DC is reportedly eyeing a new universe — one that would be “showrun” by beloved writer Scott Snyder and will exist in parallel to the current DC Universe. Existing in the same vein as Marvel’s Ultimate universe, the project will reportedly be called Absolute (or Absolute DC). Obviously, DC have attempted variations on the “Ultimate” theme over the years, most notably their All-Star and Earth-One lines of miniseries and original graphic novels. Per reporting at Bleeding Cool, the biggest difference between those imprints and the Absolute line is that DC will attempt to remake their whole universe, not entirely unlike what they did in 2011 with The New 52.
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The New 52, which was a true reboot of DC’s publishing line, including renumbering all of their comics with new #1 issues, was a massive sales success in its early days, but lagged as it wore on — in part because there were major creative defections and stories of editorial meddling almost from the beginning. The All-Star line, while it only managed to publish a tiny number of actual comics, gave big-name creators broad leeway to tell the stories they wanted with DC’s biggest characters.
The idea, then, seems to be that a companion line like Marvel’s (recently resurrected) Ultimate universe could be a success if the creators involved are allowed freedom to work their magic.
Bleeding Cool further claims that the Absolute universe will be part of an editorial program called DC All-In, which will attempt to take a more holistic approach to overhauling the publishing line, while leaving alone the pieces that seem to be working.
There are no official details yet. It seems likely that this will spin out of the events of DC’s Free Comic Book Day one-shot, Absolute Power, and the event series that spins out of it from Mark Waid and Mikel Janin. Bleeding Cool speculates the Absolute and All-In initiatives may be announced at Comic Con International in San Diego this summer, although that seems to be little more than an educated guess. The timing makes sense, given that the Absolute Power event is likely to wrap in October or November, meaning that anything announced at Comic Con and solicited soon thereafter would line up almost perfectly with the end of that story. Waid previously had a multiverse-altering event in the form of The Kingdom, which established the quasi-multiverse concept of Hypertime, but that idea never really took off.
