'Superman/Wonder Woman': Love, superhero style

Brian Truitt | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Superman and Wonder Woman are an item! | BackStage Carly Mallenbaum hosts BackStage about the second issue of 'Superman Wonder Woman,' out today. What happens when Superman meets Wonder Woman's parents?

The Man of Steel meets Diana%27s family in %27Superman/Wonder Woman%27 No. 2

Creative team balances relationship drama with action-packed scenes

Not everybody is pleased that they%27re a supercouple

It's not a "meet cute" moment in a favorite romantic comedy but just as memorable a courtship exchange: Superman brings Wonder Woman an exotic flower from nearby his arctic Fortress of Solitude, and she wants to go teach him some fight moves.

Writer Charles Soule (Swamp Thing) and artist Tony Daniel (Action Comics) are exploring the mostly uncharted dating life of superheroes and balancing it with epic action sequences in their DC Comics series Superman/Wonder Woman.

And that aforementioned scene in the first issue showcases one of the main things that Soule wants out of his series: a deep-dive into superpowered relationships. (So far, fans are feeling the love, too. According to Diamond Comics Distributors, the debut issue was the No. 7 comic in all of October, out-selling even Neil Gaiman's much-ballyhooed return to The Sandman.)

"They're both coming at it from the place of 'I want to share something of myself with this other person,' which is a noble goal. But they're both very different," Soule says of his supercouple.

"Superman was raised in the apple-pie Kansas town of Smallville, and Diana was raised in a warrior society on an island in the sea that no one gets to go to. They bring very different things to the table, but they both have the same goal: to share something of themselves and try to build something together."

Out Wednesday, Superman/Wonder Woman No. 2 begins with an epic throwdown between Wonder Woman and the powerful Man of Steel foe Doomsday after a mysterious force knocked the heck out of Superman. More conflict arises with the likes of Kryptonian foes Zod and Faora and things ramp in upcoming issues — especially the last few buzzworthy pages, says Soule — as the power couple's relationship goes public.

Superman and Wonder Woman each have friends they can turn to who are rooting for a successful lovelife — Cat Grant may not know her journalist partner, Clark Kent, is actually Superman but she digs the idea of him having a hot date.

Not everybody is so happy about this coupling. Issue 2 features a meet-the-parents scenario where Superman and Wonder Woman go to visit Diana's family, the Olympian gods that Brian Azzarello has been writing in the main Wonder Woman series.

"The gods are very imperious, they're very cocky, they mess with people because they think they're superior to everyone on Earth, but then you have Superman, who is basically a god in his own right, and there's some really fun tension," Soule says.

Because it's a big superhero story featuring two of DC Comics' most famous characters, "it's tempting and almost habitual to write them as icons," the writer adds. "That's how they come across — if you were to see Superman or Wonder Woman, you wouldn't be able to process them as a person."

But it's writing them as people that is the key, according to Soule, who has been digging into what makes them tick and do the things they do for the relationship aspect.

"I feel like I'm more in the head of Superman and Wonder Woman than I've ever been before as a reader," he says, "which you would hope me being the person writing it."

As far as those courtship experiences and the intimate moments between the two, Soule's primary source is drawing from his own emotional experiences and letting them color a relationship between a man and woman who are more than just superfriends.

"I've never had one that's precisely like Superman and Wonder Woman — I don't think anyone has, which is why it's an interesting book to read," Soule says. "But at the same time I can extrapolate from situations I've been in and discussions I've had with friends I've known, and I try and make it feel as real as possible."

In both the action beats and the love story, Soule and Daniel strive to balance the ordinary and the extraordinary.

"It would be a terrible waste to have a comic book with Tony Daniel drawing them having milkshakes the whole time," Soule says.

A large splash page with Superman lifting a large Norwegian ship to save the day is something the artist is well known for doing, yet it's a different kind of thrill in the quieter moments where Daniel has to craft the right character detail for a scene, such as a Superman smirk or a glint in Wonder Woman's eye.

He works hard on those scenes "to convey their emotional responses and interactions with each other so they're not just cardboard cutouts I paste on the page," Daniel says.

"Superman is still Superman, but if I can catch that vulnerability in a certain moment he might be having with Wonder Woman, or vice versa for Wonder Woman with Superman, I'm happy with that."

Not retreading the same old kind of superhero story is refreshing for readers but also Soule and Daniel as creators.

It's times such as the one in an upcoming issue when Wonder Woman is discussing with a confidante how to handle something personal with Superman "that make these characters a little bit more identifiable," Daniel says.

"Then when we get to see them in harm's way and fighting these superpowered beings and monsters, it makes us care for the characters that much more when we can really relate to them."