Like Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad before it, the Wonder Woman movie in theaters next week features a lengthy list of comic book writers, artists, and editors who rate a “special thanks” in the credits.
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The list includes numerous creators who have worked on Wonder Woman, the Justice League, and related characters, mostly in the modern (post-Crisis on Infinite Earths) age of comics but going back as far as her creation in 1940.
As we’ve done with the previous movies, ComicBook.com decided we would run down the list and familiarize those in our audience who are primarily in this for the TV, movies, and video games with some of the famous names and faces behind the characters.
A quick note: the first of the credits reads “in memory of Captain William T. Jenkins.” That’s not a comic book or historial figure, but something more visceral and obvious: Jenkins is the father of Patty Jenkins, the director of Wonder Woman.
The final name isn’t a name at all, but the family of William Moulton Marston, the psychologist and inventor who created Wonder Woman. Since it’s his family who gets the thanks, it’s likely part of a deal with DC, but we’ll just talk a little bit about Marston himself and his contribution.
GEORGE PEREZ
The creator of many of the most acclaimed and best-loved Wonder Woman stories of the modern era, George Perez is the writer and artist who reinvented the character for the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths era in the late ’80s.
ROSS ANDRU
Ross Andru’s last screen credit was in Suicide Squad, as he was the artist on the “Classic” Suicide Squadron stories in The Brave and the Bold and Star-Spangled War Stories in the ’50s and ’60s.
A legendary artist, Andru is best known for his work on The Amazing Spider-Man, The Flash and Metal Men…and of course, Wonder Woman.
Along with his Suicide Squadron collaborator and Rick Flag co-creator Robert Kanigher, Andru created years of fan-favorite Wonder Woman comics, collected in various formats including a pair of hefty, black-and-white Showcase Presents issue.
From 1958 until 1967, the pair reinvented Wonder Woman, establishing her Silver Age status quo and introducing various members of the supporting cast.
Even after they left, though, Andru’s take on Wonder Woman had become the most recogniable version for licensing and marketing, and Andru would continue to draw the character for years, including on the first Ms. magazine cover in 1972.
BRIAN AZZARELLO
With Cliff Chiang, Brian Azzarello created The New 52 version of Wonder Woman, a run that director Patty Jenkins has praised, particularly in its depiction of Wonder Woman’s emotional journey leaving Themyscira.
JAMES BONNY
This is an interesting inclusion to the list, because James Bonny is not a longtime DC contributor and has never worked on a Wonder Woman comic.
Bonny co-wrote or wrote numerous comics during The New 52 era of publication, including The Savage Hawkman and Deathstroke.
It took us a while to figure out just why he would have made his way into the credits, but once we saw it, it was pretty obvious: Bonny and Tony S. Daniel created the godkiller sword.
In the “Godkiller” story arc, in which Wonder Woman was a guest star, Hephaestus contracted Deathstroke to kill the Greek Titan Lapetus, and offered him an enchanted weapon with which to do it.
Given the place of honor given to Wonder Woman’s sword in trailers and clips, it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that the sword is some version of the godkiller, which could shapeshift to best suit the combat style of its wielder, produce destructive waves of energy, and re-form if broken, among other abilities.
CLIFF CHIANG
Chiang was the artist on Azzarello’s Wonder Woman during The New 52.
Together, the pair assembled one of the longest and most generally well-liked runs of that era, although it was not without its controversy.
The controveries, though, were generally plot-driven, and Chiang garnered almost universal praise during his time as the artist on Wonder Woman.
TONY S. DANIEL
Back to the Godkiller again.
Tony S. Daniel has worked with Wonder Woman a few times, but likely he’s included on the credits because of his work with Bonny on Deathstroke and the story that appeared in that title.
The fact that Deathstroke — a character who will appear in The Batman and who has appeared as recently as this week on Arrow — is contributing (even tangentially) a major piece of Wonder Woman’s cinematic mythology is likely lost on nobody at DC thinking about what characters fans would like to see more of in the near future.
Daniel also did some work on Superman/Wonder Woman during The New 52, and there’s even a “Wonder Woman: The Art of War” statue available based on his art.
MIKE DEODATO, JR.
Mike Deodato, Jr. was arguably the first massively-bankable name to draw the Wonder Woman monthly comic after the departure of George Perez.
In the 1990s, at a time when DC and Marvel were reinventing and redesigning their superheroes left and right, Deodato drew a run on Wonder Woman from writer William Messner-Loebs, in which among other things Diana was briefly replaced as Wonder Woman by Artemis.
He’s responsible for one of the most maligned designs in comics history, the “biker” Wonder Woman look…but snark aside, people were buying the book and excited about it.
It also opened up what was, at the time, a fairly rare conversation in the industry about the overt sexualization of comic book women. A skimpy, leather outfit arguably called back to Wonder Woman’s earliest days, when creator William Moulton Marston evoked bondage imagery regularly, but given the propensity for cheesecake art in ’90s comics, it didn’t feel particularly liberated or feminist for many readers.
A collection of their work is available now through DC, and as a testament to how much people associated Deodato with the character of Wonder Woman, the volume is called Wonder Woman By Mike Deodato, even in this writer-driven age of comics.
PHIL JIMENEZ
Phil Jimenez, one of the comics creators who posted a photo of the credits to his Instagram feed following a screening of the film, has long been seen as the heir apparent to George Perez, and his run on Wonder Woman supports that.
Stylistically, the two are not dissimilar artists, so much so that Jimenez has been tapped to “fill in” for Perez before, like when they had him drawing much of Infinite Crisis, a sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths, a series drawn by Perez.
For 20 issues from 2001 until 2003, Jimenez was the writer/artist on Wonder Woman. He also did The Return of Donna Troy, a one-shot featuring one of Wonder Woman’s most important supporting characters.
Years later, in 2010, he would co-write Del Rey’s The Wonder Woman Encyclopedia.
Currently, Jimenez writes and sometimes draws Superwoman for DC.
ROBERT KANIGHER
Along with his Suicide Squadron collaborator and Rick Flag co-creator Ross Andru, Kanigher created years of fan-favorite Wonder Woman comics, collected in various formats including a pair of hefty, black-and-white Showcase Presents issue.
From 1958 until 1967, the pair reinvented Wonder Woman, establishing her Silver Age status quo and introducing various members of the supporting cast.
Given the importance of the Silver Age of comics to DC and Marvel’s multimedia franchises — you don’t see a ton of characters created before 1955 or after 1980, relatively speaking — it should be no surprise that the pair have their fingerprints all over the cinematic Wonder Woman and her world.
What’s interesting about Kanigher being credited is that while he and Andru created lots of entertaining stories together, many Wonder Woman fans and scholars have not been kind to his writing. While William Moulton Marston created an overtly feminist and somewhat subversive female superhero, Kanigher transformed Wonder Woman into a more typical female protagonist of the day, and there is significant debate about whether it would be accurate to characterize his work as sexist or antifeminist.
Obviously that runs counter to the message of the movie and its promotion.
JIM LEE
Jim Lee is the co-publisher at DC and one of the most popular and best-selling artists of the last thirty years in comics.
Lee hasn’t worked on Wonder Woman as a solo title before, but he drew a run on Justice League at the start of The New 52, which not only heavily featured Wonder Woman but also established some of the groundwork for the Justice League movie in terms of the look of the Apokoliptian technology and things like that which we might get a hint of in Wonder Woman.
Lee’s most notable contribution to Wonder Woman is probably that he redesigned her costume following the 2011 The New 52 reboot, including the “ribbed” top that has carried over to the DC Extended Universe look.
Being both a best-selling artist and management, Lee was also involved in a previous reinvention of Wonder Woman’s costume — the “jacket” look from the mid-2000s — but that one didn’t take.
WILLIAM MESSNER-LOEBS
William Messner-Loebs was one of the most popular and best-selling Wonder Woman writers of the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths era, buoyed (as mentioned before) by the assistance of hot artist Michael Deodato, Jr.
In the 1990s, at a time when DC and Marvel were reinventing and redesigning their superheroes left and right, Deodato drew a run on Wonder Woman from writer William Messner-Loebs, in which among other things Diana was briefly replaced as Wonder Woman by Artemis.
He’s responsible for one of the most maligned designs in comics history, the “biker” Wonder Woman look…but snark aside, people were buying the book and excited about it.
A collection of their work is available now through DC under the title Wonder Woman By Mike Deodato.
GREG POTTER
Greg Potter was the original co-writer on Wonder Woman following the Crisis on Infinite Earths reboot, although he only finished a couple of issues before he was replaced by Len Wein and co-plotter/artist George Perez.
Potter is a veteran comics writer best known for creating Jemm, Son of Saturn, a character who appeared as a villain on season 1 of Supergirl on CBS last year.
GREG RUCKA
Greg Rucka is arguably the most acclaimed Wonder Woman writer since the George Perez era, and had a long, fan-favortie run before Flashpoint before returning to the character with Wonder Woman Rebirth one year ago.
“How do you say no to Diana?” Rucka said. “I couldn’t.”
Rucka is working with artist Liam Sharp and Nicola Scott in what he describes as a “once in a lifetime opportunity.”
He recently announced he will depart the book in July, to be replaced by DC Super Hero Girls creator Shea Fontana.
Much of Rucka’s original run reshaped the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths take on Steve Trevor and the spy elements surrounding Wonder Woman and her world.
LEN WEIN
While George Perez is both a writer and an artist, Len Wein was the editor on Perez’s title, and the writer for most of the issues where Perez wasn’t doing everything by himself.
Here’s the solicitaiton for the first volume of Wonder Woman by George Perez, featuring Wein’s writing, which just recently came out:
In this new paperback collecting WONDER WOMAN #1-14, the Amazon Princess’ first assignment takes her to Man’s World to teach humanity the ways of the goddess Gaea—no matter who objects!
THE MARSTON FAMILY
Wonder Woman was created by William Moulton Marston, an eccentric visionary also partially responsible for the polygraph lie detector test.
(Kind of puts the whole Lasso of Truth thing in a different light, no?)
Two women, his wife Elizabeth Holloway Marston and Olive Byrne (who lived with the couple in an extended relationship), both greatly influenced Wonder Woman’s creation.
Marston created Wonder Woman in 1940 and would be involved with the characters’ adventures up until his death in 1947.
MORE WONDER WOMAN
Before she was Wonder Woman, she was Diana, princess of the Amazons, trained to be an unconquerable warrior. Raised on a sheltered island paradise, when an American pilot crashes on their shores and tells of a massive conflict raging in the outside world, Diana leaves her home, convinced she can stop the threat. Fighting alongside man in a war to end all wars, Diana will discover her full powers…and her true destiny.
Joining Gadot in the international cast are Chris Pine, Connie Nielsen, Robin Wright, David Thewlis, Danny Huston, Elena Anaya, Ewen Bremner and Saïd Taghmaoui. Patty Jenkins directs the film from a screenplay by Allan Heinberg and Geoff Johns, story by Zack Snyder and Allan Heinberg, based on characters from DC Entertainment. Wonder Woman was created by William Moulton Marston.
The film is produced by Charles Roven, Zack Snyder, Deborah Snyder and Richard Suckle, with Rebecca Roven, Stephen Jones, Wesley Coller and Geoff Johns serving as executive producers. Warner Bros. Pictures presents, in association with RatPac-Dune Entertainment, an Atlas Entertainment/Cruel and Unusual production, Wonder Woman.
The film will be released on June 2, 2017.
More Wonder Woman:
- Patty Jenkins Reveals Her Favorite Wonder Woman Storyline
- Wonder Woman’s Women-Only Screenings Are Causing Drama All Over The Internet
- Gal Gadot Nearly Quit Acting Before Wonder Woman
- Patty Jenkins Explains How They Worked Real History Into Wonder Woman
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