Wonder Woman has faced many trials and tribulations in her quest to save the world of man from itself. But what happens when Diana wakes from slumber to find man’s world already lost? Welcome to DC Comics’ new take on the Princess of the Amazons, Dead Earth.
Written and drawn by Daniel Warren Johnson, with colours from Mike Spicer, Dead Earth will be a four-issue, prestige format miniseries as part of the publisher’s Black Label line, aimed at older audiences as part of DC’s recent reshuffling of its imprints and age groupings.
Set in a world where Diana has been sleeping for centuries, the Princess of the Amazons wakes to find the world of man ravaged by nuclear war, rendered a barren wasteland. With her fellow heroes gone and the last remnants of humanity struggling to survive, Wonder Woman has to face this dead earth alone — protecting the last standing city of humankind from gigantic monsters while also uncovering the real mystery behind what caused the apocalypse in the first place. Check out the full cover to the first issue below, by Warren Johnson and Spicer.
“I like the audacity of an immortal hero saying to a human, ‘I do this because I love you,’” Warren Johnson said in a statement provided to Kotaku. “That line is in the first issue, actually. I was thinking, what better way to explore how much a character loves a maybe undeserving humanity than to really test the limits of where that love goes, when confronted with the harsh reality of what humanity is capable of? Within this world, humans are doing their best to survive, and when humans are trying to survive, a lot of times the worst parts of ourselves come out. So that’s on full display here in Wonder Woman: Dead Earth.”
It’s not just humanity that’s gone through some major changes in her absence: Diana has as well, her powers altered by her time sleeping, leading to her taking a more… rough and tumble approach befitting a post-apocalyptic earth. “Because her changed powers are limiting her ability, it allows for more of a down and dirty feel,” Warren Johnson continued.
“In the first issue, she has a bar fight — she kicks a table into a bunch of warlords. I’m really excited about that concept of this very elegant figure getting down in the dirt. Getting to draw that is really fun, and it’s a way to reexamine the character.”
As well as the gallery of Warren Johnson’s work-in-progress pencils for Dead Earth above, you can check out some final textless pages from Dead Earth’s first issue below, coloured by Spicer.
Wonder Woman: Dead Earth #1 hits shelves in December.
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