Three ‘New 52′ Titles Get New Writers In DC’s Latest Round Of Creator Shuffling

So why did DC Comics choose 52 as the number of titles to promote as part of their "New 52" reboot/relaunch/PR offensive? I'm beginning to think it might have been because there are 52 cards in a deck, and, like a deck of cards, the New 52 creative teams are always being shuffled. According to a series of announcements made on DC's The Source blog Tuesday, Justice League Dark, Stormwatch and Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E. will all be getting new writers, although two of those writers are simply moving from title to title:

Jeff Lemire will leave Frankenstein for Justice League Dark, Peter Milligan will leave Justice League Dark for Stormwatch, and Matt Kindt will take over Frankenstein.

Peter Milligan will be leaving Justice League Dark with April's issue #8, and moving to Stormwatch, which was written by Paul Cornell for its first six issues, and will be written for two issues by fill-in Paul Jenkins. Milligan's first issue will be May's #9.

Replacing Milligan on Justice League Dark will be Animal Man and Frankenstein writer Jeff Lemire, who has had great success reintegrating the animal-powered, one-time Vertigo character back into the mainstream DCU, and would seem like the second best choice to write a book featuring other former Vertigo characters like John Constantine and Shade, the Changing Man (Behind the departing Milligan himself, of course, who wrote both characters previously for Vertigo). Lemire takes over with May's issue #9.

Lemire will stick with Animal Man and his Vertigo imprint series Sweet Tooth, but give up scripting duties on Frankenstein.

Taking over as writer for Frankenstein will be Matt Kindt, who is primarily known as a cartoonist whose work is closer to the literary side of comics than the genre-specific stuff (Kinda like Lemire was with his Essex County opus prior to picking up gigs writing Superboy and The Atom). Kindt's past work includes original graphic novels Pistolwhip, 2 Sisters, Super Spy and Super Spy: The Lost Dossier for Top Shelf; 3 Story for Dark Horse; and Revolver for Vertigo. He's also writing the Robotman feature in DC's recently relaunched My Greatest Adventure. Kindt's first issue of Frankenstein will be May's issue #10.

While DC's New 52 has included many artists writing or co-writing their own work (Tony Daniel, Rob Liefeld, Scott McDaniel, J.H.Williams III, Francis Manapul) DC's announcement refers to Kindt repeatedly only as the new writer, making no mention of the artist on Frankenstein. Kindt's style, like Lemire's, is so far afield of everything else in DC's superhero line --even when you factor in the work of stylish outliers like Cliff Chiang and Keith Giffen -- that it would be a blast seeing Kindt-drawn characters standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Jim Lee redesigned superheroes. Alberto Ponticelli has been drawing Frankenstein since it launched in September.

JLD artist Mikel Janin was the only artist mentioned in DC's statements concerning the three affected books, and he will continue to draw that title.

[Via The Source]