‘Wonder Woman: Earth One’ Artist Yanick Paquette On Continuing the World in Volume 2

While writer Grant Morrison was busy talking up Happy! — the SYFY series based on his comic with Darick Robertson — at New York Comic Con, artist Yanick Paquette was at the DC booth, talking about the pair’s latest project, Wonder Woman: Earth One – Volume 2.

Building on the success of the first volume, Volume 2 deals a little more with the challenges of man’s world, including a suspicious populace not sure what to make of Wonder Woman at times. A look at the Golden Age Wonder Woman that retains a lot of Golden Age sensibilities (including, yes, Nazi villains), Wonder Woman: Earth One – Volume 2 will be in stores this week.

Paquette joined Comicbook.com to talk about the project over the weekend.

As soon as the first volume hit, it felt like an Earth One project with you and Grant was more or less guaranteed a sequel. Did you start working on this right away?

We waited a little to see the reception of the first one, but there were always that option to do three.

In a way, the first one would have worked just as an origin story, and that would be it. We had a bit hesitation of going back to the island and trying to expand, because, really, the first one we’re just establishing the moral parameters in which we work.

Here the concept that needed to be explored was his crazy Amazonian way of thinking about pacifism. Can it actually work in the real world? We really debate that idea.

The third one will be a lot more of a, an action-packed spectacle. So far, we didn’t go for too much physical action. The second one is a lot more an intellectual debate. But the third volume is going to be over-the-top craziness and action.

The second one feels kind of bigger and broader than the first one. And so even though it isn’t super physical, it still feels sped-up to me. Was that kind of the intention, to kind of ramp up as you go?

The way Grant Morrison works, he’s giving me two pages at a time. At some point, he must have had a huge plan somewhere, which I’m not aware of. Beyond the fact that I know it’s three volumes, and that the third one will be an invasion of the island or something of that nature, most of the time I discover as I draw those things. I discover as a reader does.

Do you ever regret that you started yourself off drawing in the margins and creating more work on each page?

“I wish I had made different choices!” No, actually I’m having a lot of fun with this process.

I started it on Swamp Thing, actually. So like on Swamp Thing every time a border is a code, and works with an aspect of the story. So if the Green, for instance, was acting on reality, then all the panel border would be black branches to create those panels, and then the normal reality would be something else. And if we are inside the Green, it’s something more psychedelic-looking elements.

In the first Wonder Woman: Earth One, I kept them quite simple, in a way. On a panel border that described the past, like the far Greek mythological past, there were broken potteries. And the lasso that was symbolized whenever people is under the influence of the lasso and have to tell the truth. Or tell part of the story, because the first one is really a bunch of flashback to whatever happened. So we had the curl lassos, so that was it.

The second [volume], I went to town with it. Basically, it’s a battle between two types of panel borders: The art nouveau panel border, which is the Amazonian. Elegant, fluid, and organic-looking borders there. And the art deco, which is very angular, at 90 degree, much more masculine, much more severe in a way which symbolize the villain in that story. And what’s happening is that those panel border can actually merge together when the bad guy would influence [Wonder Woman]. Art deco panel border is influencing Wonder Woman’s art nouveau panel border. So the battle of idea that they have in using place also on a visual design level.

A third panel structure is the Nazis. There is a bunch of that there. And so I looked at Nazi symbolism and tried to figure out what kind of panel border would work very well with Germany — the black and white, and the proportion of black and white in their logos and stuff — and do panel borders that works with this. I can turn those panel borders into art nouveau panel borders also. So every panel border can actually influence each other and change through time, or revert to their original aspect, depending on where the story goes. So with a bit of luck, without any drawings you can tell the same story with just the panel border. That will be my next project!

Obviously when you started the first volume, the movie had not come out yet. The designs are not the same, but they are close-ish. Is there ever a time when you look to that, either for inspiration, or to know what to avoid so you aren’t too similar?

Yeah, it’s close-ish. Honestly, I really enjoyed the movie, by the way. But I tried to not really take it in consideration doing my thing. We are exploring the Wonder Woman of the 40s, which is a different animal really. It’s not the one — the warrior, strong, very interesting Wonder Woman that we see in the movie and DC in general. It’s something of a different nature. But, yeah, maybe on a subconscious level it’s hard to totally avoid some of it.

There are a lot of things going on in this book that feel very current, even though it has been in development for a while now. Can you talk about that a bit?

This book is very well timed, but because it’s two years in the making, it’s obviously just coincidence, it just happened like that.

I remember we were doing the first one and we were talking about the second one, the idea was that by then, that was 2016, we lived in a world where feminist evolution and progress would totally reach a moment of glory. And where humanity would turn a page with Hillary becoming President, slaying a symbolic monster — the end of the video game-type level of creature. And it was a sure thing, right? Everybody thought so.

And when it turned out to be different, I think it shocked Grant like everybody else. We’re about to do Wonder Woman Volume Two in a different way, where obviously there will be resistance, and progress is not made. We’re not quite there yet.