This morning, The Source announced that this September for the one year anniversary of the launch of the New 52, all of the series will get a issue zero. These issues will explore the origins and answer some of the questions that fans have had since the relaunch.
In addition to that news, there was also a new series that will fall into The Batman Universe that was revealed.
TALON – Co-Writers: Scott Snyder and James Tynion IV Artist: Guillem March
Meet Calvin Rose, the only Talon to ever escape the grasp of the Court of Owls. This former assassin of the Court is trying to live a normal life … but that’s impossible when he’s being hunted by his former masters!
The series will kick off with the zero issue and give the characters history and issue one will follow in October.
USA Today ran a story about the news series and revealed a couple of things to look forward to.
-The zero issue will get readers caught up with the origin of Rose, how he used to be an escape artist in Haly's Circus — the troupe that has trained all of the men and women who have been Talons over the years — and found a way out of the Court, and how the Owls have been in pursuit of him ever since.
-Rose will be unlike many of the other Talons we have seen during Night of the Owls because he's a more recent recruit — and a still living one.
-One of the aspects that sold Snyder on the idea was that Gotham co-exists with other cities such as Metropolis, Coast City and Star City so Rose would best be a character built to exist anywhere.
-Gotham is a "wonderful and rich starting point" for Rose, Snyder says, but as much as he's a fan of Batman's hometown, he can't wait for the storytelling opportunities in Talon waiting outside the city limits. "It shows how the DCU works as a shared and realistic place, as well," he adds. "You'll learn how the cities work together and what any one villain or superhero does has reverberations in other places around the world, too."
In addition to all of the news, Comic Book Resources talked to Dan Didio about the zero issues and the new series, including Talon.
CBR: Let's get into these zero issues. In a lot of ways, this is a real no brainer twist on celebrating year one of the relaunch. Was it something you had in mind from very early on in the whole process, or did it come once the first issues were out on the stands?
Dan Didio: We knew we wanted to start all our stories "in the action," though some of the books did need origin stories. But we knew there would be a lot of questions out there as we were rolling new stories and series out. While we really got to move these stories forward, we didn't always get the past information necessary to fill in some of the blanks about the characters' origins or motivations.
So this [zero issue initiative] allows us to refocus on some of the characters, to fill in some of the blanks and, more importantly, to give everybody another wonderful jumping on point to get involved with the New 52. Because it's not just that we're doing another jumping on point with the zero month, it's that we've also got our first trades coming out. So if somebody is just reading these books for the first time, we're only a year into the stories so it's very easy to come in and be a part of the fun.
CBR: You're also launching four new titles, and when I heard what they were, I couldn't help but think they synched up really well with a lot of the general industry discussion we've heard since the New 52 launched. Let's start with event comics. One of the selling points for the New 52 was a level of self-containment. There were eventually some character crossovers and now stories like "Night of the Owls" and "The Culling." Now we've got "Talon" — an ongoing series from Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV and Guillem March — which is the first fully fledged spinoff series of the New 52. How have all the moves leading up to this book reflected how you think events should best work on comics right now?
Dan Didio: In some ways, what we wanted to do was build a strong foundation with the existing titles and series that we owned. So we wanted to give each series a chance to breathe and find its own audience and voice. But we also wanted a continuous, contiguous world where all the characters fit in the same space. And the original crossovers that we did — and you remember that I did the first one between "OMAC" and "Frankenstein" — we wanted to do stories that made sense to the characters that were involved with them. We wanted the crossovers to feel more natural and organic, especially for the characters involved. When we did "Night of Owls," it was unique to the Batman world, and that's why you didn't see the Talons showing up in "Wonder Woman" or any other book. It was a Batman story, and it branched out to all the books that made sense. With "The Culling," we had a bunch of younger characters, and we wanted to show how they would interact. That made sense.
So we're constantly looking for ways to crossover stories and ideas that make sense and make this feel like it all takes place in one shared world. We have to just find the places that make the most sense rather than just telling big stories that are overly complicated and encompass all 52 books. So the zero month is a shared idea. It's a month where we'll be revealing different secrets and origins of the various characters or addressing questions that might be out there. But we're also creating new questions to be addressed in stories moving on.
CBR: The other really interesting thing about "Talon" as a series is that it's the first New 52 book that's a brand new character we've only just met. Every other book in the line has some kind of background as a past franchise. Have you been looking for more opportunities to do all new stuff like that?
Dan Didio: One of the things I think we didn't do with the New 52 that we should have done was have more original ideas in there. We hedged our bets to go with known product and characters so fans would have at least a sense of familiarity with the books themselves. Now that we've got some strength behind the New 52, we can start getting more aggressive with some new ideas, new characters and new conceits so we can flesh out the world so it isn't just a repackaging or revisiting of everything that's come before.
For the entire interview, including talk about the three other new series, head over to Comic Book Resources. he zero issues will hit stores in September along with the first issue of Talon.
Posted by Dustin Fritschel
