Conventional Wonders

GWomen show their growing strength in every role on the biggest stage in fandom, a.k.a. Comic-Con International in San Diego.

irl power has been on the rise for many years now in the multitude of genres and media celebrated each year at Comic-Con International, and it’s never been more clear than at this year’s confab, set for July 21-24 at the San Diego Convention Center and its immediate environs. 75th Anniversary of Wonder Woman The grand dame of this year’s event is clearly Wonder Woman, who is celebrating 75 years since her debut in the pages of Sensation Comics #8, released in late 1941. Created by William Moulton Marston to be a female answer to the then-new sensation of superheroes exemplified by Superman and Batman, Wonder Woman has been published continually ever since and become one of the most recognizable characters in existence.

There were a lot of quirks in Wonder Woman’s past, to be sure. Unlike the mostly young men who created most comics, Marston had a doctorate in psychology and is credited with creating the systolic blood pressure test that became an important component of the modern polygraph, or lie detector. Marston saw great educational potential in comics and was approached to consult with two of the publishing companies that wou later merge into DC Comics. He proposed creating a superhero that would triumph with love rather than fisticuffs, and then made her a liberated modern woman.

The character has been an icon ever since, most notably in the hit 1970s TV series starring Lynda Carter and in animation as a key member of the Super Friends through many series, the Justice League home video titles and her own 2006 animated movie. Wonder Woman also made her big screen debut earlier this year in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, played by Gal Gadot, who will reprise the role for a solo Wonder Woman movie due in theaters June 2, 2017.

To celebrate the character’s ongoing popularity, Wonder Woman is featured on the cover of this year’s Comic-Con Souvenir book and T-shirt in an illustration by rising star comic-book artist Babs Tarr.

Oscar-winner Patrick Osborne attached to direct.

Babs Tarr Tarr set the comics world on fire with her fresh and modern redesign of DC Comics’ Batgirl when she began drawing the series in 2014. She since has moved on to draw covers for DC Comics, Boom! Studios and is working with her Batgirl collaborators Brendan Fletcher and Cameron Stewart on a creator-owned series titled Motor Crush due from Image Comics later this year. Maggie Thompson Comics fandom just wouldn’t be the same without Thompson, who was instrumental — along with her husband, Don Thompson — in the dawn of comic fandom and fanzines. The pair took over editorship in 1983 of The Comics Buyers Guide, then a weekly news and trading publication that was essential reading. She continued to edit and write for CBG after her husband’s death in 1994, overseeing the publication’s transition to a monthly magazine through its end in 2013. She continues to write about comics online at her own site and for Comic-Con International.

Bjo Trimble Trimble, along with her husband, John, is the cornerstone of Star Trek fandom, having led the initial successful letter-writing campaign to save the show from cancellation, thus ensuring a third season and syndication success for the show. She also was an early figure in organized sci-fi fandom and brought that expertise to early Trek conventions and wrote the first great reference work to the show, The Star Trek Concordance.

G. Willow Wilson Wilson is a rising force in the comic-book world, having broken in writing the hit graphic novel Cairo, based on her own experiences living in the city as an American Muslim, and later the Vertigo series Air. More recently, she co-created for Marvel Comics the character of Kamala Khan, a 16-year-old Muslim girl from New Jersey who takes on the mantle of Ms. Marvel. [