Grant Morrison: Wonder Woman Brings Me Back to My Alternative Roots

Iconic comics writer Grant Morrison, speaking with USA Today about the end of his run on Batman [...]

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Iconic comics writer Grant Morrison, speaking with USA Today about the end of his run on Batman Incorporated (due in stores today), had quite a bit to say about his next big DC project, Wonder Woman: Earth One. Discussing the project, Morrison told the newspaper, "What it's done for me is I've had to read the entire history of feminism, which I'm still working my way through. Reading that, you really do get angry. You get a little bit militant. It's brought out my politics again a little bit, which has been buried for a long time. It's getting me back into my alternative roots." Asked whether he self-identified as a feminist himself, he hesitated. "I wouldn't be any kind of "ist." I don't believe these T-shirt slogans adequately explain the complexities of human existence," he told USA Today with a laugh. "There's a lot of what you've got to agree with. It's undeniable. There's so much that has to be said and there's a lot that really gets you enraged, but as a man who doesn't feel that way, it's hard to identify with. That's always going to be a problem for men who don't recognize themselves in the description."

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He said that working with Wonder Woman in this instance has allowed him to explore a complex mother-daughter relationship; Wonder Woman isn't sent off to Man's World in his version, but runs away. Much of the story revolves around a trial on Paradise Island, which Morrison said is a way of approaching something in fiction that he sees as being key to the character's struggles off-page. "I always felt one of the fundamentals of Wonder Woman in at least the last two decades is that she always seems to be on trial, and I don't mean that in a story sense," Morrison explained. "Everyone's always saying, 'Why does nobody buy Wonder Woman? Why isn't she any good?' (Laughs) it seems like she's always on trial, so I thought if I literalized that and made the story basically the Amazons bringing her back home after her first adventure away and putting her on trial, it'd be different from anything else you might see. The Amazons have their own ways of doing things."

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