C2E2 2014: DC Entertainment: All Access Panel

On Friday, April 25, 2014, DC Entertainment conducted the All Access panel at the Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo, featuring speakers Bobbie Chase, Brian Azzarello, Charles Soule, Dan Jurgens, Greg Lockard, Greg Pak, Jim Chadwick, Kyle Higgins, Nicola Scott and Scott Snyder. Below you can see the panel description, followed by the blow-by-blow. At DC Entertainment, there's never been a better time to be a Fan! Come by for unfiltered access to all things DC Entertainment! Find out what some of DC's biggest names have to share from behind-the-scenes! Joining the All-Access party will be some of the industry's top talents, so don't miss out! Moderator John Cunningham wasted little time, jumping straight into Batman's 75th anniversary at the start of the panel.

Batman: Eternal is meant to make Gotham City feel "experiential," Snyder said. "We want it to be a living, breathing place that you can experience." He hinted that in addition to the changing staus quo for characters like Catwoman and Spoiler, Bruce Wayne has some stuff coming up that cannot yet be discussed. Snyder, Higgins and company are more than thirty issues into the series, of which only three have been released, so they're in fairly good shape -- especially because the weekly series won't even run a full year before it goes on hiatus in March. The finale of the "Batman: Zero Year" arc is also finished now, having been completed on Snyder's flight to Chicago. The most personal part of the storyline, it's Batman, Lucius Fox and Jim Gordon fighting to save Gotham at a time when Bruce wasn't sure of how to save himself. The Batcave's collection will come into play in a big way in an upcoming Snyder story -- not in Batman, but in Superman Unchained #7. The story features Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman battling Wraith in the Batcave, where both the giant penny and the robot dinosaur will be used. You can also see from the cover above that the costume Batman is wearing seems to be the one from the teaser poster for The New 52: Futures End. Artist Jim Lee reportedly has about five pages of art left to complete for the series, which will conclude with #9. The New 52: Futures End writer Dan Jurgens teased that there will be some changes coming to Aquaman and the Others, saying "There were ten bars of gold and we haven't seen that many weapons yet." He also confirmed again that the series will tie into Futures End. "[The writers] all come from very different places," Jurgens said of Futures End. "If you have four guys who think alike in terms of character and story, it will homogenize too much." The upcoming Free Comic Book Day issue will begin 35 years in the future, but then scale back to just five years in the future when Batman Beyond travels back in time. "This book is really dark, and for me to say that...," joked Azzarello. "There have been a lot of fights. It really hasn't been fun. It's been a real journey, it's been arduous, but I think you're really gonna love this thing. It doesn't matter how difficult it is for us to do it." He added, "There are things in this book that I can't believe we've done. It gives me pause. You guys are gonna freak. I envy you." Regarding his Wonder Woman run, Azarello confirmed that he'll be leaving the title soon. "We did an outline, we're sticking to the outline, and we're done," said the writer, who admitted he kind of didn't want to end it. "We have five or six more issues, and that's the last storyline. We've had a great time working together, and now we're done and it's kinda hard. I'm really going to miss this book. I'm going to miss her. There's not a character that we've done that hasn't grown on me -- and there's a few that no one else will ever get to use, I'll say...." Soule talked about the Superman/Wonder Woman relationship (between the title characters), joking that the title "would be over" if they stayed happy for too long. He said that his run on Swamp Thing will cross over with Aquaman soon, joking that the character will become "Seaweed Thing" for a while. His Red Lanterns, meanwhile, is building to a confrontation between Guy Gardner and Atrocitus, which Soule just finished writing. Over in Action Comics, Pak told the audience that he and artist Aaron Kuder work in a kind of modified Marvel Style, doing plot, then layouts, then hammering out dialogue together. He also teased the upcoming "Doomed" storyline, "a giant test for Superman and everybody he cares about - which means everybody on Earth." "I'm having a ton of fun writing characters I haven't gotten to yet," Pak added. "I'm loving writing Lois Lane. I'm writing Steel -- and we'll see a new Steel." There was a lot of talk about Earth 2, including a spoiler that an upcoming scene in #25 sees Earth 2 Superman become "irredeemable," after he brutally dashes hope for a better world. "We just did it in Nightwing but we're doing it again," joked Higgins about the origin of Dick Grayson, which he's writing for Secret Origins.