DC's newest event: from 5G to Future State

 DC's latest event has quite an interesting history, one that I'm going to go over today.

Next month, DC's new event 'Future State' will begin. For the entirety of January and February, the DC universe will jump forward to the future before returning to the regularly scheduled programming in March. Future State is a world where most (if not all) of your favourite characters have aged out of their superhero persona's and replaced by a new generation of heroes. If you're just a comic book casual you might think Future State is just 'yet another random event' but this could not be farther from the truth. Futures State has quite the turbulent history, one that dates back all the way to the beginning of 2019. Today, I'll be discussing the history of Future State, as well as give my own opinions on the event.

Without further ado, let's dive in.

The first rumours

Way back in June of 2019, internet news site Bleeding Cool first reported about a whisper they heard at DC Comics. '5G'. What 5G entailed was unclear at the time, but it was known to be something that has been planned at DC Comics at the upper creative and editorial levels. Over the course of the next year or so, more details about '5G' trickled out. Renamed G5 to avoid confusion with the G5 mobile network (and all the controversy that comes with that) and would be a reboot of the entire line. The 'G5' name was referring to generation 5. Back during New York Comic Con 2019, Co-Publisher of DC Comics had made an entire timeline of the DC Universe. The plan was that with G5, the current crop of superheroes would be aged out of their roles and be replaced with brand-new characters.

You're wondering how that would have looked? Well, let's take a look at the rumours that surrounded the G5. For Superman, DC intended his son Johnathan Kent to take over his role as Superman. John would quickly prove himself to have a quite different approach than his father, bottling Metropolis ALA Brainiac style for 'protection'. Clark, meanwhile, but be the leader of the space-based The Authority. The Batman mantle, meanwhile, would be taken NOT by any Robin, but by supporting character Lucius Fox's son, Luke Fox. Bruce himself would be (thought to be) dead. Other rumours included Jo Mullein (the Green Lantern in the book 'Far Sector') to become the Green Lantern of earth and the son of supervillain Captain Boomerang becoming the new Flash.

By ageing their heroes, DC Comics parent company AT&T and Warner hoped to not only meet the success of DC's Elseworlds stories but to also have a path forward with their movie universe. The MCU is the highest-grossing movie franchise to date but one of the challenges its facing is that of their actors. There will come a time, which has now come for the MCU, when either the actors will age out of their roles or leave for other projects. What to do then? The MCU has chosen to pass the mantle of these heroes over to other characters who have held those mantles in the comics as well. Steve passing along his shield to Sam (Falcon) at the end of Endgame was inspired by a story-line that happened in the comics. By introducing a whole crop of new legacy heroes at once, DC hoped to 'future-proof' their movie universe for this inevitability.

The pivotal role of Death Metal

How would all of this come to past? It would all start with another DC Event, one that is still going on at the time of me writing this piece: Dark Nights: Death Metal. In Death Metal, the idea of multiple different timelines and generations is a plot point. The cover for the Death Metal final shows the current Wonder Woman coming face to face with the original Wonder Woman from back in the '40s. This end would lead into yet another event that would explain it all. Somethings similar to DC's older Convergence event. Look it up if you don't know what I'm talking about). This is where the name G5 gets its meaning. G5 means 'Generation 5'. Dan DiDio, then co-publisher of DC Comics, had been working on a spiffy new timeline of the entire DC universe. It would start with Wonder Woman first leaving Themyscira and arriving at 'Men's world' and lead all the way to the current stuff. The timeline was also separated into different 'generations', Wonder Woman the WW1&2 would be generation one and the current post-rebirth era was generation four. This new timeline would be revealed to the public through a set of one-shot issues, each covering one generation, that was set to commence at free-comic-book day with 'Generation Zero'. According to this new timeline, everything happened, everything mattered. 5G and the next major DC reboot was only a few months away from becoming reality. And then Dan DiDio got fired. That's when 5G started to unravel.

The cover(art) in question.

How would all of this come to past? It would all start with another DC Event, one that is still going on at the time of me writing this piece: Dark Nights: Death Metal. In Death Metal, the idea of multiple different timelines and generations is a plot point. The cover for the Death Metal final shows the current Wonder Woman coming face to face with the original Wonder Woman from back in the '40s. This end would lead into yet another event that would explain it all. Somethings similar to DC's older Convergence event. Look it up if you don't know what I'm talking about). This is where the name G5 gets its meaning. G5 means 'Generation 5'. Dan DiDio, then co-publisher of DC Comics, had been working on a spiffy new timeline of the entire DC universe. It would start with Wonder Woman first leaving Themyscira and arriving at 'Men's world' and lead all the way to the current stuff. The timeline was also separated into different 'generations', Wonder Woman the WW1&2 would be generation one and the current post-rebirth era was generation four. This new timeline would be revealed to the public through a set of one-shot issues, each covering one generation, that was set to commence at free-comic-book day with 'Generation Zero'. According to this new timeline, everything happened, everything mattered. 5G and the next major DC reboot was only a few months away from becoming reality. And then Dan DiDio got fired. And that's when 5G started to unravel.

Now, I don’t pretend to know everything about the career of Dan DiDio. The only thing I really got from him was that he wasn’t a fan of grown-up sidekicks (Nightwing, Wally West etc.). What my research told me, however, is that DiDio could be a rather difficult man to work with. He had a tendency to micro-manage his staff and made some, poor we shall say, decisions and speeches about women and sexual harassers in the workplace. This all led to an incredibly stressful time behind the scenes for G5. While for audiences, the roll-out of this new reboot was a string of hints, teases and leaks the story was quite different for the editorial staff. It was a series of constantly changing ideas, reassignments and a work environment that turned hostile. Morale at DC comics had started to fall rapidly. Frequent shakeup in responsibilities of the staff and multiple, sudden, departures are only two examples of what ‘destabilized’ the workplace. The whole ‘Bat member’ over at Batman: Damned (look it up, it’s quite the controversy) had already left its mark at AT&T and Warner. The behind the scenes chaos that resulted from G5 was the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak. Dan DiDio was, rather suddenly and unexpected I might add, fired. With his departure, G5 future was uncertain.

The idea of swapping out new heroes for the older ones got a lot of pushback, especially with DC’s movie slate is gearing back up with Wonder Woman 1984 and Matt Reeves’s Batman. It was for this very reason that I was dreading 5G. I followed the rumours and leaks about 5G while they were coming out and to me, they sounded a lot like ‘the New 52 + Marvel Now’. The New 52 was the latest complete reboot of the DC universe. It centred around removing almost the entire history of the DC universe and focused on each character starting from scratch as if this was their first-ever appearance. It went over poorly and is widely considered to be DC’s biggest misstep in modern times. During (and also a bit after) Marvel Now, Marvel replaced many of their favourite heroes one by one. Sam Wilson became Captain America, X-23 took over the Wolverine mantel from her genetic template/father Logan and Jane Foster became the new Thor. While initially successful and most of these characters time as these more recognizable heroes is still remembered fondly, sales-wise they didn’t do so hot. Their books started to warm shelves like crazy, with comic book shops and Marvel editorial reportedly coming to blows at SDCC. They switched out their heroes to quickly after each other, in my opinion. 5G seemed like a combination of both to me, both the good and the bad. I was thus very worried that the event would tank and leave DC comics at an even worse state than it already was.

The generation one-shots were cancelled, the Generation Zero issue for free comic book day was recalled and every single last copy was destroyed. After that, it remained quite around 5G for a while, until slowly but surely, more info started to come out. Jim Lee, now sole-publisher of DC comics, confirmed that no new reboot was at the works anymore. What did they do then, with all of the months of work they initially put into 5G? Well, I’m pretty sure that you already now. Those remnants are what has now become Future State. It takes the main premise and many of the originally proposed ideas of 5G and uses those to fill the two months that ‘Convergence 2.0’. Not everything is the same as it would have been in 5G. Jonathan Kent is the new Superman, but Clark doesn’t lead the Authority here but a pariah on War World just to name an example. Still, it is very clear to anyone who had followed the 5G rumour mill that the two events are one and the same.

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All in all, I feel Future State is a much better (and safer) event for DC then 5G would have been. Future State allows us to experience these new stories with these new characters without having to sacrifice the DC universe that we all know and love. If these characters and or the event tank, then no worries, it’ll all be back to what we know works in a few weeks. If they do prove successful DC can leverage these characters and their stories moving forward. The Yara Flor Wonder Woman has already proven herself quite popular. The character has lots of potential that I’m hoping that DC will utilize over the years to come. Let’s just hope she, and the entirety of Future State, can meet all the hype when the event starts in January next year.

Special thanks to BleedingCool as well as Heidi MacDonald from comicbeat for their reporting on all things 5G and DanDiDio.