DC has announced Batman and Superman will team up once again for their own series, Batman/Superman. This time the pair will investigate the Dark Multiverse’s Batman Who Laughs as the story sees the immoral villain succeeding in an evil conspiracy to infect six heroes in the DC Universe. Artist David Marquez and writer Joshua Williamson are the creative team behind the new series.
“That I’d be able to build it from the ground up, and also that it was actually a meaningful big project, were really important factors,” Marquez told THR about the series. “In terms of the characters involved and the role it plays in broader DCU and its evolving narrative, working with Josh who’s one of the biggest writers there — these reasons sold me on the idea of doing this book. If it wasn’t all of those unique characteristics altogether for one project, I probably wouldn’t be doing work-for-hire stuff right now.”
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“We discover, through the Batman Who Laughs series that the Batman Who Laughs has been working on this massive plan since [Dark Nights] Metal,” Williamson said. “What it is is, he has sleeper agents throughout the [DC Universe]. They’ve been infected, and they’re slowly turning into the worst versions of themselves. Some of them know they’re changing, some don’t. Some aren’t aware it’s kind of like a Jekyll and Hyde situation where they’re not aware of [what] the other side is doing.
Marquez also revealed that they took inspiration from a surprise place for the series: John Carpenter’s The Thing.
“This is happening to six people — we’ve been calling them the new Secret Six — who have been turned. But who could be turned? Who are they? [Batman and Superman] have to go out and figure it out. But that means spying on other heroes, friends, allies,” the artist added. “We talked about the end of The Thing, where it’s the two of them and they’re like, ‘It could be you, it could be me, but now we have to work together.’”
Batman/Superman arrives in stores in August.
