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Comic book creator Kendall Goode tweeted put an observation of the portrayal of Wonder Woman in the late Darwyn Cooke‘s New Frontier comic book series, saying “It’s too bad the look of Darwyn Cooke’s Wonder Woman isn’t more common. Not a bodybuilder, more of a powerlifter. And bigger than Superman.”
Former DC Comics editor Valerie D’Orazio replied, “Originally, DC/WB brass baulked at this Wonder Woman design for being too “off-model.” Darwyn threatened to quit the series unless it was kept the way he initially rendered it. (Source: me on the phone with the artist at the DC offices)”
Damn, I’m not used to such on-the-nose sources. Previous series writers Michael Conrad and Becky Cloonan revealed during a Comic Con@Home panel spoke about how Darwyn Cooke’s version of Wonder Woman was is “go-to” for writing Princess Diana and pointed to a scene in the story where Wonder Woman, assigned to administer humanitarian relief in Indo-China alongside Superman, rescues a group of abused women. After disarming the rebels who have imprisoned the women, Wonder Woman frees them and allows them to pass their own judgment on their captors. “For me, it showed a level of Diana that is rarely seen but I think is the refined definition of what she is, which is someone whose moral compass is self-defined, and that’s one of the things that I find most exciting about Wonder Woman, Nubia, and all of the Amazons” with Cloonan echoing Conrad as saying it is “the one that I always go to when I think about Wonder Woman.”
DC: The New Frontier has won multiple Eisner, Harvey, and Shuster Awards, and was a six-issue series by Darwyn Cooke, published by DC Comics in 2004. The story was adapted into an animated film, Justice League: The New Frontier in 2008. Influenced by both DC Comics’ long history, it is set primarily in the 1950s and depicts Golden Age superheroes Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman meeting Silver Age characters The Flash, Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter, bridging the gap between the two and embodying different attributes to characters that may have been polished off in the decades since.