SPOILER ALERT: The following contains plot points from Saturday’s Justice League Beyond 2.0 #1. Read at your own risk!

Woah! Not cool, Superman! I sure hope this isn’t the end for one of my personal favorite Justice League members…

Anyway—Hello, again! Alex Antone here—Beyond Universe editor. Welcome the 2^nd edition of Beyond the Scenes! (Check out last week’s right here if you missed it!) I hope you’ve enjoyed the first chapters of both Beyond books thus far—Christos and Kyle have cooked up some amazing stories for you! And how about new artist Iban Coello? You might’ve seen him on Superboy recently and we sure feel lucky to have him in our corner of the DC Universe now. Check out some of his initial concepts for the Justice League above!

So you might have noticed the new Beyond books are digitally known as Batman Beyond 2.0 and Justice League Beyond 2.0. Why 2.0? Good question—I’m so glad you asked! We wanted to distinguish the new books from the previous incarnations and to convey the idea that the world has evolved. Not only in the sense that “2.0” takes place roughly one year after the previous Beyond series, but also because we’ve experienced a major evolution of our characters since Adam Beechen’s original series began in 2010. New heroes and villains have been introduced, familiar characters have returned but with a “Beyond” twist— “2.0” is a culmination of all the hard work that Beechen, Dustin Nguyen, Derek Fridolfs and so many other talented creators have put into expanding the rich tapestry of the original Batman Beyond series and the rest of the DC Animated Universe.

And thus, when this digital-first series is released in print, it’s known as BATMAN BEYOND UNIVERSE! Issue 1 hits stands on August 21^st! (Order now!)

And now for the dirt on the debut issue of Justice League Beyond 2.0, I welcome my very special guest: Christos Gage!

So, Chris, what do you have against Aquagirl?

CHRISTOS: I'm a married man. I'm not allowed to have anything against Aquagirl!

Fair enough!

You’ve had a lot of success writing team books before, so what’s the secret to writing books with such a large cast of characters? And how did you go about writing the first issue of Justice League Beyond 2.0 knowing that a lot of the characters like Micron, Warhawk and the new Flash would be unfamiliar to readers?

CHRISTOS: I think when you are dealing with a large cast you have to make sure everyone gets their moment in the spotlight, but it can't feel forced. The good news is, the types of threats the Justice League Beyond tend to face are large scale enough that they will have enough challenges to affect all our heroes, both in terms of action and character. As for the newer characters, I try to approach telling the story as if any of them, aside from maybe Superman (in a broad sense), might be unfamiliar to the reader. I mean, someone might not know who Barda or Captain Marvel is. So I just try to give them all distinct personalities, and hope the readers find something interesting about them. Kai-Ro is definitely going to approach a situation differently than Warhawk. There's a bit in an upcoming chapter when Superman is going on his first date since Lois passed away - so, literally, his first date in decades - and he asks his teammates what one does on a date these days. That was fun, thinking about the different answers everyone would have.

Okay great, but seriously, WHAT ABOUT AQUAGIRL?!

Fine… I guess we’ll just have to come back next Saturday! And did you say ‘ol Supes is getting back into the dating game? That I’ve GOT to see!

Well, that wraps up another Beyond the Scenes. These sure are fun to write so I hope you enjoy reading ‘em! Check out this Saturday’s all new Batman Beyond 2.0 as well! We’ve got lots more surprises in store for you guys!

See you in the Beyond!

Haven’t read Justice League Beyond 2.0 #1 yet? Read it instantly here! And subscribe to the full series here!