Wonder Woman:Earth One Ideas

[jelebino]

Earth One is supposed to strip away the decades of embellishment and give us a more down-to-earth, naturalistic take on the character, is that right? Okay.

Set it in 1942. Real world war, real Air Force, real Nazis.

Diana and Steve return from Paradise Island to find that Pearl Harbor has taken place. President Roosevelt decides to keep the existence of the Amazons temporarily a cabinet secret. He sets up a false American identity for her, as Diana Prince, USAF intelligence analyst, with Trevor as her control.

Diana just adores American culture, though she's puzzled at the maze of double standards among men and women. She also has a rather summary hands-on way with injustice. "Who is this Wonder Woman?" the papers are asking, the third time she foils a mob shootout. (No costume yet.)

Something big is brewing on the war front. V-2 rockets are only part of it. Diana and Steve have to go undercover. There is a capable fifth-column operation keeping the Axis plan secret, headed by one Paula von Gunther.

Suborned by von Gunther, some sexist opinionated poobah has Diana dismissed from intelligence, and assigned to babysit a class of female war orphans, on the premises of dilapidated old Holliday College.

Amazon training time!

You will believe a man can fly.

You will believe a man can dress up like a bat and fight crime.

And you will believe a woman can revive the morale of several dozen traumatized teenagers.

And prep some of them to infiltrate a murderous fifth-column group.

And turn some of them into aircraft maintenance engineers, in no time flat.

And instruct some in weapons, pilotry, parachuting and hand-to-hand combat.

And at the same time expose the Axis master-plan, which is nothing less than an airborne invasion of the USA, to take out industrial facilities, dockyards and munitions plants, plus Princeton and Los Alamos.

Unbelievable? The Nazis think so. They're not ready for anything like this.

But Diana Prince is Wonder Woman!

[Auguste Dupin]

Earth One is supposed to strip away the decades of embellishment and give us a more down-to-earth, naturalistic take on the character, is that right? Okay.

Set it in 1942. Real world war, real Air Force, real Nazis.

Diana and Steve return from Paradise Island to find that Pearl Harbor has taken place. President Roosevelt decides to keep the existence of the Amazons temporarily a cabinet secret. He sets up a false American identity for her, as Diana Prince, USAF intelligence analyst, with Trevor as her control.

Diana just adores American culture, though she's puzzled at the maze of double standards among men and women. She also has a rather summary hands-on way with injustice. "Who is this Wonder Woman?" the papers are asking, the third time she foils a mob shootout. (No costume yet.)

Something big is brewing on the war front. V-2 rockets are only part of it. Diana and Steve have to go undercover. There is a capable fifth-column operation keeping the Axis plan secret, headed by one Paula von Gunther.

Suborned by von Gunther, some sexist opinionated poobah has Diana dismissed from intelligence, and assigned to babysit a class of female war orphans, on the premises of dilapidated old Holliday College.

Amazon training time!

You will believe a man can fly.

You will believe a man can dress up like a bat and fight crime.

And you will believe a woman can revive the morale of several dozen traumatized teenagers.

And prep some of them to infiltrate a murderous fifth-column group.

And turn some of them into aircraft maintenance engineers, in no time flat.

And instruct some in weapons, pilotry, parachuting and hand-to-hand combat.

And at the same time expose the Axis master-plan, which is nothing less than an airborne invasion of the USA, to take out industrial facilities, dockyards and munitions plants, plus Princeton and Los Alamos.

Unbelievable? The Nazis think so. They're not ready for anything like this.

But Diana Prince is Wonder Woman!

I like the idea very much, but that doesn't seem to be what they're aiming for with Earth One, considering how both were set in the present days. That would make a cool graphic novel though.

Anyway, about my two cents.
As I said in another poster, there's a few elements that seem to be recurrent in Earth One stories. We generally have a mostly classic version of the origin, but with a more "relatable" and flawed characterisation of the main character, a member of ther supporting cast becoming more impressive and "badass", and a new villain (who might be connected to an already established one).
So, my Earth one idea would start with a secret agent escaping from a secret base of some sort and hickjacking a plane. After a fight in the air, the plane gets hits and is falling towards the Ocean, when he suddenly disapear from the radars. He did crash however, but in a secret location hidden from the rest of mankind called Paradise island. Trevor, since it's obviously him, is discovered by Diana. When he wakes up, he reveals he's a member of the Secret Services and was infiltrating a group called the Secret Society, who has been perpretating a number of attacks toward the Western World. He also explains he discovered a plot to destroy Washington, and must go back at once to warn his superiors. Unsure of what to do, Hyppolita speaks with the Amazonian oracle, who reminds her of a prophecy about one of them going back to his Man's world and reunite both worlds. Reluctant of doing so, because that would mean revealing Paradise Island to the world, Hyppolita decides to organize a tournament to decides who is going to be their champion in Man's World. Diana decides to participate, wins, and goes with Trevor to Man's World. They fight the Society and twarts the plot, only for Diana to realize they seem to use magic as upgrades, and wonders how. The twist of the first book would be that the Society is secretly controlled by Ares himself, for reasons that are to be revealing in the following books.
In this take of the mythos, the Amazons won't have the advanced tech they had in the Golden Age, but they won't simply be Greek wariors in tongas either. Basically, they would be magic users, their connection with the Gods giving them a few magical tricks ("Purple Healing Ray" for instance, or the oracle). All we will know at this point of their history is that the Gods forbid them to leave the island for unknown reasons (something that will obviously have to be adressed at some point). Only one of them, when the time is right, is allowed to leave to prepare the two worlds to finally meet and, perhaps, learn from one another.

Now, with Diana's personality. I wondered for a while what "flaw" I could give her. In the end, I went with "spoiled brat". Let me explain. Diana is young, lives on a place called Paradise island, among a race of wonder women, is the only one to have real superpowers. Moreover, she is their princess, meaning she has the authority over most of them, without having actual responsabilities. That doesn't mean she isn't a good person. It does mean, however, that she is a bit immature, and isn't used to people contradicting her. that could be a plot point, and one of the reasons Hypolita is reluctant: she doesn't think her daughter (whose very reason she was granted "gifts" by the Goddes would be because she was destined to reunite both worlds) is ready for the task. Of course, by the end of the story, she would mature and be more like the "classic" Wonder Woman.

For the "ensemble darkhorse" character, I hesitated between Hypolita and Trevor. Eventually, I went with Steve. First, because I realized the other books chose characters who were never portrayed as such, instead of going with characters that already were to some extend, like Lois or Gordon. Second, Hypolita stays on the island, Steve doesn't.
Basically, the character would be portrayed as being a hero on his own right. He would be a bit like a James Bond lite: cocky, a bit trigger happy, a womanizer without being the sexist jerk Bond is.

As for the villain, well.... I'm not quite sure yet. I was thinking of a variation on the "baroness" sexy villainnes leader stereotype, the way Von Gunter of dr Cyber were. She would probably be wearing some kind of tech looking armor that would allow her to fight Wonder Woman, which arlor would actually be magical. her death by the end of the volume would trigger the revelation that Ares was behind the Society all along.

Voila. Nothing groundbreaking, I agree, but that was my two cents.