What with an actual WOMAN writing Wonder Woman, the media is all up in Diana’s grill. Over at The New York Sun, Grady Hendrix has a comprehensive look, including a clear-eyed analysis of just what it was that creator William Moulton Marston was getting at.

Wonder Woman has had her bottom spanked by glassy-eyed adult babies from Grown-Down Land. She has been rendered helpless by the prehensile moustache of Egg Fu, a 30-foot-tall, communist egg. She has been turned into a gorilla against her will, battled villains as depressing as the Paper Man (who has all the powers of paper) and the Mouse Man (who controls mice with his mind), and her own mother has tried to kill her on more than one occasion. But never before has Wonder Woman faced an enemy as demoralizing as the ones she’s found in 2007 — the 66th year, this month, of her super life.


Meanwhile, Reuters of Singapore interviews new writer Gail Simone and sadly passes on the misstatement that Simone is the first regular woman writer on the book:

Shiny red boots, wasp-thin waist, razor-sharp tiara and big, big hair. Wonder Woman, the world’s top female superhero may be 66 years old, but she’s still got it, Gail Simone, the comic’s author says.

Simone, the character’s self-professed biggest fan, is the comic book’s first ongoing female writer. During a visit to Singapore recently, she told Reuters how the superhero remains an icon of “woman power” nearly 70 years after her creation.


We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, we still want to see WW in a truly girl-friendly guise, like the notorious proposal by Tintin Pantoja:
Ww 3

1 COMMENT

  1. I’m not a fan of the character, nor am I a girl, or even fan of manga for that matter- but I’d buy that Wondy comic by Tintin Pantoja- it looks interesting.

  2. I would pay double, heck even triple, price for a Wonder Woman comic by Tintin Pantoja. Every time I see that proposal it makes me cry to think of what could have been. Maybe it’s time to start a letter writing campaign.

  3. Maybe minds have changed at DC since about two years ago, when I told Paul Levitz that Tintin’s WW manga could be the start of a superhero-oriented girl’s manga line.

    Oh, hi, Marvel.

  4. I interviewed Tintin Pantoja by email for this piece and wound up not being able to use her comments due to space limitations, but I thought I’d throw them on here for anyone who’s interested:

    “I wore a Wonder Woman costume for my sixth birthday. Heh. Then in the late 1990’s I picked up some back issues of the relaunch of Wonder Woman written and drawn by George Perez, and fell in love with his version of the character. I particularly loved his emphasis on the mythical elements of Wonder Woman’s story, his situating her in an ancient-Greece-based culture, and his characterization of her as basically a young, innocent and inexperienced outsider with much untapped strength.

    Later while studying at SVA, DC comics, through its Vertigo imprint, released a manga-influenced graphic novel featuring Death. I’d been getting more into manga at this point, particularly manga written by and for young women, and thought Wonder Woman would provide the perfect bridge between the DC Universe and manga. After all, Wonder Woman has many of the same elements you find in girl’s manga: magic powers, gods and goddesses, mythic struggles, a young and malleable warrior princess protagonist, and a vast historical universe. How about further examining Wonder Woman’s hero’s-journey, using a younger version of the protagonist to reflect the younger manga audience, against this huge backdrop of magic and myth?- I really thought teenage readers might enjoy it.”

    Asked about pitching the project to DC:
    “I drew up the proposal with help from some friends- among them Eve Grandt, who provided the comic tones- and showed them to a DC editor who also taught at SVA. I think he might have showed them to an editor at Vertigo as well, but I believe that’s as far as it got. I don’t think I expected much of a reaction, since it’s pretty tough to attract work from Marvel or DC, but the idea was so compelling I thought, ‘might as well go for it and see where it leads.’ With no reaction from DC, I just filed the project away and put the pages online as part of my portfolio, then forgot about them.”

    When asked what she thought of Wonder Woman in general:
    “I see Wonder Woman as a great potential role model and powerful symbol. She’s iconic, and she has all this symbolism behind her: freedom from bondage and from hate, the breaking of chains, the forging of bridges, the crossing of cultures, etc. I’m also intrigued by the universe George Perez helped re-establish for her: how did this young girl from a totally isolated society become a powerful hero?”

  5. I would LOVE to see Tintin’s Wonder Woman manga published! Last I’d heard, another publisher had expressed interest in her project. I’d love to see the book either way, but I think it would be HUGE if DC did it as a manga-inspired digest aimed at younger female readers. (If Tintin is still interested in having the book come out through DC, I’m all for a letter-writing campaign.)

    As I said on my blog, this is one time I think DC would be smart to copy Marvel’s moves. (Yeah, DC did the manga-inspired version of Death, which I recall did really, really well, but after that, NOTHING.)

  7. “Yeah, DC did the manga-inspired version of Death, which I recall did really, really well, but after that, NOTHING.”

    To be fair, DC/Vertigo did follow up Jill Thompson’s manga-influenced DEATH: AT DEATH’S DOOR graphic novel with Thompson’s THE DEAD BOY DETECTIVES.

    So it’s not that DC/Vertigo did NOTHING after the Death book, but (if anything) that the thing they followed up with didn’t sustain the interest generated by the earlier book…

  8. Oops, that’s right! I completely forgot about that DEAD BOY DETECTIVES follow-up — which I enjoyed, but you’re right that it didn’t seem to garner the same level of publicity or buzz.

  10. John Jakala:
    The publisher, or, more correctly imprint, in question is myself and Lisa Jonte. The imprint is named “Nan.” The plan was for TinTin to file off the serial numbers from the WW manga, as it were.

    We’re finding that settling Nan is a challenge as publishers are reluctant to add a girl’s line in spite of the fact that girl’s lines are proven sellers in traditional bookstores. There’s also the very necessary requirement that the line be with a publisher with solid bookstore distro.
    We are still working on it, though. It’ll happen. Both I and Lisa know have the kitten-herding experience to ensure that it does.