Grant Morrison has announced that the end is nigh... for his superhero work, at least. The writer will be leaving both Action Comics and Batman Incorporated within the next year, and outside of two already-in-progress shorter works for DC Comics, he has no other superhero work planned to replace those books.Morrison dropped his bombshell in the middle of a conversation with Comic Book Resources about his upcoming Image series, Happy. "The idea was always that I'd keep doing [superhero work] as long as it gave me a lot of pleasure and allowed me to express myself," he explained, "and it still does, but I can see the end coming closer." He continued by explaining,

I'm coming to the end of long runs and stories I've had planned in my notebooks for years and the stuff I'm developing now is quite different. The "Action Comics" run concludes with issue #16, "Batman Incorporated" wraps up my take with issue #12, and after that I don't have any plans for monthly superhero books for a while. "Multiversity" is eight issues and I'm 30-odd pages into a Wonder Woman project but those are finite stories. I'm not saying that I'll never write superheroes again. It's just that my relationship to them has changed especially after finishing the book and I'm not sure if I want to maintain the same kind of relentless level of production.

The loss of such a big-name writer is likely to hurt DC's New 52 line at least in the short term, especially the Superman franchise; Action has become the "stable" Superman series since the publisher's high-profile relaunch last year, while the Superman monthly has cycled through three different writers in a one year period.

Morrison described his change in attitude towards superheroes as "coming to the end of a long intensive period where I was talking about certain ideas using the language of superheroes," going on to say that he's looking forward to "try[ing] out some new ideas and explore the opportunities that keep coming up to write novels and screenplays."

Barring any delays or changes in plan, Action Comics #16 will be released in January 2013, with Batman Incorporated #12 coming up in May 2013.