I’m starting to think DiDio’s mission is to confuse the hell out of all of us.
At ComicsPRO, and I don’t know what or where that is, “5 Years Later” went from rumor to “coming soon”, in September to be exact. So basically DC is back to the “status quo is for suckers” way of timing events. This is what Eventitis does to you.
Newsarama decided to split the news into three articles (probably to boost their readership, and thus their ad revenue). One focused on the new 3D covers, one on a currently unnamed third weekly series, and then finally DiDio discussing his new marketing gimmick. Because that’s all the big two know how to do anymore…marketing gimmicks. We’re going to focus on DiDio’s interview, ignore the stupid cover gimmick, and focus on the weekly series and the new event. Because “Forever Evil” just brought their Eventitis out of remission.
The move to weeklies, which DiDio called a coordination “challenge,” is an attempt to generate enthusiasm for comics at a time when, the publisher said, excitement is “quieting down.”
You mean because the gimmicks aren’t helping you any more than in the previous continuity? People are starting to realize that the only difference between the New 52 and the post-Identity Crisis DCU is the rebooting of the universe.
It’s certainly not the first time DC has published stories about the future — some of the company’s most successful stories have been set in “possible” futures, including Kingdom Come and The Dark Knight Returns. But the idea of “peeking” into the future has shown up a few times in even the past year at DC, from Geoff Johns’ Green Lantern #20, where he shared a “possible” future for the comic’s characters, to this month’s Batman #28, which showed what the Caped Crusader’s life will be like in one year .
I’m not even into the interview, folks, and I already have an opening to say this. The New 52 has had trouble maintaining its own continuity. First there was an earlier version of the Teen Titans and then there wasn’t. First Tim Drake is a former Robin and then he wasn’t. It’s like Pandora is still rewriting the DC Universe. And by Pandora I mean the Bad Fanfic Brigade. Also, I need to condense some lines compared to Newsarama’s posting. Not every sentence needs its own paragraph. Are you paid by the page length or something?
Newsarama: Dan, what’s the idea behind the big event in September 2014?
Dan DiDio: We have the weekly series kicking off,Futures End, which starts in May. And the idea is that it gives us a snapshot into the future of the New 52 DC Universe. And one of the things we wanted to do was not just look at it through the lens of the weekly series, but also take a month and flash forward, and see what the potential futures of all our characters be in that month.
So in that month, you’ll get a chance to see where, in the next five years, our characters might finish up or might end up being. So there are a lot of twists and turns, and it gives some exciting teases of potential storylines that might be coming for our characters in the near future.
Nrama: You keep using the word “might.” Obviously, your fans understand the idea of a possible future, particularly with the success of stories like Dark Knight Returns and Kingdom Come. But it seems like the future stories wouldn’t impact your present-day DCU. Are there going to be things teased that definitely are going to happen? Or does it tie into present-day in other ways?
DiDio: These stories aren’t going to just be tied into the weekly. But what you’ll be seeing is a lot of the writers who are working on series right now projecting forward — their ideas, their storylines, where they think their character might be five years from now. What that means is that you have a writer who’s working on a series currently, and he’s looking forward to his run five years from now, where he anticipates the characters will be at that time.
So if I have this right, DiDio is letting the writers (which would be a first) show where they want to have the characters five years into the Universe’s timeline, which in our time they may never get to because of how comics and time work, like the sliding timeline. On the other hand the writer could change and I’ve chronicled in the past how new writers can easily toss out everything his or her predecessor was doing on a whim, sometimes giving us terrible resolutions to put the pieces where he or she wants them. In other words writers are either hamstringing themselves or others or alternately making the entire time jump pointless and wasting time better spent on current events. Because that’s (not) good storytelling! And that’s if editorial lets them write it!
DiDio: Yeah, no, no. We really wanted to show things that seem like the logical progression of the characters and where the storylines are going. That’s the main thing. So if you’re reading a series right now, you might actually see threads that look like they’re being played out five years from now.
Instead of, you know, having the events play out during the five years and surprising the readers as to what’s coming up. Meaning the next five years will be one long prequel.
DiDio: [Laughs.] We will be having some new series that we will be premiering between June and July, and they will be participating in the Five Years Later future and tied to Futures End, and they will be part of the September event.
But they will all be ongoing titles. So unlike what we did with Villains Month, which were villains that were stand-alone, attached to individual titles of other series, these are actually the series that are going to be here. So all the lenticular covers — all the Futures End stories that will be told in September — will be in the titles of the ongoing series.
One of the things that works for events is when they use the annuals, leaving the ongoings alone to do what they’ve been doing. DiDio believes linear storytelling is for p@#$#ies. He’ll just jump around and mess with everything because having a status quo, something that gives us time to care about the characters and their world, is something the BFB doesn’t appear to be interested in.
And the idea of putting Grifter in there or Stormwatch came from the team. They’re the ones that wanted to see those characters.
Because I assure you nobody else did.
And, you know what? We launched a lot of product out of the gate when we launched the New 52. Some of it succeeded; some of it didn’t. But it doesn’t mean that any of those characters weren’t working for us. As a matter of fact, we have a lot of faith in them. That’s why they were in the initial launch.
No, they might have been working for you, but they weren’t working for us, the fans. I heard nobody happy about Stormwatch and maybe one or two people at best happy to see Grifter (sans the other WildCATS). You launched the product out of the gate…and have been patching it like a buggy video game ever since.
Nrama: OK, I’m going to confront you a little bit on the title of this event and the weekly series. It’s been pointed out to us that there’s no apostrophe in Futures End, which means we’re talking about plural futures. Can you explain the significance of that missing apostrophe at all?
DiDio: Yes! It’s interesting because, what you’re going to see at the start of Futures End, the story actually starts 35 years in the future, and then moves to five years in the future. And you’ll see the potential of where the world is heading and what needs to be changed, or what needs to be acted upon.
So the story starts 35 years in the future and then jumps back to 5 years still into “our” future? And after that they’ll return to the present and this future may or may not happen? It’s like “Days Of Futures Past” done wrong.
Ultimately, what you’re going to see is the potential of where the futures can be going. And also, I’d like to say, what direct impact it has on stories set in the current timeline in the DCU.
Nrama: So there is direct impact on the current day? If it’s set in the future, how does that happen?
DiDio: Because ultimately, we are… you know what? Rather than just alluding to this, we might as well say it here too. We are going to have another weekly series kicking off in October that will be set in the current DCU timeline that will have direct implications on what’s happening with the five years later storyline. And you’ll see a level of connectivity that I think will help really bring into focus where we see the future of the DCU heading.
At this point I wonder what future the DCU will have. I picked up the first two issues of the meeting between Batman & Superman and their Earth-2 relations Huntress and Power Girl (respectively) out of curiosity but otherwise I’ve ignored all of the New 52 universe since I lost my job. It’s not worth wasting time or money on when I have so little of both.
DiDio: Three weeklies in one year, what it brings to us is a sense of urgency to the line. We do weeklies primarily because we have big stories to tell, and this is the best format to tell it in. It gives a sense of urgency, themed to the story beats and the actions that are occurring on a weekly basis.
So that’s what’s exciting about that.
Also, just to let you know, these aren’t weeklies added onto 52 titles. They are part of the 52 number of books that we create on a monthly basis. So it’s not that we’re adding more product in. It’s just as the weaker books go away, we’re adding weeklies, which we think have big stories that lead to more and exciting events as they start to unfold over the next year.
So it’s their way of cheating on the “New 52” moniker? Do they think fans have the money to spend on three weekly titles on top of their monthlies? Are they not paying attention to the economy? I guess they must because they stopped “holding the line at $2.99”.
Nrama: So you’ve got a new weekly in April, a new weekly in May after Free Comic Book Day, some new titles launching in June/July, and the big event in September that leads to the new weekly in October. Talk to me about this schedule you’ve established where the big event comes in September – an annual sales necessity because of the numbers generated that month in 2011. What does it feel like, to you, that September has become the “big month” for DC for so many years in a row — and I assume into the future, since you’ve established this sales pattern?
DiDio: What it does is it gives you a chance to reset the line a little bit and see where your strengths and weaknesses are. And if you look at what we did, we launched the New 52, which re-established the heroes in a new direction, voice and continuity. That’s where we started.
Then we went forward and we did the Zero Month, because we sort of started the New 52into the storyline. Zero Month allowed us to look back and look at the origins of the characters themselves, and how they came to be. Then, because we established the heroes in that fashion, it only seemed to make sense the following year, to launch with the villains. So that’s why we did a month around villains, because we have such a great pantheon of villains. We wanted to give them the chance to shine in the light too.
And now, we’re looking into the future. So what we’ve done is, we’ve looked in the past, we’ve looked at the heroes, we’ve looked at the villains, and now we’re looking toward the future.
I left that in there but it all builds out of “gives you a chance to reset the line a little bit”, which was DC’s problem even before DiDio came to power, as far back as maybe Zero Hour. I’ve seen people say that’s why they can’t get into the DC Universe. There’s no status quo, even with the history of the universe much less current events and now even the future is going to be fragged up.
Image Source: Newsarama
Nrama: Yeah, this cover you released has Superman as a robot!
DiDio: And that’s the reason why we have the “might” aspect of our conversation. Because the 35-years-in-the-future story is a very dystopic future. And because of that, we’re saying that itmight happen.
Ultimately, the goal of the Futures End story is to reset the future so that that [their typo, not mine; I just copy/paste] type of end for our characters does not happen.
Wait, I get it now. I know where this idea came from:
DC Universe Online – 3 (Photo credit: SS Games Online)
It’s the plot of DC Universe Online, which Jim Lee is in charge of. Was this Jim Lee’s idea? So that’s “Futures End”. Personally, this is one future I’d rather not see start.
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