'I remember people telling me then how important it was for a woman to draw a monthly book,' she said, 'but I also remember, the first time I spoke on the phone with George, my body blushed I was so nervous - I remember that I sweated right through my shirt.'

Nevertheless, though Thompson was hired by DC editor Karen Berger, Wonder Woman comics at the time were still written and drawn entirely by men. He underlined her connection with the gods, and provided depth to her island paradise of Themyscira. He approached Wonder Woman as a sort of utopian feminist-warrior ideal.

She found herself as the artist to DC writer/artist George Perez, whose take on Wonder Woman in the late 1980s would set much of the tone and mythology associated with the character since. She has also been one of the artists behind “Wonder Woman” comics. Ĭhicagoan Jill Thompson has been a longtime artist for DC Comics and is one of the first women to make a name in this once-male-dominated industry. Her characters are a gallery of freaks made relatable: Swamp Things and X-Men, Invisibles, the talking dogs of 'Beasts of Burden.' Since 1997, her signature has been the 'Scary Godmother' children's books, which tell the story of a witch who is gnarled and shrouded - and the reason for her home's Halloween trappings.īefore that, she drew Neil Gaiman's beloved, surreal 'Sandman' series, as ambitious a monthly comic as ever existed, telling the ethereal epic of Dream, who travels through human consciousness, accompanied by his siblings, Destruction, Despair, Death. While other comic artists prefer ink, she tends toward the vaporous wash of watercolors. The Forest Park native, one of the first (and few) female artists to become a brand name in the traditionally malecentric comic-book industry, has been humanizing the morbid and unusual for more than 30 years now, distinguishing herself with a style pitched somewhere between storybook and matter-of-fact - with a whiff of the elegance of midcentury commercial illustration.

Death by Jill Thompson