Posted in: Comics | Tagged: 5 years later, Alan Moore, brian azzarello, Comics, dan jurgens, dc, jeff lemire, keith giffen

What Can We Expect From Five Years Later – By Way Of Alan Moore

Bleeding Cool first started talking about Five Years Later last month. Which may have led to DC's decision to take a little bit of ownership of the rumour back in their All-Access DC video.

And don't worry, none of the logos shown on the screen are being used. Especially the one that looks like it says SHIT.

But given that this is all that has been officially revealed about Five Years Later, I thought it might be an opportune moment to list what we know and what we may expect from the concept.

Five Years Later will launch in May with Free Comic Book Day.

The month of September 2014 will see all comics set five years later in real time, for one month.

A new weekly series will start, exploring this future world. It is it be written by Keith Giffen, Dan Jurgens, Brian Azzarello and Jeff Lemire after Greg Rucka and Brian Keene pulled out.

It will feature characters from out of the current timeline such as the Batman of Batman Beyond.

There is a comparison with the proposed-but-never-published Twilight Of The Superheroes crossover pitch by Alan Moore to DC Comics, he talked about the lesson of The Dark Knight Returns;

It does no damage to the current stories of Batman in the present, and indeed it does the opposite by lending them a certain weight and power by implication and association–every minor shift of attitude in the current Bruce Wayne's approach to life that might be seen in Batman or Detective over the next few years, whether intentionally or not, will provide twinges of excitement for the fans who can perceive their contemporary Batman inching ever closer to the intense and immortal giant portrayed in the Dark Knight chronicles.

And about Twilight Of The Superheroes;

A character who hasn't been seen yet… say Barbara Randall's proposal for a female Flash… could be presented in Twilight as an old established character who's been in the Justice League for years. When the character appears on the newsstands in her own title some months later, this should strike a suitably ominous resonance back to the Twilight storyline; is it all coming true? Even if it doesn't all come true in every detail, even if, say, she never joins the Justice League, mightn't most of it come true? This is the sort of feedback effect that I want to foster. In addition to that, any changes that writers have planned for their characters in the future could be hinted at directly as having happened in the past, so that when they actually happen in the regular comic book, they have a meaning beyond that which they have on the surface. Even if plans change and certain things don't materialize as planned, then even that has its implications with regard to the future proposed in Twilight, especially after certain key ambiguities that will be introduced in the final issues of this proposed crossover.

That's exactly it. Readers will have new expectations of the titles based on that jump ahead. And will interpret whether or not things are matching up with the expected future. Which may never come to pass.

Now, Twilight Of The Superheroes was meant to be set twenty or thirty years in the future. Five Years Later is just… five years. But in comic book terms, that's all but an infinite time, current DC Universe characters probably won't actually age five years… ever.

So it gives DC writers a chance to do the things they can't do. Like marriage.

I'd expect a swath of marriages, Batwoman of course, Aquaman now definitely married, but what about Superman and Wonder Woman? Or Clark Kent and Lois? Twilight Of The Superheroes gave us a Superman and Superwoman couple, something strip mined by current New 52 and Injustice Gods Among Us continuity.

But what else? Like Dark Knight, could Green Arrow lose an arm? Could Damian be back, somehow, as a teenage Batman? A new Swamp Thing avatar? Could Bizarro have turned into a new boy? Could Stephanie Brown be the new Robin, or will Carrie Kelley?

So… five years later. Book by book, character by character, what will you be expecting?

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