Neil Gaiman and DC Team for 'Sandman Universe' Comic Book Line
DC Entertainment on Thursday announced the return of a piece of comic book history.
Neil Gaiman will curate The Sandman Universe, the umbrella title for four new comic book series spinning out of the mythology Gaiman created for his iconic fantasy series of the 1980s and ‘90s.
Launching in August with a one-off issue titled The Sandman Universe No. 1, plotted by Gaiman, the four titles will take place in a shared universe utilizing characters and concepts originated by the writer including The Dreaming, Tim Hunter and the Books of Magic, as well as the Los Angeles-based retired devil himself, Lucifer.
The four titles will be written by creators hand-picked by Gaiman, with editorial oversight by the executive editor of DC’s Vertigo imprint, Mark Doyle. (Vertigo was created as an imprint at DC in 1993, in part thanks to the success of Gaiman’s first Sandman series.) The announced series are: The Dreaming, written by Si Spurrier; House of Whispers by Nalo Hopkinson; Books of Magic by Kat Howard; and Lucifer by Dan Watters.
“The Sandman Universe has always been very close and personal to me, and I am thrilled to open up the world once again to an extremely talented group of writers and artists,” Gaiman said in a statement. “I get to see the joy in these brilliant people whom I’ve selected, as they get their chance to play in this world.”
DC released a promotional video, above, to accompany the announcement.
Brian Michael Bendis Unveils 2 New Series (Including an 'Alias' Reunion)
Longtime fans of Marvel's Jessica Jones are in for a treat.
Superstar writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Michael Gaydos are reteaming after their work on Jessica Jones and Alias, the groundbreaking series for Marvel's MAX imprint that introduced the world to the failed superhero-turned-private detective in 2001.
The new series is called Pearl and will be released by Bendis' creator-owned Jinxworld, in partnership with DC Entertainment, where the writer has made his home after years at Marvel and has already unveiled plans to write Superman.
The new project centers on Pearl, a tattoo artist for the Yakuza, who lives in modern day San Francisco and falls in love with a counterpart from a rival faction. The series launches in August, and Bendis says he and his artist are well aware that their reunion will come with high expectations, particularly after Jessica Jones has risen to new levels of popularity following the Netflix series starring Krysten Ritter as the character.
"We knew it had to match what people perceive Jessica to be and that what and we came up with had to be an equally, if not more complex, character in Pearl," Bendis tells Heat Vision of the new series.
Pearl is just one of several announcements Bendis is making Friday at Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle.
Bendis is also teaming up with acclaimed artist David Mack for another new Jinxworld title, Cover — which is inspired by a true story in which the intelligence community recruits a well known comic book artist as a spy. Bendis describes it as having nods to films like Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and The In-Laws
Mack, known as the creator of Kabuki, previously worked with Bendis on Jessica Jones and Powers and is one of his closest friends in comics.
"Who has a better cover story than comic book artists and writers, who get to travel the world and no one is actually paying attention to what they're doing?" says Bendis. "David and I have had a lot of travels over the last few years and we are going to have a lot of fun examining the world of espionage through the world of Comic-Con."
Cover will launch this fall.
Finally, one more treat for Bendis fans: more than 150 of his Jinxworld periodicals and collected additions — such as Brilliant, Fire, Fortune & Glory, Goldfish, Jinx and Torso — are now available digitally via readdc.com, the Vertigo app for iOS, Comixology and Amazon Kindle. And until March 7, several No. 1 issues from Jinxworld are available to download for free.
Below, Bendis delves deeper into the origins of these titles and how a health scare in December helped give him more drive than ever.
Why is now the right time to reteam with Michael Gaydos?
We've been slow-cooking this stew, because we knew we were going to do a creator-owned book together and then when the TV guys made Jessica Jones a pop culture icon, we knew that no matter what we were going to do, it had to be up there … What we sat down to do was make sure we were telling a tale that was unique and original, and at the same time had a character that I had never seen before doing things I had never seen before, and Mike came to the table with some really interesting visuals.
Pearl is about a tattoo artist who falls in love with a rival. What else can you reveal?
We have a tattoo artist with a very special skin condition that will make the tattoos on her body very unique — and you'll see in the very first issue what's unique about her and the way she makes her tattoos and what her tattoos on her look and feel like. But it also tells the story of two people who are born in this situation that have grown up and find out they may be very different than the situation they were born in. I see this going on a lot lately, more than ever before, where people grow up and go "OK, I was born into this situation, but I really feel I might be a different kind of person," and find a way. Or they build their own family or they make their own happiness, and that's the story we are going to tell.
It sounds like a personal story.
It is. Very intimate. Very romantic. There are very few comics that are just flat out romantic, and to me romance is the most precious, dangerous thing and putting that in this world full of dangerous people, it's the thing you most want to fight for, so she is going to have to fight for that which she didn't know she deserved until it was in front of her.
What were your conversations with Michael like about re-teaming for this?
I told him that I had a lot of research I had done on the Yakuza in America and what was happening to them. It also speaks to what's happened to corporate America as well. It was an interesting way to talk about how the world works, but through this very unique organization and at the same time I had met some people, one person in particular, who was part of this world who was looking for any way out. And having long talks with them. Then Mike calls me up. "So, I bought a tattoo gun and I'm tattooing stuff to practice" and he found some stuff out about tattooing that made the book visually gorgeous and unique and some things about the character that I had not seen before.
Alias and Jessica Jones felt like they were from the real world. Is that the same here?
It's a very different story, but it came from the same inspiration. Jessica herself is from the real world and real-world inspirations. I said if we do something together, it has to come from the same kind of inspiration, because people will know the difference. As soon as this fell into our laps, we were like "Yeah that's it, we're doing it." We didn't want to do "Here's Jessica Jones at DC" or "a Jessica Jones we own." We wanted to do something completely unique and different, with completely different visual touches. You have to remember, Mike has drawn Jessica Jones' face like eight billion times. He is looking for something different to draw, and that's my obligation, is to give him things that are equally cool
How did your collaboration with David Mack come about for Cover?
David and I have been friends for many years and worked on many projects together, this is his first new creator-owned since Kabuki. … David is like my brother. He literally stays at my house. We were working on a book we were going to do next year, but he came over and told me a story that happened to him, and I'm like "well that's our book." And that's the book we are doing.
How are you feeling after your health scare in December and what did that support from fans mean?
Even going public with what happened to me, I don’t know if I would have done that. But I was supposed to be places and people were going to know I wasn't there, so we wanted to tell the truth on what was going on. So we said, "Listen, something really bad happened." The outpouring was insane. It's hard to even describe. ... My wife actually had a health scare too. Now that we're both better, [it's like] we're shot out of a cannon. "I just looked into the abyss, I'd like to finish all of my projects before I look at it again."
Being a father has inspired your work, as well as other life events. Did your health scare give you a new perspective in terms of your creative perspective, or is it more it gave you an urgency to get things out there?
The audience has showered me with appreciation and love, and I want to shower them back with work that I think that deserves what they already gave me, even though I know people would say they responded "because of the work you already did." But I'm neurotic so I can't hear that, so I am going to tell you, "I appreciate the nice thing you did, so I'm going to do something nicer..." That's getting these books done and getting them out on time and making them hopefully the best books we've ever done, ever.
My two chief complaints are, first off, that it assumes too much familiarity with whatever continuity/crossover herpa-derp came before, and secondly that it's pretty thin in terms of story. I guess it's a pretty common complaint with modern comics but it was kind of a shock to my system because I've been enjoying so many old 80s comics of late ... Very little happens and it seems like your typical "written for the trade" type of dealio.
Also, the female member of the team gets really short shrift here. Maybe she'll have more to do in the later parts. In this issue, we don't even find out her code name, and I'm not really enough of a DC guy to know it.
But Plastic Man gets some good lines and some clever uses of his powers. And they set up the Plastic Man/Metamorpho dynamic pretty well (it's obviously meant to have a bit of that Johnny Storm/Ben Grimm back-and-forth).
I'm going to trade-wait it, though, if I continue with it at all, because if this issue is any indication they're not putting enough story into the single chapters.
Yeah, I almost picked it up yesterday but kinda figured it wouldn't be satisfying as an individual issue. I might get the issues drawn by Doc Shaner, though (I think that starts with #4).
Oh yeah, I saw a dude in full Mr. Terrific cosplay just browsing the shelves at the LCS yesterday. I'm not sure there was a convention around, so I don't know what inspired him to go all-out like that... I mean, it was full facepaint and everything.
Actually, wait -- decided to try a quick Google search for "Mr Terrific cosplay" and found the guy. He posted pics of him getting this issue at the shop on his Twitter feed:
I enjoyed it...but it did feel a little "by the numbers". I always liked Simon Stagg,but I can't understand why he isn't in jail for 30 or so life sentences. At first I thought that was Phantom girl, but she referred to herself as Linnya Wazzo(The Legion member is Tinya Wazzo....that I don't have to use google to double check kind of bothers me ) Either she is an Ancestor or she is a Dark Universe resident(those creatures seemed harmless around her. The dead Galactus was pretty cool. I hope they return to it when Doc Shaner is drawing it.
DC Entertainment’s latest comic book initiative relies on a very simple, very classic formula: Take some of the best creators at the company, pair them with some of the best characters at the company, and stand back. Welcome to DC Black Label.
“Many of our perennially best-selling, critically acclaimed books were produced when we unleashed our top talent on standalone, often out-of-continuity projects featuring our most iconic characters, a prime example being Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns,” DC Entertainment co-publisher Jim Lee explains in a statement about the new imprint. “Creating DC Black Label doubles down on our commitment to working with all-star talent and trusting them to tell epic, moving stories that only they can tell with the highest levels of creative freedom.”
Invoking Miller was not a random choice; the iconic creator is writing his first full Superman project, Superman: Year One, for the imprint, with John Romita Jr. illustrating. Also on tap are Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo, re-teaming for Batman: Damned — which teams the Dark Knight with John Constantine for a story that tests the former’s sanity after the Joker is found dead — and, in her first major DC work, Bitch Planet and Pretty Deadly co-creator Kelly Sue DeConnick, partnering with Phil Jimenez for Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons, which tells the lost history of Wonder Woman’s people from their creation through the arrival of Steve Trevor on Paradise Island. (Jimenez’s promotional art for Wonder Woman Historia is above.)
Other projects in the works for DC Black Label include the already-announced John Ridley project The Other History of the DC Universe, a new Batman project from the best-selling creative team of Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo called Batman: Last Knight on Earth, and the return of writer Greg Rucka to Wonder Woman, with a project set 20 years in the future under the working title Wonder Woman: Diana’s Daughter.
Each of the DC Black Label titles will be released in a format and schedule dictated by its creators, and take place outside of the canonical DC Universe as seen in the regular comic book series, allowing creators to take full advantage of the creative possibilities on offer. “We are carefully crafting each series to fit the vision of the creative team,” said Mark Doyle, executive editor for the imprint. “All of these creators are masters of their craft. I’m psyched to be working on a Wonder Woman story with Kelly Sue and Phil, helping to bring John’s vision of The Other History of the DC Universe to life and reuniting with some of the greatest Batman talents in the industry.”
The line is scheduled to launch in August with the first issue of the three part Superman: Year One. DC’s official synopses for the launch titles are below:
SUPERMAN: YEAR ONE from Frank Miller (THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT: MASTER RACE) and John Romita Jr. (ALL-STAR BATMAN, SUPERMAN) A groundbreaking, definitive treatment of Superman’s classic origin story in honor of his 80th anniversary. This story details new revelations that reframe the Man of Steel’s most famous milestones—from Kal-El’s frantic exile from Krypton, to Clark Kent’s childhood in Kansas, to his inevitable rise to become the most powerful and inspiring superhero of all time.
BATMAN: LAST KNIGHT ON EARTH from Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo, the creative team behind DARK KNIGHTS: METAL Batman wakes up in a desert. He doesn’t know what year it is or how The Joker’s head is alive in a jar beside him, but it’s the beginning of a quest unlike anything the Dark Knight has undertaken before. In this strange future, villains are triumphant and society has liberated itself from the burden of ethical codes. Fighting to survive while in search of answers, Bruce Wayne uncovers the truth about his role in this new world—and begins the last Batman story ever told.
BATMAN: DAMNED from Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo, the creative team behind JOKER On a deserted Gotham City bridge, a body is found. Whispers spread the news: Joker is dead. But is this a dream come true or a nightmare being born? Now Batman and DC’s outlaw magician John Constantine must hunt the truth through a Gotham City hellscape. The city’s supernatural recesses are laced with hints about a killer's identity, but the Dark Knight’s descent into horror will test his sanity and the limits of rationality, as he must face a horror that doesn't wear a mask.
WONDER WOMAN HISTORIA: THE AMAZONS from Kelly Sue DeConnick (Bitch Planet) and Phil Jimenez (INFINITE CRISIS) A Homeric epic of the lost history of the Amazons and Queen Hippolyta’s rise to power. Featuring monsters and myths, this three-book saga spans history from the creation of the Amazons to the moment Steve Trevor washes up on the shores of Paradise Island, changing our world forever.
WONDER WOMAN: DIANA’S DAUGHTER (working title) from Greg Rucka (WONDER WOMAN, BATWOMAN) It's been 20 years since the world stopped looking to the skies for hope, help, and inspiration. Now the world keeps its eyes down, and the powers that have risen have every intention of keeping things that way. Amongst a scattered, broken resistance, a young woman seeks to reclaim what has been forgotten, and on the way will learn the truth about herself, her heritage, and her destiny.
THE OTHER HISTORY OF THE DC UNIVERSE from John Ridley (12 Years a Slave, THE AMERICAN WAY) A compelling literary series analyzing iconic DC moments and charting sociopolitical gains through the perspectives of DC Super Heroes who come from traditionally disenfranchised groups, including John Stewart, Extraño, Vixen, Supergirl, Katana and Rene Montoya, among others. At its core, the story focuses on the lives of those behind the costumes, and their endeavors to overcome real-world issues. It isn’t about saving the world, it’s about having the strength to simply be who you are.
'Black Lightning/Hong Kong Phooey' Leads New DC/Hanna-Barbera Crossover Slate
A year after DC Entertainment’s icons teamed up with characters from the Hanna-Barbera catalog — who could forget the Suicide Squad/Banana Splits comic book? — DC has announced a second wave of unlikely crossovers. And it's once again pulling cartoon heroes of yesteryear into today’s comic book universe for a series of one-off special issues.
As with the 2017 releases, DC plans four Hanna-Barbera one-shots for 2018, each one an extra-length (48-page) issue for $4.99. Additionally, two of the issues — Aquaman/Jabberjaw and Black Lightning/Hong Kong Phooey — will include a second story by creators Jeff Parker and Scott Kolins, pairing more DC heroes with Hanna-Barbera characters. (Captain Caveman/Shazam and The Demon/The Funky Phantom, respectively.)
In a statement about the second round of crossovers, DC co-publisher Dan DiDio said, “Mixing DC and Hanna-Barbera characters together for these stories is always fun because the results tend to be wildly unpredictable. Even before you know what the story’s about, just hearing the names that get thrown together instantly brings a smile to your face and puts your imagination into overdrive, trying to figure out what kind of story could possibly come from these team-ups.”
The four titles will be available at comic book retailers and digitally May 30. Details of the issues follow.
Aquaman/Jabberjaw Special No. 1
In a story by Aquaman writer Dan Abnett with art by Paul Pelletier and Andrew Hennessey, the town of Amnesty Island is besieged by a series of shark attacks, and the authorities call Aquaman for help. What’s unusual about this case is that the shark isn’t trying to kill people — he just wants to talk to them. All Jabberjaw seeks to do is get back to Aqualand, the future undersea utopia where he hails from. But that peaceful city where man and sentient sea life have been living in harmony has been turned into a dystopian nightmare by a new Ocean Master! Now, the King of Atlantis and his friendly shark ally must team up to set things right. This one-shot also includes a bonus short story by Parker and Kolins that tells the tale of the first-ever meeting of Captain Caveman, The Spectre and the wizard Shazam.
Black Lightning/Hong Kong Phooey Special No. 1
Back from Vietnam, kung-fu master Hong Kong Phooey has set up his own detective agency in the inner city. Meanwhile, Jefferson Pierce (aka Black Lightning) has uncovered a plot by three assassins to collect the components of a sacred text revealing the darkest secrets of martial arts magic, and they’ll kill anyone who owns them — including the dog who holds the last chapter of the book, Hong Kong Phooey. Michael Cray’s Bryan Hill, Denys Cowan and Bill Sienkiewicz team up to deliver a story with all the power of a roundhouse kick to the chops! Plus, Parker and Kolins team up once again in a bonus story featuring a pre-Demon Jason Blood and Hanna-Barbera’s own “Spirit of ’76,” The Funky Phantom.
The Flash/Speed Buggy Special No. 1
Red Hood and the Outlaws scribe Scott Lobdell, along with Brett Booth and Norm Rapmund, are gearing up to deliver a rubber-burning story that pushes past the red line. When Wally West tries to take down the villain Kilgore, he’s surprised to find he has an unknown ally who can move just as fast as he can. Dr. Pernell, a brilliant S.T.A.R. Labs scientist, has found a way to power his dune buggy using the Speed Force. When the Flash agrees to help test the limits of the vehicle in a race, something unexpected sends them spiraling out of the Speed Force and into the unknown. They land in a postapocalyptic future, but Pernell is missing, leaving a now-sentient Speed Buggy to help the Fastest Man Alive repair the time stream and stop the triple threat of Savitar, Speed Demon Buggy and… Reverse Speed Buggy?
Super Sons/Dynomutt Special No. 1
It’s no fun for Jon Kent to be visiting Big City with his parents for the funeral of an old friend, so his best pal, Damian Wayne, decides to follow along and give him the inside scoop on the city. But when they go to meet Robin’s local friend, Dynomutt, they find him injured and in need of help. And Dynomutt’s human superhero companion, Blue Falcon, has seemingly turned evil. What’s the reason for this betrayal between once-loyal companions, and what role might the evil Red Vulture play in this scenario? Fan-favorite Super Sons writer Peter J. Tomasi teams up with Fernando Pasarin and Oclair Albert to tell this story featuring the first encounter of the Dog Wonder with the sons of the Man of Steel and the Dark Knight.
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) Either she is an Ancestor or she is a Dark Universe resident(those creatures seemed harmless around her. The dead Galactus was pretty cool. I hope they return to it when Doc Shaner is drawing it.
