James Gunn Confirms Major DC Writer Is “Integral Part” of DCU

We’ve gradually begun to learn more about James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DC Universe, and the wide swath of movies and Max-exclusive television shows that will exist within that. The duo have already confirmed that there are a number of creators working behind the scenes on the DCU’s future, including comic writer Tom King, whose work alongside Bilquis Evely on Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow is inspiring a forthcoming film of the same name. In a recent post on Threads, Gunn outlined a bit more about King’s role, and hinted that he is unopposed to adapting more of his comic work onscreen. This comes shortly after Gunn named King and Greg Smallwood’s The Human Target miniseries as his favorite comic of 2023.

“Tom is an integral part of the DCU, not just WoT,” Gunn explained. “He’s one of the first people I showed the Superman script, asking for notes. He’s included in various ways in numerous other projects, including WoT. And, yes.”

What Is on the DC Universe Slate?

As Gunn and Safran revealed earlier this year, the initial DC Studios slate for “Gods and Monsters” will include movies for Superman: Legacy, The Brave and the Bold, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, Swamp Thing, and The Authority. It will include the HBO Max television shows Waller, Booster Gold, Lanterns, Paradise Lost, and an animated Creature Commandos series.

“A lot of people think it’s going to be Marvel 2.0, and definitely I learned a lot of stuff at Marvel. I think that we have a lot of differences,” Gunn explained at the time. “We are telling a big, huge, central story that is like Marvel, except for, I think that we’re a lot more planned out than Marvel from the beginning because we’ve gotten a group of writers together to work that story out completely. But we’re also creating a universe that is like Star Wars, where there’s different times, different places, different things, or Game of Thrones, where characters are a little bit more morally complex.” 

What Is The Human Target About?

In The Human Target, Christopher Chance has made a living out of being a human target—a man hired to disguise himself as his client to invite would-be assassins to attempt his murder. He’s had a remarkable career until his latest case protecting Lex Luthor when things go sideways. An assassination attempt Chance didn’t see coming leaves him vulnerable and left trying to solve his own murder, as he has 12 days to discover just who in the DC Universe hated Luthor enough to want him dead by slow-acting poison. And the prime suspects happen to be…the Justice League International?

“This is not a book that I went hunting for,” King explained in a roundtable interview in 2021. “I very rarely go hunting for books. My best books that I’ve I’ve ever written were given to me, things like Vision and Mister Miracle, those came from someone being like, ‘We have a project, Tom. You do this,’ and me being in a corner and writing my way out. And Human Target was the same. I literally made a joke on Twitter. People say nothing good comes from Twitter, I got some work from it once at least. The editor called me that day and said, ‘Hey, would you actually like to write about Human Target?” And I thought he was joking, so I said yes, because I didn’t really get the joke, and it kept tumbling forward from there.”

What do you think of James Gunn’s new comments about Tom King’s role in the DCU? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!