We all knew that something along these lines would happen, but the exact outcome is still somewhat of a surprise: to work on his sequel to the smash hit Earth One (which began selling out across the country and online on the first day), J. Michael Straczynski will be leaving his current Superman and Wonder Woman arcs.
As announced over at DCU’s The Source, “Starting with SUPERMAN #707 and WONDER WOMAN #605, Straczynski will step back as the monthly scripter of both books, opening the door for two rising talents to step in and complete the books’ respective storylines using JMS’s story notes. Straczynski’s influence will be apparent in both titles — Superman’s Walk Across America continues, the mysteries surrounding Wonder Woman barrel toward a conclusion and in due time you’ll have a second volume of SUPERMAN: EARTH ONE to put on the shelf next to the first.”
So who will be penning the two titles? Superman goes over to Chris Roberson, who we all know and love from Cinderella and iZombie. He will continue to work with Eddy Barrows as well as guest artist Alan Goldman to finish up Grounded based on JMS’ outline (with a much more toned down version of JMS’ famous soap box writing style). Meanwhile, over at Wonder Woman, Phil Hester of MC favorite title Days Missing will step in with artist Don Kramer and Eduardo Panisca to continue JMS re-launch of the character in her alternate timeline (which has apparently no effect on DC’s regular representation of Wonder Woman, if Morrison’s Batman is any indication).
Now – we all knew that there would be a sequel. Both Superman and Batman Earth One books were planned as ongoing graphic novels, and a large part of Earth One was foreshadowing what was to come. JMS also supposedly has Samaritan X in the works, but I’m a little surprised to see him leaving two of the DC trinity in order to focus on Earth One. JMS has a … habit, so to say, of leaving his stories unfinished (see: The Twelve and Thor), but he also has noted in the past that he has health issues that do slow him down, which is very unfortunate. DC and JMS’ decision to let other people take the reigns for the monthly titles seems like the right thing to do.
Brave and the Bold is still in the ultimate limbo (perhaps stuck in DC’s “hole in things”?), but for now it looks like DC needs to update it’s January solicits a tad.
