NYCC 2017: DC Metal/New Age of Heroes Panel Live Blog

A panel at NYCC 2017 featuring DC writers Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, and more discussed the upcoming and ongoing events for the publisher.

Here’s the panel’s official description:

“The best-selling team behind DARK NIGHTS: METAL, Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo, will share what’s to come in the series currently rocking the industry at the DC Metal/New Age of DC Heroes panel. Joining them will be contributors to the New Age of DC Heroes: writers Steve Orlando, Justin Jordan, Frank Tieri, James Tynion IV, Robert Venditti and Joshua Williamson will discuss not only the secrets of the Dark Multiverse, but some of the all-new heroes spinning out of DARK NIGHTS: METAL, creating even more excitement in the DC Universe!”

Dan DiDio, DC publisher, likens Metal to the Court of Owls, which introduces new elements in a way that is organic to the existing history.

“We never expected it to do what it’s been doing,” Snyder says. “The fact that you guys have sold out all of the one-shots, all of the issues, is beyond our wildest dreams.”

Snyder says that Metal was built out of fan response to Rebirth.

“We felt we had the launching pad to do something totally, totally new,” Snyder adds, saying that he spoke with Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison about creating the Dark Multiverse.

“Metal is for me a story that celebrates the bonkers, over-the-top, classic, Kirby-esque kind of storytelling that I grew up and I love,” Snyder says.

“The [comics] that I grew up on were ones that I didn’t realize were speaking about personal matters, because I just wanted to see what happened,” Snyder says, teasing that Metal goes much further than what has been seen so far.

“With 3, you start going to Shazam stuff, the Rock of Eternity,” Snyder teases. “The original Thanagar, which is the Roman Empire you didn’t know existed, under Atlantis, Skartaris, the center of the universe, the Dreaming, it’s so many things.”

Snyder says that the Red Death will have “a million Batmobiles that run over the Flash,” which Capullo jokes is something only a writer would say.

Snyder said the team set out to make a crossover where every part is relevant to the readers.

“I have to say these guys have delivered; every single one of these one-shots, everything coming just gets crazier and crazier and crazier until we get to five and six,” Snyder says, adding that after Metal they are going to keep getting bigger and bigger.

“We didn’t want any of this material to just feel like filler,” Tynion says. “We wanted each of these stories to stand alone as something really, truly special. You want to have moments in each and every one of those books that are important to the readers for long after the series.”

Tynion says that some of his favorite crossover moments have happened in tie-ins, and they “want to create an entire ecosystem of freaking awesome comics.”

“We wanted each of these stories to be twisted and awesome,” Tynion says, “And I’m really proud of everything we did.”

Snyder explains that each of the evil Batmen is the result of a world where Batman succumbs to one of his greatest fears.

The Batman Who Laughs is the result of a world where he killed The Joker, and a toxin in Joker’s heart makes his killer the next Joker.

“The good thing is, Scott might not know what it’s like to be on crack, but I do, so he was able to consult me on what a crackhead thinks when he approaches this stuff,” Tieri jokes.

“You’ve got a big Devastator/Lobo fight, which is worth the price of admission alone,” Tieri says of his one-shot.

Capullo says that Snyder’s scripts are “always the jumping-off point” for design, “and sometimes I land close, and sometimes I land far.”

He said that he tried to design each evil Batman based on the elements that help to define the hero each character is a bastardization of.

“The way I approach things can’t be defined; I can’t sit you down in a classroom and tell you how to do it becuase it will come out of you,” Capullo says.

“What we didn’t want to do was overwhelm the fans,” DiDio says. “We know you have a budget.”

He says that is why there are only two comics per week tying into Metal, because they want as many people to be buying and reading it as possible.

“People are going to come through this story changed,” Williamson says.

Cyborg will be connected to the multiverse, as if it were a computer; he is “a multidimensional character” coming out of Metal, which Williamson refers to as “Cyborg One Million.”

“Let’s see who’s the best Flash: is it Barry, or is it Wally?” says Williamson. “It’s me and Howard Porter starting in Flash #46. In January, we have an annual coming out that’s a prelude to Flash War, but starting in Flash #46, we go into Flash War.”

Each issue of The Immortal Men has a three-fold vertical cover from Jim Lee.

“We are going to do a new concept for comic books: only one cover,” DiDio says. “When you collect this book and you own this book, and you say ‘I have the first issue and this is the cover,’ everyone who has it has the same thing.”

He adds that the prices on DC’s New Age of Heroes will remain at $2.99 for the life of the series.

Immortal Men will introduce “the secret superheroes from every era of DC history who you’ve never known of before,” Tynion says, listing off a number of characters influenced by various different kinds of genres and eras in comics.

Those will represent the House of Action, but they will be overcome in the first issue by the House of Conquest, who believe that the only way humanity can be safe is by being subjugated.

“I feel like I started writing in an age where they stopped adding things to the core universes — that era was done,” Tynion says, but he and Lee decided to take over the secret history of the DC Universe.

“We’re going to see The Batman Who Laughs in that first issue. On his world, he knew about those secret heroes, and on this Earth he’s going to challenge the balance a little bit,” Tynion says.

“As readers, this is the first time you’re seeing Damage, but Damage has always been there, you just didn’t know about it,” Venditti says.

Venditti will create a new version of Task Force X, called Task Force XL, which will include Solomon Grundy, Giganta, and Parasite.

The book’s second arc will involve Poison Ivy and Gorilla Grodd.

DiDio says that the New Age of DC Heroes was inspired by the launches of Marvel and Image.

Talia al Ghul will come to Silencer, a retired assassin, and ask her to help bring down Leviathan, which DiDio says will become one of the premiere villain agencies in the DCU.

“It’s a little bit of The Long Kiss Goodnight meets John Wick,” DiDio says.

Sideways, from DiDio and Jordan, is intended to have a “youthful energy,” and when a kid falls through a crack in reality, he ends up able to open up rifts in the world and come out in other places, but using his powers damages the world, and so others will try to stop him.

“It’s been interesting to approach somebody doing a new character in a world where these existing heroes have existed for a while,” Jordan says.

The hero will get powers and try to emulate the behavior of a known superhero, and it turns out to be way harder than he expected.

The pair praise the work of artist Kenneth Rocafort.

“Grant Morrison is coming in to help, because we’re going into the Dark Multiverse and I can’t imagine anybody better to help us in the Dark Multiverse than Grant,” DiDio says, teasing that Morrison’s Seven Soldiers of Victory will play a role.

“We came up with this fantastic concept” for the Terrifics, DiDio says before pausing for laughs.

“I love the Plastic Man egg,” Snyder says. “In the next issue, he gets dragged into space and they just carry him around.”

Lemire pitched the idea “that’s exploratory and about the science of the DCU,” Snyder says. “Metal is largely one step in a larger design, where we want to show you that all the things you thought were the boundaries of the DCU…it’s actually the way we perceive our universe. We know so little of it. It’s so infinitely expansive beyond that, that any crazy thing can be out there.”

Justin Jordan and Philip Tan will write The Curse of Brimstone, a horror book about a young man who lives in a forgotten town that he has watched slowly die over his lifetime.

“He meets a man, the Salesman, who makes him an offer — ‘I will give you the power to make your town great again and make it special, but you have to be my agent,’” Jordan says.

He accepts the offer, but he gets heat powers that are often worse than what he’s fighting.

“It’s kind of looking at that idea, that when you make a bargain for powers out of desperation, you have to live with that choice for the rest of your life,” Jordan says, noting that there are many forgotten horror places in the DC Universe.

Tan keeps sending Jordan sketches of “horrible things I designed,” and Jordan loves them so much he builds stories around them.

Snyder, Tynion, and Williamson will write Dark Knights Rising: The Wild Hunt, a one-shot with art by Doug Mahnke and Ivan Reis. The story centers on the Dark Knights, and will take place between issues 5 and 6 of Metal.

The Dark Knights will chase Detective Chimp, Cyborg, and some other characters from Metal through the Morrison-defined multiverse from The Multiversity.

While Capullo was running behind schedule due to health issues, DiDio says that “Metal is Scott and Greg,” so the Wild Hunt gives Capullo a chance to catch up and do every issue of the series.

Steve Orlando will write The Unexpected, which will feature a team of enemies who just happen to hate each other slightly less.

“I was going to say that it’s The Dark Tower meets The Expendables, but it’s actually The Dark Tower meets Seven Samurai, even though there’s only four of them,” Orlando says.

They are characters that have made huge mistakes, and only by working together do they get a chance to redeem themselves. Ryan Sook will draw the series.

The Unexpected is made up by Neon The Unknown, a blind magician and rockstar artist; Ascendant, who is a king to a race of “Jack Kirby super-science orcs” that nobody knows exists because they accidentally erased themselves from existence; Firebrand, who was a first responder who has to get into a fight ever 24 hours or her heart will stop and she will die; and Viking Judge, a Viking Judge who lives inside of an unemployed hipster.