Posted in: Batman, Comics, DC Comics | Tagged: 5g, 5g remains, Batman, dc comics, dc vs vampires, james tynion iv

James Tynion IV Planned DC Vs Vampires To Avoid Writing 5G

Every now and then someone tells me that Bleeding Cool totally made the DC Comics 5G plan up. That it was totally fake news. That it was never going to happen. And every now and then a comic creator pops up and tells people what their 5G plan was s- or was not. such as  James Tynion IV's in his latest Empire  Of The Tiny Onion newsletter talking about the announcement of DC Vs Vampires written with Matthew Rosenberg and drawn by Otto Schmidt. And how he would have written that a couple of years ago when he was meant to leave Batman with #100 and replaced by John Ridley, so that he would not have had to be involved with 5G, which was a bit of an anathema to him.

So, way back at the start of me doing this newsletter almost two years ago (What?! Really??!! Two Years?????) I hinted at a project that I referred to as PROJECT TEETH. At that time, I thought my run on Batman was going to end at Issue #100, and what would have been the 5G initiative was going to kick off after that, and after a few conversations I realized that I didn't want to participate in what was cooking for the mainline DCU on the other end of 100. The entire publishing initiative was being cooked in house, with the goal of having writers execute a vision they didn't get to contribute much toward. I tried to see how flexible it was going to be, and quickly realized that it wasn't going to be all that flexible. I wasn't interested in writing other folks ideas, but I had signed a DC Exclusive Contract that was going to keep running almost a year after I was done with Batman #100. Nice House on the Lake was already approved, so I knew I'd be able to work on that, but I still had one slot in my exclusive contract to fill. So, what was I going to do?

DC Vs Vampires, it seems, after the DC Comics success of the zombie hit DCeased.

I wanted to come at a horror apocalypse from the other angle from DCeased… By the end of the first issue of DCeased, an intense Zombie Apocalypse was already ripping through the world and the people in it… But I liked the idea that we might be a slow burn apocalypse… A conspiracy growing in the shadows of the DC Universe, that escalates slowly and terrifyingly issue by issue until the world is unrecognizable. The story starts with Andrew Bennett, wrapped in blankets, trying to get into the Hall of Justice at high noon with a terrifying message that there is a new Vampire leader on Earth and what he's plotting will mean the end of human domination of the planet. And it ends, twelve issues later with… Well… You'll have to wait and see. I wrote a light breakdown of the twelve issue run, and had it ready in my back pocket for when I finished Batman #100 and left the book… But then Batman doubled in sales in six months, 5G didn't exist anymore, and all of my creator owned books were doing so well that I wasn't going to seriously consider dropping any of them.

Hence the co-write!

And now you get to read us turn a bunch of your favorite DC Heroes into soulless Vampires and murder each other and take over the world! The story is out of continuity, so we can really kill people, and also so we can have Alfred Pennyworth in the story to serve tea as needed. It's going to be f-cked up and scary and fun… We've got an amazing cover from Jorge Molina that's going to be a Glow-in-the-Dark variant… And DC is doing their whole Team Variant thing with an amazing piece from Ejikure! Anyways, more to come on all of this… This is really fun and gross and weird, and there's a beat in the first issue with a blender that I wish I could take all the credit for. We're going to have a real fun time destroying the DC universe and turning all your favorites into blood-sucking killers.

Something Is Killing The Superheroes…

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