Wonder Woman officiated a same-sex wedding today and stopped Russia from rolling more tanks and weapons into Crimea. What did you do with your Tuesday?
The Amazon warrior officiates her first same-sex wedding in DC’s Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman, Chapter 48, the newest issue in the anthology series. Writer and artist Jason Badower—making his DC Comics debut with the issue, available digitally Wednesday—sends Diana of Themyscira on a mission to Crimea on behalf of the United Nations, with Superman in tow.
The pair spot an unnamed Russian general rolling dozens of tanks and munitions through a shady mountain pass. Diana waves Superman away, gives the general her best “come at me, bro” face and calmly glides through every missile and bullet his army throws at her, before peacefully disarming him.
Badower describes the near-international incident as a metaphor for standing up to bullies. “She ends up deflecting a bullet back and disarming the general,” he says, adding that “she doesn’t actually do anything violent in the story. I just think that Wonder Woman is smarter than that.”
Wonder Woman casually wraps up her day by officiating the wedding of a woman she met while volunteering in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. Silly farm boy Clark Kent seems surprised at the act, to which Diana remarks, “Clark, my country is all women. To us, it’s not ‘gay’ marriage. It’s just marriage.”
“[Diana’s] mother, the queen, at the very least authorized or in some cases officiated these weddings,” Badower says. “It just seems more like a royal duty [Diana] would take on, that she would do for people that would appreciate it.”
In other words, it’s really not that big a deal. Rival Marvel Comics had Beast officiate Northstar’s wedding to his longtime partner Kyle three years ago, in Astonishing X-Men #51 (the first gay marriage depicted in a Marvel comic). While DC doesn’t seem to have had one of its superheroes officiate a same-sex wedding until now, it held its first such ceremony back in 2002, when Midnighter and Apollo wed in The Authority #29.
DC did attract controversy three years ago for not letting Batwoman's Kate Kane marry her fiancee Maggie Sawyer, prompting the book’s creative team to quit in protest. At the time, co-publisher Dan DiDio brushed off accusations of homophobia by saying that marriage in general impedes super-heroics. But as Wonder Woman might say, dude, “it’s just a wedding.”
Preview four pages of DC’s Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman, Chapter 48 below.