Newsarama Interview with Greg Rucka on Wonder Woman

[Ed Liu]

Howdy,

Subject line says it all. Greg Rucka talks about his plans for the Amazing Amazon in detail.

I was planning on waiting for the first trade before popping for Rucka's Wonder Woman, but now I'm not so sure. I think he's pushing all the right buttons to pique my interest, and I've been on a Wonder Woman kick lately (which would be a LOT easier to satisfy if, say, DC would reprint the George Perez reboot issues...grrrrrrr). I think I may make room for his first issue, at least.

On the other hand, one comment he makes kind of hacks me off:

NRAMA: Before we leave Diana’s supporting cast, something that always comes up is a romance. Is that in her cards this time around?

GR: I don’t feel the need to hook her up with anybody. There’s something a little creepy about it – there frequently seems to be this undue haste to give her a boyfriend, and I don’t really understand it. It’s not that she doesn’t want the relationship and companionship; it’s not that she wouldn’t welcome it, but I don’t think that is a defining element of the character. I have no plans to start throwing anybody at her with arms wide. That may change, if I can see a good reason for doing it, but Diana does not need to be defined by her relationship. She doesn’t need one, and I don’t think she suffers from the lack of one.

This, in sum, is why I have such a hard time reading the average ongoing monthly comic, especially the big-name corporate-brand comic characters. Trevor Barnes, who has been a possible romantic entanglement for Wonder Woman for a while now, is an interesting character in his own right and has the potential to raise the kinds of sparks that you'd get in old Hepburn/Tracy movies (or, more recently, the kind between Maddy & David on Moonlighting or Mulder & Scully on The X-Files). Rucka's comment either gives away a big spoiler for the (admittedly less-than-stellar) Simonson run, or reveals that he's just going to dump a character who's been a fairly important player in the Wonder Woman universe for a year or two because he doesn't think she needs a relationship.

-- Ed/Ace

[Clayface]

I'm rather excited about Rucka's upcoming run. I've never been able to get into the Wonder Woman character - she just never appealed to me in way, shape, or form. But then I picked up Wonder Woman: The Hiketeia by Rucka and J.G. Jones, and absolutely loved it. So much so that I convinced my girlfriend to read it (she loved it as well). At the time, I declared to her that if they ever managed to get Rucka writing the regular monthly title, I'd start buying it. Well, I'm a man of my word - I can't wait for this series to get started, and I'll definitely be checking it out. Rucka's comments on where he's taking the character sound interesting to me, and as a new comer to the title, with no sense of past continuity for the character, the comments about no love interest for her don't bother me at all.