Earth-Shattering Flashpoint and DC News Coming June 11th
DC Comics has announced that Geoff Johns and Jim Lee will be making some kind of major announcement regarding the end of Flashpoint and its affect on the DC Universe at the Hero Complex Film Festival in Los Angeles on June 11th. The timing of the announcement to the film festival is because this is a very geek-friendly event with the festival focusing on the type of movies we geeks love. Specifically their announcement will tie in with a screening of Superman and Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut with a Q&A with Richard Donner. The announcement also specifically mentions the future of Superman, which has set the speculation online into overdrive.
Due to the focus on Superman, rumors are flying around online that they plan to drastically change Supes after Flashpoint due to the current legal quagmire with the families over the rights to specific elements of Superman’s character. Some of the gentler rumors discuss them possibly rebooting Superman without most of the elements from Action Comics #1, which won’t be owned by DC anymore. That means no more Kryptonian origins, no more Lois Lane, and a drastic change in the costume. More radical rumors say that DC will lose Superman all together and he won’t be part of the DC Universe at all, but the wording of the announcement doesn’t quite point to that…yet.
As for the rest of the DC Universe, there’s thought that there may be a new “One Year Later”-style storyline at the end of Flashpoint. Every DCU comic will have its current storyline completely wrapped up prior to the August 31st release of Flashpoint #5 so some kind of big reboot is possible. There’s also a rumor that every DC comic will be restarted at issue #1, which in my opinion would suck as both Detective Comics and Action Comics are two of the longest running series in the history of the medium. Action just celebrated issue #900 with a reprint of that and #901 coming out this week.
Whatever the announcement is, it’s pretty safe to say that Flashpoint will end up having a massive impact on DC Comics in the future.