‘Sensation Comics’ Featuring Wonder Woman To Also Feature Master Cartoonist Gilbert Hernandez

Snuck out in the usual DC Comics PR is a little gift to discerning readers that may demonstrate that DC's digital wing really know what it's doing. Gilbert Hernandez, the legendary Love & Rockets cartoonist who gave the world Heartbreak Soup and Palomar, is going to write and draw a Wonder Woman story. Like, for real.

The story is part of the DC West Coast office's digital first line, and will appear in late September as part of the Wonder Woman anthology Sensation Comics. A print edition will follow in October.

Gilbert Hernandez is not a complete stranger to DC Comics. He co-authored nine issues of the Vertigo book Yeah! with Peter Bagge in 1999/2000, and his Vertigo series Grip: The Strange World of Men ran for five issues in 2002 -- but those were obviously very different times for the publisher. Idiosyncratic indie artists like Hernandez don't fit the mold of the more conservative New 52-era DC.

Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman is one of the West Coast office's out-of-continuity anthologies, outside the auspices of the New 52, which presumably gives Hernandez fairly wide scope. Digital titles like Legends of the Dark Knight and Adventures of Superman have become showcases for some of the more unconventional and interesting stories coming out of DC -- and they've given creators a chance to tell stories unhindered by the aesthetic and narrative restrictions of the New 52.

Quite how Hernandez will play in that space remains a tantalising mystery. The solicitation copy for Sensation Comics #3 outlines two stories, one by Hernandez and the other by Sean E. Williams and fashion/commercial illustrator Margeurite Sauvage (another impressive, outside-the-box choice). One is about other-dimensional androids; the other is about Wonder Woman's rock-star days. Obviously we'll be surprised if Hernandez isn't on rock star duty, given the love of punk evident in much of his works.

Hernandez's other obsessions include tough, powerful and, yes, beautiful women, and as the images above show, he's lent his pen to Wonder Woman in a sketches for the Women of Wonder Day charity event many times over the years. We're excited to see what Hernandez does with the character. We're also excited to see what comes next from DC's West Coast office.