You’re Not Ready for DC’s ALL-IN Initiative (And Being At San Diego Comic-Con Made Me a Believer)

Believe me when I say that what DC Comics has planned for this fall could wind up being the best thing to happen to our favorite heroes in a long, long time. Between dramatic shake-ups and a brand-new universe, there’s going to be something for everyone.

It’s only been a few short weeks since the publisher revealed its exciting new DC All In initiative, but fans got a real good look at what DC Comics had brewing at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. I had the privilege of covering the convention this year and let me tell you: I’m hyped for DC All In and I guarantee you will be too.

DC All In? The Absolute Universe? What’s Going On?

Like many DC Comics fans, I heard rumors swirling about something called the Absolute Universe for the better part of a year. But it wasn’t until DC Comics made an official video announcement that we finally got concrete details about the Absolute Universe and DC All In, the publisher’s huge initiative for the fall. Spearheading DC All In is Joshua Williamson and Scott Snyder, who appeared in the video and introduced fans to the latest chapter of the DC Universe.

Williamson revealed this new initiative spins out of DC’s summer event Absolute Power and officially begins with DC All In Special #1. Williamson stayed mum on the details, though he did reveal that the Darkside played a key role in the upcoming storyline. Snyder followed this up by saying the confrontation between the Justice League and Darkseid would “shape the DC Universe for a while”. But the biggest and most tantalizing part of this announcement was the confirmation of DC’s new Absolute Universe.

Snyder played coy when discussing the Absolute Universe, but remarked that it’s going to be a world predicated on “Darkseid energy” in the same way the Prime Universe is based on “Superman energy”. The Absolute Universe is a world where the DC heroes fans know and love do exist, but they lack many of the creature comforts their mainline counterparts have. Superman has no family while Batman lacks the wealth and privilege he usually has. It was an intriguing idea and one I couldn’t wait to find out more about when I traveled to San Diego for Comic-Con.

DC Comics Creators Hyped Up All In Even More

Nothing set the stage for my Comic-Con experience better than attending DC’s Absolute Power Panel. Between hearing some of my favorite writers and artists speak and getting a peek at books like the new Justice League Unlimited series, I was ready to learn all I could from my first in-person interviews. Green Lantern writer Jeremy Adams was my first interviewee, and while he’s not going anywhere for the foreseeable future, he had some things to say about Green Lantern’s future regarding the upcoming Civil Corps special.

Jeremy Adams: …the one-shot is what’s basically going to kick off the finale of the Green Lantern story that I’ve been telling. It doesn’t mean I’m off the book, at least that I know. But it does mean that at the end of this, the status quo for Green Lantern will have changed. We will be at a new crossroads in certain ways.

It’s always great to hear from Jeremy and it was equally great to hear from Mark Waid. Unfortunately, I had way too many questions for him (given that he’s writing more than a handful of books for DC at the moment). But I was able to glean some valuable insights into the upcoming Justice League Unlimited series. It was also around this interview that I started asking what DC All In meant to each individual creator working on the initiative.

Mark Waid: It means that there’s just an excitement to it. And I know that sounds like bulls**t Hollywood answer, but I mean it. I’ve been very lucky. I’ve been able to build a corner of the DC Universe in the last couple of years, where I can have fun and where I don’t feel like everything is editorially mandated or feel like everything is grim and dark, and things seem to have worked out pretty well. The thinking was we should be having more fun with these books. We shouldn’t be experiencing the joy of what it is like to be Green Lantern, Flash, whatever. The characters should shine and we should get back to the essence of who these characters are.

Of course, I also needed to do my duty as a comics journalist and find out something about the Absolute Universe. Thankfully, I got to speak to Jason Aaron, the writer reinventing the Man of Steel in the upcoming Absolute Superman. It was nice talking to Jason, not just because he’s an absolute sweetheart, but because he really elucidated on the details of the Absolute Universe and described the painstaking care he and other creators were putting into these titles.

Jason Aaron: I struggle with talking about this because I’m super excited to talk about it, and I don’t want to give away all the secrets. But everything fits together. Like I talked about it at the panel when we showed the image of Superman and his costume. The costume is very different in a lot of ways, parts of it glow. His hair’s long, his cape looks very, very different. All those things are not just cosmetic choices. There’s a reason that cape looks like that. I’ll give you the one tidbit I’ll say is: Look at the cape. It’s got a gradient texture. He’s literally wearing the dust of Krypton.

Reflecting on DC All In, Post San Diego Comic-Con

The five days I was at San Diego Comic-Con were some of the most exhausting of my life. But when the experience was over, I was still abuzz after hearing from some of DC Comics’ brightest stars. They were all so confident and excited about DC All In, whether they were revitalizing a character for the Absolute Universe or simply taking a hero in the Prime Universe in a new direction. Everyone was excited about this new direction for the DC Universe, including New Gods’ Ram V.

Ram V: I think in general, the thing that excites me most about All In is the idea that it’s no longer just the characters that have been around for the past, you know, 5-10 years. If you look at the JSA announcement, if you look at the Green Lantern story, if you look at the Absolute Universe, it feels like all of the DC characters from the big to the small are all coming to this event. And that feels very exciting to me.

I’ve been reading comics for the better part of my life. And as someone who was sorely disappointed by the sweeping changes of the New 52 and its many, many inconsistencies, I’m always ambivalent hearing about giant initiatives. But the more I heard from these DC Comics creators, the more I realized this wasn’t a marketing stunt or an attempt to chase new readers. This was a passion project on a scale that’s never been seen before and no one sold that idea better than Joshua Williamson.

Joshua Williamson: So the idea was “If we’re going to do this, it can’t feel like they’re separate. It’s one story.” right? And then we started talking about all of us, like “We’re all in this together.”. And we started saying this all the time. We all say it and that’s what it meant from top down. It wasn’t an initiative. It wasn’t a reboot. It wasn’t a relaunch. It was a moment in time where we were able to say “W’re all in this together doing the same thing.”

I’m not going to lie, I was pretty damn excited getting to talk to these creators in person and a lot of my excitement was probably spurred on by the energy of San Diego Comic-Con (it was my first time there, after all). But well over a month later, I’m still feeling that excitement. I was doing my best to be cautiously optimistic about DC All In, but now that I know how much passion and planning went into this event, I really do think DC Comics is about to give fans something special.

I Can’t Wait to See What Else DC Comics Has Planned

If I walked away learning anything from San Diego Comic-Con this year, it’s that the creators involved with DC All In have huge plans. We’ve only seen a small fraction of what’s coming down the pipeline. But after seeing everything DC has revealed and talking with these amazing creators, I’m more hyped than I’ve been for DC in a while. I think everyone who takes a chance on DC Comics in the next few months is going to be pleasantly surprised as these comic creators go ‘all in’ on this exciting new endeavor.