More than 80 years after the release of 1940 Gum, Inc. Superman, a set that is widely considered one of the most important non-sports releases ever, Upper Deck ushered in a new era for the DC Universe with its release of 2023-24 DC Annual on Wednesday.
The first physical release from Upper Deck under an expanded deal with Warner Bros., DC Annual serves as the launching point for an IP the company hopes will be cultivated into an entertainment juggernaut similar to what Marvel eventually became during a decade-long run under the UD umbrella.
Since officially announcing the partnership last July, the Upper Deck team has juggled the creation and launch of a number of new DC products, including a five-week trading card series celebrating Batman’s 85th birthday on the ePack platform last November.
DC Annual is the first set collectors can snag online or in hobby shops around the globe.
“I think initially for most of the team, it’s probably a relief, to be fair,” Upper Deck entertainment director Travis Rhea told cllct. “Because we’re finally starting to get this rolling and having a recurring brand that we’re used to with this kind of category is helpful to the team. It’s just a big relief. The team has been working on multiple other trading card sets for the last few months, but seeing this one get to market is a big deal for the team.”
Long considered a starter set meant for comic book fans and newer card collectors, the Annual series has served as a recap for the previous year in comic books. This year’s set will feature storylines from Dawn of DC, Titans: Beast World and Birds of Prey, among other others.
Rhea says the team has also aimed to create a more robust offering with Annual, making it a better all-around fit for both new collectors and more experienced hobbyists.
This year’s DC Annual will feature sketch cards, a highly-coveted piece of 1/1 original artwork typically from a well-known artist.
Lenticular cards add a 3-D effect to comic cover art and the chase for image variations for all 100 base set cards will feel familiar to comic collectors hunting popular cover variants.
Rhea told cllct in November one of the biggest challenges to launching a new IP would be the subject matter expertise. Comic card and non-sports collectors, more so than the traditional sports card community, demand additional depth and authenticity.
Upper Deck has reshaped its team in recent months to deliver legitimacy to DC fans and their favorite characters, and Rhea says it has been the work of team members such as TJ Shelvin, who has a knack for remembering not just when a character debuted, but also the cover artists — for both penciling and ink — that has made the company’s early months with the IP easier.
“I couldn't be happier, honestly. I was a little worried about it going in, because it’s really important to be authentic with these customers and these fans, and we scored big time,” Rhea said. “We’ve got some people on staff that are living and breathing DC.”
Though the loss of its Marvel license has been less than ideal, the addition of DC to Upper Deck’s portfolio has provided a welcomed boost to the creative team.
To many casual superhero movie fans, the DC Universe has likely felt less robust than the Marvel Universe and their cinematic counterparts, and it has been for good reason. The DCEU currently has 15 films, and the MCU has produced 35.
For Rhea and Upper Deck, that disparity could present an opportunity for the creative team to provide background on characters many casual fans or new collectors simply haven’t gotten before.
The first comic under the current DC banner landed back in 1937, and Marvel’s first arrived in 1939. So, the source material for DC goes back just as far as Marvel, the stories just have to be told in this era of trading cards.
There’s also the chance that less popular characters among comic fans are reimagined by an iconic on-screen performance. For many, Robert Downey Jr.’s portrayal of Iron Man completely changed the character’s status in the Marvel Universe, and that could happen with upcoming DCEU films and shows, too.
“I think for the team that’s worked on Marvel stuff internally previously, it’s fun and maybe a little bit refreshing to have this new batch of characters to get to know,” Rhea said. “And the DC stuff is deep, too, it has been around as long as Marvel. There’s a lot of depth there, and I would say even more depth on the villain side than you see on the Marvel side, so that is kind of something directing how we’re building our sets in the future. I think it has been a breath of fresh air in a way.”
Though the DC characters are largely new to Upper Deck, the team still has a trusted playbook for creating sets from its time with Marvel.
The popular Metal Universe brand, which contains the coveted Precious Metal Gems chases, is expected to land sometime this summer with Skybox Metal Universe Batman. Fleer Ultra Superman is also currently in production and contains a significant amount of original artwork.
Upper Deck also has long-term plans for a DC Masterpieces set, which has become one of the most important brands in all of collecting. Upper Deck’s Masterpieces releases are drawn by a single artist and contain some of the company’s most impressive designs.
“One of the things that I think is really fun for the team and I hope for the consumers and fans is the lack of original [DC artwork],” Rhea said. “We’ve pumped out so much artwork in the past, and now we’re in this place where that isn’t in the market for DC. The original artwork has been fun, the process has been great with Warner Bros., and we’re really excited to continue to pump out a lot of new pieces and stuff that people have never seen before.”
Should Fleer Ultra Superman land at the end of 2025, Upper Deck will have delivered three flagship releases within roughly 18 months of expanding its DC license. Those three drops could show Upper Deck can turn out key releases for a new IP quickly, and they could also signal a healthier release calendar for a team that has been bogged down for years.
Marvel has, of course, been an iconic and important IP for Upper Deck over the last decade-plus, but it also proved difficult to manage as the entertainment team was tasked with constantly churning movie and TV sets that had become increasingly less popular among collectors and hobby shops.
DC provides somewhat of a reset for Upper Deck and the chance at a healthier release calendar. That should, ideally, result in better products for the collector, even if there are fewer releases to chase.
It will take years to build DC’s trading card market into what Upper Deck created with Marvel, but Rhea believes the potential is there.
“[DC] has been really nice to have. It’s something that we’ve been working on for a while and we already had a Warner Bros. relationship — we just wanted to kind of expand on that. As it turns out, the timing is pretty good,” Rhea said.
“I would have hated to have seen a big gap that didn’t have something like this in it. And it’s not a one-for-one replacement overnight, this is something we need to grow, but it’s nice to have the batch of characters and storylines as huge as DC is … DC is something that we can cultivate for decades if we do it right.”
Ben Burrows is a reporter and editor for cllct.