Warning: Mild Spoilers for Wonder Woman #14After more than a year of mystery, the origins of Tom King and Daniel Sampere, spoke with ScreenRant about the character and this monumental issue.

Wonder Woman will never be the same after the release of Wonder Woman #14 by King, Sampere, Tomeu Morey, and Clayton Cowles. The issue, which is billed as part of DC's All In storytelling initiative, begins a new story arc featuring Diana Prince, her enemy the Sovereign - and, of course, her daughter, Lizzie Prince.

Fans have gotten to know Lizzie Prince - and her future superhero self, Trinity - through the hilarious backup stories by King and Belén Ortega, which have co-starred her "brothers," Jon Kent and Damian Wayne. But this issue marks the "birth of Trinity" and promises to answer a number of fan questions about Trinity's origin, which has been an intentional mystery from the beginning of this run. King and Sampere spoke with ScreenRant about all things Trinity - and how Diana is feeling in the face of motherhood - in the interview below, which is edited lightly for clarity.

Tom King and Daniel Sampere Discuss the Importance of Wonder Woman's Origin Story

Made from Clay and Her Mother's Prayers

ScreenRant: I read issue 14 this morning, and we'll obviously dance around spoilers once we dig into things, but what an issue. I cried reading it this morning. It's monumental. It's really good stuff.

Tom King: That’s so nice of you.

Daniel Sampere: I cried too while doing it!

SR: So I'm in good company, is what you're saying.

TK: I cried when I got the assignment. I was like, I could never do this, I’m sorry. [All laugh]

SR: So we're here to technically talk about Trinity's origin, but I want to talk a little bit about, first, Wonder Woman's birth origin, which feels important to discuss, which is famously a bit mixed up after all DC's retcons. But earlier in this run you guys reestablished her very first, you know, born-from-clay-and-her-mother's-hands origin. Why does that Wonder Woman origin make the most sense for her character, and why was it important to you both to make that clear in your run?

TK: For me, it's a few things. Number one, it's her original origin. It goes back to the beginning of this character and what a huge impact she has and what a revolution of a character she was when she first came on the scene, being entirely different from everyone. Whenever I'm dealing with properties where I'm standing on the shoulders of giants, I like to go back to the first giants and see what they did. And so that's part of it, is going back to capture that.

Wonder Woman, created by William Moulton Marston, first appeared in 1941's All Star Comics #8.

The other part of it is that it's uniquely her, that she comes from the prayer of a mother, that she was created by one woman, out of that woman's relationship with the divine and with her own soul. I think that's profound and impactful.

The third reason is that I just think it's a cooler origin? Just in of having raised a daughter who wanted to be Wonder Woman, being like— what's Wonder Woman's origin? You know, Superman's from another planet, Batman's parents were killed, Wonder Woman is made from clay. That's cool! Like, to my daughter. She was like, “What?! Her mother sculpted her and so she's not like any other Amazon?! And she's not like any other human on Earth?! She's completely unique?!” And I was like, “Yeah!” That makes my daughter's eyes go wide. In this book, I'm always trying to recapture the magic of what made my daughter's eyes go wide.

So when something is right, why change it?

DS: I think the same. It's the beginning of [the character] and it's the best version of it for sure. And in my opinion, it's what makes her more unique and it's more original than being just born by some affair. It's made by clay. It's awesome, it's cool. So when something is right, why change it? That doesn't make sense to me, so it was an obvious choice to go that way.

King and Sampere Dig Into Trinity's Origins

Variant Cover by Stevan Subic

SR: So readers are finally on the verge of understanding Trinity's origin. And that's been shrouded in mystery, very purposefully, for well over a year now, since y'all debuted the character last summer. So how does it feel for you both as creators to finally have reached this point that we've all been waiting for, for, what, 16 months now? Something like that.

TK: It makes me feel grateful for the patience of my audience, to be perfectly honest. We live in a time of a lot of instant gratification. You can stream a whole show on the first day. So for people to be like, “here's a mystery in one issue, and we're not going to solve it for a year and a half” — and for people to stick with it and still care about it? It just means that people reading Wonder Woman are giving this book a ton of benefit of the doubt and are reading it carefully and with a lot of love and care. I'm thankful they're letting us build this story. It's really humbling.

The first arc of King and Sampere's Wonder Woman run, which began in September 2023, is available now both digitally and in a collected edition from DC Comics.

DS: For me, it's a culmination of what we've been doing all this time. But at the same time, it's the beginning of more. It's another opening door for us. When we started, I was doing some interviews in Spain as well, and I was trying to make people understand that we didn't have to rush on this, because we're planning to stay here for a long time. So we don't have to tell things in a rushed way. We have time. This is gonna be a long journey, and I personally love the stories that— here in Spain, I don't know if you have the same way of saying it, it's boiling in a slow way. But when finally it boils, it explodes in a really strong way and it's super satisfying. I like these kinds of stories, and I think it works.

It’s all focused to this moment, but we're not just telling this particular thing, we're telling a lot more. So we have other aspects of the story to focus on and keep developing and keep building. I'm grateful, too, for people having patience, but I think that that proves that the journey here is also important. Not just the destination.

SR: And it sounds like you're just as excited for what's coming next, for what's down the line. This might be an important issue, but in a way, it's just a stop along the road. It's one of the pleasures of ongoing comics, right? That's the best part.

So trying our best to avoid spoilers, because there is quite a spoiler at the end of this issue, but— origin stories in superhero fiction, you know, they often get at the heart of what a character means. I mean, Tom, earlier, you brought up Superman's classic origin story, Batman's classic origin story. They're not just iconic stories, but who the characters are, right? And especially in serialized fiction, which we were just kind of talking about, origin stories are touchstones for the characters as they continue their journeys. So what do you hope that Trinity's origin story will say about her as a character? Now and, you know, fifty issues down the line as we get more of this run, as we get more of this serialized story.

What's gonna make her a superhero, what makes her essentially cool has yet to be told.

TK: I feel like we haven't told her full origin. We've told half of it. Because when I think of Wonder Woman's origin, there's her birth as an Amazon. That's half of it. But the other half of it is her rebellion against her mother. Her decision to enter that contest, win that contest, leave the island with Steve. For Batman, you know, half of his story is being born rich and the other half is his parents dying. So I feel like this is the first half of Trinity's origin story, the fact that she's born out of this moment of profound love and need, and she is born as both a reflection of the way her mother was born and in a completely different way to be her own person, that her way is slightly different.

So I feel like we've set her on a path of where she has to be. But she still has that second moment. She still has that second thing. This origin explains why she's Wonder Woman's daughter. Why she's an Amazon, why she's unique, why she's awesome. What's gonna make her a superhero, what makes her essentially cool has yet to be told. And that's ahead of us for Daniel and I to tell in the coming months and years.

DS: Well, I can't wait to know about this origin as a superhero. I'm here on the same page as you! [All laugh] But I hope for her to become a strong character in the DC Universe, you know? She feels like a little bit of my daughter, too. I hope the best for her. I think she has potential to be an incredible comic book character and an incredible superhero for DC. So I can't wait to keep developing her and playing with her and see in the future how other creators handle her and just see how it grows, you know? It's very exciting.

Daniel Sampere Reveals More About Trinity's Design as a Superhero

Trinity Debuted in the Story "Trinity" by King, Sampere, Morey, and Cowles in Wonder Woman #800

SR: Talking about her as a superhero, I really wanted to ask you in particular about her superhero design, right? Her costume, her character design, everything about the way she looks and how she holds herself as a character. What was it like creating Trinity from a visual standpoint?

DS: I started from the first request that Tom did, that was the curly hair and the ponytail. Starting from there, I imagined her like— I don't know how to say it in English! Like a fun girl, you know? Like, not too thoughtful, maybe, because she's young, still. So the look needed to reflect that a little bit. I wanted to make her feel more like a classic superhero costume than a warrior. A little bit of armor, she’s an Amazon, it's okay. But I wanted to make her, like, a full superhero costume with spandex and all that.

And then the rest, it's a pretty basic concept. It was like trying to make her feel a little bit like Wonder Woman, but the opposite at the same time— like “daughter rebellion” at some point. So if red is the more dominant color in Wonder Woman[‘s costume], I was like, “okay, Trinity is gonna wear blue as a dominant color.” And it's not like, the most complex idea ever, but I think it works!

I wanted to make her like— okay, opposite to her mother in the colors and the attitude. But it's her mother, too. She loves her. So a little bit of her. So I thought to [give Trinity] the same tiara as Wonder Woman is wearing right now in the series. I imagine Wonder Woman in the future, giving the tiara to her as a present. I don't know. The three lassos, [those were] obviously Tom’s request, too. It flowed pretty naturally. In a couple of attempts, we had her.

King and Sampere Discuss Wonder Woman's New Role as a Mother

Variant Cover by David Nakayama

SR: Wonder Woman, by the end of issue 14, is officially a mother in DC's current timeline as it stands right now. Mothers in fiction, for me, is one of my personal obsessions, for a very long time. So I'm going to quote something at you: the Irish novelist. Anne Enright says about mothers that “bringing a mother into a fiction is to make a strange, uncanny and difficult return.” As you both continue to work on this Wonder Woman run, what has been strange, uncanny or difficult about introducing motherhood to Diana’s quote-unquote “power set”?

TK: The thing that stands out to me is that Diana is so very good at everything. Almost from birth. She has very [few] doubts. If you ask Diana, you know, if she's going up against Giganta: “Are you gonna win this battle?” She's going to say yes. She's not a character, unlike Superman or Batman, that stomachs doubts. She has a core self-confidence to her that I think is unique to the character. But I think motherhood and that challenge is something where she does sort of have doubts about herself. I mean, she was raised in an Amazon world, which didn't have a lot of children. The only mother she knew was her own.

How does she find her confidence and how does she find her footing and how does she raise this child?

I think she has the same doubts that I have as a father, you know— Can I be a good father? Can I be a good mother? Is this a role for me? The same questions of every single human being, if you ask them when they have kids: can I find a balance in my life between my duties to the world and my duties to this child? All of that creates something in Diana that she doesn't have a lot of, which is doubt. And so we'll be exploring that. How does she find her confidence and how does she find her footing and how does she raise this child?

DS: On my side, I think it's amazing to take a character so important, so iconic, like Wonder Woman, and open this big door about her being a mother. It opens up so many new possibilities for the character. I think it adds a lot more richness to her character, you know? I think with Superman, [he’s] more interesting since he's a father, in my opinion, and I think the same, too, about Wonder Woman.

For us as creators, it's very exciting to be playing with this new field that no one has done before for her. And, no spoilers, but this week we were discussing like, should she do “this” with baby Trinity? Or maybe not? Discussing how she acts with the baby — or not — I think it's a new field for us, but it's super exciting as creators.

Tom King Teases Trinity's Very First Solo Series with Belén Ortega

Variant Cover by Kelley Jones

SR: I can't leave without bringing up the teaser that was at the end of the Trinity special, the recent one, World's Finest— the solo series that was teased, but yet to be announced, for Trinity! What can you tell us, if anything, about Lizzie's very first solo series?

TK: Belén [Ortega] and I are putting it together as we speak! We're working on what it's going to be. DC came to me and said “can Trinity have her own series?” The first thing I said is, “if Belén’s drawing it, I'm in.” I'd only work with her on it. I just love the energy she brings to it. And then I said, “and it's gonna be funny.” It's going to have heart, and it's gonna have soul, but the Trinity backup comics are very much modeled after, you know, Calvin and Hobbes strips, Peanuts strips, my love of comic strips and, you know, like Sergio Aragonés, and that sort of energy.

I write the most comics about sad people being sad - Lord know [Wonder Woman] #14 has some of that energy in it. So Belén and I are going to do a book that's full of joy and reversals and laughter and crazy adventures and Robins turning into corgis. It's the series you want to read and then go to the dinner table and talk to your friends and be like, “I can't believe this happened.” That's the series. It's not Watchmen, it’s made to be fun.

SR: Well, I will say that every month when I read the Trinity backup story, the advanced copy I get through ScreenRant, I do immediately text my best friend and be like, “I cried laughing again at Trinity.”

TK: [Laughs] It’s SO much fun!

SR: So I do go to my friends and talk about how funny they are!

TK: My kids get so bored of me bragging and being like, “Oh my God, I wrote all these songs for Black Canary!” And I'm singing them at the table, and they're like, this is the dorkiest thing! And yeah, I get very excited when I write those things.

Thanks again to Daniel Sampere and Tom King for discussing Trinity with us. Though fans will have to wait for more details about the Trinity solo series, they can check out her origin story in Wonder Woman #14, available October 16th, 2024 from DC Comics.