G Willow Wilson's Tenure on Wonder Woman

[Agent Z]

She’s a “Daughter of Zeus” since being a demigod is what allows her to beat Ares, since only a god can beat a god. Steppenwolf mentions that she has “the blood of the Old Gods” in her. With Snyder gone though, if Patty wants to retcon out Zeus I’m sure she could, but for right now DCEU WW is definitely considered a Zeus kid.

I highly doubt that. WB has pushing Diana as the daughter of Zeus everywhere else. It doesn't matter if Snyder is around or not.

[Natamaxxx]

https://bookriot.com/2018/11/12/g-wi...mpression=true

Interview

Interest piqued, but did the interview have to start with a question about Diana's origin? Do we really need to vet the writer's stance on Diana's birth before deciding if their story might be worthwhile?

The art may take a little getting used to, but I'll give it a shot. This book has had worse.

[kjn]

Interest piqued, but did the interview have to start with a question about Diana's origin? Do we really need to vet the writer's stance on Diana's birth before deciding if their story might be worthwhile?

I think it comes down to several different things. One is of course that DC's push to give Diana a father has met quite a bit of opposition among Wonder Woman fen. But more important to me is that Wilson gets the mythological power of the clay birth, and how it lies at the feminist core of Wonder Woman.

So even if, Ghu help us, DC forces Wilson to use the Zeus origin, I know that Wilson groks Wonder Woman on a fundamental level that many other writers doesn't do, and that understanding will inform everything she writes about the character.

[Fuzzy Mittens]

Wow thats alot to take in.
The preview first of all is rather good. Little Pimple should totally be Grails moniker going forward.

And the interview does give alot of hope for how this could go forward

[Vordan]

I highly doubt that. WB has pushing Diana as the daughter of Zeus everywhere else. It doesn't matter if Snyder is around or not.

On second thought you’re probably right, but Patty does have a greater degree of creative freedom than anyone else.

[kjn]

Another interview with Wilson. This one goes more into her thought processes on how to approach Wonder Woman as a character.

To me it was really a desire to smash the two Wonder Woman genres together. There are really two parallel Wonder Woman storylines. There’s Wonder Woman in our world where she is very much an anomaly, she’s dealing with real-world problems and political intrigue. She’s got a roster of anti-heroes and villains who she deals with who are very much from our world as well. And then, on the flip side of that, you have the very high fantasy stuff where you’re in the realms of the gods and you’re dealing with the underworld and with Greek mythology, and you’re in a completely different high fantasy world where anything is possible. Often those two run in parallel, I really wanted to smash them together. I think the Sandman influence will be pretty obvious pretty quickly.

[millernumber1]

That's a very nice interview. It's basically a more laid out, philosophical version of her DC Nation interview. It's so hard, when something is as complicated as this run promises, to really hype it up while still not spoiling anything.

[kjn]

Yeah, I really liked it. Wilson looks like the type of writer who is quite aware of the craft of storytelling, worldbuilding, and characterisation. That does not necessarily mean they automatically write good or great stories, but it makes for nice interviews.

Another interview I found, over on ComicsBeat. This one touches a bit more on the concrete story we're going to get.

We’re really asking a lot of hard questions, of Ares as a character but also of Diana as a character. She’s presented with this caricature of herself in this newly-improved and suddenly-interested version of Ares. Things could go very well or very badly, and given that this is superhero comics, you can probably guess which way it goes. Along the way, we’re going to pull in some beloved minor characters we haven’t seen in a while, some new characters that hopefully will really grab interest both with new readers and with established readers, and we’re also going to have a lot of fun and face a lot of drama.

To me, that's appealing, since most versions of Ares has been rather one-note, in both the Pérez and the Jimenez versions. (Azzarello's Ares was interesting, but making Ares into basically the only sympathetic god chafed with me, and the movie Ares was far too influenced by Christian patterns.) Having an Ares who is a caricature of Wonder Woman sounds like a different take.

[VonHammersmark]

“Superhero Sandman” sounds bloody good to me but, in the end, it’s how well she and Cary Nord execute it. I can’t help but think how good this story might’ve looked like in the world that Chiang and Azzarello created, oh what a shame

[Stanlos]

I hope she has what it takes to write something worth while. Robinson is an old pro from the 90's and he couldn't deliver.

I still wonder how much of that was him and how much was editorial/TPTB. We will never know I guess.

[kjn]

And another Wilson interview, on the NY Times no less. This one is even more philosophical, often barely touching on Wonder Woman at all.

That’s exactly what I was looking for. I think what’s fun about Wonder Woman, especially in some of her more recent incarnations, is the way that she juxtaposes these mythological features with the very banal, everyday facts of living in our society in the 21st century. For me, it’s really about re-examining those Greek myths that have timeless themes in the context of a society that has smartphones and Wi-Fi and international espionage and gentrification and income inequality and all the things that you encounter on a daily basis. To see whether they’re still relevant and to keep them relevant is an interesting artistic challenge.

[SiegePerilous02]

I still wonder how much of that was him and how much was editorial/TPTB. We will never know I guess.

I think it was a deadly combination of both. Robinson might have been able to deliver a more solid run if wasn't editorially mandated to use Jason and Grail and tell his own stories. But he was, and he wasn't the right person to execute it in a good way.

Then again, I think what he did to Vanessa was all him, so...

[kjn]

Another interview, with some thoughts about the relation between Steve Trevor and Diana.

One of the intrinsic parts of the Wonder Woman story is that, just because of who she is, a lot of classic superhero tropes get flipped on their head," Wilson said. "I think most superheroes, or most male superheroes, have a love interest that they're gonna have to save at one point or another, and probably at many points. In her case, it just happens to be a guy. I think this really seeps into the way that I portray their relationship, that Steve is kind of used to it at this point. He's been in this position before and he's really just trying to make sure, because he knows how powerful Wonder Woman is, that when he gets in trouble, she doesn't come in with -- I would say guns blazing, but she doesn't use guns -- with lasso blazing and make the mess even bigger.

[kjn]

Interview over on The Daily Beast, touches mainly on Internet use and Ms Marvel, but plenty about Wonder Woman as well.

To me, it was interesting that Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor are World War II-era characters from a time when warfare was still largely about two armies facing each other across a battlefield. And of course, in this day and age, warfare almost never looks like that. It’s almost always asymmetrical. It’s urban, there are massive civilian casualties, there are proxy wars, there are insurgencies. So warfare itself looks very, very different than the era in which Wonder Woman arrived on the scene in the 1940s. And I wanted to challenge her position in the context of modern warfare, where very few things are black and white, it’s not as easy to determine quote-unquote good guys from quote-unquote bad guys, it’s very rarely two armies facing each other from across a battlefield, and kind of see what happens.

If I wanted to add something here is that I believe Wilson and the movie have something in common here, in that they decoupled Wonder Woman from the Second World War, which is one of the very few wars that can be said to have a clearcut moral dimension (the other ones I can think of of are the French Revolutionary Wars 1792–1802 and the Slaveholder's Rebellion 1861–1865). The First World War, in comparison, had a bad side with worse members facing off against a worse side.

[WonderScott]

I'm really enjoying where GWW's head is at creatively, philosophically, and regarding the questions she's asking of the character, supporting cast, and their relevancy and place in the modern age.

These are the questions and considerations I that I love to have and peer into a creative's mind in story development and characterization.

Thanks for rounding them up and sharing them kjn! Much appreciated.