Comics Legend Grant Morrison on His Queer, Kinky Wonder Woman

Comics superstar Grant Morrison (All-Star Superman, The Multiversity) knew going into his Wonder Woman origin story Wonder Woman: Earth One that he’d be making a few major tweaks to the Diana Prince narrative most people know best.

For one, in Morrison’s retelling, Diana’s home of Themyscira is not a warlike society of highly trained female soldiers the way the island is characterized in most depictions. Instead, the Amazons of Morrison’s Paradise Island (the original name given to Themyscira by Wonder Woman’s creator) are more like supermodel scientists who’ve developed fantastical technology and science fiction-like genetic experimentation techniques.

And Steve Trevor—the American soldier who, in traditional retellings, washes up on the sacred island’s shores, gets Diana Prince to fall in love with him, then returns with her to the modern world to fight and win World War II—is no longer a love interest at all. To Morrison’s rebellious teen Diana, he’s simply an opportunity: a way off the island she’s grown restless on and eager to leave behind.

Instead, Diana informs Trevor, making over 70 years of subtext explicit, she has another lover: a woman on the island named Mala.

And while Hippolyta, Diana’s mother, claims the Amazon princess was molded out of clay, then brought to life by divine gift (as most Wonder Woman origin stories do), Morrison’s Diana learns that her mother’s quaint tale is a lie. She does have a father: a monstrous, misogynistic demigod named Hercules, whom her mother strangled to death with the very chains he bound her with. This trauma, we learn, is what motivated Hippolyta to found Paradise Island.

Morrison, aided by artist Yanick Paquette’s gorgeous pencil work, tells an overtly feminist story about a queer Wonder Woman who is an optimistic, mischievous, and kind hero-in-the-making—who also just happens to be into bondage.

The Daily Beast called up Morrison at his home in Scotland to chat Wonder Woman: Earth One, Vol. 1 (on sale Wednesday), Batman v Superman, and bringing Diana Prince back to her (kinky) roots.

How did you decide what to incorporate from Wonder Woman’s 70-year-plus history in this new retelling?

I decided to go back to the original version of Wonder Woman written by her creator William Moulton Marston with art by H.G. Peter. I thought there was a lot of material there. In recent years, Wonder Woman’s been portrayed as a kind of warrior woman, but in Marston’s direction, she’s much more a diplomat and an ambassador. She uses weapons for peace, she uses the bracelets to deflect missiles and bullets, and she uses the lasso to capture people and, basically, make them obey her loving command. So I thought there’s a lot more interesting material there for a version of Wonder Woman that was a little bit different than the one you usually see. I was kind of trying to capture the original essence of this counterculture, feminist heroine and put it in a modern context.

I also read you immersed yourself in feminist history while writing it.

Yeah. It’s not a book about feminism, it’s a book about Wonder Woman, but I felt it was important to have the voices of intelligent women throughout history in my head while I was writing it. So I read a bunch of stuff, from Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women to Gloria Steinem and Andrea Dworkin and a whole bunch of feminist writers.

The Amazons in the book are not at all warlike, the way they’re usually portrayed. They’re tall and have idealized body types and are super glamorous. What sort of statement did you and Yanick want to make with their appearance?

Well, one of the things that Yanick and I noticed about the original material is that the Amazons were portrayed as very glamorous-looking. They looked like 1940s actresses. And so we kind of took that and talked about the idea of creating a sophisticated society of women...And instead of film stars, we made them look a little more like supermodels, taking that idea of “glamour girls of the ’40s are the supermodels of modern times” and turning the Amazons into that. So as you say, their culture is very body-conscious and we created this ridiculous, gazelle-like, athletic body type. Then when Diana meets the girls of the modern world, they’re all very different shapes and sizes and colors, and she starts to realize that there isn’t a standardized look in the world.

As far as the culture of the Amazons, you brought back a lot of the chain-and-collar bondage rituals from Marston’s old versions, and a lot of the cool, sci-fi technology like the purple healing ray—all of which lends itself to that great line from Beth Candy, Diana’s curvy new sidekick on Earth: “You’re from a Paradise Island of science-fiction lesbians? With a side of bondage? Honey, I’ll drink to that!”

(Laughs.) Yeah, a lot of recent portrayals of Amazons focused on the Greek culture aspect, with them trapped in a kind of pre-industrial world. But in Marston’s story—which, again, was my inspiration—the Amazons do have technology. So we just kind of made a point of that: of course these women who’ve been [on the island] for 3,000 years would develop and share ideas. And naturally, they’d have their own technology. And in some cases, their technology is way more advanced than ours.

We wanted to make it “here’s a culture that’s advanced and developed,” but at the same time, these women have known each other for 3,000 years. I mean, they’ve done everything, they’ve had every conversation…they feel as if they’ve had these interactions over and over again. And that’s what Diana’s escaping from—that kind of ritualized, formalistic [society]. They’re very advanced, but at the same time, it’s like they’re frozen in place.

And the Amazons, Diana included, also take female lovers—which only makes sense, considering that Paradise Island is inhabited by nothing but women.

Yeah, I can’t imagine that these women, after deciding to cut off from men and form their own society for the past 3,000 years, would stop having sex. It’s kind of obvious in the subtext [of older runs] and all we did was kind of make it explicit. We made it a fact: of course they have relationships. Of course they have lovers.

And the bondage is based on Marston’s ideas of love and submission, which were quite strange at the time because he believed that women were superior to men, and that men should basically be dominated by women. Our whole story’s about ropes and snares and chains and lies and deception, so we wanted to include some of Marston’s original ideas.

You also give Diana a father in this version of her story, breaking with the traditional story of Hippolyta miraculously shaping her out of clay. There’s some recent precedent for Diana having a father: in Justice League Unlimited, it was Hades. And in The New 52, her father was Zeus himself. How did you decide on Hercules for this retelling, who’s this monstrous misogynist who degraded her mother Hippolyta and kept the Amazons enslaved?

I wanted Diana to have some kind of masculine element because I thought, well, most girls have a dad. (Laughs.) It is quite important. But this is my big tradeoff, because I love the idea that Hippolyta just created her out of nothing, that Diana is a solely female creation. But at the same time, I wanted a lot more tension and drama and a kind of struggle…Hippolyta is the true rebel of the story. She’s the one who fights back and overpowers and strangles Hercules at the start of the book. So really, she’s the one who gives Diana her fire. But she doesn’t want to admit this to Diana. In a kind of genetic experiment, Hippolyta is the one who’s taken Hercules and used his blood and genetic material as a weapon by creating a woman who will subjugate man’s world in the name of women. So [Diana’s creation] was an act by Hippolyta to get her ultimate revenge on Hercules.

Right. And Hercules was half-man, giving Diana another connection to the human world. One of the three Fates, who oversees Diana’s trial after she breaks the law and leaves Paradise Island, sums up her life in one line that way: “Born of vengeance, shaped by love, to battle drawn.”

Yeah, I thought it made more sense. We don’t really treat gods the same way they do in Greek mythology. They’re not actual beings, they're just abstract concepts. So to give her a divine father, I think that was too much. The idea that Wonder Woman’s dad is a superhero of the ancient days, Hercules, I thought really quite resonated: a strongman as Wonder Woman’s dad.

Steve Trevor is also African-American in this book and very much not a love interest for Diana, as he usually is in most iterations, including Patty Jenkins’ upcoming movie. I kind of liked that—it avoids the Little Mermaid trope of a princess falling in love with the first man she sees and upending her entire life for him.

Yeah, I did that to add more dynamism and more tension. In the original Wonder Woman, she falls in love with Steve, who was fighting for America [in World War II]. And that’s cool, she was coming back to fight with him. But I felt there was a little bit more ambiguity to it. When she meets Steve, he’s the first man she’s seen. And a girl who was raised in the culture of the Amazons—she’s used to seeing certain types of bodies, certain types of dress—I don’t think she would necessarily find him attractive instantly.

So the first thing she does, as a scientist, as a doctor, as a healer, she checks him out in a very matter-of-fact way. I thought there was much more [room for] development in the relationship with Diana and Steve as friends. But there’s so much more there. You find out that Steve was lying to her [about his military mission], you don’t know how many people are lying to her, and the book’s about truth and lies. So I wanted to make the Steve and Diana relationship a lot more fraught and dynamic.

Have you seen Batman v Superman yet? Wonder Woman was pretty much everyone’s favorite part of the movie.

No, I haven’t yet—I’m really looking forward to it though! The Wonder Woman stuff is good?

Yeah, the moment she showed up onscreen in her costume is the moment my screening’s audience came to life, cheering and clapping.

Yeah, I think it’s Wonder Woman’s time again. I think the character is making a comeback.

I’ve heard your name occasionally brought up in the aftermath of the movie, as people go back to All-Star Superman as a kind of palate cleanser for the joyless, hopeless tone of the movie.

Yeah. Well, we all have our tastes and things that we’re into. I like a certain kind of Superman. I don’t believe superheroes could ever be real, and the idea of imagining what they would be like if they were real is futile….But at the same time, I love that there are so many interpretations. And the only way to understand the guy is to look at all the interpretations—same with Wonder Woman or Batman. To understand Superman, even the one in Man of Steel or Batman v Superman, [is to understand] it’s just another facet. So I’m kind of open to all of them—except ones I like less than others, let’s say. But I love the fact that Superman is such a multifaceted character and I love the fact that All-Star Superman can exist alongside the Henry Cavill Man of Steel Superman, alongside the animated Superman, alongside the 1960s Superman. And all of them build up this giant mosaic picture of a really complex fictional character.