Happy New Year’s Eve internet! My name is Travis. I’m midnight drunk at 9am and I’m here to talk to you about the world of comic books. 2015 was a pretty big year for the industry. Aside from the obvious domination of comic book movies in the theater, the impact of comic books has been felt all over the entertainment landscape. iZombie and The Walking Dead entered their 2nd and 6th seasons, respectively. Marvel destroyed and recreated their entire Universe in epic event Secret Wars; and DC Comics decided that they didn’t need to be headquartered in the heart of Gotham anymore and moved all of their comic book operations to the West Coast to be closer to their movie-making-parent-company WB. So what kind of craziness do we foresee happening in the coming year? I have a bottle of whiskey and six thoughts on the subject so I’ll go ahead and put on my writing pants and get this thing started. Each prediction will have a likelihood rating and the lower the rating, the more shots I’m going to take.

Because I’m an "adult" who makes good "decisions."

Two Definites

Regardless of how much I’ve had to drink—which appears to be a fairly healthy amount before we’ve even begun—these things are definitely going to happen. Like 100% accuracy.

Has anyone seen my shoes?

A Huge Crossover Event will Change the Landscape of the World and Nothing will be the Same Again!

Likelihood: 100%

Shots: 1 (or maybe 2….apparently 2)

Every year the big two create large scale, crossover events that tie in most of their major players and effect every character across the company’s line of comics. So far we already know that the house of ideas will be launching Apocalypse Wars and Civil War II, which are totally driven by story ideas and not a means of cashing in on the current slate of comic book movies to attract readership. Expect, at some point, for the Last Son of Krypton and Gotham’s Vigilante to cross swords as well. Because it’s totally what they were going to do anyway and TOTALLY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MOVIES COMING OUT.

Mark Millar will Make Something that will Become a Movie

Likelihood: 100%

Shots: I should stop at 1

You may not have heard of Mark Millar but you’ve seen his work. From “Wanted” to “Kick Ass” to “Kingsmen,” his work gets optioned for big screen adaptations before he’s even finished writing down the idea. And, whether you know it or not, your current love of Marvel movies have largely been based on his entire reimagining of the Marvel landscape. His Ultimates and Ultimates 2 are largely responsible for the realistic grounding of the comic book world as we know it today. His work in the creator-owned space has made him, and his collaborators, very well known and very wealthy, and you’ll be seeing a lot more of them in the new year.

Two Long Shots

It’s been about fifteen minutes since I started writing this and I’m far deeper into this bottle than I would have expected to be. I feel tingly all over and I’m pretty sure I am on the verge of developing super powers. While the first two predictions are almost 100% guaranteed to happen, these ones are a little more on the side of unlikely.

DC Officially Relaunches 'WildCATS' (Written by Scott Snyder and Drawn by Jim Lee)

Likelihood: 60%

Shots: 3 seems like a bit much...

In the late ‘90s, DC purchased all of the properties of Jim Lee’s WIldstorm studio, which includes, but is not limited to, Stormwatch, The Authority, Gen 13, Planetary and the creator-owned title that helped to launch Image comics: WildCats. When the Image revolution began Jim Lee’s contribution was the “Covert Action Team” responsible for guarding the world against an alien civil war taking place on Earth soil. Even though Stormwatch, and a few of the other Wildstorm characters have made a comeback in the New 52 world; none have been more clamoured for than WildCats. And who better than to helm the resurgence of the primary figures of the Wildstorm Universe than DCs most prolific writer and DCs greatest artist?

Marvel Reverses All of Their Controversial Changes

Likelihood: 80%.

Shots: I should, oh god, I’m not sure that I can feel my face anymore.

During the course of 2015, Captain America lost his super soldier serum and became a brilliant, yet frail, old man. The title of Captain America was handed over to his long time friend and partner, Sam Wilson—The Falcon. At some point in time it was deemed that the son of Odin was no longer worthy to wield the hammer Mjolnir and the title of Thor was handed off to Jane Foster. Both of these changes were met with a great amount of scepticism and worries of terrifying political correctness. However each of these mantle changes were predicated by story creative direction….and all of those things will change in 2016. The son of Odin will regain his rightful place as the wielder of the magic hammer and Steve Rogers will take back his shield. Why? BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT THEY WERE GOING TO DO ANYWAY (and has nothing to do with the piles of money that the film arm of Marvel brings in).

Two Ain't Never Gonna Happens

It’s really hard to read the computer and my brain feels like it's breaded in a thin layer of Pop-rocks and cocaine.

The Image Movie Universe

Likelihood: 20%

Shots: Half of whatever’s left

Shared movie universes are like the Tomagaci’s of the ‘90s and the pet rock of the ‘70s—everybody wants one and they’re not really sure why. After Marvel spent years crafting theirs, every movie company on the face of the earth decided that they needed one too, and they needed it as fast as possible. DC is in the process of creating their shared universe, Fox is desperately trying to make the X-Men/Fantastic Four Universe a thing (spoilers: it’s not going to fucking happen), Universal is building their poorly planned Monsterverse, and Hasbro decided to throw all of their toys into a blender where GI Joe, Transformers, and various other buckets of your childhood nostalgia live, so why shouldn’t the third name in comic books have their own shared, cinematic world?

When Image comics launched, initially, all of their heroes lived in one big world. Spawn, WildCats, Youngblood, Cyberforce, The Savage Dragon—and a few others who don’t really merit mentioning—all interacted with one another and their creators probably feel like they could have a go at the very same idea. Because why the fuck not, right? Imagine that, a Rob Liefeld created character helping to anchor a shared comic book universe.

Fox Sells Their Character Rights Back to Marvel

Likelihood: 12%

Shots: I’m out of whiskey and I’ve pounded three Bud-Light Cheladas

There was once a point in time where no one thought that Spiderman would end up back in the hands of Kevin Feige and his crew, but he’s set to make his debut in Civil War. The rights to several other characters have reverted back to Marvel: Daredevil, Ghost Rider, Punisher, Blade and it’s likely that they’ll all fair much better under Marvel’s guidance than anyone else’s. With the failure of the latest Fantastic Four reboot, the only real viable franchise that Fox is holding onto is the X-Men, and it’s already been rebooted once (and Bryan Singer, much like Michael Bay, can only make so many of the same film). Folding the Fantastic Four and The X-Men back into the Marvel Cinematic universe opens up a world of possibilities for beyond the currently planned phase III and I am just drunk enough to believe that it could, maybe, happen.

Where the fuck are my pants?

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!