Monthly Archives: May 2007

The Bristol Comics Expo was last week and is one of the few convention’s I’ve managed to get to in quite a while. The DC panel was fairly low key as one would expect for something for something so far from the USA. If you’ve ever been to a DC Comics panel then you’ll recognise the Bob Wayne Roadshow – a mixture of slideshow, banter, and a few questions from the floor. Wayne’s an old pro at these things and delivers a really nice level of sales pitch and sarcastic banter. This time he was joined in a double act by Kurt Busiek with it being noted that some people can’t tell them apart.

At one point Wayne noted that it was rather nice to have comics gossip columnist Rich Johnston otherwise occupied with his own panel. The DC panel itself was well attended with pros wedged into any and every space on the modestly sized dais. What was nice was that this was probably the only chance we’d get in the UK to get those DC Nation badges (my favourite is the “I Found Ray Palmer” one). In a surreal moment Bob Wayne was joined by Batman to help distribute the badges and the GA ashcan – a rare example of the Wayne brothers joining together to promote DC. Wayne took fun in teasing the audience with creators who weren’t allowed to talk about their secret DC projects. The first slide shown was of an upcoming Countdown cover by Shane Davis featuring a black-clad Mary Marvel and a bound Zatanna. Then having captured the fanboys attention Wayne ran through a selection of DC’s upcoming books.

The biggest names on the panel from the US were Allan Heinberg and Kurt Busiek. It was great to see Heinberg on the DC Panel as he’s a great writer and I’d hate to see the Wonder Woman problems sour his relation with DC. He noted that,

“What was Wonder Woman #5 is now going to be the Wonder Woman Annual, which is an extra-sized conclusion to the five-part Wonder Woman story and we’ve got a really nice 13-page backup story with art by Gary Frank out-lining the origins of Wonder Woman, Donna Troy, Wonder Girl, Nemesis, and Sarge Steel. That should drop in September.”

Kurt Busiek then talked about Walter Simonson’s cover to the double-sized Superman #666 and Wayne noted that Simonson was going to be a featured-guest at the next year’s Expo. Busiek described the Superman issue as “Superman goes to Hell! Its Superman #666, how could we not?” He also noted that it would guest-star the Phantom Stranger, the Demon, Zatanna, and lots of cameos, but mostly it was “gorgeous gorgeous Walt Simonson artwork.”

• Ian Churchill said he’d enjoyed his art run on Supergirl, but followed the party-line in keeping his next DC project secret.
• The new Metal Men mini-series is coming in August and will be written and drawn by Duncan Rouleau (he did their origin art in 52).
• Sam Keith’s two-part Batman/Lobo is also shipping in August. Wayne joking noted that they were two characters’ who should never exist in the same world.
• JLA #11 was trailed with art by Gene Ha, but one of the biggest surprises for me was the announcement of the Hitman/JLA mini-series (a story which had been heading for a JLA Classified arc). The artist John McCraig was there and he said that it had been written in about a week-and-a-half period three-years ago and that he’d spend the time since then drawing it. He described it as “lots of good Tommy action, the boys are back together. He’s [Garth Ennis] treating the superheroes nicely. It’s quite complementary although Green Lantern gets shafted as usual.”
• Doug Braithwaite was there to plug the final part of Justice. On the art chores for the final issues he said “an immense amount of detail and reference was involved”
• Brian K. Vaughan talked about a double-sized standalone Ex-Machina Special. He said that “we were going to call it that Halloween Special, but it’s not coming out close to Halloween so it’s going to be the Ex-Machina Masquerade Special.” It’s about Hundred’s first costume identity before he became the Great machine. Later in the questions section Brian noted that the regular Ex-Machine title still had two years left to run.
• Then there was Lee Garbett, the artist on the Wildstorm’s The Highwaymen, which he described as “non-stop action” with “car-chases, shoot outs, very gory, and some profanity.” There then followed a short discussion on just how good the profanity was.
• Flash #13 was trailed as well and the mystery there-in was also restated.
• The cover to Teen Titans #50 was shown and surprisingly included Supergirl and Blue Beetle.
• Further hits at the events in Countdown were given when it was revealed that DC were producing a Showcase Present The Great Disaster collecting the Silver Age stories of the Atomic Knights, the 1970s Hercules Unbound, among others.

One of the projects getting the most attention was Green Arrow Year One. They gave away an ashcan with pages from the first issue and writer Andy Diggle and artist Jock were there to promote it. Andy described it as,

“the crazy mayhem action stuff from the Losers, but with a popular DCU character. We get to do it with zero spandex which keeps us happy. It’s all about Oliver Queen’s origin story where he’s a waistril playboy billionaire who gets washed up on a jungle island. He thinks it’s uninhabited and has to learn to use a bow and arrow to survive. Then it turns out it’s full of badguys with machine guns. And complications ensue.”

Jock was more hesitant to speak, but reiterated the lack of spandex.

Question and Answer Session

• “Any plans to integrate Sandman characters into the DCU?” – No plan at the moment, although Busiek noted that many of them started off in the DCU anyway. Wayne pointed out that the Destiny and the Phantom Stranger could walk between worlds “or walk between floors as Vertigo is on the seventh floor of our building and the DCU is on the sixth.”
• When asked if the “JLA should lose the A because they don’t only protect America” Busiek countered with the point that should Superman loose the man because he doesn’t only protect men. Queue another chance for a joke by a DC exec at the Justice League International which got a bit of a groan from the crowd.
• It was asked if DC were planning on releasing the Starman trades with all the supplementary stuff that was left out last time. Wayne replied that something like that was planned for next year.
• The oddest question was “How’s the Spirit selling and can you not cancel it?” Wayne replied that it was selling well and that they were planning a hardcover collection.
• Fan: “Any chance of collecting the Denny O’Neil Question?” Bob Wayne: “Yes, there is definitely a chance. In fact we are going to. That’s an affirmative, but act surprised as I don’t think we’ve announced it yet.”
• When asked if Butch Guice was going to return to Aquaman Busiek noted that Guice was tied up on another unnamed project for the next year or so.
• “Is DC looking for new writers” got the standard reply that DC are only looking for proven writers from other media or companies, who while new to DC Comics are not new to professional writing.

Questions then turned to the All-Star line. To the timing of All-Star Batgirl Wayne said “it will come out when we have almost every issue written and drawn so we don’t have to have questions about when the next issue is coming out.” The guess was that it wouldn’t be this year.

As to the finite lifespan of the other All-Star titles Wayne delighted a lot of people by saying that the “reality was that as long as Grant Morrison wants to write All-Star Superman we’ll be willing to publish All-Star Superman.” DC would be willing to accommodate any extension that Morrison, or Frank Miller on Batman, wanted to do. There was no release date for Millar’s Holy Terror book, but Wayne said he’d seen pages from it so it did exist and that there was no need to hold off buying other stuff from Frank because you were saving up for it.

When asked if the delays to Action Comics affected the storytelling on Superman Busiek replied that no and that everything through the end of Camelot Part One happened before the delayed Action Comics arc. And that by writing fill-in issues of Action Comics he was actually telling stories he originally had planned for a few years down the line in Superman.

“Are there any DC movies in the pipeline that we’re not aware of?” The simple answer was yes. That prompted a follow up question of which characters to which Wayne elaborated on the point that its not news that Warner Brothers were making a movie about characters that Warner Brothers already owns:

“I know you see a lot of things if you look at the Internet fan sites whenever anyone gets an option on a property or movie. Because of the nature of DC Comics being part of Warner Brothers and Warner Brothers and related companies making most of the films and TV shows and cartoons that are of our characters they have a lot of different things on option. We just don’t announce it on an ongoing basis most of the time. ”

“It tends to get announced more often on properties like the Losers that have an artist’s equity state as that’s news, but its not news that Warner Brothers may be making a movie of the Flash, Green Lantern or the Justice League of America or Wonder Woman, or Sgt Rock or Swamp Thing, because you just hope and expect that’s what will happen. All those properties are in some level of development, but Sgt Rock has been in development for a feature film for as long as I’ve been at DC.”

The situation with the Losers movie was raised to which its creators replied that Warner Brothers had a script from the people who wrote Zodiac which they were happy with and they were now looking for a director.

When the panel was asked which comic they thought should be made into a move Brain Vaughan gave the best answer with

“Even through I’m a big sell out and working in Hollywood, when I read comics I love my first thought is normally ‘I hope they never make this into a movie’ just because I like comics and sometimes comics should be the destination and not every comics is a glorified screenplay.”