Flashpoint Batman Headlines New DC Series

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DC Comics announces a sequel to 2011’s event series Flashpoint, with Thomas Wayne as Batman seeking out clues to his timeline’s continued existence.

DC announced a return to the Flashpoint alternate reality with a new six-issue miniseries starring Thomas Wayne as Batman.

Original author Geoff Johns will be joined by artist Eduardo Risso for the first issue of Flashpoint Beyond, a follow-up to the Multiverse-shaking 2011 event series. Coming in April, Flashpoint Beyond will follow an alternate Batman as he wakes up in a shattered world he knows should no longer exist.

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“This is for fans of big DC events and the great history of DC when it comes to comic books,” Johns said. “And even though this is an event, it’s focused on character over concept – it’s the story of Thomas Wayne Batman, a Barry Allen that could’ve been, the crimes of Bruce Wayne – it’s a murder mystery, a secret mission and a look into the past, present and future of the continuum of DC. And as dark as it can get in this upside down world of Flashpoint, it’s fun.”

Flashpoint introduced an apocalyptic alternate reality created by Barry Allen going back in time to save his mother Nora and teamed the Flash with a very different Batman to fix the timeline. In this reality, Bruce Wayne was murdered in that fateful alley instead of his parents, turning his mother into The Joker and his father into a brutally vengeful version of the caped crusader.

While The Flash’s actions rippled through time to create a devastating world war between Themiscyra and Atlantis that killed millions and threatened to destroy whole continents, Thomas Wayne’s Batman was motivated by the promise of changing reality such that he could trade places with his dead son. Flashpoint Beyond picks up Thomas’s story after the Flash succeeds in going back in time. Knowing the world should have reset and that he should no longer be alive, Thomas suits up again to find answers as to why his self-sacrifice seemingly failed, with the search leading him towards the mysterious Clockwork Killer.

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The original Flashpoint was an opportunity for DC to reset its narrative timeline and combine the fictional timelines of the DC, Vertigo and WildStorm universes. The story has been adapted to other media multiple times in the decade since its first release, with a comics-faithful animated feature movie and a season premiere episode of The CW’s The Flash that had reality-changing repercussions across the entirety of the Arrowverse. The DC Extended Universe’s Flash, starring Ezra Miller and featuring the returns of both Ben Affleck and Michael Keaton as different Batmans, is set to borrow many plot elements from Flashpoint. With the popularity of the story and recurring use of its mechanics, “flashpoint” has become a regular term for alternate realities created by a speedster changing the timeline.

Whether Flashpoint Beyond will explore time travel shenanigans or simply tell a new story in a popular alternate world remains to be seen, but the supposed “Clockwork Killer” may be a clue in the mystery of the Flashpoint reality’s continued existence. Johns also wrote the 2017–2019 limited series Doomsday Clock, which featured Watchmen‘s reality-bending Doctor Manhattan in a crossover allowed by the original Flashpoint‘s merging of the various DC universes.

Flashpoint Beyond will hit shelves on April 5 with a 48-page Issue #0, and then release bi-weekly starting April 19 for six more issues. Starting with Issue #1, featuring art by Xermánico, Johns will be joined by writers Jeremy Adams and Tim Sheridan.