COMIC BOOK readers are accustomed to captions that describe sudden shifts in time. But they’ve never seen a shift like "One Year Later," an ambitious narrative leap DC is taking with its entire universe of heroes and villains.

"One Year Later" comes on the heels of "Infinite Crisis," a miniseries concluding in May that was DC’s biggest event in two decades. It featured a battle between 1930s Superman and current Superman and the death of Superboy.

"One Year Later" will tackle a lot of questions left in the wake of "Infinite Crisis": Why have Superman and Batman been missing in action? Who are the new Aquaman, Wonder Woman and the father of the very pregnant Catwoman’s baby? How has villainous Lady Shiva become a heroine and joined the Birds of Prey? Why is Jason Todd - the second Robin, long thought dead - fighting original Robin Dick Grayson for the mantle of Nightwing? How did lifelong counterculture hero Green Arrow become Mayor of Star City?

To fill in the gaps, DC is launching "52" in May. More about that in the coming weeks.

Write the screenplay first?

While many comics are adapted into movies, Jay Douglas and Nav Gupta are taking a different route with "Stonehenge:Rise of the Druids."

A movie deal is virtually done ("Since we’re based in the Universal backlot, it’s likely that they’ll be handling this," said Douglas), so the pair has decided to put out a 13-issue series based on their script to create buzz for the movie, which will likely hit theaters in late 2007 or 2008.

"Our comic ’Stonehenge’ is our mythical telling of how Stonehenge was created and built," said Kelly McManis, manager of the project for Castle Bright Comics. "We have this story between these two ancient druid races and they’re battling each other, and so Stonehenge is built to maintain or subdue one of the races within the stones themselves. But somehow the stones are destroyed and the race is released and they take over our society and change it as we know it."

Funny guys try hand at comics

Brothers Marlon, Shawn and Keenen Ivory Wayans’ first foray into comics, "Super Bad James Dynomite" has generated buzz as big as their title character’s Afro. With a 1970s blaxploitation era theme, the creation has proved to have large appeal for urban readers and been a big hit for small publisher IDW.

At a recent comics convention in Los Angeles, Marlon and Shawn had bigger lines than comic con faves Charisma Carpenter and Kevin Smith.