DC Entertainment has finally, finally officially announced, via Comic Book Resources, the August 2014 launch of Grant Morrison’s long awaited mini-series Multiversity. Originally announced way back in 2009, the series was scheduled for 2010… then 2011, 2012, and so on. Many fans out there wondered if this would ever actually happen, or if this would go in the great “what if?” pile of comic book projects that were announced but never produced, like Marvel’s Captain America: White and Frank Miller and Jim Lee’s The Dark Knight: Robin (although it’s possible no one really cares about the latter.)
This project has been a labor of love for writer Grant Morrison, something he’s had brewing in some form for eight years. The series is going to be comprised of seven complete adventures, with each 40 page issue set in a different parallel universe in DC’s recently recreated Multiverse, including a two part framing story and a thorough guidebook to the many Earths of the Multiverse. Each chapter/parallel world will feature a different artist, with a line-up that includes names like Chris Sprouse, Karl Story, Ben Oliver, Frank Quitely, Cameron Stewart, and more still to be announced.
So what can we expect in terms of content for this series? According to Morrison’s official statement, “Prepare to meet the Vampire Justice League of Earth-43, the Justice Riders of Earth-18, Superdemon, Doc Fate, the super-sons of Superman and Batman, the rampaging Retaliators of Earth-8, the Atomic Knights of Justice, Dino-Cop, Sister Miracle, Lady Quark, the legion of Sivanas, the Nazi New Reichsmen of Earth-10 and the LATEST, greatest superhero of Earth-Prime — YOU!” That alone should have longtime DC fanboys salivating. Not mentioned as part of the press release, but mentioned in other interviews in the past, are Earths that have the Charlton Comics heroes (Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, etc.) as stand-ins for Alan Moore’s Watchmen, a “’90s Earth” with third generation heroes like Green Arrow Conner Hawke and Flash Wally West, and an Earth where the only heroes were the Shazam family.
DC has also released the first official piece of color artwork from the firs  40 page issue, featuring pencils from Justice League and Blackest Night artist Ivan Reis, with assist from Joe Prado and Nei Ruffino, featuring the African-American Superman of Earth-23.
Grant Morrison is God !
Ah Morrison; of course there will be an Earth “23” .
Indybuda, agree on both counts with you.
Additionally on #1, and more explicitly, the article implies Watchmen came first, and that should be corrected to read better and more clearly that the Charlton characters came first. And they inspired the Watchmen characters.
2 things: The Watchmen were originally written for the Charlton characters and DC flinched at using the newly acquired characters the way Moore intended, so he changed them.
And thing the second: If the Superman of Earth-23 is still from Krypton, then it’s okay to say “Black.” I mean, unless Africa is on Krypton now.
Yep. I was just “that guy.”