After DC Comics finishes publishing its line-wide event Convergence in April and May, co-publishers Jim Lee and Dan DiDio are planning to really shake things up starting in June.
They're bringing in a ton of new writers and artists, striking characters out in bold new directions and launching 25 brand new titles to accompany the existing 24 that will continue.
The thing is, the more you hear them describe this new post-"New 52" DC Comics, the more it sounds like a return to the individualization and creativity of yesteryear.
CBR published a complete transcription of a recent media event where Lee and DiDio addressed the press and explained what a post-New 52 DC is going to be like. It's a long read, but if you hang on every detail for these kinds of things, you're going to want to check it out. If it's too much for you to deal with, allow us to sum up the major points for you.
What's Changing?
The overall driving purpose of the new DC Comics seems to be to move away from the structured continuity created for the New 52, and move back toward a time when creative teams on individual titles or characters were allowed the time and freedom to explore their heroes and villains without the need to serve a larger continuity. The duo caution that this doesn't mean they're ditching things like history and canon, just loosening the reigns on where things go from here. They want to see a lot more experimentation in comics, specifically mentioning the likes of Kingdom Come and The Dark Knight as instances where creators were free to tell the stories they wanted to tell without being constrained by continuity.
With that in mind, it sounds very much like DC is calling for a moratorium on line-wide events -- after Convergence, of course. Instead of requiring all of their characters to show up alongside all the others for event after event, DiDio and Lee are directing their teams to create smaller events for individual titles or characters. For example, there might be an event for Superman that plays out in the pages of Superman, Action Comics and one or two others. But what happens in those events won't affect whatever storyline is happening in Batman or Flash and so on.
New Blood
Addressing the new talent coming on board, Lee mentioned award-winning graphic novelist Gene Luen Yang taking on Superman with artist John Romita, Jr., stating that the new direction they're taking Superman in is "something that hasn't been done" before now. In that same vein, Vertigo creative Ming Doyle will be writing Constantine: The Hellblazer and also drawing a new book called Dark Universe. A new Black Canary book is launching, spinning out of the current run of Batgirl, which will be drawn by Annie Wu.
A Focus on Diversity
Longtime comics fans should be jazzed to hear that Garth Ennis is coming back to DC with his old partner John McCrea, working on Section Eight, a "dark, humorous take on [one] section of the DC Universe." Heath Corson, a writer and producer for DC Entertainment's animated films, is writing a new Bizarro comic, while satirist Mark Russell is writing a new incarnation of Prez. All of these titles are examples of DC's renewed focus on character, not to mention diversity -- another major theme of the new DC. A perfect example is Midnighter, which spins off from Grayson, about an openly gay male superhero.
To promote the new DC Comics, the company has gone to great lengths to get new material into the hands of readers. There will be a series of new eight-page stories that you can easily get your hands on for free in a variety of ways. They'll be included in the back of May's Convergence titles, they'll be compiled into DC's Free Comic Book Day title, and they'll be available to download for free from dccomics.com and digital distributors like ComiXology.
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