"Night of the Monster Men," reviewed

It might seem a little early for a crossover story, given that DC Comics' "Rebirth" initiative is only a few months old and that the first story arcs of this period are just now wrapping up, but you know how it is in Gotham City. One night it's a paramilitary organization attempting to assassinate citizens with drone-mounted weapons, the next giant monsters are rampaging.

"Night of the Monster Men" was a six-part story that ran weekly through two issues a piece of Batman, Detective Comics and Nightwing, detailing Batman and his many allies' attempts to safeguard the city from bizarre monsters created by Hugo Strange and set loose on the city as part of an elaborate (and rather silly) attempt to dramatize the renegade psychologist's diagnosis of Batman's flawed psyche.

Before we get into the story itself, it is probably useful to remind ourselves what's been going on in Gotham City just prior to this event story.

Batman recently took Duke Thomas under his wing and began training him as a new partner, here taking the unusual step of not naming him Robin (Duke wears a black and yellow, bat-themed costume when on the streets, but thus far hasn't taken a codename of any kind). Among their very first challenges were facing two metahuman superheroes–Gotham and Gotham Girl–driven mad by Psycho-Pirate's Medusa Mask. Gotham died, but Gotham Girl survived, and has been living in the Batcave with them (For more on Duke, check out All-Star Batman; he's been appearing in both the main story and starring in a back-up feature).

At Batman's behest, Batwoman has been training Spoiler (Stephanie Brown), Orphan (Cassandra Cain) and criminally insane supervillain Clayface (Basil Karlo). Their first big mission was trying to stop her father and his secret splinter group of the U.S. military from killing dozens of Gothamites that they believed were part of a conspiracy that may or may not even exist. Batman's new team succeeded, but at the cost of Red Robin Tim Drake's life...or so it seemed. In reality, he was saved only to be imprisoned by the mysterious Mr. Oz (This was the first story arc of the recently de-relaunched Detective Comics).

The original Robin, Dick Grayson, recently retired from his brief career as a super-spy for Spyral and resumed his Nightwing identity. He's currently working alongside a sketchy new partner named Raptor to stop the Court of Owls from going international (in the pages of Nightwing, obviously).

As for Batman's other allies, current Robin Damian Wayne is MIA (apparently off founding a new iteration of the Teen Titans, as can be seen in the pages of Teen Titans), Batgirl is traveling Asia (in Batgirl) and Red Hood is semi-undercover as a bad guy in an effort to infiltrate Black Mask's criminal organization (in Red Hood and The Outlaws).

Now, if the Monster Men sound familiar to you, there's a good reason for that. Batman first faced off against Hugo Strange's Monster Men in 1940's Batman #1, in a story entitled "The Giants of Hugo Strange." In that story, most likely written by Bill Finger and drawn by Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson (although credits weren't exactly trustworthy in that particular franchise at that particular point in time), Strange injected five insane men with a super-serum that turned them into 15-foot-tall ogres bent on mindless destruction–a perfect cover for his robberies.

Matt Wagner returned to that material for his 2006 miniseries Batman and The Monster Men, which expanded and updated the story to fit into modern Batman continuity and meet modern comic story-telling style. Both would have been knocked out of the character's official history with 2011's Flashpoint-driven reboot, making this third version of the story the official one. The monster men in Wagner's telling were still very man-like; not so in writer Steve Orlando and company's version.

Batman #7 ("Night of the Monster Men," Part 1) by writers Steve Orlando and Tom King and artist Riley Rossmo

Even without the threat of monster men, this is going to be a pretty terrible night for Gotham City, as Hurricane Milton is bearing down on it. That's right, a hurricane. Gotham City not only sits atop a massive fault line (see "Cataclysm" and "No Man's Land"), it's also in the path of hurricanes, making it the most dangerous place to live on the eastern seaboard, and that's just when considering the natural disasters!

This is explained via a radio announcer, for which I blame the issue's co-plotter Tom King, as he used that device in "Robin War" as well. Batman is meeting with his top lieutenants Batwoman and Nightwing atop a building, telling them that they are going to make sure no one dies at all, no matter what, to which they both essentially reply not to be so crazy, Batman; it's not like you can punch out a hurricane. Batman is really upset about Tim Drake's fake death, though, and so he calls "everyone" in.

Here "everyone" merely means Spoiler, Orphan, Clayface and the Gotham City Police Department. I've already mentioned where his other sidekicks are, although I'm not sure why he hasn't called in the Justice League, as presumably Superman, for example, actually could punch out the hurricane...or at least use his various spectacular powers to divert it. Of course, one could always ask why Batman doesn't just call his bro Superman to come solve any problem he's faced with, and readers of Batman comics generally have to just accept the fact that Batman won't call in the League because they are reading a Batman comic and not a Justice League comic. That's a little more difficult in this case, though, as he just called the League in two issues ago to help him take down Gotham (the mad superhero, not the city), and, as we'll see, the League eventually shows up during the course of this story, right when they are needed the least.

The plan is for Clayface to split into a bunch of selves, each of them in the shape of GCPD officer, and his clay-selves, Spoiler and Orphan will help evacuate the city and keep peace at the caves outside of town.

And then a monster shows up, so Batman takes Batwoman and Nightwing to deal with that while the others handle crowd control.

Said monster is very, very different from the previous versions of the monster men. These monsters begin their "lives" as corpses laid out on tables in a morgue, and then start...dripping. Red goo. Hugo Strange, meanwhile, is working out in the nude.

You can see his butt and everything. He looks at his watch and says, "It is time to start." And bam, the corpses start going "FSSSSSS" and swelling and bubbling and dripping and mutating (one of these, I should note, is a woman, not a man, so maybe this should have been called "Night of the Monster People").

The first monster looks like a two-story tall baby, one fat baby arm bigger, redder and fatter than the other, with a massive, swollen, mushroom cloud-shaped head with a huge red eye in the middle of it.

Batman loses his Batplane to it immediately, then starts buzzing it in a cool little "combat capsule" jetpack thingee that Steel apparently built for or with him ("Remind me to thank John Henry. Steel was right. Handles like a dream"). Batman then manages to kill the monster with fire, but don't worry; as Alfred and Duke, oracle-ing from the Batcave inform him, it's not "traditionally alive." Besides, we saw it mutate from a corpse, so we know it was dead before the battle began, meaning Batman is free to "kill" these monsters.

Using giant syringes to take tissue samples and with Alfred and Duke on the computers, Batman and team are able to determine that the giant baby monster was the guy who slit his own throat in front of Commissioner Gordon the previous Batman arc, warning "The Monster Men are...coming." Also, it has heavily modified cells, "like programmable stem cells, but super-charged."

But this is, of course, only the first monster. A second appears on the final splash page (that's the one at the top of the post), this one even less human in appearance, bearing a body something like that of a huge pteradon, but with a long, maned neck terminating in a fang-filled animal head with six red eyes. At this point it becomes pretty clear what this story is going to end up being all about: Batman vs. kaiju, basically.

I immediately thought of Steve Niles and Kelley Jones' series Batman: Gotham After Midnight, during the course of which Batman broke out a giant monster-fighting machine he had made, which was essentially just a giant metal punching machine.

Batman's giant monster punching machine, from Batman: Gotham After Midnight #3.

If you'll recall, he used that device to fight Clayface, who, in that story, had grown to giant proportions. As Clayface is now on Batman's side, perhaps he would grow giant and fight a monster hand-to-hand in this too...? One could only hope.

My next thought? Okay, maybe now you call in the Justice League. Multiple giant monsters seems more like a League-level threat than Gotham (the guy, not the city) was in issue #5, you know?

This chapter is drawn by Rossmo, who is probably the strongest of the three artists involved in this story. I'm not sure who designed the monsters, but they deserve high-fives; they are all very different from one another, and some of them look like Guy Davis-level weird; more anime monsters than old-school kaiju (Cover artist Yannick Paquette unfortunately does a poor job of featuring the monsters themselves on these covers, as you can see above; I can't tell you how disappointed I am that they didn't have Jones draw these covers, as Batman and monsters are pretty much his exact wheelhouse).

The most noticeable thing about Rossmo's Batman? Goodness are his ears tiny! I mean, Paquette draws fairly small ears on Batman, but Rossmo's Batman has ears that are smaller than Bob Brown or Dick Sprang's Batman ears; they are only slightly longer than those of Kingdome Come Red Robin's or Midnighter's bat-ears, and, if you say, "But Kingdom Come's Red Robin and Midnighter don't have bat-ears," then I say to you, "Exactly."

I wonder where Sims would place Rossmo's bat-ears on the Sprang-Jones scale...?

Nightwing #5 ("Night of The Monster Men," Pt. 2) by writers Steve Orlando and Tim Seeley and artist Roge Antonio

In the Batcave, Duke is whining to Alfred about having to stay indoors with him doing computer stuff instead of being out there fighting giant monsters with Batman, while Gotham Girl, wearing Duke's old Robin jacket over her superhero costume like they are going steady or something, remarks that she can hear buildings crumbling and giant heartbeats with her super-hearing. Guys, there's an entire mansion a short elevator ride above you; surely you can find Gotham Girl something to wear aside from Duke's old coat.

In the city, Batman and Batwoman take on the second of the monsters, the one that looks a bit like a huge furry pterosaur with a weird head, while Nightwing is tasked with tracking down Hugo Strange, starting with the morgue where the corpse that grew into the first monster was last seen.

Before he goes, Nightwing mentions that Batman does have a giant-monster fighting plan (Ooh, I hope it's that Kelley Jones contraption!), which he calls "The Tower contingencies" and Batman calls "The Wayne Watchtowers." By whatever name they are called, however, we are told that they are too dangerous to activate before the city has been completely cleared.

Does Batman have giant-monster fighting mechas all folded-up inside a few of his properties? Is the climax of this series going to involve our heroes launching giant, bat-themed Evas?

We'll just have to wait and see.

In the meantime, Batman activates Duke's "special project," "The Bat-Beacon." This is essentially Batman's own emergency broadcast system, which projects holograms of Batman out of all the street lights, so he can tell people to evacuate and to keep a stiff upper-lip and everything.

From there, he and Batwoman grab some super-motorcycles to fight the monster with; by the time they've engaged it thusly, it has grown two more heads.

As for the girls, they are helping Detective Harvey Bullock and other members of the GCPD move evacuees into the cave system outside of town, but something weird is going on there. Everyone is getting irritable and angry, as is prone to happen in such situations, but there's a red liquid covering them, so maybe their anger isn't entirely natural?

At the morgue, Nightwing does not find Strange, nude or otherwise, but he does find evidence that there are not two, but four monsters that have burrowed their way out of there. Our Oracle Bros Alfred and Duke help determine the identity of one of the dead guys-turned-monster, and Nightwing realizes that it is headed for Blackgate prison.

This is the monster on the cover. Monster #3 is roughly human-sized from the waist up, with a Nosferatu-like head, a desiccated torso and insect-like arms and legs. It drags a gigantic, bloated mass behind it, likely containing something super-gross.

Nigthwing is in the process of hurriedly assembling a hang glider or something to fly out to Blackgate with when Gotham Girl rockets passed him on her way to save the day. If you missed Tom King's initial Batman arc, her deal is that she and her brother were both given Superman-like powers, but the more they use them, the quicker they burn out their life forces. Additionally, she is suffering the effects of a the Psycho-Pirate's Medusa Mask, so Batman and Duke would both prefer she just hang out in the Batcave, rather than fly off to fight giant monsters.

In this scene, it becomes clear why she is still wearing her superhero costume with a zip-up jacket over it; it's so she can un-zip that jacket to reveal the big, one-letter logo of her superhero costume, Superman-style.

Detective Comics #941 ("Night of The Monster Men," Pt. 3) by writers Steve Orlando and James Tynion IV and artist Andy MacDonald

Batwoman, still fighting Monster #2 atop a motorcycle, checks in with everyone via radio, so that during the course of a five-panel sequence we can be reminded of who is doing what where (and also see incoming artist Andy MacDonald's renditions of all the characters right off the, um, bat). Batman continues to try to talk Gotham Girl out of flying to confront Monster #3 at Blackgate, saying Nightwing will be there soon, and she talks a bit of smack: "Whoever Nightwing is he isn't fast enough or strong enough."

Much of the action in this issue is divided between two battlegrounds: The caves outside Gotham where Spoiler, Orphan and the GCPD have corralled the evacuating citizens, and Blackgate prison.

The people in the caves have gradually started questioning authority and fighting one another and, thanks to the red goop, begin to act with a sort of hive mind, turning on the heroes and law enforcement.

In an incredible act of being-smart, Spoiler starts thinking about the way plants, molds, fungi and algae communicate, and thus how to combat this goop, which is apparently another monster of sorts. New 52 Stephanie Brown, who is now apparently a genius (she sure made out in the reboot, huh?) comes up with a plan to neutralize the goop without killing or harming the people it's possessing: Raising the heat in the caves. So she, Orphan and the un-gooped cops start shoving road flares all over the cave walls and ceilings. This explains in part what Stephanie keeps in her many pockets and pouches--so many road flares.

At Blackgate, Gotham Girl lands in a superhero pose that shatters the cement beneath her, accompanied by the sound effect GA-THOOM. That is the sound of Gotham Girl smash-landing on cement: "GA-THOOM." What does she find there? Dog-sized creatures that look a bit like giant toads crossed with superman villain Doomsday, attaching themselves to the shoulders and heads of inmates and snaking their long, gross Venom tongues down around them. These are the things apparently hatching out of the huge, gross egg-sack that Monster #3 drags behind it. Nightwing arrives and tries to talk Gotham Girl down a bit, suggesting that maybe tearing the monster to pieces isn't the best course of action, but she basically goes into berserker mode and tearing through the monster's egg sac and then just ripping and ripping and ripping in one of the grossest sequences I've seen in a long time: She and Nightwing are just covered in dead monster gore by the time she's done.

As for the Bats, they are still motorcycle-fighting Monster #2, which continues to grow heads along its long neck. By the end of this issue, it's up to five heads, the topmost of which SPLURTs out a huge knife-shaped horn somewhat reminiscent of Gamera's goofiest-looking opponent, Guiron. They call Nightwing to check in on him and Gotham Girl, but they get no response: Nightwing can't come to the Bat-radio right now, because he's too busy being transformed by the monster blood and guts into a monster himself! Both he and Gotham Girl are turning into monsters, and, in Dick's case, ironically so, as his new monster form is that of a half-bird, half-bat creature.

Batman #8 ("Night of The Monster Men," Pt. 4) by writers Steve Orlando and Tom King and artist Riley Rossmo

The five-headed, building-sized Monster #2 has taken flight, and Batman is still crouched atop his motorcycle, which is attached to the monster by a grappling hook. That's right, he and Batwoman are still fighting the five-headed, blade-horned furry pteradon-esque creature. Surely at this point a call to Superman wouldn't be out of the question, right? He could be in Gotham knocking that thing out and back in Metropolis in less than a minute. I'm sure it would be no trouble at all!

After another quick recap of who is where, the increasingly eager to join the fight Duke reveals to Batman that he and Alfred have discovered what it was that created the monsters: A super-steroid with notable similarities to Venom, the super-steroid that Bane used to take to get super-jacked (and Batman was briefly addicted to, pre-reboot).

Nightwing and Gotham Girl, both mutated into monsters--albeit human-sized ones--by the viscera of Monster #3, both arrive on the scene for some more fighting. Batwoman keeps them busy while Batman finishes off the kaiju via a judicious application of electricity, and joins Batwoman by popping a wheelie and slapping Gotham Girl across the face with it. Oh, that Batman!

That's actually just the first of the cool tricks he tries out here, including wearing Clayface as a big suit of battle armor to go hand-to-hand with Gotham Girl.

It's not enough though, and the day isn't saved until Duke Thomas arrives on the scene with a monster cure in a giant syringe, which he pokes G.G. with. Meanwhile, Batwoman and the monster-ized Nightwing fight in the sky and, outside of town, Spoiler's gambit with all the road flares worked, and the red goop making the Gothamites act all crazy melts off them, forms a river of black goop, and streams out of the cave, where it transforms into Monster #4, the biggest, scariest of the monsters so far.

It's humanoid in shape, but with four long arms, and a body that looks a little like a robe, with a long, dangling red veil. Sprouting from its shoulders are a pair of huge trees with red leaves.

Again, Paquette's cover really rather sells the monster short. With giant monsters, it's all about scale guys...although I suppose it's understandable that the artist might want to focus on the human-sized hero whose name is on the book in the cover image rather than on his titanic opponents.

Nightwing #6 ("Night of The Monster Men," Pt. 5) by writers Steve Orlando and Tim Seeley and artist Roge Antonio

Batwoman and the de-monsterized Gotham Girl manage to administer Duke's de-monstrification serum to Nightwing by the former essentially roping and riding the mutated Nightwing into the syringe the latter was holding up. Nightwing pukes up a bunch of monster juice, and is back to his old self, only missing his mask and a few small pieces of his shirt. Really, he could have stood to lose his entire shirt. I mean, don't you guys want to sell comics, DC? Then lets get Dick Grayson more shirtless more often!

Monster #4, the last of the Monster Men People, strides towards downtown Gotham, scooping up a train car in one of its massive hands. Ah, giant monsters and trains! A classic combination.

Spoiler and Orphan arrive in a station wagon (?) to join the rest of the Bat-squad, just in time to dodge the train engine the latest monster chucks at them. Nightwing takes Spoiler to the top of a Wayne Tower, where she plugs her...super-computer staff?...into the floor and she and Nightwing start reviewing various clues regarding Hugo Strange's whereabouts on the Iron Man: The Movie like hard-light computers it projects...?

Again, I'm not sure how or why Spoiler is fucking Oracle all of a sudden, but I don't really like this new, hyper-competent version of a character whose original charm came from the fact that she was an extremely willful amateur with more heart and guts than actual skills. I suppose this is just the way James Tynion IV, Scott Snyder and other Bat-writers and editors decide to characterize her post-reboot, but for someone who has been reading her for a very long time, it sure feels off, like she was absorbing Tim Drake's mad computer skills through his kisses or something.

By way of explaining how she's able to crack encryptions in a matter of seconds and follow a money trail involving the Monster Venom and the facilities to process it, she tells Nightwing, "I'm The Cluemaster's daughter, Dick." Um, yeah, exactly my point, Steph.

Meanwhile, Dick watches a few seconds of recorded sessions between Strange and the four patients of his that he ended up turning into his Monster People, showing no respect for patient doctor privilege. Those few seconds are enough for Dick to boil each patient's diagnosis down to a single word--Manipulator, Fear, Grief and Child. He's starting to put it together.

The monster knows what they are up to, and starts scaling the tower to get to them, so Batman must activate the Wayne Watchtowers. Is this where one of his buildings transforms into a giant monster-fighting robot? No, sadly nothing that dramatic. The activation does apparently knock all power out of the city and then maybe divert it to the building or something, as it heats up and sets the monster on fire or something with a "SCHWUFF" as Spoiler and Nightwing jump to safety, Strange's location uncovered just in time.

So that's all four monsters down and out, has The Night of The Monster People ended so soon, with a whole issue yet to go?

Ha, Batman and friends wish!

No, the "dead" monsters have all been linking some kind of pink goo that has been gradually sliming its way together, forming an even bigger monster than the biggest of the first four. This final monster isn't too sensational of a design; he looks a little like Spider-Man villain The Rhino, but with a giant Sarlacc Pit mouth for a face.

So this is the climax: One final, big-ass monster for Batman's team to fight while he goes to face Strange. As he's about to go, Nightwing tells Batman what he's figured out about Strange's plan. They monsters aren't just monsters, but they are a statement. People wrestling with childhood trauma, facing grief and fear and manipulating others around them, all of them combining into one, single monster. The Monsters are, Nightwing says, Strange's diagnosis of Batman.

So Batman does the sensible thing: He calls The Justice League and asks them to come take care of this monster for him while he and his team go beat the crap out of Strange.

No, I'm just playing. He tells his team to use The Watchtowers--special fortified buildings bristling with high-tech weaponry that Batman built after Darkseid's "Year One" invasion--while he goes to fight Strange himself. On the final splash page, we finally see Strange again. He is not nude, but he is wearing a Batman suit. Not the cape and cowl, just the suit from, like, the neck down. Which is really too bad, because I'd love to see what he would look like wearing the cowl. Like, it's hard to imagine a Batman with a beard and glasses, isn't it?

And that's the final page of the penultimate chapter of "Night of The Monster Men"...! Just one more issue to go!

Detective Comics #942 ("Night of The Monster Men," Pt. 6) by writers Steve Orlando and artist Andy MacDonald

This is page four of this comic book, in its entirety:

That totally looks like they are all jumping into their own individual robot lions or vehicles or Megazords or whatever, and they are totally going to combine them to form a giant robot, right? I mean, everything about that page, right?

I found the third tier the most intriguing, because it shows that each of the four Watchtowers is apparently programmed with a particular symbol for a particular member of Batman's Bat-squad to light up on its side. I have to imagine those symbols change depending on who is in the individual towers' cockpits, as it's really hard to imagine that Batman had a tower all set up for Spoiler and Orphan, neither of whom even really have symbols, but not ones for Robin, Red Robin, Red Hood or Batgirl.

As for the symbols, the girls have some terrible ones. Spoiler's icon is...a pink "O"...? Not even an "S" for Spoiler? Or something, anything, purple? And Orphan, whose name does begin with the letter "O" gets, what, a hashmark indicating five? A symbol representative of the stitching over the mouth of her current, dumb mask? That's kinda dumb.

A friend of mine pointed out to me that Orphan's symbol looks a little like a crudely drawn, hobo version of the bat-symbol--imagine the little lines in the middle as its ears and two of the lower points on the serrated bottom of the traditional bat-symbol, and the two larger lines on the edges as the largest points of the wings--which kind of works for Cassandra Cain.

Damn I wish she'd hurry up and re-adopt the name Black Bat and a better, more bat-like costume...

Batman arrives in Hugo Strange's penthouse hideout to confront him, and Strange is an all-around amazing decorator! The walls have all these weird, Batman-specific medical charts. Like, there will be a profile of Batman's head, with the mask and skull cut away to reveal Batman's brain, and then all these little (unfortunately illegible) scribbled notes and lines, pointing to which part of Batman's brain thinks about what (Justice? Bat-shapes? Vengeance? Black? His mom's pearls?). There's even a Vitruvian Man, only with Batman in it--so, a Vitruvian Batman, I guess. It's like Strange took a bunch of medical textbooks, and then drew Batman costumes on all the figures.

These are plastered everywhere on the walls, while Strange himself sits atop a throne of psychology books (My favorite title? "Crazy People"), some thick, sticky substance along the bottom (I would assume it's that red stuff that Monster #3 leaked to make people crazy.

Before Batman can strike across the room and punch out Strange, the doctor warns him that he's wearing a "suicide suit," and therefore if Batman strikes him at all, it will kill him, breaking one of Batman's cardinal rules about crime-fighting. They begin their long talk about Batman's psychology, which essentially amounts to Strange's belief that Batman's mental health issues are flaws that make him a weaker crime-fighter, whereas Batman believes they are actually strengths, or at least he's been able to master them and turn them into strengths, which help make him a better crime fighter. Guess who's right?

Meanwhile, the watchtowers prove to not be able to transform into robots. Rather, they are just kitted out with a bunch of laser guns and giant harpoons and stuff like that. These are enough to temporarily stop the monster, but not enough to do so permanently. And this monster's hide is so tough that the giant syringe of monster cure won't pierce its hide. What are they to do? Spoiler alert: Nightwing run across one of the harpoon lines anchoring the monster in place, dives into its open mouth and administers the cure to its softer insides, causing it to vomit him out. And keep vomitting. Re-reading it now, it looks like the monster may actually have vomited itself out through it's mouth, if that makes any sense.

And back to the Batman vs. Strange battle, the latter talks himself into unconsciousness, as Batman secretly brought back-up with him. Clayface blanketed the top few floors of the building with his own malleable body, completely sealing the flow of air into the room. Apparently, Batman can just go without air a lot longer than Strange, who passed out during his speechifying. (It here occurred to me that this particular move was a very Plastic Man-like move, and made me reevaluate Clayface's role on the team. I wondered if at some point Tynion hadn't considered using Plas or Metamorpho or maybe eve Elongated Man in the book, but either changed his mind or had it changed for him by DC; it would explain Clayface's presence, given that as a villain who has pretty much never shown a "good" side before he is a definite odd one out on this Bat-squad team of Tynion's Detective.

And then, after all give giant monsters have been defeated by Clayface, Gotham Girl and a half-dozen physically fit people with masks and capes but no powers, guess who shows up? The Justice League has the gall to arrive to help with clean-up. Yeah Green Lanterns, that's cool you guys can use your power rings--the so called "most powerful weapons in the universe"--to lift and move rubble, but where you a few pages ago? You couldn't have been using those rings to beat up Godzillas with giant boxing gloves!

(By the way, one of the things I don't like about the new Cyborg is his undefined, apparently limitless powers. Like, what's he doing there? I thought he just shot sonic weaponry out of his hand-cannon things, but here he's apparently lifting girders and masonry as if he had a blue-tinted Green Lantern ring. I love that The Flash, The Fastest Man Alive, is literally just standing there next to him though. What's Flash doing exactly, supervising? )

On the final pages, we see Bruce Wayne and Kate Kane in a cemetery, remarking on the headstones erected for the four victims that Strange used to make his monsters, which an anonymous donor paid for (I bet you five dollars it was Bruce Wayne; no, ten dollars!). They talk to one another in a brief conversation meant to set up future storylines. When Kate asks Bruce if Strange was sent to Arkham, he says no, but "somewhere...better equipped for his mind." (Hm, maybe Bruce Wayne bought Oolong Island?). He also said that Strange's Venom was given to him by Bane, in exchange for the Psycho-Pirate, and that he's "not waiting to find out" why. If you've been reading Tom King's Batman, you already know why, because that storyline, "I Am Suicide," just ended.

Batman further tells Kate that SHIELD ARGUS has "pulled eminent domain" and built a big research facility around the mostly-vomit body of the final monster, and since the monster goop can be weaponized, it "bears...watching." This will apparently be followed up on in Tynion's Detective and the upcoming Batwoman book.

And that is that.


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Since DC re-relaunched Batman last year, they have been having Tim Sale providing variant covers for the series. I personally find this kind of ridiculous, as Sale's covers are almost always superior to those of the "regular" artists and, while I continue to not understand the specific economics of variant cover sales, it always seemed more logical to me to pay one artist to draw a single cover for a single issue of a comic, rather than paying two or more to provide multiple covers for the same damn book.

Anyway, as I've stated repeatedly above, Paquette's "regular" covers may have included pretty decent images of Batman, Batwoman and Nightwing, they usually failed to depict the monsters in any way that demonstrated their size and/or scariness. That was definitely not the case with Sale's variants, the first and fourth of those below.

As you can see, he makes the monsters look huge, while also putting Batman at the center of the action, and he does so using some fairly basic visual tricks. The Nightwing variants are penciled by Ivan Reis (the second and fifth of the images below), and Rafael Albuquerque drew the Detective variants (the third and the sixth).

Overall, Albuquerque and Sale do the best job of making the giant monsters look like giant monsters; Reis' images aren't really all that fair to compare to Paquette's on that score, as the monsters he draws are more less human-sized.

Anyway, for comparison's sake, here are what the other artists involved in drawing the Monster People came up with:

Two quick links to thing that are kinda sorta about DC superheroines.

Kelly Thompson, like Tom Bondurant and probably at least a dozen other smart writers-about-comics, discussed the announcement that J. H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman (whose names together make for the classiest sounding creative team; don't they sound more like Victorian barristers than guys making Batman comics?) were finally leaving DC's Batwoman title over creative differences with the publisher's now-notoriously hands-on editorial staff (I still think Wheeler's ComicsAlliance piece is the strongest all-around, and Khosla's is the "best," meaning "the one that made me laugh out loud).

Thompson notes the sort of abusive relationship dynamic that exists between the Big Two publishers and their most loyal base of fans—the well-known phenomenon in which readers angrily and bitterly complain about the publishers constantly, sometimes for years or decades, but continue to buy and read their wares—but in so doing she also brings up a point that I haven't heard articulated too terribly eloquently before, and certainly haven't thought much about in a long time:

There’s one reason and one reason only that Dan Didio and Co. can have an absolute disregard for creators – and it’s because they have learned time and again that we won’t actually stop reading. No matter how much of a fit we throw, we don’t actually stop buying, or at least not in significant enough numbers to make it matter.

And it’s hard to blame readers, because why should a character like Batwoman be punished because of something that has nothing to do with her. In fact, Batwoman is the perfect example because it’s taken so long for readers to get an openly gay hero headlining her own book. So do we risk losing that, something SO important in order to protest creator treatment? It’s a tough call.

I have my favorite characters and concepts and creators just like any comics fan, and, to a certain extent, those do tend to govern some of my purchasing decisions, but as each year passes and more and more material from more and more sources becomes newly available, quality becomes the determining factor of what I buy and read more than any other.

That said, I understand the impulse of wanting to vote with your dollars for things you think are important (and/or to not vote with your dollars for things you find repellent and don't want to support; I don't think I've personally done this so much with comics, but I certainly have when it comes to how I spend my money in other areas of my life).

Is a "mainstream," Big Two-published superhero comic book starring a woman, or an all-female team*, or a lesbian or a gay character, or a black character, or a Latino character so important to some readers that they will continue to buy and read comics like Wonder Woman or Birds of Prey or Batwoman or Batwing or Vibe, whether the comics are any good or not or whether they enjoy them or not or whether they think the publisher is treating the characters, the consumers and the creators shabbily?

Perhaps to some people it is, although it's hard for me to wrap my head around someone who digs Batwoman as is being more loyal to the character than the guys who have been telling the character's story for years now. I can't imagine the book is going to get cancelled if even one-third of its readers leave with Williams and Blackman though (And I expect a lot to leave; it's basically a beautifully, weirdly, intricately illustrated mediocre comic book as is, and it's next artist can't do beautiful, weird or intricate on any level approaching comparable).  It's a Batman comic, and likely to become more of a Batman comic. It's as close to uncancelable as a comic book can get.

For anyone looking for a new—or simply another—superhero comic book with a lesbian protagonist, however, might  I suggest Ross Campbell's (creator-owned) Shadoweyes?

Yes, I think I might: Give Ross Campbell's Shadoweyes a shot. It's like Wet Moon meets the original Stan Lee-scripted (or Bendis-written Ultimate) Spider-Man, filtered through an Eastman and Laird's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles brand of 1980s, black-and-white aesthetic. The cast is predominantly black, the title character is a girl who is as of volume two dating a girl, and there's also a gay male character and a transgender character. Plus a crime-fighting super-monster.

There are two volumes in existence so far, Shadoweyes and Shadoweyes In Love. The writing and characters and characterization are, in my opinion, far superior to what I've seen in Batwoman, pre- or post-New 52, although as I noted before, the main selling point of Batwoman is its weirdness and its artwork, and Campbell and Williams are both so good and so different, I have no idea how to even compare the work of one to the other in order to come up with an assessment of which is better.

I will say that Shadoweyes is damn good though, and worth looking into...particularly if the main thing you're reading Batwoman for is because it's a comic book starring a lesbian character.


***********************

I found a link to this blog, The Smith Kids Art Blog, on Tom Spurgeon's Comics Reporter today. The subject of that particular linked-to post is "The all girl Green Lantern Corps by Kassidy Smith," an 11-year-old who can design DC superhero costumes at least as well as Jim Lee can.

She draws an original version of a member of each of the variously colored Lantern teams, but the one I was most intrigued with was the Green Lantern character, a fraction of the image of which I put above (Follow the link to see the Green Lantern's kicky boots, and the other Lanterns).

That is brilliant.

If you're not super-familiar with the Green Lantern comics (so, I'm not talking to you here Sally), their rings have some sort of operating system that is both elaborate and vaguely defined. The rings give them their powers—the ability to convert willpower into energy and matter—and make their force fields and allow them to fly. They also have some sort of self-preservation mode to protect the wearer from harm, can create oxygen for them, translate alien languages, serve as communication devices and, depending on the writer or the particular era of Green Lantern comics, serve as a sort of super-Siri, answering questions the bearers may have regarding alien culture or where they are in space and suchlike.

I love the little projection the Green Lantern Smith drew has coming out of her ring. It looks like a comic book dialogue bubble, but it bears a face. I don't know the "story" of Smith's image or anything, but when I first saw that, I immediately imagined it as an avatar or "face" for that Lantern's ring operating system (not unlike a super-advanced version of that goddam paperclip with bug eyes that used to always butt in and ask if I was writing a letter or not).

I imagine that Lantern asking where she was in space, and that green balloon with a cartoon face appearing to answer her questions, and deliver analysis or advice as she needs or demands it, serving as a sort of character with a range of expressions not too far removed from those of, say, Squiggle. Green Lantern ring as Green Lantern sidekick.

Such should be well within the abilities of a talented and imaginative ring-slinger and the powers of the average Lantern ring; maybe we'll get something like that if DC ever gets around to creating a female earthling Green Lantern from Sector 2814. Right now they've got five dudes, so I'm assuming the next one will have to be a lady. Here's hoping they consult with the Smith girl when it comes time to design her...

*I read two issues of the Brian Wood-written X-Men comic that Marvel marketed with a mysterious "XX" ad, and found them to be incredibly average X-Men comics. In both cases, I found myself actively annoyed that they weren't better, given some of the reviews and positive buzz I had heard about them. I've only read one issue of the New 52 Birds of Prey, and that was horrible. 

Some random thoughts on some NYCC announcements

(Above: J.H. Williams sure can draw, can’t he? From his upcoming run on Detective Comics, starring the lady with the custom-made bat-boots)

—This is probably the news of the Con. Er, for me at least.


—I don’t understand this concept at all. Robert Kirkman and Todd McFarlane are doing a book about a scary Spider-Man who wears a mask that looks like Spawn’s face, and he shoots…webs? Slime? Ectoplasm? Seriously, what’s that stuff he’s flinging around in that image? It’s pretty gross-looking.


—I read this write-up of the Superman panel, and I’m afraid I still can’t figure out what exactly is up with the Super-books going forward. I have both Action and Superman on my pull-list at the local comics shop at the moment, but I guess I’ll drop ‘em and proceed on an issue by issue basis going forward. I definitely want to avoid any issues of Action with Eddy Barrows’ art, as he’s in the Ed Benes/Tony Daniel neighborhood in my own personal aesthetic estimation.

And what’s with Superman leaving Earth for about a year…again? The first Superman story I read was the one that followed his death, the yearlong “Funeral for a Friend” and “Reign of the Supermen” sequence, which was all about defining Superman by his absence. That was about 15 years ago now, I suppose. About two years ago, Superman left Metropolis for a year of story time (but just a few months of our time) as part of 52, and stories were told defining him by his absence. The ongoing Trinity is all about what the world would be like without Superman (and Wonder Woman and Batman in it) and thus defining him by his absence. I get it, I get it—Superman is very important to Metropolis and to the whole world in general.

This particular storyline, which I guess takes place in a third Superman series, will have a different reason for him leaving, and some different creators involved, but it’s hard to get very excited about a world without Superman story again.


—I’m still not at all interested in the X-Men. Although this image is pretty awesome, in a stupid-awesome kind of way:



—Ditto Star Wars comics. I don’t know what it is exactly; I loved Star Wars growing up, and I love comics now, but I just can’t seem to get into any of the Star Wars comics. I did dig the Star Wars Tales trades and the Tag and Bink trade, but that’s as far as I’ve been able to wade into ‘em.



—What I find most interesting about the existence of a book called Dark Wolverine starring Wolverine’s son Dokken (did I spell that right?), who has two claws on each hand instead of three, is that it’s being co-written by prose writer Marjorie Liu, who is currently writing a low-selling NYX miniseries. Not that her co-writing a Wolverine book with Daniel Way is a negative thing or anything, it’s just not the next place I expected to see her name pop up at Marvel.


—Vaneta Rogers covered the Batman panel, which was full of mysterious and exciting news.

For example, I’m kind of excited about the Greg Rucka/J.H. Williams III Batwoman arc on Detective, which will definitely get me picking up that title again. I am curious why it took DC so long to publish an actual Batwoman story after her high-profile debut in, when was that, 2006?

Also in June, DC will be relaunching Batman(hopefully with the original numbering still in place!) and launchng new books entitled Batman and Robin, Red Robin (A Jason Todd book? I’ll pass, but jeez, they sure did take their time getting around to telling a real Jason Todd story too, didn’t they?), Outsiders (New direction #16), Batgirl (which is pretty damn silly considering they cancelled a semi-successful Batgirl ongoing, then spent a few years doing their level best to wreck the character, and her just-ended miniseries sold pretty awfully), Batman: The Streets of Gotham and Gotham City Sirens.

They didn’t announce creative teams for any of those though, so who knows if any of those will be any good.

If Batwoman is taking over TEC due to Batman’s continued absence, than I suppose Jason Todd is in Red Robin, Dick Grayson reluctantly becomes Batman and stars in Batman and Robin and beyond that…I can’t make any guesses. Streets sounds like it could be a Gotham Central type book, and Sirens sounds like it could be the rumored girl book, which would be a natural place for Paul Dini.

I do hope Batman will be Grant Morrison’s story of Batman fighting his way through time from caveman days to the present.


—Okay, the plans for the Ultimate Universe post-Ultimatum just sound insane. Here’s a few paragraphs from Albert Ching’s coverage of the Cup O’ Joe panel:

Turning to Ultimatum, Quesada showed slides of "Ultimate Requiems." "We're kind of saying goodbye to those books," said McCann. "We're canceling Ultimate Spider-Man," said Quesada to a startled crowd. "We are done professionally!" yelled Bendis to Quesada, emulating the now-infamous Christian Bale rant.

"We are introducing Ultimate Comics," said Quesada. Bendis talked about Ultimate Comics Spider-Man, starting with a new #1, with David LaFuente as the new artist. "You can tell it's going to be good because it has the New Avengers lightning bolt on the cover," said Bendis.

Of LaFuente, Bendis said "This is his first ongoing series. He's awesome." Bendis said it's a fresh start, but not a reboot, though some time will have passed between the series. "Some new characters, maybe someone new in the costume," he continued.

I really like LaFuente’s art—he did the Peter/MJ sex life annual, and the Hellcat miniseries—and I’m sure I’ll continue reading Bendis’ new version of Ultimate Spider-Man, but I’m pretty surprised that they’re relaunching it, as doing so is kind of anathema to the whole line’s original concept. And Stuart Immonen didn’t end up sticking around all that long after all, did he? (Of course, New Avengers, which he’s taking over, sells better, so I can’t exactly blame the guy).

I love the way LaFuente draws Spidey's head, by the way.

They also announced Ultimate Comics Avengers—these kinda sound like Japanese titles using English words, don’t they?—by Mark Millar and too-slow-for-a-monthly Carlos Pacheco, continuing the proud tradition of ridiculously late Millar Ultimate Avengers books, I guess.


—This kinda sorta excited me. From Albert Ching’s DC panel coverage:

DiDio asked Giffen what his post-Reign in Hell comic will be. "Two words: Doom Patrol," said the veteran creator. Giffen then asked how many of the crowd were fans of the Grant Morrison Doom Patrol. Many cheered. "You're going to be really disappointed," said Giffen. "How about the original Doom Patrol?" Slightly less cheers, but still positive. "You guys are going to be really disappointed," said Giffen, playing the audience. He said that they were going to make the Doom Patrol accessible to people.

"So what's your problem with Justice League International?" asked Giffen in DiDio's direction. "Does anyone really think I have a problem with JLI?" DiDio snapped back. (Apparently, much of the crowd did.) This led to an announcement that the classic JLI team — Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire — will be doing Metal Men back-ups in Doom Patrol.


—I don’t know what to make of any of the Final Crisis Aftermath books without hearing the names of any creators attached, but only the Super Young Team seem to naturally extend from FC and show any glimmer of the possibility of maybe being a minor hit. It also scares me to hear Ian Sattler say of Final Crisis Aftermath: Escape, "Dan described this book as a combination between The Prisoner and Saw.” I thought all DC books were now a combination of something and Saw.


—Fellow Blog@ contributor David Pepose covered the Radical Publishing panel, of which the most interesting news to me was this:

In addition, Levine said, after this Comic Con, Radical would no longer publish 22-page single issues, instead collecting six-issue arcs into three 48-page books. “It's just so much easier for readers to invest themselves in 48 pages rather than 22,” he said. “We'll keep it at $4.99 so it’s cheaper than two issues.”

Hey, yeah, that is great news. A five-dollar bill gets you 48 pages, whereas Marvel and DC charge you six bucks for 44 pages.

Assuming that there are prices associated with the production of individual books that would be involved with the production of a bigger book with two books’ worth of pages inside (i.e., making two covers, laying out the ads twice, etc.), that would be a way to save money, right?

If industry leaders DC and Marvel are really thinking they need to move to a higher price point, as Marvel’s already in the process of doing, the Radical model sure sounds promising. Currently, Marvel’s charging $3.99 for 22 pages of New Avengers; a pretty rotten value when put up against $4.99 for 48 pages, isn’t it?

The downside for the Big Two transitioning to double-length books would be publishing each one less frequently, which means potentially getting those customers into the shop less frequently, but smart publishing schedule planning could alleviate that.

For example, if Marvel’s publishing 20 X-Men books a month, they could simply schedule five a week. People! This could work! Try this before you go charging $3.99 per chapter of New Avengers!


—Hey, look at this!

Lockjaw and The Pet Avengers, apparently.

DC, your pets are like more numerous and much cooler; I can’t believe you let Marvel beat you to the punch on an all super-pet team book.


—Kevin Maguire will also be drawing Spider-Man: The Short Halloween, which is being written by some guys from that Saturday Night Live show I used to watch in high school. That’s still on, huh? Anyway, a lot of upcoming Maguire comics is good news

Strike while the iron is ice cold!

This past Wednesday DC debuted the first part of a new six-issue miniseries, Huntress: Year One, by Ivory Madison, Cliff Richards and Art Thibert. It's a pretty perplexing release, and retailer/reviewer Brian Hibbs lists some of the reasons in his Savage Critic review.

As Hibbs pointed out, it can't be a book that DC thought would sell terribly well. The Bat-family solo spin-offs—Nightwing, Robin, soo- to-be-cancelledCatwoman—are all doing less than stellar these days, and the Huntress isn't even part of the Bat-family proper any more. The book she calls home—Birds of Prey—only sells in the 20K neighborhood, a bit bettter than Catwoman and there's she's part of an ensemble, not carrying the book herself.

The artists attached are pretty good, and while Madison is an unknown quantity, she's the sort of unknown quantity I imagine readers will be curious about (I was pretty amused to see that her website referred to this comic book series as "a graphic novel;" perhaps it's just shorthand to communicate to "civilians" and/or the book industry, but it denotes a certain amount of shame and/or sensitivity about the word "comics"). But none of them are the sorts of big names that would move a Huntress book in big numbers, so DC can't be thinking these creators will move such a book where the character won't.

One could also raise the question of relevance, but then, that's been the case for all of DC's recent Year One miniseries.

Green Arrow: Year One re-told an origin that gets pretty regularly re-told, but boasted an interesting creative team (The Losers' Andy Diggle and Jock), came at a time when DC was clearly trying to promote the character (around the time of his wedding to Black Canary), and filled the publishing gap between the end of Green Arrow and the launch of Green Arrow/Black Canary.

Teen Titans: Year One similarly tells an origin that isn't very mysterious and which there are no questions about, but makes a certain amount of sense within DC's nonsensical attempts to flood the market with Titans books (Teen Titans, Titans, Tiny Titans and solo minis for Wonder Girl, Raven and soon Cyborg).

And then there was Metamorpho: Year One, the origin of a bit player in low-selling team title The Outsiders by a not-exactly-hot creative team.*

Of course, Huntress: Year One is unlike the others above in that it falls squarely in the shadow of another six-part Huntress origin miniseries, 2000's Batman/Huntress: Cry For Blood, which has the benefit of a higher profile writer, a high profile guest-star (and branding in the title), and being, at the time, much more relevant to other books (Greg Rucka was then writing Detective and was thus part of the Batman office's stable of creators, and Huntress was pretty firmly ensconced in the Bat-family, rather than in Birds of Prey).

From this side of things, it's impossible to tell why DC greenlights certain projects and not others, of course. Perhaps sales on the recent-ish Huntress: Dark Knight Daughter trade paperback (collecting the old pre-Crisis Huntress stories) were brisk enough that DC's data suggested the existence of a bigger Huntress market than seems apparent from where I'm sitting.

What I find most perplexing about all of this, however, is that DC decided to greenlight a miniseries telling the origin of a masked, caped, female, Gotham vigilante, and they went with the Huntress and not, oh, I don't know, Batwoman.

Remember her? The sensational character find of 2006? New character introduced to much fanfare in 52? Often said to be getting her own series (most recently here), a series that never actually materializes? Origins completely shrouded in mystery? Only had a handful of appearances?

She seems like a better candidate for a Year One mini, doesn't she? Her origin is certainly virgin territory, giving a creative reason for such a book's existence, and the fact that she has the word "Bat-" in her name guarantees a higher level of sales than a Huntress series, no matter who the creators are.

Huntress: Year One isn't the only new miniseries starring a masked, caped, female, Gotham vigilante that's not Batwoman, of course. A Batgirl miniseries is also in the works, starring Cassandra Cain. She had formerly starred in an ongoing solo series, which DC canceled not due to sales as much as to streamline the Bat-family and their line of books (presumably to make room for Batwoman and Batwoman). But since that never materialized, they've gone years without selling Batgirl or Batwoman books, and are now trying to sell a Batgirl miniseries. The fact that it is from a writer who is widely perceived as having "ruined" the character and an artist most-associated with Countdown and related projects, makes it another sure-not-to-be-a-hit book.

How did both of these books beat Batwoman out the gate? And why is DC waiting until any and all interest in Batwoman has dwindled before trying to capitalze on her now two-year-old high-profile debut? I honsetly don't know, but these not-Batwoman projects keep raising those questions.



*Meanwhile, top-tier characters whose origins could actually use post-Infinite Crisis/52 rejiggering clarification, like Superman, Batman, the JLA and, most especially, Wonder Woman, get none. I don't think we necessarily need four official Year One minis featuring those characters—certainly they'll never do another book called Batman: Year One—but stories dealing with their new origins would certainly make sense.

Sixteen thoughts about the 52 trades and their "extras"

There was a lot to admire about DC’s first year-long weekly series, 52. One of the more admirable things, I thought, was that it was a sequential comic book completely intended to be read as it was being published, in it’s 20-page, stapled, comic book format.

In other words, it wasn’t a graphic novel that was simply being chopped up into chapters and marketed as a series to make a little extra money in the direct market before tackling the book market, like so many comics these days.

In fact, it was so perfectly created to be enjoyed as a comic book series, rather than a trade paperback, that as I was reading it, I couldn’t even imagine how it would be collected in trade. With different artists handling the art chores each issue, it seemed like it would make for the ugliest trade ever some day.

Well, I recently checked all four volumes of it out from the library. Part of that was simple curiosity, to see how it reads in one sitting, whether or not it works in a trade format or not (It does; Keith Giffen’s layouts really do the trick).

But in greater part, it was because the trades include little afterwords between each issue’s worth of story, with some of the creators involved telling inside stories about the particular issue. These come from Michael Siglain, Keith Giffen, Mark Waid, Greg Rucka, Geoff Johns, J.G. Jones, Phil Jiminez, Dan DiDio and, on one occasion, Paul Levitz. MIA are Grant Morrison and Steve Wacker, the latter of whom has since left the company to work for Marvel.

I find the production of this book incredibly fascinating, and always appreciated whatever interviews any of the creators involved did about it. The four writers—Johns, Waid, Morrison and Rucka—are just so different, and everyone insisted everyone wrote everything together, with a “band” like approach to the creation. I want every look behind the curtain I can get, and this one offers lots of little peeks.

Anyway, here are some thoughts on the trade collections of 52…


1.) While the trades read better than I would have thought, the series still reads best as it was intended—as a weekly experience. The myriad little mysteries running throughout and the guessing games involved were a great part of the fun of the series, and seeing them all solved within a few hours, rather than the course of a year, may be satisfying, but does rob the reader of one of the series’ great pleasures.

Additionally, a weekly comic book that readers feel has to be read immediately in comic book form, rather than six months form now in trade, is, I think, extremely important for DC and Marvel, and any comic book companies that hope to truly compete with them in a meaningful way. If the industry is ever going to be able to resist some sort of all-graphic novel (or perhaps electronic) model, then the future lies in books like these.

It’s not hard to imagine a weekly, universe-wide series like this at each of the Big Two, and weeklies starring Batman, Batman’s sidekicks, Superman, The Justice League, The Avengers, The X-Men and Spider-Man. If weekly series became standardized enough, it would be easy enough to see them even returning to magazine racks.

But back on track for a second, while the story itself reads just fine, the trades are an overall less appealing package. The two-page back-up origins are missing, for one, and while J.G. Jones’ covers are all included, they play a less prominent role, all republished at smaller scale at the back of each volume, rather than kicking off each chapter.


2.) DC and Marvel have both been shying away from using blurbs on their trade covers of late, but 52 is lousy with ‘em. Most are pretty positive, some kind suspiciously vague (“[A] grand experiment…fun.” Or “An unprecedented undertaking…”). But still, they’ve got blurbs from The New York Times, the Washington Post, Salon.com, The Onion, Variety, the New York Daily News, Entertainment Weekly, the Philadelphia Daily News, the Miami Herald, the Newark Star Ledger and the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Can’t wait to see what the Countdown trades look like…


3.) Jones’ covers for these things are pretty weak:




(Note: That fourth one is in color and has trade dress matching the first three. DC hasn't updated the listing on their site though, despite the fact that the trade is, you know, completed and ready for purchase now).

The rendering is fine, and I can see how he was going for a unified theme, with the stars standing front and center in front of other members of the ensemble, but compared to some of the brilliant covers on the 52 individual issues of 52?

These really suck.

I don’t think I like the idea of Doctor Magnus looking so much like Doctor John Dorian, either…


4.) According to Waid, Steve Wacker wrote the notes on Rip’s infamous blackboard scene, and a few of them are things that were meant to be addressed but never were or will be, including “2000 years from now” and “What is Spanner’s Galaxy?” Not sure why Waid sounds so definitive abut it being something that won’t be gotten to eventually.

Looking at the board and Rip’s scattered notes, there’s a lot there that is so vague I’m still not sure if was actually covered somewhere. A lot of it seems to have been things covered outside of 52 anyway.


5.) Despite being constantly concerned with the book going off the rails due to the unforgiving deadline schedule, Giffen was apparently constantly fucking with everyone. He accidentally revealed Batwoman a little too early, which wasn’t caught, and he drew a Spider-Man balloon into the Thanksgiving parade (which was caught) and Zatara in fishnets (ditto).


6.) I’m not in love with Batwoman’s costume, which is just Barbara Gordon’s Batgirl costume with a different color scheme, a Silver Age Batwoman/Bat-Girl-esque mask, and a tweaked bat logo. Ross designed several different masks for her though, and they were all worse, I think. All were borrowed from other iterations—Batgirl’s mask, Batman Beyond’s mask, Huntress’ mask—save one, which looks like a Bat-symbol perched over her eyes, its wings flaring up off the sides of her head.

A few weeks later, there’s a full-color sketch from Ross labeled “Batgirl” (it’s the costume which is just a red and black version of Barbara Gordon’s, with a Batman Beyond-shaped Bat-symbol). The one sentence blurb accompanying it is interesting: “Alex Ross’s proposed sketch was originally intended for a new ‘Batgirl’—but was repurposed later for Batwoman.”

Huh?

This can’t possibly have been sitting in a drawer since the last new Batgirl was introduced (Huntress as Batgirl and then Cassandra Cain as Batgirl in “No Man’s Land”), could it? (Alex Ross did do some “No Man’s Land” covers).

Were there plans for another new Batgirl that were scrapped, then?


7.) There was one thing in the story that I was positive would get fixed in the trade and it didn’t. In week 11, Ralph confronts a member of “The Cult of Conner,” using the name “Cult of Conner” and showing a news clipping with the same name. In the weekly post-mortems on Newsarama.com, the editors and writers maintained that the general public wasn’t using that phrase, only those who already knew Superboy’s identity were. This scene contradicts that, and is still here.

Obviously, if Superboy’s name, even just his first name got out, the fact that there was a Conner Kent in Smallville, Kansas living with Clark Kent’s parents, well…you wouldn’t need to be Lex Luthor to figure out Superman’s identity with a clue that big.


8.) DiDio writes a passage about the introduction of Batwoman, and the fact that she was a lesbian caused a bit of a medium hubbub. He mentioned that he got over 1,000 emails on the subject of Batwoman’s sexuality, split 50/50 between positive and negative.

What I found most interesting was his conclusion:



I said it then and I feel it is worth repeating now: Batwoman is a hero first, and being lesbian only helps to define who she is and how she arrives at the choices she makes. I am proud of her addition to our pantheon of characters and although you are only meeting her briefly in this issue, we expect great things from her character in the future.



That first issue was September of 2006. This trade, in which DiDio wrote that paragraph, was released in May. Is she really in DC’s “pantheon of characters” at this point? Damian al Ghul has been a bigger part of Batman’s adventures and Gotham City since the end of 52 than Batwoman is.

DC has released solicitation through March of 2008, and there’s been no mention of the Batwoman ongoing that’s been rumored since fall of ’06, and had at least two writers attached to it so far.

And even if her title never comes, she’s yet to really play a part in the Bat-books. At least the one’s I read (Batman and ’TEC). Other than last year’s Christmas special and a panel or four of Countdown has she appeared anywhere yet? Has Batman met her yet? Has Barbara Gordon?

Every time a completely irrelevant fill-in appears in Batman or Detective Comics, every time a Bat- event like “The Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul” or Gotham Underground is announced, I can’t help but wonder why DC is literally sitting on a more relevant, more interesting and more eagerly anticipated Bat-related story.

The only conclusion I can come up with is that the fact that Batwoman is a lesbian is apparently a bigger deal than DiDio’s words seem to indicate, and that people within the company hierarchy are of very different opinions on what’s appropriate for a member of the Bat-family.

(I don’t think the company as a whole, or DiDio, are necessarily homophobic, or worried about being perceived negatively by homophobes. Lesbian character Montoya has a current miniseries, gay character Midnighter has an ongoing in the WildStorm imprint, and gay man Piper plays a role in Countdown. On the other hand, Manhunter, which had gay characters in its supporting cast, isn’t being published any longer, but readers were publicly assured it wasn’t cancelled, gay Superman analogue Apollo was pointedly made into a Ray analogue in Countdown: Arena, and Countdown is full of some pretty clumsy gay jokes).

It does seem like an instance of leeriness of a gay character trumping a good business decision though. Surely a Batwoman comic or event is going to outsell, oh, at least half of the books DC is publishing now, and be met with more interest than Batman fighting the Scarecrow for the 456th time.


9.) Apparently, one of the most labor-intensive parts of the series was Booster Gold’s death in week fifteen, as multiple drafts were done as the writers tried to work out a way to make the death look final, from the presence of a corpse to Booster’s last words. Waid originally wrote him dying while making fun of Supernova, saying things like, “Look at me, I’ve saving the day, I’m Supernova!” The others talked him away from that as being a little too big of a clue. They were right. What sold the death the most to me was that it was a heroic death. If a hero dies in an unheroic way, you know they’re coming back—and even when they do die a heroic one, they’re still probably coming back sooner or later anyway (See Hal Jordan, Ice, Oliver Queen and Jason Todd).

Also, in Giffen’s lay-outs, Booster Gold’s body was ripped in half by the explosion. That’s gotta be Geoff Johns’ idea.


10.) Abraham Lincoln really was one of Booster Gold’s pallbearers. According to Waid, Wacker chose the pallbearers, and one was “yes, Abraham Lincoln (from—my hand to God—an unpublished Justice League story I once wrote for Steve on a dare).” Now that’s a story I’d really like to read. Forget Four Horsemen and Crime Bible, can we get 52 Aftermath: The Abraham Lincoln Justice League Story Mark Waid Wrote on a Dare? I’d buy one.

I wonder if Waid was referring to the Lincoln story he wrote from the never released Elseworlds 80-Page Giant? A book that was pulped because of the concerns that Kyle Baker’s Super-Baby story would have kids microwaving babies or something like that. It was later published in one of the Bizarro Comics anthologies, anyway.

Font of information Wikipedia has a breakdown of the contents, including a story by Waid and EDILW favorite Ty Templeton entitled “Superman in President Abraham (Brainiac) Lincoln Vs. Clark Kent, Mentallo” in which baby Kal-El’s rocket is discovered by the Booth family.

Or did Waid write two crazy-ass Lincoln stories?


11.) The Ross-designed Batgirl isn’t the only Bat-story that never came to pass referred to in this series of trades. Rucka talks about an unrealized plan during his time on Detective Comics, near the very end of Denny O’Neil’s era as the character’s chief shepherd, which was focused on “moving Batman away from the dour-faced humorless vigilante.” Says Rucka, “There had even been a plan to do so, and a way to bring it to pass, but a change in group editors scuttled that, and, shortly after, scuttled my own participation in all things Batman, at least for the time being.”

I wonder what the plan for that was? The one DC went with was apparently to rejigger the universe so that Batman did catch his parents’ killer, apparently retconning away some of his dour-faced humorless-ness (I guess; I don’t think this has been addressed in any stories at all yet, but it’s specifically referred to in Infinite Crisis as an element of the rejiggering), plus have him take a year-long vacation and have the darkness cut out of him by the ten-eyed surgeons.


12.) Waid refers to Plastic Man’s son Offspring as being a character he created “with Frank Quitely ten years ago for a story from which, I swear to you, he was the only good thing to emerge.”

That issue with Quitely was great, but it’s interesting that Waid won’t even say the words “The Kingdom” and that he’s so down on it, too. Because some pretty significant things came out of that event, including the concept of Hypertime (apparently since forgotten, and only really touched upon in the pages of Superboy and JLA/Avengers anyway), the idea that The Trinity were the lone holders of its secret existence (and a deputized Superboy), and the grown up version of the Trinity’s son.

I remember at the time, reading interviews with Morrison and Waid trying to explain exactly what Hypertime was, and Morrison saying that to truly explain it, he’d have to do a big, Cisis-like miniseries entitled Professor Morrison Explains It All. So I’m assuming Final Crisis is a story that Morrison’s been wanting to tell in some form for ten years now.

Oh, and Funnybook Babylon has uncovered a Morrison interview from 2002 in which talks about Hypertime and what sounds like Morrison’s plans for Final Crisis.


13.) Giffen hated Osiris, quite passionately. In fact, he hated him so much that one of the gag sketches he would occasionally do prefigured the fate the writers had planned for Osiris—it was three panels of Sobek looking upon Osiris and imagining him as a giant dancing roast chicken, then calling some kind of counselor on the phone.

A few issues later, Giffen’s afterword described the Osiris chomping and his own feelings for O. thusly—“I was coming off one of the more satisfying sequences in the series, the death of that annoying little twit Osiris (I HATED that kid!) and was up for more mayhem.”


14.) Originally Veronica Cale was supposed to be killed by Black Adam. That scene where he walks right past her on Oolong Island without even glancing at her? In the original script, Adam smooshed her there. Rucka had to argue for keeping her alive. I’m glad he won that argument. It’s a neat little scene and while she hasn’t been used to much effect since (I didn’t care for the issues of Giffen and Ollife’s Four Horseman mini I’ve read), Wonder Woman needs all the rogues she can get.


15.) Rucka pulls no punches in discussing the botched Wonder Woman relaunch.

Earlier Michael Siglain discusses the fact that though the 52 creators knew exactly where Batman and Superman spent the missing year (Having the incoming Batman writer and incoming Action Comics co-writer on the team), they weren’t sure where Wonder Woman was, and no one at DC could give them a straight answer, which is why she ended up getting only a few Nanda Parbat appearances at the end of the year’s worth of issues.

Rucka attacks the Allan Heinberg spearheaded and DC editorial OK-ed new direction more fiercely:

The Wonder Woman resolve bothered me—I think it was Grant who wrote it specifically—and to this day still doesn’t sit right with me. While Bruce got most of the year to define and then to “solve” his dilemma, Diana was releaged to three appearances in the course of two weeks, and I think that Rama Kushna telling her that her whole problem is that she’s “not human enough” is garbage. It’s reductive and it’s simplistic, and it was, in my opinion, unworthy of the character.

I was, clearly, in a minority, as her entire relaunch was based on this premise.

Heh. “Garbage.” “Reductive.” “Simplistic.” “Unworthy of the character.” And this is Rucka talking about the new direction in a DC comic book! Could you imagine what he’d have to say of it if you were alone with him in a bar after he’s had a couple of beers?

And, though he may have been in the minority at DC, I think that state of the Wonder Woman franchise post-Infinite Crisis as opposed to pre-Infinite Crisis will show that he was right.


16.) According to Waid, they spent a full week deciding whether Mr. Mind should still be wearing his little glasses post-metamorphisis. I think they made the right decision. Clearly his glasses would have fallen off his head when he transformed, given how big his head got and the new shape it assumed. Besides, his new form should have perfect eyesight, shouldn’t it?