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Academy Award-winning writer John Ridley and artists Giuseppe Camuncoli and Andrea Cucchi’s five-issue DC Black Label limited series The Other History of the DC Universe concludes July 27 and the publisher has released first look preview pages of the issue.
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The prestige format series – which mixes sequential comic book art with prose writing – examines the history of the DC Universe through the eyes of “superheroes outside the prevailing culture, and against the backdrop of real-world events,” according to DC, with the fifth and final issue focusing on Anissa Piece, AKA Thunder, AKA Jefferson Pierce/Black Lightning’s daughter.
Anissa’s story serves as something of a bookend to the series, as the first issue focuses on Black Lightning and his journey from an Olympic gold medalist, teacher, neighborhood activist, and then finally to a superhero.
“Being a superhero runs in Anissa Pierce’s family,” reads DC’s description of the final issue. “It’s been a part of her life in one way or another since her father, Jefferson Pierce, first started to fight crime as Black Lightning. Despite what her parents tell her, despite what the world tells her, Anissa knows that she has the same calling as her father. But as Anissa takes on the mantle of Thunder, she must grapple with a very different world than the one that her father first patrolled.”
Given its incorporation of real-world events, The Other History of the DC Universe approaches DC history very much in tune with the publisher’s new more passive approach to continuity – i.e. the story being told is more important than a catch-all canonical timeline that requires in-story explanation.
In The Other History of the DC Universe #1, Jefferson is depicted as an Olympic athlete (at least in his early 20s) at the real-world 1972 Munich games, which would make him a man in his 70s today. DC heroes like Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman, are also depicted as being active in Pierce’s early post-Olympic days.
Check out the first look preview images of The Other History of the DC Universe #5 in our gallery below, along with the cover by Camuncoli with artist Marco Mastrazzo and a variant cover by Jamal Campbell.
The entire series will be collected in a The Other History of the DC Universe (opens in new tab) hardcover on November 9.
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Speaking of DC’s new rules for continuity, Newsarama explains the new DC Universe of the Infinite Frontier editorial era.
