Inspiration behind Wonder Woman

SUFFERING Sappho, Batman, you’re such a square! That’s especially true when you consider the real origin of Wonder

Woman, the warrior with the indestructible bracelets and slightly kinky magic lasso who burst into comics in 1941.

As it happens, there was more kink to her story than suggested by that golden lasso, which she uses to force her captives to tell the truth and looks like something from a bondage emporium.

There are some delectable questions posed in Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, and a few frisky binding games on tap too.

A sly and charming Trojan horse of a movie, it tells the story of the man who created Wonder Woman and the women who inspired him, in and out of bed.

Professor Marston is another reminder that people once had sexual appetites and relationships as complex as those of today.

Occasionally, grandpa might have even visited a dusty, mysterious shop with sexy speciality items in front and something naughtier in the back.

Dr William Moulton Marston (a winning Luke Evans) finds out just how special those items could be when he pops into a store where a man calling himself the G-string King (JJ Feild) opens up a world of consensual power play and pleasure.

At that point, life has already become interesting for Marston. The writer-director Angela Robinson lays out just how, well, knotty it all is with wit, sympathy and economy.

Spanning decades, the story takes flight in 1928 with Marston teaching young lovelies at Radcliffe.

“Are you normal?” he asks of a beaming, receptive audience that serves as an amusing stand-in for the viewer. Marston has answers to that and other questions, along with a theory he calls Disc – for dominance, inducement, submission and compliance – which sounds terribly complex and slightly ridiculous.

Robinson borrows Marston’s