After a rocky year for DC Comics with a transition to new distributors, spurred on by Diamond’s COVID-19 lockdown, and a substantial layoff round that took out a third of DC Comics’ staff, DC has unveiled a look into it’s future project:
DC FUTURE STATE
What We Officially Know
DC describes the project (from their official press release):
DC Future State spotlights the World’s Greatest Super Heroes in fresh new roles, with all-new characters taking up their iconic mantles.
…
In DC Future State, the Multiverse has been saved from the brink of destruction, but the triumph of DC’s heroes has shaken loose the very fabric of time and space!
As you can see from the preview image and the press release, DC is leaning heavily into the Multiverse concept by re-introducing characters in new “skins” with new costumes and new histories. It was previously thought this would be the culmination of Dan DiDidio’s 5G initiative plans, but those have since been scrapped. Now, it looks like the unofficial reports of 5G (mostly from Bleeding Cool) were mostly correct, albeit significantly scaled down.
From DC’s description, the preview images provided and comments made by DC press officials, it seems the goal is to create whole range of alternate versions of existing characters. Without knowing the internal DC strategy, it’s clear DC is angling to open up a whole realm of storytelling using the pseudo likeness of their established characters without locking into established canon.
Reading Between The Lines
Nobody does things, certainly nothing as big as DC Future State, without a reason. This site is about opinions (and thank you for checking out the site’s very first post!), but before we can form an opinion, it would help to try and fill in a few gaps if we can. And the key to the opinion comes from the great Amazonian herself, Wonder Woman, and some vague comments made by DC’s own Jim Lee.
In a recent Hollywood Reporter interview, Lee mentions the future focus of DC Comics in the midst of a difficult period for the publisher:
The need for storytelling, updating the mythology, is vital to what we do. The organization leans on us to share and establish the meaningful elements of the content that they need to use and incorporate for all their adaptations. When we think about reaching global audiences, and we see comics as helping drive that awareness and that international brand, it’s very much part of our future.
jim Lee
Focus on that key phrase – “international brand.”
In the DC Future State announcement, there is a depiction of an alternate version of Wonder Woman named Yara Flor; an Amazonian of Brazilian decent.
Without knowing much backstory for this alternate Wonder Woman, it’s at least clear this is not the classic Diana of Themyscira, but this is one of several examples where the Future State characters are almost completely new reinventions of the titles focusing on alternate ethnicities, genders, and even disabilities.
That’s fine, but it doesn’t really tell you much about the stories. Whether or not the books will be good won’t be known until the books are published in January 2021.
What’s DC Trying To Do?
Connecting the dots between Lee’s comments to HR and today’s announcement, we can guess that DC is testing out versions of the DC character lineup that has a more international appeal.
Why?
DC Comics needs to expand its reach into a broader market to survive. DC’s attempts over the last few years to diversify their storylines to bring in more customers have largely fallen flat, so if you can’t make the one product more broadly attractive, make different versions of the product to appeal to different markets.
I picture Yara Flor becoming a version of Wonder Woman that is market targeted towards a growing customer base in the Latin American regions like Mexico, Central America, and South America. Those countries/continents are huge markets, and if DC can create a non-Western version of Wonder Woman, as an example, that could be claimed by Latin countries as their own, the market potential is huge.
Likewise, the preview image shows a female Flash that has prosthetic legs, so that could be an attempt to appeal to a market for readers with disabilities without making a nonsensical change to existing Flash characters such as Barry Allen or Wally West. And, track and field is a massively popular sport in those same Latin American countries.
It may seem like I’m focusing solely on Latin America, but the examples here could be extended to countries in the Middle East, Africa, Europe and elsewhere.
It’s highly unlikely DC would go to this level of promotion and expense and create such a large catalog of new characters to simply put them up on a shelf after two months. There has to be a longer play. Therefore, I foresee DC using the Future State event as a testing ground for new takes on old characters to gauge interest in international markets. The one’s that stick would be tweaked and marketed intentionally in those international regions to establish a global reach for DC beyond taking the American characters and republishing with language translations.
Time will tell.
What do you think of my opinion. Am I on to something or making a mountain out of a mole hill. Leave comment down below with your best guess about this topic, and please share this post on social media using the links below.
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