On The Unexpected #1

*I didn't read this one. I've felt somewhere between leery and queasy with some of writer Steve Orlando's DC scripts since the short-lived Midnighter series, as his over-reliance on the characters, concepts and stories of other writers, some of which were very specific to that writer and of rather recent vintage, seemed to stand on--if not outright cross--the line between homage and appropriation.

Additionally, the most recent work of his I had read--about half of the second volume of his Justice League of America series--was just not very good. I think I made it up to the introduction of a character that was part-Tarzan, part-Iron Fist before I gave up on the trade collection. When I heard he was re-introducing the Mark Waid and Bryan Hitch-created Queen of Fables and the Grant Morrison and Mark Millar-created Aztek, I groaned. When I saw he was integrating Alan Moore and J.H. Williams III's Promethea into the DC Universe in the pages of JLoA, I swore his work off.

I know cases can and have been made as to why it's "okay" for one writer to integrate the work of another writer who has specifically expressed his desire that people not do that into his own work, about how DC's within its legal rights to use the character, and Moore and Williams' creation wasn't that unique anyway and blah blah blah. But the bottom line remains that it is just a shitty thing to do, and while mainstream comics can be a pretty shitty industry, no one is forced to be shitty. I can't imagine DC, like, held a gun to Orlando's head, or kidnapped his family and would only release them on the condition that he write Promethea into a Justice League story.

I didn't read The Terrifics for similar reasons; that integrated another Moore co-creation into the story. And I didn't read Sideways because it was a Dan DiDio-written comic, and those are generally terrible...in addition to it just being kind of gross to go around hiring yourself for plum writing assignments at the publishing company you run.

So that's...let's see here...three of the eight "New Age of Heroes" line of comics I couldn't bring myself to read.

And with the release of The Unexpected, the entire "New Age" line of comics has had their first issues debut, and we can start placing bets on which will be the first to be canceled. I'm going to ahead and bet on Sideways, although I think Damage is a real contender.



Previously...

On New Challengers #1

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

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.

These are some recent DC books I've read recently:

Batman: The Dark Knight--Master Race

The inherent weirdness of a Frank Miller comic without Frank Miller that saturated the individual, serially-published issues of Dark Knight III: The Master Race was only accentuated when reading the entire series start-to-finish in a single, slightly re-titled volume.

I know that Miller was technically pretty involved in the series, sharing a story credit with Brian Azzarello and providing extremely loose artwork for the mini-comics that appeared in the middle of each of the nine issues--which are here blown-up to full-size and appear between chapters of Dark Knight III--but it's pretty apparent that it was Azzarello who did the majority of the heavy-lifting. At the beginning, it's clear that some work is being done to make it feel like a Dark Knight comic, but that work only accentuates that it's not, that it's an homage, rather than Miller doing Miller and, increasingly as the series goes on, there are more of Azzarello's ticks evident in the scripting.

As for the overarching story, it seems to be set in the Dark Knight-iverse, but there's really not much to it. It's not a story about anything in particular, it doesn't really comment on anything and, in fact, its plot is so similar to one that could be occurring in the regular DC Universe that it already has occurred in the regular DC Universe to a certain extent. It is just a little too palpably an exercise in brand extension, and an apparent variant cover-generating machine (How many variants were there attached to this book? I don't know, but they were so numerous they appear in their own hardcover collection that Amazon is calling Batman: The Art of The Dark Knight: The Master Race--the words on the cover of the book say something different, however--and the solicitation copy says it includes over 150 covers).

What's been going on in the relatively short time that has passed since 2002's final issue of Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again...? Well, Batman is recovering from some particularly grievous wounds, so Robin-turned-Catgirl-turned-Batgirl Carrie Kelly is masquerading as him by wearing some kind of weird man suit. Wonder Woman is raising her and Superman's son, who she wears in a little papoose as she runs around the Amazon jungle, home of the Amazons, fighting monsters and shit. Superman has withdrawn even farther than he usually does in these alternate stories, having basically decided to just sit still in his Arctic Fortress of Solitude until he froze solid within a thick block of ice.

Given Miller's politics, the title of this third Dark Knight book might have have been responsible for a feeling of dread in many comics readers, but it turns out that the "master race" here isn't a race so much as a species: Kryptonian.

And the plot involving them is more or less pure pot-boiling superhero stuff. Lara, Superman and Wonder Woman's headstrong daughter, recruits The Atom Ray Palmer to help her free and un-shrink the microscopic Kryptonians living in The Bottle City of Kandor. These are lead by Quar, a psychotic, murderous cult leader who seeks to subjugate all of humanity and take over the world. So, not entirely unlike the year-long "New Krypton" storyline which found 100,000 Kryptonians freed from Kandor and flooding Earth with a whole people who had Superman's powers, but not necessarily his morals.

Lara sides with the Kandorians over her own parents, even going so far as to beat her dad bloody, and it is, as always, down to Batman to save the world. With the help of a rag tag group of allies, including Batirl, The Flash and eventually Superman and Wonder Woman, he does so. He dies at one point, but gets tossed into a Lazarus Pit and comes out young and vibrant again (There is of course a gross scene where the now grown-up Carrie sees the now youthful's Bruce's rejuvenated genitals).

And...that's it, really. Evil Kryptonians vs. Batman and some other heroes. Andy Kubert is the pencil artist with the tough, thankless assignment of trying to draw a Dark Knight comic, and it actually is sort of fun to see his attempts to approximate Miller art. It no doubt helps tremendously that he's working with DKR inker Klaus Janson.

I don't want to say anything too terribly mean about Miller's art--he pencils most of the interlude comics, although Eduardo Risso randomly draws one--as I understand he was in very poor health at the time but, well, the art is extremely rough, to the point where some of the extremely spare images lean towards the unintelligible, and there are strange inconsistencies that the inker, colorist and editor should have noticed and fixed (the placement of Batgirl's bat-symbols, for example).

In the end, what stuck with me about the book is some strong images throughout.

There's Wonder Woman's nipple, something you don't see too often, as she prepares to breastfeed her child. There's Green Lantern Hal Jordan losing his ring hand, and then searching for and ultimately recovering it (He is able to use the ring, but his hand just float around him, rather than attaching itself back to his arm at the wrist). There's the strange, goofy battle armor that Superman dons to protect him from the Kryptonite-seeded rain that Batman causes to fall over Gotham. There's Carrie Kelly's hot pink and yellow Batgirl costume (her final Batwoman costume is pretty nice, actually; it basically just reverses the black and gray portions of Batman's). There's the redesigned Hawks. And I still dig Miller's redesigns for The Flash and Wonder Woman, previously seen in Dark Knight Strikes Again.

Visually, there's a lot in here to interest the eye, particularly of a longtime DC Comics fan. Otherwise, though, there's little to it other than a superhero beat-'em-up with a handful of allusions to Dark Knight Strikes Again.

DC Super Hero Girls: Past Times at Super Hero High

I arched an eyebrow when this DC Comics/Mattel collaboration was first announced. Though I grew up with similar toy/cartoon/comics marketing vehicles like Masters of The Universe, G.I. Joe and Transformers, they seem incredibly cynical to me now, and it struck me as somewhat sad that DC felt the need to essentially create a girl-friendly version of their universe, as it was an indication of just how girl un-friendly the regular version was.

While the toys and cartoons generated by the premise--where DC's heroes and villains attend a high school where Principal Amanda Waller and weird faculty of bad guys and older heroes teach them a superhero-focused curriculum--I was naturally interested in how it translated to comics. As it turned out, quite well. The first original graphic novel, Finals Crisis, was actually a lot of fun, as were those that followed, Hits and Myths and Summer Olympus. All three were the work of writer Shea Fontana, who helped create the concept and recently penned a fill-in arc on DC's Wonder Woman arc, and artist Yancey Labat.

This fourth graphic novel, Past Times at Super Hero High, varies only in that Labat has two other collaborators on the art, Agnes Garbowska and Marcelo DiChiara. They are all working from some pretty strict style guides in terms of character design, so it's not exactly clear who draws which sections, but there are points where the art does feel a little off.

The plot for this particular adventure is essentially just The Magic School Bus in the DC Universe, which is pretty damn charming in its simplicity. Driving the school bus-shaped time machine for a field trip into the Jurassic Period is teacher Miss Liberty Belle, whose mouth Fontana fills with all kinds of old time-y slang. This Liberty Belle is presumably the original one, Libby Lawrence, and something of a time traveler herself. While Golden Age hero Wildcat is SHH's gym coach, Miss Liberty Belle at one points mentions not having had so much fun since "the Coolidge administration" (1923-1929).

Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Batgirl, Katana, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy and token boy Beast Boy travel back to dinosaur times, where their bus breaks in half and Liberty Belle is abducted by a pterodactyl. Everyone eventually gets back to the present, but due to some meddling withe the timestream--Harley swiped a pterodactyl egg--their present has been altered so that now immortal caveman Vandal Savage is their principal, the kids based on villains are now all super-villainous and the field trippers have to figure out how to reset time.

That mostly falls to frenemies Batgirl and Harley, who travel throughout the past and to the future before bringing the pterodactyl egg, now a baby pterodactyl, back to its own time, where Harley offers a not-very-scientific theory regarding how her baby Bitey McPuddin'-Face prevented Savage from ever encountering his immortality-granting meteorite.

What remains most fun about this series, to me at least, is seeing the occasional deep cut show up, like Batgirl and Harley meeting the giant dalmatian-riding Atomic Knights in the future, or seeing Principal Waller when she was just a teen in the 1980s, sitting on a stoop listening to her boom box.

There are some fun dinosaur moments in here, like Beast Boy's attempts to blend in and preach harmony between predator and prey species, but it's worth noting that this isn't exactly an educational look at dinosaurs, as their depiction seems a few decades out of date. For the latest on dinosaurs in all-ages comics format, I can't recommend Abby Howard's Dinosaur Empire strongly enough.

Justice League of America Vol. 1: The Extremists

The Steve Orlando-written Justice League book, which features Batman leading a rag-tag team of Steve Orlando's favorite characters and thus feels almost as much of a Batman and The Outsiders book than a League book, suffers in the same way that too much of his writing (and far too much of DC's post-Flashpoint output) suffers. It tries very hard to trade on nostalgia, on readers knowing, liking and caring who the individual members of the team are and therefore already being invested in their setting, their history and their villains, but it does so on the other side of a reboot that purposely erased all of that.

This is that worst-of-both-worlds problem I talk about all the time, and Orlando's solution seems to be to just ignore it. Maybe that is the best choice--after all, I think this is something like the third version of Lobo that has been introduced in the last six years, for example--but the end result is a comic book essentially just introducing a team and assuming you'll care about them, without putting any real effort into trying to convince you to care (and certainly the publisher has given us mixed signals, if they were, say, willing to wipe out The Ray and then replace him with a brand new character that no one likes or remembers and then just reintroduce the original shows that they aren't too terribly pro-The Ray, you know?).

While Batman has obviously been front and center in a whole slew of books since the reboot, and some of the other characters like Black Canary and Vixen have been knocking around, and even Lobo 3.0 and Killer Frost had a role in the Justice League Vs. Suicide Squad book that served as an intro this ongoing, other characters, like The Ray and The Atom, we're meeting for basically the first time (This new version of Ryan Choi appeared previously in DC Universe: Rebirth #1, while I don't think we saw The Ray until Justice League of America: The Ray--Rebirth #1...which is collected with three other character introduction one-shots and Justice League of America: Rebirth #1 in the collection Justice League of America: The Road to Rebirth).

From the pages of Justice League Vs. Suicide Squad Batman brings Killer Frost to the Justice League's original Happy Harbor, Rhode Island headquarters, which, um, shouldn't exist any longer, but still does for some reason (that was the last continuity). He then goes about recruiting a League that includes (a) Lobo, Black Canary, Vixen, The Atom Ryan Choi (he's initially looking for Ray Palmer, whose history post-Flashpoint I couldn't begin to make sense of) and The Ray, a new superhero protecting the city of Vanity (the setting of Grant Morrison, Mark Millar and company's short-lived Aztek: The Ultimate Man series).

Batman's rationale for needing/wanting a new League is waved at in passing a few times, but it's not terribly convincing. He basically says he wants a team that consists of real people, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the people they are protecting, rather than gods. The make-up of his particular team, which include a couple of folks with god-like powers and one literal super-alien, seems to argue against that, however.

After the recruiting issue of Justice League of America: Rebirth #1--which, yes, is double-collected in both this and Justice League of America: Road To Rebirth--they fend off an extra-dimensional invasion of The Extremists, Giffen/DeMatteis era villains who are analogues to Marvel villains. Dr. Diehard has conquered a small, European country, and the League joins the resistance to help liberate it. By having the League do the sort of thing they explicitly avoid all the time, it raises the question of why they don't do this all the time. The question goes unanswered, though.

That's followed by a shorter story in which the team holds a press conference--sans Batman--and then go to liberate an American city that has been taken over by relatively obscure Wonder Woman villain Aegeus, an arms dealer who sells folklore-based super-weapons.

The art is kind of all over the place, with Ivan Reis pencilling the Rebirth special and the first and final issues of the four-part Extremists arc, while a pair of different artists, Felipe Watanabe and Diogenes Neves, pencil the middle chapters. The two-part Aegeus arc features fine art by Andy MacDonald, but it's in pretty sharp contrast to what it's following...and fails to sell a fairly silly scene that really needed to be sold hard to get over.

Like its sister book Justice League and all of DC's post-Flashpoint Justice League books, then, the latest iteration of JLoA isn't very good, but given it's weird line-up and Orlando's ticks, it is at least interesting.

Wonder Woman and Justice League America Vol. 2

When I discussed the first Wonder Woman and Justice League America collection, I speculated what might be in this one. It turns out they skipped the annuals, and stuck to just six issues of Justice League America--plus two issues apiece of Justice League International and Justice League Task Force, which means this trade collects the entire six-issue "Judgement Day" crossover between all three Justice League books, as well as a coda issue, that repurposes the "Funeral For a Friend" slug from the aftermath of Superman's fight to the death against Doomsday. It also concludes writer Dan Vado's time on the Justice League America title.

The first three issues are concerned with the JLA facing off against Dreamslayer of The Extremists yet again, while natural disasters rage the world over and spooky hints about the end of the world are related to heroes and readers: Darkseid writes off the planet Earth, Vandal Savage appears to the League to warn them and T.O. Morrow tries to tell Max Lord the end is near. Then "Judgement Day" begins in earnest, and it's all hands one deck, with the three Justice Leagues fighting one another, and other unexpected foes, as to the best way to proceed against "The Overmaster," a giant alien humanoid and world-ender who has landed his ship atop Mount Everest and announced the end of the world, saying that any move against him will only result in a lessening of the time left.

Because "Judgement Day" ran two issues apiece in all of the books, that means Vado and primary JLA artists Marc Campos, Ken Branch and Kevin Conrad pass the creative team baton on to writers Gerard Jones and Mark Waid and pencil artists Chuck Wojtkiewicz and Sal Velluto.

Visually, the book is very much of its time--1994. Campos is probably the weakest of the artists, and his anatomy features the worst of excesses, so that the women are all boobs and hips--in one early panel featuring the Leaguers in flight, Wonder Woman and Maxima are literally just busts, a limb or three extending from somewhere behind their boobs and heads--and the men universally ripped and wearing fabrics whose tightness fall somewhere between spandex and body paint, even the decidedly non-superheroic Max Lord and Oberon. Campos is at least consistent, but his work is so detailed and overly-inked that each panel just looks like a wall of unnecessary detail.

Sal Velutto, a very accomplished artist, has his own ideas of character design, one that marries the huge, heroic figures of the Silver Age League with the detailed musculature of '90s superhero art, but even that is inconsistently applied. Only Chuck Wojtkiewicz's art really ages gracefully. Thankfully he's the one who draws the climax, wherein an ad hoc group of some of the more powerful Leaguers--Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, Captain Atom, The Flash, Fire, Booster Gold and Amazing Man try to take the Overmaster on hand-to-hand in his ship, while Blue Beetle races to figure out a way to shut it all down.

The story is probably best remembered for being the one that killed off  Ice--she spends this collection in possession of greater than usual powers and weird mood swings, before joining the Overmaster and, finally, betraying him--and it's true, there's not a whole lot to it other than that. There are some neat touches though, like T.O. Morrow looking at his checklist of things that will happen as the League seeks to reach Overmaster, and crossing off each event as it comes to pass (That was in a Waid-written issue).

This storyline and its epilogue were  followed by a Zero Hour crossover introducing Triumph as a founding Justice Leaguer who got knocked out of the time-stream almost immediately, and then the creative team of Gerard Jones and Chuck Wojtkiewicz take over Justice League America for the remaining 23 issues. If the Jones and Wojtkieicz issues all get collected, I think we could be looking at two more volumes of Wonder Woman and Justice League America. If the Zero Hour tie-in does, I don't know, maybe three more? It doesn't quite fit in with the rest of this stuff, though, and might makes more sense in a Justice League: Zero Hour collection, or with the Triumph solo series or Justice League Task Force.

"Night of the Monster Men," reviewed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We'll just have to wait and see.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ha, Batman and friends wish!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that is that.


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

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

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

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

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

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

Review: Midnighter Vol. 2: Hard

First of all, get your mind out of the gutter, or at least out of Midnighter's tight-fitting leather pants. The sub-title of the second and final volume of writer Steve Orlando's Midnighter ongoing, the last vestige of the 2011 merging of the WildStorm "universe" with the DC Universe, refers not to the title character's sexual excitement, but how tough he is. "You think you're something? Think you're hard?" Deadshot taunts a temporarily captured Midnighter at one point. Which is rather silly, really, given that this is Midnighter we're talking about. Of course he's something. Of course he's hard.

One has to imagine the double meaning of that sub-title is intentional, however, given that Orlando's Midnighter is one of the few DC superheroes we ever see in a sex scene...and one of still fewer that it doesn't seem weird and gross to see in a sex scene. Like, whenever I saw New 52 Superman and Wonder Woman in bed together, it felt a little like walking in on my parents or something. Midnighter was a superhero character created for grown-ups from the start though.

Hard is actually sort of a mixed bag of a trade collection, including as it does the final five issues of Orlando's Midnighter, and then what could charitably referred to as filler material...albeit high-quality filler. These are the first two issues that followed Garth Ennis' six-issue run on the 2007 Midnighter series, back in simpler times when the character was merely an artificially created Batman analogue, part of a madman's designer Justice League that eventually joined up with some similarly morally uncomplicated superheroes and formed The Authority, a team of super-bastards intent on protecting the world their way, and fuck you if you didn't like it.

The first is a semi-clever issue by Brian K. Vaughan and Darick Robertson that riffs on Midnighter's ability to see into the future by telling the story backwards; it's a pretty straightforward 22-page story, only with the pages re-ordered so it reads 22-1, rather than 1-22. That's followed by a Christos Gage/John Paul Leon issue in which Hawksmoor challenges Midnighter to do something simple and traditionally superheroic, rather than horrifically violent. They settle on helping a little girl find her lost cat, but, luckily for Midnighter, it involves fighting over-the-top cyborgs.

These are both great, even though they don't really line up with the preceding issues of the new series, and really only underscore that Midnighter doesn't really fit into the DCU (surely the Justice League would have gone after him, power rings and eye beams blazing, in an attempt to shut him down by this point), and how needlessly complicated he and his fellows are at this point. For the life of me, I can't imagine why DC decided to launch a StormWatch book starring a mixture of Authority characters, DC characters and all-new characters at the outset of the New 52 rather than an Authority book, given how much more popular that latter concept was in the recent-ish past.

The final bit of filler is the Midnighter and Apollo short from the 2013 Young Romance: A New 52 Valentine's Day Special, which, if I recall, was the highlight of that anthology. It's by Peter Milligan and Simon Bisley, and features the characters in their initial New 52 redesigns, which, in the case of Midnighter, meant the loss of his signature trench coat and the addition of a bunch of spikes, for some reason.

As for Orlando's story, the lead-in is something of a team-up with Freedom Beast–although he's never called by that name, nor by B'wanna Beast, which might be weird given the color of skin. He simply introduces himself as "Dominic Mndawe." When weird hybrid animals start rampaging through Rochester, New York, Midnighter encounters Mdnawe, who tells him he's on the trail of twisted big game hunters using a formula similar to that he uses to create the exotic animals, which they hunt for sport. Not a bad idea, but I'm uncertain why they are doing so in a city, rather than somewhere more remote, like their own personal island, where they might conceivably get away with it.

The rest of Orlando's run concerns itself with a Suicide Squad story. Midnighter allies himself with Spyral to deal with something missing from "The God Garden," which brings the wrath of Amanda Waller and her Squad–Deadshot, Harley Quinn, Parasite, Captain Boomerang and new character Afterthought–on Midnighter. Then Waller allies herself with Henry Bendix and his latest superhuman creation and Apollo gets involved.

It's a pretty big, crazy action/espionage story, and it was kind of fun to see Midnighter trading blows and barbs with the Squad, but I would have preferred clearer, less-detailed artwork...something driven home by the bigger, bolder and brighter artwork that Robertson provides in his issue in the back. Aco remains the top credited artist, and had at least a hand in most of the issues from the current series, but he also usually has several different artists help finish the issues. Given the tendency to break scenes into many little panels, artfully littered across the ones telling the thrust of the story, as a way to visualize Midnighter's powers, the pages generally look crowded, and all those lines and realistic coloring effects don't help any.

Leon's art looks similar to that Aco and company's, but is crisper, while Robertson's looks like very well-drawn superhero comics, which suits the character best, I think, as it draws a greater contrast between Midnighter and other, similar heroes.

The character is already back with Orlando writing him, in a six-issue miniseries entitled Midnighter and Apollo. That's a good thing. Orlando seems to get the character and have a lot of fun with him, and there's certainly a great deal of potential to Midnighter and Orlando's particular take, it just isn't always apparent on the page.

Let's talk at some length about Midnighter, on our way to a review of Midnighter Vol. 1: Out...which will contain story-ruining spoilers, so don't read this post if you haven't read the book but want to

Writer Steve Orlando's Midnighter ongoing launched as part of DC's June 2015 "DCYou" initiative, but apparently won't survive this summer's "Rebirth" initiative. The series' tenth issue is just now seeing publication this month, and its first collection, Midnighter Vol. 1: Out, was just released, so its removal from the schedule seems to have less to do with sales than an attempt to re-focus the DCU line. Or, I suppose I should clarify that it may have to do with sales, but only as far as sales to direct market shops go, as not enough time would have passed to see if the book would fare better in the bookstore market as a trade paperback than it did as a serially-published comic, be it a paper one or a digital one. I don't know DC's exact metrics, obviously, but it seems like this was likely about more than sales, however big a factor sales might have been.

I wouldn't go so far to say that the cancellation of Midnighter is a shame, given how many superhero comics there are on the shelves at the moment, but I can see how it might feel that way to fans of the character or the book. As one of relatively few out gay super-characters, Midnighter is fairly unique in one sense, despite how derivative his character is of other superheroes in most every other sense. I think he's the only gay male superhero currently headlining his own title, but I'm saying that off the top of my head, rather than doing any research on the matter, which does make the cancellation a bit of a blow in terms of diversity (The "DCYou" initiative in general brought a great diversity of the types of characters starring in their own titles...and the creators and even styles of those books).

It is a rather good book, though.

It suffers from several problems of course, chief of which is the fact that Orlando doesn't exactly have a partner on the series. You'll notice I referred to it as "Steve Orlando's Midnighter" above; I did so not because I don't think an artist deserves to be granted the same degree of authorship as the writer, but because Midnighter lacks a regular artist. In Out, which collects the first seven issues (and the eight-page preview that ran during DC's Convergence break), first-issue artist Aco draws about 86 pages (#1, #3, #6, most of #7 and the preview), but these are interrupted regularly by sections of the book drawn by other artists Alec Morgan (#2) and Stephen Mooney (#4 and #5). Those are a lot of personnel changes for a single story arc, and the second issue of a brand-new series is a completely ridiculous time to need to turn to a fill-in artist. What makes the uneven art particularly regrettable is that Aco has a particular style and way of depticting Midnighter's powers–using tiny little inset panels to call attention to the things Midnighter's fight-computer brain and/or enhanced senses pick up on–that the other artists drawing th stories remaining 62-pages don't adhere to.

It also suffers somewhat from The New 52 paradox in a particularly weird way, given the relative youth of the Midnighter character, and the fact that as a WildStorm character imported into the DCU at the launch of the New 52, he has literally only been in this publishing line/universe for four years.

On the other hand, the character is a Warren Ellis-created, Mark Millar-tinkered with character, who Orlando writes as an Ellis-tongued Batman with a dark sense of humor, an insatiable sex drive and a love of violence. He surrounds himself with other characters, even borrowing Batman's longest-serving sounding board for a few issues, allowing him to trade quips, flirtations and tossed-off technobabble throughout his adventures.

Elements are quite familiar, even similar to other DC books–the character has a bit of Batman, a bit of Deathstroke, a bit of Constantine to him, and the globe-trotting, high-tech, super-crime focus is reminiscent of the slightly older Grayson book–but there isn't really another book in DC's line exactly like Midnighter.

But let's backtrack a bit, as Midnighter's not exactly a household name or anything.

So, who is Midnighter?

As mentioned above, the character was created by writer Warren Ellis with artist Bryan Hitch, both well before they reached their current super-star status, way back in an 1998 issue of StormWatch, when it was still an Image title. He and Apollo were the sole survivors of a seven-member superhero team of Justice League analogues, being the team's Batman and Superman, respectively.

Hell, the cover for the issue in which Midnighter first appeared looks like an homage to Dark Knight Returns:

While Mignighter, like so many Ellis creations, wore a particularly movie-ready looking costume, note the cape-like coat, the scalloped sleeves and the cowl that looks like one of Batman's with the ears trimmed off.*

Unlike Batman, Midnighter was super-human, having a whole bunch of artificial enchancements to make him stronger, faster, smarter and with greater senses; these included an extra heart and a sort of "fight computer" in his brain that allowed him to predict outcomes nearly instantaneously, so he could essentially map out how to win fights just before jumping into one. (Batgirl Cassandra Cain, who had a similar ability gained in a completely different way, debuted well after Midnighter, if you're wondering.)

While he and Apollo appeared in that volume of StormWatch, they would reach greater heights in the millennial spin-off series The Authority, where they were part of a powerful superhero team with a no-holds barred approach to superheroing (I first heard of the team when writing up a little piece for my then-local paper about Ellis visiting a local comic shop; the shop's owner described The Authority to me as "an amoral Justice League"). Ellis and Hitch handed the hit book over to up-and-comers Mark Millar and Frank Quitely, and it was during their run in which Midnighter and Apollo came out as a couple. While it was refreshing to have two such powerful, bad-ass and (at the time) popular and prominent heroes come out as gay, it also made me a little uncomfortable in that they did so. Mainly because they were created as Batman and Superman analogues, and this was Mark Millar doing the writing, which made it seem like the intent may have been nothing more than a gay joke about DC's flagship characters (DC, by the time the characters had come out, had acquired the rights to the WildStorm characters and universe, and WildStorm was at the time an imprint of DC).

Whether that was the case or not–and hopefully it wasn't, but Millar's a writer whose sincerity is always a little hard to take given just about everything he's written since his brief run on The Authority–the characters certainly grew beyond simply being Gay Batman and Gay Superman (Who Are Gay With Each Other).

As was the case with most of the WildStorm characters after their acquisition by DC, the star of The Authority began to fall pretty quickly. Maybe this had something to do with the fact that what constituted success for characters overseen by Jim Lee at Image in the late '90s didn't exactly constitute success for DC in the early '00s, and maybe it had to do with the fact that DC's readership already had all those DC super-teams to read about, and thus weren't as interested in following the WildC.A.T.S. or Authority or whoever, even when they would occasionally cross over from Earth WildStorm to the DCU.

Midnighter did earn his own solo title in 2006, though, from the creative team of Garth Ennis and Chris Sprouse, the former of whom was perhaps uniquely positioned to write a semi-parodic superhero character whose adventures had gotten so big and absurd (this was years after The Authority fought God, remember) that the next logical step was silly: He sent Midnighter back in time to kill Hitler. Despite contributions from high-profile creators, the book limped along after Ennis and Sprouse's departure, and died after just 20 issues (That's still about eight issues longer than the current, second volume of Midnighter will last, however).

Hard to imagine that a book about a more powerful, more violent Batman without the moral code against killing wouldn't last too long, but then, that Midnighter solo book was stuck in the WildStorm universe, which, at the time, was going through a series of reboots that gained less and less traction with each attempt (a warning sign that DC failed to note?), and the creators eventually became those that DC felt they could spare from their DCU titles (a lot of Keith Giffen, in other words).

And then The New 52 initiative came, with a semi-rebooted, completely re-designed new universe that was composed under mysterious circumstances by the mysterious character Pandora for yet-to-be-revealed reasons, a universe that smooshed three of the 52 Earths of the extant DC Universe together: New Earth (The DCU Universe), the "Vertigo Universe" and "The WildStorm Universe" (Those last two had number assignations in 52, but I'll be damned if I can remember them, and I'm not digging through longboxes to find the comic in question).

Midnighter and Apollo's place in the New 52-iverse was in the pages of a new Stormwatch title, which lasted less than three years. Written by Paul Cornell, who also wrote the similarly short-lived and poorly-drawn Demon Knights, this new iteration imagined the team as a secret superhero team that has protected Earth from behind the scenes for centuries. It featured The Engineer, Jack Hawksmoor and Jenny Quantam, teamed with all-new creations and lead by Martian Manhunter, who in the New 52's new continuity was never really a member of the Justice League. Midnighter and Apollo were among their newest recruits, and they both looked terrible, with a red-eyed, coatless Midnighter wearing spikes all over his costume, including a huge one on his chin, for, um, some reason. It's not like it's easy to hit the guy, especially on the chin.

The launch of a Midnighter monthly, two years after the cancellation of Stormwatch, might have seemed like something of a surprise, given that the character hadn't found traction anywhere during much of the past decade, and DC's readership's fairly strong rejection of any WildStorm books in The New 52 era (Stormwatch lasted 31 issues, Grifter 17 issues and Voodoo 13 issues.)

More surprising still was not only that it wasn't terrible, but that it was actually quite good. Aco put Midnighter back in his original costume, losing the spikes, armor and red-eyes and restoring his coat (The character still has to have bits of armor here and there, and his gloves look like they may have weights in them or something, which seems weird; Midnighter doesn't really need padding or anything, does he? Given his abilities, his costume should really just be as basic a superhero costume as possible, chosen for style over functionality).

So Midnighter looks like Midnighter again, and he uses the doors that The Authority used to use (and which Brad Meltzer borrowed during his brief, best-forgotten Justice League of America) as he travels the world beating the living shit out of evil, often directed by his "assets," people he's met in one way or another and "tagged" with high-tech thingees that allow them to "call" him when they are in need...or just see something or someone he needs to kill.

Orlando, as I said, writes Midngihter as an Ellis character, talking almost exclusively in an endless variety of clever/bad-ass bon mots and, as in an Ellis-narrative, there is a sometimes dizzying amount of bleeding edge, sci-fi technology on display. This isn't to say that Orlando is doing something bad or wrong; Midnighter should be an extremely Ellis-esque character, since he is an Ellis character.

Without an origin or what one might call a "real life," Midnighter is pretty much always Midnighter, and Orlando gives a great introduction to the character in the very first issue, by introducing us to him via his dating profile. Midnighter dates, a lot. The preview has him jumping out of bed with one man, the first issue has him spending the night with another man (who will become a series regular, although they decide to be friends pretty much the very next morning) and he spends most of the first trade dating a guy named Matt, who we will discuss a bit later.

Besides all the fun, creative conflicts and combat–alien body-snatchers posing as demons from Christian hell, artificially-created vampires and other "weaponized folkore", a woman who can kill by reciting one of six words, etc–Orlando explores Midnighter's past and personal life, with Apollo here his ex-boyfriend, who he broke up with because...well, the main reason is that they were one another's first and only relationship, but Orlando ties it to Midnighter's powers by having the character note that he already knows the outcome of every fight, and therefore he breaks up with Apollo before their fight. As Orlando writes the character, his super-brain isn't simply for physical combat, by conflict of any kind.

He also surrounds Midnighter with friends like Matt, Jason (his first date in the book) and a straight guy who owns the bar that more or less serves as Midnighter's superhero HQ. Or, at least, the place he goes to between fights.

The overarching plot is that someone has stolen many super-exotic, fantastical weapons from some orbital vault called "The God Garden," where a woman named "The Gardener" created Midnighter. The thief immediately begins distributing those weapons all over the world, and were that not enough incentive for Midnighter to track them down, The Gardener confides to him that she also kept a secret file detailing the real life Midnighter didn't even know he had.

And so these seven issues feature Midnighter hunting for the arms dealer, meeting him only at the last page of the second-to-last issue.

The DCU connections are, for the most part, somewhat minimal. Midnighter encounters Multiplex, an old Firestorm villain whose power is to create innumerable clone bodies of himself, which makes him, if not Midnighter's arch-enemy, at least his favorite guy to fight.

At one point, Midnighter recruits/kidnaps Dick "Agent 37" Grayson for an extended team-up, apparently returning a guest-star favor (Midnighter appeared in the early issues of Grayson). It's actually kind of hard to overstate how much fun it is to see these two characters together. On the meta-level, it is of course interesting to see Grayson teaming up with a more violent, more psychopathic version of Batman, but this black-cowled crimefighter has a personality, and quips as much or more often than Grayson, and he's also gay, which makes his teaming with the sexiest man in the DC Universe a lot of fun, as he relentlessly flirts with Grayson.

I was actually sad when their mission ended; Midnighter and Grayson is about as enjoyable a Dynamic Duo as Batman Dick Grayson and Robin Damian Wayne were. Whereas Grant Morrison basically inverted the traditional Batman and Robin personalities in his Batman and Robin (grim, humorless Robin allied with a sunny, smiling Batman), Orlando's Midnighter makes Grayson the straight man and the guy who has to keep Midnighter from killing all of his opponents constantly.

And then we get to the climax of the book, which is where it suffers from the New 52 paradox and, if you're reading this despite my spoiler warning, let me remind you that I am about to ruin the end of the first story arc, okay?

So among Midnighter's circle of friends and allies is his new boyfriend Matt, who has white hair. Because Apollo also had white hair, a far more common hair color for people under 70 in superhero comics than it is in the real world, one could safely assume that the choice was quite deliberate, that the character was meant to evoke Apollo, and that Midnighter perhaps was attracted to him because he reminded him of his first love.

As it turns out, however, there's a more prosaic reason he has white hair. Matt is secretly a pre-existing DC Universe character, who also happens to have white hair. He's the character who robbed the God Garden and has been distributing it throughout the world and he's been plotting to murder Midnighter for at least five issues. He's also been dating, and sleeping with, Midnighter for weeks and weeks.

This is a little weird not because the character was seemingly straight in the pre-Flashpoint DCU, although I suppose that's a notable change, but also because that is a crazy amount of work to go through just to kill this one, single superhero, and killing this one, single superhero isn't the character's primary motivation, either pre-Flashpoint or even as stated in this book.

Okay, so here's the reveal:

That's right, it's Prometheus. So once again, we have a big moment in a New 52 series presented as a big moment that is a deliberate call-back to a now out-of-continuity story. The impact of the reveal, which is the cliffhanger of the sixth issue, depends on a reader knowing who the hell Prometheus is...which is something The New 52 was explicitly designed to not have happen that often, since all previous Prometheus appearances aren't supposed to exist anymore (which is maybe for the best, as after the three stories Grant Morrison wrote featuring the character, they were all terrible, terrible stories; I'm convinced that Cry For Justice and it's follow-ups, along with Identity Crisis, are a big part of the reason DC decided to try a reboot at all).

This Prometeus character was created by Grant Morrison who used the opportunity of DC's 1998 "New Year's Evil" specials to present his origin in New Year's Evil: Prometheus #1 (penciled by Arnie Jorgensen). That origin was essentially a reverse of Batman's: The son of criminals who saw his parents gunned down in front of him by police officers at a young age, Prometheus devoted his life to becoming the perfect soldier to wage a one-man war against justice. He appeared in a two-part arc in JLA #16-#17, in which he attacked the League in their Watchtower, taking down one of the most powerful League line-ups ever through a combination of trickery and high-tech gadgetry.

Among his gimmicks was a specially-designed helmet that allowed him to download particular skills and fighting styles directly into his brain.

He returned for Morrison's final JLA arc, "World War III," in which he was one of the members of a new Injustice Gang composed entirely of League-level threats. After that, well, don't read any Prometheus appearance after that.

Now, long-time DC readers–or at least newer readers who have read Morrison's JLA run in trade, which I hope is anyone at all interested in DC's superheroes, because those comics are just the best–will know all this when they see that splash page, and think, "Oh shit, it's Prometheus!" (And, maybe, "Wait, Prometheus and Midnighter were doing it all this time...? Huh.") For others, this is just a random bad guy.

At the beginning of the next issue, #7, Orlando recaps Prometheus' origins, and even includes The Cosmic Key (which, at least as presented here, simply allows him to disappear; we don't see his Ghost Zone or crooked house). It's kind of uncomfortable, at least to me, because there's no acknowledgement of the fact that Orlando is re-telling part of Morrison's story from the Prometheus special, or using a character that someone else created. I know this happens all the time in Big Two super-comics–Orlando didn't create Midnighter, Apollo, Grayson or Multiplex either–but given how few appearances Prometheus has had, and the way in which he's used here, it seems...worse, somehow. I don't think I'm articulating it very well, but his re-telling of Prometheus' origin, a character that I believe is appearing for the first time in the New 52-iverse here, borrows pretty heavily from Morrison's origin, with no indication that this character is a pre-existing one or that any borrowing is going on.

It just doesn't work for me, and maybe just me perosnally, that the character is used at all, for the same reason I don't like how The New 52 comics keep relying on old, pre-New 52 comics with which to buttress big, unearned moments, but also because if you're not familiar with the character and his stories, this seems like a new and original character (if randomly presented), but if you do, then this feels uncomfortably familiar.

All that aside though, Orlando does take Prometheus' name literally to incorporate it into his plot nicely (Prometheus having stolen "fire" from the God Garden for his own personal use). I think his appearance heralds the book falling a part quite a bit, though. While Prometheus' vendetta against law and order and superheroes is restated, and Midnighter likely qualifies, he's a hell of a superhero to start with. Prometheus makes a speech about Midnighter's hypocrisy, fighting murderers by murdering them, but hey, maybe you want to start small?

On the other hand, in JLA he did start with the Justice League, although they had the benefit of being the most public face of superheroics in the world. The fact that Midnighter is such a behind-the-scenes kind of guy–it's not like if he was killed any other superheroes would notice–makes him a strange target for Prometheus' first strike.

And then there's the lengths to which Prometheus went, essentially pretending to be in love with Midnighter for weeks, just to get close enough to almost murder him when his guard is sufficiently down. (Had he succeeded, that would be what, 1 down, 359 more to go...?)

Their battle is surprisingly dull, too. After Prometheus stabs Midnighter in the chest, suits up and begins his monologue, he tells Midnighter that he's made himself unreadable to Midnighter's computer brain, and that his own brain has been "programmed with the abilities of thirty of the world's best fighters," including Lady Shiva, Batman and Midnighter himself.

But when they fight they just punch, kick and beat one another with blunt objects (Prometheus has his super-baton, while Midnighter resorts to a fire poker and a doorknob). What should be the best fight scene imaginable is just one more fist-fight, and not even anywhere near as in interesting as the many, many fights of the previous six issues.

Midnighter and Prometheus are actually well-suited to be archenemies, but this was pretty out-of-left-field, draws attention to the problem at the core of The New 52, raises all kinds of distracting questions and, of course, fails to deliver on its promise.

I wouldn't say it ruins the first story arc of Midnighter, which is apparently going to be the first half of the series, but it certainly sours Out quite a bit.



*It didn't actually occur to me until I was staring at this cover and its close-up of Midnighter's cowl just now, but I suppose Doctor Midnight might also have been a source of inspiration for the character, given the name as well as the fact that Doc Midnight also rocked a black cowl that looked a lot like the one Batman would eventually sport, sans ears.