SDCC 2015: Rounding Up All the News and Announcements

I greet each and every July with equal parts excitement and sorrow.  July is home to Comic Con International, a massive comic book and entertainment media convention held annually in San Diego.  The event has grown to gargantuan proportions since the first, one-day dry run in 1970.  Tickets sell out months in advance and hotels are booked to capacity.  Thus my sorrow.  Every year produces a cornucopia of news and announcements to get genre fans jazzed for the following year.  This year was no different.

The biggest thing coming out of Hall H (the main theatre at SDCC) was undoubtedly the debut of the new Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice trailer.

For someone who prides himself on skills of oratory nature and use of the written word, I am left speechless.  Granted, I am biased (DC over Marvel and Batman over, well, everything), but this trailer was simply amazing.  Since the film was announced, I’ve said that the “versus” part of this title will only last 30 minutes of the movie (maybe the entire first act), before the eventual team-up to take on the true villain.  After this trailer, however, I’m backpedaling ever so slightly on that claim.  The team-up is still inevitable, but I’m thinking our heroes will be at odds for longer than it takes for you to finish that popcorn and $15 Coke.  Either way, I can’t wait until March 25th of next year.

Supplemental information on Ben Affleck’s future as Batman is making its rounds on the rumor mill.  We know he will appear in Suicide Squad (a film that saw a trailer debut as well) in at least a cameo, but the new tidbit to speculate on is that Ben is co-writing alongside DC Comics writer Geoff Johns (Justice League, Green Lantern, Batman: Earth One) and will direct a solo Batman film with a targeted release of 2018.  If true, this has the potential to be the greatest Batman film thus far.  Geoff Johns would not be my first choice to co-write a Batman script, but Affleck’s writing is solid; look no further than Good Will Hunting and The Town.  The idea that he will direct the movie has me more excited than anything.  2012’s Argo, Ben’s most successful movie to date, garnered (no pun!) the filmmaker Golden Globes, BAFTAs, and Academy Awards in the Best Director and Best Picture categories.  I hope there’s truth to this rumor.
 

"Desert Batman" promo image released earlier today

From the comic book realm, both of the Big Two (DC and Marvel) made big announcements concerning their publishing lines for the upcoming months.  The biggest of which (in my book) was the reveal of a new series and a crossover event.

Batman & Robin Eternal, a sequel to last year’s Batman Eternal, will be a weekly series set to launch in October and run for six months.  The series looks to highlight all of Batman’s current (and some past) sidekicks.  October will also play host to a crossover event titled Robin War.  A five-issue event, the story will run through Robin: Son of Batman, Gotham Academy, We Are Robin, with two Robin War issues book-ending the event.  No details were available other than that, so I don’t know the premise of the event.  What I do know is that these two events are in celebration of The Boy Wonder’s 75th Anniversary which takes place this year (Robin first appeared in Detective Comics #38 in 1940).
 

The Evolution of Robin through the ages

Over on the television side, AMC revealed trailers for both Season Six of The Walking Dead and the debut season of Fear The Walking Dead.

Also shown in Hall H was the trailer for Heroes Reborn, the revival of the popular superhero show that ran from 2006-2010.

DC Comics’ shows on The CW had a great showing at the convention as well.  The Flash confirmed the debut of Jay Garrick (to be played by Teddy Sears) for Season 2 and revealed its central villain in Zoom.  Arrow welcomes the casting of Neal McDonough (who plays Dum Dum Duggan in the Marvel Cinematic Universe) as Damien Darhk.  Perhaps the coolest thing, though, was Stephen Amell taking the stage in Hall H to reveal Oliver Queen’s new costume and the fact that he referred to himself as the Green Arrow.

 

Green Arrow's Season Four costume

Back in the comic world, Marvel announced a crossover event for their Star Wars and Darth Vader books titled Vader Down.  The story, co-written by Jason Aaron and Kieron Gillen with art by Mike Deodato and Salvador Larroca, will feature the Dark Lord of the Sith being trapped behind enemy lines, leading to a showdown between Vader and the Rebel Alliance.
 

Cover art for "Vader Down"

Part of its initial slate, Marvel’s Star Wars line featured a Princess Leia limited series.  This was followed by a limited-series starring Lando Calrissian (simply titled Lando).  Marvel will follow this trend of launching a new limited-series when the other ends.  Chewbacca, written by Gerry Duggan and drawn by the incomparable Phil Noto, launches in October.
 

Chewbacca #1 variant cover by Phil Noto

One of the seminal works featuring Batman is Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns.  It has influenced the character in some way, shape, or form since its debut in 1986.  Miller, who was inducted into the prestigious Will Eisner Hall of Fame this past weekend, will finalize his trilogy with The Dark Knight III: The Master Race.  Co-written with Brian Azzarello with art by Andy Kubert and long-time Miller collaborator Klaus Janson, the edgy-titled series will have eight-issues, with no release date announced other than "Fall 2015".

Back in November, I got the opportunity to meet the iconic artist and legend that is Neal Adams.  When I asked Neal what he was working on at the time, all he would tell me is that he was working on a New Gods (a near-omnipotent race of legitimate gods in the DC Universe) book.  Over the weekend, the series, Coming of the Supermen, was announced.  Essentially billed as “Superman vs. the New Gods”, the series launches in October.  It will be joined by several other Superman related series- Superman: American Alien, a telling of Clark Kent’s formative years; Superman: Lois & Clark, an alternate Earth story spinning out of the pages of Convergence; also coming out of that event will be Telos and Titans Hunt, a series uniting the original Teen Titans.

Lighting round:

• Grant Morrison will return to the Bat-world with Batman: Black & White, a multi-issue series and a list of “superstar artists” attached.  It was also announced that Grant will pen several original graphic novels serving as sequels to his alternate Earth-spanning series, Multiversity.  These books will each have subtitles, but will have the umbrella title: Multiversity Too.
• DC Universe Animated Original Movies will release an adaptation of the classic Batman story The Killing Joke in 2016.  So excited for that.  Also, two new animated series were announced: Batman: Bad Blood and Justice League vs. Titans.  No other details on the series were available.
• Barnes & Noble announced plans to double their comic and graphic novel section in each of their stores across the country.  I’ll always encourage the purchase of books in a local comic shop to help support retailers, but the more available products are to consumers, the better.
• The CW will expand their comic book television shows to include a live-action Archie show.  If the series takes cues from the recently released Archie comic by Mark Waid and Fiona Staples, it’ll be astounding.
• Batman meets The Avengers (no, not those Avengers).  A crossover in the Batman ’66 comic featuring the British agents of the same decade.
• The previously announced Green Lantern film slated for 2020 has been revealed to be a Green Lantern Corps film.  That will be cool.
• Continuing the Earth One graphic novels (so far there have been three volumes of Superman, two of Batman, and one Teen Titans), two more OGNs were announced:  Aquaman: Earth One (by J. Michael Straczynski) and The Flash: Earth One (by Francis Manapul).  The Earth One original graphic novels serve as alternate origin stories for these characters.
• IDW Comics announced an “Academy” comic book series to accompany their current Star Trek line.  This new series will feature Kirk, Spock, and Uhura during their Starfleet Academy years on Earth with “familiar faces” appearing throughout.
• While Marvel Studios took this year off, 20th Century Fox did not.  The “final” trailer for August’s Fantastic Four was shown alongside debut trailers for X-Men: Apocalypse and Deadpool.

I didn’t cover even close to all of the news and announcements out of San Diego this past weekend, but the highlights are here.  I have to say that I am overly excited for the things to come later this year and into 2016 (and ’17 and ’18 and…)

Thanks for reading!

-Josh

Sources: Comic Book Resources; Wikipedia; Newsarama

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