December 28th, 2022 will mark the 100th birthday of Stan Lee, the prolific comic creator and pop culture icon who has become somewhat of a household name — and it looks like DC Comics is preparing a clever celebration. On Thursday, the publisher announced the first details surrounding Earth-6: A Celebration of Stan Lee, a commemorative one-shot anthology releasing on December 27th. The one-shot will spotlight the return of Lee's Just Imagine universe, which saw him and Batman movie producer Michael Uslan remix the origins of core DC characters, which then resulted in a series of one-shots published in 2001-2002. These origins included reimagining Catwoman as a supermodel with cat powers, The Flash as a female college student injected with the DNA of a hummingbird, and The Sandman as a space colonel.
The Earth-6 anthology will feature ten new stories involving the Just Imagine characters, including a new story from Uslan himself. There will also be stories written by Mark Waid (Kingdom Come, Batman vs. Robin, Batman/Superman: World's Finest), Jerry Ordway (Superman, Action Comics), Kenny Porter (DC: Mech), Stephanie Williams (Nubia & the Amazons, Trial of the Amazons), Michael W. Conrad and Becky Cloonan (Wonder Woman, Batgirls), Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing (Batman Beyond: Neo-Year), Meghan Fitzmartin (Tim Drake: Robin), Steve Orlando (Martian Manhunter), and Zac Thompson (Batman: Urban Legends).
Artists on the one-shot will include Lee Weeks, Kevin Maguire, Jerry Ordway, Karl Mostert, Juan Ferreyra, Anthony Marques, Pablo M. Collar, Belén Ortega, Max Dunbar, and Hayden Sherman. The issue will also feature a wraparound cover by Jim Cheung, and a number of variant covers by Steve Beach, Riley Rossmo, Jason Howard, Kelley Jones, Ariel Colon, Kyle Hotz, Christian Ward, Clayton Henry, Jorge Corona, Belén Ortega, and Dan Panosian, plus a 1-in-25 ratio variant cover by Cully Hamner.
Keep scrolling to check out the first look at Earth-6: A Celebration of Stan Lee, and share your thoughts with us in the comments below!