Scott Snyder and Joshua Williamson’s DC “All-In” initiative will launch the brand-new Absolute Universe that will tie in with a new Darkseid-centric storyline for all the publisher’s current titles, beginning this October. The acclaimed writers recently discussed Darkseid‘s overarching importance in their vision for the DC Universe and how the intent is to make the infamous despot of Apokolips even more formidable.

In an interview with ComicBook, Snyder and Williamson spoke extensively about All-In and its big bad, Darkseid, who they agree is the perfect primary antagonist for the ambitious initiative. “And so we started planning this story about Darkseid. Darkseid is the villain that both Josh and I always felt like he is sort of the core antagonist of the entire DCU,” Snyder said. The plan is to make the villain even scarier than his already formidable current iteration. “I think over the last few years, he’s had some fantastic stories from, you know, 15 years ago. I can’t believe it’s that long almost, but Final Crisis to you know, the Darkseid War, all these different ones, but we felt like maybe it was time to do something with him where he leveled up,” Snyder continued.

Williamson, who will helm All-In’s Superman title, contrasted the Man of Steel with Darkseid to emphasize the increased threat posed by the new god, who will embrace chaos in the upcoming arc. “What Superman represents about Hope and doing things together, Darkseid is about despair, entropy, and chaos really, and doing things on his own,” he said.

Williamson continued, “That’s something interesting about Darkseid because normally he represents order and has always been about order, but this new, I don’t want to call him new, but after what Darkseid has been going through the last few years, now instead of embracing order he’s beginning to embrace chaos, and you’re gonna see that in this special on that side.”

The Absolute Universe will tell alternate tales of DC’s iconic characters alongside the ones in regular continuity, with Absolute Batman writer Snyder explaining the objective of the new initiative. “The goal is to celebrate every kind of superhero storytelling at once. I was lucky enough in my decade-plus of DC to be part of a couple of really awesome initiatives. One, the New 52 was all about new things and reinventing the heroes from the ground up and inviting in readers that wanted reimagined takes,” he said.

“Another, Rebirth, was about celebrating this great incredible tapestry of continuous storytelling that we’ve had, this epic kind of collective story, possibly in centuries,” Snyder continued. “My belief and the belief of, I think, most creators and editors and everybody there was that if we could do both of those things together at the same time, we’d have an incredible seismic moment and initiative that embraced all kinds of readers.”

Post Absolute Power, DC All In Special #1 arrives on Oct. 2

Source: ComicBook