DC News from Montreal

Primal · Nov 14, 2005

DC NEWS FROM THE RRP MEETING

Today, a select group of comic retailers made their way home from the Great White North as DC’s RRP meeting wrapped up in Montreal.

Many of the announcements and talking points re-iterated news from this summer’s convention season, with a few new tidbits thrown in for spice.

As announced at Chicago, Dynamite’s Red Sonja will cross over with (and revive) DC’s Klaw character, and the two will be in a one-shot under the Wildstorm banner. Alex Ross and Jim Lee were confirmed as cover artists for the one-shot (two covers, not collaboration), which will kick off Wildstorm’s sword and sorcery line and a new Klaw series.

While he’s he’ll be meeting many heroes of the Wildstorm Universe throughout the Captain Atom: Armageddon miniseries, his meeting with The Authority in issue #5 will lead to a “big event.” The returning Wildstorm titles were again mentioned: Wildcats by Grant Morrison and Jim Lee; Gen13 by Gail Simone and Talent Caldwell; and Wetworks by Mike Carey and Whilce Portacio. No specific dates for the three series’ launches were mentioned.

What appears to be the final Alan Moore/Kevin O’Neil League of Extraordinary Gentlemen project to come from Wildstorm, The Black Dossier will be a hardcover which will include many formats contained within, including a 3D segment.

Chris Sprouse will step in for a two issue fill-in on Ex Machina, spelling off regular series artist Tony Harris sometime after issue #20.

Each issue of 52* will contain 20 pages of stories with back-ups. Issues #2-#11 will feature a 10-part “History of the DCU” story. As mentioned before, the weekly series will tie-into seasons and holidays and will see six stories running throughout the run.

The maximum cover price the weekly series will be is $2.99. It will launch in the second week of May, and will be the chance for some minor characters to shine.

Hawkman changes its title to Hawkgirl with issue #50 as a part of the publisher’s “One Year Later…” event. The series will also be getting a creative team change, with Walt Simonson coming on board as writer and Howard Chaykin joining as penciler (marking the first return of both to mainstream, ongoing DCU work in years – decades?).

Asked how edgy the series would be, it was stated that the Hawkgirl series may be stronger than some of the softer DCU titles, but will be a part of the DC Universe.

Absolute Sandman starts in 2006; there was no announcement of price or extras yet, but DC will be recoloring the early issues of the Sandman series to match the higher production values of the later issues, as well as touching up the lettering in some issues where reversed lettering dropped out a bit. This is part of a plan to do every Sandman story in the Absolute format. Concurrent with the publication of Absolute Sandman, DC will not be keeping the current hardcovers edition collections of the series in print.

February will see the next of DC’s progression in its revival of IPC characters (Albion), with Thunderbolt Jaxon by Dave Gibbons and John Higgins. Garth Ennis is reportedly to follow in the IPC line with a miniseries, though the character Ennis will be handling was not named.

Though not slated to be announced, DC representatives, noting that the DC solicts had leaked out over the weekend on the Silver Bullet Comics website (since taken down), confirmed that the current Wonder Woman series will be ending that month, as will Gotham Central and Gotham Knights. Flash ends in January with the already-solicited issue.

June and July: there will be one new major series launch each week; and in July – one new major high-profile creative team launch.

June & Juiy: one new major series launch every week in June, one new major high-profile creative team launch every week in July.

Batman/Spirit will ship in June, with the new ongoing Darwyn Coke Spirit series starting in June.

In DC Direct news, an upcoming Silver Age Superman set will include Superman (with robot machineworks behind the s-shield), Lois, Jimmy, Perry, Lex, and Beppo the Super-Monkey.

There will be a recall on the Crisis on Infinite Earths action figures from DC Direct, due to line-wide problems with paints, assembly, and looks. Consumers will be able to return figures they bought as well. The production problems with the CoIE line was pointed to as the cause of the shipping date changes for other DC Direct lines.

Upcoming Infinite Crisis figures will include Power Girl, Alex Luthor, OMAC, and Superboy Prime with his new costume design.

There will also be a line of figures based on Darwyn Cooke’s versions of the characters from DC: New Frontier.

The next Elseworlds series will include a Spectre/Norm McCay two figure set at a single-figure price, in a box designed to match the look of the original Kingdom Come boxes. The subline will also include more Red Son figures and Gotham by Gaslight figures.

The coming JSA line will include four modern JSA member figures, and one classic--the Atom--which will feature two complete figures in one box, one with the hood costume and one with the cowl revealing the lower face.
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Source: Newsarama

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DC News from Montreal

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DC News from Montreal

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