SDCC Days 3 and 4 Round-up: Shazam, Aquaman, & Wonder Woman 1984 & more

Worlds of DC replaced the DC Extended Universe as a label for the shared universe of DC films. The idea seems to be replicating the DC multiverse, allowing the films to exist in the same universe without directly affecting one another, at least initially. This could explain the multiple Jokers, Miller & Gustin’s different Flash portrayals, & a new Batman (replacing Ben Affleck). 

Batman: Hush and Justice League vs. the Fatal Five animated series are coming in the Fall. Hush was Mark Waid and Jim Lee’s beloved early 2000’s Batman story about an obsessive childhood friend of Bruce’s. The Fatal Five is something I don’t know about but I presume you can google as well as I can. Sounds boring though. 

Aquaman was well-received but downplayed Momoa’s performance. To be fair, he’s a known commodity and the rest of the cast is as if not more talented than he, so featuring those actors and actresses makes sense from a marketing perspective. Much attention has been placed on the tonal change from dark BvS and JL to this, more consistent w WW. I didn’t love WW, but it was clearly massively improved over the terrible Snyder era. 

WW 1984 also had footage but it showed neither Kristen Wiig nor Pedro Pascal’s villains. Patty Jenkins did hint that more of her powers will be on display since she’s now “at full power” whatever that means. Hard to imagine her going nuclear on Cheetah who is more of a hand-to-hand combatant than the GOD she was fighting in the last film. But here we go. 

I just watched the Shazam trailer and I have to say that this looks awesome. Zach Levi was a blast in Chuck, a show that ended way too soon. He appears to have the same pathos here. The kids seem great. It reminds me a bit of Spider-Man and the Ant-Man franchise which, to me, is the most consistent Marvel product atm. I’m here for it. Check out the trailer. 

First looks for a live action Kim Possible & the second Godzilla film featuring Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown & completion of Robbie Williams pilot for a Judge Dredd tv show were all news at SDCC on Saturday. 

Luke Cage, Iron Fist, & Daughters of the Dragon (Misty Knight & Colleen Wing) are getting Marvel Digital Firsts series from no one you’ve ever heard of. The Vision is getting a sequel to the Tom King/Gabriel Walta story from “Ask me about my feminist agenda” Mockingbird scribe Chelsea Cain. Something is happening with Gwenpool, a character that exists for no apparent reason. 

Rumors of an Ironheart treatment script surfaced over the weekend. Obviously Robert Downey Jr. can’t continue in the role of Tony Stark forever. Someone will have to take over the suit at some point. No word from Marvel to confirm or deny and nothing approaching a release date or start date even exists. 

Slow news day on Saturday but we have an X-Men panel later today. I’d expect at least one more major announcement from the House of Ideas beyond the obvious X-Men announcement. 

Not much out of Image this weekend. Could be a couple of things from them today too. I wouldn’t be shocked if the comics folks want their news to come out late Sunday so it shows up as front page news on Monday rather than being drowned out by movie and TV news releasing Friday and Saturday. 

Update: 

Uncanny X-Men is back in the Fall, but no team is announced today. What. The. Fudgesicles. The Fall is only a couple of months away, Cebulski. You should probably make a gosh darned decision on the team. I’m annoyed in Cade you couldn’t tell. 

X-Men Black: a series of one shots running in October w J. Scott Campbell covers. 

Chris Claremont & Dalibor Talajic on Magneto, Juggernaut by Robbie Thompson and Shawn Crystal, Mojo by Scott Auckerman and Nick Bradshaw, and Mystique by Seanan McGuire and Marco Failla. 

Most intriguing, Leah Williams (X-Men Gold Annual) & Chris Bachalo on Emma Frost. Leah has been leaking Frost info for a couple of weeks on Twitter & is pumped for the project. Bachalo is a fan fav.

Update 2:

Tim Seeley is writing Shatterstar. Womp womp. 

Astonishing X-Men will bring back Banshee, who has been dead but apparently Beast put him in a freezer bc what could possibly go wrong w that? 

X-Men Red will be in Atlantis. It sounds dumb but Tom Taylor is writing it so I’m a believer. 

Wolverine will have a team. That’s all of the Wolverine news from the panel. But hooray McNiven, who we found out about Friday. 

More news as it breaks today...we’ll mark it as update. 

SDCC Day 1 News: DC Universe, Morrison on Green Lantern, Johns on Joker/Shazam, & More!

Day one SDCC News is up! We’ll be keeping you posted here on all the announcements and goings-on. 

Biggest announcement: Grant Morrison & Liam Sharp on Green Lantern. This book has been rumored for quite a bit now, but knowing the exact team will bring the excitement to a fever pitch. Morrison has a cult following esp. w DC fans and will give this title a real shot in the arm. A crime procedural in space sounds pretty compelling. Sharp is just off of his solo creating the Batman/WW Brave & The Bold and his run on WW w Rucka was well liked. This book should sell well & be high quality. 

Runner up: two Geoff Johns titles, Shazam w Dale Eaglesham & 3 Jokers w Jason Fabok. Johns recently announced he was stepping down from his VP position w DC to rejoin the creative team & he’s hitting the ground running. Shazam seems like a stretch for a guy of his talent. But they’ve got a movie coming out & his vision will help sell it to the comic book faithful. Eaglesham is a talented artist who should realize Johns plots well. 3 Jokers should be a top-selling book & a creative success. Recent stories hinted that the Joker has not always been one man but is rather a spirit of chaos/murder. This tale will resolve that thread w a fan favorite villain & a very hot artist. Should be a solid book. UPDATE: Johns also dropped some info on his new imprint at DC. It’s called The Killing Zone, it’s politically motivated, & it deals with characters from the Golden Age (1940’s) to the 2040’s (Legion?). It’ll hit the stands in May 2019. No details yet on what will be released at that time but it’ll be multiple characters & properties under one banner telling a semi-unified narrative. 

Also, Kelly Sue DeConnick & Robson Rocha (recently of Deathstroke & Supergirl) are taking over Aquaman ahead of a the movie’s release. This should be a vote of confidence in a team that will see interest in this cast of characters at an all-time high. DeConnick has a solid fan base & the recent success of their Mera solo title bodes well for interest in this book. 

Clone Wars returns for a new season on the Disney streaming service. Not a lot of detail to this announcement, but it’ll be red hot given that the next Star Wars film isn’t for over a year & the intense polarization over The Last Jedi & Solo. The Clone Wars is nearly universally well received by fans & should be a notch in the belt of the Star Wars universe Disney envisions. 

Wolverine returns! Logan will be back in his solo title this Fall with Charles Soule (architect of the character’s death) & fan favorite artist Steve McNiven at the helm. Word has it that Wolvie has a new power set that heats up his claws to ridiculous temperatures, which I don’t know — sounds dumb — but maybe it’ll be cool? Soule is a talented writer & I’ve liked all of his work including Daredevil, Vader, & the series returning Wolverine to the MU. We’ll have to see the reasoning behind it. 

DC Universe streaming service: it’ll be 74.95 annually. You’ll get to watch Titans & (another Geoff Johns production — and his creation). Dick Grayson says fuck and kills people, apparently. Raven looks cool. Starfire is portrayed by a black actress. Beast Boy looks like Beast Boy. Stargirl will feature the JSA, which is way more interesting than Stargirl is. At any rate, no one is subscribing to this & everyone will stream it, right? Right. Hard to know if these will be any good or just more of the Arrowverse type garbage we’ve gotten from DC tv. The extra dark version of Titans seems to hint that they still think everyone should be Batman or more dark/grim than even that.

Mark Silvestri Batman/Joker team-up was announced during the Black Label panel. Some story details including the kidnapping of Jim Gordon & a new villain, but no release date or format details at the moment. 

There should be a bevy of additional announcements from Marvel coming up, including FF, Gaiman & Miracleman, & at least one, maybe more, X-book. HBO, MCU, & Star Wars are all OUT on SDCC this year, so it’ll be nearly all comics, TV, & DCU films. I’d expect Fox to show us more Venom & maybe some Phoenix, Netflix may have some Millarverse material for us, & BBC will definitely be getting folks hyped for the new (and first female) Doctor. I’ll be around tomorrow with more news.