Hey guys, it’s Scott.
It is Friday, October 3rd. We are one week away from New York Comic Con. I can’t believe it. The leaves are changing, the spooky season is here, and we have an insane week coming up. So, on October 8th, Wednesday, we have two massive comic books coming out. First and foremost, DC K.O. #1. The first issue of our big fall event, the first of five. This is our knockdown drag-out fight with all the heroes, some of your favorite characters all across the DCU, in what’s essentially a universal cage match to find out who is going to be the champion to take on Darkseid. So it is balls to the wall fun. I’m really, really thrilled at how it came out. Javi Fernández is just a beast. He’s the artist on it. It’s written in part with Joshua Williamson and Xermanico on those pages from Josh. That’ll be consistent throughout the whole series. But it’s like Saturday morning cartoons on steroids, but it also has a big heart. It’s a story that has a lot to do with what these characters stand for, especially in tough times. And I really love it. So I can’t wait for you to see it.
And also we have Absolute Batman #13. This is a huge one for us. There’s a big secret surprise in it that we haven’t told anybody. We didn’t let it let it out like we normally do. So Catwoman is featured in this one. That’s no secret. And I love her relationship with Bruce, it’s been a blast to write. Can’t wait for you to see Nick and Frank’s incredible work with her. There’s a moment in it I hope you really enjoy that we’ve been waiting to do for a while. So yes, that’s Wednesday.
And we’re going to do a class soon. I just haven’t been able to get my shit together, honestly, between the start of school, traveling down to a convention in La Mole in Mexico City, which was amazing. I loved it down there. The people were fantastic. The organizers were great, fans were terrific. It was great.
I got to spend some time with buddy Ryan Stegman and his great wife Erin, so it was it was a really fantastic time. But with NYCC coming, it’s just been a complete crunch and I feel like I’d be doing a disservice to do a class before that. But as soon as the convention’s over, we’re going to do a class. I already know what it’s going to be. I’m really excited to do it. But just give me a week to finish off all the crazy work I have before it. We’ve got Wytches going. We’re still in production finishing the animatics for the first season. It’s going great. I’m really, really excited about it and can’t wait for you to see it.
And if you’re going to NYCC, I’ll do another post about this but please come say hello. I’ll be there pretty much all of Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Some of Thursday, but mostly the last three days.
It’s really first come, first serve. I’ll try to do as much signing as I can at my booth. You got to get there way before the signing time. New York is a beat and if you want to get in there, you just got to line up, honestly. I’m really sorry. Or if you’re a paid subscriber and you do the $7/month (or $75/year) membership or you’re in the Black Jacket Club, which we do have a breakfast on Sunday for those founder’s tier members, then you can skip the line at the beginning of each signing. So be there at the very beginning and we’ll have a moment when people who are in Best Jacket with us here get to come up before. And it’s definitely worth it, I would say, for seven bucks to skip those lines that happened in New York. So you can still sign up now. So Tyler, the best assistant, will put the link right here.
And one quick thing I wanted to talk about, it was so interesting going down to Mexico City and seeing the excitement for the Absolute characters and just thinking about Marvel’s plans with the Ultimate Universe and other things coming in all kinds of ways throughout comics. And I’ve said this before, but I really feel like comics is the place where these characters, these heroes that we love, are renewed and made fresh again over the years, like it’s where the DNA is. It’s where they live and breathe and where they can be evolved and be transformed and still stay true to core. And some of the greatest canonical stories were really upsetting when they came out, like Dark Knight Returns or Year One or Kingdom Come or Kraven’s Last Hunt. Just all these things that were so seminal were upsetting because it really took the characters to places that they’d never been before. And then those things become canon and then wind up becoming the basis of the televisual and cinematic universes, right? Like, so much of the Marvel Cinematic Universe comes from the original Ultimate Universe, not even the main universe.
But anyway, the point I’m trying to make is just that I’ve thought a lot about it. And I think back when I started in comics and just before that, like in the era when Geoff Johns was one of the head voices at DC. But even before that, it felt like what we had up on the movies and television world of superheroes was that the movies could come in and do some wild take. You could do Tim Burton Batman, or you could do Sam Raimi Spider-Man or Richard Donner Superman. But the comics had this huge interconnected tapestry of story, this whole ecosystem of story where you could fall down this rabbit hole if you loved Wolverine and go from X-Men to Wolverine to X-Force to Wolverine and the X-Men to all these different things. And it was this incredibly exploratory and experiential thing. And over the last 15 years, we watched these incredible cinematic and televisual universes be built around these characters at Marvel, Star Wars, DC, all these different companies. And they were building these massive ecosystems of story and really doing the thing that was only being done in comics, where suddenly you had a trilogy of new movies from Star Wars, plus other ones like Solo and Rogue One and not only video games but whole TV shows like Andor and Mandalorian that built on them and similarly, obviously, the Marvel Universe being the biggest example of that.
And so you had these giant webs of story and it was great, and it is great, but things go in cycles and it kind of feels like viewers and readers are used to that now, in a way. Like, they’re very used to these big systems of story and they’re almost skeptical of them. I feel like some of the stuff that we’ve seen work best in the past, spinoff series from major events, Things that are built to fill in areas of the DCU that we had created a space for in a bigger story, those books used to do really well. And now it feels like they struggle a bit more. It’s more of a challenge just because readers are getting more cynical, I think, about things that feel like they’re built to be part of systems of story. Not because there’s anything wrong with that, but just because it feels like they’re used to it and they see it as something that corporations are also desperate for in film and TV, how to keep these massive universes going. And so to see the excitement around these things reborn, right? The Absolute Universe, the Energon Universe, the Ultimate Universe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles right now.
To have readers be so excited to see surprising new takes, it’s made me almost rethink some of the possibility and the role of what we can do in superhero comics, where it almost feels like we’ve switched places a bit with movies and TV for the moment. Doesn’t mean that it always stays this way, but it feels like TV and movies is the place where they’ve created this giant interconnected system of story and narrative where they’re kind of beholden to it right now. You can’t suddenly pivot and reinvent Captain America or Iron Man because those characters literally have rides at theme parks and you have billions of dollars invested in those versions of those characters and TV shows based on them and all kinds of stuff. And so it’s much harder to suddenly swerve and do something new. But in comics, we’re super nimble. We can just start a new universe or we could just reboot a universe. Not that we should, but we can just move and do those things. And so it’s interesting to me, I guess just as a creator right now, how much excitement and how much enthusiasm there is from readers and sales on these books that are taking new swings that are unpredictable with these characters.
And it’s making me think that comics almost has a responsibility to try those things a lot. It doesn’t mean that in any way the main universe, the interconnected story we’ve been telling for 80 years, or any of that stuff is any less valuable or any less important or should in any way be diminished or abandoned. It just means that I think you can put a lot of weight and also creative power behind this other endeavor at the same time, not as kind of a throwaway or a spinoff, but as a major responsibility that we do more often. We do as a consistent thing for now where people really are looking to us to make these characters as exciting as they can be, as resonant as they can be. And that can happen in the main universe too. It does happen all the time. But I think that we also have this other lane that we sometimes think of as throwaway or you just do it for a little while, but it’s actually like a huge part of what comics has to offer that nothing else can do right now. The same way it felt like what movies and TV could do that nothing else could do before—take the characters in these huge, crazy swings or that they could do in a way that was huge and impactful. And now it feels like most movies and TV are trying to fit into that same system they’ve built. So we can do that.
Anyway, you get the idea. But it just got me thinking and very appreciative going to Mexico City and having been away with Nick Dragotta in Italy and seeing all over the world how excited people are for these wild personal takes on these characters that mean so much to us and clearly to so many people out there. Thank you. I can’t wait for you to see what’s coming up in Absolute Batman. Obviously, I spoke about #13. #14 is our big finale with Bane. It’s got some big surprises and hyper, hyper violence. And then #15 is the Joker issue with Jock. Can’t wait for you to see that. It’s really special to us.
#16 is our Wonder Woman crossover. Kelly Thompson is doing the first part. We’re doing the second. And just to be clear, we’re not going to do something where you have to read Absolute Wonder Woman and there’s a cliffhanger and then you read Absolute Batman. We just felt that that put too much on readers. So the way we’re doing it is almost like two one-shots, one leading into the other. But if you read them both, it’s a fuller story. But you could read them separately too.
So the idea is like it won’t force you if you’re only reading one series to read the other. But as most people are reading both based on sales, it feels like you can read both and get an even richer picture, but both are standalone. So in Kelly’s, Wonder Woman comes to Gotham. And in ours, Batman goes to Gateway City and has a crazy adventure that we’re really excited about. Changes the tone for an issue. So that’s #16.
#17 begins an arc. I can’t wait for where we’re going to bring in some characters, to spoil a little bit. #17 is a standalone issue. It’s a prelude, almost, to the arc that begins right after that. It brings in a big villain people are waiting for. #18 starts to bring in Scarecrow and other villains, but it’s all done in service to this larger Joker story that we’ve been doing. So I can’t wait for you guys to see it. And really, really grateful. That’s it. I can’t wait to say thank you at New York and really appreciate it. Thanks, guys!
S
P.S. Important announcement, there’s just over a day left to support the fifth issue of The Cloakroom! This is a labor of love from my students Jerry and Veronica, and continues the great work done in the Eisner-nominated Tales from the Cloakroom. It’s a great project that deserves your attention and funds! Help them reach their goal by going to the campaign and pledging at any of the tiers.
