Stephanie Brown coming to the New 52U, convention questions about Cassandra Cain expected to double.

News from New York Comic Con! Stephanie Brown, aka The Spoiler, aka Robin IV, aka Batgirl III, is making her New 52 debut in the rather goofily-entitled, Scott Snyder-showran Batman Eternal! If you like the character, this is either great news (she is no longer non-existent in The New 52U) or terrible news (I know when I've seen some favorite DC characters of mine re-introduced into The New 52 so far, my thought process has generally been something along the lines of, "Oh cool, it' s Captain Marv---AAAAH!").

There's been no revelation of what, exactly, Stephanie Brown will be wearing or what she'll look like, but the few articles I've read have said she'll most likely be appearing in her Spoiler identity (although with Damian Wayne dead and Robin III Tim Drake's superheroic identity retconned so that he was always "Red Robin" and never [just] Robin, there does seem to be an opening for a new Robin).

As for the costume, I assume it will look a lot like her original duds, maybe with more black or a darker purple, and certainly with visible seams, armor plating, treads on her boots and fussily detailed gloves. You know, New 52 (If she's first appearing in issue #3, and Jason Fabok is drawing the first story arc, he'll be the first to draw her in a story, but that doesn't necessarily mean he'll be designing her).

So why did I post the above picture, of a Spoiler costume designed by the great Dean Trippe a few years back? Oh, just because I love that costume, and the way it cleverly yet organically blends her Spoiler and Robin costumes together (Her Batgirl costume was fairly awful, her Spoiler costume not so great unless Damion Scott or Jeff Parker were drawing it and her Robin costume was just Tim Drake's with a longer shirt to act as a mini-dress; that Trippe costume is the best she's ever looked, if you ask me. And you didn't. But I'm answering anyway).

I've said this before—long before the New 52 was announced—but Trippe is such a good designer, and so adept at designing costumes for DC's teen superheroes, that I wish DC would have hired him in some Re-Design All Our Teen Heroes capacity.

Now, they obviously went with Jim Lee, a handful of his WildStorm cohorts and/or whatever artists happened to be drawing whatever title was in question when they redesigned the costumes of their entire universe. If I were in charge, I probably would have went to Darwyn Cooke* and asked him to re-design much of the DC Universe, coming up with costumes that were instantly recognizable to anyone who had ever heard of heroes like Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel, but more streamlined, and taking this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to re-tweak them into "ultimate" costumes. And then I would have looked to folks with similar abilities and sensibilities to design different corners of the DCU, asking Trippe to take on the younger heroes, from Nightwing own down (It goes without saying that I would not have condensed the entire history of the DC Universe into five years, so there would actually still be a bunch of different superheroes of various ages running around).


*And if I were the Boss of All DC and was in charge of the New 52-boot, and Cooke said no, I probably would have next asked Bruce Timm, and then maybe Frank Miller (Shut up there are some totally awesome costumes in Dark Knight Strikes Again I don't care what you say!) and/or Alex Ross. I'm actually surprised they didn't ask Alex Ross, given how much everyone, the current DCU regime included, have loved so many of his designs from Kingdom Come, importing the likes of Red Robin, Zatara, Offspring, Wildcat, Gog and others into the DCU in the years between Infinite Crisis and The New 52-boot. I suspect there's some hard feelings somewhere, as Ross has been notably absent from DC for so long, but who knows. 

Meanwhile, at Robot 6...

I've only got one piece of writing up at places that aren't EDILW this week, but it deals with maybe the greatest thing I've seen with the words "DC" on the cover in years, a book that could hardly be more directly targeted towards me personally if it had a big, fat "Dedicated to J. Caleb Mozzocco, The Most Radical Dude Who Ever Lived" on the first page: The DC Super-Pets Character Encyclopedia by artist Art Baltazaar, writer Steve Korte and foreword-writer Geoff Johns.  You can read my piece on it at Robot 6, where you'll see profiles of about ten more of the 200+ pets and animal characters detailed in the book.

Since I don't have any other Caleb-writing to link to at the moment, let me instead link to a few things of note that I read in the last 24 hours or so.

First, here's too-infrequent-comics-critic, outspoken retailer advocate and guy who sells comic books Brian Hibbs on DC's Villains Month, listing the numbers of the special $3.99, 3D-ish cover-bearing issues that the publisher printed along with the estimated sales numbers of the last issues of each title they printed before them.

Here's my favorite bit:

JUSTICE LEAGUE #23: 104k (I’m going to round from here on, look to those links in previous paragraph for “real” numbers)

Darkseid: 78k

Secret Society: 44k

Lobo: 36k

Dial E: 26k

Those last two are insane, as the 2D VERSION HAS HIGHER ORDERS FILLED — 39k on Lobo, and 34k on Dial E. DIAL H #15 (the August issue) was 11k.

The "Dial E" issue of Justice League always intrigued me because it seemed almost impossible for a retailer to guess how to order on it: It was technically an issue of Justice League, one of the publisher's best-selling titles, but it was actually more like an epilogue issue of Dial H, one of the publisher's worst-selling (and already canceled) titles. Apparently, DC had no idea how many issues of such a weird hybrid book people might want either...?

If you care about this sort of thing, do read the whole column, as it seems to reveal a bit about what DC thinks of its own line in terms of what they think is or will be popular.

Given the number of Villains Month issues that were printed at lower levels than August's order, it seems like DC expected to sell fewer issues rather than more, which isn't even logical; if they really expected to sell fewer issues, than they probably wouldn't have done it in the first place (the only other benefit it offered was giving regular creative teams a month off), and they certainly wouldn't have done it in the way they did, choosing to publish multiple issues of the most popular titles like the main Batman books and Green Lantern rather than lower-selling spin-off books like Batgirl, Green Lantern: New Guardians and so on.

The more logical explanation, one that a commenter brings up, is that DC ordered fewer copies on purpose, knowing all along they could and would publish the 2D versions to meet the demand they were intentionally not meeting. Why? To turn the books into collectibles and spark a early-nineties like boom of speculation, and the attendant attention and coverage that would come with it. (I do think there's some evidence that DC wanted this to be the case, although I don't see any real long-term benefit to it, and it seems like one of those things that ultimately does more harm than good).

Hibbs rejects the notion though, as he doesn't want to cast sinister motives on the publisher when "incompetence" seems to explain it just as easily.

I don't know. The whole thing is weird—not as weird as the announced but ultimately aborted WTF? Certified month, but close!—and the more you learn, the more weird it becomes.

If I were DC Comics,  I don't know what I'd find the more troubling accusation: That I was incompetent or that I was manipulating the market and deceiving partners for my own benefit. As a business, I suppose the latter is actually a better thing to be, isn't it?

As for future DC projects, two of note were announced at the New York Comic Con, apparently.

First, the current, second volume of Detective Comics will soon hit its twenty-seventh issue, which is a magic number for the series, given that Batman first appeared in the original volume's twenty-seventh issue. They're going to have a bunch of different Bat-creators from various eras contribute to the new Detective Comics #27, including EDILW-favorite Kelley Jones. But where's Norm Breyfogle? I'm sorry, I meant WHERE'S NORM BREYFOGLE?!

The issue will introduce the new creative team of Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato, The New 52 Flash creative team, which explains why those guys are leaving The Flash after so long (In The New 52, where bold, new eras can last as few as a single issue, and some writers' runs on titles literally end before they begin, Manapul and Buccellato's Flash run was the equivalent of a five-year run in the old days).

I can't imagine the gig will be all that terribly creatively satisfying for the pir, given the fact that TEC is clearly the B-title and Scott Sndyer and Greg Capullo have already done so much to re-create Batman, his allies and enemies and his city that they won't be able to create as much as they did with their rebooted Flash. On the other hand, they'll be making a lot more in royalties, so good for them.

The bigger Bat-news is that DC is going to launch their first new 52-issue weekly series in a few years, a Batman book featuring Scott Snyder as the head-writer and different artists drawing different arcs. It will be entitled Batman Eternal for some reason, probably because no one at the publisher seems to be able to think of titles that aren't dumb anymore (This is right up there with Superman Unchained, right?).

DC has tried a couple of different methods when it came to creating their weeklies, never repeating the same method twice.

The original 52-issue weekly series, 52, featured a "rock band" approach to the writing, with four writers writing everything together-ish. And then a single artist handled layouts and different artists drawing different parts of the books, usually rather willy-nilly. That was their best-written weekly book, and neither the best nor the worst-looking book (I think we all cut the art a lot of slack on 52; partly because the writing was so damn good and partly because it was such a new format).

That was followed by Countdown, perhaps the nadir of DC Comics' entire publishing history (From what relatively little I managed to read; tellingly, I've never had any interest in reading the rest of it in trades, which, remember, are absolutely free to borrow from libraries). For that one, they used a TV model, with a "showrunner" writer plotting the story, a rotating team of writers handling the scripts and the art drawn by right-handed chimpanzees that were only allowed to draw with their left hands (If I recall correctly; it's been a while).

And then there was Trinity, which featured a single writer and just a handful of artists, with one of them—Mark Bagley—pencilling the majority of each issue, with back-up features featuring art by Scott McDaniel and...I don't know, maybe someone else too...? Or was it all just Bagley, McDaniel and inkers? All I remember are Bagley and McDaniel. That one featured the best and (obviously) most consistent art, and told a pretty great story that only suffered from being written by one great comics writer (Kurt Busiek) rather than four (Grant Morrison, Mark Waid, Greg Rucka and Geoff Johns), as was the case with 52.

Batman Forever Eternal will follow the least successful of those three writing models, the showrunner one from Countdown, but this showrunner (Scott Snyder) will be one much more engaged and familiar with the setting and cast the book is featuring, so hopefully it will work out much better than it did on Countdown.

Using a single artist for distinct story arcs is a pretty good idea, and seems to be what Amazing Spider-Man was doing early in its weekly-ish phase, and as long as the creators have enough lead-time on the book, this sure sounds like it could be closer to a Trinity or a localized 52 than a Countdown.

I do hope it does well though, as the New 52 could use a new 52, complete with revised, two-page origins for all the characters. Of course, before DC can really do that, it has to figure out its own rebooted continuity, and that still seems to be very much a work in progress.

(links + con reax)

Um, I think I have one, maybe two positive things to say this week...

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Comics writer and Iranian-American Dara Naraghi didn’t care for the opening of Aquaman #7 either, but instead of simply making a smart remark in passing like some people, he penned a nice, reasonable open letter to writer Geoff Johns, noting his disappointment in seeing a new Iranian hero introduced just to be killed off immediately.

Naturally the anonymous a-holes of the Internet responded with ignorance and racism when offering their unsolicited opinions.

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Would it have been better if it was a white dude who got killed in that same scene of Aquman #7? I think, plot-wise, it would still be boring and reductive, simply because I think it's lame to create characters just to kill them; in this instance, they are being killed to a) show that the villain is strong and mean, which can be accomplished in other ways and b) because that's how this particular story always goes.

There are more interesting, original and creative ways to demonstrate the strength and villainy of your villain or tell this same sort of story. I think it was rather eye-rolling in this instance because the villain was Black Manta, who Johns has been approaching with the same defensiveness that he's approached Aquaman, and thus the comic book seems to have a chip on its shoulder regarding its readers and how serious they take the characters.

I don't know. I thought Alex Ross and company did a fine job of making Black Manta seem like a badass in Justie without a scene in which the character not only butchers someone, or cleans them like a fish, I guess would be Manta's preferred metaphor, but also gives a little speech about how he's going to track down the victim's family and kids and do the same to them.

I suppose we will see a little bit more of that particular hero, as I have to imagine there will be flashback scenes explaining who she and her team are and what they have to do with Aquaman and Black Manta, but introducing a character just to kill them just seems trite and lazy, and the fact that it was a character from such an under-represented ethnic group in the DCU during a time when so many people in our country are calling for war against Iran only makes the whole scene seem worse.

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Reading Dara's letter I was wracking my memory to think of an Iranian superhero in the DCU, as it seems like there had to be one, but the only one I could come up with was Sirocco, a speedster that Kurt Busiek created in his great, but too-short, run on Superman. I can't recall if Sirocco died or not; I think he died in a possible future that Arion recruited Superman to help prevent, but I don't recall if he died "for real" or not...

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I...I have no idea who would win this particular battle.

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Respect for Darwyn Cooke dropping... dropping…

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(By the way, if you're one of the dudes writing two of the stupid things and drawing one of 'em, how can you be "at a distance" from them, exactly...?)

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(Also, dude has a much different understanding of the expression "kicking and screaming" than I do if he called Dan DiDio back and asked if he could do a book after all)

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I try to do these chronologically as they occur in space and time, but I'm moving this up because it has to do with Before Watchmen: Please enjoy David Brothers taking down the Before Watchmen panel at C2E2.

Did you know that Dan DiDio expected a "more negative reaction" than the one he got (By my count, one person who writes about comics on the Internet under his or her real name was positive about the project), and that everyone DiDio talked to about the project had their concerns melt when they heard about all of the sub-par (my word, not his) talents involved with the Before Watchmen.

Dude, I can't tell you how many times I heard people at the comic shops say, "I thought Before Watchmen was a practically heretical concept, and then I heard Len Wein is writing a back-up story! Can you believe it? They got Len Wein! And the guy who wrote those awful Superman and Wonder Woman and Red Circle comics that no one read and no one, not even the writer himself, liked! No one can top Alan Moore, of course, but they got the six or seven next best things to Alan Moore! They even got the guy who wrote the six-part story in Superman Confidential #1-5 and #11!"

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I asked for it, and I got it. Apparently the Game of Thrones graphic novel adaptation isn’t very good, and frustratingly so.

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Oh wow, this sure is unfortunate…I was really looking forward to that collection, but that post sure puts a damper on my enthusiasm.

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DC Women Kicking Ass caught that while the majority of the characters being featured in the just-announced National Comics series are female, all the creators are (surprise!) male (Unless you count Fiona Staples' contribution of one of the four covers).

The sharp-eyed observer of DC Comics’ female characters and creators also noticed that Amanda Conner isn’t just drawing the Darwyn Cooke-written Before Watchmen: Silk Spectre miniseries, but, as of the second issue at least, she is also co-writing it, increasing her culpability!

Tom Spurgeon noted that National Comics seems like a good way to get characters who might make for good licensing prospects in other media into comics briefly (you only need one issue for a media packet to give to producers, right?), without having to try and maintain comic books featuring them.

That sounds about right. It would certainly explain why the premise of the Kid Eternity issue sounds like a TV show pitch more than a awesome comic about a dead kid, his guardian angel and his power to resurrect the dead.

The Looker issue is interesting in that they're using a much later permutation of the character—she wasn't conceived in 1985 as a vampire, but became one about a decade later in the second volume of the series. Of course, her being a vampire probably explains why there's going to be a Looker solo comic at all.

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Chris Butcher has a point in parts of this post, and there’s no arguing with his calls for better online discourse or grown-ups treating one another as grown-ups, but I disagree that a relatively high-ranking employee at Marvel shouldn't get all kinds of shit from people regarding Marvel being shitty.

If you work for a corporation, if you take money fromr that corporation, you're responsible for that corporation's actions. Even if you’re just the tiniest part of that corporation, you’re still a part of it.

And if you disagree with the actions of that corporation if you think it's unfair that you share in the blame of that corporation's actions, quit and get another fucking job.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the economy sucks, Marvel's one of the biggest company's in the American comic book industry—I don't care. That's a choice C.B. Cebulski or whoever else makes: Work for a company that does shitty things and share in the guilt and/or blame, or get a different job for a company you don’t think is shitty, and live a (relatively) guilt and blame free life.

Of course, that goes for consumers, too. If you don’t like what a company does, then you really should purchase goods or services from that company, and thus enable them to continue doing those things you don’t like. I still give Marvel $3-$9 a month, so I too share some responsibility in the shitty things they do.

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I'm pretty confident that AMC's gonna find out that it's the zombies, not the Robert Kirkman, that makes their Walking Dead show so popular, but congratulations to Kirkman: his new book that looks like it was just a pitch for a TV show is apparently being developed as a TV show. (The bad news? This will only encourage more shitty comics that are just TV show pitches being packaged as comics).

If AMC had to adapt another Kirkman-related comic to television, I woulda preferred it be Super-Dinosaur, as that has a dinosaur in it.

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Reminder: Eric Stephenson is a hell of a blogger. He makes an extremely convincing case that there's actually a lot of money in producing new comics featuring new characters and concepts, backing up his argument with a strong list of examples.

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Tim O'Neil's "Tao of..." pieces on some Avengers characters are pretty great. Here's his "Tao of Iron Man" piece, and here's his "Tao of Hawkeye."

I imagine he'll be getting into Thor, Captain America and some of the other characters featured prominently in the upcoming Avengers film later, as he talks at great length about the core of those characters and how their film versions reflect their comics versions.

The Hawkeye piece was of particular interest to me, as I never really liked the character much, having never really been exposed to him at any great length before (In the very first Avengers comic I ever read, Brian Michael Bendis killed Hawkeye off, and the next two dozen or so times I read a comic featuring Hawkeye, he was being written by Bendis, so his characterization was basically just A Guy In A Bendis Comic). O'Neil boils him down to two essential traits: 1) he's not Green Arrow and 2) he's an asshole.

He then explains how both of those things are true, and he sold me.

Interestingly enough, though, Green Arrow is also kind of an asshole, so that means Hawkeye and Green Arrow are both assholes, but completely different kids of assholes.

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(Hey, that last sentence had "asshole" in it three times; that is enough times that the word is starting to sound funny and unnatural to me. I am going to to take a break and go sit in a chair and just say "asshole" over and over again quietly to myself until it sounds like gibberish)

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DC PR is now referring to the people making their Before Watchmen widgets as "iconoclastic," as in "Among the iconoclastic Before Watchmen creators attending C2E2 will be..."

I need to go check something.

Yes, the word "iconoclastic" still means "characterized by attack on established beliefs or institutions" like I thought it did.

I guess that's one way to refer to a group of creators doing something as shitty and morally dubious as exploiting the work of a giant in your medium for a great deal of money on behalf of a corporation, despite the pleas of that giant in your medium not to do it.

In this case, "the institution" is apparently Alan Moore, and the freelancers working for Warner Brothers/DC Comics are the iconoclasts, but it sure is hard jamming these particular players into that particular rhetorical structure.

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I appreciate hyperbole as much as anyone, but calling any crossover involving Danger Girl the "crossover of the century" is going way too far.

JLA/Avengers was this century too, guys.

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I feel weird that the announcement of a Battle Beasts comic got me temporarily excited, but what are you going to do? Such is the power of nostalgia.

I can't actually imagine how that comic will go, since that was one of the few toylines from my childhood that didn't spawn a cartoon to help sell the toys to me and my fellow grade-school boys, nor did it come with little comics explaining who was who and what was what.

I just remember thinking the designs were super-cool, and I folded them into the epic battles I staged with my friends using an assemblage of Transformers, G.I. Joes and He-Man guys and whatever other action figures happened to be in the respective toy boxes.

I hope the deer with the drill hand shows up in the comic. I liked the deer with the drill hand.

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At this weekend's big comics convention, DC announced some digital-first comics I won't read digitally because I am a frightened old man (But I imagine "Digital-first" means "paper-second," so maybe I'll read them on paper later).

One of these new comics is a Batman comic, and they've announced some fairly strong contributors to it. I was most surprised to see "Jeff Parker and Gabriel Hardman," because I can't believe those two guys aren't Marvel exclusive—especially Parker.

And if they're not Marve exclusive, why on Earth wasn't Jeff Parker writing one of "The New 52" last fall...?

The other is Ame-Comi Girls, which is apparently based on the line of scantily-clad, manga-style statues featuring reworked versions of familiar DC superheroines.

They've announced the first five stars and creative teams, including artists I like a lot Ted Naifeh, Sanford Green and Amanda Conner, at least two of which don't work in anything even faintly resembling a manga style.

I hope these things are rated T+, if not M, and focus on the prurient aspects of barely-dressed super-girls, rather than serving simply as standard DCU fare in which the characters wear different costumes. If you've ever seen one of those statues, you know the two selling points are 1) sexiness and 2) manga-style, so I would hope that's the focus of these stories, although they're all being written by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti instead of, say, Adam Warren, so I'm not holding out much hope.

It would be great if they could establish this as a sort of reservation for all the cheesecakey pin-uppery and inappapropriate festishization of the DCU heroines, a place for the creators to get it out of their system, and the fans who want it to get it, without mucking up the supposedly mass-audience focused DCU books.

So, for example, had this existed a few months ago, the version of Starfire that appeared in Red Hood and the Outlaws could have appeared here, and the DCU Starfire could have resembled something between the George Perez/Marv Wolfman version and the one on Cartoon Network's Teen Titans.

I can hope, of course, but, as with the "New 52" initiative, it looks like DC decided to go with who they already had around (Palmiotti and Gray) instead of someone new who happened to be more expert in a particular field).

If you read the piece in the The Beat, the picture seems particularly glum, as Heidi MacDonald says Palmoitti promised something closer to his run on Power Girl than the statues that inspired the series, and he notes that they're shooting for the teenage girl market which, okay, teenage girls (used to) really dig manga, but this brand is focused on selling really expensive nonsense to male perverts so, um, well, good luck gang!

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So Marvel is going to do a Hawkeye series. That's what last week's teaser image that said "Coming Soon" that had purple and a phallic symbol in it was teasing (And not, as Abhay reported for The Comics Journal, a comic about Galactus' penis).

It seems like they just tried a Hawkeye series (2010's Hawkeye & Mockingbird lasted six issues). The Matt Fraction and David Aja team did a pretty good job launching an Immortal Iron Fist series, although they didn’t stick around long, and therefore neither did the title, which lasted 27 issues.

I wonder how a Hawkeye book will do in the long run, especially after having just read O’Neil’s piece on Hawkeye (linked to above), which dealt at length with the fact that Hawkeye is a great character to have in team books, but not the sort of character that really works on his own, which is why he’s never sustained a solo title.

The character should have a pretty high profile this summer what with being one-seventh of the Avengers line-up in the movie, but then, none of the Marvels seem to benefit much from movies, and Black Widow’s title that came on the heels of Iron Man 2 only lasted eight issues.

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Finally: Fuck Yeah Mystery Science Theater Beatdown!

I hope he’s still going, because while that’s an awesome list, I found my self poring over it again and again to see if it included this or that person or monster. I didn't see any Killer Shrews, for example. (Via 4thletter)

This week's link post, now fortified with NYCC announcement reactions

The full Avengers trailer has debuted. Weirdly, I found myself more excited about that teaser trailer that featured nothing other than Sam Jackson reading that bit about there coming a day, a day unlike any other, when Earth's mightiest heroes blah blah blah...than I was by this one, although I imagine any truly show-stopping stuff will be saved for a while, and the object of this particular trailer was just to show us the characters from different movies in the same scenes (This is going to be the first super-team movie to really be the film equivalent of a super-team comic, in that the characters all have their own movies, in the same way that the characters in the Avengers comics all had their own comics first too).

Still, this looks pretty good, and my only concern at this very early point are that Robert Downey Jr.'s going to blow everyone else out of every scene he shares, and that the movie could use a Wasp or Black Panther to de-whiteguyify the line-up a bit. Maybe for the sequel.

The only villain I noticed was Loki, but presumably the Cosmic Cube and Red Skull will play a part as well...? Or will those plot points show up in Captain America 2: Batroc Begins...?

Well I'm also slightly concerned about how terrible that song playing over the trailer is, but hopefully that won't be in the movie itself.


Somewhat surprisingly, I find myself just as excited about this Disney/Marvel-related movie. Perhaps because it's even more imminent...?


Archie Comics is one again reviving their old "Red Circle" superhero characters, most recently seen in a badly bumbled attempt to integrate them into the DC Universe spearheaded by writer J. Michael Straczynski.

I'd be much, much, much more likely to read the new Archie versions than those recent DC versions, based simply on the single image Archie has released so far, which shows the characters with infinitely better costume designs than the recent DC ones (Check out the new Archie Web, for example, and compare it to DC's Web). Also, the Archie superheroes are much less likely to be as depraved and decadent as the heroes of the DCU.

That said, it looks like Archie's version will be digital-only, which means I won't ever actually read them, because I am old and like to read comics printed on paper. Perhaps if there's enough online interest, print copies or trades will eventually come along.


Here is Marc-Oliver Frisch's monthly analysis of DC's comics sales for The Beat, updated for August, the month that included the release of Justice League #1, the first book of DC's "New 52" reboot-a-launch, by the publisher's chief creative officer (and most popular writer) and co-publisher (and most popular artist).

When looking at that number, there are a whole lot of caveats to keep in mind, including the number of reprints and re-orders and, most especially, that these are all estimates since the big publishers don't ever really release the real numbers, presumably because doing so would just make everyone sad, by reminding them that there's not a whole lot of difference between the North American comic book industry and the North American poetry industry, save for the former having many more lucrative licensing opportunities.

Even still, my first thought when seeing the number (185,766) and noting that it is substantially less than that associated with 2006's Justice League of America #1 by writer Brad Meltzer and a guy who can't even draw (212,581) was...wait, I think I took a note at the time....yes, here it is: "HOLY SHIT, the relaunch was LESS a big deal than Meltzer's launch, despite having JIM FUCKING LEE and an UNPRECEDENTED PR push associated with it?!"

I can't remember the last time DC got more mainstream press (the death of Superman story, probably), and I don't think they've ever gotten more mainstream press as a result of their own actively courting it, so the fact that retailers only ordered about 190,000 copies of JL #1, as opposed to how many they ordered of that awful Brad Meltzer #1? Wow.

Now, the difference may have somethng to do with the way the market is now, but, if that's the case, it shows the current market being pretty well fucked, as far as I can tell (Even if that's not the full and final number, shouldn't Geoff Johns + Jim Lee + Justice League + historical reboot/relaunch + huge PR push equal a number at least two times as big as the one for The Novelist Who Wrote The Rape Comic + The Artist Who Only Draws Butts + The Justice League? If not three or four times as big?)

That number also doesn't reflect digital sales, although I think it's safe to assume that the numbers aren't that big, beause if they were—like, if they had doubled or tripled or quadrupled the number of print sales, surely DC would crow about that. Until DC releases numbers, logic dictates they must be so small as to be insignificant.

Here's Frisch on the relatively disappointing nature of the initial numbers on the initial book: "The farther you go back beyond the last two years, however — and you don’t actually have to go back that far — the clearer it becomes that this isn’t remotely close to being game-changer territory. Bluntly, these are not numbers that suggest that the comic-book direct market is suddenly going to be brimming again with all-new customers eager to spend money."


—Of course, on the other hand, when you add 'em all up, that number looks a bit more impressive...


Slate took the opportunity of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's religion briefly becoming an issue in the Republican primary again to check in with Mike Allred on the progress of his adaptation of The Book of Mormon, The Golden Plates. I was very excited about the project when it initially began, not only because it was a new project from one of my favorite artists, but also because I had tried reading the The Book of Mormonitself a few years earlier during college, but found it too difficult a slog, and I had to give up.

Nevertheless, I apparently lost track of Allred's series, because I bought and read the first volume, but forgot about it...so much so that I hadn't even realized he had to abandon it before completion.

The interview makes for a pretty interesting read:

Slate: You did a lot of historical and geographical research before beginning The Golden Plates. Were you at all worried about disproving what you believed to be true?

Allred: No. My beliefs are mostly hopes. Anyone can argue the truth of anything and be unswayable, given the strength of their convictions or degree of stubbornness. Beyond that, the Book of Mormon is fascinating on any level, fact or fiction. If true, we know that God exists, there is life after death, and life has an eternal meaning. If fiction, it’s a phenomenal story.

Wow. That's an extremely succinct and eloquent distillation of the essence of faith. It reminded me of Pascal's Wager, to a certain extent.

But wait, if Allred is Mormon, does that mean he will automatically support Romney should Romney earn the nomination (and, personally, I'd be shocked if anyone could beat him to it). Slate asks for Allred's opinion on whether a Mormon like Romney is electable, and he answers thusly:

It looks like he has a pretty good shot, even though I won’t be voting for him...In any case, it’s unlikely that anyone will keep me from voting for Barack Obama again. I’ve yet to see any politician in my lifetime show more dignity and have a greater desire to truly bring people together. A true Christian. It’s been stunning to hear the recent debates on what is Christian and who is Christian. Simple math in my book: Christ is love. If you study his teachings and try to live them, who is to judge?

Amen.


—Speaking of Slate, this Michael Agger article entitled "Use the force, Daddy!": A guide to the Clone Wars for parents of inquisitive children" was pretty fun. I pretty much permanently checked out of the Star Wars universe after that fucking terrible CGI Star Wars: Clone Wars movie that dropped in August of 2008 and set-up the current Clone Wars TV show. The Slate piece is an attempt to give readers an at least conversational familiarity with that period of the Star Wars saga, set after Episode II and the excellent Star Wars: Clone Wars traditionally animated "micro-series", but before Episode III. It does its job admirably, and is kind of funny to boot.


—Lots of interesting points in Tom Spurgeon's post-September "Nine Thoughts On Advantages DC Comics May Have Moving Forward" post, particularly regarding DC having a swell opportunity to lure creators from Marvel (Like, if you're laboring on that publisher's lower-tier titles, you're probably never gonna get to write an issue of Bendisvengers until Brian Michael Bendis retires, but Justice League is going to need some fill-in issues in the can for when Lee inevitably falls behind). That, and the mildly depressing thought that DC may publish pure garbage no one who writes about comics will actually like, and that that's not necessarily a bad thing for the company, business-wise. In fact, that may quite probably lead to better comics coverage—Spurgeon's not super-passionate about things like Supermans' marriage or the "best" version of Wonder Woman (aside from his oft-expressed love of Wonder Tot, I guess) or whether Aquaman is better off cleanshaven or with a beard, and yet he covers the company super-well. If more writers-about-comics become alienated from the characters by their awful, awful stories, than those writers might cover the industry and business of comics in a less-biased fashion.


—Check out this NSFW Vice story! Why? Hellen Jo art! Girls! Masturbation! Three of my favorite things! (Via Sean T. Collins, that degenerate pervert)


—Reminder: Hellen Jo's Jin & Jam is awesome.


—Chris Sims is still funny (That Batman image always cracks me up, no matter what he happens to be furiously writing on that parchment while dripping sweat)


—NYCC was this weekend, and I did not attend, as NYCC took place in New York City again, rather than in my living room, and I have a much easier time making it to events that occur in the latter locale than the former. Tom Spurgeon has his usual accrual of links to posts and articles on the con here, which makes for a good one-stop shopping place for con news, and Spurgeon also has a post breaking down ten of what he considered the biggest announcements/stories coming out of the convention.


This report on a Superman panel in which details of the next Superman: Earth One graphic novel were revealed made me wonder a bit about what the point of the Earth One graphic novels are now. When the first one was launched, the idea was to present a new audience with a younger, more modern, more easy-to-relate-to version of Superman. Now that DC relaunched their whole superhero line, however, they're publishing two monthly comic books (Superman and Action) featuring a younger, more modern, more easy-to-relate-to version of Superman. In fact, there is no older, less modern, um, harder-to-relate-to version of Superman anymore.

The main distinction between these two version of Superman now seems to be the format in which they're being delivered—a series of original graphic novels vs. a series of monthly comic books.

Is it worth noting that the Earth-One new Superman costume is much closer to the original "old" Superman costume than "The New 52" new Superman costume (the one no one likes)...?

Is it worth noting that the next JSA book is apparently going to be set on Earth-2, which would presumably make the setting of "The New 52" Earth-1 again...which would mean that "New 52" Superman (the, um, "real" Superman) and Earth-One Superman (an alternate, "Imaginary Story"/Elseworlds version of Superman), both exist on different Earth-1s...?

Urrgh. Comics are hard.


I liked the idea of IDW's Infestation crossover series, in which zombies attacked various toys I used to play with as a kid, although I've yet to read it (Was there a trade of the whole shebang yet?). I like the idea of Infestation 2 in which H.P. Lovecraft's public domain space god-monsters attack various toylines I used to play with as a kid, even more. And look, now it included Ninja Turtles!

Oh how I wish IDW priced their comics at $3 a pop...they'd probably have a lock on all my comics-spending money if they did...


I'm excited to hear about one of my favorite writers working on a character who could use his touch, but I have to admit Morrison's discussion of the sexual content in the Golden Age Wonder Woman comics here and in his prose book Supergods seems odd to me.

Yeah, that stuff is all there if you want to see it, but the comics are also completely innocent if you want to see them that way. I think the original Wonder Woman comics were more like fairytales than self-conscious explorations of sexual politics and prurient content.

It's easy to see how the comics could be interpreted as being filled with weird fetishes decades later from a post-Wertham, post-post-modern, ironic point of view, once you know the details of creator William Moulton Marston's professional and personal ife, but taken at face value, on its own terms, in the context of a kids comic from the early 1940's...? I think it basically just reads like a bunch of craziness, that can be seen as deviant sexuality to adults when pulled out of context...but I personally don't find it anything weirder or sexually- or psychologically-concerned in the Golden Age Wonder Woman comics than what one finds in the first 40 years of Batman comics or Silver Age Superman comics.

I do look forward to reading Morrison's take on the character though, if only to see what he comes up with. I like the idea of writers—especially writers of Morrison's stature in the current industry—deciding to tackle characters he finds challenging or didn't really get or like before making an attempt. The industry needs more of that sort of thing...and I imagine more comics writers' own work would benefit from that kind of workout for their creative and craft muscles, instead of simply staying in their comfort zone and writing their imaginary friends, which so often leads to that fan-fiction feeling emanating from the results (Something that is probably inevitable, to a degree, when a writer happens to be a huge fan of the star of the fiction they are writing).


I hope these comics feature the Justice League fighting/teaming up with various General Mills cereal mascots. Like, Batman catching Sonny the Cocoa Puffss cuckoo and putting him in Arkham Asylum, Felix Faust trying to get Lucky the Leprechaun's lucky charms for a spell and so on.

Do note the 1960s line-up of five white guys and a token white girl (without even the token green "person of color"!), and the classic costumes that people recognize, rather than the new ones which people recognize as ugly.


Ann Nocenti writing Green Arrow sure sounds like good news—I especially liked her description of writing single issues as part of a whole in the linked-to article—but it is unfortunate she's starting on issue Green Arrow #7 instead of having started with September's Green Arrow #1. She's the third announced writer for a series that will, by the time her first issue debuts, be just a little over half a year old. Additionally, it would have been nice if Anne Nocenti were the one involved at the beginning and thus the one who decided the what the new Green Arrow for the 21st century might be like, instead of this new version of the character apparently having been created by committee. (Ditto Marc Bernardin coming on to write the just-relaunched Static Shock book; I'm not familiar with most of his work, but I did really like Monster Attack Network).

WIth Nocenti joining DC, that doubles their number of female creators involved with re-creating the entire DCU and its stable of characters for a new generation of new readers from one (1) to two (2).


Hey, there's going to be a Captain Marvel back-up in Justice League...?

Well, you can't argue with the placement...there's no better place for it than the back of a Justice League comic by Geoff Johns and Jim Lee, and it oughta therefore get Cap infront of more readers than anywhere else DC could put the story (I thought it strange that there wasn't a Captain Marvel/Shazam series launched as part of "The New 52," give that character's iconic stature and high recognizability factor, and the fact that he could use some reinvention.

I wonder what Earth it will be set on? If DC is bringing back an old version of the Multiverse, with the JSA on their own parallel world, does that mean the Fawcett characters will go back to their own Earth-S too, or will they stay part of the the "New 52"-iverse in the same way that the Earth-4 Charlton characters and some of the Earth-X Quality characters seem to be doing?

I'm pretty confident in the Geoff Johns/Gary Frank team's abilities. Johns doesn't automatically seem like someone who won't screw up the character, but at his worst, Johns is mediocre, and I'm sure he won't try to reinvent the wheel too drastically a la Judd Winick's rather recent fucking up of the franhise (John's reboot strategy in general seems to be to picking a more-or-less classic or "straight" version of the character, and working his way back to it via streamlining, only with a little more—sometimes too much—bad-ass-itude added. He did pretty well by the character during his JSA run, though, and obviously loves his evil opposite Black Adam.


On the subject of rebooting DC characters, check out this thoughtful piece on Green Lantern John Stewart and how he's changed from his first appearance in the "old" DCU to his first appearance in the new New 52-iverse by Colin Smith.

I always liked pink shirt and green scarf and vest wearing John Stewart better than the retconned Marine sniper John Stewart, but I haven't read the new GL Corps #1.


Marvel is launching a yet another new Avengers series, once again by Brian Michael Bendis, who has launched so many new Avengers series in the past five years that I can't imagine the announcement was met with all that much excitement by fans: New Avengers, Mighty Avengers, Dark Avengers, New Avengers again, Avengers...dimishing returns have got to be setting in at this point, to the extent that announcing anyone other than Bendis on an Avengers title will probably sound more fresh and exciting. Even pairing him with his Ultimate Spider-Man co-creator Mark Bagley brings with it a sesne of been-there, seen-that, as they worked on a few Mighty Avengers arcs together already.

I'm curious if Bendis will be leaving Avengers or New Avengers to make room for this title, or if he'll be writing three different Avengers titles at the same time, which seems kind of insane.

Comic-Con announcement reaction-o-rama!

I did not go to San Diego Comic Con this year, due to my abject poverty and the price associated with traveling from northeast Ohio to the Pacific coast of the United States. That, and also because of my debilitating phobia about flying in an airplane. And of crowds. And of the state of California. And of celebrities. And women. And people in costumes. And Dan DiDio. And the accusing eyes of people at booths as I walk by without buying things from them. And... Well, let's just move on, shall we?

While I did not attend SDCC this year, I did spend an awful lot of time on the Internet reading coverage of the convention. It will not surprise you, given the content of my blog, that one of the subjects I was most interested in was the reception that the crowds would give news of DC's upcoming reboot, relaunch and re-branding efforts, as this was the first big industry convention since they announced the move, which is either the most audacious and ambitious thing the often hidebound company has ever attempted, or the most self-destructively insane (Not that those two things are mutually exclusive, now that I think of it).

A word of warning: If you're as sick of me talking about DC Comics as I suspect many of you are, feel free to scroll down to the later, smaller bullet points. I tried to get all of that business out of the way first, before turning my attention to other announcements.


I’m sure all of the comics news sites covered the “New 52” panel, but the one I read was The Beat’s live-blogging of it (complete with charming live-blogging typos!), so I’ll link to that one.

Tom Spurgeon has noted a couple times this week that the DC panels tend to be “defensive and slightly hostile,” which is one thing that hasn’t really changed (Although why would it? The same folks who have been in charge over the last few years are still in charge of the “new” DCU). While “defensive and slightly hostile,” sounds about right, I probably would have characterized them as passive-aggressive, or even aggressively passive-aggressive.

I guess the panel didn’t deteriorate into a riot, which is good, and it didn’t sound like the entire room was virulently opposed to the new direction, which is obviously a good thing for DC.

Reading the answers and questions really made me kind of sad though, and for the first time since they announced their new direction, I really felt like the “DC Universe” as a shared setting, as a partially autonomous, open source (to a large if select group of people given access) entity was ending. (Which makes the last year or so worth or stories particularly disappointing; if they were ending the DCU, they really oughta done something Crisis On Infinite Earths or JLA Vs. Avengers or bigger to burn it all down with; when COIE reshaped their continuity and cosmology, Alan Moore wrote “Whatever Happened to The Man of Steel?” as the “last” Superman story. This time, we get the JMS-and-committee-created Superman-walking-around story, the title of which I couldn’t even tell you).

Of the new 52, I’ll definitely try out a few issues of Green Lantern, Wonder Woman and Aquaman, the only titles where I’m confident I’ll like the work of the creators and am at least optimistic enough about the new directions that I think they could be good, and I’m sure I’ll read more in trade eventually, some out of affection for the creators and others out of curiosity, but everything in the “New 52” sounds like an Elseworlds or "Imaginary Story" to me.

Now, while no real good can come of me typing up a one-way argument with strangers thousands of miles away—and even less good can come of you wasting your time reading it—there were a few particularly depressing things form that panel I wanted to highlight.

“Hire more women. You went from 12% women to 1% women.”

“Who should we have hired?” DiDio demanded. Some from the audience suggested Nicola Scott and Carla Speed McNeil.

I don’t even know how to respond to that. I hope DiDio didn’t sound as defensive as “DiDio demanded” makes him sound.

At the very least, I wonder what happened to Felicia D. Henderson and Nicola Scott, both of whom were working for DC before the announcement (and the latter of whom was one of their better artists). Or they could flip through Marvel’s trade of Girl Comics, full of creators who are all women and who all work at least occasionally for the Big Two and can do superhero stuff just fine.

Or they could, I don’t know, look for some. Don’t these guys ever just spend an hour or two clicking around DeviantArt, or pick up something random and cool-looking off the new comics rack and think to themselves, “Hmm, I wonder if this Marian Churchland or Emily Warren person would like to draw a superhero comic…?”

On Wonder Woman:

Eddie; What you’ve done is turn the gods into something modern, not just toga wearing guys.”

Cliff: We’re bringing them into a world that is modern.”

Greg Rucka and his artist collaborators did the exact same thing during their run on the title eight years ago (a run interrupted by Infinite Crisis and various other initiatives spearheaded by Dan DiDio and others responslbe for “the New 52.”)

Lobdell talks about the Teen Titans: “We thought that Wonder Girl would be separated from being yet another version of Wonder Woman and have worked really hard to make these characters like you’re there at ground zero of a brand new book.”

How, exactly, do you take a second-generation, legacy sidekick conceived and named after Wonder Woman and make her something other “yet another version of Wonder Woman”…? And why would you even try?

It’s a reason we’re holding it to $2.99. It’s a big investment we’re trying to make it as accessible and affordable as possible .

This is the part where I would be hauled out of the panel, screaming, “What about Flashpoint #2, you monsters?!”

NEW Q: What about Widening gyre and Elseworlds.

DiDio: Widening Gyre #2 will come out when Kevin Smith’s schedule clears up. Batman Odyssey is scheduled to come out right after the launches. The 52 books isn’t all that we’re producing. but we are trying to limit the amount of product on the stands, to make it a stronger line overall.

I am glad DC will continue to publish things other than their new, rebooted universe, and I hope there will still be projects featuring the characters I like that I can read without having to look at that Superman costume or feel sad about the creative bankruptcy of the Big Two. Like those DC Retroactive books, for example.

That said, did you guys read Batman: The Widening Gyre,? It completely broke me. It may be the worst comic I’ve ever read, worse even than that completely insane, practically unreadable-as-comics Jeph Loeb-written Ultimates comic with that Battle Chasers guy…well, not quite that bad, but still pretty bad. In the same ballpark, anyway. I couldn’t even bring myself to review it here. I’m going to try again sometime, but it was the strangest comic DC ever published, in several key ways.

Eddie Berganza; I have a timeline you’ll never see. We’re keeping the most important events but compressing it. We are not making this for people to have to read all the history at once.

What? Really? Why will we never see it? Will you let the other creators and writers see it, at least?

Didio: This is why we need new readers, so we have people who didn’t read what I said before. With Arsenal they didn’t like it when we ripped his arm off, and now they don’t like we put it back on.

Q: What about his daughter?

Q: We want beginning characters and this is about Roy startingout and this takes place before he had kids.

And here’s the strangest thing about a relaunched DC universe that still contains so many of these characters.

Is it really possible to interest new readers and/or civilians in a character named “Arsenal” with the power of super-aim based on, um, his name, costume and powers, and nothing else? How do you do a starting out version of a character that is the grown-up sidekick of another superhero?

And how on earth does Arsenal Roy Harper and Nighwing Dick Grayson even exist as the grown-up, adult versions of Green Arrow and Batman’s sidekicks if Green Arrow and Batman have only been around for five years?


So DC has confirmed the dissolution of the Superman/Lois Lane marriage. It’s really weird to hear folks from DC talking about how Clark Kent is bachelor and how they’re bringing a “fresh perspective” and opening up “dramatic new story possibilities.”

They’re essentially restoring Superman to his 1939-1996 marital/romantic status. Lois Lane as a TV reporter, Lois dating a douchebag and a media conglomerate buying out the Daily Planet are all story points and status quos I’ve seen in the comics and other-media Superman stories repeatedly before as well.

Turning the clock back 15 years doesn’t really sound all that fresh and new to me, but I guess it’s in keeping with Warren Ellis’ statement that he thinks DiDio sincerely believes making comics more like they were in the nineties will restore that decades huge sales levels.


—David Uzumeri’s write-up of another panel on the subject for Comics Alliance is a lot less depressing

Lee stated that things were way too easy for Clark Kent with his beautiful wife, nice apartment, and high-paying job, so they felt it was important to restore the love triangle and the sense that Superman couldn't get everything he wanted.

If you’ve even a passing familiarity with what DC has done with the Superman character in the last five years—including de-powering him and forcing him into retirement for a (fictional) year, killing off his dad Pa Kent, exiling him from Earth, giving him an adopted son and then taking his adopted son away, restoring a huge Kryptonian population of 100,000 or so to a new planet in Earth’s solar system and then killing them all off, “too easy” is a weird way to look at the characters’ life.

What is interesting about this statement, particularly as regards the live triangle, is the belief that the Lois Lane/Superman/Clark Kent love triangle is essential the character and concept. The argument could certainly be made.

Personally, I think it was, but mostly because Superman was an adolescent power fantasy, a kids comic character. Now that he’s more of a shared, all-ages character, and that his readership has grown up, I don’t think the adolescent romantic/sexual tension that exists between his two selves and Lois Lane is necessarily as relevant—and decades of good Superman comics in which the two are married partners bear that out.

That love triangle aspect of the character is also, I think, a product of the early 20th century, and now seems dated and chauvinistic. Why can’t Superman be himself around the woman he loves? Why can’t they be equal partners? Why must Lois be so dumb that she can’t see two men in her life are one and the same?

The move would definitely be one that might give Lois Lane more panel time, but there’s a danger of reducing her to a plot point and story object instead of a character, and, I think, diminishes her—she’s no longer the human being that landed the most perfect mr. perfect in the world, the single person who is complete equals with Superman, instead she’s someone with a crush on him that Superman would like to be with if it weren’t for his pesky secret-identity and the fact that girls are yucky and have cooties and might get hurt by a villain if they ever fournd out she was dating Superman.

Whatever happens, I do hope they will keep Superman and Lois chaste until their identities are revealed. The few instances where I’ve seen a romantically involved Superman and Lois, wherein Lois doesn’t know Superman is really Clark Kent, have struck me as exceedingly creepy (That Superman/Doomsday animated direct-to-DVD featurette leaps most immediately to mind, and I must confess to have forgotten whether the Lois in Superman Returns new Superman’s secret identity or not—I might just be creeped out by any of the many other creepy things in that movie).

DiDio pointed out that the characters had aged a lot in the DC Universe, with many of them having wives, children and multigenerational legacies. Barbara Gordon was a character they discussed a lot, with most DC staffers feeling that she was likely in her mid- to late 30s. Additionally, they wanted to de-age the characters for story reasons, to allow them to go on voyages of self-discovery, since many of the current DC characters had already matured so much. At the same time, they wanted to tell fresh new stories rather than rehashing old ones, just with younger versions of the characters who hadn't already overcome their greatest battles.

That actually sounds a bit right to me. I would have said Gordon could be no younger than her mid-twenties, but was probably early-30’s.

I don’t think it matters over much, so long as you don’t think about it. Personally, I guess Superman and Batman will always seem “older than me” to me, no matter how old I get; I’m currently 34, so I think of the Wally West/Dick Grayson generation as my age, between 25-35, and the original Justice Leaguers in their mid-40’s. Maybe when I’m 50 or 60 I’ll see that differently though.

I think there’s a real danger here that DC will end up repeating themselves though; the temptation is going to be extremely great to “do-over” stories with the characters.

And, of course, whenever there’s talk of difficulties or limitations with the writing of characters—like Marvel’s argument that being married made Spider-Man stories too hard to tell, or that the DCU heroes are now too experienced—I get a little depressed, as it sounds like a veiled admission of defeat, a failure of imagination. If you honestly can’t think of a way to tell any good Spider-Man stories with a married Spider-Man, for example, then maybe you shouldn’t be telling Spider-Man stories. I’m sure there’s a pool of several dozen to several hundred other writers and cartoonists out there; someone oughta be able to do it.

On Superman's Continuity: When asked for six examples of Superman stories that are still in continuity, Berganza mentioned Doomsday and then gave five classic parts of Superman mythology, such as Krypton exploding.

Uh-oh. Well, double uh-oh, I guess. First, not being able to name five other Superman stories is kind of scary. Secondly, if they rebooted his marital status, than almost everything since the mid-nineties is now in that same weird place where Spider-Man comics were after their continuity-ectomy: Like, they happened, but happened completely differently, since the character’s weren’t married…?


I really liked The Crow the first time I read it. I was a teenager at the time, and read it after Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a book with which it shared some aesthetic, I think. I liked the first movie (mostly). As powerful as both were, particularly that comic, I never thought that the concept itself had much juice beyond the story and characters of the original stories. (I remember hating the second movie, and only seeing the third one at all because Kirsten Dunst was in it, and I heart her; somehow, I never read any of the other Crow comics produced).

That said, there’s obviously a lot of interest in the character and concept, so I’m not surprised it’s coming back, nor that IDW’s the publisher doing it. It’s really rather weird to look at the The Crow today, however, and think of him as a 21st century character or product. Looking at him and his story in context though, James O’Barr was well ahead of his time in a lot of ways, and he and his comics wielded an awful lot of influence over certain elements of pop culture.

The other two IDW projects mentioned in this report sound even more appealing. I can’t imagine what the Popeye comics would be like, if they are new, comic book adventures based on the old strip continuity, but I’m really excited to learn more.


—Marvel is publishing a new Villains For Hire book, which has Misty Knight leading a team of villains. Kinda like DC’s old Suicide Squad, in which tough black lady Amanda Waller lead a team of villains. Or current Thunderbolts, in which tough black guy Luke Cage leads a team of villains?

I wonder if this means Thunderbolts is going away…? If not, that’s two books with two very similar concepts going on at the same time. Heck, Luke and Misty are even pals in the Marvel Universe, aren’t they?



DC released a mess of interior art from a bunch of their books. Unsurprisingly, the Batwoman stuff looks particularly nice, and those Guillem March images were enough to get me to overcome my resistance to Judd Winick’s writing. I think I’ll read Catwoman in trade someday…I can always just ignore the words and look at the pictures, right? The sense of motion in some of those panels is just amazing…


—I’ve never watched any Star Trek—none!—not a single TV show episode or a single movie (In 2002, I tried to find episodes of Voyager in preparation for a feature article I was writing about a Star Trek celeb-starring fundraiser for Ohio gubenatorial candidate Tim Hagan being held in Cleveland; his wife, actress Kate Mulgrew, played Captain Janeway; I didn't manage to find any before the article saw print, however). And I am quite adverse to the Legion, despite given the concept a couple of chances (Waid and Kubert’s short-lived run, Geoff Johns’ Action arc “Superman and The Legion of Super-Heroes” and Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds).

So why do I think this sounds kinda cool?


—This crossover sounds even weirder to me than a Star Trek/Legion one. Johanna Draper Carlson wonders after the appeal. I would probably buy it if it featured Josie and the Pussycats instead of the Archie gang.


—Really? I still haven’t read the second one yet. The first one was really rather good, though.


—This doesn’t sound as flashy and exciting on the surface as some of the other announcement, but I be there’s a pretty good chance it’s going to end up being a lot better than a lot of the above mentioned projects: Guy Delisle’s next book is going to be about his time spent in Jersualem.

I was particularly intrigued by Drawn and Quarterly's Editor-In-Chief and Publisher Chris Oliveros’ statement that, “There has never been a book like it.” Considering the fact that I can think of a handful of cartoonists who have spent time in the same geographical area and produced great works, this should be something special.


—Current comics creators probably shouldn’t opine about Siegel and Shuster’s treatment of and by DC in public, especially if they’re currently working on Siegel and Shuster’s signature creation and on DC’s biggest cashcow of all time. Even Grant Morrison, who seems like one of the smartest, nicest and coolest folks in super-comics, come across as sounding like a bit of a jerk in doing so.


—I can’t wait to read Frank Miller’s Holy Terror, although I’m gonna have an awfully hard time not mentall drawing little bat-ears on the lead character while reading it, I think.


—I guess Image is publishing a MacGyver comic…? Here’s Robot 6’s mention of the announcement, in a round-up of news:

Image Comics will resurrect the classic television show MacGyver as a five-issue miniseries written by MacGyver creator Lee David Zlotoff and Doctor Who writer Tony Lee, and illustrated by Becky Cloonan.

And here’s a transcription of my thoughts while reading that sentence:

Really? Why that’s a weird thing for Image to publish, I can see what Zlotoff would want to do that, but I can’t imagine anyone wanting to read—OHHH, Becky Cloonan.

—The line-up for this new Defenders comic from by Matt Fraction and Terry Dodson sounds a little goofy—Red-She Hulk? Iron Fist?—but I do love The Defenders, and will likely give this a try if it’s $3 a pop.

My pitch for a Defenders book would be to title the book Defender Avengers—having the word “Avengers” in the title would totally be worth at least 20K units ordered a month, I bet.


—Have you guys noticed that in the past half-decade or so, Marvel seems to steal all of DC’s good ideas, while DC steals all of Marvel’s bad ideas?


I like both of the Wonder Girl costumes in this gallery of “New 52” redesign sketches better than the one they ultimately went with (Or did they go with the second one, and Booth just draws it weird?) I especially like the one I excerpted above. (I also really, really like this, Wonder-person costume, and the idea of Wednesday Comics creator Ben Caldwell doing a Wonder Woman series.

September’s relaunched Wonder Woman snagged one of the better creative teams of all 52 new books, but man, how cool would it be if they did something really radical, like a Wonder Girl—Wonder Woman’s adventures when she was a girl!—book by Caldwell…?


—I’m excited about both of Fantagraphics’ two big archival announcements, Zap and creator-specific collections of EC Comics.

I still haven’t caught up with their Krazy Kat, Complete Peanuts or even Popeye yet though. And there's the Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck stuff coming up too!

After I post this, I’m gonna go by a lottery ticket.


—That’s kind of cool, actually. Not putting-CaptainMarvel-and-Plastic Man-in-the-founding-line-up cool, but still pretty cool. I think I will try Justice League #1 after all…


—Finally, according to this report, former New Teen Titan Cyborg will be a founding member of the Justice League. What does that mean for the history of the Teen Titans, a run of comics which is among DC's best-loved and best-remembered (particularly for folks who were reading back during the time Marv Wolfman and George Perez were working on them), but also comics that inevitably age the DCU, as it starred the sidekicks coming of age and becoming young adults themselves. If it's knocked out of continuity, than that could be troubling, but I notice DC is gearing up to sell a Wolfman/Perez original graphic novel set during those fictional years and using that continuity.

I wonder if Martian Manhunter's absences from the new Justice League means that he is no longer a founding member. That's going to really, really, really hurt that character's standing and marketability in the future, although I suppose if he is kicked out of the League and grafted on to the new Stormwatch line-up, it signals DC having finally given up on him.

If DC wanted a black person on the founding League, I do wish they would have went with Black Lightning, Amazing Man, Vixen, Icon or Hardware, John Stewart or even Mr. Terrific instead of Cyborg, if only because it moves him from one generation of heroes, back to another (Hey, does that age him and make him more experienced?). But then, I suppose the choices depend on how much DCU continuity is changed (Was there a Golden Age with a JSA and All-Star Squadron? Did Batman recruit Black Lightning into The Outsiders a few years after he turned down League membership? Was there a JLA Detroit? Is the Milestone Universe still part of the DCU?), and I don't know anything about all that.