DC Comics’s Batman line will soft relaunch later this year. Jeph Loeb returns to Age of Apocalypse for Marvel. DC announces Pride 2025 plans.
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Episode Transcript:
Batman line to soft relaunch.
Jeph Loeb returns to Age of Apocalypse.
DC announces Pride plans.
This is Comic Book Club News for March 12, 2025.
Batman Books To Soft Relaunch Later This Year:
DC Comics’s Batman line will soft relaunch later this year, with new jumping on points, new costumes, and new books.
The news comes via Scott Snyder’s latest newsletter, which is all about what makes comics sell — specifically with questions surrounding the continued success of the Absolute Universe. While the whole thing is worth a read, talking about how to provide an entry-point for readers in the mainline universe of DC, Snyder notes that while Matt Fraction and Jorge Jiménez’s new run on the title starting in September is a big sell, it may not be enough to get people to check out other books in the line.
So what are they gonna do? Make it easier to check out other books in the line.
Writes Snyder, “We launch Matt Fraction’s Batman with Jorge. Amazing, right? But are you going to go in and try more Bat books? I don’t know if you will. That’s why we created an initiative around that book. We’re doing almost a mini moment of jumping on points for all those books where everybody has the new costume. Everyone is sort of beginning stories. There’s some cool new books coming out. So that group of books as a moment where you can explore all of them at once.”
While Snyder offered no further details, this does follow up nicely on DC’s “Summer of Superman” initiative, which is aiming to do the same for the Superman line. Perhaps with Superman in Summer and Batman in Fall, we’ll get the Winter of Wonder Woman’s discontent? More on this as it develops.
Jeph Loeb Returns To Marvel For Age Of Apocalypse One-Shot:
Jeph Loeb has been on a bit of a greatest hits tour lately for DC, bringing back Batman: The Long Halloween, and upcoming delivering the sequel to Batman: Hush with Jim Lee. And now he’s bringing that same “play Stairway!” energy to Marvel by returning for a backup story in Giant Size Age of Apocalypse.
Alongside artist Simone Di Meo, Loeb will fill in that issue’s “Revelations Backup Story,” with the main story provided by writers Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing, and artist C.F. Villa.
Said Loeb via press release: “In 1995, I was extremely lucky to be part of one of the biggest stories to hit the X-Men with Age of Apocalypse, writing both Astonishing X-Men and X-Man. Now, thirty years later, join me and the superstar artist of tomorrow—Simone Di Meo—as we return to this doomed timeline with some of the greatest X-Men characters ever!”
While the main story finds Ms. Marvel thrust into the Age of Apocalypse hours before the universe’s destruction, Marvel didn’t provide info about what Loeb will be tackling for the Revelations backup. But based on a variant cover it looks likely it’s Sabretooth versus Wolverine. But maybe not! Maybe it’s about Sugar Man. We can only hope.
Giant-Size Age of Apocalypse #1 will hit stores on June 25
DC Announces Pride 2025 Plans:
DC Pride is going big and completely reinventing itself for the fifth anniversary of the event spotlighting DC’s LGBTQIA+ characters.
The cornerstone of the event is DC Pride 2025, which will be published on June 4. While previous years had an anthology format, this year will shake things up a bit to tell an overarching story focusing on Alan Scott, the Green Lantern.
In the story by Tim Sheridan, Emilio Pilliu and Giulio Macaione, Scott will return, per a press release provided to Comic Book Club, to a “century-old tavern, the center of queer life in Gotham City,” which is unexpectedly closing. As Alan returns to “the place he fell for his first love, Johnny Ladd,” and touches the spot on the wall where they carved their symbol of love, it somehow sends people to “strange, alternate worlds where everything they ever thought they wanted can be theirs…but at what cost?”
That includes heroes, villains, and regular folks, including The Question, Midnighter and Apollo, Harley Quinn, Green Lantern Jo Mullein, Bunker, Connor Hawke, and Blue Snowman.
In addition, DC will reprint last year’s DC Pride as a hardcover book, and bundle the first three editions in a DC Pride Box Set, both set to hit stores on May 27.
Alternately, if you have a DC GO! subscription, you’re in luck. The publisher is adapting the first four DC Pride anthologies for the vertical scroll format, and will roll out two episodes a day, Monday through Friday, throughout the month of June. By the end of the month, all 42 episodes will be available to read on the platform.
For Comic Book Club News, I’m Alex Zalben. And here’s hoping the winter of Wonder Woman’s discontent is made glorious summer by this son of Krypton.
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