Weekly Wonder Woman

A weekly round-up of the latest news about and DC comics featuring Wonder Woman

Gal Gadot and Patty Jenkins
Weekly Wonder Woman

Weekly Wonder Woman: Wonder Woman #38, Titans #19, Harley Quinn: Be Careful What You Wish For Special Edition #1

11 January 2018 Rob Buckley 9 Comments

Yes, it’s Weekly Wonder Woman – keeping you up to date on pretty much anything involving DC Comics’ premier superheroine, including who plays her on TV in the comics

Another quiet week for Wonder Woman news, I’m afraid, assuming you don’t think a 12-strong march on Warner Bros to ask for a Zac Snyder cut of Justice League is news. Is it actually a march if there’s only 12 people? Isn’t it more of a throng or maybe a milling?

Sure, Wonder Woman‘s been nominated for the 2018 Producers Guild of America Awards.

But we’re still waiting to see if the movie could win an Oscar. What do you reckon the odds are? After all, if even the Teen Titans love Wonder Woman, surely the Academy must, too?

On the upside, though, lots of comics featuring our heroine this week and we’ll be looking at all of them after the jump. In Wonder Woman #38, we get the Rebirth version of old enemy The Silver Swan (who’s also an old friend). In Titans #19, Diana and the Justice League are a bit worried about Donna Troy – or at least her future self, Troia. And over in Harley Quinn: Be Careful What You Wish For Special Edition #1, Harley Quinn gets infinite wishes from a genie and decides she’d like to be Wonder Woman. But which Wonder Woman, hey?

All that after the jump…

Continue reading “Weekly Wonder Woman: Wonder Woman #38, Titans #19, Harley Quinn: Be Careful What You Wish For Special Edition #1”

Diana in Justice League
Weekly Wonder Woman

Weekly Wonder Woman: Wonder Woman #37, Justice League #36

4 January 2018 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Yes, it’s Weekly Wonder Woman – keeping you up to date on pretty much anything involving DC Comics’ premier superheroine, including how naff her dad is

Happy New Year, True Believers! Yes, I know Stan Lee’s a Marvel man, but I doubt he’s trademarked it. So, True Believers, I hope you had a great time; Diana was off lighting a bonfire with Batman, apparently, so whatever you did, it was probably better than her Christmas/New Year celebrations.

Everyone else in the real world was off celebrating, too, so not a lot of news came out over the festive period. But here’s what did happen, for what it’s worth.

Movie news

Justice League looks set to close its run in cinemas with just $700m in takings, which is apparently enough to break even – just. It’s still not great though.

Looking more to the future, though, Patty Jenkins says Wonder Woman 2 will be totally different from Wonder Woman:

“We’re actually making a totally different film with a lot of the same, similar like things that we love, but it’s its own movie completely, so it’s not ‘two’ to us,” the director told ET. “It’s an entirely new adventure together that we couldn’t be luckier [to do].”

Comics news

Liam Sharp revealed some more art from his forthcoming Brave and the Bold:

Liam Sharp's Brave and the Bold

Meanwhile, Jill Thompson was at the DC Comics Art Academy to explain how she draws Diana:

Comics reviews

Just the usual titles featured Diana Prime this fortnight, although Superman #38 might contain a visit from a future Wonder Woman (I can’t even), if you want to give that a whirl. So after the jump, we’ll see who won in that fight between Zeus and teenage Darkseid (the cover contains a bit of a spoiler, mind) in Wonder Woman #37 and in Justice League #36, she’s still agonising about her mission. And whether Germany is in the EU. Maybe not so much the second one, but it’s a concern.

Continue reading “Weekly Wonder Woman: Wonder Woman #37, Justice League #36”

Weekly Wonder Woman

Weekly Wonder Woman: Wonder Woman #36, Justice League #35, Wonder Woman/Conan #4, Trinity #16, Batgirl and the Birds of Prey #17

21 December 2017 Rob Buckley 20 Comments

Yes, it’s Weekly Wonder Woman – keeping you up to date on pretty much anything involving DC Comics’ premier superheroine, including what she does for breakfast

It’s the last Weekly Wonder Woman of the year, thanks to the upcoming Christmas holidays, but she’ll be back in the New Year ready to bring peace to the world with the minimum of violence necessary, you’ll be glad to hear.

The past two weeks have seen a minor deluge of comics, which we can look at together after the jump, as well as a flurry of news, which we can look at now.

Movie news

Justice League is officially clocking in as the worst performing DC Extended Universe movie ever, not even breaking even yet when marketing et al are taken into account, so the autopsies continue. Unfair attention is being levelled at the weird removal of Henry Cavill’s moustache, but certainly, it’s prompted a shake up at Warner, with producer Jon Berg leaving the film production division and a complete restructuring of the division planned for the New Year.

Wonder Woman, meanwhile, continues to rack up the plaudits. Gal Gadot is top of IMDb’s stars list for 2017, while the movie itself is one of the AFI’s top movies of 2017 – is an Oscar on the cards? Both Gadot and director Patty Jenkins continue to be feted, too, with Deadline interviewing both again recently about how they’d tried to portray Diana. Gadot also recently presented a Wonder Woman screenwriting scholarship at the Hollywood Reporter’s Women in Entertainment breakfast:

Meanwhile, TV Wonder Woman Lynda Carter is busily trying to help single-player gamers, who apparently are in need of… something.

Merchandise news

Another entry for ‘spooky corner’, here’s Prime 1 Studio’s Justice League Wonder Woman statue, which clocks in at 85.5cm tall. Eek. Double eek for the price tag: $1,249.

Wonder Woman statue

Comics news

Nothing new, per se, but here’s former Wonder Woman artist Cliff Chiang talking about, among other things, going to watch Wonder Woman with Brian Azzarello.

Comic reviews

Two weeks have passed since the previous WWW (sorry, everyone) so there’s quite a few titles to look at. We’ve the latest issue of Wonder Woman itself, as well as the continuing travails – and habits – of Diana with the Justice League in Justice League #35. Trinity #16 sees our Diana musing on immortality, while the Amazon princess helps to save all the men of Gotham from being killed in Batgirl and the Birds of Prey #17. Lastly, Conan the Barbarian talks a surprisingly large amount about Diana, who is revealed as a bit of a lightweight in Wonder Woman/Conan #4. All that after the jump.

Continue reading “Weekly Wonder Woman: Wonder Woman #36, Justice League #35, Wonder Woman/Conan #4, Trinity #16, Batgirl and the Birds of Prey #17”

Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot
Weekly Wonder Woman

Weekly Wonder Woman: Justice League #34, DC Holiday Special, New Talent Showcase + more

7 December 2017 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

Yes, it’s Weekly Wonder Woman – keeping you up to date on pretty much anything involving DC Comics’ premier superheroine, including why she’s been hanging around with Batman so much

Weekly Wonder Woman took a break last week for a few reasons:

  1. I had too much work on
  2. There were no new comics (give or take)
  3. There wasn’t much news

I think that’s fair enough, don’t you?

This week, though, it’s the reverse. So much news. So many new comics.

Movie news

This week marks four years of Gal Gadot being Wonder Woman in the movie universe. Doesn’t time fly, hey? I think she’s been a success, too, given that Wonder Woman was the most Tweeted about movie of the year; both Gadot and director Patty Jenkins have won NBR Spotlight Awards; Warner Bros has crossed the US$5 billion mark at the box office for only the second time, thanks largely to Wonder Woman; and Patty Jenkins was on the shortlist for Time’s 2017 Person of the Year – to name but a few highlights of the past fortnight.

That was Wonder Woman, though. Justice League ain’t faring so well, although it has just become the 10th movie to cross the $200 million threshold at the US box office this year and earned $370 million outside the US (thanks China!). So it’s made its money back but it’s not up there with Wonder Woman‘s $821 million tally.

Who’s to blame for the movie earning only a few hundred million more dollars than it took to make? The Wrap has a list of its problems behind the scenes, as does Den of Geek, which lays most of the issues at the door of Henry Cavill’s CGI-ed moustache.

People are also curious as to what was in the original script, before Joss Whedon took over and Warner Bros decided to limit the run-time to two hours. Superman’s black costume was in there at one point, as was Darkseid, and Diana originally cut off Steppenwolf’s head (it takes a god to kill a god, remember?). People also want to know what happened in previous attempts at a Justice League movie, with one close effort from 2011 apparently revealing that Wonder Woman and Batman had had a child at some point.

Still, it nearly being 2018 n’all, thoughts are already turning towards Wonder Woman 2. What’s that going to be about? Well, love’s going to feature strongly, according to some sources; however, Patty Jenkins is telling people to dial back their expectations.

Comics news

Liam Sharp’s been showing off some of his artwork from the forthcoming The Brave and the Bold: Wonder Woman and Batman, as has Tripwire magazine.

Batman versus the Kelpies

The Brave and the Bold

Meanwhile, his co-artist on Greg Rucka’s recent run, Nicola Scott, has been nominated for an IGN best artist award for her work.

Talking of Batman, Diana’s set to appear in Batman for a few issues, starting with issue #38 on January 3rd. Supposedly. This is the cover Comixology still has of the issue:

Batman #38

However, that might have changed and so you might have to wait until issue #39.

Diana’s also scheduled to appear in Damage #3, judging by this bit of work by Tony Daniel:

The second volume of Wonder Woman: Earth One is now scheduled to be released in August 2018 – I’ll believe it when I see it, mind, given how often Volume 1 got rescheduled.

Continue reading “Weekly Wonder Woman: Justice League #34, DC Holiday Special, New Talent Showcase + more”

Wonder Woman on the Old Bailey
Weekly Wonder Woman

Weekly Wonder Woman: Justice League (2017), Wonder Woman #35

22 November 2017 Rob Buckley 50 Comments

Yes, it’s Weekly Wonder Woman – keeping you up to date on pretty much anything involving DC Comics’ premier superheroine, including how badly her latest movie is doing

Movie news

Oh dear. Poor old DC/Warners. Last week, the signs were looking good for Justice League at the overseas box office. However, the US box office taking this past weekend has been below expectations: $96m, which although pretty good is the lowest ever opening for a DC Extended Universe movie. It also got a ‘40% rotten’ critics score on Rotten Tomatoes and is now projected to lose Warner somewhere between $50m and $100m.

Oops.

All is not lost, however, since it’s Thanksgiving week in the US, and Justice League did eventually hit its domestic mark after another day’s takings. It’s also done $185m outside the US and has an audience Rotten Tomatoes score of 85%, meaning audiences liked it twice as much as critics did – in fact, they liked it more than Man of Steel, Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad, although not quite as much as Wonder Woman, naturally.

Still, already everyone and their auntie is weighing in on what went wrong. Previously, director Zac Snyder had been universally blamed for all previous failings of DCEU movies. However, a personal tragedy meant that he departed the movie after shooting a big chunk of it, upon which Warner hired Joss Whedon (yes, that one) to do some rewrites and reshoots.

Weirdly, a whole bunch of people are therefore putting Justice League‘s perceived failings down to there being not enough Snyder and too much Whedon. There’s even a petition by fans to have a Snyder cut of the movie that the movie’s own cinematographer is backing. Someone even claims to have a list of all the changes Whedon made. All the hints in Batman v Superman as to the original plot of Justice League are probably out the window – or maybe they’ll turn up in Justice League 2 if that ever happens.

Want to know what I think of Justice League? Well, I’ll tell you after the jump. But first, let’s talk about comics…

Comics news

Batman and Wonder Woman

As previously mentioned, former Wonder Woman illustrator Liam Sharp is working on the first ever Batman-Wonder Woman title. But we now have some actual details:

It’s a six-issue mini-series called The Brave and the Bold: Batman and Wonder Woman, out on February 21st. One week earlier and people would talk. The series will mix Wonder Woman’s Amazonian mythology with the legends of Irish and Celtic gods. “The story would involve the death of an Irish god, and Wonder Woman would bring in Batman, the world’s greatest detective, to help investigate.”

Sharp said this new story will be a continuation of his Wonder Woman series with [Greg] Rucka, taking place not long after their final issue. He said Wonder Woman and her classic supporting character Steve Trevor are still a couple, but that he was tempted to add a little of the romantic spark that has existed between Batman and Wonder Woman over the years in various adaptations.

“There’s a moment [between Batman and Wonder Woman] in it. It’s more of a nod than anything else,” Sharp said. “I fell very much in love with the Steve and Diana story during the series with Greg. We felt like we gave him a certain richness to his personality that perhaps he’d lacked somewhat previously. There was a sense that the fanbase said this is right and this is how it should be. So I don’t want to spoil that. That’s the [Wonder Woman] that we created and that’s the dynamic that we created, but at the same time there is a [romantic] nod [to Batman].”

Should be fun. And well drawn.

Continue reading “Weekly Wonder Woman: Justice League (2017), Wonder Woman #35”