DC has announced the winners of the first round of the Round Robin tournament, as well as the creative teams and expanded descriptions behind the eight remaining series.
CBR can exclusively reveal the creative teams behind the eight remaining series in DC's 2022 Round Robin tournament. The list includes Hawkman & Hawkwoman: The Changeling by writer Cavan Scott and artist Fico Ossio, Constantine & The Demon: Vacation from Hell by writer Frank Allen and artist Nik Virella, Suicide Squad: Dark by writer Zac Thompson and artist Garry Brown, Kid Flash: The Speed of Fear by writer Brandon Easton and artist Travis Mercer, Green Lantern: The Birth of Conspiracy by writer Scott Bryan Wilson and artist Skylar Patridge, DC Horror: Ghost Tour from Hell by writer Tee Franklin and artist Dominikie "Domo" Stanton, Superboy: The Man of Tomorrow by writer Kenny Porter and artist Jahnoy Lindsay and Green Lantern: A Light at The End of Forever by writer Si Spurrier and artist Marco Santucci.
The Round Robin tournament allows fans to vote for their favorite story ideas. Starting with 16 potential candidates, voters narrow down the list until a winner is determined. The winner will be published as a digital series on DC Universe Infinite before going to print and on ComiXology in October. Voting for the second round will go live at 9 a.m. PT/12 p.m. ET and lasts until April 10. All votes can be made through DC's Twitter and Instagram accounts, as well as DC Universe Infinite. The final voting ends on May 17.
Read the full list of titles, creative teams and pitches below:
HAWKMAN & HAWKWOMAN: THE CHANGELING by Cavan Scott and artist Fico Ossio
Logline: Hawkman and Hawkwoman have never had children together. They know that for a fact. Then who is Hektor Hol, the hotheaded, razor-winged teen who claims to be their son? Can they trust their own memories—or each other?
Themes: Finding your identity as a family, both together and apart.
Tone: We’ll start with bombastic cosmic battles as the Hawks go about the perfect life they’ve built for themselves. Then, when Hektor arrives, we’ll play up the uneasiness of the situation, perhaps giving us an at-times creepy M. Night Shyamalan Servant vibe, which makes Hawkman himself increasingly paranoid.
Imagine the scene when Hawkman, brooding on the Soarship, suddenly realizes that Hektor is staring at him, not moving. Not even blinking.
And yet all the time, Hektor is acting like an enthusiastic teen when he’s with Hawkwoman, who is as accepting as Hawkman is distrustful. There will be moments when Hawkman lets his guard down, and the family starts to come together, only to have events turn against them.
Basically think Super Sons meets the Orphan. Yes, it’s an odd mix, but it will work, especially with Fico’s art! The trick will be to make the readers love Hektor -- and also fear for him. Does he even know who or what he is? There will be heart here that will stop things tipping over into horror, helped immeasurably by Fico’s style. We’ll be playing with darkness and light, light ultimately winning out with a conclusion that will be full of hope and fulfillment, as a bond is formed between the Hawks and their son, the cuckoo in the nest finally accepted as part of the family, the three of them stronger than ever before.
VERSUS
CONSTANTINE & THE DEMON: VACATION FROM HELL by Frank Allen and artist Nik Virella
Pitch: John Constantine’s deceptive nature catches up with him when he is caught cheating by a mysterious individual at a mystic’s poker game. After being interrupted by a talking corpse with a cryptic message, demanding Constantine return home, John is punished for his sins.
Soon a magically nerfed Constantine is on a plane, traveling to his home city of Liverpool.
With Etrigan the Demon.
In his body.
Uninvited.
On arrival, John and Etrigan meet up with the voice of the corpse. The pair are then tasked with locating and safeguarding a child, who has come into possession of an evil, parasitic artifact of immense power. The clock is ticking as the two unlikely and unwilling allies race to save an innocent before the ancient corruption consumes her soul.
With an unstable tether to a prince of the pit, and his powers severely reduced, Constantine must beg, borrow, or steal anything of magical use he can in order to face an army of nightmares.
From old wounds springs a fresh hell. It’s going to be unconventional.
SUICIDE SQUAD: DARK by writer Zac Thompson and artist Garry Brown
Pitch: Meet the occult Task Force Dof Earth-13. Field leader Vampire Batman commands a top-secret team of murderers, monsters, and demons. The magic-dampening parasites hooked into their brains keep them following orders, and the promise of freedom keeps them motivated. Thanks to the mysterious benefactor known only as Milton, Amanda Waller has built the ultimate Squad...on another Earth! She’s handpicked a deranged team to topple the supernatural world of sorcery and permanent twilight. Yes, she’s going to do the unthinkable. She’s going to eliminate the League of Shadows...but to what end?
Suicide Squad: Dark is a speculative horror story about dark Multiversal conspiracy, endangered species, and the possible end of all things. It’s the dark mirror of the Suicide Squad where everything is weird and not quite as it seems. When team handler Frankenstein discovers his teammate Sporemay be a reputed ecoterrorist from Earth-41, he sets in motion a series of events that quickly spin out of his control. Worse, Task Force X has few allies to help make sense of the true scope of their peril. Who is Waller taking orders from? What the hell are those worms hanging off their heads? No, really, who the **** is Milton?
Vampire Batman, Frankenstein, Raven, Gorilla Grodd, Spore, Zatanna, Plasma-Man, and Sinestroare dying to find out.
VERSUS
KID FLASH: THE SPEED OF FEAR by writer Brandon Easton and artist Travis Mercer
Pitch: KID FLASH (Wallace West) suddenly finds himself torn from the surface of the Earth in a cosmic storm caused by a tear in the Speed Force. As he investigates, Kid Flash learns that REVERSE-FLASH has merged with the dangerous entity PARALLAX—an entity composed of fear energy that powers the yellow rings of the Sinestro Corps. Their unholy combination crafts the unprecedented Speed Ring, which can generate enough interdimensional velocity to shatter the central battery of the Green Lantern Corps on OA. Somehow, Kid Flash has been caught up in the vortex of the creation of the Speed Ring, which destabilizes the walls of the Multiverse!
Now, Kid Flash must pursue the hyper-powered Reverse-Flash across a variety of alien worlds devastated by the Speed Ring and find a way to stop him and dangerous members of the Sinestro Corps who will do whatever it takes to destroy the GL central battery. However, Wallace West’s connection to the Speed Force is disrupted and his ability to use his powers decreases exponentially as Reverse-Flash gains the ultimate velocity to accomplish his dark goal. As the clock ticks to zero, Kid Flash learns new ways of using his intelligence and guile to defeat a squadron of Yellow Lanterns and stop Reverse-Flash and Parallax before they eliminate the forces of justice and peace.
GREEN LANTERN: THE LIGHT AT THE END OF FOREVER by writer Si Spurrier and artist Marco Santucci
Pitch: A million years from now. A galaxy convulsed by violence, where godlike emperors wield unthinkable power and wage pitiless interstellar war. Here the ancient echoes of our heroic age—our DCU—lie fossilized, rendered as myth or forgotten entirely.
...but not by the Madman: an elderly farmer in a backwater system, brutalized by the latest thugs with jetpacks and jackboots to call themselves lawmen. He remembers. As his broken skull is patched up he suddenly remembers it all. An era of champions. A time of truth and justice. A cadre of peacekeepers dedicated to prosperity, fairness, and light. The Green Lantern Corps. He remembers...because he was one. His name...he’s sure of it...is John Stewart.
Is he right? How could he have forgotten who and what he was in another age, in another life? How is it that nobody else has ever heard of the Green Lanterns? Isn’t it more likely that he, as his friends assume, is nothing but a broken-brained old derelict, fantasizing about bygone wonders from childish myths as senility sets in...?
Whichever it is, there are plenty of scum who care more for his money than his memories. And so he assembles a small band of guns for hire, historians, and *cough* bastiches, to go out there. To dig. To uncover surprising secrets and twisted traces of the DCU we know and love. To try and unpick the greatest riddle of all: Who killed the hope of an entire galaxy? Who murdered truth, justice, and peace?
Who killed the light? And can it be relit?
This is a Green Lantern story unlike any other, melding secret remembrances of the DCU with a dystopian future where the Lantern Corps are a forgotten myth. A multitude of twists will hit our elderly hero as he bumbles cantankerously through the echoes of a corrupted history, causing ripples that will have major consequences for the present-day DCU...and quickly learning the horrible fate of his former comrades.
They never went away. They simply took over: corrupted by ultimate power, twisted by the demons of ambition and authority. Warring star gods, clad in green.
Ultimately the Madman’s greatest gift is not miraculous power nor the strength of a hero, but his belief in the simple goodness of the people around him. Over time, his idealism rubs off on even the most grimdark laser-knuckled space bastard in his retinue. Until we start to wonder: Can a single frail mind reignite the flame of hope?
...and what happens when he realizes the flame isn’t—never was—what it seems...?
VERSUS
DC HORROR PRESENTS: GHOST TOUR FROM HELL by writer Tee Franklin and artist Dominikie "Domo" Stanton
Pitch: After needing a change of scenery, Madame Xanadu relocates to New Orleans, Louisiana, from New York, and opens up a new shop. The grand opening of Madame Xanadu’s Occult Curiosities went a bit better than expected; running a magic shop in New York is vastly different from running one in New Orleans—especially when you only take select walk-ins.
While ushering the last customer out of the shop, Madame Xanadu senses something is coming...or perhaps it’s already here. A stranger walks into the shop and begs Madame Xanadu for her help—a distraught mother believes that something evil has happened to her child. She explains that her son and his college friends went on a ghost tour and have been missing for days. Pulling out her tarot deck, Madame Xanadu flips over cards that give her pause. When the mom reaches out to touch Madame Xanadu’s hands, the oracle hears words that she can’t quite make out, which send a shiver down her spine like no other. She sends the mom home with the promise of trying to find out what’s happened.
Praying while shuffling the tarot cards, images flash intoMadame Xanadu’s head, causing her to scream and ultimately pass out. While she’s passed out, Rama Kushna appears with a warning and offers Deadman to aid her on this quest. In another part of the city, a ghost tour is happening—college kids, adults, elders are all in attendance, including one Jason Blood. Something’s drawn him to New Orleans and no matter how much he ignored this “call” it continued to get louder. At the end of the tour, a man steps out of the shadows, inviting a select few to a “seance.” Jason and Etrigan recognize the man immediately: it's Deacon Blackfire!
Blackfire has been brought back to life by a powerful new player in town—the Goddess Hecate—and she’s ordered him to bring souls for her to feast upon. Hecate, also tired of the mundane life, decided to shake things up and visit New Orleans during Mardi Gras, before returning to Mount Olympus.
Xanadu, Deadman, and the Demon team up to figure out how to stop these disappearances from happening, defeat the immortal Deacon Blackfire and Goddess Hecate, and hopefully reunite many of the lost souls. Appearances from Constantine and Bloodwynd throughout the series, to even the playing field against the all-powerful Hecate.
GREEN LANTERN: THE BIRTH OF CONSPIRACY by writer Scott Bryan Wilson and artist Skylar Patridge
Pitch: It’s 1947, and Alan Scott is part of a new breed of humans endowed with the power of gods. But he still has to work a day job, protect his personal secrets from the public, and hide his civilian identity from the government agency formed to monitor superhero activity. When he finds himself at the sites of three UFO incursions—the famous “men in black” and flying saucer sightings, and the Roswell crash—he realizes that he could lose everything. Now, as Green Lantern, imprisoned and alone on an alien planet, used as a conduit to harvest the power of the green flame, he may have to rely on three low-level government functionaries—whose job it is to spy on him—to help him put a stop to an alien genocide and hold the government accountable for hostile actions...and trust them to keep his deepest secrets secret. Scott Bryan Wilson (Pennyworth, Batman: Gotham Nights) and Skylar Patridge (Wonder Woman) make you question everything in this high-octane, conspiracy theory-drenched tale of power and patriotism at a pivotal time in American history.
VERSUS
SUPERBOY: THE MAN OF TOMORROW by writer Kenny Porter and artist Jahnoy Lindsay
Pitch: Conner Kent is back! But this isn’t the DC Universe he knows. With Jonathan, Kara, and Clark protecting the Earth, Conner feels like an outsider more than ever. Living on the Kent farm, he dreams of one day finally finding his place in the universe, and a purpose as Superboy.
When Conner intercepts a distress signal from across the galaxy, he heads to the stars to lend a helping hand. But his journey is cut short when he finds himself caught in an intergalactic battle between Dominator warlords and a group of renegade space rebels called the Cosmoteers.
Eager to help the planets of a faraway galaxy, Conner offers his help to the spacefaring heroes. But the Cosmoteers don’t play by the same rules as the House of El. They’ll do anything to free the bioweapons that the warlords have created—even if it means crossing lines that Superboy never would.
Caught between the Cosmoteers’ hunt for revenge and his own code, Conner will have to fight harder than ever to find his path in the universe and carve a brighter future for worlds that don’t have a Superman. Villains of the universe are about to learn: you don’t mess with the “S.”
The second round of DC Round Robin 2022 kicks off April 6 at 9 a.m. PT/12 p.m. ET.
Source: DC