In this tale from Wonder Woman #2, Deception promises to recapture Wonder Woman for Mars after Greed comes back a failure. He promises to play Wonder Woman for a fool, and truthfully, he made a pretty good play with Wonder Woman’s naturally trusting and honest nature.
The kooky Deception also seems to be the only one to really employ people versus just bribing or forcing them to do his bidding. Sure, they’re all slaves of Mars and chained, but he seems to get better results. Especially compared to Greed who had a hard time even with evil people like Hitler. Deception has a “lie factory where hundreds of slaves work day and night writing plots, deceptions, false propaganda, fake publicity and personality camouflage.” He also has things called phantasms, which are basically empty people shells that his astral body can take over.
Meanwhile on Earth, Wonder Woman sells war bonds. In fact, Wonder Woman takes the record for selling the most war bonds. Everyone wants to buy them from her, and soon, she’s tired out. Luckily, there are some Hawaiian dancers there to entertain the audience of war bond buyers.
Then Naha, a Hawaiian dancer, staggers toward Wonder Woman with a knife in her hand. Naha’s been stabbed, and she leaves Wonder Woman holding the knife. The police assume Wonder Woman murdered Naha and take her off to jail. Wonder Woman, being of a trusting and honest nature, says she did not kill Naha, but allows herself to be taken away. She even lets them take her lasso, as is prison policy, so she can’t hang herself. While in her cell, Wonder Woman points out that only guilty prisoners hang themselves, and she mocks how weak the bars are. Won’t she be popular out in the prison yard.
Soon, a man claiming to be her lawyer bails her out. He takes her back to his house. Where it turns out he’s a Japanese spy! Oh, snap, didn’t see that one coming. (Warning: as the Japanese are the bad guys, there is some yellowface.) Wonder Woman lassos the spy. However, it’s not her lasso; it’s a fake. The real lasso is slipped around Wonder Woman and held by Naha.
Naha knows Wonder Woman is a crafty prisoner and isn’t going to leave her alone. She says that she understands Wonder Woman’s strengths better than the men because she’s a woman.
Naha binds Wonder Woman’s hands and takes her aboard a yacht. They attempt to make everything look normal by making Wonder Woman wear a trench coat and fake arms and hands so no one notices. No one notices Wonder Woman dressed for a rainy day in the late fall and Naha wearing her belly-showing dancing outfit.
Then there’s some good times where Naha binds Wonder Woman’s feet and puts tape over her eyes and mouth. Oh, Marston, opening your cabinet for everyone to peer inside at the bondage fun. This is the moment where Naha makes her mistake; she leaves Wonder Woman alone.
Wonder Woman first send a metal radio message to Etta telling her to get the girls and go to Norfolk and look for a bound woman in the ocean. Then her strong lip muscles pull the tape off. And when her robust eyes go to do the same, Wonder Woman laments that she’s just too vain to pull up that many eyelashes with the tape.
She then uses her mouth to open the porthole — which has to be the dirtiest panel Peter’s has drawn yet — to jump through the porthole and into the ocean.
Naha spots Wonder Woman escaping from above and jumps into the water. Turns out Naha was a champion swimmer back in Hawaii. While she can’t quite catch Wonder Woman, because Wonder Woman’s eyes are still covered, she’s swimming in circles. Wonder Woman sense Naha and lifts her in the air with her feet and kicks her into Etta’s speeding boat. Once the tape’s removed and she’s untied, Wonder Woman proceeds to punish Naha by spanking her. Yes, I think Wonder Woman just got a new girlfriend this issue.
As her new girlfriend reforms, Naha reveals to Wonder Woman that she’s been working by force for Deception. Wonder Woman and Etta go back to Naha’s apartment where Deception has hidden his phantasms, including one he made of Wonder Woman. Together, Wonder Woman, Etta, and Naha go back to Hawaii with the phantasm and with a message for the military that the Japanese are going to air attack, instead of attacking by convincing native Hawaiians to join their side like previously thought.
Etta goes into a deep sleep, and her astral form goes inside the Wonder Woman phantasm. As Etta pretends to be Wonder Woman and watches the hula at a Festival of Flowers, she’s kidnapped by Japanese spies. They tie Etta in the fake lasso, and Etta acts like she’s under the rope’s spell.
But when the spies leave Etta tied up by the shore for Deception, the real Wonder Woman shows up. Deception is upset, but he knows when to cut and run. However, as he calls up his space torpedo (kidd you not) from the ocean, Wonder Woman throws a huge rock at it and smashes it into pieces. Deception must go back to Mars in shame on a slave ship. Etta just complains that Wonder Woman’s too skinny, and she’s hungry for some candy.
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