[Credit: @marcusthevisual]
As the hit DCEU movie Wonder Woman was in its fourth day of breaking the US box office this past weekend, Atlanta-based illustrator Marcus Williams (Tuskegee Heirs) started breaking the internet — or Facebook and Twitter, at least — by posting a spine-tingling tribute to WonderWoman and her largely forgotten fraternal twin sister, Nubia.
And as you can see, the artwork is wondrous.
Due to popular demand voila. Wonder Women Nubia & Diana— marcus williams (@marcusthevisual) June 4, 2017
Posters are available Also Shirts. https://t.co/8rwRHr1Qf9 pic.twitter.com/PuMYA0J3Ht
On June 2, a pulse-pounding preview of this now full-color work was shared in the form of a pencil sketch of Nubia and Diana. That piece showed off the pure form of fine line work for which Williams is becoming well known, especially due to his remarkable renditions of fan favorite comic book heroines like Storm, Captain Marvel, Psylocke, and too many others to name.
At the time the sketch was posted, Williams was just showing his enthusiastic support of the then-upcoming Wonder Woman film. Fans of the artist's work were quick to show their enthusiastic support of his enthusiastic support!
Yet, there were also many new school comic book fans who weren't aware that Diana had ever had a sister, aside from Donna Troy of the Teen Titans, let alone a black fraternal twin. But, once upon a time, she did indeed have one.
I offer a sketch of two Wonder Women (Nubia and Diana) to show my support for the film. Peace ya'll.#WonderWoman pic.twitter.com/L5Vg9WLeQ1— marcus williams (@marcusthevisual) June 3, 2017
In February of 1973, during the rise in popularity of blaxploitation films like Shaft, Coffy, Black Caesar and many others, DC Comics showed themselves as "hip to the times" by introducing the Amazon warrior Nubia, with whom Diana duels in issue #204 of Wonder Woman. But Diana — who'd just recovered from amnesia — had no idea who her tall, dark and lovely adversary actually was. The same was also true of her book's readers.
By way of a flashback in Wonder Woman #206, it was revealed that Nubia and Diana were twin sisters, formed as babes from dark and light clay by their mother Queen Hippolyta, and animated into life by the breath of the Goddess Aphrodite. After their miraculous creation however, the God of War Mars appeared and stole Nubia away from her mother and sister.
[Credit: DC Comics]
In the mid-1980s, DC Comics released the popular but also controversial series, Crisis on Infinite Earths. This complex story would serve as a reset button of sorts for the publisher's then-sprawling, multi-dimensional universe. Many of the plot twists that came about in the ensuing years since Wonder Woman and her peers were first created in the 1940s and onward were erased.
Among those countless casualties was Nubia's audacious origin, which left the character being just one of many Amazons on Paradise Island with no special relation to Diana and Hippolyta. The ripple in Wonder Woman's continuity created in 1973 by writer Cary Bates and artist Don Heck never faded, and the appreciation of this little known Amazon warrior endures.
In fitting tribute to that now classic tale of the "Wonder Women," Nubia and her fraternal twin sister Diana — as they forever remain in the minds of many old school comic book collectors — have been given a picture perfect family reunion in a gorgeous work of fan art by Marcus Williams.
[Credit: @marcusthevisual]
Though Nubia has never really had the place in comics that her character deserves, the vision of this talented artist from Atlanta makes you realize that it would be some kind of wonderful to see the separated twin sisters together again on the silver screen in Patty Jenkins' senses-shattering sequel to Wonder Woman — even if only for a moment.
No comments:
Post a Comment