Welcome back to school, comic fans! The leaves may be changing and classes are already ruling our lives, but here at Musings we’re not ready to let go of summer yet. With that spirit in mind, it’s time to look back and review the big happenings in the world of comics since we all left school back in June.
The biggest event of the year for comics is always San Diego Comic Con, which happens every July and draws exhibitors from across Hollywood as well from the comic book world. In the latter section of this massive event, the publishers announced their major upcoming projects. Marvel Studios teased their post-Avengers film lineup for the next few years: Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, Iron Man 3 and Ant-Man.
Marvel also teased some big comic book storylines, including the return of Carnage to the Spider-man books and their ongoing epic Avengers/X-men crossover storyline.
Marvel also made national news this summer for the very public wedding of X-Men and Alpha Flight member Northstar, aka Jean-Paul Beaubier, Marvel’s first openly gay superhero who came out in 1992, and his long-time boyfriend Kyle Jinadu. Around the same time, DC Comics announced that in their new DC Universe, the Green Lantern of Earth 2, Alan Scott, is gay. These choices by the biggest names in comics not only showed a growing support for the LGBT community, but put all other LGBT representation in comics in the spotlight.
That, of course, was not all that DC did this summer. You may have heard of a little movie of theirs, The Dark Knight Rises, the final film in the Nolan Batman trilogy. Aside from that cinematic juggernaut, DC had their own slew of announcements at Comic Con. One of the more controversial pieces of news is that in the DCnU, former Robin Tim Drake was never actually a Robin. On an oddly lighter note, DC will publish a comic adaptation of Quentin Tarantino’s newest film Django Unchained, to be published this November. But the biggest news from the convention is that comic and science fiction/fantasy legend Neil Gaiman will be returning to the world of his award winning Sandman comics for a new miniseries next year for the original comic’s 25th anniversary.
So there you have it, a small taste of what you may have missed this summer in the comic book world. But the comic business is year-round, so who knows what big news could be announced this fall.