This picture comes from a video in DC’s All Access, where the lady host visits Dan DiDio’s office. Taking a look at his bulletin board, there are Batman sketches and this, which appears to be samplings for a new logo. Bleeding Cool has been writing about the rumors for this event/series for a while now. While I’m hesitant to take rumors as fact, it does fall in-line with a lot of the new 52’s failings, right down to those less than inspired logo samples. Yes, I see what they’re going for, which is already more innovation than New 52 logos have had. That doesn’t make them look any less sad.
So what is “Five Years Later?” It’s the reverse of “Zero Year”, except that it will hijack certain comics. There’s no official announcement so I only have the Bleeding Cool rumors to go on. If they prove correct, my cynical mind sees the Bad Fanfic Brigade pushing even more influence into making “their” vision dominant for a long time to come.
“Five Years Later” isn’t quite the same as “One Year Later” because it will shift back after the mareketing gimmick storyline is complete. Already the New 52 continuity began five years after heroes first began appearing (so when did the supervillains start appearing?), but this will zoom five years forward from “today” to see what will become of the DC Universe. And then it jumps back…so that every writer will now have to tailor their stories to match what is supposed to happen.
Or maybe not. One of BC’s other rumors is that a new series may come out of it, or maybe that’s just a theory since that happened with the Old 52, the one DiDio thought was inferior to “Countdown”. Could this series push 5YL into an alternate continuity, perhaps replacing Earth-2? Or could it be an attempt to prevent the 5YL events from happening? Waverider 52? Or the “grittier” Booster Gold DC is rumored to be accepting pitches for? (DC, where fun used to live, where fun now goes to die! Like the suicide booths on Futurama.) If they go with Waverider 52 it might be interesting…if they weren’t chasing off all of their good, fun-writing writers. (How is Dan Jurgens still there when they keep canceling his books?)
If my first theory is right, though, it would be in line with how DiDio and friends operate. “He who controls the origin controls the character” takes an interesting spin when the power becomes semi-retroactive, controlling where the characters have to go, whether the writers have other ideas or not. It could end up a new form of editorial mandate, and DC’s BFB have been all about the editorial mandates lately, chasing off good writers and even some good artists (and Rob Liefeld) due to their control, last-minute changes, and just plain being jerks to better writers than DiDio. Worry they’ll steal Johns’ thunder, are we?
I can’t really review the full idea until we either hear it or see it in action. (Although I’m sure we’ll hear about it first in USA Today or Entertainment Weekly because DiDio loves to get his name in the top press.) That said, DC’s current track record has been less that stellar and I can see the bad areas they’ll easily take this. Status quos as of late have been temporary in both DC and Marvel and it doesn’t look like that’s going to change anytime soon. And yes, I get the irony.
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