Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, DC Comics, Movies | Tagged: grant morrison, graphic novel, tarzan, wonder womman, yanick paquette

Grant Morrison Used Tarzan Movie Pitch In Wonder Woman Earth One

Grant Morrison is continuing to talk about their Wonder Woman Earth One graphic novel series with Yanick Paquette on the Xanaduum Substack.

Published Mon, 04 Dec 2023 11:02:10 -0600

by Rich Johnston

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Article Summary

Grant Morrison discusses the bondage themes in Wonder Woman Earth One.
Yanick Paquette's visual concepts in the graphic novel are explored.
Morrison incorporated a Tarzan movie pitch idea into Wonder Woman.
The post offers insight into Morrison's unseen body of work.

Grant Morrison is continuing to talk about their Wonder Woman Earth One graphic novel series with Yanick Paquette on the Xanaduum Substack, including their use of bondage as text and subtext.

"Announcing our themes up front, we chose to show Wonder Woman our heroine, in chains on the cover. But we gave her a challenging, even superior, expression and the physical poise to suggest she can handle this. In fact, she's arranged this…"

"With the notion of bondage as philosophy in our minds we chose, as the principal motif in the first book, the rope, twine, thread, or lasso, which winds through the story and binds its narrative."

"It is Wonder Woman's Lasso of Truth and the Fates' Thread of Life. It was Yanick's idea to makes this thread a visual element that could take the place of traditional panel borders (flowing curved shapes replacing the lined, ruled borders of a typical comics page layout – which then try to reassert themselves in the 'Man's World' scenes). Yanick also added touches like the Greek pottery shards that frame panels in the opening scene and tell their own version of the story, as well as numerous other visual motifs that played as musical theme accompaniment to certain characters and settings."

Previously, Grant Morrison talked about their many DC Comics movie pitches, some of which made their way into comics, like Wonder Woman Earth One. But it seems that Morrison also pitched a Tarzan movie, one aspect of which made it into Wonder Woman.

"Notice how quickly Diana learns English – when she first encounters Steve Trevor, her attempts to converse with him are halting – 'Me Tarzan, you Jane…'. Within 20 pages she's discoursing conversationally."

"Later, we see how she's mastered the language sufficiently to deploy more poetic English when she faces the Army and goes all haughty Amazon Princess on them."

"(Interestingly enough, this detail was borrowed from my Tarzan movie pitch, which remains for me the best revamp of a franchise character that I ever did. Tarzan, who'd been put in a position where he had to communicate fluently with numerous jungle animals, was, I decided, an expert communicator and could master human language in days. Typically, they made some other Tarzan that wasn't as good…)."

As Grant Morrison previously said, ""My published work is the tip of a vast iceberg of written material that will never be seen!". But does anyone with the Tarzan license fancy talking to Grant about a new take on the Lord Of The Apes?

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