Today's "Spotlight on Geoff Johns" panel felt to me, at times, like a tent revival where I'd never heard of any of the gods being worshiped. Johns is the head of DC Entertainment and a veteran comic book writer, which means that when the Comic Con crowd gets a hold of him they're just as likely to ask him questions I might understand-- "What is Zack Snyder planning to do with Superman?" or "How about the Flash movie?"-- as bring up obscure DC Comics characters and comic book plots from a decade ago. Luckily Johns is just as well-prepared a geek as anyone, and regaled the audiences with all kind of promises about what they'll do with the Black of Night series or the Green Lantern Corps. At least, I think that's what he promised. LIke I said, comics isn't my language, and I spent a large portion of the panel just trying to keep up.
From time to time, though, a question related to DC Comics movies came up, and Johns masterfully dodged most of them-- what we know about possible Justice League movie plans comes from interpreting a slam against Marvel, and even though everyone knows there's Flash movie in development, his only response to a question about it was "That could be cool." Still, Johns was allowed to talk about the recent hiring of Zack Snyder to direct the next Superman movie; he didn't say much, but here's what he had to offer:
"I don't know if you can ask for much more than Chris Nolan and Zack Snyder. We're really lucky to have them on board. I'm psyched. [Superman will] be punching something."
To put that "punching something" bit in context, the question was couched in terms of Superman Returns being a disappointment, and wanting to see Superman get back to being a man of action rather than crying over his lost love. Johns seems to be confirming what many of us already suspected: they brought on Snyder to pump up the action, and are counting on him to take the character in a more rough-and-tumble direction. Emo Superman, as you probably hoped, seems to most definitely be a thing of the past.
For more of our coverage from New York Comic Con, click here.
