Wonder Woman is queer, her writer has confirmed: “I don’t know how much clearer I can make it”.

Greg Rucka, who worked on Wonder Woman for DC Comics throughout the 2000s, returned to DC Comics this year for the new Rebirth series commemorating her 75th year in print.

He told the comic news site Comicosity the character had “obviously” been in love and relationships with other women, as has long been speculated by fans.

Wonder Woman is known as the warrior princess Diana in her homeland of Themyscira, an island populated only by Amazonian women.

The confirmation was met with celebration on social media.

dc: wonder woman is bissexual

me: pic.twitter.com/O9uenH7mJV — ms j (@visenyat) September 29, 2016

But Rucka cautioned against prioritising “the desire to see representation on the page” at the expense of good writing and character development.

While he acknowledged the demand from audiences to have characters from marginalised groups leading books and series, he said it was a “thorny question” when his job was to “serve the characters as best I can”.

Rucka was critical of writers that shoehorned their characters’ sexualities into their narratives for the sake of doing so.

“The character has to stand up and say, “I’M GAY!” in all bold caps for it to be evident,” he said. “For my purposes, that’s bad writing. That’s a character stating something that’s not impacting the story.”

But in the case of Wonder Woman, he said, her queer identity was important to the narrative because Themyscira was represented as paradise, and with that came diversity.

“It has to be an inclusive and accepting society, for a number of reasons — paradise being one of them.”

My timeline is divided between "no duh wonder woman is queer, she's from a feminist utopia"

And

"If it's not shown on panel it's not canon" — Hope Nicholson (@HopeLNicholson) September 29, 2016

Wonder Woman’s sexual identity was as such representative of her character in a way that it was not for other superheroes, said Rucka: “[Batman] doesn’t spend his days thinking about how best can he understand his fellow man.”

But as much as he believed that characters’ sexual expression had to be “germane to the story”, Rucka said DC Comics was concerned with issues of representation and diversity.

“Nobody at DC has ever said, “She’s gotta be straight.” Nobody. Ever. They’ve never blinked at this.”

He added he was surprised that Wonder Woman’s bisexuality was still under question when it was hinted at in some instalments of her story.

Making it any more explicit meant “writing a polemic, not a story”.

“I don’t know how much clearer I can make it! ...

“It doesn’t matter if I say, “Yes, she’s queer.” Or “No, she’s not queer.” It matters what you get out of the book. Can you find it? Is it there? Is it on the page in action or in deed? Then, there’s your answer.”

A standalone movie about the female superhero, directed by Patty Jenkins, is set for release in the US and UK on 2 June 2017.

This first trailer for the film introduces Princess Diana of Themyscira as she fights for peace during the first world war.