Co-writers and writer-artists are all the rage at DC these days. Rob Liefeld is going to be the writer-artist on Deathstroke and co-writing Grifter with Frank Tieri and Hawkman with Mark Poulton. J.H. Williams co-writes Batwoman with W. Haden Blackman, while sharing some art duties with Amy Reeder. David Finch was given Dark Knight to be the writer-artist of before Paul Jenkins was added as a co-writer. Flash has a double dose of it as Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato co-writing the book that they both provide art for. Detective Comics has Tony Daniel as the writer-artist, not unlike his pre-New 52 run of Batman. It’s the current thing at DC, and in some cases it’s proving to be a pretty good thing.
But now Wonder Woman is joining the party, as series artist Cliff Chiang is now going to be co-writing the book with current writer Brian Azzarello Sure, it’s not the most epic change to a creative team ever, but it does make it clear that Chiang is going to be the book for the long haul (or whatever passes for that with DC’s current state of shuffling creators around). Wonder Woman has been one of my biggest surprises of DC’s relaunch, as it’s the first time I’ve ever actually enjoyed reading Wonder Woman. It’s on my pull list, it’s something I get excited for. This creative team is doing something awesome here, and I love knowing that DC is keeping the band together instead of shaking up an actually successful run on Wonder Woman.
Chiang did an interview with Newsarama about the change, and while he had a lot to say, here he is describing the writing process.
“Our creative process is pretty fluid, and both of us are concerned foremost with storytelling, so it just made sense for me to be involved at an earlier stage rather than do the book full-script. We’ll throw ideas back and forth, he’ll ask me to put on my old “editor’s hat” for feedback on scripts, so really we’re just making the process more official.”
I actually didn’t know that Chiang was an editor at Vertigo before he started doing art. So this may actually prove to be an even better fit than I originally had thought, since now I know the method he intends to take with this.
“Basically, it’s old school “Marvel-style,” where I’ll begin breaking down from a plot. Brian is still driving this thing, I’m just getting to add my two cents about the road we take.”
Chiang will be officially coming on at co-writer with the recently solicited issue number eight, and while it’s not confirmed to be a long term change, I imagine that’s just a matter of time.
