“I say ‘Spoil everything,’ don’t you agree?” joked DC Comics Publisher Dan DiDio as fans assembled for the company’s New Age of Heroes panel Saturday at Comic-Con International in San Diego. Focusing on the new series of characters who debuted in the DC line this year, the conversation was led by Senior Editor Marie Javins and featured DiDio, writers James Tynion IV, Robert Venditti and Steve Orlando as well as artist Ryan Benjamin.

Venditti spoke to the challenge of doing Damage – a series that has massive, back-breaking action sequences in every issue. “It’s nothing I’ve ever done before,” he said. “Doing something so action intensive and so widescreen and bombastic…to cut loose like that is enjoyable, but it’s a challenge in many ways when you’re doing characters moments.”

In upcoming issues, the brutish hero will team up with a more familiar from the classic DCU, but still off the beaten path: the Unknown Soldier. The writer said he used to read comics starring the military ghost when his dad took him to the barber shop as a kid. The story will open up new facets to Damage’s origin story. Also in the future are villains like Poison Ivy and Gorilla Grodd which were worked in at the request of artist Trevor Scott.

Venditti will team with Aaron Lopresti for the Damage Annual on sale in August. The story returns to one of Damage’s earliest adventures and reveal secrets building up in the series for months.

Tynion then spoke to the next phase of Immortal Men. The writer told the story of how Jim Lee pitched him on the series stealthily by just gabbing about the concept of the forgotten hero the Immortal Man.”Am I writing this with you?!?” the writer asked when it finally dawned on him what the conversation was about. “I was describing Immortal Men once to a friend, and I said it’s like if the Matrix was a Final Fantasy game that got turned into a WildStorm comic in the ’90s…I wanted to fall into a strange new corner of the DCU. It’s stumbling into a world that’s always been around you, but you’ve never seen it before.”

Incoming issues will show more of the Batman Who Laughs – the villain from Dark Nights Metal that is living on in the DCU with his own series soon to come from Scott Snyder and Jock. “I love that character, and I really love scary stories, and I think he’s one of the scariest new villains ever,” Tynion said calling the madman “an instigator” who is coming into the book to start a war against the long-hidden immortals.

Page 2: Grant Morrison Joins Sideways (Finally!) and the Dark Multiverse Returns

DiDio’s creative role as both the Publisher and the writer of Sideways and he made on odd comparison to the new trailers for DC movies Aquaman and Shazam. He said the former one in particular gave him the feeling he saw when watching Marvel’s Infinity War saying, “Holy crap, the movies are doing comics better than comics.” He admitted it was a bold statement to make on multiple levels, but he said the goal at DC with this New Age of Heroes line is to tie all the best and exciting elements of the DCU.

“These are stories we didn’t have at DC,” he said. “When I wrote Sideways, we needed this kind of character that dealt with teen angst…Damage is a monster story…Immmortal Men shows the hidden corners of the DCU…these are all stories we needed to tell and expand our universe from. When you look at the history of DC Comics, which I do all the time, you see back to 1968 and characters like Brother Power, the Creeper, Metamorpho and all sorts of stuff. Those didn’t hit big at the time, but here we are 50 years later talking about them…and I hope 50 years from now people are talking about Damage or Sideways…we’re forging new territory in an era where people are living in nostalgia.”

DiDio then declared that the New Age of Heroes characters will soon start to show up in other DC books, but his measure of success for the line is when these characters start to appear in other media.

“I’m about to push Sideways into the Dark Multiverse,” the writer added. “This book has lots of ties to Metal, so we slide into the Dark Multiverse…in Sideways we’re going to see the dark version of Superman characters. What’s the dark version on Porcupine Jimmy Olson or Lori Lemaris?” He also promised appearances by “Super Brain Lois Lane” and other Silver Age ideas that have been corrupted.

In the future, DiDio will collaborate with Grant Morrison on Sideways Annual #1. That’s where the Superman characters will show up as well as Morrison’s take on the Seven Soldiers characters, but maybe most importantly of all, a Superman will appear that “could” be the New 52 Superman from Morrison’s Action Comics run, which DiDio would not confirm the full story of. The annual goes on sale on Halloween.