For the first time since the debut of DC Black Label’s acclaimed limited series Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons, a majority of the beloved comics creators gathered for an official Wonder Woman Historia panel at Rose City Comic Con. A celebration of the Eisner Award-winning comic, the Wonder Woman Historia panel was a beautiful glimpse into the creative process of the incredible team, as well as the impact Historia has had on each of them.
The panel consisted of Historia’s writer Kelly Sue DeConnick, the series’ three main artists Phil Jimenez, Gene Ha, and Nicola Scott, as well as the series’ letterer Clayton Cowles, and its main editor Andrea Shea. The only major members of the creative team missing were the colorists for the series like Hi-Fi, Arif Prianto, and Romulo Fajardo Jr. among others. The panel started with DeConnick reading an “Invocation to the Gods,” like at the beginning of each issue of Historia, honoring powerful women like Tina Turner and Dolly Parton, a lovely way to start the conversation.
Historia’s panel was an absolute blast, with Kelly Sue DeConnick partnering with an amazing Artemis cosplayer to give “gifts of the Gods” to attendees who won “Historia Bingo” (I was lucky enough to get a beautiful bracelet from the goddess Hecate for winning!). Plus, the talented artist Gene Ha was randomly sketching audience members, and then jumping off stage to give them the sketches he made of them! Gene Ha also spoke on how the creative process for Historia pushed him farther as an artist than ever before, with DeConnick giving him a prompt like “Artemis followed Hippolyta through the forest, but not in physical form,” inspiring him to incorporate her presence into natural scenery.
It’s obvious that the creative team behind Historia became very close throughout the long process of writing and illustrating the iconic series, and there were several emotional moments where tears were shed and laughs were shared. Specifically, Phil Jimenez – artist for the first issue and designer of all the major Gods and Amazon’s new costumes – got emotional when speaking about his Eisner win for the series. One of Jimenez’s close friends and mentor, the brilliant Wonder Woman artist George Perez, passed just a few months before Jimenez’s win, making the Eisner particularly meaningful.
Unfortunately, there was no major news about the possibility of a second Historia series. When asked about this, DeConnick and Shea made it clear that there was a lot of interest, especially because the series was a critical and commercial success, but that there are no formal plans as of now. Shea reported that a lot of it was about making sure everyone’s schedules aligned, and that they were doing justice to the first series, but there is still hope that the tales of Historia may continue at some point in the future.
Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons is undoubtedly a masterpiece, a wildly creative Homeric retelling of Themyscira’s origins that relies on the power of righteous anger, radical love, and building community to give Hipployta the mythos she deserves. The Historia panel at Rose City Comic Con was the perfect display of how the limited series ended up so brilliant… everyone from the writer to the letterer to the editor is so passionate about the story and message, that there is now way Historia could have been anything less than perfect.
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