In case the title wasn’t enough; massive spoilers ahead. Especially for Batman and Superman.
DC sure does seem to be making an effort to freshen their major heroes status quo recently. It appears to finally have dawned on them that simply resetting their continuity over and over again is not doing much to draw in new readers.
Batman and Superman, in particular, are going to have their status quos shaken up. DC’s free comic book day offering; ‘Divergence’ offers us a glimpse into the near future of Batman and Superman; amongst others.
You’ve probably already heard about the upcoming changes to Batman. Cowl-wearing Bruce Wayne will be replaced by mech-armour wearing commisioner Gordon. Batman#40 has since revealed the ‘pressing’ reason that Bruce Wayne won’t be around for the near future. Divergence reveals more details; Powers International has taken over Wayne Enterprises in his absence and are funding Gordon’s new work clothes to try and fill the void left by Batman’s absence.
The upcoming changes to Superman are far more interesting however. Because, unlike Bruce Wayne’s ‘absence’, this has the potential to become permanent if audiences like it. Superman has already developed a new super power this year.
However, those of us who read Superman#40 will know that Lois appears to have finally figured out the whole Clark/Superman thing. That would be big enough. However, Divergence reveals that Lois doesn’t decide to keep this to herself.
That’s right, as of June, Superman no longer has a secret identity. We’ve seen big changes to Superman’s status quo before (anyone remember ‘energy Superman’?) but this one has the potential to stick around. Many of Marvel’s heroes started out with secret identities only to drop them over time (Thor, Iron Man etc). Could this work for the Man of Steel as well?
It won’t be long before we find out.
