Hey guys, it's Scott.
It is Tuesday, July 22nd, two days before San Diego Comic-Con. The Beast, the big one. I will be there Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I'm taking a very late flight tomorrow night to try and spend as much time with my family and get as much work done as I can before I go. But I'm really, really excited to see you. If you're in the Black Jacket Club, we have our breakfast on us to treat you and say thank you. If you're in the Best Jacket Club at the $7/month tier please come by any signing at the very beginning. The first 10 minutes I reserve for you guys to come up before the line starts to come get anything signed. You can still sign up right now, for $7/month or $75/year believe me it would be worth it to skip the lines at San Diego or Boston or any of the cons I do and you get access to all of our classes that we've done and are going to do.
But besides San Diego, a little bit of housekeeping. We had so much happen in the last couple of weeks. First, thank you guys so much for the enthusiastic and kind response to the announcement of DC K.O.
I'll give you a little a little bit more information here. But DC K.O. is our big knockdown drag out cosmic tournament. It starts in October. It's what we've been building to since we did All In. Our Darkseid saga has three big stages. Again, this is all probably more than I should say, but I feel like we're among friends here, right? But All In is the beginning where Darkseid begins to transform into something much more dangerous. This is the midpoint, the heroes’ first encounter with this new thing Darkseid has become. And it's their attempt to find a way to beat him, to become something as big and as powerful as him.
And so this tournament is a way to do that, to literally beat Darkseid at his own game. And so it's, again, going to be like a battle royale between all the superheroes and some surprise characters along the way. It's meant to be big, bombastic, epic fun. We really want you to feel excited to go to your comic book stores. We're going to do a “who will win?” kind of competition. We're going to have all kinds of incentives. We're announcing a bunch of stuff at San Diego. We're revealing a bunch of stuff at San Diego. We've got great art, great creators, great characters.
It goes back to that old school feeling of Secret Wars, that sort of big brawl, but done in a really, really new way. So it's a fresh take on that. It was really me and Josh talking and being like, what is a good middle stage for this story where heroes realize they're not going to be able to fight Darkseid the way that they have in the past? And we kept thinking about how Marvel has done all of these fight events from Secret Wars to Avengers vs. X-Men and on and on. But we never really done one, ever. Like we've talked about it. We talked about Trinity War being a battle between Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. And I once talked about ‘Batman versus DCU’ or ‘Batman versus Justice League’ back when Geoff Johns was on Justice League and I was doing Batman. So we had plans but we just never brought it together. And so it was like, let's do it. Let's have fun. But let's do it in a way that isn't grim. Let's do it in a way that isn't heavy it doesn't take a lot of time to set up. It's not a schism between the heroes over deep, deep issues. That's not the way this is. It's literally designed as a kind of tournament that they realize will empower one of them to be able to destroy Darkseid and the only way to do this is to go in it with absolutely no holds barred. And so it's fun. Again, it's like a bolt of lightning to the DCU.
It's going to affect a ton of stuff on the other side in all kinds of positive way, I promise. It's designed to just brush up the books and also give some really cool new story prompts to books that want them, all done in conjunction with creators. It's going to be a blast, but I really can't wait for you to see what Josh and I have been building. This is Josh Williamson and me. We came up with the story together. He's writing the backups, I'm writing the main. It's a really collaborative effort with the incredible Javi Fernandez on art, and it's going to be fun.
So I can't wait for you to see it. Thank you again for immediately getting what we were going for. That was my big concern was that we'd have to re-message it a lot because sometimes when we were doing Metal or Death Metal, it took a while for fans to understand what we were going for. And to be perfectly frank, I think some of that is reflective of the chaotic nature of the company in those times, that we had a lot of different things running at one that contradicted each other, all of which could have been great like Doomsday Clock or Infinite Frontier or this or that. But there were different storylines happening concurrently whereas now we’re sort of more cohesive editorially and and creatively with this single vision, not my vision but a collective vision of what the company is about, what the characters are about, how we want creators to feel on their books, the kinds of risks we want to take, and our relationship to you guys. So we feel really good about it, really excited and can't wait for you to see it.
Also I'd be remiss if I didn't say thank you so much for the incredible response to Absolute Batman #10. This issue for us was the Rubicon. This was the one that I remember telling Nick, like, if they follow us down this rabbit hole, they'll follow us anywhere. And it's my favorite issue so far. It brings together all the elements that the series is about. Bruce's indomitable will, his viciousness, his demonic resistance to anyone trying to control him or push him down, and his idealism. But also the body horror, the zaniness, the comedy, the big ambition, everything is there in this issue. And I know that it was a really tough issue to do.
Once I saw it, I was like, this just represents kind of everything we're going for. And the fact that you guys showed up and made it our highest selling issue other than number one and maybe number two, because I'm not sure, but it's been going up which is amazing. But the fact that you sold it at such high numbers and seemed to respond to it so enthusiastically just made Nick and me so enthusiastic about everything we have planned. We've got Catwoman coming. We've got Joker coming. All kinds of goodness coming up in the series. It only gets bigger and crazier from here. So thank you so much.
Now, San Diego, a brief word. I'm posting my schedule. There really isn't a bad time to come up and say hello. The one thing I'd say if you want a general rule is anytime at the con is great. Once you see people outside of the con, if you see them out at the restaurant with their friends, if you see them at the bar or at dinner or whatever it is, I think most creators are happy to have you come up and say hi. I'm certainly happy for you to come up and say hi. Just be a little bit more generous with waiting for a good moment because we get really excited about the idea of going to these conventions to say thank you to you. That's the main reason, to get to announce stuff, to get to share our enthusiasm for the projects we're working on, but it's also a place where we get to hang out with each other and we haven't seen each other in a long time. For example, I’m seeing Jock at this convention. I haven't seen him in months and months and We're working on the Wytches animated show together. We're working on the Joker issue together. And I just can't wait to see him. There's a bunch of people like that for me and for everybody. So, you know, just be aware that we don't get a lot of time outside of convention spaces to see each other. So just enjoy, be happy, come up, be friendly. Can't wait to see you.
Just be aware that creators are under a lot of pressure there too. Usually we have a lot of things that we're doing behind the scenes that aren't listed on our schedules. I have meetings with groups of retailers with marketing, with editorial, like, all kinds of stuff. So as does everybody else. So I'm saying a lot of the time we have more obligations than you're aware of. So it is a big work weekend for us. So just be gentle is my point, but I'm sure all of us can't wait to see you guys. So come out, have a blast. I'm sorry I didn't do one of these earlier. I wanted to do a whole one on Superman and how much I enjoyed it. And also about comments about Batman that I got really into. I just didn't have time. So when I get back, I'll try and do one. I'll try and post a lot of stuff for as much as I can from San Diego here in this space. So I hope you'll check it out and I hope you have a great week!
S
