Even at a mere age 20, years of voracious comic-book collecting and drawing had honed Jimenez's talents. The '90s were a boom time for the art; comic books had matured from one-dimensional cotton-candy tales into visually striking (and often too earnest) "graphic novels." "Maus," Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer-winning Holocaust tale, had upped their cachet. By the '90s, comic-book artwork had outgrown its restrictive square panels, and had broken free of puerile subject matter.

Marvel, the country's largest and most successful comic-book producer, had used antihero plotlines in the '60s with the mournful Silver Surfer, but by the '90s virtually all the successful heroes were twisted characters. Batman was reimagined as the brooding, homicidal "Dark Knight," light-years away from Adam West's campy portrayal. DC Comics, Marvel's biggest competitor, actually killed off a latter-day Robin. Urban ills, racial tensions and the threat of nuclear holocaust had replaced everyday tales of mad geniuses and testy aliens. Gays and lesbians were also introduced, albeit as secondary characters.

Pozner played mentor to Jimenez's moon-eyed protégé. After two years, Jimenez was eventually assigned to another editor; only then did he summon the courage to ask his former boss on a lunch date. Pozner hesitated; Jimenez was 15 years younger. But Jimenez persisted, and the two became a couple.

Wonder Woman, alas, had no power over the next episode: Pozner, who was HIV positive, fell mortally ill. It was 1994, and at age 23, Jimenez became a widower.

Jimenez carried on, numbly. His four-issue "Aqualad" miniseries, called "Tempest," was nominated for a 1996 Eisner -- an award named for his School of Visual Arts professor -- and made comic-book history when Jimenez dedicated the work to his late lover. His candor touched off a flood of letters from young readers taking baby steps out of the closet.

Jimenez was a gay-rights champion at 26 -- and an industry anomaly. "The queer cartoonists I know in the mainstream [i.e., DC and Marvel] all complain about their lack of control over the work they do and how often they have to bend to the het-white-boy party line," says Jennifer Camper, cartoonist of the defiantly dykey strip "Subgurlz."

Choice assignments followed, but Jimenez kept focused on someday drawing Wonder Woman. He watched silently as other artists remade his heroine.

A tumultuous 1999 was the turning point. He began a new relationship -- with film director Jim Fall, known for the urban queer fable "Trick." Fall persuaded Jimenez to return to California, his much-loathed homeland.

"It was ill-conceived," Jimenez now admits. "It all crumbled." Within six months, the relationship had imploded, Jimenez's grandmother had suffered a heart attack and the artist himself had developed diabetes. Jimenez escaped into his trusty comic-book world. When he emerged, he had conjured up 12 stories about Wonder Woman, and he sent them to DC for consideration.

The company gave him a 12-book Wonder Woman assignment.

Peers cheered the decision, feeling Jimenez had paid his dues. "Phil is a rare combination of diehard comics geek, talented artist and exuberantly out gay man," said Joan Hilty, a DC editor and one of the few women in the mainstream comics game. "This gives him street creds and social skills!"

But DC insisted on three co-writers, wary of allowing its wunderkind a solo flight. (One is George Perez, whose Wonder Woman work in the mid-'80s is considered a high point in her legend.) Jimenez's debut issue, "Wonder Woman No. 164," hit newsstands on Nov. 29. "Gods of Gotham Part 1: Discordia" presents a mammoth rumble among Wonder Woman, Batman and their worst nemeses.

Jimenez has fashioned a Wonder Woman for the millennium. To keep lusty fans happy, her statuesque and buffed frame is clad in a whisper of a costume. But this year's model will also exhibit the qualities Jimenez revered as a teen: wisdom, conviction and gobsmacking powers descended from the gods.

Trina Robbins is a veteran comic book writer and artist, the author of a new history of female cartoonists and characters, "From Girls to Grrrlz," and the writer of a 1998 Wonder Woman graphic novel, "The Once and Future Story." She remains skeptical; for the past decade, she has hated DC Comics' depictions of Wonder Woman, feeling they reached a nadir with the mid-'90s big-breasted renderings by Mike Deodato. Robbins said, "I've picked up the occasional copy, sighed and put it down."

The legacy of Pozner is never far from Jimenez's work. "I firmly believe that I have a responsibility as an out gay person to be political and to use my work in a political way," he says with irony-free earnestness. Women's rights and racial issues will figure in future plots along with gay themes.

He will restore one long-neglected story line: romance. Wonder Woman has been single for the past 15 years, since the end of her 40-year relationship with pilot Steve Trevor. While her battle cry of "Suffering Sappho!" fueled speculation about her sexuality for generations and made her a pre-Xena lesbian icon, Jimenez will grant Wonder Woman a new boyfriend.

Sitting in the catbird seat of the comic-book world, Jimenez remains refreshingly guileless. At a midtown Manhattan signing in late November, he warmly greeted scores of fans who could be slammed for forgetting to get a life. Better-known artists, he said, too often exhibit an unwarranted haughtiness toward fans. "The strange thing about my industry is how so many people are unpleasant," he lamented. "We're comic-book people; we're not that important."

Recent Stories