sensation comics

This week, Comixology has launched a sale on DC's digital-first line, which means that for half of their usual cover price, you can catch up on rip-roaring retro adventure in books like Bombshells, Wonder Woman '77, and Batman '66, get continuity-free adventures in Adventures of Superman, Sensation Comics, and Legends of the Dark Knight, and --- perhaps most importantly --- finally get the answer to the question of whether Batman could defeat a pro wrestler.

ComicsAlliance readers get an exclusive first look at the latest covers for DC Digital's next two print editions of Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman, featuring the Amazonian warrior brought to life by Michael Zulli and Francesco Francavilla. The stories feature cats, dragons, Lois Lane, and a pop starlet, but the covers offer two other visions of DC's most formidable hero. Zulli, best known for his stunning painted work on Sandman, portrays his Wonder Woman armored up and ready for battle on the cover for Sensation Comics #10. For issue #9, cover artist superstar and Black Beetle creator Francavilla offers a glamorous pop-art inspired '60s take on the hero.

One of the great strengths of DC's digital-first line of comics is that it's a showcase both for emerging talent and for some unorthodox storytelling approaches. DC's digital wing plays to the strengths of the anthology format, telling the sort of stories that the main line just isn't interested in telling. For a character like Wonder Woman, an icon beloved by a lot of people who aren't invested in the rigmarole of month-to-month continuity, the approach is especially liberating. The latest writer to tackle Wonder Woman for the digital-first Sensation Comics series is Amy Chu, an up-and-comer who we've profiled in the past. Chu has collaborated on short stories with Larry Hama, Steve McNiven, and Janet K. Lee, and has self-published her comics through her Alpha Girl Comics imprint. Her Sensation Comics story, 'Rescue Angel,' tells a Wonder Woman tale with a focus on a different female warrior, a young combat pilot, with art by Bernard Chang and colors by Wendy Broome.

Over the past few years, Gabriel Hardman and Corinna Bechko have quickly become one of the creative teams that I look forward to seeing the most, and this week, they're giving me a pretty good reason to be excited. Today marks the release of the first installment of their three-part story in Sensation Comics, the digital-first Wonder Woman anthology, which finds DC's Amazon Princess sent on a rescue mission to Apokolips, the home of the evil New Gods. To find out more, I spoke with Bechko and Hardman about their approach to Wonder Woman, their take on Jack Kirby's cosmic evil, and just why it is that page turns are so magical.

When ComicsAlliance first heard that Gilbert Hernandez would write and draw a Wonder Woman story for DC's digital first Sensation Comics series, we were excited to see what the master Love & Rockets illustrator would would do with the character. We also assumed he'd be the author of the story about Wonder Woman as a rock star. Anyone following Sensation Comics now knows that the rock star story was Margeurite Sauvage's excellent work, while Hernandez spun a tale about a brainwashed Diana going toe-to-toe with fellow heroes Supergirl and Mary Marvel. The first half of his two-parter, "No Chains Can Hold Her," is already available. DC sent us this exclusive preview of part two, available this Thursday.

In the overwhelmingly male comic book industry, it has been a challenge for some editors and readers to see the ever growing number of talented women currently trying to make a name for themselves. With that in mind, ComicsAlliance offers Hire This Woman, a recurring feature designed for comics readers as well as editors and other professionals, where we shine the spotlight on a female comics pro on the ascendance. Some of these women will be at the very beginning of their careers, while others will be more experienced but not yet “household names.” Longtime ComicsAlliance fave Marguerite Sauvage had already established herself as a fashion and commercial illustrator with work for companies as varied as Marie Claire, Playstation, and Louis Vuitton, not to mention animation art and writing and drawing comics for the French market. It was only recently that Sauvage made waves in the US with her celebrated work in Sensation Comics, where she reimagined Wonder Woman as a contemporary feminist rock star. Just this week, Sauvage was announced as the artist of a new Thor story to be written by Lumberjanes co-creator Noelle Stevenson.

For the most part, mainstream comics don’t care about fashion. But sometimes, something sneaks through and reminds us all of why this matters. Sensation Comics #7, illustrated by Marguerite Sauvage from a script by Sean E. Williams, is that rare, trembling shaft of light into the dank, Dragon Ball Z-print-button-downed basement that is the state of fashion in comics.

Next month, DC Comics will launch Sensation Comics, a digital-first anthology series featuring new Wonder Woman stories from a wide variety of creators and styles. This approach follows in the footsteps of the acclaimed Adventures Of Superman series, and is similarly structured – a new 10-page digital chapter will be released each week, and the stories will then be collected in a monthly print edition, with paperbacks presumably to follow. During last weekend's San Diego Comic-Con, we got the chance to hang out at the DC booth and have a quick round-table conversation with legendary Love & Rockets cartoonist Gilbert Hernandez, Smallville illustrator Cat Staggs, and Vampire Diaries writer Sean E. Williams, and ask about what they have planned for their installments of the new Wonder Woman book.

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.

  With both Legends of the Dark Knight and Adventures of Superman sadly no longer with us, it seemed unlikely that Wonder Woman would also star in her own digital-first anthology series from DC Comics. Fortunately that's turned out not to be the case, as the publisher has confirmed the third member of its heroic "trinity" will indeed be the focus of Sensation Comics, a digital-first anth