Chapter 17 | Page 3b: Hot Stuff

Posted on December 19, 2025 by Brad Guigar

Today’s page takes us back to Ralph’s Diner, where Captain Heroic proves—once again—that nothing rattles him… not even a surprise soup bath.

Hailey is mortified, Captain Heroic is dripping, and somewhere across the diner, Yazmine Velour is livestreaming the whole thing as heart emojis rain from the internet. It’s a small moment, but one that says a lot about who Cap really is—and why people can’t help falling for him.

Transcript

Panel 1
Hailey (distraught that she has dumped hot soup on Captain Heroic): Omigod Omigod Omigod…

Captain Heroic (turning to another person eating at the diner): Excuse me. Would you hand me a napkin, please? (The person hands him a napkin)

Panel 2

Hailey: I’m so sorry Captain Heroic, sir. I didn’t mean to — {sob}

Panel 3

Captain Heroic (handing her the napkin): Here. Please don’t cry.

Panel 4

Captain Heroic (continues): Most of my first impressions involve disintegration rays. And actual impressions. In concrete.

Panel 5

Captain Heroic: This was far more pleasant — not counting the bay leaf in my shirt.Yazmine Velour (as she livestreams the interaction from the other side of the diner, a torrent of heart emojis flow from her phone as the audience reacts): Omigod Omigod Omigod

After Dark

This week's commissioned MicroFic delivers exactly what you’d want from a pairing between Dynasty and Father Christmas.

  • Yes, he lives up to his name.

  • Yes, Dynasty knew exactly what she was doing.

  • No, the North Pole will never be the same.

I also posted the Goblin Girl MicroFic from the Monster Girl poll — and the response was so good, I might need to make these poll-powered MicroFics a recurring thing!

William Moulton Marston

Posted on August 24, 2006 by Brad Guigar

Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston


Remember when I complained that a story about the history of Wonder Woman in the The Philadelphia Daily News lacked any mention of the pervading themes of bondage?

Check out this fascinating piece by Charles Lyons, contributing writer for ComicBookResources:

She wasn’t jettisoned from a doomed planet, she didn’t witness the brutal murder of her parents, and she was never injected with radioactive venom, but the true story of Wonder Woman’s origin is one of the strangest and most fascinating of any superhero…

…Wonder Woman’s creator was William Moulton Marston, a Harvard-educated psychologist, lawyer and provocateur who invented a precursor of the modern polygraph (the likely inspiration for Wonder Woman’s lie-detecting lasso)…

As he told interviewer Olive Richard in the August 14, 1942 “Family Circle,” “Wonder Woman satisfies the subconscious, elaborately disguised desire of males to be mastered by a woman who loves them.”

But Marston was intent on more than merely fulfilling the fantasies of his male readers. In a letter to comics historian Coulton Waugh, he wrote, “Frankly, Wonder Woman is psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who should, I believe, rule the world.” Marston believed that submission to “loving authority” was the key to overcoming mankind’s violent urges, and that strong, self-realized women were the hope for a better future. Wonder Woman was very consciously Marston’s means of spreading these notions to impressionable young minds.

With this unusual brand of feminism as his stated aim, Marston filled his stories with bondage (both male and female), spanking, sorority initiation rituals, cross-dressing, infantilism, and playful domination. Armies of slave girls were everywhere, and hardly an issue went by without a full-body panel of Wonder Woman bound from head to toe. In “Sensation Comics” #35 (November 1944) Wonder Woman even lets slip that rope bondage was a popular pastime back home.

Read more.

The excerpts don’t do it justice. This is one engaging, well-written piece on a fascinating subject.