UPDATED: It was revealed during the Young Animal Panel that “Mother Panic” will also be going on hiatus with “Cave Carson” and “Shade” from October to January. In January, the four one-shots will all be “Doom Patrol” specials, the first is a “Doom Patrol/JLA” crossover by Gerard Way and Steve Orlando with art by ACO. You can check out the cover from Frank Quietly with a character called Milkman Man below. Way also revealed he’s working on more original music for the imprint.
Original Story: It was revealed at the DC Press Breakfast this morning at San Diego Comic-Con that Gerard Way’s Young Animal imprint will now fall under the Vertigo banner at DC Comics. At the breakfast it was also revealed the the Young Animal titles will “crossover” into the main DC Universe in a series of four one-shots that will set the stage for the series going forward.
Young Animal currently publishes five titles which include “Bug!: The Adventures of Forager” (a six-issue miniseries ending in October), “Doom Patrol,” “Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye,” “Shade, The Changing Girl,” and “Mother Panic.” To accommodate the move the Vertigo and the new status quo for the imprint both “Shade” and “Cave Carson” will begin a hiatus after their issues published in September and will pick back up in the new year. This explains why both were not solicited in DC’s October 2017 Solicitations that were released on Monday of this week. At the breakfast Young Animal curator Gerard Way revealed he held a creator’s retreat at his house to plan out the four-part crossover.
It is unclear why the imprint is shifting to Vertigo, although it may have to do with the recent shifts in editorial leadership at DC and the promotion of Mark Doyle, previous “Batman” family editor, to Executive Editor overseeing Vertigo, Young Animal, and new projects (more than likely whatever new mature superhero imprint both Scott Snyder and Jim Lee have teased). This also lends itself to thinking Vertigo may return to its former days of publishing darker DC stories still set in the DCU. More info will be revealed later at the Young Animal panel this evening so check back here in a few hours!
