BACKSTAGE PASS: Green Arrow

newcomer Kurt Busiek—who wasn’t as famous then as he is now—to tell a four-part story in The Legend of Wonder Woman (published May–August 1986). But we’re going to ask them today as they are with us here at BACK ISSUE: Which one of you was approached first?

KURT BUSIEK: It had to have been Trina, because I was told, “We’re doing this thing with Trina; would you like to write it?” TRINA ROBBINS: Okay, I didn’t know who was first.

MANGELS: Trina, my understanding from the introduction you wrote in issue #2 was, DC came to you asking for you to do something that was Golden

Age–flavored? ROBBINS: No, no. They simply asked me if I would like to draw a four-issue Wonder Woman, and I said the only way I would do it was if I could draw it like Howard G. Peter in a retro style, and they said okay.

MANGELS: There was a bit of caveat that you had to use the modern-day costume.

ROBBINS: Yes. That was disappointing, but I did what I could.

MANGELS: Did they explain how that was supposed to be done?

ROBBINS: [chuckles] Actually, no. I finally figured it out on my own, but it was not explained.

MANGELS: Was that just for copyright reasons?

ROBBINS: You mean why she had to wear the original costume, not the original costume, but the new version? No. I never figured that out. I just did it.

MANGELS: Kurt, you had written one issue of Wonder Woman prior to this, but you were still early on at what’s now been a very storied career. How did you get involved in the project?

BUSIEK: I had been writing a few things for Alan Gold and had written two issues of Wonder Woman, but one of them never got printed—it was Wonder Woman guest-starring Superman—and probably 20–30 years later, it got turned into a Superman fill-in, guest-starring Wonder Woman. It was the same story and it happened in Metropolis, rather than Washington, D.C. It was a Wonder Woman story, and I got paid for it twice. I had done some things for Alan, and he asked me if I would be interested in writing this series. It was an interesting series because it wasn’t supposed to sell well. The reason it wasn’t supposed to sell well was because— can I get into the whole Marston contract thing here?

MANGELS: Yes, yes.

BUSIEK: Wonder Woman was about to die in Crisis on Infinite Earths and they were already working on the new Wonder Woman series, the one coming from George Pérez and then-writer Greg Potter, who wrote the first couple of issues. But DC at the time, and possibly now still, doesn’t actually own Wonder Woman. They license Wonder Woman from what is now the Marston estate. The setup was—and this is how it was explained it to me—as long as they published four issues a year that were Wonder Woman–featured comics—not Justice League, but an issue of Wonder Woman worked, and an issue of Sensation Comics where she was the headliner also worked—as long as they published four new issues of Wonder Woman a year, the rights did not revert.

There was some delay while they were tinkering with the Potter/Pérez version, and they weren’t going to get it out in time—they weren’t sure whether they would break the contract, so they needed a four-issue project, but they didn’t want one that would be a stumbling block for the new series. They wanted the Pérez series to come out of the gate, “BAM! This is great!” If they had a series right before it that actually sold well, then people would say, “Why are we getting this when we got that thing we liked?” or “I want to see more of that.” It might just be, “Oh, you’re rebooting this again?” So, they specifically wanted a series that would be a Wonder Woman story without making waves, and that’s why it’s this retrospective story looking back. That’s partly because what Trina wanted to do and because Trina delivered excellently and partly because they did not want to look forward in any way. They wanted George to do that. That’s why the very last line of the Legend of Wonder Woman series is— the Amazons Hippolyta and Aphrodite are aware that there’s going to be this new era, this new Amazon, this new story—and the very last line is, “I wonder what it

trina robbins

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All the World’s Waiting for Her

…Trina Robbins, that is, and her retro take on the Amazing Amazon! DC house ad for The Legend of Wonder Woman. TM & © DC Comics.

BACK ISSUE #137 1980s PRE-CRISIS DC MINISERIES! Green Arrow, Secrets of the Legion, Tales of the Green Lantern Corps, Krypton Chronicles, America vs. the Justice Society, Legend of Wonder Woman, Conqueror of the Barren Earth, and more! Featuring MIKE W.

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