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To be fair, this news has been out there for months and months, but USA TOday made it official: following the end of the Brian Azzarello/Cliff Chiang run on Wonder Woman, the team of writer Meredith Finch and artist David Finch are taking over the book starting with #36 in November. Mr Finch is of course well known for his Marvel/DC work, most of it with the slick, attractive female superheroes that we’re used to; Mrs Finch has written some books for Zenescope previously.

With their dark, often gruesome run, Azzarello and Chiang created a singular vision for the Azmazon princess, surely one of the definitive runs on the book. It’s a tough act to follow, let alone with a new writer whose every move will be scrutinized in the run up to the Wonder Woman movie with Gal Godot slated for 2017. Are these two Tumblr ready?

“I love the idea that it’s a woman writing a woman because we’re trying to appeal to more female readers now,” says David.

Adds Meredith: “it makes sense if you’re going to try to attract that female market that you appeal to them on every level — your writing demographic reflects the demographic of your readership.”

“That’s one aspect of being a female writer I can bring to her. Women tend to react in a different way, and I can bring some of that reactionary (thinking), going from your heart sometimes more than from your head,” she says.

UPDATE: Oh NOW I SEE why social media has been up in arms ALREADY about this.

David: And for my part, I’m excited to be drawing Meredith’s story and to be drawing such an icon. That’s something — since I’ve been at DC, it’s been an incredible privilege to be able to draw characters like Batman, and to the limited degree I’ve had, to draw Superman, and now to get into Wonder Woman. I think she’s a beautiful, strong character. Really, from where I come from, and we’ve talked about this a lot, we want to make sure it’s a book that treats her as a human being first and foremost, but is also respectful of the fact that she represents something more. We want her to be a strong — I don’t want to say feminist, but a strong character. Beautiful, but strong.

Have the two of you collaborated on a creative project together, either in comics or outside of it?

David: No–

Meredith: He says no, but the fact of the matter is, yes! [Laughs] He did that “Wolverine” #900 that he co-plotted with C.B. Cebulski, and of course we talked about it, and I also talk through ideas with him, and we have conversations about how to do this or on that–

David: I think it’s been a bit of a — we actually came up with a creator-owned project years ago that one day it would be great to do if we actually found the time to do. When I did “Batman: The Dark Knight,” for the most part, I wanted to do something a little darker, and that’s not really where DC was coming from. I wanted it to be my own. I probably ignored advice that would have been helpful! [Laughter] I feel like I went from trying to take a lead role with a lot of that stuff to realizing, you know what, I’m an artist. I feel pretty comfortable doing that, and I’m really not a writer; it’s not my strong suit. I have a really hard time keeping plot details oriented in my head because I’m so visual. I’m happy to leave the writing to somebody that is a little smarter than I am!

Anyway, I think it’s VERY safe to say that the Finch team is merely a stopgap until a new creative steps in for the JL movie pre-launch and WW’s first appearance in Henry and Ben: where’s my cowl, dude?

Showbiz reporter and scooper Nikki Finke has been languishing under a no compete since she left Penske Media’s Deadline.com, which so founded. But she’s back, and the very first scoop on her site is a purported line-up of superhero films that WB is planning for the next four years. According to Finke, this is to be announced at Comic-Con.

May 2016 – Batman v Superman

July 2016 – Shazam

Xmas 2016 – Sandman

May 2017 – Justice League

July 2017 – Wonder Woman

Xmas 2017 – Flash and Green Lantern team-up

May 2018 – Man Of Steel 2

Finke adds that Suicide Squad and Metal Men were also considered but now on the back burner. And as Batman v Superman will be a “Dawn of the Justice League” film, cameos for the actors playing the rest of the universe are being signed up, including Aquaman and Green Lantern.

Ambitious plans, and as DC has been searching for its very own Kevin Feige—Zack Snyder can’t direct everything—they had better continue to search. Without a cohesive hand to helm this, this is a LOT of movies to come out in a four year period.

BTW, for year Nikki has professed that she “doesn’t do geek.” That this is her first scoop tells you all you need to know about the power of the comic book movie in Burbank.

by Verushka Byrow

[Wonder Woman has always been a part of Nicola Scott’s life, in fact it might seem like she was destined to work with the heroine’s, be as an artist or an actress. Scott came late to comics and in fact, it was the simple desire to draw Wonder Woman every day that set her on her path to DC.

Her pursuit of her dream is a study in determination and will cause no small amount of awe given the fiercely competitive industry she wanted to break into. Below Nicola discusses her Wonder Woman, Wonder Woman’s appearance in the upcoming Batman vs Superman movie, and how a failed Wonder Woman pilot set her on her path to comic success.

Nicola Scott will appear this week at the Supanova Pup Culture Expo in Sydney, AU.]

VB: There was a quote in one of your old interviews where you said that would be happy drawing Wonder Woman all day every day, so is she still everything you hoped for when you were growing up, or is she more?
NS: Well obviously my version of Wonder Woman in my head is not necessarily the fictional character as she is now. Wonder Woman’s look and stories are guided by a number of different people at any given stage. What tends to happen is that you start narrowing down who she is to you, what these characters mean to you, so I narrowed her down to what she means to me, and as an idea she hasn’t let me down. That is one of the reasons why I feel like I haven’t grown out of the character, because she still speaks to me on that really sort of nostalgic level, but also just as an adult. I like her life philosophy.

VB: What exactly do you mean?

NS: Oh, well, for the last, oh gosh, it’s got to be probably about 15 years there has been a version of Wonder Woman that has been quite aggressive. She’s not really the Wonder Woman I relate to, she’s more of a Xena Warrior Princess version of Wonder Woman. It’s a fashion, and it’s a trend in comics.
I see Wonder Woman, at her core, as quite compassionate. She has a lot of solidarity, and she is very inclusive, so despite being physically perfect, she’s more than that. She’s gifted by the gods in almost every aspect of her life — with her compassion, wisdom, nature, power, and beauty.

What makes her relatable or approachable, despite this perfection, is that she is incredibly inclusive, and welcoming, and nurturing, you know, she is a earth mother and I have a lot of time for that. She is a woman from a race of women where, there is nothing but solidarity. They don’t have to rise up against anyone, they don’t have to fight from oppression from anybody, they don’t have to compete for attention with anybody. They are pure solidarity and I find that a really lovely way to see female sisterhood and I think that is something she will always aspire towards.

I come from a female family sisters and cousins, all girls. The only men we have are the ones that have married into it and then they go and procreate more women. So I understand that dynamic of huge female energy and luckily my family is a very warm family, there is no sort of bitchy outsider. So I have always related to her in that regard quite strongly, and it wasn’t really until I was in high school, that I really started experiencing the separation that can be caused by competitiveness, elitist thinking and all that kind of stuff.

I found that really disenfranchising for a while, until I started to realise that no, I can tell the world around me what I would like with the people I choose to surround myself with, with all the people whose attention I should encourage or seek myself, so my ideas relate quite strongly to that.

Q: That is a wonderfully pure version or pure thinking about her.

NS: Well, that is what I think she is. She’s not really a superhero like Superman is a superhero, she is a warrior by training, but she by the time she comes to face a war, she is not really a warrior by experience. So it’s her nature, in any confrontation, to try and settle it down, to try and talk it down, to try and compromise and suggest other options other than brute force. If that doesn’t work, which quite often it won’t, she will just defend people that need defending and try to stop harm being committed, and if that doesn’t work she will always try to take the most submissive turn.

So, if push comes to shove she will shove back and at the end of the day if everything is completely out of control and someone needs to be put down (literally killed) she will do that too but it is absolutely a last resort but she will do it. Superman and Batman won’t do it but she will.

VB: She isn’t afraid of making the hard decision when there is nothing else to be done?

NS: Exactly, and I have a lot of respect for that, she has the power to use brute force first, which is probably what Superman would do, but she will try everything else first. At the end of the day she is willing to go further than the boys will, if need be and I have a lot of respect for that discipline.

VB: Before you started work as an artist for comic books, did you have an interest in art in itself or was it always Wonder Woman and comic books you lean towards?

NS: I didn’t really know about comic books properly until I was in my late teens. I saw a few comic books in newsagents when I was a kid and some of them would have characters on them I would recognise, like Superman or Batman or Wonder Woman. And when I picked those up to look through, they were not the same version of the TV characters I was used to. I would find the continuity that they existed in a little confusing and very overwhelming, and really more often than not the comic book would have Hulk on the front cover, and I did not know who any of those people were. So cComic books didn’t really factor in my life until much later but art factored in my life from a very early age, because my mother and grandmother were artists, so the culture of art was very rich in my family.

My mother had a studio which had a big book shelf full of art books, so I was always looking at art books from a very young age and starting to relate to some artists and some themes more than others. I gravitated towards classical themed art, sculptural or paintings or anything like that. The culture of art was part of my family and because I think I had a natural instinct for it, my mother spent quite a bit of time teaching me bits and pieces. A lot of which went over my head at the time. But now that I am older it comes back to me, and I realise it has actually made a difference learning stuff so young.

I used to go along to life drawing classes when I was four, not because I was taking myself to them but because mum was going to them. Instead of leaving me at home she’d take me with her, and instead of giving me a toy to play with in the corner she would give me some paper, and some graphite to draw the model which I would, and more often than not I would go over the drawing she had done and put Wonder Woman boots onto everybody. Take all these naked fleshy forms and turn them into a super hero! The language of art was being discussed with me and nurtured in me from a very young age.

VB: If you hadn’t found yourself working in comics what kind of artist do you think you would be?

NS: Originally what I wanted to do with my life was be an actor, that was where I had placed a lot of my training, I went to a performing arts high school and I started acting quite seriously from the age of 12. Like many unemployed actors do I worked in hospitality and drawing was just something I could always do, and not something I could see myself doing professionally. My eldest sister is a graphic designer and she has the eye for that, and the knack for that, which I didn’t necessarily think I had, so that wasn’t really a field I considered pursuing. There were times when I did some work for hire, art jobs for her, but really some uninspiring stuff like directions on how to use floaties and stuff. So commercial art was never really something I pursued professionally because I was always drawing something that other people wanted me to draw. It wasn’t terribly interesting and I wasn’t inspired to be a fine artist like my mother and my grandmother were.

I wanted to draw the things I wanted to draw, which would be super heroes, and fantasy stuff but I didn’t really grow up as part of a geek culture — none of my family were terribly geeky and none of my friends were geeky. So I didn’t really have anyone to share the interest with or bounce the ideas off of until I was quite a bit older. By that stage I was so behind the 8 ball in terms of knowing anything, that I just sort of felt like an outsider when I found people who I felt could be kindred spirits, but they knew so much more than I did. I found that really intimidating. It wasn’t until I was 28 and trying to work out what I was going to do with the rest of my life, because I had given up on acting, probably a really dumb time to give up on acting at 28 because that is usually when everything really starts happening for the people that really make it. You either make it really young or you make it round to your mid to late twenties.

When I was 28, I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life, because I’d finished with acting. I knew I wanted to do something creative for a career, but I wasn’t sure what. The skillset I had was that I could draw and I could sew, and out of a process of elimination I had got myself down to drawing, but I could not work out what I could do with that that would be satisfying to me, until I thought, if I have to draw the same thing all day every day, what do I want to draw?

And that was where Wonder Woman came in I was like, I thought it would be fun if I could just daw Wonder Woman every day. I had not considered it before because I don’t know anything about it but that is ridiculous because all the things I love exist there. Just because I didn’t know the industry wasn’t a good enough excuse. That was what I wanted to do, that is what I should be doing and so that was the initial spark and from that moment literally I started pursuing, learning about the industry, learning about what being an artist in that industry meant and pursuing that and facilitating goals as I went along.

VB: What was the time like for you? Did you ever think “oh my god what am I doing this is never going to work out” or did you just go for it?

NS: I just went for it. I think because I was older and I was coming to it from a period of creative frustration in a different field I could just put all of that energy into learning about comics. That I knew nothing about it just meant that I could go into it just sort of less emotionally and more aggressively. I think if this had been something I had been toying with for a long time and then I decided to pursue it the weight of expectation and failure would have possibly stopped me at a number of road blocks along the way. Because I came into it knowing I had no idea what I was talking about and just determined to learn, it just made me a bit more of a bulldozer.

I just decided I am just doing this whether anyone else wants me to or not. I am just going to start asking all the questions that I need to ask. And I think because of that it gave me a really particular … I say rejuvenation.

The first time I went to Comic Con in San Diego I went with a couple of people, less than a year after I decided this was what I wanted to do. I just found out that going to conventions is the best way to get work and going to America is the only way I was going to get a job in comic books. The San Diego convention was the biggest one, and even though it was a fraction of the size it is now, it was still the biggest one. I found out about that one through asking people, magazines, and websites. I went to that with a couple of people who had been in the Australian industry for a few years, and we were really emotionally invested. And what I found really interesting was at the end of that convention we were totally overwhelmed and completely freaked out.

We went to this convention think that we were hot shit, and that we would be snapped up and we got knocked on our arses as soon as we saw the size of it. That was completely overwhelming, by the end of that show the other two were like “oh my god I don’t know if I can do this” because it was so overwhelming and also a little scary. I came away from it thinking, I don’t know what I am doing but I now have direction so I am doing this. I wasn’t taking no as an option, failure just wasn’t an option.
To start off with people would see that attitude from someone who clearly has no idea what they are doing, yeah I could draw ok but they would see that as slightly amusing but give it a couple of years and they would say that chick is really determined she is going to get there.

One of the very first people in the American industry I met was a writer and traditionally an inker and was a big deal in the industry. He had been around for a very long time and he knew everybody. The very first time he met me and saw my portfolio, he was like yeah this is cute but good luck, and because I was being quite determined and asking a lot of questions, he gave me some advice and he sent me in some particular directions. Jimmy managed to open a couple of doors for me and had quite a lot of faith in my determination.

Now I consider him one of my best mates, he has a lot of time for me and he looks at me like I cannot believe you are the same person that I met 10 years ago that had no idea what she was doing, because you are at the top of your field. It is one of those things where I think my enthusiasm for learning actually worked in my favour, because it was a little contagious. People would get swept up in my I am going to make this happen gung-ho attitude and they would sort of think oh ok she probably can.

VB: So you have no regrets about coming to the industry late?

NS: Not regrets no, but it would have been better for me if I had started earlier partly because I have been doing this for over 10 years now and physically I am not in my top form. I am in my forties now. Also there was a window of opportunity in the 90s before I started, where there were a lot of people that made a lot of money, and there were some really interesting creative pushes that happened in the early 90s and then again in the later 90s. I wish I had been part of one of those, where artists were getting quite a lot of notice.

I am talking real bottom line here because I am in the industry, it becomes about what you earn per page and I make a nice but a modest living and there are some people who make quite a lot more. They were lucky enough to get in at a good time, they were lucky enough to get some really fabulous creative jobs, and some of those creative jobs are still around, but there isn’t as much money around as there once was.

Q: I read an interview you did with Gail Simone where you said you had actually auditioned for a part in a Wonder Woman show. It seems like you were always meant to do something with Wonder Woman.

NS: Well yes, Wonder Woman has sign posted my life, it was actually because of that audition that I decided to give up acting. Because I had been pursuing it throughout my twenties and it wasn’t happening and then in the late 90s when I was in my mid-twenties there was a Wonder Woman pilot series being made. I was auditioning for that and I got through to one of the final rounds, and they never ended up making the show or even confirming the casting. From what I am aware, I was still included in, I hadn’t been struck off the list before it got delayed and then it got cancelled. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me, the one role not only did I really want but I would have been great for.

So I thought I am getting out of this gig, this is ridiculous, so that was when I spent a couple of years trying to work out what I was going to do next and eventually I came round to comics.

VB: She has definitely signposted your life that is a good way to describe it. So when you think of all the pilots and the Wonder Woman in the new movie coming up what do you hope they all remember about her?

NS: I hope they remember she is a complex character, because the pilot they did make a couple of years ago, the David Kelly one — I don’t know if you have seen it — was appalling, it was really, really bad.

He didn’t understand the character, he’d just taken bits and pieces of her to make the TV character. I didn’t mind the casting because she was quite a big, tall, girl, but she was a little too American for me. Despite wearing an American flag Wonder Woman isn’t American. It was just a terrible waste of an opportunity, for Warner Brothers to finally, finally commit to injecting some money into a project, and it was badly conceived, and then pretty poorly executed.

There was a fight scene towards the end which had the potential of being pretty good, but other than that the characterization was awful they just painted her as a bad ass that didn’t fit in. That is the one thing she is not, just because she can be a bad ass doesn’t mean she is one, it is not a defining characteristic. Even though she is an outsider, no one feels that way about her — she is somebody everyone wants to be friends with, or feel protected by, she is like everyone’s big sister, everyone’s mum. Everyone feels a warmth from her. I think she will look amazing, primarily because Zac Snyder has a great eye for beauty and for visual dynamics and he really plays up the glamour of texture, shape, and form.

I have no doubt that her hair will flow in the breeze in a completely beautiful slow-mo way. I think the girl that they have cast is really pretty, I was incredibly happy they had chosen a non-American, their understanding of sexuality is different to the American understanding of sexuality. I think that is quite important because Wonder Woman is quite a sexy character and even her outfit is quite sexy but her personality does not broadcast that sex appeal. She wears that outfit because that is what she is comfortable in to fight, and because she comes from a society where women wear things like that normally. She has no discomfort or modesty with nudity. She is a pagan earth goddess character, she is very comfortable in her own skin and while being an incredibly beautiful person she would see beauty in everybody.

She shouldn’t be a pin up for others to feel bad by and that in itself is an incredibly tricky fine line to tread, and a lot of that comes down to how her character is written, how the actor is directed, and how she performs the role. So I am really hoping for, I have a real unnatural, unreal expectation on how good it can be and I would be incredibly surprised if I get even half way there but fingers crossed.

VB: At least she’s finally in something we can all see.

NS: Yes, the first time since the 70s the broader public audience will be exposed to Wonder Woman…

Q: When you put it like that it sounds so epic.

NS: Prior to the Iron Man movie the general public would not know who Iron Man is, and prior to the Thor movie the general public would have no idea who Thor is, and prior to the Captain America movies people might have had a vague idea of who Captain America is, but not really anything specific. They might have had a better idea of who the Hulk is because the Hulk had a TV series in the 70s, the same way the Wonder Woman had a TV show in the 70s. But Wonder Woman is iconic, and her visual is iconic.
There are people around in their 20s now who have barely heard of Wonder Woman and really wouldn’t be able to pick her out of a line up. Now I think that is a real shame, there are kids that I know that have never heard of Wonder Woman, and I make it my job to educate all the kids around me about Wonder Woman and with some of them it sticks and with some of them it doesn’t. She is the premier, biggest name, most iconic female super hero of all time there are so many people we aren’t familiar with her and that is pathetic, considering how well people know Superman and Batman.

There was a time when everybody knew who Wonder Woman is, and now they don’t and I think that is an incredible shame. A lot of that has to do with the license and that license is owned by Warner Brothers, who haven’t taken the opportunity to capitalise on that. They make more money out of merchandising the image of Wonder Woman, than they have of actually letting the creation of Wonder Woman evolve in the public eye.

VB: That is so depressing…

NS: Yeah, I know it is really sad, so I hope the image in the movie is impressive enough that people want more, because I feel like Black Widow was introduced in the second Iron Man movie and she didn’t really make that much of an impression, no one really cared it was like oh yeah there is Scarlet Johannsson with red hair.
Then she appeared in the Avengers, where she was really well written and had a significant role to play. Johannsson played it incredibly well and she got to play be the only person for the job in the movie, twice over. She wasn’t just the girl on the team, there were things that she could do that no one else could. She was really well written, she was really well directed, she was really well acted and when that movie came out suddenly everyone was like Oh this Black Widow character is awesome.

VB: So that is what you want for Wonder Woman?

NS: Wonder Woman needs that kind of treatment, not like a half-arsed oh here is Wonder Woman that makes people go Oh yeah I kinda remember that character she was just a female. She is not she has a lot more to offer and hopefully she will get the opportunity to offer it.

VB: She shouldn’t just be in there for the sake of being in there?

NS: Yeah I hope there is enough substance in the upcoming film, that generates more interest because it is from generating that interest she will get more material. Fingers crossed.

VB: I want to go back and go over some general questions about your time in the industry as an artist. So generally speaking the comic book industry is thought of as male dominated but what has your experience been like of it?

NS: Well the broader comic book industry which includes Indie Comics and small press and Japanese comics there are a lot more women than you would think at first. Though certainly when it comes to superhero comics it is very male dominated, in terms of numbers but that has to do with a lot of things. I work for a company that gets slammed quite a lot by the female readership for not having more female creators, for not having better representation of female characters. Their answer is (and it is actually the real answer not their brush off answer) it’s that they are trying.

And they are but getting a job at one of these companies at DC or Marvel, getting a job at one of those companies is incredibly competitive and then once you get the job you have got to be able to keep the job, and that is incredibly demanding. So you not only have to really, really want the job, you have to be good enough to get it, disciplined enough to keep it and I am not saying boys have more of this than girls do, because that is bullshit.

But I think, because there are so many guys already in it, that intimidation factor can put doubt in your mind. You have to have really thick skin to get into the industry, and you have to have really thick skin to stay in the industry. I know a lot of guys you want to get in, get in and then are like Holy shit I want to get out of this, this is terrifying. It’s not because it is mean, it is because it is a machine. The books come out once a month that is 20 pages minimum that is a lot of work. I work 7 days a week to keep to my schedule and I only draw a maximum of 10 issues a year out of 12 of the titles I work on.

It is a very full on industry, so you have to be prepared to work that full on. A lot of the guys I know who work in the industry have wives or girlfriends who look after them so it just gives them the freedom to get all the drawing done. There are women who work in the industry to have supportive boyfriends or supportive husbands, but not necessarily doing all their laundry or cooking all their meals blah blah blah.

The women are running their own lives as well, so it adds up to quite a lot of focus and work keeping your own life running, as well as keeping your career running and that is overwhelming. I don’t know a lot of guys that do it on their own. Considering what you get paid you work a lot of hours for not a lot of money, so it really helps to have a thick skin There are a lot of people who don’t cut it because of that and you have got to be fast. The thick-skinned thing tend to keep the boy numbers a little higher than the girl numbers I think, which I think is a real shame.

VB: Until our conversation I have not realised how incredible your schedule must be working on 10 titles a year.

NS: I draw, generally, 7 days a week. I take days off for travel when I need to travel to a convention, I take a day off when I am doing a convention. I am sitting there drawing and signing books anyway so it is part work as well but it is not part of my regular work. I take Christmas day off, I take New Years Day off and every now and then something will come along and it will be like I am taking a day off because I have something on, but generally I work 7 days a week. I am working 9-10 hours Monday-Friday and probably about 7 hours on Saturday and Sunday and that is a lot of work. That is the nature of the work, there are some people whose work is just as detailed as mine but who draw faster than I do but this is how I need to pay for myself, this is just how I operate.

VB: You were working as a writer on the Red Sonia anthology, what is that like coming from working on art then into writing?

NS: I am working with totally different head space. As an artist I am thinking of storytelling the whole time, my job is taking the script and finding the most interesting and/or the most straightforward way to visually interpret the writer’s story. I need to find the subtext, find the relevancy of the text. You are thinking narratively a lot but the head space for writing is totally different.

I found that quite a jolt, it’s not just in a more complex way, it’s just a completely different set of storytelling skills and it really requires me to remove myself from my drawing routine for a day. I just sit at my desk and hatch it out, commit to not just doing a little bit of writing per day, but to block off a day and get into that head space. I find it really kind of rewarding to do and a little nerve-wracking and exciting, because for the first time I was being the writer, handing my script on to an artist to interpret because comics are quite a unique medium in that it is a series of Chinese whispers.

VB: What do you mean?

NS: The writer writes something down, then the artist has to interpret what has been written down. Sometimes they can really make a story sing, and sometimes they can really miss the point or they can overemphasize the wrong moment, or the wrong emotion, and can change the tone of the story. The inker has to take that line work, and follow on a nature that they don’t necessarily understand the lines they are looking at, then the colourist has to do the same and what comes out the other end is not necessarily the intention that the writer had.

You have to be prepared to be part of that production line of collaboration. With a film a lot of people collaborate but the end is the director pulling all the pieces together, and what comes out is their best version of everyone’s collaboration.

VB: With the Red Sonja title you had to give your words over to an artist — was it scary giving those words over to another artist that wasn’t yourself?

NS: The idea of it was scarier than the reality of it, because in reality I ended up getting to choose a friend of mine, who was my absolute first choice for who I wanted to draw this book. Knowing that he was going to draw, gave me the freedom to really take the story in the direction that I hoped it would go because I knew he would understand, he would get the humour. That made it very exciting — giving him the plot breakdown and the character breakdown, and he would come back to me with the character design, before I had actually written the script. That I just loved, I thought it was so perfect.

The script isn’t really all that exciting but it is really interesting, and writing, and reading over it and editing it before handing it over to the artist, the artist side of my brain would kick in just enough to make sure all the information I wanted was there. I would just start working out in my head what I would do, and it was fascinating to see what just came back from the artist. Some of the things were exactly how I thought they would go down, and some of them were completely different, and it was a really different way of seeing that panel description. Just because it is not what I had in mind, didn’t mean I was not happy with it, sometimes I was just like that is brilliant it was so funny. I was lucky I got to work with someone I knew who was coming on board and I trusted him.

VB: Do you think you will do more writing in the future?

NS: Not that I don’t want to, but because it requires a different head space, it requires the time to do it and it is a little hard to pursue writing when I am busy with my monthly schedule. But I would hope to have opportunities to write again in the future.

VB: What was the most unexpected part about writing?

NS: Realising as I was going that my characters were all in first person narrative, they were telling their own story. That what she was saying, didn’t necessarily have to be what the artist was depicting because I wanted the art to show the reality of what was happening, and it being contrary to her telling of it was tainted with her opinion. The visuals would be telling the real story.

VB: You have said that you have had a romantic view of super heroes do you still have that romantic view of them?

NS: I think at their core absolutely, different stories play up or add something contrary to that view. The current mode DC is in at the moment with the new 52 is contrary to my opinion — my view of superheroes are they a little more human and not quite so responsible and not so mature about their status than I would like them to be. That is the fashion that comics are going through at the moment but I don’t think it is a really true representation of who these characters are to me and yes I have a romantic view of who I want them to be. I like my Superman to be a boy scout and I like my Wonder Woman to be compassionate and loving and I like my Batman to have a sense of humour on occasion. It’s one of those things, there is going to be fads and fashions all the time.

[Verushka Byrow is a contributor to I'm With Geek.]

WB Consumer Products has just unveiled a bunch of Wonder Woman merchandise themed to Mothers Day, reminding us that even if an actual storyline for Wonder Woman is problematic, difficult and whatever other synonym for “iffy” word you want to use, licensing wise, she’s a powerhouse for Warner Bros.

Licensees include Icup, Lauren Moshi and Junk Food, and products include

A comfy Wonder Woman sleeved robe from Warner Bros. is great for snuggling up after a long day, while a colorful Wonder Woman tote from Vandor is the perfect accessory for fighting crime – and for grocery shopping. Wonder Woman aprons from Icup and chic pullovers from Lauren Moshi will also thrill Mom this Mother’s Day. Product ranges from $5-$60 and is available at retailers nationwide. Select items are available at WBShop.com. 

A quick glance at animation director Robert Valley’s filmography reveals major projects from storyboard work on Aeon Flux in 1994 to animation for big corporate names like Nike and Coca Cola, and working with Passion Pictures on music videos and short films for the Gorillaz. When he discussed his latest project—a new webseries called Shinjuku—with Cartoon Brew he was quick to relate his professional experiences with that of an assistant coach in the major league. “At some point I needed to venture out and present myself as a coach in my own right, so regardless of success or failure I feel compelled to put myself out there and see what happens.”

Shinjuku, which is based on the Dark Horse graphic novel of the same name by Christopher ‘Mink’ Morrison (Twistory) and Yoshitaka Amano (Final Fantasy), is a work of noir fiction based in a Tokyo of a not-too-distant future. Morrison presented the project to Valley with the intention of adapting it for the screen, releasing it in monthly two-minute installments while simultaneously collecting the artwork from the episodes into book form. “What’s really important for me is this cross-over between animation and graphic novel, so periodically we will be releasing a book based on the animated films,” Valley explained. “This [is] my goal, film, book, film book, and so on…”

Over the last several years, Valley has been honing his personal aesthetic by self-publishing his own comic series—turned—animated film, Massive Swerve, which has become a creative jumping off point for defining his approach. “This has been a great way to develop a personal style and voice. I take ideas from my Massive Swerve books and re-purpose them for the task at hand.” His look, which he defines as a “burning man/muscle car/beach theme” was heavily debated by comic book fanboys when DC Comics unveiled his recent Wonder Woman shorts for their DC Nation franchise.

The shorts, produced by Valley and his buddy Jorden Oliwa, and featuring Wonder Woman as a West Coast urbanite cruising the shores in her invisible Charger, seemed to be a perfect fit for DC Nation, which showcases creative reinterpretations of popular superhero properties. “Some people like the spin I had,” Valley said. “Others are completely repulsed by it.” When you consider the fickle nature of comic book geeks, perhaps that is the greatest compliment one can receive.

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“I’m sorry I’m late with my book”, Jimmy Palmiotti said rather humbly, opening a “spotlight” panel on March 31^st 2013 at WonderCon, and asked the audience if he ought to put on some “background music”.  Amanda Conner, his co-spotlighter, and Palmiotti explained, tongue in cheek, that if the panel appeared “random”, months of deep thought had allowed them to “plan it to be random”. Attendees were already engaged by the humor, and probably by their avid fandom of both Conner and Palmiotti’s work, in this panel Conner and Palmiotti hoped would be “interactive”.

For the first part of the panel, they followed a rough chronology of the story of their working and personal relationship together, but Q &A was welcome throughout. Palmiotti explained that the “magic started” between the couple when he inked a GARGOYLES cover for Conner and a friendship developed between them. This friendship allowed them to learn the “horrible, wonderful sides” of each other, Conner commented. Palmiotti added that they “knew each other insanely well” long before they started dating.

Their first big collaboration, where both provided their own input for a personally satisfying project, involved the VAMPIRELLA comic when Conner asked Palmiotti to create a script where she would be allowed to portray the title character “on the toilet”. Palmiotti, in gallant fashion, concocted a plot involving laxative-laced candy on Halloween, a child-eating demon, and a heroic devourer in Vampirella. Palmiotti encouraged writers to play to the desires of artists and “give them stuff they really want to draw” to produce great results. That’s been their “theme ever since”, he said. Comics have been their “career of choice”, Palmiotti reflected, even though their were “other choices” possible. Conner’s other choices, for instance, included working in advertising, and prior to that, owning a comic book store.

This chronological tour abruptly leapt to the present as both Palmiotti and Conner commented on keeping late hours, particularly at the con. The “number one rule”, Palmiotti shared sagely, is “never look at the clock. It ruins the night the next morning, worrying about it”. Then the “only indication”, he said, “is hearing birds. I don’t like that”. This commentary had the audience in uniform, vocal agreement. Conner and Palmiotti introduced another recurring topic in the panel, the sheer number of shoes Conner has managed to assemble. She insisted she had no more than 20 pairs of shoes, but Palmiotti remained dubious, putting the number at more like 600.

This speculation was interrupted by a question from the floor about the “timetable” on the planned collaboration CAPTAIN BROOKLYN. Conner explained that she’s working on a “glut of covers” at the moment, but when she’s finished those off, she’s going to stop other work and focus on BROOKLYN. Conner confirmed that they are “thinking about” the possibility of doing a Kickstarter for the project. CAPTAIN BROOKLYN, Palmiotti explained, is about a garbage man in Brooklyn, with a “house full of cats” and “Russian massage parlor girls next door” who has to devise a financial means of helping his sickly grandfather. On top of that, he comes to possess “superpowers that really don’t help his life”. Palmiotti says the book, as scripted, is “funny” but he trusts Conner to “bring it down to earth” and “ground it”, a power he feels is her particular strength as an artist. Her work “has a soul”, he said, “The eyes have a soul”, but he jokingly threatened her with finding a replacement if she doesn’t pick up the production pace.

Since the panel declared itself to be “interactive”, I asked Conner about her background studying comics art at the Kubert School in New Jersey, and whether she felt it was beneficial to study comics specifically in order to become a professional comics artist. The benefits, she said, of specialized study, is that she now knows how to “use a lot of other tools besides drawing specific to what I want to do”. At the time that she attended the Kubert School, she said, “most other art colleges frowned on comic art” and it was “not respected”. She feels things are “more open now”, but at  the time, she said, the Kubert School was “exactly what I needed”. Palmiotti commented that at that time, the Kubert School also had very few women, about 4 in her class, Conner recalled. Now comics are a “little more accepted”, Palmiotti said, and the word “geek” is on the rise.

“Now we’re the cool kids and can talk about stupid stuff”, Palmiotti commented, including channeling child-like behavior to geek out about things like films. Both Conner and Palmiotti revealed that they are avid film watchers, and particularly Palmiotti, who goes to the movies a couple of times a week. Conner focuses on particular films that catch her attention, which she watches “repeatedly”. As a kid, she was a huge fan of The Poseidon Adventure, then Star Wars, The Terminator, The Long Kiss Goodnight, and more recently, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.  Palmiotti’s most recent film enthusiasm is for the film Upside Down, particularly fascinated by this love story featuring reverse gravity fields and conflict between differing worlds.

An audience member brought up the subject of the completion of Conner’s run on SILK SPECTRE from the BEFORE WATCHMEN series, a project that ran only four issues rather than a possible six. “It could have stretched to 6”, Conner said, but she found it wasn’t necessary to do so. She declared herself relieved to have finished the job, since it was “labor and research intensive” to make sure she “blended it into the original storyline” of the mid to late ‘60’s. Her goal, which made the job more difficult, was to present “not people’s perception of the 60’s, but actually the ‘60’s” in contrast to our current, commercial views of the time period. This quest led her to contact her mother and her aunts, the youngest of which was “Laurie’s age” during the same time period. Palmiotti, who witnessed Conner’s rather excruciating commitment to historical accuracy in her art, came to call SILK SPECTRE “that effin’ book’ (which was the PG-13 version of the phrase).

Palmiotti said that Conner “became obsessive with every building” she drew, as well as clothing. The “layout” for Laurie’s house, apparently, was drawn from a single panel featuring a single room in the house in WATCHMEN. Conner built an “entire house” around a living room contained in the original comic. Palmiotti reminded the audience, who then applauded, that Conner’s work on SILK SPECTRE has since been nominated for a Reuben Award in “good company” with Evan Dorkin, and Bernie Wrightson, two of their favorite creators.

I asked Conner and Palmiotti what, particularly, they are looking for that they find attractive in a project in terms of character and plot. Palmiotti replied that he’s looking for several things, including the “soul of a character”, “what they want”, “what they fear” and “something at stake”. He’s very drawn to idea of romance in comic books. “It’s there even in JONAH HEX”, he said. “I like the idea of two people who have something in common, a goal”, Palmiotti explained. Even if he’s writing “horrible people”, he’s “looking for a likeable trait”. His example prompted a lot of laughter from the audience, proving the maxim “It’s funny because it’s true”. He said that even “Hitler’s dog thought Hitler was awesome” because the dog, being fed and tended by his master, could find a likeable trait. You have to “find those things in the characters”, he said, and ask yourself, “Why would we care?”.

Conner’s particular take on character focuses on the idea of perfection and imperfection. “I try not to make the character so perfect”, she said, preferring to create a character who is “someone like you know”. She wants her comics audience to react by thinking, “I know somebody who’s just like that”. That’s one of the reasons Palmiotti finds Spielberg films compelling, he explained, since they “start with the hero screwing up” and “we relate”. If a hero is “too perfect, there’s push-back”. He doesn’t respond to films where there’s a “super handsome guy and a perfect girl”, finding them “boring”.

An audience member’s question about Conner’s work drawing BARBIE in the past led to an energetic discussion of Wonder Woman as a character and the possibilities of new directions for her books. “I would love to write WONDER WOMAN”, Palmiotti admitted; he sees her as “more down to earth, less superior” than some other creators since being “too perfect” is a turn-off, though he thinks some solid work has been done on WONDER WOMAN. He observed that in some WONDER WOMAN comics he’s read, the creators “make everyone else more interesting” than Wonder Woman and he can’t understand that approach. “She’s the most interesting person in the room”, he pointed out, not her surrounding characters. Of course, he added, he would only want to write WONDER WOMAN with Conner as the artist on the project.

The last few questions fielded by Palmiotti and Conner included their typical work schedules, which they revealed to be opposite, and therefore difficult in timing, Conner’s recollections about her work for indie magazines, which she described as “guerrilla comic book making”, and what comics they like to read right now. Conner cited Terry Moore, finding herself “rivetted” by every story. Palmiotti’s a big fan of Darwyn Cooke’s work, but also always comes home with a “stack” of comics from the shop on Wednesdays. He buys every #1 issue from every company, he revealed, and continues to “try everything… like it’s my job”.

Conner and Palmiotti certainly presented a fully interactive panel, so much so that when panel time ran out, it felt like an interrupted conversation with plenty more to say. Hearing stories from their daily life and their work suggested that the divide, especially for these collaborators, is artificial, with influences moving back and forth constantly. Maybe that’s the secret to their wide-ranging output in comics, and a glimpse of the reason behind the energy they continually bring to the industry. The panel illustrated well the benefits of the “spotlight” approach to con appearances giving enough time and focus on particular creators to generate a conversation with their audiences.

Photo Credits: All photos in this article were taken by semi-professional photographer and pop culture scholar Michele Brittany. She’s an avid photographer of pop culture events. You can learn more about her photography and pop culture scholarship here.

Hannah Means-Shannon writes and blogs about comics for TRIP CITY and Sequart.org and is currently working on books about Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore for Sequart. She is @hannahmenzies on Twitter and hannahmenziesblog on WordPress.

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A panel on Friday, March 29^th, the first day of programming at WonderCon brought together a rather iconic cast to discuss “iconic characters” and what keeps a character “true” to their origins over long periods of time. Mark Waid opened as moderator by pointing out that the table full of seasoned pros had more than 125 years of comics experience between them and most had worked on longterm characters and newer creations alike. The essential question posed by Waid was how to “vault” characters “into the 21^st century without losing what keeps them special”. The question seemed particularly pertinent to Waid, whose ongoing work on DAREDEVIL has evoked critical acclaim. Waid asked his panellists how they handle the “core elements of characters” to face this challenge.

J. M. De Matteis introduced an image that stayed with the panellists as a reference point for discussion. He felt that creators handling long-lived characters work “within a cage”, so they can’t “go wide” with the character in term of change, but they can “go deep” in terms of making new discoveries. For De Matteis, personally, it’s all about the “Big Why” of characters, figuring out what makes them tick. He prefers working with super-villains to pose questions about the formative impact of their past histories because there’s “always a little corner of the psyche to dig into”. Ann Nocenti, however, in her recent work with Catwoman found that “her archetype was pretty clear” as a troubled kid originally, “on the streets” originally, and moving through “foster homes”. Her intuitive approach is to “play with a character and see what feels right” and she doesn’t mind the fact that later creators will do the same with long-term characters. It’s “like treading water”, she said, “You give a sense of constant, dynamic action, but you’re really not moving far”, and she expects later creators to be under the same constraint.

Doug Mahnke’s challenges, as an artist working on long-term heroes, is rather specific, handling costumes and their overtones. He observed that heroes, even today, often don’t look “contemporary” because their appearance has become iconic and we no longer question the anachronism, like Superman’s “underwear outside his pants”. Other features like capes and boots, Mahnke said, “made sense at the time” they were created based on a “swashbuckling” influence. In fact, he explained, an artist’s job is to “bring out the majesty in the character. It doesn’t matter so much what they’re wearing”, but you can use costume as a “tool” to use to your advantage.

Several of the panellists then commented on the fact that objectively, some of the nomenclature and costumes of characters created decades ago would seem “stupid” now. Nocenti’s example was a resurrection of a minor character, Zebra Man who was “visually fantastic” but the name and concept bizarre. Slott felt that once an icon is an icon, “the fact that it’s an icon gives it weight”, preventing further critique from readers. Even Waid’s considered opinion was that “Green Lantern” is a “stupid name for a character, but after 75 years”, it has “gravitas”.

The panel then tackled the question of when and how exactly a character becomes officially iconic, and they set the bar high on awarding this status. De Matteis opined that “nothing about the character idea makes it iconic. It’s the execution”, and not every character reaches this status despite reasonably strong storytelling behind them. Dan Slott interjected that it only takes “one writer and one artist to do it”, like Frank Miller on DAREDEVIL. The discussion often drifted into slap-stick commentary on the more absurd aspects of superhero lore like the possession of a super vehicle as an icon accoutrement. Nocenti provided the little known detail that Cat Woman’s car is known as a “Catillac”. Slott confessed to proposing in a “meeting with real adults” that Superman’s car should be known as “Superman’s Ford Taurus of Solitude” with disasterous results.

Waid observed that some characters are iconic in pop culture without necessarily being long-lived, like Woody Woodpecker, who’s highly recognizable, but not a currently active character. Waid commented that the tendency toward merchandizing may encourage the slow-down or freeze of new developments in a character since “every character becomes a beach towel” in the end. The entire panel segued into a long and fairly serious discussion of Wonder Woman as a character and why she has, or has not, lived up to her iconic status in terms of actual comic storytelling.

Most felt, like De Matteis, that Wonder Woman comics have not always been “all that good”, nevertheless the character definitely qualifies as “iconic”. Waid had a fairly idiosyncratic theory behind why this is the case. He observed that there was a strong “sexual element” to the “first 10 years of the strip” that was later removed to render the character more “plain vanilla”, and that now, lacking that “x-factor of sexuality”, stories fail to live up to the early days (an issue, he said, he frequently discusses with Grant Morrison). Slott disagreed pointedly with Waid’s assessment. He instead blames the lack of verve in Wonder Woman comics to the fact that comics are essentially a “make dominated industry” that has not explored the “many angles of the character” sufficiently. Slott still feels that if the right team is put together, the stories can rise to iconic status again, without recourse to the “weird quirky bits”. His choice of phrase caused plenty of giggling among the panellists.

This led Waid to ask his panel how they decide what elements are most essential to a character, what continues to translate, and what can be left behind. De Matteis advised to “always approach the characters psychologically and emotionally” and not worry too much about the “other stuff”, and sometimes that psychological appeal can be found in lesser known characters. Nocenti commented that her current work on KATANA based on the strange but intriguing concept of a “girl with a sword” produced “good potential” for developing “obsessional love triangle” elements between herself, her murdered husband, and his murdering brother.“The less iconic a character, the more fun you can have!”, she enthused.

Slott agreed with Nocenti on  this idea, up to a point. When you’re handling an iconic character, readers lose the fear that their reckless lifestyles will do them in, whereas if a character is “unknown”, “Everyone is worried”, wondering if they will survive from issue to issue. Slott and Nocenti shared an interesting moment of commiseration, albeit brief, about their mutual killing off of Spider-based characters, and the emotional reaction of fans. “Screw letters from emotional fans”, Slott concluded, laughing, but Waid intervened by informing the audience that he’s sure Slott “weeps himself to sleep at night with 6 year olds’ fan mail” over the death of Spider-Man .

The panellists didn’t always find their subject matter easy to decipher, nor did they feel that there’s always an easy answer for why some characters “click” as icons and some don’t. Batman, particularly, has a mysteriously successful dynamic, they said. But some things do change. Waid observed that he “couldn’t have imagined a world where I walked down the street and everyone knew who Tony Stark was” until after the Iron Man films had been made. Waid suggested that iconic status for characters might be measured in the number of imitators who have sprung up. De Matteis returned to his general position that archetypal patterns determine iconic status, however. Slott provided examples, stating that Superman is like Hercules, Batman a being on a vengeance-quest, and Tony Stark is, too, iconic in formula, as a combination of “Man and Machine”, an icon that the world is ripe for right now.

The panellists’ parting thoughts during the Q and A period focused on an interesting point made from the audience about the superhero/villain ratio. With so many more supervillains than superheroes in comics, “recycling” them is the norm, but at what point do they become “stale” and need to be retired, at least for awhile? De Matteis was firm about the roles of the artist and writers, insisting that there are “no stale characters but stale interpretations of characters” and that good work will prevent this problem. “Every character is great if you did into them in the right way”, he said. Waid’s closing example to support De Matteis’ point was that “20-25 years ago, no one would have thought that GREEN ARROW would become 2 times the best selling DC book, and then get his own TV show”. His bottom line: “If you dig deep enough you can find something that resonates”, and that’s the key to creating an icon, something that may not happen overnight.

 Photo Credits: All photos in this article were taken by semi-professional photographer and pop culture scholar Michele Brittany. She’s an avid photographer of pop culture events. You can learn more about her photography and pop culture scholarship here.

Hannah Means-Shannon writes and blogs about comics for TRIP CITY and Sequart.org and is currently working on books about Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore for Sequart. She is @hannahmenzies on Twitter and hannahmenziesblog on WordPress.

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We all want Wonder Woman to be in a movie. In fact, I’m going to go out on a limb and say we want her to be in EVERY film. And every TV show. Maybe a few music videos. But for one reason or another, we’re repeatedly disappointed by a world which does not seem to share our desire for Diana to take over the entirety of culture. She can’t get a TV show off the ground, her film scripts never get put anywhere near production, and Nicki Minaj hasn’t dressed up as her ONCE.

So step-forward first-time director Jesse V. Johnson, a stunt co-ordinator who has worked on films like Lincoln, Thor, and Spider-Man, to show how it’s done. Johnson today uploaded a film trailer for Wonder Woman, to show off his ability as a director for potentially-interested parties… and it’s pretty darned good, you guys. It’s even got this poster, created by Robert Sebree.

Casting actress Nina Bergman as Wonder Woman and Peter-flipping-Stormare as her Nazi captor, this fan film captures basically everything William Marston could have possibly wanted to see in a Wonder Woman movie. There’s fighting, and empowerment, some light bondage, and even a touch of psychological theory. Johnson describes the project’s origins:

It was my manager / producing partner Kailey Marsh’s idea to shoot the trailer.  She really believes I should be a studio director, and thought shooting Wonder Woman would be a great way to show off my skills in a fun way that people could get excited about.

So without further ado, here’s the trailer for the movie. What do you think?

Female Super Hero Fan Film from Jesse V. Johnson on Vimeo.

June is Gay Pride Month in America, with parades gathering in all the major cities to celebrate God’s chosen people as they wave from floats and hang out with Sarah Silverman.

New York had one of the largest parades this year, as you’d expect, with an apparent 2 million people joining the parade at one point or another over the course of the day. It’s also been a year since gay marriage was made legal in the state, and many took advantage and decided to tie the knot in classic Northstyle/whatshisname style. Roving reporter Phil Jimenez was on-hand at the parade today, and managed to catch the first-ever evidence that Wonder Woman… has a sex life. Here’s what he found:

That’s right! While we’ve spent years wondering whether Wondy was more in love with Batman or Superman (or Steve Trevor, I guess?) the answer has been flying under our noses all this time. Supergirl! Who woulda thought it, right?

Nathan Bulmer strikes again.

To the donation button, Batgirl: WONDER WOMEN! The Untold Story of American Superheroines is a documentary by Kristy Guevara-Flanagan and Kelcey Edwards that examines the evolution of Wonder Woman and other kick-ass heroines, with a look at “how popular representations of powerful women often reflect society’s anxieties about women’s liberation.”

The film was already funded on Kickstarter but it’s been selected for the SXSW Film Festival, (the only comics-themed movie to make the cut) and it needs a little bit more polishing in post to get to the finish line.

The description sounds fascinating; among those interviewed: Gloria Steinem. Shelby Knox, Lynda Carter, Lindsay Wagner and punk rock star Kathleen Hanna. The evolving perception of what’s allowable in female heroism and the history of Wonder Woman alone should make for a very thoughtful film. With the rise of geek girl fandom, it couldn’t be more timely.

Okay so that Allie McAmazon version of Wonder Woman didn’t work out as a TV pilot. Despite being re-elevated to Trinity Status as one of DC’s big three, Wonder Woman is still languishing in the development purgatory that so many DC characters seem to swim around in. But how’s this for an electrifying concept for Diana: a film directed by Drive’s kinetic stylist Nicholas Winding Refn and starring-MMA fighter-turned-actor Gina Carano.

Wow, now didn’t that make you jump up and shout “2012!” Refn’s movie was a great character piece, a twisted noir view of LA, a hipster retro fest AND an edge of your seat action film. All traits that could make an amazing comic book adaptation.

Admittedly, this is just a pipe dream concocted by Page 6, Now it is TRUE that Refn once said his dream project was Wonder Woman, but the minute he said that every sheet had him making the movie, forcing him to say that “rumors has spiraled out of control.” Aw. Spiraling rumor sad face.

Christina Hendricks, who had a brief but electrifying role in DRIVE, was of course tapped at Wonder Woman before everything got shot down.

Carano is known for dishing out punishment in the MMA but just starred in Steven Soderbergh’s HAYWIRE, to good notices, and even claims that we have a new action star:

Soderbergh, who has a long history of working well with non-actors in his films, took the fighter he saw on screen, and along with screenwriter Lem Dobbs (who also penned Soderbergh’s Kafka and The Limey), created a celluloid persona that reflected what he saw in her already: a tough, self-assured and prodigiously talented physical performer. He just made her a mercenary doing black-ops work for the government rather than a cage fighter.

She can even do her own demure version of the brokeback pose.

Anyway this is all gossip column rumor, so just file it away in your secret screening room of the imagination.

The rejected Wonder Woman Pilot, starring Adrianne Palicki as Wonder Woman, is making the rounds on the mysterious black market of such things in Hollywood. But until the omerta it is being supplied with is lifted, we’ll have to do with these dribs and drabs.

Thoughts: Palicki loooks fine. The costume looks okay. Maybe this could have worked?

iFanboy’s Conor Kilpatrick has seen the fabled Wonder Woman pilot and….

There wasn’t a whole lot about the pilot that I didn’t like.

Many of the worst elements of the script were eliminated and he liked the whole darn thing:

Overall, I quite liked it. When I was done watching the pilot I found myself bummed out that I wouldn’t be seeing any more episodes. I really liked this version of Wonder Woman. She is a badass fighter with a bit of an unhinged edge that gives her just a hint of “if she got out of control she’d be scary”.

Oh also, Adrianne Palicki wore lots of shorts and looked AWESOME. I predict we’ll be seeing lots of her again.

Since the announcement that Wonder Woman pilot had not made NBC’s schedule, there has been no dearth of analysis about what it says about Wonder Woman, about us, about women, about…EVERYTHING, dammit. The Wonder Woman pilot getting dropped may just be the most significant event of our time!

First off, a picture of the variant “shorts” costume has been making the rounds. Would showing a bit more thigh have tipped the balance for the show? Probably not. With Wonder Woman nothing can ever, ever be simple.

A particularly annoying (to fans of Wonder Woman) piece in EW, exemplified this, by conflating her with everything:

She is the most famous female superhero, and there is every reason to be proud of the fact that she is considered an equal to Superman and Batman. But she also perfectly represents a whole assortment of fundamental problems with the treatment of women in comic books. Let’s not forget: The mainstream comic world is dominated, in readership and authorship, by men.

And the idea that Wonder Woman’s story can’t be compelling? The number one movie at the box office this weekend was a superhero who is a God. A superhero who walks around with a giant hammer (as opposed to, say a lasso) that spends time in both “man’s world” and in the the world of the Gods.

Why is Thor so easy to get to screen, but Wonder Woman is reduced to a television drama by David E. Kelley where she’s a superhero but also a female who worries about her body and pines for her boyfriend? Why when that treatment fails do the stories focus not on the execution but on the character?
[snip]
Every time a male centric film fails, there’s another one right behind it. Superman Returns was a failure. You don’t read Entertainment Weekly writing about how his costume was the reason. The Hulk failed twice and is on its third take. You don’t see them writing about how his torn green pants are the problem or a metaphor? Of course not.

If there’s a curse, it’s the tendency of writers to “figure out” Wonder Woman to death. Why can’t she just be a strong, confident woman who beats the crap out of bad guys?

When it came to the mos

15 Comments on Wonder Woman: What happened and why she is wearing shorts, last added: 5/25/2011

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Synsidar said, on 5/24/2011 8:02:00 PM

People shouldn’t take it for granted that a movie would be about the comic book version of Wonder Woman with fairly minor changes. Would the movie be set in the DC universe, or would WW be the only superheroine on Earth? If they went with the latter setting, explaining the island’s existence would be problematic, and WW and her opponent(s) would be out of their natural settings. Setting the movie in the DC universe wouldn’t help the movie reach non-fans of comics.

Then there’s the Amazonian angle. If WW and the rest of the Amazons don’t hate men,or at least find them strange, and the plot doesn’t have WW go up against a man or men, then the Amazonian background is practically irrelevant. There’s no reason to use WW in the story.

If you research Whedon’s involvement with WW, you’ll find that he didn’t do any better than other writers at producing a satisfactory script. Instead of insisting that “n” writers have failed to recognize the essence of the character and show people how wonderful she is, it’s possible that all those writers simply can’t think of a way to depict the comic book WW without making her look ridiculous to the general public.

SRS

DC Women Kicking Ass said, on 5/24/2011 8:09:00 PM

@RockPaperNukes I said big budget movies. Half your examples were television. And the movies you name have taken place over two decades. And I don’t know why you say Lara Croft and Charlies Angels are “new female characters” when, well, they weren’t.

For every big budget film that gets the greenlight with a woman as a star about 20 get the greenlight with a man. Hollywood are a bunch of unimaginative people who only know what they know. Wash, rinse, repeat. The problem isn’t Wonder Woman. The problem is Hollywood.

Darren J Hudak said, on 5/24/2011 8:16:00 PM

How would explaining Paradise Island be problematic? Was explaining Hogwarts problematic? Asgard? The concept of super powered mutants who have their own school? Teenage Vampire who are at war with teenage werewolves?

Paradise Island would require maybe all of 3 minutes of exposition. It’s a magic island populated by immortal women who have reason to distrust the man’s world. There, Done, move on.

These things are only problematic when people over think them. If movie audiences can accept a school for wizards they can accept the concept of Paradise Island.

rich said, on 5/24/2011 8:59:00 PM

Darren:

“As a certain Vulcan would say, “Fascinating””

Except … we’re not certain what you’re driving at …

Thomas said, on 5/24/2011 9:03:00 PM

I am 30. I have no memory of the Lynda Carter series. I have no sense that Wonder Woman is a feminist icon for anyone my age, much less younger. The problem with Wonder Woman isn’t that she’s a woman; it’s that when she was created, the only thing special about her was that she was a woman. I have read these supposedly great Perez and Simone comics, and I have to say, Wonder Woman has no personality. The David Kelley series was on the right track in A. giving her problems that only a human being, and not a robot, could have (most Wonder Woman stories could be told with a lasso-wielding robot in the starring role) and B. embracing the inherent goofiness that the early Wonder Woman comics apparently had.

RockPaperNukes said, on 5/24/2011 9:14:00 PM

dcwomenkickingass

re: “I don’t know why you say Lara Croft and Charlies Angels are “new female characters” when, well, they weren’t.”

You’re right. My mistake. I should have said they’re “mostly” new female characters with no baggage or unrealistic expectations attatched.

re: “I said big budget movies. Half your examples were television. And the movies you name have taken place over two decades.”

Since the part of the subject was the canceled WW pilot, I thought I’d throw in the TV stuff for free.

But Kill Bill was 2 decades ago? No. The Charlies Angels movies were 2 decades ago? No. I can name more. The Aeon Flux movie, Ultra Violet, Domino, the Resident Evil films, the Underworld films. Most of those are from the last few years. And the ones that were two decades ago were made, weren’t they? They could have easily stopped after the first Alien film but they didn’t. Since Ripley is one of the most iconic and successful action heroes in movie history, I figured she warranted mention.

I never made the claim that there are just as many female centric big budget film projects. Of course there aren’t. But sweeping generalizations that Hollywood never makes big budget action films staring women are disengenuous no matter how justified the anger is that bore them. Rational discussion means acknowledging facts, no? There’s plenty of reasons to hate hollywood. Ignoring the positives because they don’t support a point doesn’t gain anyone anything.

DF said, on 5/24/2011 10:06:00 PM

I always love to see guys so passionate about why they don’t like WW. Guys – at least I think they’re guys – like “Synsidar,” who has no problem accepting the “goofiness” of male-centric properties (Batman and Robin in his green-scalloped Speedo and pixie boots can be as uber-goofy as they come; ANY X-men character defines goofy) and 30-year-old “been there, done that, ever-so-wise” Thomas, who has read a few comics and determined WW has “no personality.”

Question: why does she threaten you so much and inspire so many contrarian posts from you?

Seriously. You all post multiple times about how boring, robotic and goofy she is. Why is it so important to brand your opinion, and make no mistake, it is only an opinion, over and over with such relish? If she’s so boring, why do you care so much?

I hate the “M” word. I really do. So overused and, even worse, improperly used. But misogyny is truly the only word that’s applicable here. Too many otherwise “goofy” and “robotic” characters get a free pass solely because of their plumbing. No surprise, really. Too many comic book fans are man-children living out power fantasies where they’re the hero and the girl swoons over their every breath.

WW sort of kicks that fantasy in the ass, doesn’t she?

Want to get really pissed? Go read Marston’s original WW comics. Oh, everyone loves to discuss the bondage elements, and those are indeed present. But the character of WW would drive you nuts: assertive, adventurous, she’d F with people constantly and couldn’t stand stupid, ignorant people and had no problem telling them so. She was an intensely curious thrill seeker and a wild woman; amazingly liberal and unapologetic. DC has watered down this version of the character for decades, which is a major, major part of the problem.

Look at Batman, Superman and WW in the 1940s and today. Character-wise, the former two are pretty solidly the same. Continuity hasn’t changed their core. WW, on the other hand, became meeker and meeker, more and more vanilla and non-threatening. The fire, the crackle and character constantly diluted for something “safe.” Even Perez’s reboot, while powering her up admirably, still portrayed her as Bambi with superpowers, naive and doe eyed even as she tossed around trucks and went one-on-one with Ares. Marston’s WW would have smacked her upside the head (and probably spanked her for myriad reasons).

DC is far too afraid to go back to that version. But they would be wise to do so. Because, yes, Marston’s WW was dangerous, exciting and boiling over with personality. Yes, it got out of hand some times. But it was a fantastic ride.

Because as “boring” or “goofy” as she gets, that’s not the problem. The problem is if the original WW, her creator’s original intention, were again unleashed, she would be more dangerous and potent today than she was 70 years ago.

Settling for the vanilla, though, seems to be DC’s default. And that’s a shame.

Thankfully, the Wonder Woman Chronicles exist, and the wild, awesomeness that is WW can continue for all to read.

OtisTFirefly said, on 5/24/2011 10:54:00 PM

>>>@marioboom Beyond the fact I don’t know where you hang out to see prostitutes who dress like Wonder Woman is that she has been wearing the same costume for years and moved a lot of product wearing it. As a matter of fact she just sold a load of make-up for the Estee Lauder/MAC wearing it. Your comment doesn’t just smack of misogyny it’s full of crap.>>>
>>>>For every big budget film that gets the greenlight with a woman as a star about 20 get the greenlight with a man. Hollywood are a bunch of unimaginative people who only know what they know. >>>

Cheez… LIGHTEN UP FRANCIS! Mario made obviously a joke there… that’s what the ” : ) ” signifies, even from an evil human encumbered with a penis. Not EVERYTHING you see as an insult to womanhood makes a man a misogynist. Do you also see skyscrapers as giant phallic symbols meant to keep women reminded they are inferior to the penis bearer? (Believe it or not, YES, that was almost a direct quote from a Women in Film class I took in college)

I find amusing all of the ‘empowered strong woman men/studios/executives are afraid of and try to keep down/hidden/invisible’ variations here. This goes back to the ‘take us seriously when we want you too but buy us drinks and dinner and punch out that annoying guy when we’re in the bars wearing Victoria’s Secret and not much else’ dichotomy that exists in America. We’re still in that lovely transition phase from “man rule world beat you with club” of most of the 20th century and earlier and “men and women are total equals and should be treated as such” that will invariably come about (should the USA exist as a country throughout this century and beyond). Try to give us feeble minded males a break, huh? We’re still confused because we live in the “you’re the man, hold the door open for me / i am perfectly damn capable of opening my own door you misogynistic pig” times that keep chauvinistic pigs happy/pissed and bitter uber-feminists happy/pissed and the rest of us in a position of not being able to win for losing.

And let me beat you to it… “You’re a misogynistic pig OTis!! and you’re probably racist and homophobic too!” None of which is true, but no doubt will be showered upon me for bringing sex into the equation.

mario boon said, on 5/25/2011 2:14:00 AM

Also, make up? Have you seen the campaign? They used a stylized drawing. It’s a heap of difference.

Does one remember the other time a big budget hollywood movie starring a A-list actress playing a superhero? And how she was dressed? And how people reacted to that look? Halle Berry?
I don’t mind a bit that female crimefighters look sexy: it IS a weapon in their arsenal but when you have to walk wearing less than a bathing suit, you’ve lost the woman segment of your potential moviegoing audience.

For teevee the same: Baywatch worked because the women there -let’s face it- were nothing more than eye candy.

Xena: wasn’t very in your face with the sexy costume.

Wonder Woman’s uniform just looks incredible tacky in a live version. Surely you don’t need a MAN explaining that to you? Just ask your mother.

DC Women Kicking Ass said, on 5/25/2011 4:31:00 AM

@RockPaperNukes It think you misread my comment. I said “And the movies you name have taken place over two decades.” I didn’t say they were two decades old. I was saying that films you name have been released OVER the last 20 years (Aliens was actually 25 years ago, Charlie’s Angels 11 years ago). I’m not saying they don’t do them, but as I said they are the anomaly rather than a regular thing. So maybe not quite “sweeping generalizations” and lack lack of “rational thoughts”, huh? Jeesh.

@OtisTFirefly I said HIS COMMENT smacked of mysogyny. I didn’t call him a “misogynist”. To use you words, “Hardly the kind of comment that drives a response like yours.” And the rest of your comment? Yikes!
@mario boon I agree the costume can look tacky, no question. It depends on the artist. What I object to is the classification of it as something a prostitute would wear. That’s loaded language.

Dan Cheek said, on 5/25/2011 7:16:00 AM

I think part of the problem is that the studio executives know that “comic book” movies are hot right now, so they’re in a rush to pump out comic book stuff. Quality, it seems, is an afterthought.

Synsidar said, on 5/25/2011 9:41:00 AM

Paradise Island would require maybe all of 3 minutes of exposition. It’s a magic island populated by immortal women who have reason to distrust the man’s world. There, Done, move on.

Spending three minutes on Paradise Island in a 98 minute movie would leave 95 minutes for — what? WW kicking bad guys’ asses and other fun stuff?

Back years ago, when series were the standard for comic books, editors and fans would talk about the virtues of character-driven stories. They don’t do that now, since the events are generally plot-driven things. If WW is an Amazon, being an Amazon is central to her character. Dismissing that in the space of a few minutes so that she can be seen doing superheroic stuff turns the story into one about a generic superhero. All superheroes hit things hard, fly, shoot beams from their eyes, etc. Going to a movie to see that is like going to a movie for the thrill of seeing explosions, a car flipping end over end, etc. A writer who cares about character will be more interested in writing about that than he will be about the action scenes. In a WW movie, there should be a balance between action and character scenes, but the character scenes are necessary, and they make writing an ending hard. An ending that just implies she’s going to be running around in “Man’s world” forever isn’t a real ending, and just makes a movie a filmed version of a comic book. Whether she takes down a villain isn’t a real issue either. Writing a real ending about her Amazonian nature that leaves room for a sequel isn’t easy.

SRS

Brad said, on 5/25/2011 11:09:00 AM

so somehow I am lucky and I teach a college comics class. so a student (a woman) does her final paper on the ‘new’ JMS/not-JMS Wonder Woman. as much as I expect her to dislike it, she says it is great and is much more palatable as a feminist icon (her argument) and that personally, though she is a huge comics fan, she never liked the original Wonder Woman because she “couldn’t take her seriously in a swimsuit.” Direct quote.

To further make her point in her final presentation, she made/sewed/constructed her own ‘new’ WW costume just to prove that it could work — and it looked so good it made me wonder if they did model this as a real costume before approving it. This is a college kid and it looked better than the photo above. Her argument was that a costume means everything: a WW of unearthly ideals and costume doesn’t make much sense as a practical role model/super-hero. it was really interesting.

Eric H. said, on 5/25/2011 11:41:00 AM

“Total Failure” Daredevil

- Domestic Gross $102,543,518
- Production Budget $78 Million

Difference: $24,543,518

“Exemplary Success” Blade

- Domestic Gross $70,141,087
- Production Budget $45,000,000

Difference: $25,141,087

Difference between “exemplary success” and “total failure” $597,569. That’s probably Edward Norton’s latte budget.

Though unlike either Hulk both of these were profitable on domestic gross alone (as was Ghost Rider – $115,802,596 domestic box office vs. 110 million budget).

RockPaperNukes said, on 5/25/2011 1:41:00 PM

dcwomenkickingass

Actually, the last Charlies Angels film was 8 years ago and the last Aliens film with Sigourney Weaver was 13 years ago.

>>>>>>

Personally, I’d rather see a WW series or mini series on HBO. I really loved what they did with Mildred Pierce. I think it’d be cool to see WW start in the 40s and see her in all the different time periods, going up to present day. Kind of like what they did with Highlander. I think a HBO series could do something like that better than a movie could. I mean, if they can do something as awesome as Game of Thrones, then WW should be a breeze.

with regards to the costume, I was watching the pilot movie for the Carter series last night and saw her in the old 40s era skirt that wrapped around her shorts. That actually looked pretty cool.

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