Isn't this the exact thing people used to argue was necessary in order to save the comics industry...?

I've been blogging about comics here at Every Day Is Like Wednesday for about 20 years now but even before that I used to read about and very occasionally talk about comics online, mostly on the DC Comics message boards and the handful of comics news sites that were around at the time. One thing I used to hear said an awful lot back then was that the one thing that could save the comics industry* would be if publishers could just get their books back in grocery stores and drugstores, where they could be seen and purchased by kids and other new readers, thus growing the market beyond those that already patronize their local comics specialty shops.

Well guess what I saw in the checkout aisle at the grocery store?

Shelved among the latest issues of People and Woman's World and, um, some books of word searches was a magazine simply entitled Justice League, the cover featuring a Jim Lee drawing of the New 52 League (note the presence of Cyborg, and Superman's lack of red briefs) and the words "Four acclaimed comic book stories by all-star writers and artists!"

I was surprised to see it there, although I suppose I shouldn't be. I had previously seen similar magazine format collections of reprints focused on Batman and Superman in the same store, although those were in the magazine section, rather than right here in the checkout aisle, where a kid could presumably spot it and ask his or her parent if they could get it.

This was for a very long time Archie Comics' whole business model, selling digest collections of their comics in grocery store check-out lines and, according to Tim Hanley's book Betty and Veronica, it was a model that helped save the publisher when the comics market was contracting and specialty shops started to replace newsstands and spinner racks as the places that people bought comics. 

Of course, this collection costs $14.99, which seems like a fairly steep price for an impulse buy, although I suppose that's about what magazines tend to cost these days. (There weren't any Archie digests on sale there to compare it to, but according to the publisher's online store, one of their upcoming digests costs $9.99 for about 100 pages). 

Comics readers will likely find that price point pretty high, though, as that's $15 for only 84 pages of comics, all of them reprints. That price is approaching trade paperback level. I mean, Justice League Unlimited Vol. 1: Into the Inferno, the latest trade paperback collection featuring the Justice League, costs $17.99, and that collects six issues, or about 120 pages.  

I did ask my sister if she would buy a $15 magazine for my nephew if he asked for it in the checkout line of the grocery store, and she said she would, as she encourages any kind of reading. Given that this is a survey of just one parent though, I can't be sure how representative she is of the average parent. 

So, what are the four acclaimed stories by all-star writers and artists collected within? A quartet of timeless, evergreen done-in-ones? Ha ha, no don't be silly. Rather, they are the first issues from four different Justice League titles from the last 30 years or so, and I couldn't discern the logic for the order in which they appear; they are neither chronological (that is, oldest to newest) nor reverse chronological (newest to oldest). 

Also, somewhat surprisingly, though the magazine is magazine-sized rather than comic book sized, the comics pages within have been blown-up or reformatted in anyway. They're at comic book page-sized, they just all have wide borders that fill up the rest of the extra space. 

Anyway, here's what $15 will get you at the grocery store...

Justice League Unlimited #1 (2025) by Mark Waid and Dan Mora This seems to be a smart, even obvious choice, as this is the first issue of the current Justice League title, one that's only about a year old at this point (DC has only published one, maybe one and a half collections of it so far, depending on how you want to count Justice League Unlimited/World's Finest: We Are Yesterday).

It introduces various plot elements that won't be resolved for a while (the mysterious villain team Inferno, for example) and it ends on a fairly potent cliffhanger (with point-of-view character Airwave confessing to the readers in a narration box that he's only joined the Justice League in order to kill them all). But, at the same time, the first half or so of the issue pretty thoroughly introduces the premise of this particular Justice League book, that of a massive, army-like super-League consisting of pretty much every superhero in the DC Universe.

The early scenes, in which Airwave arrives on the new team's new satellite Watchtower headquarters, is chock-full of appearances by various heroes, making this story a pretty strong introduction to the breadth of the DC Universe. Skimming through the book again as I pound this post out (I had previously reviewed the first trade paperback collection of the series in this column), I counted over 50 heroes appearing in some fashion, including those you might expect in a modern Justice League comic (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, a The Flash), some less likely candidates (Firestorm, Black Lightning, Star Sapphire, a Kid Flash) and some pretty deep cuts (Tuatara, for example; he doesn't just cameo, but is name-dropped as well, as Red Tornado sends him off on an off-panel mission with a few others). 

The issue, and the next five, are collected in the aforementioned Justice League Unlimited Vol. 1: Into the Inferno, which was then followed by Justice League Unlimited/World's Finest: We Are Yesterday. Other characters and concepts introduced in these 20 pages are followed up on in various spin-offs too, like Challengers of the Unknown, The Question: All Along the Watchtower and Justice League: The Atom Project. The JLU title is still ongoing, and the last issue to ship as of this writing seems to be #16.

I have some concerns about JLU—mainly that the book seems to offer a status quo rather than a story or stories, and, increasingly, that it's meant to serve as a bridge between various big event series like Absolute Power and DC K.O.—but in terms of quality, that first issue was solid. 

There are certainly worse creators a new DC reader could choose to follow after this series than Waid and Mora, too. The former has decades of quality series and miniseries on his resume (including various Justice League-related books), and Mora is one of the best artists drawing super-comics for DC at the moment...or drawing them for anyone else, for that matter. 

Justice League #1 (2011) by Geoff Johns, Jim Lee and Scott Williams I was a little surprised to see this one in here. Not just because this was the first chapter of The New 52 version of the Justice League's origin and the New 52 continuity has since been rebooted away (Although according to New History of the DC Universe, this story, or at least some version of it, still happened in current continuity, it just would have had to happen fairly differently). No, I was mostly surprised because it's not really much of a Justice League story. Despite the whole team appearing on the cover, the issue itself is basically just a Batman/Green Lantern team-up; the only other Leaguers to appear at all are Superman, who is one panel, and a pre-Cyborg Victor Stone, who is on a couple of pages.

This issue (and the story arc it is a part of) has been collected and recollected several times now, starting with 2012's Justice League Vol. 1: Origin (There have also been deluxe, "Absolute" and "Unwrapped" editions since). This iteration of the title would last 52 issues, with Johns writing the first 50 of them (Lee would draw two arcs, the first one and "The Villain's Journey"). 

As I was a Justice League fan, I wasn't exactly enamored with this story or this run (or the New 52 in general), which jettisoned DC comics history/continuity to offer a new "Ultimate" style reboot. 

Johns' greatest strength as a DC writer was his ability to finesse thorny continuity into things that mostly made sense, solving the storytelling problems that occurred when various writers over the decades took turns on the characters, synthesizing past, sometimes contradictory stories into something that felt natural, even intentional. The New 52 stripped him of that, of course. 

Lee is, obviously, a pretty great artist, and this arc was a decent showcase for him—although the number of splash pages in this first issue is striking and, if you happened to have bought the issue in 2011, annoying—but he's not the best character designer, and the New 52 Justice League notoriously had him redesigning some of the best and most iconic characters in history. I mean, can one really improve on Superman's costume? No, but Lee tried and, well, you can see what that looked like. (Even the costumes he left mostly alone, like Carmine Infantino's Flash costume and Gil Kane's Green Lantern costume, were given more, fussier lines.)

And, again, because The New 52 continuity is now over, I'm not sure there's a whole lot to really recommend this iteration of the Justice League book to new readers. Although if you are a Jim Lee fan, then there are at least two trade collections of him drawing a Justice League you might want to check out.

Justice League #1 (2018) by Scott Snyder, Jim Cheung and Mark Morales The Scott Snyder-written iteration of the Justice League book spun out of his Dark Nights: Metal event series and Justice League: No Justice miniseries, and his line-up seemed to be an in-comics re-creation of the that in the old Justice League cartoon series, with Hawkgirl, Martian Manhunter and Green Lantern John Stewart rejoining after pretty long absences from each. (You'll note Cyborg is on the cover, and, in this issue at least, he is presented as a member of the current team, while John is called in as a secret weapon at one point; Cyborg will pretty immediately leave this "main" league, joining the splinter team in the spin-off Justice League Odyssey, while John will essentially replace him on the team.)

In this issue, the already formed Justice League, headquartered in the Hall of Justice, fight a long-term scheme of Vandal Savage's, the heroes keeping in touch via J'onn's telepathy while they fight against Savage's armies on various mini-missions. Each is assisted by a guest-star or two—Green Arrow, Adam Strange, Plastic Man, Mister Terrific, Swamp Thing, etc.—although these do little more than cameo. While the League staves off that threat, it's actually Lex Luthor and his new (rather small) Legion of Doom that ultimately confront Savage. 

Meanwhile, a mysterious threat from beyond the Source Wall streaks like a comet towards Earth, space-time swirling "like road dust" behind it, while various other cameos look on (The 853rd Century's Justice Legion-A, Kamandi, a Monitor, The Quintessence).

Like the previous issue collected in the magazine, this issue has been collected and re-collected plenty of times; I just re-read it in a library-borrowed electronic copy of Justice League by Scott Snyder Book One The Deluxe Edition. 

Snyder's run, which featured a few fill-in issues from writer James Tynion IV and art from a whole bunch of different artists, lasted about 39 issues. The title continued for another 36 issues though, with writers Robert Venditti, Simon Spurrier, Jeff Loveness, Joshua Williamson, Brian Michael Bendis and the team of Andy Lanning and Ron Marz all following Snyder, some of them writing enough issues to constitute a "run", others only writing a story arc. The title was then cancelled with issue #75, as part of the lead-up to Williamsons Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths. 

I read all of the Snyder issues (and the rest of the title more sporadically), so I guess it was good enough that I never dropped it. It was well-written, and the art was never terrible (although it would have been nice if Snyder had a true, regular, consistent partner on his run). What is both noteworthy—and really weird—about Snyder's run is that it is essentially just one big, long story arc, about the Justice League fighting the Legion of Doom (Luthor, Grodd, Sinestro, Black Manta and Cheetah...The Joker, who is in this first issue, would leave almost immediately) over fundamental forces of the universe, and the direction that the universe was to take...towards justice, or towards doom. 

Snyder also introduced some cosmic beings that played into his own messing around with the nature of DC continuity and the multiverse.

It had its moments (most of them revolving around Starro and Jarro), but, seen from the remove of years, it now seems a lot like an ongoing series devoted to marking time, acting as a bridge between Snyder's Dark Nights: Metal and his Dark Nights: Death Metal. Because of that, I can't really remember the specifics of any single issue or arc within the overall narrative, nor have I ever been tempted to revisit it. 

JLA #1 (1997) By Grant Morrison, Howard Porter and John Dell The final issue collected in here is the first of the Morrison/Porter/Dell JLA, which took the then novel (if obvious) approach of re-teaming the Justice League's founders (with the legacy versions of The Flash and Green Lantern taking the places of their then-dead predecessors). It was the first time that some version of these seven heroes had starred in a Justice League title together since the early 1980s, and thus seemed pretty fresh, new and exciting then.

I do wonder how readers seeing this comic for the very first time might react to certain aspects of it. Would they know who this Kyle Rayner character was? Would they wonder at all about Aquaman's design, with the gladiator armor and harpoon hand? Or why Superman has a mullet? Or perhaps why Martian Manhunter seems so nude?

The issue opens with a UFO landing on the White House lawn. Out of it steps a golden, caped man named Protex and his superhero team The Hyperclan, who say have come to save the world and deal with all of its problems...even if they do so in a much harsher way than any Justice League ever has (At one point, they execute supervillains tied to posts with their eyebeams; Porter draws one of them to resemble Marvel's Wolverine). They are met by Superman, and he and various other heroes aren't so sure about the Hyperclan's methods or promises of quick fixes to long-term problems.

At one point, mysterious assailants assault the then-Justice League America's satellite base, knocking it out of the sky, and forcing Leaguers Metamorpho, Ice Maiden, Obsidian and Nuklon to a desperate gamble to save their own lives (Metamorpho, who transforms himself into an escape capsule, dies in the process, or at least seems to die in the process; his funeral is then held in JLA #5 but, like all superheroes, and like Morrison hints during the funeral, he will eventually get better).

In this first issue, all of the incoming Leaguers appear, except Aquaman, who will be reluctantly drafted into the brewing fight against the Hyperclan in JLA #2. Superman, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman (who was leading the previous League, the team who flee the satellite, in Justice League America, the title that JLA would replace) get the most panel time, while Martian Manhunter and Batman get the least, the latter showing up in the last five panels, and uttering "HH!" for the first time.

(I love how Potrter poses Batman there, melodramatically stalking around, gesturing like a vampire; this is pretty consistent with how then Batman artist Kelley Jones was drawing him.)

Frankly, I could talk about this title, and this particular story arc, for thousands of words, but that's probably enough for this post. 

This issue, and this arc, has also been collected and recollected over and over. If you've never read it and would like to, basically just look for any book with "JLA", "Grant Morrison" and a "1" on the cover. 

Morrison's run would last through issue #41, with maybe a half-dozen fill-in issues, and include JLA/WildC.A.T.s (did I spell that right?), original graphic novel JLA: Earth-2 and event series DC One Million.  Porter and Dell drew most of it, with fill-in artists needed here and there to meet deadlines (These include Oscar Jimenez on #8 and #9, Mark Pajarillo here and there and, surprisingly, the likes of Greg Land and Gary Frank, among a few others). 

Morrison was followed by Mark Waid and Joe Kelly on JLA, which would ultimately run 125 issues, and, after Kelly's run, the book became an anthology series with rotating creative teams until it was finally canceled in 2006 as part of the events of Infinite Crisis. 

I am likely prejudiced and influenced by nostalgia to some degree, as this was my first introduction to the Justice League, but Morrison and company's JLA was (and is) one of my favorite comic book runs ever; revisiting it now and then, I still think it holds up as one of the best superhero comics ever.

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Previous to the comics portion of this magazine, there's a two-page introduction by a Jim McLaughlin, under the headline "Top Heroes. Top Talent." It's maybe 500-800 words, tops, and seems to do a decent enough job of offering a sort of elevator pitch to the Justice League concept and then introducing the writers, pencil artists and concepts for each of the issues included. The thesis seems to be that the idea of the Justice League was to unite the best DC characters into one book, which naturally produced the best comics by the best creators.

It's a decent piece given its brevity and I wouldn't argue with its main points, publisher boosterism aside, although I will nitpick it (I also would have attached the names Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky when mentioning 1960's Brave and the Bold #28). I mean, you know how wordy I am; I would struggle mightily to produce a piece that hit all these points in so few words.

The parts I found most interesting, maybe even revealing, were the ways in which McLaughlin described the writers and pencillers.

Mark Waid isn't just "one of comics' most acclaimed and award-winning scribes," but he is also "the scholar, the teacher." And Dan Mora? Well, he's "a 30-something hotshot who burst out of Costa Rica to become one of comics' most dazzling talents almost overnight." (Overnight, I guess, if you don't count his pre-DC work for the likes of Boom, although you should count it; it's also great!).

Upon relaunching the League for the New 52, Geoff Johns was "writer and executive producer of DC's The Flash TV show and Wonder Woman movies", rather than one of super-comics' most popular writers, who then had a decade of experience writing most of DC's biggest heroes, teams and events, and had even managed to make books starring less-than topline characters like Hal Jordan and the Justice Society into hits. (As for the New 52, that was "a groundbreaking slate" of comics "that grabbed both critical acclaim and massive sales success." Sales? Sure. Acclaim? Eh...the fan press sure like Scott Snyder's Batman, but I'm having trouble thinking of many—or any—critical darlings among that mess. Refresh my memory, if you do.)

Scott Snyder's run on Batman was also "groundbreaking", according to McLaughlin, and Jim Cheung is an excellent draftsman. Together, their book—which Cheung didn't last all that long on, intentionally built a lineup to "echo" that of "the smash-hit Justice League animated series."

And finally, we get to Grant Morrison, "a madman-with-a-plan writer who cut his teeth on DC Imprints books." (McLaughlin also refers to Morrison as "he" here, rather than Morrison's preferred pronoun "they", which I can definitely relate to, as EDILW readers have repeatedly had to call me out for doing so here and on Bluesky; still, it's probably embarrassing to do so in print, rather than online, where it's so easily fixed).

I found the "DC Imprints" phrase...weird. Yes, Morrison wrote some Vertigo books (And why not just say "Vertigo" instead of "DC Imprints", with a capital "I" in "Imprints"?). These included Sebastian O, The Mystery Play, Kill Your Boyfriend and Flex Mentallo. But before that, Morrison had written Animal Man and Doom Patrol (Morrison's runs on each title concluding before these books were absorbed into the new Vertigo imprint in 1993, although certainly Morrison's work helped establish the Vertigo aesthetic). And, of course, there was Morrison's earlier Batman work, the original graphic novel Arkham Asylum and the Legends of the Dark Knight arc "Gothic" (the latter of which was collected into a trade paperback, back when such collections were relatively rare). That's just the DC stuff, though; prior to that Morrison "cut his teeth" (or "their teeth") on comics in the UK, of course.

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Anyway, it's nice to see that DC Comics' Justice League comic is finally taking its place in the grocery store checkout aisle, alongside such other important pieces of American pop culture, like, let's see here...

...ground beef, Sydney Sweeney's breasts and Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's "epic" romance, I guess. 

*And by "comics industry", I think they just meant "the direct market" or "DC and Marvel as publishers that release series as floppies once a month".

Hey kids! Comics!

(Page from Justice League #38, written by Scott Snyder, drawn by Jorge Jimenez and colored by Alejandro Sanchez)

Is it just me, or does it seem like the DC Universe has gotten kind of...small?

Ever since the closing pages of Dark Nights: Metal, writer Scott Snyder and his frequent co-writer James Tynion IV have been telling a very big story in the pages of the miniseries No Justice and the ongoing Justice League, which is already on issue #31 or so, thanks to the twice-monthly publishing schedule.

The story—and it has essentially been just one story—has encompassed all of existence, stretching as far back as before the beginning of time, and involving an entire multiverse of multiverses. Part of Jack Kirby's Source Wall broke, unmooring the local multiverse, and releasing Perpetua, a mother of the god-like Monitor, Anti-Monitor and World Forger (the last of whom is a new addition to DC's cosmology).

We're told that in the creation before this creation, Perpetua has made another reality, but her sons rebelled against her and made this existence instead. Now Lex Luthor and his Legion of Doom have taken up fighting for Perpetua and the forces of the abstract concept of doom, warring against the Justice League who, of course, are fighting for the abstract concept of justice. During the course of their battles, the DC Universe seems to be in a slow-boiling process of being remade once again, presumably ultimately undoing the last grand remaking, 2011's Flashpoint, which gave us the current New 52 version of the shared DC Universe setting (which, of course, encompasses not just a single universe, but a multiverse...or multiverses).

The Justice League itself isn't too terribly big at the moment. The core team consists of 9-13 characters, depending on whether or not you want to count Jarro and very recent additions like The World Forger, The Monitor and Shane (that's Martian Manhunter and Hawkgirl's son from a now non-existent future). There are also two ancillary teams, the ones that star in Justice League Odyssey and Justice League Dark; the former never appear in the pages of Justice League, the latter fill up crowd scenes and appear in the backgrounds in the Hall of Justice.

As the now years-long storyline reaches what appears to be a climax in the current "Justice/Doom War" story arc, much has been made of the Justice League recruiting "everyone," an entire army consisting of every available hero. Meanwhile, Luthor has been doing the same with the villains, part of the "Year of The Villain" storyline/branding event in which a newly reborn Luthor approaches various villains with transformative gifts that make them more powerful than ever.

The above page is the sixth page from Justice League #30, by Snyder, Tynion and artist Jorge Jimenez. After Starman has briefed the assembled heroes on what is going to happen in the upcoming Legion/League war—the League is all killed, but not as brutally as one might expect from a modern DC comic—the core League gives the assembled heroes a kinda sorta pep talk about their plan to stave off their seemingly fated defeat.

Here's the thing though. For an image of all of DC's superheroes assembled as a sort of Justice army, the page seemed kind of...small to me.

Part of that might be because Snyder and Tynion have already revealed this particular beat to readers a few times. They Tynion-written portion of DC's Year of The Villain Special #1 featured a two-page spread in which Francs Manapul draws pretty  much the exact same group of heroes, and Justice League #26 featured a sequence in which Hawkgirl and Mera walked around the Hall, checking in on these recruits as they prepped for the war.

But there just don't seem to be very many superheroes here. There are some members of Justice League Dark (Zatanna, Man-Bat, Swamp Thing and his beard), some Teen Titans (Robin, Red Arrow, Kid Flash), some non-teen Titans (Donna Troy, Kyle Rayner, Raven, Beast Boy, Steel, Miss Martian), The Terriffics (Mister Terrific, Plastic Man, Metamorpho and Phantom Girl), a random handful of various heroes appearing in comics throughout the current DC line (Batgirl, Supergirl, Captain Marvel "Shazam," Hawkman, Black Lightning, Jericho) and another, smaller handful of book-less characters (Firestorm, Animal Man, Ted Kord, Simon Baz, Guy Gardner) and that's it. All together, that's only between 25-30 supeheroes one can identify in the image, plus a bunch of indistinguishable blobs in the background and, remember, another nine or ten heroes off-panel on a sort of stage giving a presentation.

As someone who can just barely hold a pencil, I certainly am in no position to blame Jiminez for not filling the page with more heroes, and getting everyone in the latest edition of those encyclopedias of characters DC publishes into that panel, but I was really struck by how small it made the DC Universe of the moment seem.

I mean, I'm pretty sure you could get 30 superheroes if you took all the active members of the teams during the early '90s, when there were three Leagues with their own titles (America, Europe/International and Task Force). Or had they used the "everyone who was ever a Leaguer" rubric of the reserves evidenced in Mark Millar's JLA #27 from 1997. Hell, I bet if Batman called up all of his sidekicks, allies and affiliated teams—The Outsiders, Birds of Prey and Batman, Inc/The Club of Heroes—he alone could have filled that room to bursting.

Now, I know there are a lot more DC heroes out there, and that they're probably not available to appear in this story for their own story reasons. Noticeably absent, for example, is supposedly active Justice Leaguer Cyborg, and his entire Odyssey team (presumably because they are off in space doing space stuff; they haven't appeared in the series since the earliest issues). That's probably why Hal Jordan and Adam Strange and a few others aren't there, as well. Tim Drake and the Young Justice team are all MIA, probably because they're still out-of-universe doing whatever they're doing in the pages of Young Justice. I haven't read Heroes In Crisis yet, but I assume if Ted Kord is elbowing Guy Gardner instead of Booster Gold, that means he's dead-ish, or at least lost in time? Same with The Flash Wally West...?

But where are The Metal Men? Or the rest of The Shazam Family? What of all those Dark Matter/New Age of Heroes heroes...did none of them stick around after ignominious cancellation of their titles? Is it notable that Arsenal isn't there, or that Nightwing or Batwoman or Huntress aren't? Does Red Tornado exist anymore, and/or is he currently alive? Elongated Man? Fire and Ice? Hawk and Dove? Blue Devil? The other Steel, John Henry Irons? Vibe? Frankenstein? O.M.A.C.? Any Doctor Fates around anymore? No more Power Girls? Are we totally done with Wildstorm characters existing in the DCU, even Midnighter and Apollo? What about new characters introduced in the wake of Flashpoint, like Skitter and Bunker and Talon and those guys with weird names in Stormwatch...?

The longer I lingered on this image, the more I realized that the DCU got awfully small after Flashpoint. Not only did it wipe out the JSA and their fellow Golden Agers, and the various future heroes (although both the JSA and Legion of Super-Heroes are on their way back, of course; the former appearing on the last page of this very issue), but the reboot lead to the de-creation of huge swathes of heroes and other characters, many of whom would of course be recreated, but even many of those exist in weird liminal states, where they seem to have been re-rebooted or re-recreated since their initial New 52 reintroductions (like Black Lightning, for example) and others I know have appeared in some form, but lost track of.

And then, of course, there are heroes I know DC has reintroduced in new forms since The New 52 effort and the other branding exercises that followed it, but those characters apparently failed to catch on...and failed so badly they apparently can't even fill in crowd scenes like this (I'm thinking here of the new Ragman, or The Ray, or The Human Bomb or National Comics' Rose and Thorn, Eternity, Madame X and Looker;  I'm sure there are more).

Honestly, I'd have trouble filling a room with DC superheroes that I know have both been re-introduced since Flashpoint and haven't been killed or otherwise jettisoned from usage in an event story like this. Of course, this could very likely be just me, as I am not following the Wednesday by Wednesday exploits of DC's stables of heroes as closely as I used to, and therefore I've lost track of pretty much all of the heroes not appearing in Justice League or the Batman titles.

So maybe the DC Universe hasn't gotten small, it just feels small to me. I don't know; I'd be interested in hearing the opinions of others on the matter.

A few pages later in the very same issue, we see an echo of this page, when Luthor gestures towards his newly recruited Legion of Doom, consisting of about 25 villains, only about 15 of whom I can name...although these are mostly redesigned, presumably because of the gifts they accepted from Luthor.

The Legion has been awfully small since the start of the series, originally consisting of just six villains, the archenemies of each of the "Big Seven" Leaguers, minus Martian Manhunter. They've since lost two and gained one, so the League has always outnumbered the Legion (The original Legion, the one from Challenge of The Super-Friends, boasted 13 members; the most appropriate number for a group of villains).

They too seems like a rather small number of bad guys, especially when contrasted with the all-the-bad-guys-teamed-up premise of Forever Evil, but that image didn't make me reflect upon the possible contraction of the DC Universe in quite the same way, as for almost every successful superhero, there are always going to be dozens of bad guys. I mean, you could fill up a splash page with Green Lantern, Aquaman or Wonder Woman villains, let alone Batman, The Flash and Superman, who boast incredibly large rogues galleries.

On New Challengers #1

*This is the seventh of "The New Age of Heroes" books out of the gate and, like The Immortal Men, it's one that should probably have been the first or second one released, helping to get the troubled line off on the right foot. It, of course, has the benefit of being written by Scott Snyder, who conceived of and wrote the Dark Nights: Metal event series that the "New Age" books are supposedly spinning out of (although the degree to which this is the case varies from book to book). And while the the "New Age" books don't exactly follow up on the events of Metal--you'll want No Justice and the upcoming Justice League line for that--they are supposedly books inspired by Metal. Challengers Mountain, for example, played a role in the series, so Metal likely made some readers think, "Oh yeah, The Challengers! I wonder what's up with them these days...?" Well, Snyder prompted the question, so now he's providing the answer.

Additionally, the artist getting top-billing here is Andy Kubert. I'm not sure if any Big Two artist is a big enough deal at this particular moment in time that their presence on a book alone is enough to make it a hit--not even Jim Lee, who is probably the closest to still being so--but a new Andy Kubert book seems like a bigger, more exciting deal than, say, a new Tony Daniel or a new Philip Tan book.

*While the line's exact remit has been pretty fuzzy ever since it was announced, regarding not only if and how the books were related to Metal,  but also to what degree the artist creators were going to be involved and for how long, and even the line's very name. This particular release underscores another muddy aspect: Just how "new" the characters and concepts are supposed to be. Some books have featured brand-new characters, like The Silencer and Sideways. Some feature brand-new characters making use of old names, like Damage and The Curse of Brimestone. One, The Terrifics, has taken a quartet of pre-existing characters and put them together into a new team. Others, like The Immortal Men and the yet-to-be-released The Unexpected, seem to be mixing pre-existing characters, with new characters using old names and brand-new characters with new names.

New Challengers is...none of the above, exactly, although close to the new characters with old name/concept strategy. This is, after all, an update of DC's old Challengers of The Unknown concept. The Challs are the creation of Jack Kirby (as something like two-thirds of all Big Two IP seems to be some days), from way back in the pre-Silver Age Superhero Revival days. A group of four two-fisted adventuring types with manly-man nicknames, the original team miraculously survived a plane crash, and came to the logical conclusion that they are now living on borrowed time, and therefore they should form a team that takes on extremely dangerous missions investigating occult phenomenon, monsters, mad scientists and the like. Given that they were a group of four adventurers in matching uniforms who addressed fantastic challenges, they are a pretty obvious forerunner of Kirby's more famous co-creation, The Fantastic Four (a fact acknowledged in 1997's Amalgam one-shot, Challengers of The Fantastic by Karl Kesel, Tom Grummett and Al Vey, which amalgamated the two teams into one).

After the initial, successful run in Showcase and then their own book, DC has attempted to bring them back repeatedly, but they never really hit. In 1991, Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale gave it a shot (you can probably find that in its collected form, The Challengers of The Unknown Must Die!). In 1997, there was a short-lived revival attempt by Steven Grant, Len Kaminsky, John Paul Leon, Shawn Martinbrough, Jill Thompson and--Hey, that sounds pretty good! Maybe that should be collected in trade--that lasted just 18 issues. And in 2004, Howard Chaykin did an equally forgotten miniseries. The last time we saw the Challengers was in a 2012 issue of the DC Universe Presents title, wherein Dan DiDio and Jerry Ordway introduced The New 52 iteration of the team in a three-issue arc that involved reality television.

In other words, the Challengers are probably due for another attempt at their own title, and making that title something that can survive, let alone succeed, is going to be, well, a challenge.

*So, the cover. As I've mentioned with, like, every one of these "New Age" books so far, the artists really struggle with the vertical gatefold space. Kubert's strategy for the cover was to make use of the hourglass motif, which has served as the icon for past incarnations of the team--that whole borrowed time motif--but in order to fit an hourglass into that space, he has to elongate it so that it is much, much, much taller than it is wide, to the point it doesn't really look all that much like an hourglass anymore.

The other weird thing about the cover? See the rather ugly guy who appears as a giant head behind the team? I'm not entirely sure what his deal is--I've barely read any past Challengers comics, so I'm not sure if he's a pre-existing character or not--but the cover gives us a pretty good look at his face. The opening scene of the comic, however, features that very character, his face almost completely wrapped in bandages, Unknown Soldier-style, so that pretty much the only thing we can see of him are his two mismatched eyes. Obviously the reveal of what he looks like under those bandages is going to be something of a moment in the story eventually, but Kubert spoils his own moment by putting the guy right there on the cover, un-bandaged. I suppose it would be a little like having a helmetless Darth Vader on the Return of The Jedi movie poster. (Only not really.)

*Snyder and/or Kubert have come up with a pretty decent set-up for the new series. Instead of trying to come up with a brand-new, completely original take that will definitely work where all the other, post-Silver Age revival attempts failed, theirs seeks to incorporate all previous takes. So instead of all surviving from the same plane crash, the New Challengers all survive different deaths, and are brought at the instant of their deaths to Challengers Mountain via teleporter by a mysterious Professor character. (Actually, he says they did all die, and are being given additional time to serve as the latest Challengers of The Unknown, tweaking the borrowed time aspect so that he's essentially the one loaning them their borrowed time, and they will have to repay him through their service).

At one point, he shows them a room full of holographic memorials to Challengers past, and while I couldn't pick out any faces save for the ones he points out as the longest serving ones (that is, the originals), the implication is that there has been a long, long line of various teams of Challengers before, some known and some unknown. Thus, all of the other teams that have been introduced in various revival and reboot attempts could be incorporated into the narrative of this new series.

It is a rather Grant Morrison-y, "everything counts" kind of take.

*The other tweaks to the borrowed time elements are that these Challengers can only remain alive while inside Challengers Mountain; once outside on a mission the little hourglass tattoos they have start counting down the allotted time they have been given to complete their assignment and, when it runs out, they die pretty horrible-looking deaths. So for each and every mission, they seemingly need to "borrow" enough time to fulfill their mission. It's somewhat Suicide Squad-y, in that they are forced into taking on these dangerous missions on pain of death, but it is yet to be revealed if The Professor is all that Amanda Waller-y or not.

*Our four new Challengers are Trina Alvarez, Moses Barber, Bethany Hopkins and "Krunch," whose name whose name is apparently spelled the way so he can't be sued by any candy bar manufacturers. Of them, we only spend much time with Trina, and by "much time" I mean five pages. She is--er, was--a Gotham City herbalist struggling to carry on her grandmother's legacy by helping those in her neighborhood. Her old life comes to an end during a Justice League vs. aliens fight (So Kubert draws the pre-Metal Justice League for one whole panel here). One assumes we'll see the deaths of the other three Challs in the coming issues.

*They get their matching costumes, and go on their first mission, which is just beginning when the issue ends with a cliffhanger.

*Beyond what I said up top about this being a better comic to start the line with, it's also one of the better ones in terms of quality and in terms of being a first issue. Like, there are still a lot of questions left unanswered by the end of the first issue, but there's a sufficient amount of information to get an idea of where the comic might be going and what future issues might be like, so a reader can probably make an informed-ish decision about whether or not they want to read #2.

*I would, but I think I'll just trade-wait this. My prior experience with Snyder's work has lead me to believe it reads better in trade than single issues...although Metal was a pretty great read on a serial basis...



Previously...

On The Immortal Men #1

On The Curse of Brimstone #1

On The Terrifics #1

On Sideways #1

On The Silencer #1

On Damage #1

Comic Shop Comics: May 9th

Justice League: No Justice #1 (DC Comics) It can be difficult to experience a new comic book in a vacuum, without going into it with thoughts, guesses and opinions based not only on what knows about the characters and creators, but also what one has been seeing for months in solicitations or online discussion. For me, it's impossible, even as I pay less and less attention to comics "news" sites. So I've been thinking about this weird-looking weekly miniseries for awhile now, which seemed premised as a sort of Most-Star Squadron, with members of the Justice Leagues teaming with members of the Teen Titans and some villains and other heroes to form color-coded squads with weird names like "Team Mystery" and "Team Wonder."

The short preview story that appeared in last week's DC Nation #0 was so in medias res that it didn't little to clear anything up, just showing those teams in action as they battled their way across Brainiac's homeworld of Colu that it didn't really reveal anything other than what was in the solicitations (except, perhaps, how artist Jorge Jimenez would be drawing some of the characters appearing in the upcoming Justice League relaunch).

Well now we get some clarity, as the event actually kicks-off. It is being co-written by Scott Snyder, James Tynion and Joshua Williamson. Snyder is to be expected, as he wrote Dark Nights: Metal, which was essentially a Batman-centric Justice League story, and was slated to be writing Justice League upon relaunch (Which excited me to no end, as Metal was one of the best League stories since at least the post-Flashpoint reboot). As for Tynion and Williamson, the former of whom co-writes with Snyder a lot and the latter of whom wrote Justice League Vs. Suicide Squad, their presence made a lot more sense upon the announcement of two new Justice League series, Justice League Dark by Tynion and Justice League Odyssey by Williamson. The artist for this issue, and the whole series, is Francis Manapul, who previously drew parts of Geoff Johns' climactic "Darkseid War," and classed the joint up considerably when he did so.

The book opens with the Green Lantern Corps gathering around the Source Wall, with Hal, John, Guy and Kyle in the center, and all but Kyle getting a few lines. Interestingly, Guy and John both seem to blame Hal and, as Guy puts it, "your friends on the Justice League" for breaking the wall at the end of Metal. Indeed, Metal's epilogue set up the upcoming Justice League by positing that with the Source Wall broken, things from the other side could no access and threaten the DC Universe, and it would be up to the League to stop those new threats (I found Kyle's silence, which isn't dwelt upon, interesting as well. I may be misremembering, as I haven't read Green Lantern or any Lantern books with any regularity since Johns left the franchise, but didn't one of the books contain a storyline in which Kyle was able to travel to the other side of the Source Wall and come back...? Something that was always thought to be impossible-ish...?)

Next is a neat two-page spread of 21 tight panels, jumping from three different battles to Amanda Waller in front of red computer screens flashing "Crisis Alert." It appears that Brainiac has launched simultaneous attacks on all four--are there really just the four now?--of DC's super-teams, The Suicide Squad, The Titans, The Teen Titans and, of course, The Justice League (but not Batman's "of America" team, which is apparently already out of business, even though two of its non-Batman members show up on two of the Teams). Brainiac "wins" within a matter of pages, and various characters awake in his spaceship, all of them now dressed in different versions of their regular costumes (I was, as I've said, disappointed; the costumes are essentially similar to their original ones, just with more lines in unusual places, a few light-up discs attached and the tint of their coloration skewed weirdly; personally, I think I might have preferred these temporary costumes be differently-colored versions of their regular costumes. For example, if Cyborg's redesign was consistent throughout the others. But whatever...I am assuming I'll get used to these in a few more pages, and then everyone will go back to their old costumes by the fourth issue).

The seemingly random nature of the assembled characters is at least explained in-story: Brainiac realizes the potential of Earth's superheroes, but he thinks they "waste it in comfortable formations" based on bonds their "fragile emotions" have engendered among them. So he defeated all the world's defenders to a) prove his point and b) abduct the heroes he needs. He has then formed them into the teams that make victory against the new threat most probable.

As an aside here, it's fun to think of who he plucked and from where. Most of the current Justice League's line-up was taken, while Aquaman was the only one left on Earth (The League's Lanterns, Simon Baz and Jessica Cruz, weren't present in the fight with Brainiac, nor at the Source Wall with the GLC). From the Teen Titans, he took Robin, Beast Boy, Raven and Starfire; again, most of the line-up. From the Suicide Squad he took only Harley Quinn. And from The Titans, the grown-up sidekicks plus Omen, he took...no one. Huh. I guess he beat them all up just for fun. Then there are all the random characters: Martian Manhunter, Zatanna, Doctor Fate (although I don't know which one, there have been three or four since Flashpoint), Lobo, The Demon Etrigan and The Atom (Choi, it looks like). And then the villains: Lex Luthor, Deathstroke, Sinestro and, most randomly, Starro, fresh from his star (fish) turn in Metal.

In the real world, it will be interesting to see the rationale for these characters as the stories develop. Certainly some are likely just there for fun (Starro) or their popularity (Harley, maybe Deathstroke), and others to the ground work for the upcoming League line-ups, but a lot of the above characters do not appear to be on the new League line-ups (For example, one might expect to see Fate or Etrigan on Justice League Dark after this series, but only Wonder Woman and Zatanna from this event are). Further, the solicitation for the fourth issue mentions that "some heroes will be lost forever," so I suppose it's quite possible that some of these folks are here to act as cannon fodder.

As for what Brainiac needs them for, and why he's re-dressed them all, it appears that the hole in the Source Wall allowed Marvel's Celestials The Millennium Giants The Omega Titans to enter the universe, where they will begin eating planets Galactus style, deciding which of them gets to eat which planet based by the dominant fundamental force in that planet: Entropy, Mystery, Wisdom and Wonder. Brainiac's plan to abduct a bunch of super-people, break them into ideal teams, outfit them with nodes that imbue them with the appropriate energy to match the four forces of the four planet-eaters and thwart them; to ensure the Justice League's cooperation, he set it up so that Earth will be the Galactuses next stop if they eat Colu.

It seems like a decent plan but it all goes to hell in time for the cliffhanger ending, as a scene from Justice League Vs. Suicide Squad comes into play and Brainiac is unexpectedly removed from the equation.

By banding all these diverse characters together (and by diverse I mean from various places; there are three times green-skinned people as there are brown-skinned people among the assembled characters, and as many orange-skinned, pink-skinned or giant, psychic starfish as there are Earthlings of color), this issue has the feel of an crisis-style event comic, with characters from different corners of the DCU all bumping into one another (sometimes literally), arguing and discussing their pasts and futures, together and apart.

So there's a lot of exciting stuff going on here, perhaps particularly for DC Comics fans--I've no idea what this reads like to someone not already soaking in the DCU--and the artwork is perfect. I could ask for more--better costume design, a more representative cast--but I'm satisfied with what I got, and am looking forward to the rest of the month.

A few thoughts on Batman and The Signal #1

*The cover proclaims that Batman and The Signal is "From The Pages of Metal". Is it? If so, a connection between this first issue and the first four issues of Metal isn't evident, although I suppose it's possible one of the last two issues of either miniseries will provide one. The character Duke Thomas was rather prominently featured in the prequel one-shots leading in to Metal, but, by that standard, one could say that any comic featuring any character that appeared in Metal is "From The Pages of Metal."


*The three-issue miniseries is being co-written by Scott Snyder and Tony Patrick. The latter apparently came out of one of DC's talent development workshop program thingees. He wrote a Duke Thomas/Jason Todd team-up in this year's New Talent Showcase anthology book that was pretty okay. The artist is Cully Hamner. He is awfully good at drawing comic books.


*The issue opens with Duke narrating, "I just want to say, I know what you're thinking," while the artwork depicts a long dining room table set for seven, with Batman's various lieutenants--Nightwing, Robin, Red Robin, Red Hood, Batgirl, Batwoman, Batwing, Orphan--take their places at the table. And that's without counting other members of Batman's "Gotham Knights" team from Detective Comics, like Azrael, Spoiler and Clayface.

"There aren't even any good names left," Duke says, articulating the one problem I have had with the character to date (Hell, they've even started using the terrible names, like "Orphan").


*Duke has super-powers, of a kind. He describes his powers like this: "I see light differently than other people. Can see where it's been a few minutes ago, and sometimes...where it's going to be, which gives me an edge in most fights." Hmm. The second half sounds a bit like Cassandra Cain's ability to predict movement, but it's very vague as described here, and Duke makes it sound like he and the rest of the Bats are still trying to figure out how it works exactly.


*After the dream sequence, there's a fight sequence, involving Duke and one of several, new-ish metahuman teens that have emerged lately, of which he may be one. At its conclusion, the civilians all gather around and start yelling at him about how bats don't come out during the day, and that he should be in his cave or wherever, and so on. They're...not wrong.

While the premise for the series, and Duke's niche in the Bat-family, seems to be that he's the "day-time Batman," it does sort of break the idea of Batman in Gotham City, if one thinks about it too long. That is, it's a lot less believable that there's a squad of vigilantes that work in the daylight, that pass through crowds of civilians and commuters, than it is that they only come out at night, you know?

I suppose he does have some powers, and if they were of the sort of, say, The Flash or Green Lantern or Gotham Girl, it might be interesting if Gotham City suddenly had a superhero that protected it publicly in the day time the same as Metropolis or Central City or other DCU cities, while Batman and his team protected it at night, but Duke's powers aren't of the sort that are noticeable enough that someone seeing him in action would classify him as a superhero, rather than a vigilante.


*Commissioner Gordon's parting joke about the sun was funny, I thought.


*Duke hangs out with Izzy and Riko, both members of his Robin cell from the short-lived We Are Robin, at one point. He is apparently dating the former, although I don't know if this is new information or not.


*Batman gives Duke his own little mini-Batcave, with a lame name, "The Hatch." It's behind a secret passage in the Lucius Fox Community Center, where Duke used to volunteer with amnesiac, bearded Bruce Wayne.


*And then we finally get to the name, "The Signal." Now, I've disliked the name from the start, in large part because it is simply a random noun, not unlike, say, "Oracle" or "Orphan" (although, in the case of the former, it does refer to her purpose in a poetic fashion). Additionally, the word "signal" already has a role in the Batman milieu, as in "the batsignal." It's difficult to thin of the word "signal" in relation to Batman at this point and not think of the batsignal.

Well, here's how Duke explains it:

I've been thinking about it. My mother, she's a social worker, and she always goes out first thing in the morning to meet her clients.

She says it's the best time to see things clearly. To see them in a new light.

She considered herelf the first knight on the battlefield, defending the needy and all that, I guess.

And another word for the first knight out there is...'Signal.'

Okay, that sort of works, as it plays into Batman's appellation as "The Dark Knight" and Red Robin's "Gotham Knights" team in Detective. To a degree, it even matches Duke's look, as there is something very knight-like about his helmet and visor, and his costume certainly looks a lot more like a suit of armor than many of the costumes worn by his peers.

There's still the problem of the "batsignal" connotation, though, and, well, Duke does have bat-ears and bats on his face and chest. The costume design--and, increasingly, I'm convinced his costumes were designed long before any real consideration was made for his name--all that implies that there has to be a "bat" in his name, somewhere.

Finally, there is the fact that the script itself confuses the symbolism a bit, as during the earlier fight scene, Duke cajoles himself to "pick up the signals"...does "signal" refer to the first knight on the field, or the signals he sees with his powers...?

I think Signal, as the name of a knight-derived superhero, would work just fine in pretty much any other milieu, but it seems pretty garbled in the context of the Batman milieu (Would it have been better to repurpose an old name not being prominently used at the moment, like Knight, The Shining Knight or White Knight?). As the name of a hero with signal-catching super-powers, well, I think "Sonar" or "Echo" is more obvious, given the fact that he's dressed like a bat. It's a pretty dumb name, granted, and sounds kind of X-Men-esque, but it's no dumber than "The Signal," and it matches his costume and powers.

A little help here.

I just recently read Batman/The Shadow: The Murder Geniuses, the collection of DC and Dynamite's six-issue crossover miniseries (plus a short story from Batman Annual #1) by writers Scott Snyder and Steve Orlando and artist Riley Rossmo. Perhaps unsurprisingly given some of the names involved in its production, it was an excellent comics story, particularly for this sort of inter-publisher, franchise-mingling crossover event series. In fact, Batman/The Shadow sets a new standard for such inter-company crossovers, and one can only hope future DC crossovers can meet that high standard.

The particular story fits well into themes and motifs that Snyder has repeatedly touched on throughout his long and healthy run on the Batman character, particularly the way he keeps returning to Batman's origins and finding new aspects to reveal that change without contradicting them. In a neat bit of meta-commentary regarding the pre-comics pulp hero The Shadow and his influence on many of the crime-fighting characters that would follow, Batman more than many others, Snyder and Orlando's plotting revolves around the idea of The Shadow having secretly trained Batman throughout his life and career, essentially grooming him to one day replace him. Evidence mounts throughout the series, and while Batman is never entirely convinced, it's a particularly fun idea that not only makes the real-world history of the characters part of the adventure story being told, but manages to elevate this crossover to one of particular importance hen compared to others of its kind.

Additionally, it's a fantastic showcase for Rossmo's always-impressive skills, and Snyder and Orlando give one of the better Batman artists working today the opportunity to draw a very large swathe of Batman characters, particularly in a scene in which Batman and The Shadow follow their enemies The Joker and The Stag to a place where much of Batman's rogues gallery has gathered to battle them.

Perhaps it is because Orlando, who has made a habit of name-dropping and cameo-ing obscure characters in his body of work, is involved, but that means there are a lot of rather deep cuts among the characters who appear in that Batman and Shadow vs. everyone scene, and an even earlier one in which The Shadow tells Batman that he is but one of many heroes he has secretly groomed.

How deep are some of these deep cuts? So deep that I can't recognize them all. Perhaps some of you can.

Within these panels are various characters that The Shadow says are his army of soldiers and secret students, each a potential replacement. Keeping in mind that the guy with the horns and the knife is the villain The Stag and the guy in the Batman costume is Batman, there nine other characters here.

I see...

1.) Miss Fury (although you'd be forgiven for thinking she's Catwoman), 2.) The Woman In Red, I think...?, 3.) The Whip, 4.) Green Arrow, 5.) Some Guy With a Hat I Couldn't Even Attempt to Guess The Identity Of, 6.) Seriously No Idea Who This Guy Getting Stabbed Is Supposed To Be, 7.) Crimson Fox (Though my scan cut her out), 8.) The Reaper (ditto) and 9.) Acro-Bat.

As I mentioned, the Batman villains include some rather minor ones from all eras, including Hellhound, a pre-Flashpoint version of The Wrath, a redesigned Zebra-Man and an original design Magpie. There's one character present, though, who I can't identify. That's him above, standing between Man-Bat and The Joker.

Anyone know who that guy is...?

Thanks in advance for your help! And, if you haven't read it yet, I'd strongly recommend Batman/The Shadow: The Murder Geniuses.

On DC New Talent Showcase 2017 #1

Last year DC published DC New Talent Showcase #1, a $7.99, 72-page anthology comic featuring nine eight-page stories by writers from the publisher's new talent development program, each drawn by a more veteran artist who was involved in some aspect of the program. This year, they are publishing their second New Talent Showcase, and, rather than numbering this issue #2, they've added a date to the title, so that they can use the supposedly magical "#1" on the cover to increase the guaranteed-to-be-quite-low sales a little.

Seems appropriate. These new creators should know that superstitious numerology is more important to the Big Two comics publishers than basic math skills.

This installment differs from the first in a few key ways. Most immediately noticeable to me was that this time around the remit seemed to be on completely-complete stories that stand on their own and seem to more-or-less fit into a recognizable DC continuity (as fluid as their continuity has been of late). Last year's Showcase was weird in that almost every story seemed like an eight-page first issue of a miniseries or new run on a series, many featuring cliffhangers that would never be resolved. It made for a frustrating reading experience, and seemed a poor way to showcase the writers' skills. And hell, who wants to read the first eight pages of a 120-page story that will never actually get published, you know?

This time, the artists as well as the writer's are new to DC...or newer than many of those that participated in last year's Showcase, anyway.  Additionally, the stories are all longer--there are seven, 10-page stories--which likely went a long way toward making the individual stories more satisfying reads.

Finally, there's a "bonus" story (although since they charged us for it, it's not really a "bonus," but whatever) written by Scott Snyder.

Let's take a look, shall we? Oh, and please note that I linked to the newer creators' websites or Twitter feeds where I could find them, should you want to know more about who some of these people are. On the whole, from what I could tell by Googling, they seem to be mostly working professionals who have either worked in comics previously--just not all that much for DC--or, in the case of the writers, worked in other media.

The Red Hood and Duke in "Roll Call" by writer Tony Patrick, pencil artist Minkyu Jung and inker Klaus Janson

The first page of this story is a splash featuring a somewhat unfortunate image to kick the book off with. Pencil artist Minkyu Jung draws Batman's current apprentice Duke Thomas, who has yet to earn his upcoming codename "The Signal", launching a flying kick at Red Hood Jason Todd in what looks like a prison hallway. The anatomy on Duke looks pretty...off, and in more of a mistake-y way than a stylistic way.

Fortunately, that is probably the worst drawing in the story, which consists of the pair of Batman lieutenants sparring and comparing notes on their shared mission in Arkham Asylum...which, we learn on page five, is actually The Danger Room The Mud Room introduced in James Tynion's Detective Comics run.

After a few pages, all of the cells open up, and rather than fighting one another, the boys are fighting the likes of Bane, The Joker, Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn, giving Jung the opportunity to draw a pretty sizable swathe of Batman characters. There's also a surprise guest star.

Over all, Patrick does a good job on the characters' voices, and presents a pretty convincing take on their relationship, particularly considering how little Jason and Duke have actually interacted with one another up to this point in previous comics.

I suppose that's pretty good news, since Patrick will be co-writing the upcoming Batman and The Signal miniseries with Scott Snyder.

Hmm, now I wonder who should I blame for that dumb-ass codename, Snyder or Patrick...?

Katana in "To The Hilt" by writer Aaron Gillespie and artist Lynne Yoshii

This is basically just a Katana-focused Suicide Squad story, which I found notable mainly because it was actually a lot better than the Katana solo story that ran in the back of one of the earliest issues of the "Rebirth" volume of Suicide Squad.

The basic plot line is that Katana loses her mystical sword during a Squad mission, and, despite being blown up at one point and bleeding badly from her wounds, she dives out of the Squad's escaping helicopter to go after her sword. It's pretty special to her, given that it possesses the soul of her dead husband and all.

The villain of the piece is kind of an interesting choice. Though for the purposes of the story it really only needs to be a generic bad guy, maybe someone who can conceivably hold their own in a fight against a martial artist, Gillespie uses King Snake, the blind, blond master from Chuck Dixon's original Robin miniseries (I've lost track of so many character after the reboot; I'm not sure if this is his first post-Flashpoint appearance or not).

Yoshii has a nice, clean line and the artwork is smooth, open and appealing. There's a bit of manga influence in the characters' faces, although it's not terribly evident until the last page, when we see Katana without her mask on. I would definitely read more comics drawn by Yoshii.

Nightwing in "What We Talk About When We Talk About Family" by writer Al Letson and artist Siya Oum

Only three stories in, and there's already another appearance by the Bat-Family. This one is a Nightwing story, although writer Al Letson uses Nightwing as a sort of prism through which to discuss the Bats in general.

Nightwing is trying to safeguard a couple and their baby from Green Arrow villain Count Vertigo--ugh, that redesign!--as a favor to GA, and he's narrating the whole time. Occasionally, like, every few panels, he will think of what Batman or another member of the extended family--Batgirl, Batwoman, Robin--would say, and their busts will appear in little circles floating above the panels, with their words appearing in color-coded thought bubbles. I thought it worked surprisingly well, although if you just told me about it the way I just told you about it, I probably would have groaned.

Nightwing has to basically fight his way up a tall building, while Vertigo and his small army of goons pursue. His goal is to get to the top, from where he can call in help from some of the very people he's been thinking about, plus Red Robin, in an off-model version of his first post-Flashpoint costume (but given how bad that costume was, the more off-model the better, I say!).

Artist Siya Oum's figure work didn't do a whole lot for me, but I really like the way the pages are laid out, and the way the story moves upon them. Letson's script only works because of how well it's visually constructed, though, so Oum obviously did some stuff pretty right.

Oh, and as dumb as this Count Vertigo looks, he still looks better than he did when he first appeared in the New 52 Green Arrow comic.

Poison Ivy in "Silent Screams" by writer Owl Goingback and artist Matt Merhoff

Owl Goingback's Poison Ivy is more anti-hero than villain, at least in this story, where she has traveled to rural Georgia to avenge the plants killed by "a shape-shifting Babylonian she-devil," which conveienetly looks to be made out of black ropes or dead vines in the vague shape of a monster woman. The demon has also been taking children and killing animals and suchlike, but Ivy's just there to avenge the plants.

There's not much to the story, other than offering a different take on the character by removing her from her regular role in the Gotham City-based melodramas she usually inhabits: She goes hunting for a demon, she fights it and wins.

Artist Matt Merhoff is a pretty spectacular talent. The opening splash, showing Ivy striding down the street in a cloak of leaves while her hair flares out like searching vines is a pretty striking image, and, paired with the background, essentially previews the bulk of the story to follow. Underneath the cloak, which includes a hood of ivy, she is wearing a version of her original costume, albeit with a skimpier cut, and more detailed in its make-up, being composed entirely of little ivy leaves, rather than any green fabric.

There's maybe one wonky pose--page 8, panel 1--but otherwise Merhoff's art is pretty exceptional, with an almost Brian Bolland-esque level of detail to it. As with Yoshii, Merhoff is someone whose work I'll be looking out for in the future.

Deadshot in "Mercy" by writers Erica Harrell and Desiree Proctor, pencil artist Lalit Sharma and inker Jagdish Kumar

This story resembles the earlier Katana one in that it stars a Suicide Squad member on a mission, with Amanda Waller talking in their ear throughout the entire story--and appearing in a few panels, particularly at the end. It's actually a pretty significant story, as it ties into and rewrites an element of the Deadshot's origin story, although it's not entirely clear if the stories in this special actually "count" (and I've lost track of what's canonical and what isn't in Deadshot's life story anyway).

Deadshot's been tasked with retrieving a cybernetic maguffin embedded in a mad doctor's head no matter the cost, but the mission becomes a lot more complicated when he discovers that one of the many victims of said mad doctor--disabled people he has experimented on and given implants so that he can mentally control them like puppets--is his very own brother, who he had spent his entire adult life thinking he had accidentally killed when aiming for their abusive father.

Deadshot kills everyone and shakes his blood-soaked fist at Waller. The end.

The art in this one is actually a little rough. In general the story-telling is clear, and there's something likable about the big, bold figures, but the anatomy is occasionally off in distracting ways. Like, Floyd's legs sometimes look too long, and they bend upon the floor in unnatural ways.

Doctor Fate in "The Cost of Magic" by writer David Accampo and artist Sam Lotfi

The particular Doctor Fate in this particular Doctor Fate story is Kent Nelson--or, at least, a version of Kent Nelson. There's a flashback reference to him meeting Nabu as a child, which seems new to me, but I've really got no idea what the current state of Doctor Fate is these days (Post-Flashpoint, there was a Doctor Fate introduced on Earth-2 in Earth 2, and, later, a DCU/Earth-0 Doctor Fate was introduced in Doctor Fate, although I believe the original, Nelson version showed up in that series too before I dropped it).

Writer David Accampo's story is pretty simple, maybe even simplistic, demonstrating that the spirit of Nabu in Doctor Fate's helmet--and the source of his power--is maybe kinda sorta a real jerk, and that using the near infinite powers comes with a high cost. Namely, it seems to be turning Nelson into a sweaty, melty orc with a particularly poor complexion, until he accepts his fate...? I guess? I don't know. He fights a cool-looking monster.

Despite the lack of a real hook or interesting conflict to the story, the art by Sam Lotfi is pretty incredible--perhaps the all-around best in the book, as it not only demonstrates clear storytelling and a lack of any mistakes or drawbacks, but it also has a lot of style, and the details with which Lotfi fills his panels make them a ton of fun to pore over.

Wonder Woman in "The Archive" by writer Scott Snyder and artist Ibrahim Moustafa

Wait, Scott Snyder? What's DC's number one writer doing in here? Well, he apparently was in charge of the writers' workshops (Klaus Janson and Andy Kubert lead the artists workshop), and I imagine his presence in the book--a fact trumpeted on the cover--ought to help move a few more copies. He teams with artist Ibrahim Moustafa for a Wonder Woman story that is something of a meditation of her as an avatar of, or at least fierce proponent of, The Truth-with-a-capital-"T".

Given that this is Snyder rather than a new-ish to DC Comics writer, it is perhaps no real surprise that this is probably the best-written of the issue's stories.

After a flashback to young Diana--sadly, not Wonder Tot--on Themyscira in a room full of magical, Amazonian artifacts--we jump to the present, where Steve Trevor, Agent of ARGUS has taken her into a warehouse full of magical artifacts that the U.S. government has found and can't figure out exactly what they are. Apparently she is called in because of her experience with ancient magical shit, and she wanders around a bit with Steve, naming some of the items and their uses, while disastrous occult shit happens in Washington, D.C. There's a very solid ending, tying things together in such a way that validates Steve's belief in her and her desire to courageously do the right thing, no matter what some mean, old men might think.

Moustafa's art is fine, but it honestly wasn't the most exciting in the book, and I really found myself wondering what, say, Lotfi's version of the giant monster on the last pages might have looked like.

Is there a science teacher in the house?

Before I discuss one of this week's weirdest comic books, I'm afraid I just have to get this out of my system first, if you will all indulge me.

So the above image is a single panel of Dark Nights: Metal #1, written by Scott Snyder, penciled by Greg Capullo, inked by Jonathan Glapion and colored by "FCO" Plascencia. In this panel, we see the entire Justice League flying through outer space together. Green Lantern Hal Jordan is wearing a Green Lantern Corps ring, which encases him in a force field and allows him to travel through space. Presumably, it either traps enough oxygen in there with him to allow him to breather, or it generates oxygen. It's a pretty versatile piece of super-alien technology. The three other human members of the League--Batman, The Flash and Cyborg--are similarly allowed to travel through space thanks to the ring. As you can see, they are in a ring-conjured construct in the shape of a spaceship.

The remaining three members--Superman, Wonder Woman and Aquaman--are shown flying alongside of Jordan, outside of the ship. The only thing they have to protect them from the vacuum of space is a little see-through mouth guard like thing; these likely supply them with oxygen, as well as allowing them to speak to one another.

So here's my question: Are Superman, Wonder Woman and Aquaman able to travel through a vacuum like that without dying...? Please correct me if I'm wrong, and I likely am wrong, since all I know about what happens to organisms exposed to space comes from movies, comics and mostly-forgotten comments made by barely-remembered grade school science teachers, but I thought if one was in a vacuum, the lack of oxygen and the extreme cold were only some of the things that could kill you. I thought the vacuum would also suck out all of the air inside of you, and maybe all of the liquids inside of you and maybe the organs inside of you...? It was my understanding that you would basically explode if you were in a vacuum.

Superman seems cool. While I've seen him wearing full space-suits before, I've also seen him wearing a little mask like the one above and I've also seen him flying through space with no protective wear at all. I'm assuming he's simply so strong that his body can withstand the rigors of space travel and hold itself together. The cold wouldn't be cold enough to hurt him, since almost nothing can hurt Superman. And he doesn't really need to breathe oxygen, since his body is powered by solar energy, rather than the chemical processes that keep humans alive. Also, he can fly, so propulsion shouldn't be a problem for him.

Wonder Woman though, that seems like a stretch. Sure, she's plenty strong and has a high degree of stamina and invulnerability, but it's not comparable to Superman. Even if we imagine that her demi-god powers are such that they would allow her body to keep itself functional in one piece in space, and even if we imagine that she's strong enough that the cold of space wouldn't freeze her, she still needs oxygen to breathe. Even if the mouth piece is pumping oxygen into her mouth and nose, wouldn't it just get sucked right back out of her ears and pores and so on...? Like Superman, she too can fly, so there's no problem for her there (Unlike Superman, I'm having trouble thinking of a single instance of Wonder Woman flying through space without the benefit of a ship or a giant kangaroo).

And then there's Aquaman. I know he was massively powered-up by the New 52 reboot, to the point where he is basically as strong as Golden Age Superman, but no matter how tough and how strong they say he is these days, his body can't possibly be strong enough to survive a vacuum, can it? (The excuse for his super-strength and high degree of invulnerability is that Atlanteans basically hyper-evolved to survive in their environment, so that he must be super-strong and nigh-invulnerable to survive and even flourish at depths where the pressure of the ocean would crush just about anything.) Similarly, while he is fairly immune to heat and cold, space is, like, really cold; can Aquaman really withstand the cold of space? Aquaman also needs oxygen to breathe, whether he gets it from the air or from water. Again, the mask might be giving it to him, but how's he keeping it...? Finally, Aquaman can't fly; how is he moving through space...?

Now, all of this is easy enough to no-prize away. I imagine that Green Lantern is actually projecting a field around all of them, despite the fact that we can't see it...the Lantern rings can project and construct light constructs that a comic book reader's eye can't always see. In fact, they have to be all under the influence of the ring to a certain degree, as otherwise they couldn't travel through space in that manner very far (I think it was Geoff Johns who introduced the idea of the Lanterns' rings opening wormholes to allow them to travel through deep space in an efficient manner, but maybe someone had thought of that before). So maybe there's a giant field of oxygen all around all of the heroes, and Capullo and company just didn't render it visible (It's also possible that those face masks create super-thin, sheathe-like space-suits that can't be seen by the human eye, not unlike the ones in Guardians of the Galaxy 2).

So I'm not really arguing with the panel, I just want to know what the vacuum of space does to human beings. And Superman, Wonder Woman and Aquaman.

Thanks in advance for any help you might be able to offer in setting my troubled mind at ease.