King & Sampere to introduce Diana’s daughter in WONDER WOMAN #800

Wonder Woman has been many things over the past 80-odd years of her existence, but later this year the character’s new creative team will make her something she hasn’t been for a long time: a mother. DC has announced that the upcoming Wonder Woman #800 will feature a story, set in the future, by incoming series creators Tom King and Daniel Sampere that introduces Diana’s daughter, Trinity.

Following the prelude story in next month’s Wonder Woman #800, King and Sampere will return to the present day for October’s Wonder Woman #1.

According to King in an IGN Exclusive, the origin of introducing Wonder Woman’s daughter Trinity, also known as Lizzie, came from his frequent collaborator Mitch Gerads.

“Hard to remember exactly, but I think I stole at least the first spark from Mitch Gerads, the brilliant artist whom I’m blessed to work with on so many things. Mitch had a great idea for doing a sort of all ages short story to follow up on our Mister Miracle series where Jon and Damian would be babysitting Scott and Barda’s kid, Jack. This got me thinking about the son of Batman and the son Superman as older brother babysitters and how really the person they should be looking after is their little sister, the daughter of Wonder Woman. I have three kids, two of whom are close in age and then one who’s 5 years younger than those two, so I’m very familiar with this dynamic and its potential for comedy and drama. Super sons…and daughter. It was the kind of thing I’d want to read with them at any age. So, after I had that idea in my head, I couldn’t get it out.”

He added:

“When Grant Morrison and Andy Kubert introduced Damian, it went off like an atom bomb in the DC Universe. It was about Batman having a son, yes, but it was more about this attitude Damian brought and how that played off of Batman and the Robins, how it immediately differentiated Damian as a character that was fun to read and write. So, part of this was saying it’s not enough to just have a generic daughter of Wonder Woman; she has to be a character, she has to have weaknesses and strengths and a personality that can play off her brothers and her mother. Dan Jurgens introduction of Jon was quieter and his growth in importance and popularity has been more organic but perhaps just as impactful as Damian’s. His strength seems to be his ability to talk to a new generation of readers, to show them both the relevancy of Superman’s ideals and the need to evolve those tenets.”

“This was a model for the impact we wanted for Trinity: someone who could reflect the greatness of Wonder Woman and still show a next possible step for the ideals embodied in that very impactful and very unique hero. And maybe more important than all of that, is that Jon and Damian are so great together: Pete Tomasi and Patrick Gleason gave us endless gold with Super Sons. For Trinity we wanted someone who could play in that same sandbox, who could add to that chemistry.”

King also revealed that podcaster Darrell Taylor suggested the name Trinity:

“Darrell is a super comic fan and I’ve been bouncing ideas off him for a decade to try to see what works and what doesn’t. I had gone through fifty very bad names when he said ‘Trinity’ and it just fit perfectly. She’d have three lassos; she would complete what Jon and Damian had started; she wasn’t another Wonder Woman, she was something new; and also, it was just cool. It’s nice to have nerdy friends.”

In designing the look for Trinity, artist Daniel Sampere said:

“Well, it’s not just the costume, it’s about creating her entire appearance, her face, body language, visual attitude. It really was a big challenge but a wonderful opportunity at the same time. Luckily, this one flowed pretty natural from the first attempt. Tom gave me some previous notes about how he would like to have the curly hair and ponytail and also the three lassos. Starting from there my idea was to make a balance between some classic wonder woman details (like the stars or the bracelets) mixed with a more modern look. I pitched a possible design for Diana when we started the run with her having long pants that finally we didn’t use, so I thought it was a nice opportunity to give Trinity those pants. I also wanted to give her a more superhero look and less warrior based so I reduced to minimum the armor parts.”

Sampere also revealed the influence of the character Yara Flor created by Joëlle Jones:

“Finally, I loved Yara’s design and her chest plate and wanted to do something similar to Joëlle Jones design in ours, like establishing it’s a common piece young amazons use frequently. For the colors, I liked the idea of using blue as the dominant color over red to make the opposite of her mother and give Trinity her own personality in that aspect too. Trinity will be an incredible character and I’m very honored to have created her look. I hope fans will enjoy it!”

After his epic run on Batman, King was originally done with working on ongoing books opting instead for self-contained limited series. But the opportunity to work on the ongoing Wonder Woman book was too good to pass.

“It was basically three things. First, I love where DC is going now, where Jim Lee and Marie Javins are taking us, all the energy coming out of DC Studios, and I just wanted to be a part of it, to be somewhere near the center of it. There’s this DC Renaissance going on and I wanted to help and, selfishly, arrogantly I wanted to show I could run at this new, awesome pace. The last big current continuity book I did was Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, and I hoped to do some more work in that style, a book that wasn’t a deconstruction of heroism but an embrace of it, something that shows why these caped people still matter, are still essential.”

He continued:

“Second, I love doing contained full story series. It’s the absolute best way to write. And I was starting to get scared of doing anything else. And when you get scared of writing something, that’s when you have to write it. If you’re not challenging yourself, pushing past your fears, then you’re not writing good. This was just a path I was afraid to go down, so I took it. Third, finally, it was a chance to work with Daniel, who is just stunningly gifted. I mean, you get a call saying here’s one of the greatest characters in fiction and we have one of the greatest artists in comics interested… it’s hard to say no to that.”

Regarding the identity of Trinity’s father, King is playing things close to the vest focusing on the mother/daughter relationship:

“Being the daughter of Wonder Woman, being raised with that particular and particularly historic superhero as your mother has an impact on Trinity that can’t be underestimated. In many ways the story of many of the Wonder Girls is them finding their independence from Wonder Woman’s legacy, discovering what makes each of them unique and special and wonderful and cool. In contrast, Trinity can never escape her parents. Good or horrible, absent or present, your parents’ legacy, their decisions are always with you, and you forever struggle to reconcile what they have done with who you are. It is not enough for Trinity to find her independence; she has to learn what it means to be the daughter of Diana.”

Trinity, of course, is not the first daughter of Wonder Woman, though it is the first child for the character on the main Earth of the DCU. On the pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths Earth-2, Diana’s daughter, Hippolyta “Lyta” Trevor, was the superhero known as Fury and a member of Infinity, Inc (and would also go on to become the mother of Daniel Hall, the eventual successor to Morpheus as Dream of The Endless). Likewise, in the New 52 Earth-2 series, Fury was also the daughter of that world’s Wonder Woman, though her identity was Donna, not Lyta. The other notable child of Wonder Woman was teased in an epilogue to Kingdom Come, and made his first appearance during 1999’s The Kingdom Fifth Week event. Jonathan Kent was the son of Diana and Superman in the future of the world now known as Earth-22.

Look for Trinity’s first appearance in the upcoming Wonder Woman #800, due out in stores and digitally on Tuesday, June 20th. The issue’s final order cutoff date is next Sunday, May 21st.