Absolute Wonder Woman Gives Kelly Thompson The Runway She Never Had

Posted in: Comics, DC Comics | Tagged: Absolute Wonder Woman, Hayden Sherman, kelly thompson, scott snyder

Absolute Wonder Woman Gives Kelly Thompson The Runway She Never Had

Absolute Wonder Woman is giving Kelly Thompson the runway to write that she never had before... and what happened with Birds Of Prey?

Published Fri, 13 Nov 2026 03:35:09 -0600
by Rich Johnston
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Article Summary

• Kelly Thompson says Absolute Wonder Woman finally gives her long-term runway to seed stories and pay them off properly.
• Thompson recalls fearing she might be fired from Birds Of Prey after tough DC talks before Absolute Wonder Woman launched.
• Absolute Wonder Woman lets Kelly Thompson plan bigger arcs, from Etta Candy mysteries to Hayden Sherman character designs.
• Thompson says Absolute Wonder Woman changed how she writes Diana, with character choices reshaping planned action scenes.

Kelly Thompson has spent years pitching arc to arc on major titles. On the latest Off-Panel with David Harper, she explained why Absolute Wonder Woman is different. And recalls issues with DC Comics and the Birds Of Prey series before that. Firstly, artist Leonardo Romero, currently Lead Character Designer on Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man. "If I hadn't lost him to so much animation, we'd have done more. Hawkeye we did, we did Birds of Prey, and then I brought him back on Birds of Prey and was devastated when he had to leave it. But I get it. It's very hard to make a living as a comic book artist in this world. If you can get really great Spider-Man money for animation, I would never want anyone to turn that down, but he's such a gifted storyteller in comics. It's painful to lose someone of that talent. So I hope I can sneak him back in for a couple of things here and there."

And then what happened with DC Comics before the Absolute Wonder Woman launch. I broke the news that Kelly Thompson would be writing the title, but it wasn't a dead cert even then, and around that time there were other worries. "I thought I was going to get fired off Birds of Prey. I felt like I was doing really good work with Absolute Wonder Woman, and Birds of Prey had gone slightly wrong, and we were having some issues. I didn't get fired. I didn't even get close to being fired; it was just that I'd never been dragged into a conversation with all the upper level people all of a sudden. I was like, holy —- maybe this is a thing. A couple months later, for Absolute Wonder Woman to come out and be this massive hit was a huge relief, about everything, about my work, about things at DC. It had freaked me out; it made me question things."

Birds Of Prey did end with #28. But by then the Absolute Wonder Woman monster of a train was pummelling down the tracks. Kelly Thompson reflects, "It's an incredible thing to be given that runway. I've never had that before. Even on Captain Marvel, where we got to 50. Around the same time, Al Ewing's Immortal Hulk run was such a success; they were like, yeah, we're going to go to 50. It's got that much heat. Plan it out. Make it your thing, man. And we never had that. Even though we also got to 50, it was like arc to arc, I was still pitching. So there was no huge sigh of relief of like, we can really think about how to build this. Instead of being able to build in some B plots that eventually grow into A plots, which is something you'd love to do. That's an old-school comics thing that I've never gotten to build like that before until Absolute Wonder Woman. Now it's happening. And it's really exciting to be able to seed little story bits and little character stuff and know that you're going to be able to pay that off and not that it's going to sort of just die off panel and never get to be resolved, you know?"

Etta Candy's private detective work is one example. "If we're doing a year, then we don't get to get into too much private detective work that Etta Candy does. Like we're not going to have time for that. But yeah, if we're going to go to issue 50, like, let's get into it. She's investigating a case, and we're going to see how that pays off later." As is working with Hayden Sherman. "You can't just drop on Hayden like, hey, you're also going to at the last minute have to design this god character. So it's nice to be able to plan this out more, let Hayden know at the beginning of the arc, here are all the characters that will be coming on board that we're going to need to design." And Diana herself is already dictating terms. On Absolute Wonder Woman #25, a planned fight scene became mostly defensive because "she's not going to punch her friend." Absolute Wonder Woman #25 was recently published, Absolute Wonder Woman #26 is next… as it races ahead of Absolute Batman numerically.

Absolute Wonder Woman #25 by Kelly Thompson, Hayden Sherman
HERETIC TAKES A SHOCKING TURN AS THE ABSOLUTE CHEETAH ARRIVES! The world-shaking Heretic arc kicks into a new gear as Diana's search for Barbara Minerva comes to a bloody end in a milestone oversized issue! Do not miss the debut of the devastating Absolute Cheetah–she's not quite what anyone expected…which is the only way Barbara Minerva would have it!
$5.99 10/28/2026

Absolute Wonder Woman #26 by Kelly Thompson, Hayden Sherman
Diana reels at what she has lost while trying to cope with what she has found. Steve steps in as fear grips Gateway City. And Etta, after discovering little in Gotham, finds her lead on Cale in the most unexpected of places… $4.99 11/25/2026

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