October 25, 2021 • 57 mins
The month marks Wonder Woman's 80th Anniversary, and this interview is a love letter to Diana, whose origins are steeped in Greek mythology.
In this fabulous conversation, award-winning comics artist Phil Jimenez reveals the secrets behind Wonder Woman: Historia, his upcoming collaboration with writer Kelly Sue DeConnick for DC Comics Black Label!
Mythology has been central to some of Phil’s highest-profile projects, including War of the Gods and Gods of Gotham, and of course, Wonder Woman. And after 20 years of immersion in the topic, he has thoughts.
We cover Dionysus’ gender, post-toga Olympian fashion, Hera's burden, and what makes Wonder Woman such an enduring character.
In "Five Questions," Phil shares what brings him joy!
For more, visit mythicpodcast.com.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Boston (00:04):
Welcome to mythic a podcast where we explore meaningful
living through the power of myth.
I'm your host.
Boston Blake.
My guest today is award-winningcomics artist, Phil Jimenez.
(00:24):
In addition to his extensive work for DCand Marvel comics, Phil has also worked
as a creator in film and television.
Traditional print media.
He's done design packagingfor toy companies.
He's created large-scale artworksfor public spaces, schools, museums.
In New York and Chicago.
He's lectured at universities, museums,and the library of Congress on identity
(00:47):
and diversity in entertainment.
And he mentors young designers at theCooper Hewitt National Design Museum.
Greek mythology.
Has played a major role in Phil'swork ever since his first published
project DC's 1991 Wonder Womancrossover event, War of the Gods.
(01:08):
Currently he's workingon Wonder Woman Historia.
A collaboration with writer, Kelly SueDeConnick, which is scheduled to be
released just over a month from now.
On November 30th, 2021.
And I'll just say, I cannot freaking wait.
The art has to be seen to bebelieved and you can see some of it.
(01:29):
Phil has previews onhis social media feeds.
On Twitter and Instagram,he's "at Phil Jimenez N Y C".
And you might want to check thatout as you listen to this episode.
I first met Phil in person severalyears ago at Bent Con a queer comics
convention in Burbank, California.
(01:50):
I had been a huge fan of his eversince War of the Gods and meeting him,
uh, I was kind of a fan boy moment.
He's a scholar, as well as an artist.
He's also a deep and fast thinker.
Now, usually when I sit down todo an interview, I have prepared
questions and a general sense of howI want to see or the conversation.
(02:12):
My guest and I, we chit chat fora few minutes to get comfortable
before starting to record.
Well, that didn't happen this time.
Phil popped up on my zoom screen and wasalready sharing how he was struggling
to get Dionysus just right, why itmattered for HISTORIA for the character.
I knew right then that what Philwas going to bring was way better
(02:34):
than any of my preconceived ideas.
So I put down my notes, I pressedrecord and we were off to the races.
And what came out was a fantastic,deep and wide reaching conversation.
I'm biased.
So I'll let you be the judge.
And like I said, I highly recommendchecking out phil's especially Instagram
(02:56):
feed as part of listening to thisepisode, because we'll be talking
about images that he shared there now.
Hold on tight because here we go.
Phil (03:11):
It was just a figure.
And he's just reclining.
And I spent probably a day onthis figure or more, and it's just.
Boston (03:20):
I haven't seen any Dionysus imagery that you've done yet.
What are you pulling from?
What are the elements that makethis Historia, Dionysus, Dionysus?
What are the images.
Phil (03:32):
Dionysus is interesting in Historia because he is, kind of a
lithe she described him as slinky guy.
Maybe gender non binary and the imagethat I am totally stealing from as
reference is an old Bacchus mosaic.
It's actually a Roman mosaic andhe's in this fabulous I'm not sure
(03:56):
if it's pearls or beads, but he'sin this sort of skirt and outfit.
He's writing a Jaguar as Dionysus will do.
I'm like, that's it that's sort of music.
And so I use this idea and thensome other stuff that Kelly Sue
sent me based on her description.
I have been able to drawhim everywhere else.
(04:16):
What's interesting is thisis his big establishing shot.
And so it's the only onethat I get in this book.
I may think I'm just succumbing tothe pressure I want it to be right.
Everything else that I've doneon this book, not all the art is
perfect, but it all feels right.
It feels right for the thing.
And so I just want to get this right.
It's a moment between Dionysusand Aphrodite and my take on this
(04:38):
current costume, cause all thegods have various looks throughout.
Except for Aphrodite whoremains pretty consistent.
I think each god gets two or threecostumes and looks and whatever.
I did an interview this morningfor DC comics for Wonder
Woman's 80th anniversary.
And the hilarious thing was the one thingthat I wrote to myself, I was like, oh,
(05:01):
this is the thing I want to talk about.
And of course we didn't.
but I wrote them back as ifI could just drop in this one
little thing that would be great.
Boston (05:10):
Can I get a scoop?
What's the one little thingthat you want to talk about for
Wonder Woman's 80th anniversary.
Phil (05:16):
One of the questions, is, what makes Wonder Woman and enduring character.
And I think an interesting and enduringquality of that character is it asks
of its creators and its audience.
some really tough questions about sexand gender and feminism and war and
how we all feel about these things.
And a big question, I think it asksis, is war a feminist ideal or idea?
(05:40):
And there are different, there aredifferent schools of thought on this.
the other thing wascan a single character.
And I know the answer of course, butI think it always begs the question.
Can a single character embody, allof these conflicting ideas, or should
they, The enduring thing to me aboutWonder Woman is that even though
it's mostly subtextual, I'm not evensure people are cognizant of it.
(06:05):
Her primary enemy historicallyhad been Ares or Mars, the god of
war, but in mythological terms,in a Wonder Woman terms, what Ares
represents essentially what we calltoday, a type of toxic masculinity.
and that's, I think why sheendures because in some level she
is a force of resistance to that.
Boston (06:24):
Marston called it.
He said comic books, chief problemwas their blood-curdling masculinity.
That specifically whathe was talking about.
It's not that men are bad andI think he would hold himself
up as an Apollonian type guy.
and this idea that Ares, thatMars was a god out of control.
(06:44):
This is what happens when that partof masculinity gets out of balance.
This is what patriarchy is,is, is out of balance newness.
I gave a presentation in San Francisco anda woman asked me this fantastic question.
She said, do you think, the 2017Wonder Woman would have been
the hit that it was if HillaryClinton had won that election?
(07:04):
It had not occurred to me becausewe were all ready to celebrate.
It was going to be the year of the woman.
We were all there for it.
And instead it became like the yearof resistance and Wonder Woman you
know, stepping up to no man's landbecame something we needed in a
way that we might not have needed.
If we had gone down a smarter timeline.
Phil (07:24):
Oh, I don't disagree at all.
I've said before that Wonder Womanand certainly Black Panther, because
they hold the same psychologicalspace in their various purviews.
are zeitgeist movies as muchas they are good movies.
The moment they hit was themoment they needed to hit.
And they ended up representing somethinglarger than a two hour escapist film.
(07:44):
And so I absolutely believethat Wonder Woman timing
mattered, timing of that film.
And certainly the first two thirdsof that movie really mattered.
I do think it's really profound thatin both the first and second film,
what so many people responded toand want more of are the Amazons.
So clearly that imagery, thatidea, the sort of notion of this,
(08:07):
tribe of powerful women, reallyresonated with almost everyone.
I know, in some way they just wanted more.
And I think that's telling.
Boston (08:16):
Yeah, that's what I hear every time.
I want more of the first,third of the movie.
I want two hours of thator a series of that.
Trina Robbins has an essayWonder Woman, Lesbian or Dyke.
And she talks about the idea of awoman only community that this is the
fantasy, a place where women can go.
(08:37):
Girls can go and just be outside ofpatriarchal history for just a second.
I think men desire that too.
I, I would love to see whatthat's like, although then you
get there and you break it.
Cause you're the man.
Phil (08:50):
it's funny.
I joke about that a lot because,as I've gotten older, I think this
is certainly a reflection of thepolitics of the day shaping ideology,
but I'm very into people, groupsof people having their spaces.
Like I don't need to be.
Right.
Like you have it.
I have plenty go.
During my interview earlier,I kept calling it Paradise
Island, which I think matters.
(09:12):
I was having a debate with my bestfriend and he was giving me the central
argument that the problem with utopiais that utopia is boring or dull.
And I said to him, oh, no,no Paradise Island isn't a
utopia because it's perfect.
It's a utopia because there are no men.
And so the reason it's utopian isthat whenever conflict arises and
(09:33):
there can be plenty, ostensiblyhas no basis in patriarchy.
whatever conflict arises ispurely, I dunno, matriarchal is the
right word, but it is free of thetethers of patriarchy maleness, man.
and that's what makes it utopian,at least for those women.
Boston (09:53):
I hadn't thought of it that way.
It's their utopia because they getto solve the problems themselves.
They emerge out of that cultureAnd they are resolved within that
culture without this other influence.
Phil (10:04):
And don't have to question the origins of their conflicts, is that based
on some law or are we fighting over a man?
Quite frankly.
Or, our perception it's beingshaped by patriarchal imagery.
Like just All that's gone, right.
I'm, I'm reaching for low-hangingfruit, but to imagine a world
. where all of that is absent.
And so all decisions suddenly comesfrom within, and again , from this
(10:26):
culture that they created free of that.
That's what makes it utopia.
Boston (10:30):
I always love conversations with you.
We just dive right intothe deep end of the pool.
Phil (10:34):
I had lunch this weekend with an old friend.
It was the second time in about a month.
I hadn't seen for a long time.
And we deep dove very quickly.
It was not my intent the second time.
It was like, let's havefun and gossip and be gay.
But we dipped a very, very quickly,our respective spouses were there
and I kind apologized to him andhe's no, no, it's cool because I,
he made a comment about it, like wegot there really fast An interesting
(10:56):
thing that's happened over the years.
I think it's always historically true,but certainly Trump years imposed, I
just don't do small talk very well.
My tendency is to deep dive quicklyand I have to remember not everyone is
interested or capable of that as I am.
Boston (11:12):
I resemble that remark.
So this summer I did it was acertificate in applied mythology
through Pacifica Graduate Institute.
And I found 98 people who were asnerdy about mythology as I was.
And it was fantastic because everyone of us had spent a lot of time
(11:33):
thinking about these particular things.
And so when it came together, theconversation was rich and deep.
We talked about myths inmedia and myth in comics.
Are you familiar with aman named David Odorisio?
Phil (11:46):
I might be familiar with the work
. Boston: He has this incredible lecture on YouTube and I'll link to it in the show
notes where he breaks down The PhoenixSaga and how Jean Grey's body goes from
being objectified in her first appearance,all the way through her being the Phoenix,
and then the dark Phoenix, and then theproblematic resurrection of the Phoenix.
(12:11):
Anyway, he was one of theprofessors for , this program.
And one of the things thathe brought up is that.
Not only are comics, not only canthey contain modern myth, but they are
repositories of spiritual information.
Spiritual informationis encoded into them.
And , that really struck me.
(12:33):
In Marston's case, it was Wonder Woman.
Is theosophy like verydeliberately encoded plus his
disc theory and all of that.
Grant Morrison put into TheInvisibles his chaos magic.
I don't know how much of it is conscious.
in a lot of cases.
it just seems to emerge.
A couple of things I want to chime in about, because I had a
(12:53):
very interesting conversation withPaul Levitz four or five years ago.
because I had been asked by,Ramzi Fawaz do you know, Ramzi?
Boston (13:00):
No.
Phil (13:01):
He wrote this incredible book called The New Mutants, which I highly recommend.
Not the comic, but it's a kind of anacademic dissertation, framed by The New
Mutants, the Marvel comics characters.
And, it's an intensely loving, rich book.
Very easy to read, any breaks down themetaphor, power and symbolic power of
(13:22):
many different groups of comic charactersfrom the Justice League to the X-Men,
But his real focus was on The New Mutantsbecause he argued that beyond race and
gender diversity, it was the most classdiverse comic in comics at the time.
And diverse in that the brownestboy who was Sunspot was the
wealthiest, the whitest boyCannonball was the, the poorest.
(13:43):
and that that comic, the way itexplored issues of gender, race and
class, for its time was revolutionary.
He asked me to do the entry onWonder Woman and a new keywords
book that just came out.
And it's all about academic terms.
it's for academics.
It's comics related terms becausecomics scholarship has sort of exploded
(14:05):
in the past five or six years anddoing my research on Wonder Woman,
I kept finding themes that would runthrough various iterations of the book,
forties, sixties, eighties, et cetera.
Repeated themes.
In Wonder Woman's case, one of the onesI found really fascinating was the,, the
notion of another Amazon replacing herfor a brief period of time, and then
(14:28):
Diana reassuming the mantle becauseDiana was the best Wonder Woman.
in my conversation with Paul, he was like,You know why that happened all the time is
because so many scripts were repurposed.
And he said, if for Superman or Batman,a character or an event was very popular,
there was a period of time in the sixtiesand seventies where they would just
(14:51):
repurpose the idea sometimes even thesame script and just rejigger it a little
bit, and reprint a new version of it.
I was taken aback because I thought,oh, these recurring themes, which must
have some sort of mythic bent, if we'reall tapping into them were actually
results of corporate decision-making.
(15:12):
And so of course, Artemis theredheaded, Amazon that replaced Wonder
Woman in the 1990s where we placedDiana is Wonder Woman, was a riff on
Orana who was a riff on this othercharacter in the sixties, late sixties.
Diana was replaced for one issue.
what's interesting to me is clearly thatkind of story resonates with people,
(15:35):
but it's reinforced not through myth,but through corporate decision-making.
So just made me wonder a chickenor the egg, like what comes first.
Clearly audiences respond to it.
There's something inherent in the storyof, for example, someone who wins a
title in this case, Diana wins a titleon Wonder Woman that someone else sweeps
(15:57):
along and takes out title from her.
And she has to return it.
that seems a fairly universal idea.
And that seems to resonate withmany people and people love it.
even when Hippolyta sweptin and became Wonder Woman.
People love seeing , different iterationsof Amazons in that armor because
the stories are always different.
So it resonates, it has mythicqualities, but it is ultimately, it
(16:17):
is their result of corporate decisionmaking because it made the money once.
Boston (16:22):
One thing that that particular story does, it offers
an opportunity to deconstruct, whatmakes Wonder Woman, Wonder Woman?
Orana, that story she's goingto win the contest at all
costs, casualties be damned.
And so Wonder Woman is tryingto save everybody while
Orana's just trying to win.
And Artemis just so much morecomplex and Artemis became a beloved
(16:43):
character like in her own right.
One of the things that we got tosee through her was something that
might've even been missing in Dianawith her at that time, this sort
naivete and a bit of a goody two shoes.
And then we see Artemis asa kind of take no prisoners.
And it's when the two team up thatyou get this bad-ass femme force.
(17:06):
even when Alan Alan Heinberg did Circereplacing Wonder Woman for a hot second.
Circe is, rescuing traffickedwomen using whatever means necessary.
And I'm like, Yeah, go girl.
Nevermind that she's also genocidal.
Phil (17:30):
It gets tossed around a lot superheroes DC and Marvel, that they're
modern gods, the gods wear spandex.
Do you think that's accurate?
Oh my God.
That's heavy and deep question.
That feels like something Ineed to open up my books for.
and open up my research for.
I have very strong feelings aboutthe word God, and gods both in the
(17:51):
real world and out, but particularlyas it pertains to Wonder Woman.
I'm going to narrow thescope just a little bit.
I'm from DC heroes toWonder Woman, DC too.
I think our current and modern conceptionof godhood, particularly when we're
talking about fiction is based onpower, Physical power, as opposed to
divinity, which does something else.
(18:13):
So my understanding of, ofGod, religion, the divine, is
these are unknowable things.
and that through trying to knowthem, often through ritual reading
of text or meditation and natureor whatever, we try to understand
(18:34):
our own place in the universe.
I have a weird, hard time callingthem gods because I attribute to
godhood a certain quality and function.
And here's the thing, I might betalking out of both sides of my mouth.
Many of these characters probablydo exactly that at their best.
They ask their audience to reflect ontheir purpose and their function, their
(18:57):
reason for being, to contemplate theirplace in the universe to think of their
responsibility to community, to thinkabout things like, do we have souls?
Are we interconnected, through aspiritual force beyond ourselves?
I think comic booksuperheroes can do that.
And when they do that, perhapsthey can be considered gods.
(19:21):
But when I hear the term likesuperheroes or modern day gods, I
really think that what most people aretalking about is a highly secular view
of what a god is-- of what God is.
And I think they're talking aboutoften in terms of power level, and
maybe a sense of grander and scope.
I'm not sure how often they'retalking about it from an
internal, contemplative space.
(19:43):
I don't think speaking about Supermanor Wonder Woman as gods makes readers
think about the origins of theuniverse, their place in it, what
purpose their life serves in it.
Maybe they do.
In the interview I gave earlier, I saidthat Wonder Woman gave my life purpose.
I contemplate the world in adifferent way because of her, because
of the way she has been written.
And it's funny, we talk about her andthis is an interesting thing I think
(20:07):
about a lot is, can we talk about anycharacter separate from their creators?
But Wonder Woman's adventures, thatcharacter, the various ways she's been
embodied have driven me, personallyand spiritually in ways that, as
I'm talking around this questionmaybe are like God, in some way.
So maybe they are gods.
(20:28):
I just think when people say that, I wouldbe curious what they mean by the word God
and how divine they think these gods are.
Boston (20:39):
You said Wonder Woman or the way she was written,
gave you a sense of purpose.
How did you encounter Wonder Woman?
What was your first exposure andhow did she give you purpose?
Phil (20:49):
so my first exposure to Wonder Woman was actually the Brady Kids cartoon, but
then I got hooked on the Superfriends andthen of course the Lynda Carter TV show.
I can't honestly say I remember whichI'm pretty sure I saw super friends
first and then saw the live actionshow and changed my life forever.
And what I mean by purpose was my instantconnection to that character primarily is
(21:15):
embodied by Lynda Carter, but certainlythe animated show what ever it was,
whatever spark it gave in my brain.
I latched onto it and held onto it tothe point where I was a teenager, a gay
closeted teenager, and I needed to dosomething to escape the world I was in.
And, I decided I was going towrite and draw Wonder Woman.
(21:35):
At the time I was just going todraw Wonder Woman, cause George
Pérez was going to write it forever.
So that was my goal.
to take over Wonder Woman when GeorgePérez left partly because of what he
did with that character, partly becauseof my inherent love for that character.
But when it say she gave me purpose, I,I think a lot of this is in hindsight,
but she was a driver my whole life,seeking iterations of that character out.
(21:57):
She was a form of entertainment.
she was a space for fantasy.
And then, when I started drawingcomics and, I realized she
could potentially be a job.
There was potential toactually do the work.
And whatever that magic was, and Iuse the word it's broadest sense.
It was a driver.
(22:18):
It gave me something to focus on intocollege and beyond, and even today,
getting ready for these interviews havebeen doing and seeing you like, just
reviewing all the work I've done onWonder Woman research just makes me happy.
It's a lot of joy and it's strange how,when I'm 51, so 46 years Wonder Woman on
(22:39):
the brain have done me a world of good.
I mean, I would be nowhere withouther and the people that worked on her
Boston (22:46):
So your first published work was War of the Gods,
Phil (22:50):
30 years ago.
Boston (22:52):
Ouch 30 years ago.
And then when you took over the WonderWoman book and you were writing and
drawing, and you gave us Gods ofGotham, which was restoring Wonder
Woman to that mythology the mythologicalroots, you brought in a lot of Circe.
Classical mythology has playedinto a lot of your work.
How do you relate to mythologyyourself, as an artist, as a human?
Phil (23:17):
it's different now than it was then.
It's funny that youbring up Gods of Gotham.
As many people know, Gods of Gotham,which I'm glad is as popular as it
is, was not the book that I intended.
Gods to Gotham was aterrible fight editorially.
I had three editors on the firsttwo issues, not because I was
fighting with them, but becauseof just shuffling at DC comics.
(23:38):
And I wanted to do this Batman story.
It was very clear in my head because Iwas very interested in notions of myth
and divinity, and saw parallels betweenBatman's family and Wonder Woman's family.
and Denny O'Neil, God rest his soul whofought me so hard on that book, cause
this was back in the days when Batmanonly lived in the real world, and Batman
(23:59):
was an urban legend and he hated the ideathat Batman was in the Justice League.
He hated anything that sort ofcracked what he believed was
this veneer of reality, which isexactly what Wonder Woman did.
And so he fought me a lot on that project.
And, one of his big things was thatWonder Woman could be in Gotham City,
(24:21):
but no one could ever know she was there.
so the story ends up beingthis strangely contained thing.
And I was surprised by this becauseDanny, a practicing Buddhist, I
thought he would totally be into theseexplorations of what divinity means.
What myth means.
Batman is an urban myth.
But he just hated the idea thatWonder Woman and her family would
(24:42):
ever have been a Gotham City.
Hated it.
goal with taking on that book wasessentially to do what Pérez had done,
which was restore Diana's mission, whichI felt had gotten lost, restore supporting
costs or, or consolidated, the cast, makesense of all these various versions of
Wonder Woman streamlined her mythology,restore Ares as her primary villain.
(25:04):
and then again with Circe who Ilove as a villain, confront Diana
with someone she actually hates.
An interesting thing with Dianahistorically is that she will always
find something redeeming in a villain.
And I like the idea that there's oneperson on earth who she just despises.
Like if you were to get her in acorner, she would just go ballistic.
(25:26):
And in my head, that was Circe.
I love that there's this one person thatgets under her skin more than anyone does.
And Circe knows that.
my approach to mythology at thetime, 20 years younger, was a
little literal and Pérezian.
It was maybe more superheroGod than divine God.
(25:46):
I wasn't thinking aboutgod's his divine beings.
I was thinking as Pérez -createdbeings who were in War of the Gods,
and Pan had replaced one of them.
Despite the fact that they were creatorbeings, it was established in War of
the Gods, by the Phantom Stranger noless, that there were still a couple
of tiers of godhood above them.
So my sense of that, my sense of Godand the divine and the gods and the
(26:10):
mythology itself was still very comicbooky, still very Pérezian because I
was paying tribute to my art inspirationand his work, but also at 30 that's what
my conception of gods and godhoods andmythology was, it wasn't till I left
Wonder Woman and started doing a lotof I would say deep dives academically,
(26:33):
not just in the myths themselves, butin what myths mean and their function
culturally that's, I think where myconception of what gods were changed.
And I absolutely believe itfiltered into my approach.
to the gods and Historia, who I thinkKelly Sue DeConnick the, the end of the
writer of the book establishes fairlyearly on that these are not what the gods
(26:56):
look like, These are just some conception.
This is for us to understand them,To be able to follow their story,
but they could look like anything.
They're beings of, infinite power.
but they had to look atsomething on the page.
And so in some way, like , this iswhat we decided they looked like.
But what I also did, I think this isgoing to drive some people insane is made
(27:18):
this decision that these are symbols ofgods.They're not the gods themselves.
They're visual symbols thatwe are using to tell a story.
So their garments aremuch more fashion-based.
There's much more avant-garde design.
One of the versions of Athenais like crazy avant-garde.
It's not just a woman in atoga with a spear, although she
(27:38):
does have the spear whatnot.
My conceptions of the gods and themyths were a mix of traditional, but
also, I don't want to say conceptualbecause there's a lot more conceptual
work out there, like higher end, butI think people will find it beautiful.
I think some people areaccustomed to choices.
For example, the gods are multicultural.
(28:00):
And that's on purpose because ourbelief, our working theory was that
the Amazons, a multicultural race,would see their gods differently.
So the gods in our book arereflection of the way the Amazon
see them, or imagine them to be,based on what they know about them.
so I think people are going to flipout about that, that they're not all
like Whitey Whiterson, Greek gods, thegoddesses and the gods, they run the
(28:23):
ethnic gamut I think it will be reallyinteresting to see how people and how you
specifically, what you think of Apollo.
Kelly Sue's take on Apollo was muchdifferent than I'd ever seen in a comic.
He and Artemis are twins.
They're young.
so they are children essentially,like preteens, maybe.
(28:46):
Maybe a little bit older, sotheir visuals they're kids.
and I think that willthrow some people off.
and when I say kids, they're preteen.
So they're not babies.
They're not like, Muppet babiesrunning around, but they're not adults.
Boston (28:59):
my first thought is there's something super creepy about
Apollo chasing tail as a 12 yearold, a woman running and getting
turned into a tree to get away.
Phil (29:10):
Kelly Sue is actually telling a pretty hardcore feminist tale.
It's a modern tale for modern audience.
So her conceptions of the godsare through modern eyes and
she makes no beef about it.
Her idea of old myths are modernizedand so I think mythological
literalists might have some problems.
(29:31):
Because she's also, re-imagining severalof the goddesses through a feminist lens.
And certainly the gods.
Although I don't think he's muchdifferent in previous Marvel or DC comics.
I mean, Zeus is an asshole, but whatI like that Kelly Sue has done is that
she's, I mean, he's very funny and hastons of character, but he's clearly
(29:53):
not a good person, I and he epitomizesthis is a certain kind of masculinity
that is terrifying and destructive.
And she goes there with that.
Apollo epitomizes a certain kind of, likemasculine, sociopathic beauty, all those
wonderful things, little blonde boysget away with 'cause they're so cute.
Cause they're so prized in our society.
(30:14):
So she explored some of thatin Apollo, anyway, I will let
her fill you in on the rest.
One of the things that has always troubledme in Wonder Woman for some reason is,
and I think that I actually think thishas a lot to at the Pérez iteration.
It's people who demand acertain sort of fealty to myth.
Well, that didn't happen inthe Greek myths, and like
(30:35):
well, none of this happened.
Also, there's no Orthodoxversion of a myth.
There's no singular version of a myth.
You can find iterations of anymyths and myths need to change
and grow and evolve to suit theneeds of the people reading them.
And one thing I've grown tired of,, inthe past couple of decades is arguing
(30:57):
often with Wonder Woman fans about theirstrange need to have the mythology in
the book seem accurate to Edith Hamilton?
in ways they don't demand ofany other mythology represented
in comic book fiction.
That's something I've beenvery, very curious about.
Why?
You don't care that much aboutthe Norse gods over in Marvel.
You certainly don't care about Aztec orHindu gods, that's not your thing, but
(31:21):
somehow the Greek gods in Wonder Woman,if they not mythology, if not represented
accurately in their heads, it's wrong.
Boston (31:30):
You talked about how you and Kelly Sue were approaching mythology
for Historia, these gods, whatwe're actually seeing are visual
representation of ideas of these gods.
Where did this conversationstart with you and Kelly Sue?
What did these early conversationslook like between the two of you?
Phil (31:52):
Oh, God, I'm trying to remember.
Kelly Sue's not a Wonder Woman person.
So her knowledge is cursory.
I, which I loved.
So I have this well-known feminist authorcoming out of this material with the most
smidge of an idea of much like 90% of it.
(32:14):
And so we were suddenly deliberated tothink about these characters anyway,
we Part of her mission statement,was, the continued rehabilitation of
Hera as a figure, as the goddess ofwomen, that was very important to her.
and a reexamination of her relationshipwith Zeus, and why she didn't help
the other goddesses create the AmazonsSo I think the conversation started
(32:34):
with what are her conceptions of thesegoddesses based on her reading of a myth,
a little bit of Wonder Woman, and thefeminist lens through which she saw that.
And then we set up a Pinterestboard and started putting up stuff.
And then I brought my own thingwhere I was like, I don't want
to draw a lot of people in togas.
There are togas, but not a lot.
(32:58):
I don't want to do George Perez all over.
George has been done.
I've done George, What do I haveto say about these characters?
This has been my approach to alot of God-like figures in recent
years, as I approached them aselemental forces, Zeus is, entire
body literally looks like a storm.
He's a naked man, His skin is blue.
(33:18):
There's lightning coursing through.
He's like literally a living storm.
I did some research on Demeter, herpatron animals are snakes and lizard.
Like She was a snake goddess.
So just thinking about that,I was like, oh my God, that
imagery is really incredible.
In the creation of the Amazons,they revert to these primal forms.
Foundational forms.
Hera, because we just think it's funny,never appears in the same costume
(33:42):
twice, which is a lot of work, butit was also like her and that was
just fun for me, but it also meantthat every costume had to have some
meaning or some, nothing was random.
and every scene that she's in anew costume, there was a reason.
Some were big and fun, buoyant,very draggy, others were
much more subdued and darker.
There's one where she's in her realm ofpower that's probably the most toga-y.
(34:07):
Also anyone that sees it, it's goingto be like, oh, Alexander McQueen.
Oh, like Galliano.
Like they're going to see thefashion influence is hardcore.
I gave Hippolyta a butterfly dress,which is very Alexander McQueen.
As a matter of fact, I must've beenin my head because when I went back
to look at the reference and wego, this is actually very similar.
So the modify that a little bit, but theidea for Hera of course, the butterflies,
(34:30):
which are so beautiful are also foodfor her peacocks, you know, and all
the murders that, uh, so, um, right.
Like they all flutter about, and it'sall very pretty, but you know, then she's
like pluck and she feeds the peacock.
cause she's constantlysurrounded by peacocks.
Athena has two very avant-garde looks.
So there were severalthings that went into this.
(34:52):
Kelly Sue started with a re-interpretationof who these goddesses were.
She started appending grassmore to say, this is what I
would like them to look like.
And it was it matchedmy intent very closely.
We squabbled very little over whatthings look like, Like we were
on target almost 95% of the time.
The thing I had to get used to was thenotion of Apollo and Artemis as childlike.
(35:16):
I had made them a little bitolder, but once I saw them as
kids, as 12 year olds it openedup them visually, it was stunning.
how great that was.
She and I had a differenceof conception about Ares.
And in the first volume, Ares It'snot actually a huge character.
Zeus is a much more present, figurein the first volume than Ares is,
(35:38):
much more imposing and potent.
And my conception of Ares basedon these mythological readings was
say, he's just like the hot fratguy, who's a racist piece of shit,
but you still want to fuck him.
Right.
Like, and it has, it's so muchto do with our eroticization
of war, and entertainment.
he's just a manifestation of that.
Like he's just hot and terrible.
(36:02):
And in my head, it's a little bit ofa commentary on the terrible things,
we, particularly I would say gay men,are willing to get over when we see
someone that's physically beautiful.
Boston (36:14):
Wow.
Phil (36:16):
So Ares again, is this sort of toxic masculinity personified,
but in a more sexualized way.
and she was fine with that.
Boston (36:24):
The idea of making him gorgeous, you know, he was always
presented that way in Greek statues.
He was oddly desirable and the consortof Aphrodite, this idea that love
and war, sex and war go together.
both elements of passion.
the other thing I think of is that Ares...
(36:44):
Zeus and Hera didn't like him.
he was the son, you know, whycan't you be more like your
brother, Apollo, kind of thing.
Phil (36:50):
I pointed out to Kelly, Sue.
I think it's very interestingthat Hera's children.
Ares is probably the mostimpressive, but he's a douchebag.
And then, Hephaestus, poorguy was in the cellar.
And then their two daughters wereunimpressive in terms of their purview.
Boston (37:09):
Who were their
Phil (37:10):
it was It was Hebe, the cup bearer, and Alethia the goddess of
childbearing, although I swapped her outvisually for Iris, the goddess of the
rainbow, just cause I wanted to try her.
so she's, and I think Iris waslisted as one of Hera's handmaidens,
but what's interesting is to mejust about Hera's children...
This is a spoiler.
when Hera declines to join the othergoddesses to create the Amazons.
(37:32):
And she's like, I have my reasons.
And nobody believes Artemis is just like,she's just afraid of cat or w or whatever.
Artemis is pissed off because theyneed her and Hera has got some
other plan doesn't understand.
but nobody understands.
And that's part of Hera's burden shehas a vision that she can't share.
I was able to draw a scenewhere she's being attended by,
(37:56):
Hebe and Iris the cup bearers.
She's got her head down the whole time.
She's clearly disappointedand Iris has pissed off.
So she's taken out to her coatand putting on new clothes and
clearly there's anger in her face.
And Hera looks at her and it's allsilent unless Kelly Sue added dialogue.
I don't know.
It's all silent.
(38:16):
and Hera just walks off.
Hera can feel the disappointmentof these people, these gods,
these women around her, but cannotyet explain her choice-making.
That was all me.
So Kelly Sue just let me put that in.
I'm so interested in the relationshipswith these minor gods as well.
we covered the bigger Pantheon,but there were others, particularly
(38:38):
their children What about them?
and we didn't have a ton of roomfor it in the first volume, which
is why I'm hoping that Kelly Sue andsubsequent volumes will let us explore.
Boston (38:56):
When you were growing up, what were your favorite stories?
Nursery ryhmes, children'sbooks, movies, comics, cartoons.
As far back as you can remember.
Phil (39:04):
Strangely, as a child, I sought out my fiction in TV.
I was not a big fiction reader.
I was a non-fiction reader, dinosaurbooks, animal books, books on
geology, mythology, I guess wouldcount as fiction, but I did not
read a ton of fiction as a kid.
I watched a ton of fiction,so cartoons, adventure shows,
(39:26):
but I would watch anything.
I was also a museum kid and I've told thisstory many, many times because I love it.
So I would go to any museum fromthe time I was five years old, I
started at La Brea tar pits, but Iwould go to art museums and strange
oddity museums and miniature museums.
It didn't really matter.
The Getty.
And create these fabulous storiesabout the relics within the cases.
(39:47):
And Diane Nelson, former president of DCcomics said, that's why you like them,
because of the stories in the cases.
I've been telling stories in my head,re-imagining the world I live in,
since I can remember, but, I actuallyblame TV for my love for superheroes
because of cartoons more than comics.
Boston (40:08):
Do you remember the earliest cartoons you would have watched?
Phil (40:12):
Superfriends., Scooby-Doo.
Freddy was my first crush that Iremember having, what I remember,
and I hope that it's a true memory.
It's that I just wanted to hug Freddy.
I wanted to be his friendbecause at three or four, that
was the only conception I had.
That's what my idea of what love was,whatever that puppy love I had for him.
but all those Hanna-Barbera cartoonsand certainly live action things like
(40:35):
Land of the Lost, but Super FriendsScooby-Doo Josie and the Pussycats.
I'm sure if it was on TV on Saturdaymorning after 7:00 AM, I was obsessed.
Boston (40:44):
Did you watch the Dungeons and dragons cartoons?
Phil (40:47):
Absolutely.
Boston (40:48):
and have you and your adult life revisited The Odyssey of the
Twelfth Talisman episode of that.
Phil (40:55):
No,
I though.
Boston (40:58):
It's
gay, gay, and a half.
the whole thing is how Erichas finally found a boyfriend.
And my crush was on Hank.
Phil (41:06):
The ranger,
Boston (41:07):
The ranger, Yeah.
Phil (41:09):
As long as it's not the Barbarian.
My crush was on Diana, the Acrobat.
Boston (41:14):
What is something that you believe to be true that you cannot
prove, or that cannot be proven at all?
Phil (41:22):
Interesting question.
I am constantly questioning everythingI believe all the time as I get
older, to the point where, I don'tthink it's good because I end up in
paralysis, because I caveat everything.
And part of that's an attempt to befair, consider things from multiple
sides, and to consider the limitsof my own intellect and experience.
And so many things I believe to be true,I'm like, maybe I'm wrong about that.
(41:48):
I constantly undermine my sense of,authority to believe certain things.
Boston (41:54):
Let me add another dimension to the question.
Making room for all of that, that anybelief that you share right now is
something that is currently up for debate,or is something that you could change.
I'm not asking you to share abelief that you're going to hold
unequivocally until the day you die,but just as you see the world today.
Phil (42:13):
I will need to return to that.
that's probably one of thehardest questions I've ever
been asked in an interview.
Boston (42:18):
Oh, I win.
Phil (42:20):
You do.
You totally win.
Boston (42:22):
in what ways are you the same now, as you were, when you were a little kid?
Phil (42:27):
An interesting thing, despite the last question about questioning
myself is, I'm actually horrifiedat my age that I think I'm exactly
who I was when I was a kid.
One thing I've come to believe that Icannot prove like I think we'd be on the
shadow of a doubt is I generally thinkwe are who we are by a certain age.
(42:48):
And we can learn to sort of work aroundour faults or lean into our strengths.
but I generally, I'm not sureI believe in arcs for people.
I think some people can change perhaps.
but I think maybe it's changing behaviorsas opposed to changing self, like I
absolutely the older I get, I'm like,oh my God, I'm exactly who I was when
(43:09):
I was 15 in the best and worst ways.
and I see that in a lot of people,I think that's, that's true.
but there are certain things that stilltrigger me, that make me really happy.
I still react to certain things.
I crushed in the same wayas, it's so startling to me.
I forget my age.
Sometimes I think of myself as a teenager.
(43:35):
And I'm like oh, I'm not that.
This behavior is probablygross to someone.
I don't even think about it.
I just met an actor recently and, I'vemet him a few times, it was funny because
I was just so excited to talk to him andthen I was like, but I felt like I was on.
And I forget how we were talkingearlier about deep dives, like when
(43:56):
I'm on, I'm on and I'm a lot to take.
And, I could tell he waslike, whoa, pull it back.
I was reacting like an excitedteenager, as opposed to more
of an ideally balanced, adult.
Boston (44:10):
Ideally balanced adult.
Oh boy.
Phil (44:13):
Ideal.
I'm not saying realistic, but then ideal.
As I get older, I realize I have foughtcertain things in my system for so long.
And I think I'm learning tonot fight them to be like, oh,
that's how I am, for good or ill.
Boston (44:28):
Have you ever encountered a phenomenon that you just cannot explain
and if you have, or haven't, how do youthink that has affected your worldview?
Phil (44:37):
Well it's interesting you say, cannot explain because in
my head I haven't explanation.
I can think of two or three thingsI believe are a supernatural.
One I remember was whenmy first boyfriend died.
and the first night I went home, a lightin my bedroom sort of mysteriously.
I had an overhead light and just came onand it, it would flicker on and off for
(44:59):
the first several days after he died.
And I remember saying somethingeffective, I'll be okay.
And it went off and itwas never went on again.
And, I, I basically told Neal andthe universe, I'm going to be fine.
To an outsider who believesin the supernatural, like
he was checking up on me.
And then once I said that it was good.
The second thing I ha th the nightmy mother died, I had a very vivid
(45:23):
dream of her soul leaving her body,giving a quick kiss to me and my
boyfriend, and then taking off.
And I found that strangelycomforting because my mother had a
really difficult terrestrial life.
Her life on earth was hardfrom beginning to end.
And what was really nice aboutit was the sense of liberation.
She was free of this body thathad been plagued her whole life,
(45:47):
by abuse and self-inflicted, andcertainly brought about by others.
And, she just had a really tough andshe, you know, she died of cancer.
And so I loved the ideathat she was free of that.
it was such a vivid dream.
And I don't know if it was my mindcomforting me or not, but, it brought
me great joy and it's when people wouldsay oh, she's right there with you.
(46:10):
I'm like, no, she's not.
I'm glad she's not.
She's finally out, doing what sheshould like her she's free of that.
she doesn't have to be around me.
I'm actually okay with that.
but those two experiences, I probablythe closest things I have to,
supernatural events or things thatwould be considered inexplicable,
but to me made perfect sense.
Boston (46:30):
That's beautiful.
Thank you.
And my last question, when in yourlife have you experienced ecstasy?
Phil (46:38):
God, it's so funny.
I have been thinking about this a lot.
I've been talking to a couple of friendsof mine, how, as we've gotten older,
but particularly post Trump because of,the past five years, we have forgotten
how to experience joy and we don'texperience it without skepticism.
We never just experiencejoy without question.
(47:02):
We approach it, or we experienceit, knowing that it will go away.
And it's really sad.
I've been reading a lotof things about age.
Late forties in men tend tobe their unhappiest times.
I'm textbook when it comes to midlifecrisis and all these sorts of things.
but a lot of it has to do with, Ithink, the passing of my mother, the
new 52 came and sort of wiped out.
(47:25):
And when I say wiped out, like it,it disconnected me from this world
and this line of characters that hadmeant something to me for 30 years.
And it's so fascinating because it wasn'tlike, how could you, it was just a sudden
like, oh, I don't have that anymore.
And then of DC comics moved from NewYork to Los Angeles and the company
(47:46):
changed and it was this weird thingwhere it took me several years to
realize, oh, what I loved is gone.
It just sits an exist in the same waythat it did and it's not coming back.
and that, and then coupled with, theTrump years, et cetera, I just forgot
what it's like to feel joy and or ecstasy.
(48:07):
I'm being very honest right now, but, Ihave had probably two or three experiences
what's it called of transcendent sex whereI'm like, oh, this is ecstasy because.
I don't even feel likeI'm in my body right now.
Like it is so transcendent.
I feel so connected.
that's what this is.
I'm really grateful for that.
Cause I'm not sure how oftenthat happens for people.
(48:29):
And it was with people I caredabout, which makes it even better.
and then what else?
I think my mission for the next 20odd years, will be to do my best to
re-experience joy, transcendence,ecstasy, because I feel like I
have been unable to do so for solong because I don't trust it.
Boston (48:54):
thank you not only for sharing the moments of ecstasy,
but also for that response to it.
because that's why Iincluded this question.
Because I was trying to reconnectto it myself and I want to
hear other people's stories.
There've been so many fights to fight.
we've just been fighting for so long,and fights that need to be fought.
the last, possibly the last throwsof this iteration of patriarchy, The
(49:18):
Trump, just that constant pain andstruggle, waking up to the daily damage
report for four years and and thenCOVID, and I couldn't find it anymore.
And one of the things I love aboutyou sharing it being transcendent
moments in sex is that's deepconnection with another person.
Phil (49:40):
Yeah.
Boston (49:40):
and someone you love, I mean, Yeah.
You can have transcendent sex witha stranger, like that's possible,
but that's not what you described.
And what I think is really important, thereason this question exists, something
that I believe is important is findingjoy on earth, finding joy in life, because
(50:00):
that's what makes it good to be here.
The fights will always be there.
There's always going to be struggle.
There's always going to be challenged.
There's always going to beone nightmare after another.
If that's where your attention is,but finding moments of joy, finding
things in life that you love, that'swhat makes the fight worth doing?
Not just to wipe out the injustice,but to be able to enjoy life.
Phil (50:25):
So I've been going to Provincetown now for 20, some
odd years and through COVID.
I was there for extended periodsof time, six or seven times.
And.
It was fascinating how happy I am there.
And I went multiple times because I wantedto see how much of that happiness was
(50:45):
real or how much that joy was momentary.
And so I went from month.
I'd go for weeks at a time.
I went and winter, I went in fall.
I went in, height of summer.
I only went once this summer to makesure that what I was experiencing
was I guess, real or not fleeting.
But my continued returnsthere, I felt lighter.
(51:08):
I felt joyous.
My friends there made me feel joy.
I wanted to celebrate my friendsthere and it was real it's one of my
drivers I think, is to be there is Isee it transforming COVID it's been
transforming for a while, but COVIDlike accelerated a lot of things.
And so there's a huge mass ofwealthy people that have moved there.
(51:32):
The tenor of the town has changed.
You can feel it.
but what it still has, and it would beunfair to say that it doesn't has like
traditions still maintained, primarilygay people and artists who just float
about in the streets, doing your things.
90 active galleries arereally healthy, gay.
Like it feels like you're in a gaytown, even though technically are not.
(51:55):
So there's no sense of, imminentphysical danger, It's easy to forget
about being gay there or not forgetabout it, but not be worried about it.
To celebrate it because that'sjust the nature of the town.
But one of my thoughts was I wantto be there and be a part of that
tradition and be a part of that spirit.
Cause it feels good, but also stemthe tide and what little way I can.
(52:18):
And what I see is this sort ofencroaching, sterilization right
by the kind of gentrification thatis happening by other gay people.
it's not just old, straight people.
having just returned.
I'm like, what I love about it ismy friends, including some black
friends who of course are skepticalpredominantly white spaces and
rightfully so are like, this is magical.
(52:41):
How does this place exist?
I don't get it.
My best friend was just like, I don'tunderstand how it plays like this exists.
And I said, I don't either, butwhat I do know is I want to make
sure that it continues to exist.
And that seems to be like, amission that would not only give
me purpose, but bring me joy.
astrologically, I'm a cancer withScorpio moon and Scorpio rising.
(53:03):
Almost all of my planets arein Scorpio or Cancer, except
for Venus, which is in Virgo.
What that means is that Ido love through service.
So another thing that appealsto me about that is providing
a home where friends can go.
Cooking for people.
I find that brings me ifnot ecstasy, intense joy.
(53:23):
it's very Cancerian idea, butcreating like a home for other
people chairing mothering.
I like to believe like I finally becamea daddy, but I think I'm more of a mommy.
the idea of making sure everyone haswhat they need it brings me purpose and
seeing my friends happy brings me joy.
Boston (53:37):
In my coaching practice, I use mythic archetypes.
That Hestian and Demeter, vibe ofprotection and care and gathering around
the hearth and the meal and creating home.
That's just what I hear in that.
It's really beautiful.
Phil (53:53):
It is very funny because Hestia and particularly Demeter in Historia are two
of my favorites and has just quite quiet.
She only has one big moment.
but Demeter, like I go all outon and I, I fucking love her.
The more I read about her, the moreI love her and Kelly Sue's written
some amazing scenes with her inherit,like fantastic sisterly scenes.
(54:14):
I like I'm obsessed with.
they're great.
Really great.
that was unexpected how much I wouldgrow to love those two goddesses.
I truly believe that what Kelly hasdone is create something utterly
worthy of, of Wonder Woman fandom.
I really do believe that.
(54:34):
there's one big change.
I think people will freak out about,but when you know why, and when you see
the result that storytelling result ofthat change, or oh my God, of course.
It's so brilliant.
That's the one thing I'll be curioushow people, cause it took me aback.
And then when she explained I'mlike genius, she treats all of these
characters with great deal of respect.
(54:55):
And that's, what I like about it so much.
Boston (54:58):
How can people see your work and where can they find you?
Phil (55:02):
Oh, the standards.
I'm @philjimeneznyc,Instagram and Twitter.
my Twitter following is biggerthan Instagram I'm almost
never on Facebook anymore.
deliberately, I don't have a brainthat can manage, Facebook algorithms.
Boston (55:14):
Phil.
Thank you so much for sitting down withme being so generous with your time, for
always being so kind to me and alwaysbeing so enthusiastic in conversation.
I really appreciate everything you bringto my life, both as a reader of your
work, but also as the human you've been.
I consider you a friend, even though we'veonly met in person a couple of times.
Phil (55:34):
Thank you for that.
I said this, I would be noone without people like you.
Like you support me andI'm grateful for that.
Also.
I happen to like you, whywouldn't I want to talk to you?
no, it's actually, it's a lovely gift.
Boston (55:51):
And that, my friends, was Phil Jimenez.
Thank you again, Phil, for bringing somuch to our conversation and to your fans.
And thank you to our listeners.
What did you think?
Please let me know in the show notescomment section over at mythicpodcast.com,
where you can also find other episodesand a host of other resources.
(56:14):
I'm also on Twitter at mythpod that's M Y T H P O D.
And if you know someone who would digthe show, please share it with them.
Producing this podcast is a labor of love.
Every time I finish an episode.
I am so stoked to share it with you.
It also requires a lot ofwork and a lot of time.
(56:35):
If you're enjoying it and you want tosupport the show, another thing you can
do over at the website is Buy Me a Coffee.
Virtually speaking of course.
Contribute as much as youwant in $5 increments, no
subscription, no commitment.
Thank you again for listeningand until next time.
Journey on.
Welcome to mythic a podcast where we explore meaningful
living through the power of myth.
I'm your host.
Boston Blake.
My guest today is award-winningcomics artist, Phil Jimenez.
(00:24):
In addition to his extensive work for DCand Marvel comics, Phil has also worked
as a creator in film and television.
Traditional print media.
He's done design packagingfor toy companies.
He's created large-scale artworksfor public spaces, schools, museums.
In New York and Chicago.
He's lectured at universities, museums,and the library of Congress on identity
(00:47):
and diversity in entertainment.
And he mentors young designers at theCooper Hewitt National Design Museum.
Greek mythology.
Has played a major role in Phil'swork ever since his first published
project DC's 1991 Wonder Womancrossover event, War of the Gods.
(01:08):
Currently he's workingon Wonder Woman Historia.
A collaboration with writer, Kelly SueDeConnick, which is scheduled to be
released just over a month from now.
On November 30th, 2021.
And I'll just say, I cannot freaking wait.
The art has to be seen to bebelieved and you can see some of it.
(01:29):
Phil has previews onhis social media feeds.
On Twitter and Instagram,he's "at Phil Jimenez N Y C".
And you might want to check thatout as you listen to this episode.
I first met Phil in person severalyears ago at Bent Con a queer comics
convention in Burbank, California.
(01:50):
I had been a huge fan of his eversince War of the Gods and meeting him,
uh, I was kind of a fan boy moment.
He's a scholar, as well as an artist.
He's also a deep and fast thinker.
Now, usually when I sit down todo an interview, I have prepared
questions and a general sense of howI want to see or the conversation.
(02:12):
My guest and I, we chit chat fora few minutes to get comfortable
before starting to record.
Well, that didn't happen this time.
Phil popped up on my zoom screen and wasalready sharing how he was struggling
to get Dionysus just right, why itmattered for HISTORIA for the character.
I knew right then that what Philwas going to bring was way better
(02:34):
than any of my preconceived ideas.
So I put down my notes, I pressedrecord and we were off to the races.
And what came out was a fantastic,deep and wide reaching conversation.
I'm biased.
So I'll let you be the judge.
And like I said, I highly recommendchecking out phil's especially Instagram
(02:56):
feed as part of listening to thisepisode, because we'll be talking
about images that he shared there now.
Hold on tight because here we go.
Phil (03:11):
It was just a figure.
And he's just reclining.
And I spent probably a day onthis figure or more, and it's just.
Boston (03:20):
I haven't seen any Dionysus imagery that you've done yet.
What are you pulling from?
What are the elements that makethis Historia, Dionysus, Dionysus?
What are the images.
Phil (03:32):
Dionysus is interesting in Historia because he is, kind of a
lithe she described him as slinky guy.
Maybe gender non binary and the imagethat I am totally stealing from as
reference is an old Bacchus mosaic.
It's actually a Roman mosaic andhe's in this fabulous I'm not sure
(03:56):
if it's pearls or beads, but he'sin this sort of skirt and outfit.
He's writing a Jaguar as Dionysus will do.
I'm like, that's it that's sort of music.
And so I use this idea and thensome other stuff that Kelly Sue
sent me based on her description.
I have been able to drawhim everywhere else.
(04:16):
What's interesting is thisis his big establishing shot.
And so it's the only onethat I get in this book.
I may think I'm just succumbing tothe pressure I want it to be right.
Everything else that I've doneon this book, not all the art is
perfect, but it all feels right.
It feels right for the thing.
And so I just want to get this right.
It's a moment between Dionysusand Aphrodite and my take on this
(04:38):
current costume, cause all thegods have various looks throughout.
Except for Aphrodite whoremains pretty consistent.
I think each god gets two or threecostumes and looks and whatever.
I did an interview this morningfor DC comics for Wonder
Woman's 80th anniversary.
And the hilarious thing was the one thingthat I wrote to myself, I was like, oh,
(05:01):
this is the thing I want to talk about.
And of course we didn't.
but I wrote them back as ifI could just drop in this one
little thing that would be great.
Boston (05:10):
Can I get a scoop?
What's the one little thingthat you want to talk about for
Wonder Woman's 80th anniversary.
Phil (05:16):
One of the questions, is, what makes Wonder Woman and enduring character.
And I think an interesting and enduringquality of that character is it asks
of its creators and its audience.
some really tough questions about sexand gender and feminism and war and
how we all feel about these things.
And a big question, I think it asksis, is war a feminist ideal or idea?
(05:40):
And there are different, there aredifferent schools of thought on this.
the other thing wascan a single character.
And I know the answer of course, butI think it always begs the question.
Can a single character embody, allof these conflicting ideas, or should
they, The enduring thing to me aboutWonder Woman is that even though
it's mostly subtextual, I'm not evensure people are cognizant of it.
(06:05):
Her primary enemy historicallyhad been Ares or Mars, the god of
war, but in mythological terms,in a Wonder Woman terms, what Ares
represents essentially what we calltoday, a type of toxic masculinity.
and that's, I think why sheendures because in some level she
is a force of resistance to that.
Boston (06:24):
Marston called it.
He said comic books, chief problemwas their blood-curdling masculinity.
That specifically whathe was talking about.
It's not that men are bad andI think he would hold himself
up as an Apollonian type guy.
and this idea that Ares, thatMars was a god out of control.
(06:44):
This is what happens when that partof masculinity gets out of balance.
This is what patriarchy is,is, is out of balance newness.
I gave a presentation in San Francisco anda woman asked me this fantastic question.
She said, do you think, the 2017Wonder Woman would have been
the hit that it was if HillaryClinton had won that election?
(07:04):
It had not occurred to me becausewe were all ready to celebrate.
It was going to be the year of the woman.
We were all there for it.
And instead it became like the yearof resistance and Wonder Woman you
know, stepping up to no man's landbecame something we needed in a
way that we might not have needed.
If we had gone down a smarter timeline.
Phil (07:24):
Oh, I don't disagree at all.
I've said before that Wonder Womanand certainly Black Panther, because
they hold the same psychologicalspace in their various purviews.
are zeitgeist movies as muchas they are good movies.
The moment they hit was themoment they needed to hit.
And they ended up representing somethinglarger than a two hour escapist film.
(07:44):
And so I absolutely believethat Wonder Woman timing
mattered, timing of that film.
And certainly the first two thirdsof that movie really mattered.
I do think it's really profound thatin both the first and second film,
what so many people responded toand want more of are the Amazons.
So clearly that imagery, thatidea, the sort of notion of this,
(08:07):
tribe of powerful women, reallyresonated with almost everyone.
I know, in some way they just wanted more.
And I think that's telling.
Boston (08:16):
Yeah, that's what I hear every time.
I want more of the first,third of the movie.
I want two hours of thator a series of that.
Trina Robbins has an essayWonder Woman, Lesbian or Dyke.
And she talks about the idea of awoman only community that this is the
fantasy, a place where women can go.
(08:37):
Girls can go and just be outside ofpatriarchal history for just a second.
I think men desire that too.
I, I would love to see whatthat's like, although then you
get there and you break it.
Cause you're the man.
Phil (08:50):
it's funny.
I joke about that a lot because,as I've gotten older, I think this
is certainly a reflection of thepolitics of the day shaping ideology,
but I'm very into people, groupsof people having their spaces.
Like I don't need to be.
Right.
Like you have it.
I have plenty go.
During my interview earlier,I kept calling it Paradise
Island, which I think matters.
(09:12):
I was having a debate with my bestfriend and he was giving me the central
argument that the problem with utopiais that utopia is boring or dull.
And I said to him, oh, no,no Paradise Island isn't a
utopia because it's perfect.
It's a utopia because there are no men.
And so the reason it's utopian isthat whenever conflict arises and
(09:33):
there can be plenty, ostensiblyhas no basis in patriarchy.
whatever conflict arises ispurely, I dunno, matriarchal is the
right word, but it is free of thetethers of patriarchy maleness, man.
and that's what makes it utopian,at least for those women.
Boston (09:53):
I hadn't thought of it that way.
It's their utopia because they getto solve the problems themselves.
They emerge out of that cultureAnd they are resolved within that
culture without this other influence.
Phil (10:04):
And don't have to question the origins of their conflicts, is that based
on some law or are we fighting over a man?
Quite frankly.
Or, our perception it's beingshaped by patriarchal imagery.
Like just All that's gone, right.
I'm, I'm reaching for low-hangingfruit, but to imagine a world
. where all of that is absent.
And so all decisions suddenly comesfrom within, and again , from this
(10:26):
culture that they created free of that.
That's what makes it utopia.
Boston (10:30):
I always love conversations with you.
We just dive right intothe deep end of the pool.
Phil (10:34):
I had lunch this weekend with an old friend.
It was the second time in about a month.
I hadn't seen for a long time.
And we deep dove very quickly.
It was not my intent the second time.
It was like, let's havefun and gossip and be gay.
But we dipped a very, very quickly,our respective spouses were there
and I kind apologized to him andhe's no, no, it's cool because I,
he made a comment about it, like wegot there really fast An interesting
(10:56):
thing that's happened over the years.
I think it's always historically true,but certainly Trump years imposed, I
just don't do small talk very well.
My tendency is to deep dive quicklyand I have to remember not everyone is
interested or capable of that as I am.
Boston (11:12):
I resemble that remark.
So this summer I did it was acertificate in applied mythology
through Pacifica Graduate Institute.
And I found 98 people who were asnerdy about mythology as I was.
And it was fantastic because everyone of us had spent a lot of time
(11:33):
thinking about these particular things.
And so when it came together, theconversation was rich and deep.
We talked about myths inmedia and myth in comics.
Are you familiar with aman named David Odorisio?
Phil (11:46):
I might be familiar with the work
. Boston: He has this incredible lecture on YouTube and I'll link to it in the show
notes where he breaks down The PhoenixSaga and how Jean Grey's body goes from
being objectified in her first appearance,all the way through her being the Phoenix,
and then the dark Phoenix, and then theproblematic resurrection of the Phoenix.
(12:11):
Anyway, he was one of theprofessors for , this program.
And one of the things thathe brought up is that.
Not only are comics, not only canthey contain modern myth, but they are
repositories of spiritual information.
Spiritual informationis encoded into them.
And , that really struck me.
(12:33):
In Marston's case, it was Wonder Woman.
Is theosophy like verydeliberately encoded plus his
disc theory and all of that.
Grant Morrison put into TheInvisibles his chaos magic.
I don't know how much of it is conscious.
in a lot of cases.
it just seems to emerge.
A couple of things I want to chime in about, because I had a
(12:53):
very interesting conversation withPaul Levitz four or five years ago.
because I had been asked by,Ramzi Fawaz do you know, Ramzi?
Boston (13:00):
No.
Phil (13:01):
He wrote this incredible book called The New Mutants, which I highly recommend.
Not the comic, but it's a kind of anacademic dissertation, framed by The New
Mutants, the Marvel comics characters.
And, it's an intensely loving, rich book.
Very easy to read, any breaks down themetaphor, power and symbolic power of
(13:22):
many different groups of comic charactersfrom the Justice League to the X-Men,
But his real focus was on The New Mutantsbecause he argued that beyond race and
gender diversity, it was the most classdiverse comic in comics at the time.
And diverse in that the brownestboy who was Sunspot was the
wealthiest, the whitest boyCannonball was the, the poorest.
(13:43):
and that that comic, the way itexplored issues of gender, race and
class, for its time was revolutionary.
He asked me to do the entry onWonder Woman and a new keywords
book that just came out.
And it's all about academic terms.
it's for academics.
It's comics related terms becausecomics scholarship has sort of exploded
(14:05):
in the past five or six years anddoing my research on Wonder Woman,
I kept finding themes that would runthrough various iterations of the book,
forties, sixties, eighties, et cetera.
Repeated themes.
In Wonder Woman's case, one of the onesI found really fascinating was the,, the
notion of another Amazon replacing herfor a brief period of time, and then
(14:28):
Diana reassuming the mantle becauseDiana was the best Wonder Woman.
in my conversation with Paul, he was like,You know why that happened all the time is
because so many scripts were repurposed.
And he said, if for Superman or Batman,a character or an event was very popular,
there was a period of time in the sixtiesand seventies where they would just
(14:51):
repurpose the idea sometimes even thesame script and just rejigger it a little
bit, and reprint a new version of it.
I was taken aback because I thought,oh, these recurring themes, which must
have some sort of mythic bent, if we'reall tapping into them were actually
results of corporate decision-making.
(15:12):
And so of course, Artemis theredheaded, Amazon that replaced Wonder
Woman in the 1990s where we placedDiana is Wonder Woman, was a riff on
Orana who was a riff on this othercharacter in the sixties, late sixties.
Diana was replaced for one issue.
what's interesting to me is clearly thatkind of story resonates with people,
(15:35):
but it's reinforced not through myth,but through corporate decision-making.
So just made me wonder a chickenor the egg, like what comes first.
Clearly audiences respond to it.
There's something inherent in the storyof, for example, someone who wins a
title in this case, Diana wins a titleon Wonder Woman that someone else sweeps
(15:57):
along and takes out title from her.
And she has to return it.
that seems a fairly universal idea.
And that seems to resonate withmany people and people love it.
even when Hippolyta sweptin and became Wonder Woman.
People love seeing , different iterationsof Amazons in that armor because
the stories are always different.
So it resonates, it has mythicqualities, but it is ultimately, it
(16:17):
is their result of corporate decisionmaking because it made the money once.
Boston (16:22):
One thing that that particular story does, it offers
an opportunity to deconstruct, whatmakes Wonder Woman, Wonder Woman?
Orana, that story she's goingto win the contest at all
costs, casualties be damned.
And so Wonder Woman is tryingto save everybody while
Orana's just trying to win.
And Artemis just so much morecomplex and Artemis became a beloved
(16:43):
character like in her own right.
One of the things that we got tosee through her was something that
might've even been missing in Dianawith her at that time, this sort
naivete and a bit of a goody two shoes.
And then we see Artemis asa kind of take no prisoners.
And it's when the two team up thatyou get this bad-ass femme force.
(17:06):
even when Alan Alan Heinberg did Circereplacing Wonder Woman for a hot second.
Circe is, rescuing traffickedwomen using whatever means necessary.
And I'm like, Yeah, go girl.
Nevermind that she's also genocidal.
Phil (17:30):
It gets tossed around a lot superheroes DC and Marvel, that they're
modern gods, the gods wear spandex.
Do you think that's accurate?
Oh my God.
That's heavy and deep question.
That feels like something Ineed to open up my books for.
and open up my research for.
I have very strong feelings aboutthe word God, and gods both in the
(17:51):
real world and out, but particularlyas it pertains to Wonder Woman.
I'm going to narrow thescope just a little bit.
I'm from DC heroes toWonder Woman, DC too.
I think our current and modern conceptionof godhood, particularly when we're
talking about fiction is based onpower, Physical power, as opposed to
divinity, which does something else.
(18:13):
So my understanding of, ofGod, religion, the divine, is
these are unknowable things.
and that through trying to knowthem, often through ritual reading
of text or meditation and natureor whatever, we try to understand
(18:34):
our own place in the universe.
I have a weird, hard time callingthem gods because I attribute to
godhood a certain quality and function.
And here's the thing, I might betalking out of both sides of my mouth.
Many of these characters probablydo exactly that at their best.
They ask their audience to reflect ontheir purpose and their function, their
(18:57):
reason for being, to contemplate theirplace in the universe to think of their
responsibility to community, to thinkabout things like, do we have souls?
Are we interconnected, through aspiritual force beyond ourselves?
I think comic booksuperheroes can do that.
And when they do that, perhapsthey can be considered gods.
(19:21):
But when I hear the term likesuperheroes or modern day gods, I
really think that what most people aretalking about is a highly secular view
of what a god is-- of what God is.
And I think they're talking aboutoften in terms of power level, and
maybe a sense of grander and scope.
I'm not sure how often they'retalking about it from an
internal, contemplative space.
(19:43):
I don't think speaking about Supermanor Wonder Woman as gods makes readers
think about the origins of theuniverse, their place in it, what
purpose their life serves in it.
Maybe they do.
In the interview I gave earlier, I saidthat Wonder Woman gave my life purpose.
I contemplate the world in adifferent way because of her, because
of the way she has been written.
And it's funny, we talk about her andthis is an interesting thing I think
(20:07):
about a lot is, can we talk about anycharacter separate from their creators?
But Wonder Woman's adventures, thatcharacter, the various ways she's been
embodied have driven me, personallyand spiritually in ways that, as
I'm talking around this questionmaybe are like God, in some way.
So maybe they are gods.
(20:28):
I just think when people say that, I wouldbe curious what they mean by the word God
and how divine they think these gods are.
Boston (20:39):
You said Wonder Woman or the way she was written,
gave you a sense of purpose.
How did you encounter Wonder Woman?
What was your first exposure andhow did she give you purpose?
Phil (20:49):
so my first exposure to Wonder Woman was actually the Brady Kids cartoon, but
then I got hooked on the Superfriends andthen of course the Lynda Carter TV show.
I can't honestly say I remember whichI'm pretty sure I saw super friends
first and then saw the live actionshow and changed my life forever.
And what I mean by purpose was my instantconnection to that character primarily is
(21:15):
embodied by Lynda Carter, but certainlythe animated show what ever it was,
whatever spark it gave in my brain.
I latched onto it and held onto it tothe point where I was a teenager, a gay
closeted teenager, and I needed to dosomething to escape the world I was in.
And, I decided I was going towrite and draw Wonder Woman.
(21:35):
At the time I was just going todraw Wonder Woman, cause George
Pérez was going to write it forever.
So that was my goal.
to take over Wonder Woman when GeorgePérez left partly because of what he
did with that character, partly becauseof my inherent love for that character.
But when it say she gave me purpose, I,I think a lot of this is in hindsight,
but she was a driver my whole life,seeking iterations of that character out.
(21:57):
She was a form of entertainment.
she was a space for fantasy.
And then, when I started drawingcomics and, I realized she
could potentially be a job.
There was potential toactually do the work.
And whatever that magic was, and Iuse the word it's broadest sense.
It was a driver.
(22:18):
It gave me something to focus on intocollege and beyond, and even today,
getting ready for these interviews havebeen doing and seeing you like, just
reviewing all the work I've done onWonder Woman research just makes me happy.
It's a lot of joy and it's strange how,when I'm 51, so 46 years Wonder Woman on
(22:39):
the brain have done me a world of good.
I mean, I would be nowhere withouther and the people that worked on her
Boston (22:46):
So your first published work was War of the Gods,
Phil (22:50):
30 years ago.
Boston (22:52):
Ouch 30 years ago.
And then when you took over the WonderWoman book and you were writing and
drawing, and you gave us Gods ofGotham, which was restoring Wonder
Woman to that mythology the mythologicalroots, you brought in a lot of Circe.
Classical mythology has playedinto a lot of your work.
How do you relate to mythologyyourself, as an artist, as a human?
Phil (23:17):
it's different now than it was then.
It's funny that youbring up Gods of Gotham.
As many people know, Gods of Gotham,which I'm glad is as popular as it
is, was not the book that I intended.
Gods to Gotham was aterrible fight editorially.
I had three editors on the firsttwo issues, not because I was
fighting with them, but becauseof just shuffling at DC comics.
(23:38):
And I wanted to do this Batman story.
It was very clear in my head because Iwas very interested in notions of myth
and divinity, and saw parallels betweenBatman's family and Wonder Woman's family.
and Denny O'Neil, God rest his soul whofought me so hard on that book, cause
this was back in the days when Batmanonly lived in the real world, and Batman
(23:59):
was an urban legend and he hated the ideathat Batman was in the Justice League.
He hated anything that sort ofcracked what he believed was
this veneer of reality, which isexactly what Wonder Woman did.
And so he fought me a lot on that project.
And, one of his big things was thatWonder Woman could be in Gotham City,
(24:21):
but no one could ever know she was there.
so the story ends up beingthis strangely contained thing.
And I was surprised by this becauseDanny, a practicing Buddhist, I
thought he would totally be into theseexplorations of what divinity means.
What myth means.
Batman is an urban myth.
But he just hated the idea thatWonder Woman and her family would
(24:42):
ever have been a Gotham City.
Hated it.
goal with taking on that book wasessentially to do what Pérez had done,
which was restore Diana's mission, whichI felt had gotten lost, restore supporting
costs or, or consolidated, the cast, makesense of all these various versions of
Wonder Woman streamlined her mythology,restore Ares as her primary villain.
(25:04):
and then again with Circe who Ilove as a villain, confront Diana
with someone she actually hates.
An interesting thing with Dianahistorically is that she will always
find something redeeming in a villain.
And I like the idea that there's oneperson on earth who she just despises.
Like if you were to get her in acorner, she would just go ballistic.
(25:26):
And in my head, that was Circe.
I love that there's this one person thatgets under her skin more than anyone does.
And Circe knows that.
my approach to mythology at thetime, 20 years younger, was a
little literal and Pérezian.
It was maybe more superheroGod than divine God.
(25:46):
I wasn't thinking aboutgod's his divine beings.
I was thinking as Pérez -createdbeings who were in War of the Gods,
and Pan had replaced one of them.
Despite the fact that they were creatorbeings, it was established in War of
the Gods, by the Phantom Stranger noless, that there were still a couple
of tiers of godhood above them.
So my sense of that, my sense of Godand the divine and the gods and the
(26:10):
mythology itself was still very comicbooky, still very Pérezian because I
was paying tribute to my art inspirationand his work, but also at 30 that's what
my conception of gods and godhoods andmythology was, it wasn't till I left
Wonder Woman and started doing a lotof I would say deep dives academically,
(26:33):
not just in the myths themselves, butin what myths mean and their function
culturally that's, I think where myconception of what gods were changed.
And I absolutely believe itfiltered into my approach.
to the gods and Historia, who I thinkKelly Sue DeConnick the, the end of the
writer of the book establishes fairlyearly on that these are not what the gods
(26:56):
look like, These are just some conception.
This is for us to understand them,To be able to follow their story,
but they could look like anything.
They're beings of, infinite power.
but they had to look atsomething on the page.
And so in some way, like , this iswhat we decided they looked like.
But what I also did, I think this isgoing to drive some people insane is made
(27:18):
this decision that these are symbols ofgods.They're not the gods themselves.
They're visual symbols thatwe are using to tell a story.
So their garments aremuch more fashion-based.
There's much more avant-garde design.
One of the versions of Athenais like crazy avant-garde.
It's not just a woman in atoga with a spear, although she
(27:38):
does have the spear whatnot.
My conceptions of the gods and themyths were a mix of traditional, but
also, I don't want to say conceptualbecause there's a lot more conceptual
work out there, like higher end, butI think people will find it beautiful.
I think some people areaccustomed to choices.
For example, the gods are multicultural.
(28:00):
And that's on purpose because ourbelief, our working theory was that
the Amazons, a multicultural race,would see their gods differently.
So the gods in our book arereflection of the way the Amazon
see them, or imagine them to be,based on what they know about them.
so I think people are going to flipout about that, that they're not all
like Whitey Whiterson, Greek gods, thegoddesses and the gods, they run the
(28:23):
ethnic gamut I think it will be reallyinteresting to see how people and how you
specifically, what you think of Apollo.
Kelly Sue's take on Apollo was muchdifferent than I'd ever seen in a comic.
He and Artemis are twins.
They're young.
so they are children essentially,like preteens, maybe.
(28:46):
Maybe a little bit older, sotheir visuals they're kids.
and I think that willthrow some people off.
and when I say kids, they're preteen.
So they're not babies.
They're not like, Muppet babiesrunning around, but they're not adults.
Boston (28:59):
my first thought is there's something super creepy about
Apollo chasing tail as a 12 yearold, a woman running and getting
turned into a tree to get away.
Phil (29:10):
Kelly Sue is actually telling a pretty hardcore feminist tale.
It's a modern tale for modern audience.
So her conceptions of the godsare through modern eyes and
she makes no beef about it.
Her idea of old myths are modernizedand so I think mythological
literalists might have some problems.
(29:31):
Because she's also, re-imagining severalof the goddesses through a feminist lens.
And certainly the gods.
Although I don't think he's muchdifferent in previous Marvel or DC comics.
I mean, Zeus is an asshole, but whatI like that Kelly Sue has done is that
she's, I mean, he's very funny and hastons of character, but he's clearly
(29:53):
not a good person, I and he epitomizesthis is a certain kind of masculinity
that is terrifying and destructive.
And she goes there with that.
Apollo epitomizes a certain kind of, likemasculine, sociopathic beauty, all those
wonderful things, little blonde boysget away with 'cause they're so cute.
Cause they're so prized in our society.
(30:14):
So she explored some of thatin Apollo, anyway, I will let
her fill you in on the rest.
One of the things that has always troubledme in Wonder Woman for some reason is,
and I think that I actually think thishas a lot to at the Pérez iteration.
It's people who demand acertain sort of fealty to myth.
Well, that didn't happen inthe Greek myths, and like
(30:35):
well, none of this happened.
Also, there's no Orthodoxversion of a myth.
There's no singular version of a myth.
You can find iterations of anymyths and myths need to change
and grow and evolve to suit theneeds of the people reading them.
And one thing I've grown tired of,, inthe past couple of decades is arguing
(30:57):
often with Wonder Woman fans about theirstrange need to have the mythology in
the book seem accurate to Edith Hamilton?
in ways they don't demand ofany other mythology represented
in comic book fiction.
That's something I've beenvery, very curious about.
Why?
You don't care that much aboutthe Norse gods over in Marvel.
You certainly don't care about Aztec orHindu gods, that's not your thing, but
(31:21):
somehow the Greek gods in Wonder Woman,if they not mythology, if not represented
accurately in their heads, it's wrong.
Boston (31:30):
You talked about how you and Kelly Sue were approaching mythology
for Historia, these gods, whatwe're actually seeing are visual
representation of ideas of these gods.
Where did this conversationstart with you and Kelly Sue?
What did these early conversationslook like between the two of you?
Phil (31:52):
Oh, God, I'm trying to remember.
Kelly Sue's not a Wonder Woman person.
So her knowledge is cursory.
I, which I loved.
So I have this well-known feminist authorcoming out of this material with the most
smidge of an idea of much like 90% of it.
(32:14):
And so we were suddenly deliberated tothink about these characters anyway,
we Part of her mission statement,was, the continued rehabilitation of
Hera as a figure, as the goddess ofwomen, that was very important to her.
and a reexamination of her relationshipwith Zeus, and why she didn't help
the other goddesses create the AmazonsSo I think the conversation started
(32:34):
with what are her conceptions of thesegoddesses based on her reading of a myth,
a little bit of Wonder Woman, and thefeminist lens through which she saw that.
And then we set up a Pinterestboard and started putting up stuff.
And then I brought my own thingwhere I was like, I don't want
to draw a lot of people in togas.
There are togas, but not a lot.
(32:58):
I don't want to do George Perez all over.
George has been done.
I've done George, What do I haveto say about these characters?
This has been my approach to alot of God-like figures in recent
years, as I approached them aselemental forces, Zeus is, entire
body literally looks like a storm.
He's a naked man, His skin is blue.
(33:18):
There's lightning coursing through.
He's like literally a living storm.
I did some research on Demeter, herpatron animals are snakes and lizard.
Like She was a snake goddess.
So just thinking about that,I was like, oh my God, that
imagery is really incredible.
In the creation of the Amazons,they revert to these primal forms.
Foundational forms.
Hera, because we just think it's funny,never appears in the same costume
(33:42):
twice, which is a lot of work, butit was also like her and that was
just fun for me, but it also meantthat every costume had to have some
meaning or some, nothing was random.
and every scene that she's in anew costume, there was a reason.
Some were big and fun, buoyant,very draggy, others were
much more subdued and darker.
There's one where she's in her realm ofpower that's probably the most toga-y.
(34:07):
Also anyone that sees it, it's goingto be like, oh, Alexander McQueen.
Oh, like Galliano.
Like they're going to see thefashion influence is hardcore.
I gave Hippolyta a butterfly dress,which is very Alexander McQueen.
As a matter of fact, I must've beenin my head because when I went back
to look at the reference and wego, this is actually very similar.
So the modify that a little bit, but theidea for Hera of course, the butterflies,
(34:30):
which are so beautiful are also foodfor her peacocks, you know, and all
the murders that, uh, so, um, right.
Like they all flutter about, and it'sall very pretty, but you know, then she's
like pluck and she feeds the peacock.
cause she's constantlysurrounded by peacocks.
Athena has two very avant-garde looks.
So there were severalthings that went into this.
(34:52):
Kelly Sue started with a re-interpretationof who these goddesses were.
She started appending grassmore to say, this is what I
would like them to look like.
And it was it matchedmy intent very closely.
We squabbled very little over whatthings look like, Like we were
on target almost 95% of the time.
The thing I had to get used to was thenotion of Apollo and Artemis as childlike.
(35:16):
I had made them a little bitolder, but once I saw them as
kids, as 12 year olds it openedup them visually, it was stunning.
how great that was.
She and I had a differenceof conception about Ares.
And in the first volume, Ares It'snot actually a huge character.
Zeus is a much more present, figurein the first volume than Ares is,
(35:38):
much more imposing and potent.
And my conception of Ares basedon these mythological readings was
say, he's just like the hot fratguy, who's a racist piece of shit,
but you still want to fuck him.
Right.
Like, and it has, it's so muchto do with our eroticization
of war, and entertainment.
he's just a manifestation of that.
Like he's just hot and terrible.
(36:02):
And in my head, it's a little bit ofa commentary on the terrible things,
we, particularly I would say gay men,are willing to get over when we see
someone that's physically beautiful.
Boston (36:14):
Wow.
Phil (36:16):
So Ares again, is this sort of toxic masculinity personified,
but in a more sexualized way.
and she was fine with that.
Boston (36:24):
The idea of making him gorgeous, you know, he was always
presented that way in Greek statues.
He was oddly desirable and the consortof Aphrodite, this idea that love
and war, sex and war go together.
both elements of passion.
the other thing I think of is that Ares...
(36:44):
Zeus and Hera didn't like him.
he was the son, you know, whycan't you be more like your
brother, Apollo, kind of thing.
Phil (36:50):
I pointed out to Kelly, Sue.
I think it's very interestingthat Hera's children.
Ares is probably the mostimpressive, but he's a douchebag.
And then, Hephaestus, poorguy was in the cellar.
And then their two daughters wereunimpressive in terms of their purview.
Boston (37:09):
Who were their
Phil (37:10):
it was It was Hebe, the cup bearer, and Alethia the goddess of
childbearing, although I swapped her outvisually for Iris, the goddess of the
rainbow, just cause I wanted to try her.
so she's, and I think Iris waslisted as one of Hera's handmaidens,
but what's interesting is to mejust about Hera's children...
This is a spoiler.
when Hera declines to join the othergoddesses to create the Amazons.
(37:32):
And she's like, I have my reasons.
And nobody believes Artemis is just like,she's just afraid of cat or w or whatever.
Artemis is pissed off because theyneed her and Hera has got some
other plan doesn't understand.
but nobody understands.
And that's part of Hera's burden shehas a vision that she can't share.
I was able to draw a scenewhere she's being attended by,
(37:56):
Hebe and Iris the cup bearers.
She's got her head down the whole time.
She's clearly disappointedand Iris has pissed off.
So she's taken out to her coatand putting on new clothes and
clearly there's anger in her face.
And Hera looks at her and it's allsilent unless Kelly Sue added dialogue.
I don't know.
It's all silent.
(38:16):
and Hera just walks off.
Hera can feel the disappointmentof these people, these gods,
these women around her, but cannotyet explain her choice-making.
That was all me.
So Kelly Sue just let me put that in.
I'm so interested in the relationshipswith these minor gods as well.
we covered the bigger Pantheon,but there were others, particularly
(38:38):
their children What about them?
and we didn't have a ton of roomfor it in the first volume, which
is why I'm hoping that Kelly Sue andsubsequent volumes will let us explore.
Boston (38:56):
When you were growing up, what were your favorite stories?
Nursery ryhmes, children'sbooks, movies, comics, cartoons.
As far back as you can remember.
Phil (39:04):
Strangely, as a child, I sought out my fiction in TV.
I was not a big fiction reader.
I was a non-fiction reader, dinosaurbooks, animal books, books on
geology, mythology, I guess wouldcount as fiction, but I did not
read a ton of fiction as a kid.
I watched a ton of fiction,so cartoons, adventure shows,
(39:26):
but I would watch anything.
I was also a museum kid and I've told thisstory many, many times because I love it.
So I would go to any museum fromthe time I was five years old, I
started at La Brea tar pits, but Iwould go to art museums and strange
oddity museums and miniature museums.
It didn't really matter.
The Getty.
And create these fabulous storiesabout the relics within the cases.
(39:47):
And Diane Nelson, former president of DCcomics said, that's why you like them,
because of the stories in the cases.
I've been telling stories in my head,re-imagining the world I live in,
since I can remember, but, I actuallyblame TV for my love for superheroes
because of cartoons more than comics.
Boston (40:08):
Do you remember the earliest cartoons you would have watched?
Phil (40:12):
Superfriends., Scooby-Doo.
Freddy was my first crush that Iremember having, what I remember,
and I hope that it's a true memory.
It's that I just wanted to hug Freddy.
I wanted to be his friendbecause at three or four, that
was the only conception I had.
That's what my idea of what love was,whatever that puppy love I had for him.
but all those Hanna-Barbera cartoonsand certainly live action things like
(40:35):
Land of the Lost, but Super FriendsScooby-Doo Josie and the Pussycats.
I'm sure if it was on TV on Saturdaymorning after 7:00 AM, I was obsessed.
Boston (40:44):
Did you watch the Dungeons and dragons cartoons?
Phil (40:47):
Absolutely.
Boston (40:48):
and have you and your adult life revisited The Odyssey of the
Twelfth Talisman episode of that.
Phil (40:55):
No,
I though.
Boston (40:58):
It's
gay, gay, and a half.
the whole thing is how Erichas finally found a boyfriend.
And my crush was on Hank.
Phil (41:06):
The ranger,
Boston (41:07):
The ranger, Yeah.
Phil (41:09):
As long as it's not the Barbarian.
My crush was on Diana, the Acrobat.
Boston (41:14):
What is something that you believe to be true that you cannot
prove, or that cannot be proven at all?
Phil (41:22):
Interesting question.
I am constantly questioning everythingI believe all the time as I get
older, to the point where, I don'tthink it's good because I end up in
paralysis, because I caveat everything.
And part of that's an attempt to befair, consider things from multiple
sides, and to consider the limitsof my own intellect and experience.
And so many things I believe to be true,I'm like, maybe I'm wrong about that.
(41:48):
I constantly undermine my sense of,authority to believe certain things.
Boston (41:54):
Let me add another dimension to the question.
Making room for all of that, that anybelief that you share right now is
something that is currently up for debate,or is something that you could change.
I'm not asking you to share abelief that you're going to hold
unequivocally until the day you die,but just as you see the world today.
Phil (42:13):
I will need to return to that.
that's probably one of thehardest questions I've ever
been asked in an interview.
Boston (42:18):
Oh, I win.
Phil (42:20):
You do.
You totally win.
Boston (42:22):
in what ways are you the same now, as you were, when you were a little kid?
Phil (42:27):
An interesting thing, despite the last question about questioning
myself is, I'm actually horrifiedat my age that I think I'm exactly
who I was when I was a kid.
One thing I've come to believe that Icannot prove like I think we'd be on the
shadow of a doubt is I generally thinkwe are who we are by a certain age.
(42:48):
And we can learn to sort of work aroundour faults or lean into our strengths.
but I generally, I'm not sureI believe in arcs for people.
I think some people can change perhaps.
but I think maybe it's changing behaviorsas opposed to changing self, like I
absolutely the older I get, I'm like,oh my God, I'm exactly who I was when
(43:09):
I was 15 in the best and worst ways.
and I see that in a lot of people,I think that's, that's true.
but there are certain things that stilltrigger me, that make me really happy.
I still react to certain things.
I crushed in the same wayas, it's so startling to me.
I forget my age.
Sometimes I think of myself as a teenager.
(43:35):
And I'm like oh, I'm not that.
This behavior is probablygross to someone.
I don't even think about it.
I just met an actor recently and, I'vemet him a few times, it was funny because
I was just so excited to talk to him andthen I was like, but I felt like I was on.
And I forget how we were talkingearlier about deep dives, like when
(43:56):
I'm on, I'm on and I'm a lot to take.
And, I could tell he waslike, whoa, pull it back.
I was reacting like an excitedteenager, as opposed to more
of an ideally balanced, adult.
Boston (44:10):
Ideally balanced adult.
Oh boy.
Phil (44:13):
Ideal.
I'm not saying realistic, but then ideal.
As I get older, I realize I have foughtcertain things in my system for so long.
And I think I'm learning tonot fight them to be like, oh,
that's how I am, for good or ill.
Boston (44:28):
Have you ever encountered a phenomenon that you just cannot explain
and if you have, or haven't, how do youthink that has affected your worldview?
Phil (44:37):
Well it's interesting you say, cannot explain because in
my head I haven't explanation.
I can think of two or three thingsI believe are a supernatural.
One I remember was whenmy first boyfriend died.
and the first night I went home, a lightin my bedroom sort of mysteriously.
I had an overhead light and just came onand it, it would flicker on and off for
(44:59):
the first several days after he died.
And I remember saying somethingeffective, I'll be okay.
And it went off and itwas never went on again.
And, I, I basically told Neal andthe universe, I'm going to be fine.
To an outsider who believesin the supernatural, like
he was checking up on me.
And then once I said that it was good.
The second thing I ha th the nightmy mother died, I had a very vivid
(45:23):
dream of her soul leaving her body,giving a quick kiss to me and my
boyfriend, and then taking off.
And I found that strangelycomforting because my mother had a
really difficult terrestrial life.
Her life on earth was hardfrom beginning to end.
And what was really nice aboutit was the sense of liberation.
She was free of this body thathad been plagued her whole life,
(45:47):
by abuse and self-inflicted, andcertainly brought about by others.
And, she just had a really tough andshe, you know, she died of cancer.
And so I loved the ideathat she was free of that.
it was such a vivid dream.
And I don't know if it was my mindcomforting me or not, but, it brought
me great joy and it's when people wouldsay oh, she's right there with you.
(46:10):
I'm like, no, she's not.
I'm glad she's not.
She's finally out, doing what sheshould like her she's free of that.
she doesn't have to be around me.
I'm actually okay with that.
but those two experiences, I probablythe closest things I have to,
supernatural events or things thatwould be considered inexplicable,
but to me made perfect sense.
Boston (46:30):
That's beautiful.
Thank you.
And my last question, when in yourlife have you experienced ecstasy?
Phil (46:38):
God, it's so funny.
I have been thinking about this a lot.
I've been talking to a couple of friendsof mine, how, as we've gotten older,
but particularly post Trump because of,the past five years, we have forgotten
how to experience joy and we don'texperience it without skepticism.
We never just experiencejoy without question.
(47:02):
We approach it, or we experienceit, knowing that it will go away.
And it's really sad.
I've been reading a lotof things about age.
Late forties in men tend tobe their unhappiest times.
I'm textbook when it comes to midlifecrisis and all these sorts of things.
but a lot of it has to do with, Ithink, the passing of my mother, the
new 52 came and sort of wiped out.
(47:25):
And when I say wiped out, like it,it disconnected me from this world
and this line of characters that hadmeant something to me for 30 years.
And it's so fascinating because it wasn'tlike, how could you, it was just a sudden
like, oh, I don't have that anymore.
And then of DC comics moved from NewYork to Los Angeles and the company
(47:46):
changed and it was this weird thingwhere it took me several years to
realize, oh, what I loved is gone.
It just sits an exist in the same waythat it did and it's not coming back.
and that, and then coupled with, theTrump years, et cetera, I just forgot
what it's like to feel joy and or ecstasy.
(48:07):
I'm being very honest right now, but, Ihave had probably two or three experiences
what's it called of transcendent sex whereI'm like, oh, this is ecstasy because.
I don't even feel likeI'm in my body right now.
Like it is so transcendent.
I feel so connected.
that's what this is.
I'm really grateful for that.
Cause I'm not sure how oftenthat happens for people.
(48:29):
And it was with people I caredabout, which makes it even better.
and then what else?
I think my mission for the next 20odd years, will be to do my best to
re-experience joy, transcendence,ecstasy, because I feel like I
have been unable to do so for solong because I don't trust it.
Boston (48:54):
thank you not only for sharing the moments of ecstasy,
but also for that response to it.
because that's why Iincluded this question.
Because I was trying to reconnectto it myself and I want to
hear other people's stories.
There've been so many fights to fight.
we've just been fighting for so long,and fights that need to be fought.
the last, possibly the last throwsof this iteration of patriarchy, The
(49:18):
Trump, just that constant pain andstruggle, waking up to the daily damage
report for four years and and thenCOVID, and I couldn't find it anymore.
And one of the things I love aboutyou sharing it being transcendent
moments in sex is that's deepconnection with another person.
Phil (49:40):
Yeah.
Boston (49:40):
and someone you love, I mean, Yeah.
You can have transcendent sex witha stranger, like that's possible,
but that's not what you described.
And what I think is really important, thereason this question exists, something
that I believe is important is findingjoy on earth, finding joy in life, because
(50:00):
that's what makes it good to be here.
The fights will always be there.
There's always going to be struggle.
There's always going to be challenged.
There's always going to beone nightmare after another.
If that's where your attention is,but finding moments of joy, finding
things in life that you love, that'swhat makes the fight worth doing?
Not just to wipe out the injustice,but to be able to enjoy life.
Phil (50:25):
So I've been going to Provincetown now for 20, some
odd years and through COVID.
I was there for extended periodsof time, six or seven times.
And.
It was fascinating how happy I am there.
And I went multiple times because I wantedto see how much of that happiness was
(50:45):
real or how much that joy was momentary.
And so I went from month.
I'd go for weeks at a time.
I went and winter, I went in fall.
I went in, height of summer.
I only went once this summer to makesure that what I was experiencing
was I guess, real or not fleeting.
But my continued returnsthere, I felt lighter.
(51:08):
I felt joyous.
My friends there made me feel joy.
I wanted to celebrate my friendsthere and it was real it's one of my
drivers I think, is to be there is Isee it transforming COVID it's been
transforming for a while, but COVIDlike accelerated a lot of things.
And so there's a huge mass ofwealthy people that have moved there.
(51:32):
The tenor of the town has changed.
You can feel it.
but what it still has, and it would beunfair to say that it doesn't has like
traditions still maintained, primarilygay people and artists who just float
about in the streets, doing your things.
90 active galleries arereally healthy, gay.
Like it feels like you're in a gaytown, even though technically are not.
(51:55):
So there's no sense of, imminentphysical danger, It's easy to forget
about being gay there or not forgetabout it, but not be worried about it.
To celebrate it because that'sjust the nature of the town.
But one of my thoughts was I wantto be there and be a part of that
tradition and be a part of that spirit.
Cause it feels good, but also stemthe tide and what little way I can.
(52:18):
And what I see is this sort ofencroaching, sterilization right
by the kind of gentrification thatis happening by other gay people.
it's not just old, straight people.
having just returned.
I'm like, what I love about it ismy friends, including some black
friends who of course are skepticalpredominantly white spaces and
rightfully so are like, this is magical.
(52:41):
How does this place exist?
I don't get it.
My best friend was just like, I don'tunderstand how it plays like this exists.
And I said, I don't either, butwhat I do know is I want to make
sure that it continues to exist.
And that seems to be like, amission that would not only give
me purpose, but bring me joy.
astrologically, I'm a cancer withScorpio moon and Scorpio rising.
(53:03):
Almost all of my planets arein Scorpio or Cancer, except
for Venus, which is in Virgo.
What that means is that Ido love through service.
So another thing that appealsto me about that is providing
a home where friends can go.
Cooking for people.
I find that brings me ifnot ecstasy, intense joy.
(53:23):
it's very Cancerian idea, butcreating like a home for other
people chairing mothering.
I like to believe like I finally becamea daddy, but I think I'm more of a mommy.
the idea of making sure everyone haswhat they need it brings me purpose and
seeing my friends happy brings me joy.
Boston (53:37):
In my coaching practice, I use mythic archetypes.
That Hestian and Demeter, vibe ofprotection and care and gathering around
the hearth and the meal and creating home.
That's just what I hear in that.
It's really beautiful.
Phil (53:53):
It is very funny because Hestia and particularly Demeter in Historia are two
of my favorites and has just quite quiet.
She only has one big moment.
but Demeter, like I go all outon and I, I fucking love her.
The more I read about her, the moreI love her and Kelly Sue's written
some amazing scenes with her inherit,like fantastic sisterly scenes.
(54:14):
I like I'm obsessed with.
they're great.
Really great.
that was unexpected how much I wouldgrow to love those two goddesses.
I truly believe that what Kelly hasdone is create something utterly
worthy of, of Wonder Woman fandom.
I really do believe that.
(54:34):
there's one big change.
I think people will freak out about,but when you know why, and when you see
the result that storytelling result ofthat change, or oh my God, of course.
It's so brilliant.
That's the one thing I'll be curioushow people, cause it took me aback.
And then when she explained I'mlike genius, she treats all of these
characters with great deal of respect.
(54:55):
And that's, what I like about it so much.
Boston (54:58):
How can people see your work and where can they find you?
Phil (55:02):
Oh, the standards.
I'm @philjimeneznyc,Instagram and Twitter.
my Twitter following is biggerthan Instagram I'm almost
never on Facebook anymore.
deliberately, I don't have a brainthat can manage, Facebook algorithms.
Boston (55:14):
Phil.
Thank you so much for sitting down withme being so generous with your time, for
always being so kind to me and alwaysbeing so enthusiastic in conversation.
I really appreciate everything you bringto my life, both as a reader of your
work, but also as the human you've been.
I consider you a friend, even though we'veonly met in person a couple of times.
Phil (55:34):
Thank you for that.
I said this, I would be noone without people like you.
Like you support me andI'm grateful for that.
Also.
I happen to like you, whywouldn't I want to talk to you?
no, it's actually, it's a lovely gift.
Boston (55:51):
And that, my friends, was Phil Jimenez.
Thank you again, Phil, for bringing somuch to our conversation and to your fans.
And thank you to our listeners.
What did you think?
Please let me know in the show notescomment section over at mythicpodcast.com,
where you can also find other episodesand a host of other resources.
(56:14):
I'm also on Twitter at mythpod that's M Y T H P O D.
And if you know someone who would digthe show, please share it with them.
Producing this podcast is a labor of love.
Every time I finish an episode.
I am so stoked to share it with you.
It also requires a lot ofwork and a lot of time.
(56:35):
If you're enjoying it and you want tosupport the show, another thing you can
do over at the website is Buy Me a Coffee.
Virtually speaking of course.
Contribute as much as youwant in $5 increments, no
subscription, no commitment.
Thank you again for listeningand until next time.
Journey on.
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