DC Comics 2023 News/General Discussion

[Superfly Frankenstein]

Someone said that giving heroes a kid is the current era equivalent to giving them pouches/trenchcoats and I cackled at that. Seems everyone except Spider-Man is getting kids.

And Spidey’s the one that SHOULD have a kid.

[skyvolt2000]

Bringing in random kids and husband are just plot devices. Marvel's real purpose was to come up with horribly contrived reasons to give Mary Jane a forced personality change so she would suddenly be capable of handling herself in any situation that might require Spider-Man, since they want her as far away from him as possible at all cost. Of course for that to happen we need to pretend that she hasn't been the strong, capable, competent person and equal partner that she was for 50 years and was supposedly always someone who waited to be saved by him.

But hey, Dan DiDio once called Lois Lane a "trophy wife", so there's that. People in power of this industry whose very job is to understand these characters and their histories often turn out to be the exact opposite. And it sucks.

Where in the job description is that stated?

The majority of the jobs say "a understanding or knowledge of comics".

Nobody should think of Lois or Mary Jane as trophy wives. Especially not Lois who at one time had one of the top selling books at DC at a time female lead books were HATED.

This is what happens when fanboys run the company and you hire YES MEN.

You get the messes known as MIA Wally West & JSA, the last 8 years of Black Panther, the mess in Spider-Man and others. And you HIDE sales with tons of variants.

[Fergus]

I'm kind of in the same boat as you. We already have family members that are sidelined and get zero to little attention, we've just gotten an addition to the family and now this? It seems like it's more than likely a future story not necessarily set in continuity (something King is renowned for) so I'm not getting too excited about it. However, I would much rather see them work on the family she has with Donna, Cassie (who is currently homeless), Steve, Etta, Siggy, Ferdinand, Yara...hell even work in Jason somehow to straighten his mess out one way or the other (which to be frank, this smacks of the similar smell of another Jason.)
I mean I am here for it one way or the other, but it's a meh here and not an all in excited here.

King desperately wanted to leave his mark on the Batman franchise. Met with WB execs several times to get permission to make changes that would change the status quo forever. Those never panned out. Now he gets a chance to realise that dream.

O've always been interested inDiana and Steve having a kidbut something about this seems forced. Not story/character driven.Diana's narrative isn't at a point where one would say that a kid is the next logical step at this time.

Tying the daughter to the Supersons and calling their story Trinity feels even more forced. This is all before we even get into the fact that we just had a a new trinity introduced not too long ago [Jon, Jace and Yara]
DC already has a trinity
or that DC is yet to resolve what todo with existing middle gen, has an abundance of characters that need more use and the wonder family is underutilised.

This character isn't necessary.

Royalties are nice and I can't blame writers for trying to boost earnings by introducing original characters but it shouldn't be done so recklessly. At this point these characters are just piling up. Damian Wayne is the only one since his era that can be called a successful character that can stand on his own. Even Jon Kent is yet to really stand on his own.

DC should focus efforts on developing/building up their current catalogue of characters not gambling on new ones.

[OBrianTallent]

King desperately wanted to leave his mark on the Batman franchise. Met with WB execs several times to get permission to make changes that would change the status quo forever. Those never panned out. Now he gets a chance to realise that dream.

O've always been interested inDiana and Steve having a kidbut something about this seems forced. Not story/character driven.Diana's narrative isn't at a point where one would say that a kid is the next logical step at this time.

Tying the daughter to the Supersons and calling their story Trinity feels even more forced. This is all before we even get into the fact that we just had a a new trinity introduced not too long ago [Jon, Jace and Yara]
DC already has a trinity
or that DC is yet to resolve what todo with existing middle gen, has an abundance of characters that need more use and the wonder family is underutilised.

This character isn't necessary.

Royalties are nice and I can't blame writers for trying to boost earnings by introducing original characters but it shouldn't be done so recklessly. At this point these characters are just piling up. Damian Wayne is the only one since his era that can be called a successful character that can stand on his own. Even Jon Kent is yet to really stand on his own.

DC should focus efforts on developing/building up their current catalogue of characters not gambling on new ones.

I can agree with this. Wonder Woman's current status doesn't put her in a place where a kid would be a natural next step. From the beginning of the announcement this has felt more like another "Jason" to me than a progression of natural story, but I could be wrong. The thing that bothers me most is that King has said the story is building to her. So once again, we do not have a story that is building up Diana, but rather using her as a plot device to get to what the writer really wants to do. That's disappointing.

The better candidate for that is Dr Mist and if only "Primal Force" had taken off he could have been DC's Dr Strange.

YES! I would love to see someone at DC build up Dr. Mist. Another character that could be DC's Doctor Strange is far more controversial but could be a ton of fun...Extrano!

[Morgoth]

Their logic here is absolutely simple. Creating a biological son/daughter of popular character is basically one of simplest ways to create a new character with chances to attract sales and audience, and also, it's the chance to leave a mark on character's history. Their most successful legacy characters over the past 15 years are sons of Batman and Superman. And at the same time, with 5G/Future State they tried to launch the whole new generation of characters, who were supposed to be playing on different field, and, well, it didn't work out. It's essentially the same thing that, if I'm not mistaken, Lee was talking about during Infinity Frontier. Nothing changed, they are still creating new IPs, with the potential for possible adaptations. Wonder Woman's daughter is a potentially big IP that they seem to see really big potential in. Similarly, they, judging by King's interview, see potential in her possible team-up with Damian and Jon - the children of the Trinity work together, Jon and Damian as older brothers to her, the new Trinity, etc. Selling it to an audience will be easy. That's their goal here.

[Eskana]

Their logic here is absolutely simple. Creating a biological son/daughter of popular character is basically one of simplest ways to create a new character with chances to attract sales and audience, and also, it's the chance to leave a mark on character's history. Their most successful legacy characters over the past 15 years are sons of Batman and Superman. And at the same time, with 5G/Future State they tried to launch the whole new generation of characters, who were supposed to be playing on different field, and, well, it didn't work out. It's essentially the same thing that, if I'm not mistaken, Lee was talking about during Infinity Frontier. Nothing changed, they are still creating new IPs, with the potential for possible adaptations. Wonder Woman's daughter is a potentially big IP that they seem to see really big potential in. Similarly, they, judging by King's interview, see potential in her possible team-up with Damian and Jon - the children of the Trinity work together, Jon and Damian as older brothers to her, the new Trinity, etc. Selling it to an audience will be easy. That's their goal here.

I agree that marketability is all the company is probably thinking of... not to mention, with King being connected to the upcoming new movie/media universe, he's probably feeling more free to create characters himself now. However, I feel like they really didn't give a lot of those new characters a real chance. Yara, for instance, had her own book, but then was quickly shuffled into a supporting character of other books (despite the fact that for a while there, she was going to have her own show.) At the same time, from what I can tell, John is not that popular of a character. Many people disliked his aging-up, and I haven't heard very many prefer him in any way to Superman. Of the two, Damian is probably much more popular, but that's also because he was different enough from other people in his universe AND he's been given much more time to grow.

Adding in Trinity just seems like they're trying to come to the same 5G result, but through the back door since it wasn't a well received notion.

And the article from AIPT mentions that Trinity is supposed to be 5 years younger than Damian and John... but aren't they different ages? Wouldn't that make her really young (and not the upper teenager depicted in the artwork?)

[Vordan]

Their logic here is absolutely simple. Creating a biological son/daughter of popular character is basically one of simplest ways to create a new character with chances to attract sales and audience, and also, it's the chance to leave a mark on character's history. Their most successful legacy characters over the past 15 years are sons of Batman and Superman. And at the same time, with 5G/Future State they tried to launch the whole new generation of characters, who were supposed to be playing on different field, and, well, it didn't work out. It's essentially the same thing that, if I'm not mistaken, Lee was talking about during Infinity Frontier. Nothing changed, they are still creating new IPs, with the potential for possible adaptations. Wonder Woman's daughter is a potentially big IP that they seem to see really big potential in. Similarly, they, judging by King's interview, see potential in her possible team-up with Damian and Jon - the children of the Trinity work together, Jon and Damian as older brothers to her, the new Trinity, etc. Selling it to an audience will be easy. That's their goal here.

The other elephant in the room: the DCU is already adapting Damian. Very likely we will get Jon at some point too. DC no doubt wants a Wonder Woman kid ready to join those two in the DCU, and who better than King to create such a character given he’s already involved in plotting out the DCU storyline?

[HsssH]

Damian and Jon weren't natural next steps for Batman and Superman so I don't see why it would be any different for WW.

[Morgoth]

The other elephant in the room: the DCU is already adapting Damian. Very likely we will get Jon at some point too. DC no doubt wants a Wonder Woman kid ready to join those two in the DCU, and who better than King to create such a character given he’s already involved in plotting out the DCU storyline?

That's another reason why I believe there's something more about this whole thing with Trinity, considering King's role in DCU.
Though, I still have no idea what they're going to do with Jon, considering, that Superman will be young, and Damian will be already introduced.

[Mantis-Ray]

I agree that marketability is all the company is probably thinking of... not to mention, with King being connected to the upcoming new movie/media universe, he's probably feeling more free to create characters himself now. However, I feel like they really didn't give a lot of those new characters a real chance. Yara, for instance, had her own book, but then was quickly shuffled into a supporting character of other books (despite the fact that for a while there, she was going to have her own show.) At the same time, from what I can tell, John is not that popular of a character. Many people disliked his aging-up, and I haven't heard very many prefer him in any way to Superman. Of the two, Damian is probably much more popular, but that's also because he was different enough from other people in his universe AND he's been given much more time to grow.

Adding in Trinity just seems like they're trying to come to the same 5G result, but through the back door since it wasn't a well received notion.

And the article from AIPT mentions that Trinity is supposed to be 5 years younger than Damian and John... but aren't they different ages? Wouldn't that make her really young (and not the upper teenager depicted in the artwork?)

Yara's failure is interesting since that was due to a bit more than banking on the wrong creative in a different way than say Jace or Teen Jon.

Joelle Jones was to be the main architect of Yara though unlike John Ridley and Tom Taylor for Jace and Jon, Jones was also the main artist.

Problem...... Joelle Jones could not handle a monthly comic book schedule causing the book to be delayed not even 3 issues in and DC failed to bring in other artists to act as the secondary to Jones. That is what ultimately killed Yara, very poor planning which is a shame cause she was actually selling pretty well at the start compared to say Jace Fox.

[Ascended]

The better candidate for that is Dr Mist and if only "Primal Force" had taken off he could have been DC's Dr Strange.

...wouldn't Dr. Fate be the DC version of the Sorcerer Supreme/Strange?

Damian and Jon weren't natural next steps for Batman and Superman so I don't see why it would be any different for WW.

Very true, and I remember seeing a lot of the same complaints we're seeing now with both of the boys then. And yet here we are, with Damian a normalized part of the Bat mythos and a string of larger media appearances under his belt. Jon hasn't reached that level of integration, but I don't think he's losing ground either. Ten years from now, Lizzie might be a major player in the Wonder-verse, y'never know.

As for Yara and basically all of 5G-turned-Future-State, you could tell DC and AT&T had high hopes, and I think the fans were pretty welcoming of the new faces. It felt like we were willing to give most of them a fair shake at least, which is pretty good for a fandom that's usually real resistant to change. But it feels like as soon as they hit a small bump, DC basically gave up. They could have tried new creators, relaunched the books, etc. They've put in a bit of effort, mostly with Jon, but most of it feels pretty half-assed. I'm sure the Discovery buy-out played a role. Whoever's in charge now clearly doesn't see what AT&T did in 5G's leftover characters. But some of these guys are worth another attempt.

Anyway, we know Lizzie's story is twenty years from now, when she's nineteen. Meaning Diana will get pregnant soon (or sculpt a baby, whatever ends up happening). Are we gonna get a Future Trunks thing here? I feel like that'd be cool, and a really nice callback to the origins of Wonder Girl.

[MajorHoy]

... Anyway, we know Lizzie's story is twenty years from now, when she's nineteen. Meaning Diana will get pregnant soon (or sculpt a baby, whatever ends up happening). Are we gonna get a Future Trunks thing here? I feel like that'd be cool, and a really nice callback to the origins of Wonder Girl.

And don't forget, Lyta Trevor (Fury from Infinity Inc. / daughter of Earth-2 Wonder Woman) was first seen in Wonder Woman #300, so another callback?

[BatmanJones]

Martian Manhunter did also have a kid with Hawkgirl in Snyder's JL run. But I think he was from the future too and was eventually erased. I can't remember any details behind that story other than the kid's visuals

That arc was maybe the only thing I loved from Snyder's JL run. I mean apart from the gorgeous Cheung and Jimenez art. After Elongated Man, Shayne is the "obscure character I'd most like to see DC bring back." Jarro was fun too but Shayne was terrific.

[BatmanJones]

Could the name "Trinity" indicate the child Superman and WW had at the end of Kingdom Come? Their godfather was Bruce and Clark and Diana considered him to be the child's honorary third parent. If your parents are Superman, WW, and Batman it would make some sense to take the legacy name Trinity.

[Will Evans]

Could the name "Trinity" indicate the child Superman and WW had at the end of Kingdom Come? Their godfather was Bruce and Clark and Diana considered him to be the child's honorary third parent. If your parents are Superman, WW, and Batman it would make some sense to take the legacy name Trinity.

That was a baby boy. And that was on Earth 22.