No-one else following along and ready to post first?

But it's time for more virile displays, in "Wonder Woman Versus the Saboteurs" from Sensation Comics #5! Feel free to post your own thoughts and theories on this story! Next Saturday, 23 February, we will go on to Sensation Comics #6 and "Summons to Paradise".

I had expected many things when I started this reread, but I had not expected to find so many interesting word choices. Part of the opening for this story goes:

Daughter of a virile race of wise and beauteous Amazons who dwell on the mysterious paradise isle, one would never surmise that in everyday life Wonder Woman is that demure little army nurse, Diana Prince, friend of the U.S. Army intelligence officer, Captain Steve Trevor.

As Wonder Woman, Diana has never yet failed to come to his aid when he was in a tight spot!
(my emphasis)

There are lots of interesting things about this passage. One is the mix of archaic, formal, and colloquial word choices. In a way, Marston seems to write by dictionary, and I'm reminded of Jack Vance (though Vance was undoubtedly the superior stylist). But perhaps more interesting is the way the language is coded by gender. The Amazons are noted as a "virile race" who still are described as "wise and beateous", and Wonder Woman is contrasted with her Diana Prince identity, described as a "demure little army nurse". That is, Marston uses a mix of masculine and feminine language to describe the capabilities of the Amazons and Wonder Woman, and only feminine to describe Diana Prince. Also, I read the female-gendered language about the Amazons as clearly secondary to the male-gendered one.

The note on Diana the nurse as "little" also expands to the art. Wonder Woman is drawn as tall as Steve (page 79 frame 7 in my digital omnibus), while Diana in her nurse persona is more than half a head shorter (page 76 frame 5)

There is also a shift in that the first opening paragraph notes Wonder Woman has "amazed the world", but the last opening paragraph places her relation with Steve Trevor at the forefront.

On to the story itself. Diana, with her "more than normal senses", discovers and foils a sabotage attempt using the champagne bottle used for christening the new submarine "Octopus". Granted, I'd have expected her identifying high explosives in a bottle by smell rather than weight. Then Diana promptly pretends to faint; I'm beginning to suspect that the stereotypically "female" behaviour that Marston makes her do is partly intended as a way to show how silly the expectations of society is on women, though he also undercuts that critique by conforming to the stereotypes. Being subversive has never been easy, and I'm not sure Marston does a good job with that here.

Octopus gets in trouble after submerging, and both Diana and Steve manages to catch some signals from a nearby tug, where Ensign Martin is held captive. Wonder Woman and Steve head out to the tug.

Meanwhile it is revealed that German saboteurs on the tug had abducted Ensign Martin, and after escaping from the cabin where they kept him they toss him into the sea. Wonder Woman saves him with the "grace of a mermaid and the speed of a barracuda". Wonder Woman and Steve subdue the men on the tugboat, but Ensign Martin scares them the most, so they jump overboard and swim away. But the Holliday girls are—coincidence!—having a sailing party nearby, and Diana signals Etta to capture the fleeing Germans.

Wonder Woman and Steve discover there is second sabotage attempt on the stricken Octopus, via a magnetic lock and pumping in carbon dioxide into the submarine. Wonder Woman protects the rescue diver disabling the carbon dioxide pump, but it also means she can't subdue the German boarding party. But Wonder Woman disables the nearby enemy submarine and thus breaks the magnetic lock on Octopus, allowing the submarine to escape the boarding party. Wonder Woman makes a call to the admiral leading to the capture of the crew of the German submarine.

I note that Marston puts in rather sharp limits on how long Diana can stay underwater.

At the end, Steve Trevor continues to daydream about Wonder Woman.

As far as plotting goes, it continues with the "things happened" approach. The Germans had one plan to destroy or disable the Octopus, and another intending to capture it. I feel those plans somehow are at cross-purpose. And the Holliday girls who just happen to be nearby.

Concepts introduced: Diana's super-senses, Diana doing sea rescue