Writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist David Marquez appear to be the creative team for Justice League #59, joined as they will be by colorist Tamra Bonvillain, who announced the teaming Wednesday on social media.
This announcement felt like the third act in day hinting that Bendis was moving onto something new with DC Comics. Act One came earlier in the day when Phillip Kennedy Johnson was announced as Bendis’ successor on both monthly Superman comics — Superman and Action Comics. After that, Bendis dropped a shadowy teaser image that looked an awful lot like a new Justice League team on his Instagram, with the cryptic caption, “Wow! Whaaat? Stay tuned…” Finally, Bonvillain made the announcement on Twitter.
The book is presumably soon to be officially announced by DC Comics, which has been rolling out a slate of new comics announcements this week in the leadup to its March solicitations for retailers being published Friday. A majority of these announcements have seen creators from the two-month Future State set of comics continuing on with properties. Others — thinking of Batman here — will pick up with the same creative team they have now. While still others — The Joker and The Crime Syndicate — are brand new. There are also some pretty cool new anthology books on the way.
Justice League, however, sees an entirely new creative team taking over a marquee DC Comics property, and it’s a creative team that has much experience together. Bendis and Marquez have previously collaborated on a number of high profile books at Marvel Comics, from the late 2015 Invincible Iron Man relaunch to the event story Civil War II to the street-level Netflix series-mirroring comic, The Defenders, their last work before Bendis jumped to DC in early 2018.
Marquez seemingly followed Bendis to DC, drawing a number of covers as well as the first arc of the Batman / Superman team-up comic, which tied into Year of the Villain, and was written by Joshua Williamson. Justice League will be Bendis and Marquez’s first team-up at DC.
The teaser image that was released looks a bit shadowy, and I happen to think that is deliberate bit of misdirection, which will eventually unveil a number of familiar looking characters — Wonder Woman, Superman, and maybe even Batman — to be the new or altered versions of themselves introduced during Future State.
Even if that’s not the case, this lineup — which seems to include Green Arrow, Black Canary, and maybe even Black Adam — looks to be the most substantial shakeup of DC’s flagship superhero team in something like 25 years (give or take Cyborg here and Martian Manhunter there).
It’s all very exciting. Check out the teaser image below…
