This past weekend (October 10) at New York Comic Con, DC Comics‘ Jim Lee dropped a wild bomb on the audience during his annual Jim Lee & Friends panel: not only will the currently running DC K.O. event pit heroes and villains against each other, it will include some surprising guests stars from other universes. And no announcement was wilder or weirder than the inclusion of Samantha Strong, the serial killer bear from IDW’s Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees. So how did Sam end up in the event? Easy: they asked.
“Earlier this year Marie Javins from DC contacted IDW to discuss if there might be any suitable IDW characters to include in their K.O. event,” IDW Editor-in-Chief Bobby Curnow said in a statement provided to Comic Book Club. “We talked through several different options but it quickly became clear that DC editorial were huge fans of Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees. The more we talked about incorporating Samantha Strong the bigger the smiles on our faces got. BTWNS creator Patrick Horvath was also very excited about the opportunity for his creation to be part of this industry wide event. We all eagerly await to see how Samantha fares in this series!”
And in fact, Horvath was “emphatically yes” about the inclusion, as the new Harvey Award winner told Comic Book Club while at New York Comic Con.
To get back to the panel and provide some more context about the windup here, after welcoming Ed Boon, co-creator of Mortal Kombat on the stage, Lee explained that despite working together on the Injustice franchise, Boon had been hesitant to allow Mortal Kombat characters in DC Comics… Until now, as the Sub-Zero will be freezing his way into the currently running DC K.O. comics event.
It was a swing, but one that makes a lot of sense: the whole plot of DC K.O. is a Mortal Kombat style tournament between 32 DC heroes and villains, so why not throw an actual Mortal Kombat contender in the mix? But the reveals didn’t stop there…
Welcoming DC K.O. writer Scott Snyder on stage next, he and Lee revealed another new contender, one who is direct from a Warner Bros. franchise (the company also owns DC), and has even appeared as an Easter egg in the Aquaman movies. That would be Annabelle, the haunted doll from The Conjuring series. Which is a little nuts, but given the Warner Bros. connection still makes sense (at least in terms of how it happened; in the actual comic your mileage may vary).
Snyder and Lee then revealed three more cross-company contenders: Homelander from The Boys, Red Sonja, and Vampirella. While fans may know Homelander best from the Prime Video series, he started as a comic book character — and in fact The Boys was first published by DC, before moving to Dynamite. In fact, all three characters are published by Dynamite, which has already done other crossovers with DC, including the just released Harley Quinn x Elvira. Also, for what it’s worth, all three of these characters are fighters, so it makes sense — and certainly more sense than Annabelle, whose go-to finishing move is sitting in a glass box.
But the kicker was saved for last: also joining the lineup is Samantha Strong, the serial killer bear from IDW’s horror hit Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees. Unlike the other properties, Beneath the Trees is a comic from an indie creator, writer/artist Patrick Horvath. And unlike with the Dynamite characters, IDW doesn’t have an ongoing relationship with DC, other than a few Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Batman crossovers from a few years back.
The conceit, by the way, is that some of the DC characters open portals to other dimensions to use as a training ground/chance to gain more energy in the ongoing DC K.O. tournament. This is a bonus round, so likely a one-shot outside the main five-issue series.
So after all that windup, let’s get back to the main thrust of this piece: of all the new contenders entering the ring, how did Sam Strong end up in DC K.O.?
As noted above: they asked. Which certainly makes one wonder if DC reached out to other publishers than Dynamite and IDW… Did Dark Horse turn down including Hellboy, or BOOM! didn’t want Erica Slaughter from Something is Killing the Children to show up? But as to the IDW of it all, the short answer likely goes back to those TMNT/Batman crossovers, as well as the fact that the comic book industry is a lot smaller and better friends than folks on the outside might think. Forget DC K.O., this is DC Collabo.
But it also likely goes back to something Snyder had been talking about since DC revealed their DC All In initiative, which soft relaunched the publisher, as well as launched the best-selling Absolute Universe line. Snyder often talked about how the goal wasn’t just to pump up DC, it was to get people back in comic book stores to help the whole industry.
Posting on X (formerly Twitter) last August, Snyder said, “People asked me the other day if I’m at DC why ever promote Marvel books? B/c if I love a book, or am excited about it, I post about it regardless of the co. A strong Marvel means a stronger market. Same with DC. Same with all licensed and indie publishers. Rising tide.”
This all sounds like lip service, but… It’s worked. Like I just noted, comics is a smaller industry than one would think, and it thrives on both competition and collaboration. Snyder in particular often calls out DC’s Absolute, Marvel’s Ultimate Universe line, and Skybound/Image’s Energon Universe, as well as IDW’s Turtles, for rejuvenating the industry. It’s not one publisher dominating, it’s getting customers excited about comics again across the board.
And that’s played out in sales. Just a few years back, the cap for best-selling comic of the year — at least in reported sales — was around 100,000 to 150,000 copies. Last year it grew to 300,000, and this year to 400,000.
So intuiting a bit here, Snyder and company are taking a title on the cusp — IDW’s Beneath the Trees has sold a reported 300,000 copies across monthly and trade editions — and are giving it an extra kick by featuring the main character in a DC Comics event that’s being advertised during AEW Wrestling matches. Beneath the Trees is a great book that shows the possibilities of what comics can do, and this is an opportunity for a rising tide to lift all ships.
Does it perhaps come off as a little “toys in the toy box?” Sure. But the event is already a video game in comic book form, very explicitly in the text. So why not bring in other contenders? Why not have fun? And why not highlight a fantastic new voice in comics at the same time?
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