10 Figures Who Completely Reshaped Comic Book History
3. William Moulton Marston
Aside from having a name that sounds like an evil robber baron in a western, William Moulton Marston was a psychologist, inventor of the lie detector, and creator of Wonder Woman. Wanting to create a new kind of super hero who fought with the power of love rather than with just fists or energy beams, Marston was influenced by his legal wife (he had an unofficial wife too. She was his former student. The other wife was cool with it. It's a whole thing) to make that hero female.
Wonder Woman debuted in 1941 and has been the the predominant and archetypal female superhero ever since. Mainstream comics haven't always been great with women but Wonder Woman, as a female hero with her own franchise, has consistently stood out as a woman in comics who wasn't a victim, the love interest, or a corpse in a fridge.
It's a bit ironic that a man created a feminist icon and then wanted to use his character to promote a more accepting attitude towards bondage - Marston once wrote: “[t]he only hope for peace is to teach people who are full of pep and unbound force to enjoy being bound.” The feminist factor gets kind of washed away by the creepy factor.