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This week DC announced the long-awaited release of Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons #1, the debut of a three-issue Black Label series written by Kelly Sue DeConnick and illustrated by Phil Jimenez (issue 1), Gene Ha (issue 2), and Nicola Scott (issue 3). As more details come out about the series, which will tell a complete history of the Amazons and Themyscira in the DC Universe, DeConnick has revealed a piece of information that will surely make longtime Wonder Woman fans happy: in Historia, Zeus is not the father of Diana.
DeConnick revealed the information in response to a fan on Twitter who expressed concern about the Zeus origin’s use:
I really, really should not respond to this as it’s a slippery slope to address every guess or projection, but I’ve only had half a cup of coffee and I’m feeling spicy, so I’ll just say this — noooooope. Wrong.
— Kelly Sue DeConnick (@kellysue) July 16, 2021
The preview page the fan expressed concern about shows a baby in a basket, floating down a river, while a distraught-looking woman walks away.
“Oh, I hope that’s not Diana in the basket,” the fan tweeted. “If it’s an unwanted child it suggests they’re going with the daughter of Zeus origin instead of her having been sculpted from clay.”
Acknowledging the danger of taking time to reply to fan concerns before the book’s release, DeConnick’s reply was unequivocal: “noooooope. Wrong.” Artist Gene Ha also replied affirming that Zeus will not be Diana’s father in the series.
There’s been a fair amount of, if not nostalgia, then at least reflection on DC’s New 52 era in the past few weeks, and not everything that came with DC’s 2011 linewide relaunch is remembered fondly. One of the more controversial aspects of the New 52 was a fundamental change to Wonder Woman’s origin, in which writer Brian Azzarello and artist Cliff Chiang revealed that Diana, contrary to what she had always believed, was not sculpted from clay by Hippolyta and brought to life as her daughter, but was in fact that offspring of an affair between Hippolyta and Zeus. The change drew criticism from Wonder Woman fans for making a character whose origin had previously been primarily matriarchal, with focus on Hippolyta, now centered on Diana’s relationship with her father. Still, the argument that it’s a more easily consumable origin for the masses than ‘magical clay’ is hard to deny, and the change has even been used as Diana’s origin in the Patty Jenkins-directed Wonder Woman film.
Given the focus of Wonder Woman Historia on the Amazons and Hippolyta in particular it’s not entirely surprising that DeConnick has chosen to omit the Zeus retcon from Diana’s origin, but it’s still nice to get confirmation that that’s the case. Which version of Wonder Woman’s origin do you prefer?
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