2021 marks the 80th anniversary of Wonder Woman, and DC has been full steam ahead with the Diana Prince features and merchandising. One of their newest projects is Wonder Woman: Heartless, a Serial Box collaboration focused on the heroine.
Wonder Woman: Heartless features the characters of Jill Carlisle, the Crimson Avenger, and Barbara Minerva, Cheetah. The story weaves the three female characters together in exciting and interesting ways.
We were able to nail down some exclusive interviews with the writing team behind Wonder Woman: Heartless. The creatives include Natalie C. Parker (Seafire trilogy, Beware the Wild), Tessa Gratton (Strange Grace, The Queens of Innis Lear, Lady Hotspur), Alaya Dawn Johnson (Trouble the Saints, Love Is The Drug, The Summer Prince), and Heidi Heilig (The Girl From Everywhere, For A Muse Of Fire, A Kingdom For A Stage).
Natalie told us about diving into the comics' lore and her research process in anticipation of putting the writing team together, and you'll find an excerpt of what she had to say below before hearing the full conversation at the bottom.
"I probably had the most time to do the research because once the writing team came on, we were full speed ahead. I have been aware of Wonder Woman and have consumed Wonder Woman media in bits and pieces my entire life. So I was already pretty aware of her as a character in the world, but I definitely went out and looked at the novelizations of Wonder Woman because I do think they're a little bit different than the comic books. The approach has to be different because the medium is different. And we were writing something that was maybe straddling comic books and novelization. So Leigh Bardugo's Wonder Woman: Warbringer book was a really good resource for me.
I'm blanking on the name right now, and I feel like it's on my shelf somewhere, but there's this whole history book that archives Wonder Woman from her origin up through the 1990s or something. I picked up that, and then before I started to pull together what kind of story we wanted to tell about her, I did a pretty shallow dive into her key arcs through various reboots to find out who has been her biggest rivals who has she had encounters with, but maybe we'd like to see more of. I also pulled a couple of friends of mine and relatives who are much bigger comic book fans than me just to see, 'what is your take, what makes you excited about wonder woman?' So it was kind of a smattering of research across the board before we really started pinning anything to the board, so to speak, but it was all fun."
Take a look at the trailer and synopsis for Wonder Woman: Heartless below.
Celebrate Wonder Woman's 80th anniversary with this original new saga about Diana Prince. When a magical threat targets both Washington’s elite and its most marginalized, Wonder Woman and the Crimson Avenger unite to mete out justice.
Wonder Woman: Heartless pits Diana Prince, Jill Carlyle (Crimson Avenger), and British archeologist Dr. Barbara Minerva against two sisters — one a serial killer who is terrorizing Washington, D.C. by magically seizing the hearts of her victims, and the other whose powers might potentially be used to stop the killing streak.
What are your thoughts on Natalie's research process? Did you find the trailer interesting? Be sure to share your thoughts in the usual spot, and listen to our full interview with writers Natalie C. Parker and Heidi Heilig below!