When I was an editor at DC Comics, the comic book I worked on the most was the one the company was name for, the one Batman was created in, and the one with some of the best creative history at the company…Detective Comics. My first day at DC I was put on Detective Comics in the midst of Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato’s run, two creators I was a fan of who were having an awesome turn on the title during the New 52, and I was told I was going to get to work on a two-part story drawn by one of my all-time favorite artists, the late great John Paul Leon, written by a then new comic book writer by the name of Benjamin Percy.

Over the years Detective Comics afforded me the opportunity to work with creators like James Tynion IV, Eddy Barrows, Alvaro Martinez Bueno, Mariko Tamaki, Dan Mora, Peter J. Tomasi, Doug Mahnke, Brad Walker, Bryan Edward Hill, James Robinson, Miguel Mendonca, Stephen Segovia, and the army of legendary creators we had on both the Detective Comics #1000 and Detective Comics #1027 anniversary issues.

Currently the book is in the midst of a great run by writer Tom Taylor and Mikel Janin. This July the Detective Comics Annual 2026 will be coming out written by Taylor and drawn by the wonderful Nicola Scott where they will be telling what will surely be an all-time classic meeting between Batman and the MAIN MAN Lobo, but…there will also be a back-up story in that issue.

Written by me and drawn by an artist named Fran Mariscal who will soon become one of your favorite comic artists. I have been working on this story since the fall of 2025 and now that we can talk about the story…I am so excited. The story has a strong mystery component so I can’t say much, but it’s going to be great.

Fran Marsical is…brilliant. Absolutely, extraordinarily brilliant, and I have already asked DC to let us work together again. I can’t show you much from the story because we don’t want to spoil it but what I can show you was Fran’s initial study of Batman which let me know that I was in for one of the best collaborations of my career so far.

This story comes out on July 29th, 2026. I have already done an interview with Fran that we will be running the week the story comes out.

Getting to work for DC is always a pleasure. Getting to go back and write a Batman story that’s going to run in the pages of Detective Comics? That’s an honor, one that I did my best to live up to. My thanks to the editors Ben Meares, Jessica Berbey, and Rob Levin for extending me this invitation and for making sure I wrote the best damn story I could. And thanks to the amazing Tom Taylor and Nicola Scott for letting us share space in the same issue as them, that’s very cool of them!

Team…from what I understand…a number of comic book stores will have the ashcan for Showdown this upcoming Wednesday April 22nd, 2026. What is the ashcan? It is a slightly smaller than comic book size preview of Showdown #1. It prints the first eleven pages of issue 1, with full letters and colors. Stores will be giving them away, and it is a tool to get people who are not on board yet, to give part of the first issue a chance. Then…we hope it wins those people over and they buy all five issues of our mini-series. So go to your comic stores this upcoming Wednesday, and see if it’s there.

And if you are an LA comic book store and you have copies of these ashcans, let me know, I would love to come see them in person.

And a healthy reminder that Showdown #1 is on sale Wednesday May 13th, 2026. Every single sale helps. We have made a really awesome book. I have no doubt that you would love it.

That’s it for this week.

Next week we will come back with a super-sized Media Diet.

And as we are getting closer to the release of Showdown #1. We are going to start banging the drum for that once again.

Until then?

Stay safe!

—Dave Wielgosz