jurassica park

gerrycleary:

Pretty Ballsy move DC.

comicbooks:

DC Comics addressed their just announced changes to their publishing line in a letter from Senior VP, Sales Bob Wayne, sent to Direct Market retailers. The full letter follows below…

A LETTER ON THE DC UNIVERSE AND SEPTEMBER 2011

To our comics retail partners,

In the time I’ve worked at DC Comics, I’ve witnessed any number of industry defining moments. But today, I bring you what is perhaps the biggest news to date.

Many of you have heard rumors that DC Comics has been working on a big publishing initiative for later this year. This is indeed an historic time for us as, come this September, we are relaunching the entire DC Universe line of comic books with all new first issues. 52 of them to be exact.

In addition, the new #1s will introduce readers to a more modern, diverse DC Universe, with some character variations in appearance, origin and age. All stories will be grounded in each character’s legend - but will relate to real world situations, interactions, tragedy and triumph.

This epic event will kick off on Wednesday, August 31st with the debut of a brand new JUSTICE LEAGUE #1, which pairs Geoff Johns and Jim Lee, together for the first time. (Yes, this is the same week as FLASHPOINT #5.)

We think our current fans will be excited by this evolution, and that it will make jumping into the story extremely accessible to first-time readers - giving them a chance to discover DC’s characters and stories.

We are positioning ourselves to tell the most innovative stories with our characters to allow fans to see them from a new angle. We have taken great care in maintaining continuity where most important, but fans will see a new approach to our storytelling.
Some of the characters will have new origins, while others will undergo minor changes. Our characters are always being updated; however, this is the first time all of our characters will be presented in a new way all at once.

Dan DiDio, Bob Harras and Eddie Berganza have been working diligently to pull together some of the best creative teams in the industry. Over 50 new costumes will debut in September, many updated and designed by artist Jim Lee, ensuring that the updated images appeal to the current generation of readers.

The publication of JUSTICE LEAGUE #1 will also launch digital day-and-date for all ongoing superhero comic book titles - an industry first.

On Wednesday, June 1st, this initiative is expected to be announced in a nationwide feature article, and we’re hopeful the news will be picked up by media outlets around the world. Throughout the month we’ll reveal more details of our plans with articles in both the mainstream and comics press and on June 13th the Diamond catalog solicitations for all of the September titles will be released, followed by the June 29th street date of the print version of Previews.

DC Comics will support this initiative with an innovative mix of publicity, promotional efforts and retailer incentives designed to maximize your opportunity to increase your DC sales. We will discuss additional details of these incentives when we get closer to solicitation later in June.

We’ll be updating you more through email as September nears. But today, I hope your share our enthusiasm for this historic news!

Sincerely,

Bob Wayne
SVP, Sales
DC Entertainment

i for one cant wait for this! it took me a long time to fully jump on board with superhero comics but when i finally did i dove in head first. however the one thing that i found the hardest was finding a starting place, because id heard amazing things about blackest night i started with green lantern rebirth then worked my way up to current books. but i still feel like im behind and that i havent really read enough to grasp everything. i did pick up nearly all the jla single issues from 1997-nowish though which gave me a good background there, but something is still kind of missing for me. i for one cant wait to see the 52 new #1’s DC will be putting out, it’ll feel nice to be able to be apart of something new and be able to experience things as their coming out again, ive missed that a lot since buffy season 8 ended. people may hum and haw about the costumes or their “new ways of storytelling” but at the end of the day im just plain excited to see something different than we’re used to :)