DC's Endless Winter Brings a Justice League to Viking Times

This December, best-selling writers Ron Marz (Green Lantern, Artifacts) and Andy Lanning (Guardians of the Galaxy) will team up to tell a story that plays with an as-yet-unexplored piece of DC lore: the creation of a Viking-era "Justice League" made up of Black Adam, Swamp Thing, Hippolyta, and the Viking Prince. The team will face off against the Frost King -- a burly, armored bruiser who bears a passing resemblance to Lobo -- in a nine-part story that will run through several crossover issues and one-shots. Each part will also feature a flashback to the Viking era to see how that team came to pass.

When the Frost King re-emerges in the present day, the champions of the past who had battled to put him down the first time will be forced to reckon with what happened. According to the teaser interview Marz and Lanning did for DC, throughout the story we'll find out some stuff that maybe the characters were hoping would stay buried more or less forever.

"We felt like heroes would band together in every era, and we wanted to show off what we eventually came to call the Justice League Viking," Marz says in the new DC Connect solicitation catalog. We had to sort out which characters would logically be around in the 10th century, and then figure out how those relationships work. The short version is, not everybody gets along."

The series will deal with a number of characters, from Superman and Aquaman to the Teen Titans and Justice League Dark, according to Lanning. And, no, "Endless WInter" isn't a reference to the Golden Age villain of the same name.

"Endless Winter is a reference to the 'Fimbulwinter,' which is the Norse legend of the endless winter," Marz explained to CBR. "And in Norse mythology is two years of constant winter before Ragnarok so we were drawing upon different mythology and continuity, which is brilliant, though, that you get little things popping up like that. One of the cool things about this is that we got to create a new villain for the DCU, as such, a new threat which has nothing to do with the past continuity whatsoever."

The story will feature art by a parade of creators, some of whom haven't yet been named, including Howard Porter and Mikel Janin.

"Getting to see how the amazing artists we're working with bring our ideas to life just inspires us more and makes us want to raise our own game," Lanning explained. "Looking at these pages, we're determined to keep up our end of things because the artowk is looking bloody lovely."

Endless Winter #1 is set to hit comic shops and digital retailers on December 1. Here's the breakdown of the issues:

Justice League: Endless Winter one-shot; The Flash #767 (December 8), Superman: Endless Winter Special #1 (December 8), Aquaman #66 (December 15), Justice League #58 (December 15), Teen Titans: Endless Winter Special #1 (December 15), Justice League Dark #29 (December 22), and Black Adam: Endless Winter Special #1 (December 22), and Justice League: Endless Winter Special #2 (December 29).