Nubia

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45 years ago - Nubia is born to a Nigerian Boat Captain.
44 years ago - 1-year-old Nubia's family is lost in an ocean storm.  Ceto, Greek Goddess of Storms, hears her mother's prayer to spare her child and takes her to Themyscira, where the Amazons take her in.
37 years ago - 8-year-old Nubia engages in the trials of the gods, the youngest mortal ever to do so, and earns her place as a true Amazon.
32 years ago - 13-year-old Nubia first meets Hippolyta's newly formed daughter, Diana.  As the only Amazon to actually grow up on Themyscira they have a special bond.
22 years ago - 23-year-old Nubia wins the tournament that is staged to choose a warrior to go beyond Doom's Doorway once it is breached.  She becomes the Amazon's new Champion in the Paths Beyond.
16 years ago - Nubia defends the homelands of the Gorgons, and is granted their Cold Sight.
12 years ago - Nubia returns to Themyscira during the tournament ot choose a champion in man's world.  Seeing that Diana wants to compete, and finding Hippolyta decree that she cannot unfair, she helps Diana enter the context disguised.
10 years ago - Nubia battles the magics of Felix Faust beyond Doom's Door, reaching out to Diana Prince in man's world to tell her that the island is in Jeapordy.  When Diana is banished for bringing men to the island, Nubia is the only Amazon free to come to her.
6 years ago - Nubia and Diana Prince protect Doom's Doorway from Niharika Dyal, who has gained access to Amazon magic.​
5 years ago - Nubia returns to Themyscira to witnesses the tournament to choose a new Amazonian champion in man's world, and sees  Diana Prince losing her title to Artemis. When Diana sacrifices herself to free Artemis from Ares, Nubia serves as a guide for Hippolyta as she ventures into the Underworld to trade her life for her daughters.  She and Artemis fight alongside Diana as she enters the Paths Beyond to confront Ares, and ensures that Hippolyta has a place of honor in the afterlife.  
4 years ago - Nubia agrees to help train Cassie Sandsmark.
2 years ago - Nubia and Ahura Mazda, the Zorastrian God of Light, become lovers.
1 year ago - Nubia discovers that Hyperion, the Titan of the Light is are venturing into the underworld to steal the soul of Donna Troy.  She, Diana Prince & Artemis venture into Hades to save her, but they are cheated and forbidden from trying to restore her.  
Nubia is a really challenging character to adapt, because you really, really want to get her right, but to do so you need to put a lot of work into understanding just what the intention of the character is, and what is the best way to fufill all the things she means to so many different people; which can be harder than you might imagine at first.  Her role in Wonder Woman's story has shifted more out of necessity as her story has changed, but at the same time so too has her overall purpose.  It falls to us to try to understand that purpose and that role, and represent it in way that honors what she means to everyone.  Let's see what we can do.

Nubia's Comic History

There are plenty of other Amazons that call Themyscira home, but Nubia was introduced in a very particular way for a very particular purpose that has always made her unique.  She was introduced in 1973 in Wonder Woman #204 by long-time Wonder Woman Robert Kanigher. 

​There are two very particular influences at the time; the first being that there was a pretty prominent interest in introducing more characters of color to DC's lineup.  In the past few years Mal Duncan, John Stewart, and Black Lightning had all been introduced.  The second was that Kanigher was actually returning to the book with #204. For the last 24 issues and more than five years Wonder Woman had been a completely different character with a different creative team, losing her powers and connections to the Amazons in favor of a mod sensibility and kung-fu spy adventures.  All of this was essentially forgotten as Kanigher came back and was resetting the status quo, opening the doors to potentially introduce some new ideas into the classic mythology.
In this enviornment, we meet Nubia; at first a fully armored female warrior who challenges Diana, claiming that she's the rightful Wonder Woman.  Their fight is a draw, and Nubia removes her helmet... the reveal that she's black is actually pretty cool, with Diana just giving her a normal Amazon greeting. We the audience might have noticed that Nubia is black, but Diana genuinely doesn't seem to care, and that's kind of a neat way to handle it.

​Diana feels a mysterious connection to Nubia, and over the next few issues we discover why.  Nubia was raised by Mars on the Floating Island, leading armies of men, given a magical sword... but eventually we discover that originally, when Hippolyta was asked by the gods to make a child out of clay, the instructions were to make TWO children (one out of light clay, one out of dark), and that they would both be brought to life by the goddesses.  While waiting for the gifts of the gods, however, Mars came and stole the child... and presumably everyone memory of her? This fact means that Nubia is not just Diana's sister Amazon, but is her TWIN sister. 

​Honestly, I'm often a little underwhelmed by Kanigher's Wonder Woman stories, but I happen to think this one is very innovative.  It connects Nubia to Diana in a profound way, but also allows her to be her own person with her own story that I think was lacking in a lot of the early "black version of popular hero" characters.  
Unfortunately, Nubia didn't make that many more appearances.  Wonder Woman was simply never a huge seller and was published bi-monthly, so Nubia only showed up a few more times before the Crisis of Infinite Earths came around and Wonder Woman's story was re-imagined by George Perez in 1987.  The modern Amazons actually had a lot more diversity, so the idea of there being one particular Amazon of color was less of a priority. 

We didn't actually see Nubia until a two-issue arc in 2000 by science fiction author Doselle Young, who it should probably be noted is a person of color.  In it he created a new version of Nubia; she was now another Amazon who had, some times ago, won a similar tournament to the that gave Diana the right to venture from Themyscira as it's champion.  In her case, she went beyond Doom's Doorway, allowing her to adventure though the realms of the dead.  It's all told in a strange but oddly affecting splash page. 

Doselle's new character doesn't really have much in common with the original Nubia, but she is a huge swing for the fence in defining the character as her own person.  This version might not be Diana's twin sister, but she's a Wonder Woman of a different sort; an Amazon on her own unique quest into an outer world, and that might be even more interesting?
Nubia continued to not show up very often for a long while, but in more recent years we're starting to see her crop up more and more often.  In Grant Morrison's Final Crisis & Multiversity one of the worlds they invented was Earth-23, where most of the superheroes are black, and Nubia is that world's Wonder Woman.  In the series Wonder Woman: Earth One, also by Morrison, Wonder Woman's story is re-imagined and in it Nubia is a close advisor to Hippolyta and, we later discover, her lover. These are basically all elseworlds tales, outside of mainstream continuity, but it does speak to the general awareness of Nubia's association with Wonder Woman's story.

In the last few years upon this writing, Nubia has suddenly had her profile skyrocket, both in mainstream comics and in her own spinoff content.  She's made appearances across pretty much all of Wonder Woman's current ongoing series, had her own out-of-continuity young reader series, and most recently, has actually become the new Queen of the Amazons.  It's a little up in the air which version of Nubia this is, since modern DC comics do such a poor job of connecting to existing continuity in any meaningful way, but she very specifically talks about entering Themyscera via the Well of Souls, rather than being formed of clay (which I don't think modern Wonder Woman comics acknowledge as an orgin for Diana either), and also talks about being the guardian of Doom's Doorway, so it looks like it's still Doselle Young's version. 

Our Nubia Story

Approaching this character, we had to begin by trying to understand just who she needed to be.  She needs to have a special role among the Amazons, essentially a second Wonder Woman with her own mission, but that's actually the easy part; her mission beyond Doom's Doorway is a very cool story idea. We've expanded it, suggesting that yes, in her mission she can venture into the realms of the dead, but actually can go forth into all the Paths Beyond, allowing her to explore worlds beyond worlds, making her adventues feel huge and exciting, rather than vaguely claustrophobic.

Beyond that, Nubia deserves to have a very specific bond with Diana herself, and that's where this gets tricky.  We know it needs to be SOMETHING, but if we do it wrong we can inadvertently step on the toes of some other characters origins, making them feel less special, and also cheapening Nubia, because she shouldnt be a copy of anyone.  In an Island full of women who all consider each other sisters, and with Donna already Diana's twin, what bond can we create between these women? The answer really is that the bonds of sisterhood don't have to be biological; you don't have to have the same blood (or clay) to consider someone family.  
We want Nubia to be unique among the Amazons, and to do that we're actually going to use a version of one of Donna Troy's unused origins; she's going to be someone the Amazons took in. We made her the daughter of a Nigerian boat captain whose family was lost at sea, and whose mother prayed that she be spared.  She grew up on Themyscira, and earned the right to call herself an Amazon, and to claim their strength as her own.  

This makes her the only other person on Themyscira that's actually growing up, like Diana.  She's considerably older, a teenager while Diana is a child, but that is SUCH an important relationship.  She is, for all intents and purposes, Diana's big sister.  We already have an incident in our timeline where Death's Doorway is opened, which would require a tournament to choose a champion... making Nubia's mission into the Paths Beyond predate Diana's mission into Man's World, and makes them both, essentially, Wonder Woman.

We love, LOVE, how this turns out.  It's all about fine-tuning the relationships between these characters rather than trying to create some sort of structure to their story and serve some plot point.  It makes them relate to each other in a way that anyone with siblings will immediately recognize, and we think that's perfect.

Nubia's Costume

Here's an anecdote.  I once, years ago, saw this really great black cosplayer wearing an incredible Wonder Woman costume.  Because the internet sucks, there were people giving her a hard time.  Now, some people did come to her defense by suggesting that there IS a black Wonder Woman... Nubia.  Her reaction was that she appreciated it, but the fact was, she wasn't cosplaying Nubia.  She was cosplaying Diana, she just happened to be black while doing so.  

I describe that situation because I really think there's some nuance to Nubia's costuming, because it really comes down to the role she's playing.  She is her own character, but make no mistake, she's also the Black Wonder Woman, and that is a HUGE deal.  The powerful  iconography of black woman in full Wonder Woman costume is VERY hard to overstate.  

Personally, I think that the costume can be changed enough to make it distinctly hers while also making it clear that she is *A* Wonder Woman.  I like these takes that give her much more gold in her breastplate and boots.  It's possible that this can be a ceremonial costume that she wears when in Man's World, but while in the Paths Beyond she wears more elaborate, tactical costumes.  Essentially, I just think there needs to be a balance between representing the idea of Wonder Woman while also giving her space to be her own person.

Nubia's Future

Back over in Diana's timeline, as we left it we were kind of up in the air, suggesting that her future would mostly be about strengthing her relationships, and building stronger connections with both her embassy in Man's World, and with her sisters back on Themyscira... and that perhaps some day her positon as Hippolyta's daughter would mean might eventually come to accept the throne.

Nubia, in the meantime, has all these new stories describing her as the new Queen of the Amazons in the absense of Hippolyta, and it's kind of hard to argue with the idea.  What does that mean, then, to have these two deserving Women who could both be Queen?  I can imagine someone suggesting that they might come into conflict over it, but that would be completely out of character; these two consider each other sisters, and it just doesn't track that they'd do anything but work together. 

So perhaps, given that it DOES make sense that Nubia might have a throne in her future... perhaps someday Themyscira might extend itself out into the Paths Beyond?  perhaps there are realms the Amazons are destined to control that needs a ruler of their own?  That might be interesting...

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