“Equal Parts Genius, Charlatan, And Kinkster”: The Man Who Invented Both The Lie Detector And Wonder Woman

“Devising the lie detector was the high point of [his] rather erratic pre-comics career. He seems to have lost every job he held. His venture into business ended in an indictment for fraud; his brief stint as a lawyer saw the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals reject lie-detector tests as evidence.” Yet he ended up as creator of the first great comics superheroine – even as he kept his wife and mistress (and their children) all in the same house and his passion for women’s rights “somehow got all mixed up with bondage and spanking.”