For Wonder Woman’s 600th issue (and it is the 600th, through clever industry jiggery pokery with the numbering), J Michael Straczynski has something special in store, which we’ve come to via The New York Times.
A redesigned costume from Jim Lee, and a new back story to boot. In this re-imagined plot, Wonder Woman doesn’t grow up with her Amazonian sisters on Paradise Island, but rather she’s smuggled off it at a young age when the inhabitants are slaughtered wholesale.
You can see the new character in action at the end of this post. JMS, who is mostly known for creating and more or less single-handedly writing the entire run of Babylon 5, is hoping that the new image for such an enduring character, one of DC’s chief creations despite the poor sales in relation to Superman and Batman comics, will restore her to her rightful place at the top of the tree. And let’s not forget that Hollywood, via Joss Whedon, has been trying to get a Wonder Woman film made for a very long time. This more palatable costume will likely help toward that, in the new post-9/11 Batman Begins world.
Created by William Moulton Marston, Wonder Woman first appeared in All Star Comics issue 8, released in December 1941. Except for a brief hiatus in 1986, she is one of DC’s three characters (along with Superman and Batman) to be continually published since the company’s birth in 1944.
