The first act of DC Comics‘s “The Wonder War” storyline is closing with Wonder Woman #34, later this month on June 24. That’ll be followed by writer Stephanie Williams and artist Clayton Henry taking a two-issue side-step to recontextualize the origin of Wonder Woman, through the lens of the ongoing storyline. But what’s next? “Wonder Woman Act 2,” baby!
(Side-note: it’s okay if I call you baby, right? We hardly know each other.)
On September 16, 2026, DC will release Wonder Woman #37 by Tom King and Daniel Sampere, which finds — spoilers here, I guess, per a press release provided to Comic Book Club, “Steve Trevor and his daughter Trinity arrive in the present after a heartbreaking defeat at the hands of the Matriarch 20 years in the future. Now they must find Wonder Woman and convince her of the threat a seemingly innocent child will pose in the years to come. Will the truth prevail?”
Funnily enough, when we had King on our podcast back in March, he noted that when it comes to the storyline of “Wonder War” he might have been a little too inspired by his mentor, Chris Claremont — and the X-Men: Days of Future Past storyline in particular. At the time, it seemed like he was referring to the post-apocalyptic timeline of the Wonder Woman story, where the bad guy The Matriarch has won. But nope, he also meant time traveling to the present to change the future.
“Matriarch is a big bad guy in the future, it takes place in the future, and I like to rip off Chris Claremont, because I was his assistant 20 years ago, it’s very much a story about a horrible future where everything has gone wrong and people have to change it, which might be familiar to some particular Chris Claremont story,” King said at the time. “I was just following the natural progression of where this story was headed and where it was going… We’ve always prepped for the coming of the Matriarch, and from the very beginning, the Wonder War is just a brilliant title, and I wanted to put it with a brilliant arc. So yeah, it’s those configurations of ideas coming together.”
Wonder Woman #37 will feature a main cover by Sampere, with variant covers by David Nakayama, Kyuyong Eom, and Mahmud A. Asrar.
But wait, that’s not all! Woman Annual: Wonder War – The Matriarch #1 is a 48-page special from Stephanie Williams, Leah Williams (no relation), and artists Eduardo Pansica and Belén Ortega. Also set after the end of Wonder Woman #34, “the Matriarch must crawl her way through Hell and back to the land of the living to stop Steve Trevor and Trinity from changing the past. The only thing that stands in her way is a river filled with the souls of heroes and villains alike who perished by her hand. Retribution is coming for the Matriarch. Will she survive it, or is she doomed to fate?”
“In the Matriarch Special, Leah and I are exploring a single motif: conviction versus doubt,” said Stephanie Williams. “The Fates take Lyssa’s Green Lantern ring and send her alone onto the Phlegethon, the River of Fire she was warned about as a girl. This leaves her isolated, compelled to confront her own fears and uncertainties. We’re intentionally paralleling the events of ‘The Wonder War Act 2’ that begins earlier in September. While Tom and Dani fight the external war in Wonder Woman #37, Eduardo, Belén, Leah and I are following Lyssa’s internal struggle after she chooses fate over freedom.”
Wonder Woman Annual: Wonder War – The Matriarch #1 hits stores on September 30 with covers by Sampere, Kyuyong Eom, Guillem March, and Leirix. Check out covers for both issues, below.
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