Superhero fans may have heard the future of their favourite DC characters beyond the printed page with James Gunn’s DC Slate Announcement early last week but I heard product excellence.

The new co-CEO of DC Studios outlined a vision (continuity across platform, consistent in character talent, and a happy “elsewhere” for stories outside the main fold), a roadmap (a clear release schedule, from the first release to projects still in development), and the unifying focus to keep all of it together in order to deliver a valuable experience for fans (storytelling: “that’s all that matters to us”).

He did all that in just six minutes.

While we’re being mindful of origin stories, what we often forget is that they are usually a lot more humble than legend would have it. Here’s the concluding thought to Christopher Kelly’s review of London in the Roman World (2022) by Dominic Perring from the London Review of Books (“Someone Else’s Empire”):

Given the costs, it might be fairly reckoned that the annexation of Britain and the foundation of London was in great part an imperial vanity project. An accountant would have stopped the Roman Empire at the Channel.