We previously saw Superman finding his fights through his job at the Daily Star. Lois Lane additionally forced his hand and introduced more conflict to the story. In Wonder Woman, Steve Trevor carries this weight more heavily.
His presence involves Wonder Woman in American struggles. Before he gets out of the hospital, she spends her time making money in a sideshow. She doesn't have her own job in the army, so he gets her one. I do not bring up these occurrences to illustrate Trevor's power, rather his subservience to the demands of the plot. He more appropriately becomes to object which needs to be saved right at the beginning of and throughout the story.
It seems that though Moulton looked to give more agency to Wonder Woman, he fell into the pitfall of letting a male dictate the plot. Wonder Woman does have to save Trevor often, and demonstrates her physical power over him, but does not create any forward motion in her plot without him.
The question of agency and power in these comics troubles the interpreter due to its complexity and distance in time. Trevor's control of the plot merely fits into and illustrates this trend, rather than defining any answers for the reader. I know it certainly troubled me.
I too was perplexed by Marston's development of Trevor's character. In some ways I found that Trevor paralleled Lois Lane: he is in love with Wonder Woman and is dismissive of Diana Prince, a dichotomy, which serves as a sort of parody of his character. Nevertheless, I also wondered whether or not Trevor, and the integrality of his plot contributions undermined Wonder Woman. In an obvious way, it seems that Trevor is subservient to Wonder Woman, who he venerates and to whom he attributes all of his success. Nevertheless, the fact that the general public (the males with whom he works) believe him to be a hero, does seem problematic in Marston's supposedly feministic plot. However, does Trevor's act of describing Wonder Woman's power as that which saved him validate Marston? It would seem that it is not enough, yet I wonder why this would be the case considering the parallels between him and Lois Lane (is it that Marston fails to be sensitive to the gender difference?).
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