Rumor: DC To Answer Marvel’s What If…? With An Animated Elseworlds Series
JB Augustine
|
It looks like Marvel may not be the only one of the Big Two comic book publishers set to bring their fans tales from across the alternate timelines of their universe’s respective multiverse, as DC might be set to answer their rivals’ upcoming What If…? series by drawing from their library of Elseworlds stories for a new series.
Source: The Flash, The CW
A new scoop from Geekosity claims that an Elseworlds animated series, which will be as mature and R-rated as some of the comics it will take its stories from, is currently being discussed for HBO Max.
However, the entertainment news site did not mention any details on the series’ potential cast or crew, nor on which possible plots the show will base its episodes upon.
Reportedly, DC wants it to rival What If…? any way that it can, and it looks like they find the concept of Elseworlds, which became a staple of the Arrowverse as various iterations of Green Arrow, Flash, and Supergirl variously crossed paths and swapped lives, to be the perfect way to do so.
However, it should be noted that, oddly, Geekosity doesn’t cite any sources for this story – not even an anonymous one. While they could be site founder Mikey Sutton’s usual insiders at Warner Bros, under the assumption that any news reported on the site coming out of the studio would implicitly be attributed to them, the site may also be trying to speak something into existence – hoping the right folks are listening.
Therefore, we urge you to take this rumor with commensurate amount of salt, no matter how much fire it catches. That said, Geekosity’s been spot-on in the past, so the scoop has a good chance of being accurate.
Source: Superman: The Dark Side (1998), DC Comics. Collected edition cover art by Kieron Dwyer, Hilary Barta, and Patricia Mulvihill.
DC copyrighted the term Elseworlds in 1989 to designate alternate reality stories that existed outside of the current DC canon such as Batman: Gotham by Gaslight and The Dark Knight Returns. Before then, they called this set of miniseries and one-shots Imaginary Stories.
Source: Gotham By Gaslight (2018), Warner Animation
The last official Imaginary Story was Whatever Happened to The Man of Tomorrow by Alan Moore and other famous Elseworlds titles include Kingdom Come and The New Frontier.
Injustice is a more recent example of an Elseworlds tale and an argument could even The Killing Joke could be classified as an Elseworlds, given its questionable place in the canon – sometimes the Alan Moore story, which he disowned, is adopted so Barbara Gordon can be paralyzed and other times it’s outright ignored.
Source: The Killing Joke (2016), Warner Animation
The DC Animated Universe has been a formidable contender in the world of content for decades, with its stories and series routinely touted as an example of quality super hero media, so this is a killer combo if the discussions prove to be true.
Are you looking forward to an R-rated Elseworlds animated series or praying that it happens? Answer us down below with your alacrity.
More About:Television