One of the greatest lingering questions regarding DC’s publishing plans following the departure of Executive Editor and Co-Publisher Dan Didio in 2020 was the reported 5G initiative. Conflicting rumors of what the publishing initiative would entail have surfaced since the planned project was shelved, with only a passing reference in the final issue of Geoff Johns and Gary Frank’s Doomsday Clock and social media posts by Didio prior to his departure alluding to it. However, longtime DC comic book creator Grant Morrison has provided an explanation of what 5G would have brought to the DC Universe and the changes would have been radical and shake-up continuity to its core.
In a post on through their Substack account, Morrison recalls Didio sharing details of the 5G project to them over dinner in 2019, months before Didio’s departure, while Morrison was working on The Green Lantern with Liam Sharp. According to Morrison, 5G would have been a concerted effort to unify all of DC’s history together that would allow its iconic characters to age in real time and die. Among the examples Morrison cites is Superman arriving on Earth in 1938 before making his public debut in the 1960s while the modern Justice League would consist largely of middle-aged, former Teen Titans. With much of Morrison’s work acknowledging the full breath of history for DC characters, particularly elements of the Silver Age, Morrison was excited by the ambitious prospect.
While Morrison was enthusiastic about the scope of 5G, the project was certainly a divisive one internally at DC. Morrison alludes to fellow writers reacting poorly to the plans and attempt to talk down Didio from his plans for 5G ahead of his eventual departure in February 2020. In a subsequent Substack post, Morrison admits to his own misgivings to Didio’s plans in making Superman a disillusioned, authoritarian figure while Supergirl would’ve taken on a more fascistic outlook. However, a generational 5G move would be a bold direction for the DCU to take rather than safely remain with its largest, un-aging icons.
While 5G was evidently tabled with Didio’s departure, vestiges of the generational plans would feature elements of this initiative eventually saw the light of day. Morrison’s own Superman and the Authority was headlined by a middle-aged Superman, active since at least the Kennedy Administration and noticeably older than his classic iteration, with this version of the hero carrying over to Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s Action Comics run. Future State similarly saw older incarnations of the iconic heroes while a new generation of heroes were introduced, with many resurfacing in the subsequent Infinite Frontier era. The idea of DC’s decades-spanning timelines would figure prominently in Generations Shattered, though the space-time continuum was restored by the story’s end.
With major comic book publishers often playing it safe, 5G could have pushed the entire industry in interesting, new directions. Just as the New 52 reboot had galvanized the comic book market, albeit not without its own flaws and detractors, 5G could have shaken up how fans see the nature of continuity and its relation to the real passage of time. Didio himself has downplayed reports that 5G involved legacy characters being replaced by a new generation but Morrison’s claims appear to refute this. Ultimately, it’s all a moot point how 5G would have rolled out, with enough pushback to sideline the project. In the meantime, DC gets to have its cake and eat it too — introducing a new generation of heroes while taking its iconoclasts out of commission leading into the next crossover event Dark Crisis.
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