dcwomenofcolor:

CBR: As a black man with, I must add, an incredibly powerful voice both literally and figuratively, does it give you any additional pleasure – or pressure – that Hessia is a powerful black woman?

Not necessarily. I think that there are going to be black characters in the book, but there are also Samoan Amazons. We see Aztec Amazons. We see Amazons from Persia and Germania. There are Slavic Amazons, and Asian Amazons. East Indian Amazons. Punjabi Amazons. African Amazons. So my thing was to show that my Themyscira is populated by so many women from different races. They had to come from somewhere. And if you look at the mythological origins of the Amazons, some of them have them coming from the Middle East, places like Turkey, so when you start looking at things like that the fact that there is a black Amazon leader, sure, I guess because I am a black man, there is some cultural connective tissue there but that’s not the story that I’m telling. It’s not about her blackness. It’s about her Amazon-ness. That is the feature that is most important.

What led me to that question was the fact that I am an 80s kid and I grew up on the George Pérez version of Wonder Woman and there were not too many – if any – Amazons of color in that version so the idea of the Amazons, at least the ones living in the DC Universe, has changed quite drastically over the past 30 years.

You’re right and that’s exactly what I wanted to build into this story. We’ve always lived in a culturally diverse world but it hasn’t always been reflected in our media. Now, they are allowing it and good that DC saw the potential in that and commissioned this miniseries.

The Odyssey of the Amazons debuts January 25. [Comixology link]