Oscar-winning screenwriter John Ridley returns to comic books with The American Way: Those Above and Those Below, uniting with his series artist Georges Jeanty. The six-issue monthly miniseries hits shelves in summer 2017 and will be published under DC Entertainment’s Vertigo imprint. Staying true to The American Way, this sequel will explore historically significant sociopolitical and racial themes still relevant today. The story picks up in 1972, the year of Richard Nixon, Angela Davis, Watergate and the Weather Underground, when social and political tensions in America were at an all-time high.

The American Way: Those Above and Those Below tracks an alternate timeline in which costumed superheroes—once paragons of the Establishment—fall into disgrace during the turmoil of the 1960s following the Kennedy assassination, the Kent State shootings and the public’s growing cynicism over the lies of its leaders. Enter Jason Fisher, once known as the New American—one of the few “heroes” who still operates openly after the disbanding of the Civil Defense Corps (CDC), the former governmental agency that oversaw America’s greatest propaganda tool: its costumed heroes. Jason takes on a quixotic mission, championing the disenfranchised in inner-city Baltimore.  Jason, however, finds both resistance and outright hostility from the very people he is trying to help, who see him not as a savior, but as a tool of the heavy handed police force that targets America’s young, black men through racial profiling.  Jason’s dilemma: to uphold the law, or to serve the people.  In 1972, you couldn’t always do both.

A new edition of The American Way will be released to coincide with the debut of The American Way: Those Above and Those Below #1.