DC have announced at The Hollywood Reporter that a new “Batman/Superman” series will debut from writer Joshua Williamson (“The Flash,” “Birthright”) and artist David Marquez (“Invincible Iron Man,” “Ultimate Comics Spider-Man”) this August. The series will follow the World’s Finest duo as they deal with the continued fallout from the Batman Who Laughs. Spinning out from ‘The Offer,’ July’s contained Lex Luthor event, and more broadly spinning out from the entire Scott Snyder/James Tynion IV-penned “Justice League” series, this marks the first team-up series of Clark and Bruce since the prior volume ended ahead of ‘Rebirth’ in 2016.
The series will also introduce a new Secret Six, though it has no apparent relation to the prior incarnations of that team, most famously written by Gail Simone. This new Secret Six are characters from ‘our’ universe that the Batman Who Laughs has infected and turned into sleeper agents for his plans. Williamson told the Reporter, “They’ve been infected, and they’re slowly turning into the worst versions of themselves. Some of them know they’re changing, some don’t. Some aren’t aware it’s kind of like a Jekyll and Hyde situation where they’re not aware of [what] the other side is doing.” He described the book as more akin to the ending of the classic horror film The Thing than a typical superhero team-up title.
The biggest news, however, is Marquez making the jump to DC, signing an exclusive contract with the company. A longtime Brian Michael Bendis collaborator, Marquez has worked more or less exclusively at Marvel since mid-2012, aside from “The Joyners” at Archaia. “I’ve been very fortunate that in a relatively short career I’d been able to work on some big projects,” the artist said. “When I heard the possibility of working with DC, I wasn’t sure I wanted to do more work-for-hire stuff after wrapping up with Marvel. They really kind of had to sell me on the idea of doing the series.”
Williamson left “Justice League Odyssey” earlier this year to work on a new project at DC, which this appears to be. Williamson, along with Tynion IV and Snyder, is one the architects of the ‘New Justice’ series of books that directly lead into this new series. He promised this new title will have repercussions for the whole line, stating “It definitely changes the DCU in a lot of ways, it impacts the characters and the dynamic between some of them, moving forward in the next year.” Marquez echoed Williamson’s sentiment that this is a darker, more consequential series, saying “This isn’t throwaway, like ‘everything is perfect and back to normal,’ illusion of change stuff.”
“Batman/Superman” #1 will be released in August.
