I’ve been meaning to do one of these highlighting the incredible designs Hayden has done for ABSOLUTE WONDER WOMAN for so long — that now we’re going to get two of them! Obviously beware of spoilers if you haven’t read the issues in question.
Part 1 today — which focuses on some of Hayden Sherman’s excellent volume 1 designs (#1-7) with the exception — since she leaked this week — of Zatanna — which you can check out here:
Zee was tricky for a lot of reasons — including that Hayden wasn’t going to get to be the first one to draw her IN COSTUME in story (that’s Matias Bergara in next month’s ABSOLUTE WONDER WOMAN #14). So Hayden had to both think of her eventual “Zatanna Costume” and also what she would look like while trapped inside Cale’s Area 41 Prison. As usual, Hayden pulls it off brilliantly.
For those who are about such things and are keeping track — first appearance of Zatanna was in ABSOLUTE WONDER WOMAN #12, first in-costume appearance of Zatanna will be in next month’s ABSOLUTE WONDER WOMAN #14 (drawn by Matias Bergara) and her first cover appearance currently is ABSOLUTE WONDER WOMAN #16 as seen here.
Keep your eyes peeled for Part 2 soon which will focus on designs from the “As My Mothers Made Me” arc (#8-12). In the mean time, let’s dig into some of the arc 1 designs:
DIANA
I’m sure most of you have seen these floating around of Diana, since they are obviously pretty key and have been around since before the book was even released. But I thought it was worth posting here anyway, it’s a truly great design and it’s is impossible to understate how nervous the whole team was. When you take it apart there are a lot of things that Diana fans have historically hated — pants, swords, silver instead of gold, an (at that point) unexplained tattoo — but when we looked at it… we just knew it was exciting. I am obviously not the designing genius behind this, but I remember feeling at the time, that it would be pointless to fight against this design. It just sang, it felt perfectly right sort of all at once.
Here’s also the first sketch of her with the prosthetic we decided on. I’m not showing those different off as we might use some of them (or variations on them) in the future.
HECATE:
There are a lot of takes on Gods (and the Greek Gods specifically) in comics and there are many good takes. But I confess I was hard against a lot of pretty white or white-adjacent people in togas. Of that…I’ve, well, I’ve seen enough. It feels like there’s nothing new to be mined there and little to be said about the natures or egos or essences of the gods. So from the jump we wanted our gods to do some things differently and to really think about each one individually. And while they should possess (sometimes) some human traits, we really didn’t want them to ever be mistaken for humans when seen in their “true forms.”
HADES:
The flames pointing down was tricky to execute, but I think we all found it interesting enough to be worth the risk. This idea of everything, even the ruling God being pulled toward the center of the earth, says something without saying anything at all. My favorite way. ;D
PERSEPHONE:
Persephone so rarely gets used significantly in mythology stories that it was really exciting to design her. And the way Hayden mixed what is natural to Persephone — earth, nature, sunlight, spring — with what comes with her role as Queen of the Underworld — hard edges, cold metal, crowns, chains, and barbed armor — was truly exciting as well as a fun nod to her connection to Hecate.
Okay. That’s it for today, but come back soon for Part 2 — a look at all the designs from the “As My Mothers Made Me” arc!
Kelly
Honestly the divine designs (pun fully intended) have all been just that, but man Persephone's truly is something else 😍😍😍
It’s one of the most exciting runs I’ve read. Thank you for putting so much work into it!