Wonder Woman's bracelets

Wonder Woman's bracelets
Wonder Woman deflects bullets in her live-action television series
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
First appearance	All Star Comics #8 (December 1941)
Created by	William Moulton Marston
In story information
Type	Mystic item/artifact
Element of stories featuring	Wonder Woman

The Bracelets of Submission are a pair of metal bracelets or cuffs worn by Wonder Woman and other Amazons. They were an original creation by William Moulton Marston as an allegory for his philosophy on loving submission and the emotional control associated with it in order to balance out the strength of the human ego. These bracelets have thus far proven indestructible and able to absorb the impact of incoming attacks, allowing Wonder Woman to not only deflect automatic weapon fire, energy blasts and other projectile weaponry, but also to absorb forces from a long fall.

In the Golden Age of Comics, the Amazons of Paradise Island were depicted wearing the bracelets as a symbol of submission to their patron goddess Aphrodite and, under the goddess's instruction, as a reminder of the period when the Amazons were subjugated under the rule of the treacherous Hercules. The bracelets were magically made to be indestructible by Aphrodite. The bracelets were useful, as magically indestructible gauntlets they could be used to deflect bullets, energy weapons, and any murderous weapons in Man's World.

In Wonder Woman #52, published in March 1952, it was first mentioned that the bracelets were composed of "amazonium."

In Sensation Comics #4 it was revealed that Amazons temporarily lost their super strength if a male welded chains to their bracelets together. Their strength remained unaffected if they were chained by females (Sensation Comics #10). They would regain their strength if their bracelets were unchained. In later stories Amazons lost their strength if males simply bound their wrists, rather than their bracelets, with chains or other forms of welding. In Comic Cavalcade #14, the bracelets were revealed to balance Amazon strength with loving submission to the positive aims of civilization.

The consequences of removing bracelets became simplified in later stories: if ever broken or removed, the Amazon would go into an uncontrollable destructive frenzy, as Dr. Marston's allegory for the unfettered destruction by the human ego. The bracelets were very rarely broken, and then only by magical weapons empowered by the gods themselves (such as Artemis's sword and Aegeus's dagger of Vulcan).

The Amazons were, as before, charged with wearing their bracelets as a constant reminder of their experience of enslavement. They also wore the bracelets as penance of failing in their mission to reform mankind. However, they did not lose their strength if males chained their bracelets together and were not cursed with madness should the bracelets be removed or broken. Additionally, the generic Amazon bracelet provides no special protection.