One of the worst kept secrets in comics has finally been confirmed: Grant Morrison and Yanick Paquette are doing Wonder Woman: Earth One, the latest in DC Comics’ line of continuity-free original graphic novels that began with Superman: Earth One and continued with Batman: Earth One.
You might recall that while promoting the end of his run on Action Comics to Entertainment Weekly, Grant Morrison gave some of his thoughts on this (at-the-time secret) Wonder Woman project, like:
I want this to be f—ing serious, you know? I want this to be really, really good, to reflect not only what women think, but what men think of women. I’m trying to do something really different from what’s been done with the character before. That one’s been amazing fun, because it’s nothing like anything I’ve ever done before.
No word yet on when Wonder Woman: Earth One will be released.
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Honestly, I’m frustrated that it’s Grant Morrison writing this. No offense to Morrison fans. Yes, he’s a good writer, but the comics I’ve read of his have been super confusing. I was just beginning to read comics then, but I was expecting his stories to be simplistic enough that new readers could understand the storyline without needing to read previous story arcs to fully comprehend everything. I only enjoyed the series he did when Dick and Damian were Batman and Robin. Why couldn’t someone like Gail Simone or other strong writers (that have solid female perspective) write this instead? I’d feel more comfortable with someone like that instead.
Disagree mon frere. I am also a new reader and must say Grant Morrison is my fave. I find his stories complex not confusing. If you need perspective on his references or obscure characters Wikipedia’s your man.
Gotta say am well looking forward to this. The interview he did while discussing the anticipation for this story got me proper g’d up for it. Wonder Woman being a woman.
Am I right in thinking this will be a graphic novel?
@Levirootsmanuva: “Am I right in thinking this will be a graphic novel?”
Yep. The Earth One line are original graphic novels.
I’m a huge Grant Morrison fan, but I’m the first to admit that he can be “super confusing”… when read in issues that is. I used to read his stuff in issue, then end up dropping after a couple. So now I tend to trade wait Morrison’s books and I enjoy them much, MUCH more that way. He does use complex narrative structures, or just pain crazy ideas. I think he is best read in chunks. Just a suggestion. Take it or leave it.
Gail Simone already had a Wonder Woman run a couple years back. As much as I support and enjoy female characters written by female writers, I just can’t get into Simone. And I seriously try her books all the time. Not my thing.
For the reasons stated above, I’m very excited to read an Wonder Woman OGN from Morrison.
I love his writing and also started being a comic fan with his Arkham Asylum and Doom Patrol.
I think you should give him another chance, especially his Batman run, if you liked Batman and Robin.
The only thing I really did not liked of his and haven’t finished yet, is the Invisibles. It still flies over my head. Well, I have the omnibus, so I will try again in a year or so.
Yeah, Morrison is very often referred to as a “love it or hate it” writer. Some of his works I adore, and some I think are just total crap, it’s like he can come up with some really in-genius ideas but more often can’t quite execute them properly on page. Personally, I have a theory that it largely depends on his collaborators, because when he works with his usual collaborators like Frank Quitely or Cameron Stewart, everything just clicks, maybe they just totally get his mind and scripts. But then you have other work like Final Crisis, or even his recent Action Comics that just got too messy, too much incoherency, with too many last minute explanations, deus ex machinas, and all that crap that the stories just sort of imploded.
Also, hes terrible at dialogue. I hate to say that even in works that I love, the characters speak in no manner a normal human would.
I just want to jump in and add, I’ve really enjoyed some of Morrison’s books without much trouble: “Batman & Son”, “All-Star Superman”, “WE3”, “Joe the Barbarian”. His other books have been hit or miss for me and I try not to expect too much when I read something new he writes. I agree with pretty much everything @DarkKnightDetective said.
@DarkKnightDetective
“…He’s terrible at dialogue.”
His phrasing comes off as a bit odd, but I’m an American and often find the dialogue of European writers to be quite different. We speak the same language separated by culture, countries and even oceans. So I don’t think the characters “speak in a manner no normal human would”, just no humans where you might be from.
Then again, maybe you’re European and I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about. 😉
Understandable reaction, but (coming from someone who’s not a big Grant Morrison fan) he can do standalone material very concisely and in an entertaining matter. His runs on Batman and X-Men (anything long and serialized) are confusing, but when he does smaller, more contained works, he can be weird without being confusing (i.e. All-Star Superman, Joe the Barbarian).
This was actually Greg Rucka’s baby originally, he came up with the idea & brought it to dc, who then took him off of his own project & gave it to Morrison….while I am a big fan of Morrison, I would rather have read Rucka’s take as it was the original inspiration of the idea….morrisons got ideas about everything Im sure, but when Rucka brings a project he’s excited about to you, you should listen
J h Williams on art with him too, it definitely would’ve been a pretty book
Gail Simone has been pretty bad lately, and her Wonder Woman was nothing great. So to me that what be a huge step down from Morrison, who has done great work many times, even though some stuff leaves me cold (Action, Joe the Barbarian).
its too confusing! whaaaa, I hate having to think about a comic book for more than 5 minutes I took to read it! damn you Morrison!
I really enjoyed what Morrison had to say about Wonder Woman in Supergods. I’ll definitely be picking this up.
I’m not a Morrison fan myself, but I wouldn’t dispute his genius. I’m actually interested to see his trifecta of the “trinity” here. All-Star Superman remains the best Superman interpretation in modern times, his lengthy Batman run was not my bag, but it certainly has throngs of fans. How WW fits in with those two interpretations is what I’m interested in seeing.
And if Morrison is not for you, WW has her own well-reviewed series you can check out. I’m sure there are trades of the New 52 run that you could try.
Shouldn’t Azzarello be writing this? Isn’t he the one that rewrote Diana’s history and brought her back to prominence? I think he earned the right to have this book…
This was in place long before Azzarello took over the book and since he’s doing more or less a similar thing on the main series there’s no reason to have him do it here.
I think it’s more of a case of Morrison having a WW story to tell that he took to DC as opposed to DC wanting a WW Earth 1 story and looking for someone to write it. That would make more sense to me, but I don’t know this for a fact, so I could be very wrong.
@sitara119. This is part of the story about the genesis of the project: http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2012/09/rucka-and-williams-originally-were-set-for-wonder-woman-earth-one/
Well, how about that. Another case solved. 😉
Earth One is a different universe so basically he’d be starting over again with the character.
Also, Azzarello’s run has been pretty boring as far as WW goes so I’m glad Grant’s giving it a go.
Hooray! This is finally gonna happen! Now let’s get a final release date for Multiversity and we can call it even Morrison.
Batman Earth One took forever to come out, so I doubt it will come out this year.
Personally I would have wanted Morrison to take a non-Trinity character for this line. How about Flash or Hawkman?
A Grant Morrison take on Hawkman would be quite intriguing. At least there you know he couldn’t possibly make things any more confusing, now, could he . . ? 🙂
I read a few Flash issues he wrote in the mid to late 90s and they just came off as lazy to me, which leads me to believe Morrison doesn’t love the character as much as Waid or Johns. If you’re curious, it involves the Flash racing a radiowave alien in an intergalactic race for their respective planets survival.
The Flash is actually Morrison’s favourite character in superhero comics.
Doesn’t mean he’s better at writing him than Waid (he’s not) but I think it’s safe to say his lack of love for the character wasn’t the problem…
Morrison never really liked Wally I think. He has some quotes where he kinda implies that he was the pretender to Barry’s place. Though his JLA run treated him pretty well so I don’t know if that was seriously something he felt and got over once he had him where he wanted him or if he was just joking and it didn’t come across.
‘It was great […] I got to do the Flash. The real Flash, not this abomination that’s running around today. One of the most exciting moments of my entire life, believe it or not, was writing the sequence where Barry Allen presses his ring and the costume leaps out. When I wrote that I was sitting there all charged up with adrenalin. I suppose that just shows how sheltered a life I’ve led.’ – That was sometime around 2003 I think,
Maybe that explains that story in the mid-to-late 90s since it was Wally West, Morrison just prefers Barry. Maybe he’s even more hardcore on the silver age than Geoff Johns, I’d love to hear what he thought of Kyle Rayner as GL.
I’ve been mixed on Morrison — some of his stuff I love a lot, but, honestly, I’m not sure if he’s the right writer for Wonder Woman. At least, it’s out of continuity, so, anything he does that’s too wtf I can simply ignore.
I will say that Paquette on the art greatly increases the chances that I’ll buy this, though . . .
I’m of the opinion that you can ignore anything whether it’s in continuity or not.
I don’t live in a bubble, but my comic book continuity sure does. 😉
I’m really looking forward to this. Everything Morrison has hinted at so far sounds really exciting. Admittedly, I’m a lifelong Morrison junkie, but I respect his detractors. Nothing is for everyone. Love him or hate him, ya can’t deny that the guy isn’t afraid to push the limits of superhero comics. His approach to this sounds incredibly intriguing.
Also, it’s exciting to see him begin a new project. In my opinion, we’ve been blessed to have him on Batman for so long, but all good things must come to an end. I wasn’t in love with Joe the Barbarian, and his Action run did very little for me. It’s always good to see one of your favorites try his hand at something new.
Between this and Azarello’s fantastic run on WW proper, it’s a promising time for Wonder Woman.
I’m another person person who doesn’t know what to think of this. It could be awesome, and I’m really excited to see someone play with the ideas of Wonder Woman in a serious way (which was the word he used – serious).
But I also read the first half of his Action comics run. That was… not good. Not for me, anyways. He went big and I had trouble following along which was disappointing. I really don’t want this to be like that.
But strangling Hercules with your chains (is that Diana or her mum?) then busting free – that’s a pretty good start.
I knew that’s what his WW project had to be !!!! I’m getting this for sure
Called it. I’m somewhat looking forward to this, Azzerallo’s run has warmed to the character. Now if Morrison can just resist filling it with Parallel dimensions, meta references, time travel, and all powerful-use-one-time-only-miracle-machines we should be good to go.
Wonder Woman…UNCHAINED!!!
I liked what Morrison had to say about WW in…I can’t remember if it was Playboy or Rolling Stone, but it was interesting. I wonder if there will be a lot of Golden Age bondage and sexual overtones. Overzealous feminists might go ape-shit. LOL.
I really can’t wait for this. Super-stoked!
Azzarello and Chiang have been killing it on the current WW series, and Grant Morrison’s name alone will probably get people averse to WW to pick this up. Not to mention the great art by Paquette, who’s one of those guys that I seem to keep forgetting, but every time I see his stuff I love (his Swamp Thing run was excellent).
Despite some great runs in the past by Perez, Rucka, Simone etc… people still complain that there aren’t any good WW stories…hopefully this help in rectifying that school of thought.
Really looking forward to this! When Morrison is left alone and get to do what he wants when he wants it, he usually nails it. Him doing a OGN should be killer!
Batman Earth One was good but not great.
Were the Superman books any good? They didn’t seem like they were worth picking up in hardcover to me (I know the first book is now in paperback but it still hasn’t grabbed me.)
@BCDX97, many people didn’t care for “Superman:Earth One” but I really enjoyed it. It seemed like a cross between “Superman:Secret Identity” and “Smallville” in that Superman is younger (almost a teenager) and it’s somewhat of how a normal teenager would respond to having this great destiny pushed on him. JMS tweaked the origin in a lot of ways, but I think it’s still the core of the character. If you’ve enjoyed most of JMS’ other work or want a “fresh” take on Superman (hint; not just Christopher Reeves for the upteenth time), you might like it. Also, I thought “Batman:Earth One” was ok as well.
Well this sounds interesting, I’m more excited for Paquette on art than anything else.
You had me at Paquette!
I cannot wait for this! I’ve been eager and excited to read Grant’s Wonder Woman for some time now. Now all we need is a release date — This is going to be wonderful!