Pitch Your Epic Idea For A Wonder Woman Story

[Alpha]

Picture this scenario:
The Wonder Woman book is down in sales very bad. It got to the point where DC is desperate enough to hire YOU as the next writer for the book. You can do whatever you want but you have to be aware of these conditions.

1 - You've only been hired for a single story arc of 4 or 5 issues. So you have to make this count. This is the one and only story you know you'll ever write so you probably should do something you've always wanted to see but you know nobody else would ever do.

2 - DC wants to grow the fanbase somehow, in order to get more sales. Your story has to be markeatable enough so that someone that never picked up a WW comic will be enticed to finally try her out. This doesn't mean that you have to write a story for everyone. You could choose to appeal to a single niche group/ genre, as long as you are able to market it in a way that is appealing to some kind of strong new audience.

3 - if this one story arc is successful, DC might allow you to continue to write the book. So this one self contained story has to be written in a way that, should the opportunity arise, you could further mine and develop into a full run of your own. Just don't end on a cliffhanger.

You are free to ignore conditions 2 and 3, but I think it would be fun if you were able to answer all three conditions.

What would you do?

[Fuzzy Mittens]

Well if the goal is to put books into peoples hands in such a way as to get them talking and ive four issues to make this happen in a way that could be used as a diving board for future stories....
Id make it a story about romantic reveals. Establish Steve Trevor to be bi in as blatant as one can be with a PG-13 rating. And pair this up with Diana and her multitude of romantic interests aggreeing to form a polycule.

The publicity would drive the comic through the roof. Possibly even make the news. And it would easily leave room to explore should it be picked up to continue.

[Alpha]

It is rather strange that DC is so scared of having Diana be bisexual, considering how much attention it would bring to the character. I doubt that many cultural conservatives are reading Wonder Woman comics. So why not exploit the demographic that could in fact be interested in someone with the values of Diana.

Maybe it wouldn't result in much success for the monthlies, but if you invested in a crazy lgbt Wonder Woman graphic novel series, you could really get a lot of success in bookstores.

[Shimbo]

It is rather strange that DC is so scared of having Diana be bisexual, considering how much attention it would bring to the character. I doubt that many cultural conservatives are reading Wonder Woman comics. So why not exploit the demographic that could in fact be interested in someone with the values of Diana.

Maybe it wouldn't result in much success for the monthlies, but if you invested in a crazy lgbt Wonder Woman graphic novel series, you could really get a lot of success in bookstores.

She is queer. This really shouldn't be up for debate lol. Just because DC likes to hide that nugget doesn't mean it hasn't been in her DNA from the inception. It's DC's fear of that radical, subversive queerness that has so often led to our girl being sterilized and, quite literally, bastardized.

You're absolutely right. If we had a She-Ra show or a Lumberjanes type book, or hell, a James Tynion the 4th type horror/queer book, the sales she'd get.

But that's the wrong demographic and audience, I guess.

[marhawkman]

I'd do a team book with wondergirls as her team.

Thing is... the first issue would have a scene where Cassie and BatGirl are looking for Donna... and find her eating dinner with Deva. And then they DON'T get into a fight. Which, given that it's Devastation... having a polite conversation is scarier than a fist fight.... and fist fights with Deva are REALLY scary! O_o' What could cause Deva to decide to allow Donna to tell her what to do? Ooohh......

Another(silly) idea was to have Deva come up with the idea to conceal the team activities(from who? well, mostly heroes like WW) by creating a set of Supervillain identities, and a new supervillain team... the "Elements of Destruction". Each member uses the name of a force of nature... sort of. Thing is, with Cassie, Deva, and Donna recruiting for the group it gets a bit crazy.... eventually ending up with a roster almost as large as the Justice League(in JL:U), and being more heroes than villains... but having several (mostly WW) villains. With the eventual reveal that the element of Magic is none other than Circe. Wait what? Yeah, haven't figured out specifically why Circe joins. Just that the actual main threat the group is created to fight(Cronus) is not liked by Circe. But it's not one of those things where you do a direct confrontation at the start.

Hmm not fully a WW story, she's in it but not the focus, but it's in her corner so to speak.

[Alpha]

It sure is an interesting idea. A reverse Thunderbolts could be very appealing to non WW readers, and it's a great way to put a spotlight on her family. So would Diana herself be on the team?

[marhawkman]

It sure is an interesting idea. A reverse Thunderbolts could be very appealing to non WW readers, and it's a great way to put a spotlight on her family. So would Diana herself be on the team?

The basic idea is that WW is on paper the team leader of the public(ish) version of the team, but it's not really meant as a super team and is more of a way for(primarily female, since it's HQ is on Paradise island) young heroes to do training to improve their skills, and teamwork. So WW does JL stuff more often, and Donna and Cassie are in practice the actual leaders. Diana knows they recruited Devastation, and isn't happy with that, but thinks Donna and Cassie are pretty much the best people for keeping Deva from doing bad stuff, so she's mostly just hoping Deva will become less evil.

Elements of Destruction is the team for when they don't want WW(or the rest of the JLA) to know what they're doing. They wear matching(but not identical) super-suits that conceal their identities in a manner similar to the palette swapped ninjas in Mortal Kombat. Each uses a code name(and has a logo that's not the same as what they normally use) that is in some way vaguely related to their abilities, but extremely vaguely since it's not intended to giveaway the identity. Also some of these names are only "elements" in a metaphorical sense. There's Thunder(Cassie), and Magic(Circe), but also Wind(Miss Martian), and Ferocity(Cheetah), Moonlight(Power Girl), and Starlight(Super Girl). Also as part of the ruse they do a variety of things that they wouldn't do normally and some of them use weapons they don't use otherwise. Moonlight's mask changes PG's heat vision to be a white beam attack. Cassie uses throwing weapons that look like metal lighting bolts to channel lightning. Wind uses TK and a rather extreme version of shapeshifting to imitate a wind elemental. And so on....

Eventually WW figures it out and confronts them. At which point she starts listing their actual names... until she realizes that she doesn't actually know who some of them are! For example: Circe and Donna found a way to recruit Car-Vex, who most of the world thinks is dead.... and who WW never met. So when WW sees Car-Vex as "Slaughter", she fails to guess her identity.

So it'd be a weird sort of thing where WW is kinda sorta in charge, but not really. She is ostensibly the leader of the hero version of the team, but... WW is not directly connected to the Elements of Destruction team. Of course the question is "why?" Yeah... Cronus is the big bad, but in-universe no one's sure what's going on. Deva knows something 'cause Cronus is her ancestor, but Deva's not HELPING Cronus.... Donna knows why, but... Deva's not keen on talking about it to anyone else. But Deva and Donna put together don't have enough information to actually do anything. Which is why plot happens.

[Alpha]

Yeah dude! All of that sounds totally awesome. Really like the sound of it.

[John Venus]

Diana has an insatiable thirst for ice cream but finds out her ice cream vault is all out and she only has one hour to get to the ice cream store before it closes. As she flies to the store at super speed, she is constantly interrupted by one emergency after the other. Will she make it to the store before it closes? Find out in this 6 issue limited series!