DC Comics line-wide relaunch announced... Internet panics...

Post date: Jun 01, 2011 11:36:54 PM

As I'm sure anyone interested enough in comic books to be visiting this site already knows, DC have announced that they are cancelling a bunch of books in August and restarting every DC Universe title in September with a brand new #1, 52 in all. Some will be 'brand new #1's in name only, actually continuing stories from current titles. Counter intuitively, Green Lantern looks a dead cert to carry on regardless, even though the anticipated 'new readers' the movie based on it will bring is presumably one of the driving factors behind this drastic action.

No news yet on how this will affect us in Morrisonville, though there is a rumour flying around that Grant will be the writer on the new Superman #1, possibly paired with Identity Crisis artist Rags Morales. Also, and completely unrelated to DC's announcement, a few days ago Mexican comics message board Shazam Comics tweeted that a long rumoured collaboration between Grant Morrison and Phil Jimenez on Wonder Woman would be officially announced 'soon'. So, potentially Morrison could be writing the Holy Trinity; Superman, Wonder Woman and...

...but will Batman Incorporated make the cut? Instinct says yes, of course Batman Incorporated will continue, Morrison doesn't seem like he's anywhere near done with the storyline yet. And didn't he say it would last about two years? On the other hand, a line wide reboot covers all of the Bat titles as well as Incorporated and relaunching them with a new #1 and essentially the same status quo as before seems largely pointless.

Anyhow, I'm sure we'll hear more in the next few days and I'll be sure to keep you up to date. And don't forget about the Universe B shout out for artwork too!

And, before I sign off, I'll chip in my two penneth and propose 10 hypothetical 'brand new #1's' from DC that I would buy in a heartbeat. Its probably more likely that we'll see one of these on the stands come September than J.H.Williams' and Amy Reeder's Batwoman #1 mind...

1 - WILD DOG #1 by Chuck Palahniuk and Nathan Fox (I envision a mash-up of Zodiac and Kick Ass...)

2 - ULTRA THE MULTI ALIEN #1 by Paul Pope

3 - THE UNEXPECTED... STARRING JOHNNY PERIL #1 by Ashley Wood and T.P Louise

4 - TEEN TITANS #1 by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba (just like the Umbrella Academy, but with Damian Wayne in it...)

5 - JACK KIRBY'S SPIRIT WORLD #1 by Jonathan Hickman (with plenty of eldritch diagram action)

6 - WHO'S WHO #1 by Geoff Johns (a weekly (daily?) series where Geoff Johns gets to write mercurial revisionist fact files about every character DC has ever published, over and over again. I would actually buy this...)

7 - SUICIDE SQUAD #1 by Joe Casey and John Paul Leon (cool, grim villainy from Casey's evil pen)

8 - TOMMY TOMORROW AND THE PLANETEERS #1 by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Chris Burnham (...)

9 - THE SEA DEVILS #1 by Cameron Stewart and Karl Kerschl (not to typecast Cameron as a sea-adventure-based artist... but he does draw them awfully well)

10 - BATMAN 666 #1 by Amypoodle from the Mindless Ones and Andy Kubert (come on DC, he's already written the scripts! They're awesome!)

Batman Incorporated #4 annotations soon! I'm nearly finished, honest!