Wonder Woman
I have very strong opinions, but I am also a highly impressionable person. I've recently read the first three collections of George Perez's post-Crisis relaunch of Wonder Woman: Gods and Mortals, Challenge of the Gods, and Beauty and the Beasts. (The fourth, Destiny Calling, is to be released in June.) As a result, I have been thinking about what stories I'd like to tell should I ever have the opportunity to write Wonder Woman.

Among my all-time, desert island top five favorite books is Mythology by Edith Hamilton; so, anything I'd write for the Amazing Amazon would be as rooted as possible in the mythology of the ancient Greeks. That said, the Gods of Olympus and many other bits and pieces of Hellenic mythology have already been featured in past runs on Wonder Woman. Frustrating as it might be, I'd feel honorbound to be more attentive to the DC version of a particular Greek myth than the historical version.

Early ideas include "The Antikythera Mechanism" about an ancient clockwork monster set loose to wreak havoc on the modern world; "Orion the Hunter," guest-starring the New Gods; and a villain named Jack Ajax, a kind of evil Batman. I've had a Magic of Shazam! story called "Wonders and Marvels," involving the villains Xenophon and Ares, sitting on the shelf for a while. It could be a crossover between Wonder Woman and MOS!, or either the Wonder girls or the Marvel Family could guest-star in the other's book. (I've got The Magic of Shazam! loosely plotted out to about issue No. 86; so, crossing over with Wonder Woman would give "Wonders and Marvels" the impetus needed to muscle into the line-up.) Of course, a thousand potential titles leap to mind, any number of which might yield a qaulity story, including "The Black Sails" (myth: Theseus, the Labyrinth, and the Minotaur), "Eureka!" (Archimedes), "The Thirty Tyrants" (the aftermath Athens's defeat in the Peloponnesian War), "The Midas Touch" (myth: King Midas, duh), "The Face That Launched a Thousand Ships" (myth: the Trojan War), "Dragon's Teeth" (myth: Cadmus and Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece), and "The Seven Wonders of the World" (guest-starring the Seven Wonders, because who says learning can't be disguised as entertainment?)

I'm thinking of a couple of different ways to cast Wonder Woman as Achilles in a story called "The Iliad," though when all is said and done it might be easier to do as an Elseworlds tale, JLA: The Iliad.

{1} The Magic of Shazam!
"Giant Atomic Robots" - "May Day" takes us from No. 1 to No. 86, give or take an issue here or there, with plenty of other stories lying around waiting to be fleshed out and placed in sequence. Eighty-six issues and I still haven't introduced The Perfect. I love The Perfect, there're just a lot of Captain Marvel stories that need to be told. Not to mention Mary Marvel, Kid Marvel, Uncle Dudley and Mr. Tawky Tawny, Robot Marvel, Bulletwoman, Spy Smasher, the W.H.I.Z. gang, Mr. Scarlet and Cardinal....

{2} Action Comics / Superman
A whole gaggle of "super" stories, everything from "Superego" and "Supertown" to "Supercollider" and "Supertaster." And the still-so-vague-as-to-be-meaningless idea for "Lex Talionis." The Man of Steel is fetile territory, which goes a long way to explaining why his adventures have been continuously published since 1938.

{3} Jack Kirby's Fourth World
Preliminarily, I've got "The Never People," "The Inheritance," and the (all's fair in) war and love story "The Forever War." Like Captain Marvel, there are countless tales of the New Gods to be told, I just haven't invested the same time in them as I have in The Magic of Shazam! If I am ever fortunate enough to write for DC Comics (though lately I have been thinking of adopting a more assertive attitude, "One day, I will write for DC Comics..."), my plan is to use the New Gods in every book I work on until they finally let me write a Fourth World miniseries, and perhaps if it is well-received an ongoing series.

{4} Wonder Woman
I'd love to imagine myself capable of writing a story worthy of the title "Go Tell the Spartans," but until then I've got a solid idea in "The Antikythera Mechanism," which combines my love for giant robots with the oft-used MOS! device of ancient menaces born anew. And I think this Jack Ajax bloke has potential, though of course I couldn't neglect Wonder Woman's not widely known but none-too-shabby rogues gallery: Ares (yep, the God of War), The Cheetah, the witch Circe, Dr. Psycho, the Silver Swan (now that I've read some of Perez's issues, I'm determined to save the soul of Vanessa Kapatelis), Giganta, Dr. Poison, and maybe even Angle Man, who's currently getting his butt kicked on a monthly basis in Catwoman. Plus, I'm sure I could figure out how to resurrect Deimos, Phobos, Medousa, and Decay.