We recently had a chance to chat with the creative team behind Superman/Wonder Woman, writer Charles Soule and artist Tony Daniel, about their forthcoming (and much buzzed about) series, the first issue of which hits shelves October 9th.
In addition to the superheroic iconic couple, Soule and Daniel had a few things to say about The Empire Strikes Back, the immortal romance between Han and Leia, and how haters are, as the saying goes, going to hate.
IGN Comics: Let's start off talking a little about the birth of this project, from conception to what we're going to see in October.
Tony Daniel: DC approached me with a new project. They knew that I really enjoyed working with Superman and they also knew that I wanted to, at some point, work on Wonder Woman, and my run on Action was coming to a close. It was kind of a surprise because they asked me if I'd be interested in doing something like this. And I told them, "Absolutely." So, then they mentioned that they were talking to Charles and it all happened very fast.
[At this point, the call dropped. Cue mass panic and children wailing in the streets. Eventually, we reconnected. Tears of joy were shed by all.]
Charles Soule: Basically, I was asked to do Superman/Wonder Woman relatively early in my time working with DC, so it was exceptionally flattering, and I was particularly excited about the fact that I was working on an area of comics that hadn't really been explored that much. Superman and Wonder Woman as a couple is fairly unexplored territory, so I was thrilled to be asked and it's been a great to work on something this big.
IGN: And speaking of Superman and Wonder Woman as a couple, there's been a lot of buzz surrounding this relationship, and there's been some contention in some corners of the Internet. Tony, at Fan Expo in Toronto, you answered a fan's question about actively trying to appeal to female readers and included in that response was discussion of the romance element of the book. Is there any further insight on that you'd like to provide?
Daniel: Not really. I don't believe all that Internet hoopla from people. The people that are waving their hands in the air and frustrated or whatever, they're going to be that way no matter what. No matter what anyone says, they're going to be upset about something, so I really don't care. They're probably not going to read the book anyway. They're already dismissing it, which is what people generally do when something new comes along.
IGN: Comic fans can be resistant to change.
Daniel: I've been unaware because I don't really follow it. There's so much negativity, particularly in forums. Comic forums in particular are a very negative place for creators. They tend to beat up the creators of the medium, so I gave up reading them a long time ago. I mean, it [Superman/Wonder Woman] is romantic and it's powerful and it's exciting. If it was anything other than that, I'd be lying, and with what we're going to be doing, I don't see why.
Soule: I would say, what people really want in any sort of entertainment experience whether it's movie, TV, a comic book, you name it is emotion, really. You know, characters create emotion, and things resonate. Sometimes that's romance, sometimes it's action, sometimes that's anger. It could be any number of things, right?
IGN: Exactly.
Soule: And this is a book that is packed with elements that resonate, as far as I'm concerned. And the fact that we have a couple that is romantically linked at the heart of it adds a ton. It basically gives me as a writer and Tony as an artist a lot of extra hooks to hang our story on. We can play story beats that you can't really play in some of these other books in the same way, particularly when you're dealing with two icons like Superman and Wonder Woman.
The example I use a lot when I'm talking about this book is Empire Strikes Back, which was a fantastic, exciting, dramatic film that happened to have as one of its many elements the romance between Han and Leia. That was not the core of that story, but it was a very powerful and strong element that made the whole movie better. You didn't need that romance for Empire Strikes Back to exist, but it was certainly better with it. I think the same is true of Superman/Wonder Woman.
IGN: We were looking at this awesome gatefold cover for the first issue and there are plenty of characters on it, including Superman and Wonder Woman's extended families. How would you situate this book within the greater DC Universe and within their respective solo titles?
Soule: The goal of that cover was to show just how complicated these people's lives are. There's so much going on around them all the time, and then, in the middle, they find some time away from all of that together. And also, it was an opportunity for Tony to draw all that amazing stuff, which I wouldn't have turned down either if I was an artist.
So, it was a combination of half awesome and half kind of thematically relevant. As far as whether or not their supporting casts will be showing up in the book, absolutely. It's going to be on a case by case basis depending on what the story requires, but there are so many great characters, we'd be idiots to ignore them.
IGN: Can you tell us a bit about what it was like working with each other?
Daniel: To be honest, it started with Charles' outline, and it was a very strong take on where he wanted to take the series, what kind of stories he wanted to tell. As soon as I read it, I knew the book was going to be in great hands. As far as collaborating on the story, it's Charles' story and my collaborating comes on the art side, trying to make his vision as big and as exciting-looking and as powerful as I can make it. So, my contribution to the book is purely on a visual level. I'm sure there will be times when maybe Charles might ask me my opinion on something, and I'm there, and that's pretty normal.
Soule: We had that today. That happened, like, an hour ago. We were emailing about that one beat in [an upcoming] issue.
Daniel: Exactly. It just happened where I had an idea for one of the scenes and we're going to play around with it a little bit. When we go back and forth, I'm pertaining to visual ideas that I can implement. Where this story goes is something that Charles is working on really hard.
Soule: Anytime you start working with a new artist, but on this project in particular, it's hard to know how an artist is going to interpret your script until he actually does it. And so, I think that over time, you learn how to write for your artist a little bit, to help support their strengths, and then it all starts to gel in this really great way that I think has happened very quickly on this book. I had obviously read and seen Tony's work before, but -- and I don't know if you noticed this, Tony -- I felt like the script for issue two, for example, was from the get-go, designed to work with what I learned from working with you on issue one.
Daniel: Yeah, totally. Definitely, I think it's the perfect script.
Soule: So, it's a matter of learning who each other are because these books are so collaborative and so tightly woven... I know some books come out where the guys don't talk to each other at all, but we definitely talk a lot, we hash things out. And it's getting better. It's really good.
IGN: Any last words for IGN's readers?
Daniel: Pick up the book!
Melissa Grey is a lover of all things cats, comics, and outer space. She can be found on MyIGN at MelissaGrey or lurking on Twitter @meligrey.
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