Walter J. Ong on Wonder Woman

“Ong has no quarrel with the old-style comics like Mr. & Mrs., The Gumps, Gasoline Alley, and he seems to have a sneaking admiration for Li'l Abner ("sexy and synthetic pastoralism" done with "manifest cleverness.") But, he says, "there seems to be nothing in the good comics which keeps readers from liking the others." He saves his sharpest slings for Superman's female counterpart, a four-year-old character named Wonder Woman, who is described by her creator as "the girl from Paradise Isle, beautiful as Aphrodite, wise as Athena, stronger than Hercules and swifter than Mercury." Wonder Woman swears "By Zeus!" and regularly prays to Aphrodite—which Ong says is Hitlerite paganism.”

“Wonder Woman is only a female Superman, preaching "the cult of force, spiked, by means of her pretentiously scanty 'working' attire, with a little commercial sex. . . . When not in her outré 'working' clothes she habitually wears a suitcoat and tie among the jeweled guests at luncheon parties and at formal evening affairs." Walter Ong finds Wonder Woman sexy, but "this is not a healthy sex directed toward [marriage]] and family life, but an antisocial sex, made as alluring as possible while its normal term in marriage is barred by the ground rules."”