Meanwhile, at Robot 6...

That's what teenage girls look like, right?

I mentioned them briefly here last night, but I have full reviews of Justice League of America #1 (from which the above panel is taken) and Justice League of America's Vibe #1, which you can read here. Tom "Grumpy Old Fan" Bondurant also reviewed that pair of books, along with the latest issue of Justice League, so if you'd like a second, kinder and better-informed opinion, I'd suggest you read his column too.

Comics shop comics: Nov. 17

Batman: The Return #1 (DC Comics) This $5, 30-page comic special—which includes 16 pages of sketches, parts of the script and a reprint of the cover of this very issue in an attempt to justify the extra dollar price tag—leads into the new status quo of the various Bat-books, most particularly writer Grant Morrison’s new, ongoing monthly Batman, Incorporated and pencil artist David Finch’s new, ongoing monthly Batman: The Dark Knight.

Based on this book alone, the former sounds like it should be interesting, as Batman Bruce Wayne attempts to take his war on crime global by turning his small band of Batman lieutenants into a small army of Bat-soldiers.

The latter sounds like a nightmare, unless Finch proves to be a much better writer than he is an artist. His work here shows that she can draw very well, but is a pretty rotten storyteller, which certainly doesn’t bode well for his own book.

Even allowing for the specifics of Finch’s style—the fact that he gives the bats that are “common on the eastern seaboard of the United States of America” huge pterodactyl-sized wings and werewolf heads, for example, or the early-Image Comics over-rendering of character faces—the kindest word I can think of to describe Finch’s abilities to tell a story through images is “amateurish.”

Check out the sequence on pages nine and ten, in which Batman, a gunman wearing a dynamite vest and a young hostage boy all plummet off the edge of a skyscraper, and we lose one of the figures halfway through, and airbags emerge from…somewhere never visually established.

On one panel on page 11, a father clutches his rescued son to his chest, the dialogue explaining how the boy is his “life,” but in a few panels the boy has completely disappeared along with Batman (Did Batman kidnap him, or did Finch just not draw him? The latter, the story suggests; the former, the art suggests).Or the spread on page 12 and 13, where the various Bat-people are all at rest in comfortable poses, and in the next panel, Batman has covered some fifty yards, to find Oracle has appeared out of nowhere. He mentions the envelopes the characters are holding in the dialogue, which we see they aren’t holding, and then they suddenly appear in their hands. Was Finch drawing the book panel by panel, as he read the script through for the first time…?

Morrison’s script is full of some fun ideas, as both the writer and the title character seem very excited about their new direction, although there is an awful lot of looking backwards to Frank Miller’s Bat-canon. Morrison and Finch re-do the Year One scene in which the bleeding, dying Bruce Wayne sees a bat alight on his father’s bust and rings for Alfred to come stop his bleeding, and, later, echo The Dark Knight Returns in a scene in which Batman battles a big, hulking mutant in a mud-pit.

Morrison introduces a crime organization concept that sounds like Marvel’s Hydra or The Spirit’s Octopus with a name change (although it’s still named for an aquatic monster!) and he’s apparently sticking to his Batman-fights-alternate-versions-of-himself-constantly theme, with Bruce Wayne and Damian facing what looks like a Sandperson from Star Wars dressed up as Batman.

There are a few head-scratching moments involving the Bat-girls——made more head-scratching by the fact that both ladies anchor their own titles by writers who aren’t Grant Morrison, but I guess that’s to be expected in a book meant to reset an entire line of books (Red Robin, meanwhile, appears in the corner of one-panel, but never gets mentioned, and Batgirl Cassandra Cain remains MIA and of no concern to Batman and pals).

Will Batgirl and Birds of Prey pick up on Batman's assignments for Batgirl and Oracle, even if to show them rejecting them, or what? I'm curious about Oracle's "avatar," which seems to involve a Batmobile version of Professor Xavier's hovering action chair from the '90s...

Oh, and since I wrote about the new Batman Incorporated logo previously, I thought I should mention that I liked this one logo from this page of the back matter:The third one down, right before the final logo? I like that one okay. Look how far they came from the original concept here though. Wow.


Brightest Day #14 (DC) This is the next in the series of issues in which the entire issue is devoted to a single storyline. This time, it’s Deadman’s storyline. Seeing the Bat-signal over Gotham, Deadman gets the bright idea to hand the White Lantern ring over to the just-got-back-from-the-dead Batman Bruce Wayne and let him figure out how to complete the quest the ring/Life Entity sent him on.

Batman’s not the right guy for the job, it turns out, but in the process of finding that out, we get to see Ivan Reis draw Batman a couple of times, and put him in a neat-o all-white Bat-costume (I like what Reis and company do with Batman’s eyes on the bottom of page 10, by the way).

We also get a recap of the origin of Deadman, including bits from his childhood that I assume are new, as well as a new development in Deadman and Dove’s working relationship and Batman now knows about the existence of Max Lord.

With the weakest of the Brightest Day artists all MIA, this is an exceptionally strong issue, visually, perhaps the strongest since the almost-all J’onn Jonn’z issue penciled by Gleason.


Green Lantern #59 (DC) I like the part where Larfleeze picks Barry Allen’s pocket. Barry keeps his wallet in a heretofore unseen back pocket in his skintight red suit? I was not aware of that.

This is an exceptionally talky issue, which is only strange in that that Hal and Barry seem to talk to one another for a good 15 pages or so while a coupla space aliens just sort of stand around, three feet away, never butting in to ask who this “Ollie” person they keep mentioning is, or if the two of them would like some privacy or anything.

There are a couple of pretty big plot developments—Salaak want the Guardians to get an earth person to spy on Hal Jordan on behalf of the Corps, the Indigo avatar thingee possesses someone, we learn about the sinister nature of the Indigo tribe, Parallax returns and possesses someone else—but the two parts that stick out in my mind are Larfleeze picking Barry’s pocket and the weird opening sequence about health insurance. It seems like there’s probably a political point being made—or attempting to be made—in that first scene, but I don’t know if I have the energy to look for Geoff Johns’ opinions on federal domestic policy in his book about alien super-cops.

Doug Mahnke and Christian Alamy continue to be the best.


Justice League of America #51 (DC) The five-person JLA line-up, AKA “Batman’s Angels,” are trapped inside an impenetrable force field with The Crime Syndicate and some big crazy-looking guy calling himself The Omega Man.

I mean, really crazy-looking. Writer James Robinson hasn’t explained this guy’s whole deal yet—he popped out of a resurrection machine that half the people who built it thought would resurrect a dead Luthor and the other half thought would resurrect Darkseid—but I sort of liked him based simply on how insane Mark Bagley’s desig for the character is: He looks even more bizarre in profile, when it becomes clear his face is basically part of a small sphere full of teeth and bad guy triangle eyes.

Oh, and minor character Blue Jay, who Robinson seemingly killed off in his opening issue for the series, is still alive and kicking. Well, punching. That’s cool—I think he’d make a neat addition to this fairly wacky line-up.

This is a very strange issue of an increasingly strange run on the title, so much so that it’s hard for me to even review it, even in the manner of these just write whatever pops into my head as soon as I get done reading a stack of comics style of “reviews.”

There’s a Crisis worth of cameos, and a lot of DC superheroes running around, shouting and fighting. Mark Bagley draws it all, so it looks pretty cool. Robinson’s not doing anything as grand, sharp and exciting as Grant Morrison did on his run, nor is he doing anything as clever, fun and character focused as Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis did during their run, but he’s not doing anything wrong (he’s even toned down the Brad Meltzer-styled multiple-narrator narration quite a bit).

That’s good enough for me.


Tiny Titans #34 (DC) The central joke in this issue is that the characters Art Baltazar draws every month finally realize that his style is so stripped down and simplified that very little actually differentiates the characters from one another—mostly it’s just their hair and clothes. So naturally two characters of the same age, gender, hair color and hair style—like Superboy and Zatara—look like identical twins in the pages of Tiny Titans.
When Zatara winds up in a Superman t-shirt, the confusion gets even worse, and the issue offers more of Baltazar’s puppy version of Krypto (which I never get tired of looking at), wearing a Kid Flash costume in one panel, and more of Baltazar’s version of Jor-El. None of the Jor-El gags were particularly funny this time out, but I just like looking at a Tiny Titans version of the 1978 movie version of the comic book character.Oh, and this issue contains a kid named Gordon’s drawings of the various super-pets on the letters page. I’ll just scan one, but they’re all pretty awesome:If Baltazar ever needs to take an issue off, I hope they consider letting Gordon draw a Comet story as a fill-in artist.

Earlier today DC revealed the cover to the second issue of David Finch's

Batman: The Dark Knight #2 on their The Source blog. This is what it looks like: The first thing I noticed, after pondering the question of whether just giving any old character design a monocle and a cigarette holder was enough to make it look like The Penguin, was yet another detail of Batman's new costume, which I still don't like.

Specifically, his gloves: There's something vaguely familiar about them, although I'm not quite sure what they remind me of...

Wait.

Oh yeah, they remind me of this: Is Batman rocking two Nintendo Power Gloves as part of his new costume...?

A week or two ago I would have said that was ridiculous, as there's no way Batman has the time to waste playing video games.

But now that I've seen the animated trailer/ad for Batman: The Brave and The Bold: The Video Game, I know that Batman is, in Bat-Mite's assessment, as good at video games as he is at crime fighting. ("I make it a point to prepare for all possible contingencies," Batman says to Bat-Mite, explaining his video game prowess).

Some random thoughts (and feelings!) about DC's post-Blackest Night annoucement-athon

—DC sure doesn't seem too worried about spoiling the ending of Blackest Night do they? I mean yes, obviously there wasn't a whole lot of suspense over whether or not Nekron and the forces of nothingness would overcome all life in the universe, extinguishing it forever. A happy ending has always been a foregone conclusion here.

But the Brightest Day teaser image (right) includes a new Lantern Corps symbol, which looks a lot like the hand-shaped Black Lantern Corps symbol, only with rays of light radiating from it. There was wide speculation almost as soon as the Blackest Night event was announced that it would end with Hal Jordan somehow becoming a White Lantern at the climax, defeating the Black Lanterns and resurrecting the Black Lantern heroes (or at least the popular ones).

Early in the series, a character went off on an exposition tangent, in which she talked about "the white light of creation," which hinted further at that ending. In fact, they've been hinting at it so strongly—and showing off a White Lantern symbol is maybe doing more than "hinting"—that I'm starting to get a little suspicious of whether or not that's meant as a red (white?) herring.

I don't suppose it matters all that much, though. I think the people reading Blackest Night aren't doing so to find out how it ends so much as they want to experience it unfold, which is, I think, the reason most people read most super-comics in general these days.


—Isn't it kind of strange that DC will be launching its "Brightest Day" event/bi-weekly series/branding effort within a few months of Marvel's "Heroic Age" branding effort/whatever that ends up being? Will the publishing lines of both companies be entering a less dark, less decadent couple of months or years of comic book making almost simultaneously?

On one level, it seems like an odd coincidence, but then, on the other, it seems like perhaps both companies are sensing the same things from their audience—event fatigue, declining bloodlust, aversion to necrophilia, etc.—which they share pretty much down to a reader.

It will be interesting to see to what degree the DC Universe/publishing line will be able to be brighter and the Marvel Universe/line more heroic, and for how long. If the two companies are actually planning on recalibrating their general tone to reflect those words. It could just be some verbal, connotation palate-cleansing after a year or so in which the two universe/lines were primarily branded by the words "Blackest" and "Dark."


—As a reader, I was quite glad to hear about the Brightest Day series announcement. As I read fewer and fewer comics and transition more and more into trades (a confluence of finding fewer Big Two comic books I like and prices being raised in various ways), I've really missed having a good-to-decent DC weekly.

This isn't quite weekly (depending on how you look at it, given today's announcement) but it's close enough.

I hope the shorter run reflects the needs of the story, too. As I've mentioned when discussing Trinity in the past, it sometimes seemed like it was a 35- or 45-part series stretched out to fill 52 issues simply because the previous weeklies were also 52 issues long. (Not that Kurt Busiek and company were noticeably stalling or killing time in any of the issues; I just think it may have benefited from fewer issues and the resultant tighter focus and quicker pace).

Also, if every other week means art that's twice as good as that in the first two weeklies, then that's good news. I was much more forgiving of poor art in the weeklies because of the breakneck pace, but I sure wouldn't mind if it were better here (Also: Please don't have Calafiore or McDaniel on it, please don't have Calafiore or McDaniel on it, please don't have Calafiore or McDaniel on it...)

I'm heartened by the writers involved though. Geoff Johns and Peter Tomasi don't always wow me, and each have their weaknesses (as I've mentioned before though, many of Johns' weaknesses are ones I rather enjoy), but they're both solid craftsmen, and Johns is among the more experienced writers at this sort of thing, having previously done 52).

It sounded a bit like there would a 52-like focus on a smaller cast. With the two Green Lantern writers involved, a GL seems like a good bet for one of those cast members—most likely John Stewart, the only book-less GL. Dove seems like a good bet too, as does Mera—if Aquaman doesn't come back and figure prominently himself. I'm assuming Aquaman does come back though, in which case I think we'll see he and the other brought back-to-life characters being focused on here (Although J'onn J'onnz may show up in the other bi-weekly...in fact, it could be him blacked out behind Captain Atom on the cover image).

The Hawks, Martian Manhunter, Aquaman, Tempest, Firestorm—these all seem like sure-things.

Originally I was hoping just about everyone who was a Black Lantern would come back, as the story is being set up as a sort of "last call" for resurrections, so it seems like anyone who's coming back should come back now. Ted Kord, The Dibnys, the original Questions—it's now or never. (Well, Kord can come back through some time travel what's it, of course). These characters can come back later—if Barry Allen and Jason Todd can come back, anyone can—but it will seem much lamer when someone brings back the Dibnys in eight years time instead of just doing it now.

Of course, the all-the-Black-Lanterns-come-back-to-life conclusion became more or less impossible once we saw Dick Grayson's and Tim Drake's parents return as Black Lanterns. (And, perhaps doubly so, once we saw Jonah Hex and Bat Lash). Now, Jonah Hex and Bat Lash staring new lives int eh 21st century DCU (maybe as roommates!) would be awesome, but The Graysons and Drakes? Not going to happen.

So it seems more likely that a handful of the popular dead characters will be resurrected, which means a handful of Justice Leaguers (Save Batman, who isn't really dead) and maybe (hopefully!) characters killed during the course of Blackest Night.


—This answers what DC will be doing with David Finch now that they have him. He'll be providing covers for the 26 issue series, so I imagine he'll be working on whatever his writing/drawing project—probably a limited series or possibly an original graphic novel—is at his own pace, while doing covers for Brightest Day and probably variants and other covers (as Marvel had him doing).

I can see why Finch would want to do the project (as it would allow him to draw most of the DCU) and I can see why DC would want him to do the project (if they seem to think he's very popular), but he seems an odd choice to me, as his style seems so dark and grime and muscle-y and his characters all tend to blend together. It seems like a project premised on introducing all those Blackest Night readers to the DCU in general, and an artist with a stronger sense of character design would have seemed more appropriate to me.


—As for the books to carry Brightest Day banners, The Flash, the GL books and Justice League of America all seem fairly obvious (No idea who might be on that cover though, if that's supposed to be a resurrected lady. Are there any dead Justice League ladies who have returned as Black Lanterns so far? Jade would make sense with the JSA and some of her former Outsiders colleagues on the League, I guess), but a Titans team consisting of Titans villains seems sort of random. There sure are a lot of dead Titans, though--maybe it will be a book about Deathstroke and friends re-killing resurrectees...?


—This image/these covers look sooooo terrible.


—Okay, and then there's a second bi-weekly series which, assuming it ships on the weeks Brightest Day doesn't, will mean there will be a new superhero-filled DC book each and every week, Justice League: Lost Generation.

It features the Justice League, which I'm interested in, some characters I like (Fire, Ice, Booster Gold), it's co-written by Keith Giffen and I dig the just-about-weekly format BUT! Giffen's co-writer is going to be Judd fucking Winick, perhaps the one creator whose presence can cancel out every other factor associated with a comic book for me.

I thought DC had blacklisted him for complaining in a CBR interview that all the terrible ideas in that terrible Battle For the Cowl were originally his terrible ideas, but Tony Daniel took over and used them as his own terrible ideas? No? He's still allowed to write for them? This is awful, awful news, because I really, really, really want to read this series, but how can I read something Winick wrote? I mean, sure, as a trade borrowed from the library, but to pay money for? Why would anyone do that?

I suppose it's possible that Giffen's presence will make Winick's writing less terrible—perhaps Giffen's plotting and Winick's just scripting the dialogue, but then, his dialogue is terrible too.

Wow, people really like this David Finch character.

I was sort of surprised to see this announcement regarding Marvel artist signing an exclusive deal with DC on the latter publisher's The Source blog today. Not because the fact that Finch would work with the company is any big shock or anything—not the way that, say, Brian Michael Bendis or John Romita Jr. inking an exclusive would be—but rather I was surprised that DC would want Finch or that anyone would think it was at all exciting news.

That just goes to show how little I actually know though. DC obviously trumpeted the move, and the comments thread regarding the announcement at Blog@Newsarama, my online home away from my online home, currently has over 30 comments, the overwhelming majority of which are extremely positive. Blog@ readers seem super-excited, and most of them are simply saying different variations of "Great news!" or listing the books and characters they'd like to see him on.

I don't like Finch's work at all, personally. He can clearly draw, but I can't remember ever being particularly struck with how well he told a story or depicted something in particular, and when I think of his work, all that comes to mind are his boring, static covers in which identical-looking, way-to-muscle-y people pose and grimace. In other words, it is completely generic superhero art, mainly differentiated by the fact that its usually colored really murkily.

But hey, that's me. I'm certainly not Evan Everyfan or anything over here.

I think what I find most perplexing about the announcement is the perception that Finch is some sort of a get. I was looking over his credits earlier today, in preparation for another (hopefully more thoughtful and better-written) post on the subject than this one and it was striking that he's an artist whose popularity is almost impossible to quantify.

He's got some monster hits to his name. He did "Avengers Disassembled" and the first story arc or so of New Avengers with Brian Michael Bendis. But were those stories popular because of Finch's art, or because of Bendis, and the novelty/outrage factor involved with radically changing the direction of Marvel's Avengers franchise? He drew Ultimatum and an issue of that Crying Superheroes series (Captain America: American Son—Spider-Man Has a Sad or whatever) with Jeph Loeb, and those sold pretty darn well, but was that because of Finch's artwork, the superstar status of Loeb or, again, the fact that they dealt with big events?

Other than a run on Ultimate X-Men, some Moon Knight and some work on Marvel's ill-conceived post-9/11 emergency workers-are-the-real-heroes series, that's about all Finch has done at Marvel, beyond a shitload of variant covers. UXM was in decline and that The Call stuff and Moon Knight didn't stick around long.

Sales aren't everything of course, but they've gotta be a big part of the equation for DC when they're thinking of handing out exclusives, right? The announcement also mentioned he'd be writing as well as drawing a project for DC, so maybe the exclusive was contingent on him having the best Batman and The Club of Heroes* pitch anyone at DC had ever seen.

I just can't get over the fact that DC is pumped enough about the guy's work to hire him in such a manner (and announce it as if it were big news), and to see so many DC fans so excited to see Finch on a new Aquaman monthly or taking over JLoA. Not to be too negative or anything—ha, too late!—but it seems more likely to me that DC just acquired someone to draw a miniseries and do variant covers for them.

At any rate, congratulations and good luck to Mr. Finch. With any luck, no one at DC will ask him to draw an enormous fat man eating the intestines out of a dying woman or anything like that.



*Seriously, how is it that there's an Outsiders books, two Titans books and two JSA books, but no book devoted to a superhero team consisting solely of Batmen? It'll be like printing money, DC!

No Sale: Ultimatum #3

If you haven't been to the comic shop yet this week, when you do go, be sure to flip through the latest issue of Jeph Loeb and David Finch's miniseries destroying Marvel's Ultimate Universe (by making it so stupid and gross that no one would ever want to read another comic book branded with the word "Ultimate" ever again).

I haven't been reading this thing, on account of it being written by Jeph Loeb, but I'm kind of looking forward to borrowing the eventual trade collection from the library some day, as it looks so stupid and so gross that it looks like it could conceivably be enjoyable in a holy-shit-grown-men-made-this-and-other-grown-men-paid-them-money-to-make-it kind of way.

So, flipping through this particular issue, I saw...

—Hank Pym, now wearing his Marvel Universe Yellowjacket costume (because most of those writers charged with recreating the Marvel Universe for the 21st century for the Ultimate line have decided the best way to do that is to just ape whatever was done in the plain old regular Marvel Universe in the 20th century), grows to giant-size and bites off The Blob's head. The Blob, you may recall, ate the Wasp's intestines in a previous issue. So naturally Pym retalliates by eating (or at least biting off) part of the The Blob. Naturally, the way to retalliate against someone doing something unspeakable to a loved on is to do the exact same unspeakable thing to them.

—The Scarlet Witch, wearing a costume that includes thong panties, arguing with her dad. Given the fact that Loeb wrote about her incestuous relationship with her brother in his Ultimates miniseries (and, through the character Wasp gave the impression that siblings having a sexual relationship wasn't really a big deal), I was afraid to read the dialogue bubbles in that panel.

—The woman I assume is supposed to be Valkyrie has a hole torn in her top, which artist David Finch keeps drawing in different places in each drawing of her, and, although the rip is in a different place upon her breast in each drawing, it never reveals her nipple. Because Valkyrie doesn't have nipples anymore (?). I know the "gore/violence is okay, nipples and genitals are not double-standard" is nothing new in American pop culture, but it's especially striking in a story with this much gore and violence.


—Hank Pym gets skeltonized in some sort of explosion or energy blast.


I can't say for sure, but I think Jeph Loeb is trying his hardest to replace Geoff Johns as the perceived preeminent purveyor of superhero gore.

Well, at least they're not smoking...

(Image from Ultimatum #2 by Jeph Loeb, David Finch and Danny Miki; I found it at Dirk Deppey's Journalista and cut and pasted it from there because, you know, who buys and reads Jeph Loeb comics these days?)