Wonder Woman: Why Tom King Didn't Want The Superhero To Show Up Right Away In New Series

How'd this chance to work on this series emerge?

I hadn't worked on an ongoing series since the end of "Batman," which is a while now — 2018, 2019. I've been in miniseries land, which I love. It's been a joy. I got to do "Human Target," "Strange Adventures," "Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow" ... some big, awesome books. But it's been a while since I've been in main continuity.

DC reached out to me, and they were like, "Tom, it's time. It's time to come back, get in the waters." I was like, "No, that sounds scary and hard. I don't want to do that." Any time you have that feeling that sounds scary and hard as a writer — especially if you've been around for a while — you should lean into that so you don't get stale, so you keep taking risks. You don't want to do the same thing over and over again, ride your own coattails.

I was looking for an in-continuity book. We had basically discussed the Penguin. I'm always looking for Superman, but I'm kind of like Snape from "Harry Potter" where it's always taken by somebody else. My good friend Josh Williamson is doing a fantastic job, and he claimed that. They offered me Wonder Woman. I've been around for a decade at DC — I've seen a lot of Wonder Womans come and go. I was like, "No. Hell no. It's too hard. It's a trap of a series. It's a place that waves go to break."

Two things happened: Number one, they offered it to me with Daniel Sampere, which ... I know Daniel's coming off of being the event artist, being like a modern-day George Perez and a modern-day Jim Lee. I was like, "Oh, this isn't, 'Tom, take over Wonder Woman for a little while until we figure out what to do with it.' This is, 'We're putting on an A-list artist, and we're hoping to launch this book big and put our weight behind it and give Wonder Woman the love her fans have always given her, but on the publishing side,'" which is very appealing. And number two ... I've said this a lot, but I was at George Perez's funeral, and he had a little video because he knew he was going to pass. In the video, they interviewed him about what he was most proud of in his career, and he said it was writing Wonder Woman. I was like, "Of all the things he had done?"

He said, "Because no one had done ..." So many people had messed her up, and he was like, "I felt I did her right." I felt, in my arrogant writer way, that George was calling me out for my cowardice and being like, "Come on, buddy. Just because it's hard doesn't mean you can't get in the game." [With] those two factors, I was like, "All right, let's see if Wonder Woman is possible — if I can come up with something cool."