One of the biggest line-wide shakeups in DC's history, the New 52, launched just over 2 years ago in September 2011 but this week DC's Chief Creative Officer, Geoff Johns, in
an interview with Newsarama, talked about another line-wide shake-up coming in April next year. DC's current major Event storyline, Forever Evil, sees the heroes of the DCU defeated by evil opposites from Earth 3 calling themselves the Crime Syndicate. A small group of DCU villains who oppose the Syndicate's rule are beginning the fight back - at the forefront, none other than Lex Luthor. It looks like in the same way the mini-series Flashpoint (also scripted by Johns) led into the New 52, Forever Evil could be the lead-in for New 52 Phase 2. Johns said:
In this series we have a lot of big surprises, big changes, and come April the DC Universe will be a very different place leading into and throughout 2014. The first phase of the New 52 is drawing to a close and as Forever Evil wraps up a new phase begins one that will see the introduction, and re-introduction, of a lot of characters, concepts and a decidedly new center to the DC universe. Keep your eyes on Lex. He's the one to watch.
DC are looking to put out a few weekly comics titles in 2014 with a weekly Batman series,
Batman: Eternal, already announced and another series, Five Years Later, also cryptically teased by DC Co-Publisher, Dan Didio, which might also be an Event comic itself and looks to feature Batman Beyond. Whether any of these tie into the New 52 Phase 2 is unclear. Johns also talked about the Metal Men whom he said will be treated in a similar way to his Shazam series which appeared as backups in the main Justice League title. Johns said:
Essentially, they are a group of androids that were designed to be a new generation of soldiers but something went wrong and they aren't the cold, killing machines the U.S. Army hoped they would be. So they were shut down. And now it's time for the program to start back up. But whether their inventor Will Magnus, an introvert and social outcast, will support that is the real question.
He also mentioned that the Metal Men movie was still alive but refused to comment further. The Metal Men will appear in February 2014.
Forever Evil #3 by Geoff Johns and David Finch is out now