Talk:William Moulton Marston

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Contents 1 Details of the contract 2 Olive's Surname 3 Personal Life and Political Views 4 DISC assessment & DISC

[edit] Details of the contract

Due to shrewd contract negotiations, Marston may be the first comic book creator to have gained significant royalty rights from a major comic book publisher. (It took a highly publicized lawsuit in 1975 for Siegel & Shuster to gain creator rights of Superman from DC Comics.) Negotiated before his death in 1947, his heirs retain small royalties from all Wonder Woman related creations and merchandise. Also there is a reversion of rights clause that states if DC Comics does not publish for one month any Wonder Woman comic book, the rights to the Wonder Woman character and related merchandise, past, current, and future revert to his family. Effectively, this means that if DC Comics became so poor that they could only publish one comic book a month, it would have to be Wonder Woman, or else they would lose her to Marston's family. Presumably though, this has been extended to the creation and distribution of other Wonder Woman merchandise.

I don't think anyone denies Marston got the best deal of any of the major characters' creators - it's surely no coincidence that he was the only one who was an established author and older than the rest (and perhaps this should be explicitly acknowledged here). However the contract seems more convoluted. Other versions I've read state that it was at least 4 times a year - which is more in line with the frequency of DC's titles back then. Also there seems to be some evidence that DC have since brought the character outright - see the last on this page. Does anyone know both the original and current state of play? Timrollpickering July 1, 2005 10:14 (UTC)

[edit] Olive's Surname

The article says her surname was Richard, while the Bostonian article (External links) says it was Byrne. Or did she mary someone pro-forma? --18:32, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

AFAICT, 'Richard' was a pen-name. Earlier versions of this article identified her as "Olive Byrne (used pseudonym Olive Richard)" but that seems to have been accidentally deleted in an edit, leaving mentions of both "Olive Byrne" and "Olive Richard" without explaining that they're the same person. I'll fix it. --Calair 22:16, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Addendum - I wouldn't be at all surprised if the purpose of the pseudonym was to obscure the relationship between them. Looking at the link I just added, 'Richard' certainly didn't want her readers to know that she was living with Marston and that her sons were also his; publishing as 'Byrne' might have made it easier for people to join the dots. From some of the other articles, it looks like they were out to friends, but the world at large might've been a different matter. --Calair 22:31, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Personal Life and Political Views

Should there be a separate section on Martsons personal life and political views? Theres discussion of his radical feminism but maybe it should be in its own section. Also I think theres some relevance to mentioning Marstons personal interest in bondage as well as his bigamous relationship (he lived with both his wife and his mistress). Certainly bondage was a big theme in early Wonder Woman stories and Marstons interest in it as a sexual practice lends some added dimension to his inclusion of it.

The article does already acknowledge William's relationship with Elizabeth and Olive ("...lived with the couple in a polyamorous relationship"), although I've added another mention so this is made clear from the first mention of Olive. But more information about his personal life wouldn't hurt, particularly since it does seem to have had a lot of bearing on his work.

(I was just reading through some of Marston's WW stories, and... yeah. Were there any that didn't involve tying people up and/or spanking them?) --Calair 01:25, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] DISC assessment & DISC

This DISC assessment & DISC articles are crammed full of linkspam - basically it's an ongoing war between different companies who revert each others linkspam. I have no idea about this topic, so can't really know how to write a good article on the subject, but it strikes me that people who edit this page might be able to go over there and help out. Richard W.M. Jones 08:40, 18 October 2006 (UTC)