Enjoy this complimentary article, previously available exclusively for Popverse members. If you like what you see, consider becoming a Popverse member.

On April 16, DC’s resident psychic, hyper-intelligent ape, Gorilla Grodd is getting the spotlight once again for the first part of DC’s first major crossover of the All In era, 'We Are Yesterday.' Across issues of Batman/Superman: World’s Finest and Justice League Unlimited, writer Mark Waid and a murderer’s row of superstar artists including Clayton Henry, Travis Moore, and Dan McDaid will tell the tale of what happens when one of the DC Universe’s most fearsome villains decides he needs some help to take down the Justice League and he’s willing to travel through time to find it. To hear Waid talk about it, this is a story that will have repercussions for the entirety of the DC Universe for years to come and some echoes will even find their way into his work on the New History of the DC Universe.

We sat down with the writer to talk 'We Are Yesterday,' time paradoxes and which Back to the Future sequel is his favorite.

Popverse: Mark, In this crossover you're connecting two major time periods that you're writing about at DC right now - kind of the early days in the World's Finest books with the modern-day JLU and your other work. This is always hard to try and parse two different timelines, but a little bit easier when you get to write both. When and how did the idea for the crossover come about?

Mark Waid: It came about because we knew that Dan Mora needed a couple of months off and we knew that our regular World's Finest artists needed a couple of months off, and it happened that they were the same months. So we thought, ‘let's make it big then.’ I don't want these to feel like fill-in issues. I want them to feel like big parts of the story. So that was the genesis of figuring out where this goes and how this works together between the two books. Then the rest just came naturally.

Once we established that we needed the Legion of Doom, then we clearly couldn't have them in the present day because Luthor's reformed and everybody's kind of busy, so when Grodd wants to put the band back together in the here and now, there's nobody. He's having a very difficult time putting together the current Legion of Doom. So he has no choice but to go back in time and recruit the Legion of Doom from about five years ago and tell them, “I got bad news for you. Not much changes. In the next five years, you do not succeed. The Justice League is more powerful than ever. Luthor, you are a sniveling wimp. It's not going well for any of you. So why don't you come with me and we will take the future?”

Is there something fun about getting to go back to a more primordial, more evil version of some of these characters?

Oh yeah. Here are the classic, evil, ‘take no prisoners' versions. It really is fun because they are truly a threat on a Justice League level as opposed to just any one of them could be snuffed out pretty quickly. But with all nine of them, you are in desperate trouble.

All of them are pretty frightening, but Gorilla Grodd, especially, with his new powers. How do you feel about Grodd, his place in the DCU, and what made him the right one to put at the center of all of this?

He's always been a major villain. It's just that people sometimes overlook that he was the Flash's first arch-villain. I mean, yes, there were the Rogues, but Grodd was never a rogue. Grodd was a world-beater. He was clearly set up in the Silver Age to be Flach’s Lex Luthor, his Joker, and that's gone by the wayside.

But if you start to think about all the abilities that Grodd has and what he can do with them once they are augmented thanks to the events of Absolute Power, he becomes the single most important and powerful telepath in the DC universe able to affect all kinds of mind shenanigans and mind control. So why not put him dead center in all of this? So he was the perfect villain.

Yeah, exactly. He's got to be very careful because he doesn't want them to know how powerful he really is, so he can push and poke a little bit with his mind. He can sort of heavily suggest things and sort of push, but he doesn't want to do it too blatantly, or else they'll sense his stink on them and then the game is blown. So he's got to be judicious [about how manipulates the characters he works with]. He wants to control all of them. He's got a plan that he tells the Legion of Doom about. He also has a plan that he tells no one about, and that becomes a big part of the middle of the story.

That's awesome. The marketing for this crossover teased classic versions of Batman and Superman. What can you say about what they may learn about their own futures, their own tragedies and triumphs and how it will affect them moving forward?

It does affect them in the short term. In the long term, there are all kinds of paradoxes happening because time is breaking as a result of the Darkseid energy and Grodd’s shenanigans. Now, when you time travel or when you do something as big and extravagant as bringing the entire Legion of Doom to the present day, there's fallout and all sorts of things are happening. All sorts of things are happening in the time stream, and this is only making it worse. So to answer your question, it's kind of a moot because everything has fallen apart.

I made them work for me. That's the beauty of it. I made those rules, we broke those rules and we made that work for us. I love time travel stories, in general. I just love the idea of being able to see an event from two different points of view or being able to meet your present self or your past self or your future self or getting a sense of what could be like down the road. I've always been a huge fan of time travel stories and I've done plenty of them in my career, and this is no exception. The difference, like I said this time, is that I don't really have to worry about the paradoxes. In fact, I make the paradoxes work for the story because things are screwy and there is a point about the end of act two where because of this, the Justice League truly becomes unlimited for the first time, truly unlimited.

Do you have a favorite time travel story, both that you've written and just that you enjoy?

Boy, the one that I've written is Flash Zero. I'm really proud of that story and I've got some pages from it hanging on my wall every day to remind myself why I love comics in terms of time, travel stories, there's so many, but I would be lying if I didn't say it was the Back of the Future trilogy. That's the quintessential chef's kiss of time travel stories.

Oh, I like two more than most people do. I actually enjoy two more than three because I like the switchbacks. I like the complicated angles of it. I enjoy that.

In talking about crossovers between time periods and maybe even publishing lines, the Absolute line is looming large in the minds of comics fans the world over. Are there any plans for some of the heroes and villains of the Absolute universe to make an appearance in 'We Were Yesterday?'

Not immediately, not in this story, but beyond that, I can say nothing. Don't quote me.

Sorry, we just did. How about characters from Kingdom Come?

Boy Thunder stands a really good chance of popping up at some point. That's about all I can say there.

This all does seem to fit nicely into the upcoming New History of the DC Universe where you said you're realigning all of DC's sprawling, continuing to one master timeline. Can you talk a little bit about that? How are you keeping track of that, what your approach is and starting to figure out those disparate elements?

It's a herculean effort. I'll say that it is a matter of sitting down and for instance, my outline for the first issue was 37 single space pages of everything that happened between the dawn of time and the Crisis on Infinite Earths. That's the level of detail we're going into. That all becomes backmatter. Not every moment gets mentioned. Not every hero gets mentioned. We do our best, but that's the main timeline, and then we pull the most important moments from that timeline to show you, so it is a constant juggling act. Yesterday I'm choosing whether or not to show Nubia or do I show Shade the Changing Man on this page. I only have room for one. These are the kind of Sophie's Choice moments I'm having on every page, but it's a blast to do.

Are there moments or characters that you feel really strongly about personally that are making their way in there?

I find a way. It's more that I'm able to implant stuff with the blessing of editorial. There are revelations in every issue there. I want there to be Easter eggs in every issue that are things that either you thought you knew that you didn't know, or things that might presage some of the events coming up in the DC universe. It's not a promotional tool per se, but you'll see a different perspective on some of the events, and I'm really happy with the way that's coming together.

It’s important that I’m telling a story. It can't read like a 120-page Wikipedia entry, because then I failed. It has to have some narrative to it. Sometimes that means shuffling events a little bit. Or you see two characters that are very similar and connected, but maybe a year apart or something. You might want to pull them together for that one moment. There's bits and pieces that are not in strict chronological order, but it's covered in the timeline, so make of that what you will.

Do you feel a lot of pressure being the one to have done the History of the Marvel Universe and now this New History of the DC Universe?

I wouldn't say pressure. I would say opportunity. I mean, I'm just excited as hell to be able to tackle this. I made it clear to DC that I would burn the place to the ground if I wasn't the one.

Getting back to 'We Are Yesterday,' is there anything that you wanted to put in there that editorial completely ruled out?

In this case, no. There were no lines drawn. If anything, they were more encouraging for me to go further. There are characters in this crossover that you don't know. There are characters in this crossover that you never thought you'd see in the present day. There are all kinds of characters and it is a big Unlimited explosion.

[Waid points to his head.]

It's all in here. I double-check some things every once in a while, but basically, it's all up here. I don't know my senator's name, but I know all the members of the Justice Society of America.

Is there an issue in this crossover that you're most excited for fans to read?

I think the Batman/Superman: World’s Finest 2025 Annual is a great adventure through DC's timeline. The villains have to find chronal devices in the past in order to make their plan work. They've got to find, not only Flash’s Cosmic Treadmill, but other more obscure elements from the DC universe that are related to time travel - some stuff we haven't seen for years and years and years. I'm excited about that. I'm excited about the events in Justice League Unlimited #7 where, I mean, it really does become unlimited at that point. And then Dan Mora finishing it off with the last chapter drawing 800 characters a page. It's going to be something to see.

Can you speak a little bit to your artistic collaborators, Clayton Henry and Travis Moore? How was it working with them on this crossover?

Well, Clayton was a natural choice for World's Finest. He's just really, I've done a lot of Superman work with him. He's really good. He's got a real feel for Superman. Travis doing the Justice League issues made perfect sense to us. He'd done World's Finest work for us before. He showed us he can do big casts and he's got a real sense of darkness and menace to his villains, which is terrific. Dan McDaid - I just loved his work for a long time. Christopher Cantwell actually is the one who asked specifically for him. We'd originally had Chris lined up to do the annual story only because there's so many hours in a day, and there's only so much I could do. But once he started working on that, there were so many good ideas that came out that I asked him, ‘hey, listen, can I just swipe some of these ideas for Justice League Unlimited #6? They're very helpful.’ He was gracious enough to take on the coplotting credit there.

That leads perfectly into my next question - what was it like collaborating with Christopher Cantwell?

It's phenomenal. I mean, I really like Chris's work. I've always liked it. I really liked the Challengers of the Unknown book he did, and it's always useful to have an outside perspective on something this complicated to either bring some new ideas to it or to catch things that maybe don't make as much sense as they ought to, and he was invaluable that way. I mean, the stuff he brought to the story overall made it really sing and solved a lot of problems for me.

That's great. You have a long history of writing these characters, and what do you find that is still surprising you about them that's still keeping them new and fresh to you?

I just spend a lot of time in their heads. I spend a lot of time in their heads thinking about what the world looks like to them. How do you move through the world? If you're a super speedster in a series of regular everyday moments, what is your life? What is your life moving through the world? If you can see colors that nobody else can see like Superman because of your incredible vision, what is the world? I spend less time worrying about how they punch people and a lot more time thinking about how they relate to each other and what perspective on the world and on humanity their powers give them.

If you had to pitch this crossover to somebody completely cold -  they have maybe seen a couple of superhero movies, but they've never read a comic book before - what are you doing to get that new reader hooked?

We are pitting the Justice League against the greatest villains of all time, and the fallout there will change the DC Universe in significant ways. That's my pitch.

Need more? Here's our picks for the best DC Comics stories of all time.