NYCC News: At the New York Comic Con Dark Horse comics announced that veteran comic book writer Joe Casey will write Catalyst, a 9-issue miniseries with covers by Rafael Grampa.  The cover to issue #1 provides visual confirmation that this will be a different, more adventurous kind of superhero comic.  Catalyst will be an anthology title that will feature a rotating cast of characters from Comic’s Greatest World, a superhero universe that Dark Horse launched in the 1990s and is currently in the process of reviving.

 

Dark Horse’s Jeremy Atkins explained the CGW revival to ICv2: "You might remember our Comic’s Greatest World initiative in the 1990s.  We are going to be bringing some of those characters back. We are launching a few of them in the pages of Dark Horse Presents, then collecting the stories from Dark Horse Presents and publishing zero issues based on that material.  We have already done that with Ghost, with the zero issue on sale this month and the #1 issue due next month.  X will launch in Dark Horse Presents next month with the first of three 8-page stories that will be collected with a zero issue early next year.  We also have Captain Midnight, the old 1940s serial hero, running in Dark Horse Presents now.  We are reinventing and then re-launching Captain Midnight in the Comic’s Greatest World universe."

 

Atkins explained to ICv2 that not all of the CGW characters will be run through Dark Horse Presents, with Casey’s Catalyst series being the prime example of a title that will debut directly in revived Comic’s Greatest World universe: "In the original CGW Catalyst was a team book that featured Amazing Grace, Titan, and a few others.  Now they are going to be coming back in a 9-issue mini-series written by Joe Casey."

 

When asked by ICv2 when the first issue of Catalyst will debut, Atkins answered, "That does not have a release date yet, but it will be out early next year."