With its Brightest Day event winding down, DC is beginning to provide some details about its next major crossover, Flashpoint, which will debut in May. Flashpoint apparently wreaks many changes to the fabric of the DC Universe in a single instant.  It will take place in the DC Universe, not on some parallel Earth or mirror world. The focal point of the event will be a five-issue Flashpoint series written by Geoff Johns and illustrated by Andy Kubert, but there will also be 15 additional Flashpoint mini-series, 14 of which have been revealed on DC’s The Source blog.

 

In addition to the Flash, other DC heroes including Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Deadman, will be featured in Flashpoint three-issue mini-series along with numerous DC Universe characters as disparate as Lois Lane, the Secret Seven, and Frankenstein. So far 47 Flashpoint comics have been announced with one more mini-series yet to be revealed. Since the story will also continue in the regular Flash comics as well as in an as-yet-unspecified number of one-shots, the full scope of the Flashpoint event (and its effect on the pocketbooks of anyone who attempts to collect the entire event) is not yet known.

 

What is behind this disruption in the DC universe? Judging from the Prelude to Flashpoint prequel narrative occurring the Flash comics, it looks like some sort of major temporal shock is at fault, perhaps the “Enigmatic Temporal Disruption of the Early 21st Century” that was alluded to in Flash #8, and Flashpoint also apparently ties into a mysterious death depicted in The Flash #9, which goes on sale on February 9th. But with this kind of a “slow reveal,” fans may have to wait for the DC Free Comic Book Day Green Lantern book in May, which includes a special Flashpoint preview, to get a more complete understanding of the nature of the Flashpoint event.