Wonder Woman Wednesdays: First Appearances vs. Last Appearances

I don’t know if I’m the first person in the entire history of the Internet to point this out or not, but Wonder Woman’s original Golden Age adventures were really, really, really, really weird.

I recently checked out Wonder Woman Archives Vol. 1 from my local library because, well, I can’t afford to buy $50 comic books (Let’s make with the Wonder Woman Chronicles, DC!), and while I went in expecting lots of Nazi-fighting, Steve Trevor-saving, kanga-riding, Etta Candy “Woo Woo!”-ing and images of girls getting spanked and tied up on almost every page, I still wasn’t ready for how deeply weird and oddly powerful the dozen or so stories in the volume were.

Tell me if this sounds anything like the superheroine we’ve come to know in the last 60 years.

On a mysterious island full of magical realism-like inventions dwell a race of women who dress in Buck Rogers ballerina outfits and engage in martial sports. There lives a beautiful young princess who has never left its shores. When a handsome stranger crashes there, she uses her scientific prowess to invent a means to cure him and nurses him back to health. At the command of her goddesses, she dons the colors of the United States to follow him back to his own home and battle against the evil represented by the Axis powers.

She gets a job entertaining people in a theater with feats of super-speed and super-strength until she’s amassed a small fortune. She uses it to buy the name of Diana Prince, a woman who looks just like her. The young maiden then becomes a nurse and secretary, serving under the love of her life, and routinely saving him from Nazi and Japanese saboteurs and spies, with the help of a small army of sorority girls, whom she contacts through a “mental radio” given to their leader, Etta Candy (daughter of Hard Candy, sister of Mint Candy). When not fighting female slave-owning Nazi operative The Baroness and Nazi cross-dressing scientist Dr. Poison, Diana functions as a freelance detective, investigating international milk companies and the working conditions at department stores.

Reading these stories, one gets the completely unfiltered picture of what the character of Wonder Woman was like at inception. Just as Captain Marvel, Plastic Man, Superman and Batman seemed like completely different characters in their first few adventures than their current incarnations, the Wonder Woman of these first issues is in a lot of ways completely unrecognizable from the one who’s been running around the DC Universe for the last, oh, 40 years or so. (In some of the above cases, the characters would be refined and improved over the decades, but at the cost of something—no Batman story, for example, has been able to match the primitive, occasionally hysterical creepiness of his first few adventures).

Over the past ten years or so, DC has really pushed the concept of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman as a “Trinity” of heroes, the pillars of their fictional universe, each equally important. While they’ve gotten some good stories out of the idea of the “Trinity,” the concept's always been a bit forced.

Clearly Wonder Woman lacks the popularity of the other two heroes, never being able to support more than one monthly title, while the two men in capes have had as many as five monthly series running simultaneously, and the graphic novel lists at dccomics.com do a pretty good job of illustrating how few original graphic novels and trade collections Wonder Woman has in relation to the World’s Finest (Without actually doing the math, it seems that The Flash and Green Lantern greatly eclipse Wonder Woman in the popularity department, at least based on the number of trade pages devoted to their adventures).

And within the context of the fictional shared-setting of their books, the DC Universe, Wonder Woman’s status quo is constantly being shifted as she experiences relaunches and new directions, changing cities, jobs, love interests and supporting casts on a fairly regular basis. When Crisis on Infinite Earths recreated the DCU as a brand new universe through a complicated cosmic event, Batman and Superman were given new origin stories (Batman: Year One and Man of Steel), but they were set in the past, as it was assumed that there couldn’t really be a DC Universe without them in it. Wonder Woman similarly had a rebooted origin, but rather than being set in the past, her story simply restarted in the early ‘80s. In other words, in DC’s fictional timeline, as of the late ‘90s, Superman and Batman were said to have been active for about ten years, whereas Wonder Woman was a newcomer, only active for about half that time.

Infinite Crisis changed that, so that she appeared for the very first time back when Superman and Batman did, but this only served to make things more confusing, as it solved the problem of giving her equal standing with the World’s Finest within the ficitonal history, but it did so by unsolving the problems of her origin.

Regardless, post-(First)Crisis Wonder Woman was not only a superhero struggling against mythological villains like Circe and Ares, but a political and social ambassador of the Amazon nation of Themyscira. The ambassador aspect was given greater and greater emphasis right up until Infinite Crisis, with writers Phil Jimenez and Greg Rucka focusing on her work with the United Nations, social causes and charities and political machinations.

Golden Age Wonder Woman, at least in these first Wonder Woman stories? She was more of a fairy tale heroine living out her life in a work of concentrated war propaganda (and I know the P-word has taken on negative connotations over the years, but I mean that in a good way).

How this Wonder Woman became our Wonder Woman is hard to figure, particularly if we ignore everything in between and just look at, say, her first few adventures and her last few.

The Golden Age Wonder Woman certainly came across as a younger woman, if not a girl. She was continually referred to as a “maiden,” she had a schoolgirl crush on the first man she ever met, she lived with her mother right up until she moved out for the first time (only to go fight Nazis, not go to college) and her best friends were a bunch of co-eds whose hobbies included man-hunting, dancing and hazing rushes with paddles.

The modern Wonder Woman seems older and more mature, I think in large part simply because of her roles as an ambassador, long-time superhero and mother figure to Wonder Girls Donna Troy and Cassie Sandsmark, just as the married Superman and boy-raising Batman seem fatherly (DC reps will often say their “Trinity” is all in their late 20’s, which always causes me a bit of cognitive dissonance…that would mean Batman started his career at 19, and that Dick Grayson is now as old as him).

The early Wonder Woman also had a very distinct mission—to defend freedom and democracy (The Allies) from the armies of evil (The Axis). It made sense of her star-spangled costume, her reason for being in the U.S., her continued association with Steve Trevor and it automatically generated enemies for her. Rereading these original Wonder Woman stories, it’s pretty remarkable how big a role World War II played. It's actually hard to imagine Wonder Woman without World War II, which might be why DC has traditionally had more difficulty finding a direction for her than theu have the other points of the Trinity (It’s worth noting that Batman and Superman have kept the same home bases, supporting casts and antagonists for pretty much their entire fictional careers).

With World War II over it wasn’t too difficult to make Communists the new Nazis, and Wondy’s adventures with Steve Trevor against the enemies of freedom continued relatively unabated. But despite the fact that America’s leaders have never had a problem finding new enemies to fill in for the vanquished Axis, this obviously wouldn’t work for Wonder Woman, particularly as her readership matured and grayed over the years, and post-Vietnam, post-Watergate Americans were less likely to embrace the U.S. government’s enemies as unequivocally evil in the same way that kids in the early ‘40s could eagerly cheer for a superhero sticking it to Hitler.

Wonder Woman could easily have continued fighting Communists through Vietnam and right up until the fall of the Soviet Union. And today, she could conceivably be fighting the global war on terror, but it’s actually hard to imagine DC publishing stories like that. Ironically, in a lot of ways DC’s readers have become more politically savvy and aware over the last 60 years, but the stories have become less overtly political (Today, Wonder Woman is more likely to take up arms against fictional Qurac than Iraq, for example).

So when Allen Heinberg tried to capture some of this Golden Age magic with his soft reboot of Wonder Woman, he had her working for the fictional Department of Metahuman Affairs instead of, say, the CIA or U.S. Army. But this tied her so thoroughly to the made-up world of the DCU that it sort of defeats the purpose of referencing her Golden Age association with the United States at all (Particularly without doing away with the baggage of 20 years worth of being a member of the royal family of a sovereign nation—in these Golden Age stories, Paradise Island wasn’t played as it’s own country so much as an otherworldly fantasy land, but Post-Crisis it's more like an all-female Cuba with Greek architecture and sense of fashion).

Interaction with the rest of the DCU has caused an awful lot of problems for Wonder Woman in general, as each reboot required other reboots across the universe. When Wonder Woman was reintroduced as a latecomer to the DCU, for example, there was already a Wonder Girl active before Wonder Woman, which began a whole slew of retcons and reboots for Donna Troy/Wonder Girl/Troia, and John Byrne would later send Wonder Woman’s mother back in time to World War II, making her a Wonder Woman before Wonder Woman, and thus retroactively making Wonder Woman a legacy character (Again, Superman and Batman never had these sorts of problems).

In addition to working for DOMA tracking superhumans, Wonder Woman’s current status quo has her partnered with old DC character Nemesis (from John Ostrander’s Suicide Squad run), working under Sarge Steel (Suicide Squad, Titans), using credentials created for her by Batman and a disguise suggested by Superman. Rather than standing on her own, the current Wonder Woman is, at best, a spider scurrying along the webs of DCU continuity. Batman and Superman are, of course, members of the Justice League and prone to guest-stars from other books at any time, but for the most part their adventures can be enjoyed all alone, without any real familiarity with the workings of the DCU.

So it was certainly refreshing to read Wonder Woman stories where all the information you needed was right there in the story itself. Rather than wondering how these stories fit in with the last Wonder Woman story I read, I could simply enjoy the flat, two-dimensional art of H.G. Peter and his quirky vintage sci-fi-meets-mythology designs and William Moulton Marston’s almost stream-of-consciousness storytelling, including the amazing feats of blocking bullets with bracelets, the pre-feminist feminism, the humor of Wondy’s sidekick Etta and her cartoonish sorority sisters and family members.

The other remarkable differences between yesterday’s Wonder Woman and today’s were in the powers and the cheesecake factor. The original Wonder Woman was super-strong and super-fast, but didn’t seem to be completely invulnerable (she did block bullets with her bracelets) and she couldn’t fly, which meant she had to resort to riding horses, running and swimming super-fast and flying her robot plane. I don’t know why exactly, but I found this a lot more intersting. I guess because I've grown so used to her just being a sort of female Superman, so it was neat to not see her flying around Superman-style, but distinguishing herself from him (even if, in this case, that distinguishing factor turns out to be relative weakness).

And it goes without saying it was refreshing to see her not exploding out of her costume. In her first few stories, Wonder Woman is wearing a billowing skirt, but it quickly turns into a pair of shorts. Not a pair of panties, and not a g-string, but a pair of shorts.

Her top didn’t lift and separate, it wasn’t a corset or boob armor or just something to cover her nipples because a completely topless superheroine would be silly. It looked like something a ballerina might wear.

Likewise, her bracelets were actual bracelets, not forearm-long pieces of armor.

Taken together and read on this side of the manga revolution, it was downright surprising to see that Wonder Woman was actually something of a magical girl-style heroine decades before “magical girl” would even become a comics genre.

Reading Wonder Woman at any point form the last 30 years or so, it’s quite clear that she’s designed to sexually titillate male readers more than, you know, just look kinda cool. It’s not just the likes of notoriously-bad-at-female-anatomy Michael Turner, the unfortunate choice for JLoA cover artist, or the notoriously smexed-up JLoA interior artist Ed Benes. It’s everyone who draws Wonder Woman these day, because that barely-there costume has become inherent to the character design. Check it out:











John Byrne, J.G. Jones, Adam Hughes, Brian Bolland…these are great artists who all understand how to render human anatomy and how clothing falls across a human body in the real world. And these are all nice images, but what strikes you first about them, that it must be cool to have Wonder Woman powers? That Wonder Woman looks like a fun character to read about? Or that you can almost see her breasts?

Certainly a certain amount of sexiness is expected in any superhero comic book, chronicling the lives of perfect specimens of the human physique as they do, and even when Wonder Woman’s interiors were at their strongest visually (under the pencils of Perez and Jimenez), she was half-naked (Hell, in the Archives, Peters’ Wonder Woman is often shown in cheesecake-y costume-changing scenes, and on her first appearance in Man’s World passersby remark on how little clothing she’s wearing). Over the years though, it seems like we’ve seen fewer and fewer images like these,





accentuating the joy or menace of Wonder Woman’s superpowers, and more and more images simply reveling in the skimpiness of the costume.

Which is why I think Tintin Pantoja’s Wonder Woman pitch caused such a stir when it made the rounds in the blogsophere a few months back—it looked like the Wonder Woman a lot of people wanted to read, rather than the Wonder Woman they had to read about. While it’s hard to judge a couple of pages of art posted on the Internet, it did seem like Pantoja had managed to capture some elements of the original Wonder Woman story, including the princess/magical girl themes and the fact that the character seemed more or less like a real person, not a scantily clad statue come to life.

So yeah, Golden Age Wonder Woman’s adventures are totally insane, what with their never-acknowledged yet hard-to-miss perverse sexual undertones and symbolism (Suffering Sappho indeed), bizarre fantasy technology and bastardized mythology mash-ups, pulled-out-thin-air plot points and all-around aura of silliness, but those aren’t the only reasons they seem so weird to readers today.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled fanboy whining and lame attempts at humor for a Public Service Announcement:

If you live in Columbus or within driving distance, you're probably gonna want to go to this—





and, of course, this—



For more info on the Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo, click here. For more on the launch party, click here.

EDILW Presents: Wonder Woman Wednesdays!

Wonder Woman’s had a rough time of things lately.

She’s the First Lady of Superheroes, a position she’s earned by, um, being the first lady superhero. She’s one of only three Golden Age comic book characters whose adventures have been in continuous publication from the time she was created to the present (You know the other two). She’s one of the most widely recognized comic book characters in the world, even among the “civilian” population.

The lady deserves some respect, you know?

But what does she get instead? I don’t know—what’s the exact opposite of respect?

The rejiggeirng of DC’s fictional universe that occurred in Infinite Crisis drastically changed Wonder Woman’s status quo in the company’s shared setting, so that the decades-old rejiggering of Crisis On Infinite Earths was de-rejiggered, apparently knocking George Perez’s run on her title out of continuity/canon (And here’s a dispiriting thought: This is apparently no longer canon, but this is).

At the same time, her series, which was experiencing one of it’s rare peaks in quality thanks to writer Greg Rucka’s acclaimed run on the title, was cancelled to make room for a brand-new Wonder Woman series, to be written by relative newcomer Allan Heinberg (Whose previous comics credits included maxiseries Young Avengers and co-writing a JLA arc with Geoff Johns).

In relaunching the title, Heinberg took his clues from the 1970s TV show, introducing a new, nostalgic/retro status quo that was more in keeping with the Wonder Woman of the ‘60s and ‘70s then the one readers have followed the last 20 years in comics (and, in the past few years, on the Justice League cartoon).

This Wonder Woman had a Clark Kent-like secret identity (Diana Prince, an Amazonian secret agent who wore her hair up and a pair of shaded glasses) and worked for the U.S. government’s Department of Meta-Human Affairs. She’d stepped down from her role as ambassador, thus leaving the world stage to be a secret agent and fight supervillains. Heinberg delivered the first four-issues of an intended five-issue run over the course of a year before DC removed him from the schedule due to missed deadlines.

Next up was a not-very-good one-issue fill-in story, making way for best-selling author Jodi Picoult. Rather than giving Picoult the sort of carte blanche they’d given best-selling author Brad Meltzer with the Justice League characters in Identity Crisis and Justice League of America or Heinberg on Wonder Woman, Picoult was assigned to write a six-issue arc that built on Heinberg’s new version of the character. (Imagine instead a Picoult-written miniseries or original graphic novel, in or out of continuity).

If Heinberg’s Wonder Woman was mediocre, Picoult’s was actually terrible.

Like Heinberg, she ignored much of the last 20 years or so worth of Wonder Woman stories (Perhaps rightly so, perhaps not, depending on Wondy’s continuity, which no one knows the status of post-Infinite Crisis). In addition to keeping Heinberg’s innovations of a secret identitied-up ex-Goddess of Truth who’s trying to learn what it’s like to be an ordinary human buy hunting superhumans as a secret agent, Picoult played Wonder Woman as a fish out of water character who can’t order coffee, pump gas or work turnstiles, all of which seems…off. (If she’s a founding Justice Leaguer again post-Infinite Crisis, as IC and JLoA have made clear, that means she’s spent at least the last 11 years living in the United States, on more than one occasion living with normal American families and even working in a fast food joint).

It’s hard to say just how much of the title’s current suckiness is Picoult’s fault and how much is editorial’s. At any rate, the results have been a story featuring the dense continuity that keeps new readers from easily getting into a comic (at the least, you'll have to have read about Max Lord's killing and the previous story arc of the title, and Manhunter sure wouldn' hurt) accompanied (ironically) by the sort of continuity errors that keep hardcore fans from supporting the book.

Picoult on Wonder Woman should have been a creative, public relations and sales slam dunk for DC (and were she writing a miniseries or original graphic novel, it probably would have been), but instead it’s simply turned into strike two on their Wonder Woman relaunch.

DC’s already announced the next writer: Gail Simone. Simone is a very good comic book writer (in addition to being a woman), a writer who at her absolute worst is still guaranteed to be able to deliver stories at least as good as Heinberg’s, but on a monthly rather than quarterly schedule. Which is great news.

The bad news? Simone’s Newsarama interview intimates that she’ll be working with the post-Infinite Crisis status quo, and, of course, there’s still four more issues of Picoult’s run, and another two-issue fill-in stint, before Simone takes over.

But not all is bleak for the Amazing Amazon! We at EDILW are planning to do our part to make things a little less grim for our favorite star-spangled shorts rocking heroine, which is why we’re launching a new feature this week—Wonder Woman Wednesdays. Each Wednesday we’ll have a Wondy-centric post, and the plan is to keep ‘em up coming at least until Simone begins her run on Wonder Woman or we run out of funny Golden Age panels to post out of context and make bad jokes about, whichever comes first.

Marvel's July Previews Reviewed

Another great Irredeemable Ant-Man cover, marred only by the fact that the Hulk is wearing a tiara in it.



CIVIL WAR CHRONICLES Written by MARK MILLAR & PAUL JENKINS. Penciled by STEVE MCNIVEN, RAMON BACHS & STEVE LEIBER. Cover by MICHAEL TURNER. Experience CIVIL WAR and it’s major tie-ins from AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, FANTASTIC FOUR, FRONT LINE and more in chronological order! The landscape of the Marvel Universe is changing, and it's time to choose: Whose side are you on? A conflict has been brewing, threatening to pit friend against friend, brother against brother – and all it will take is a single misstep to cost thousands their lives and ignite the fuse! As the war claims its first victims, no one is safe as teams, friendships and families begin to fall apart. The crossover that rewrites the rules, CIVIL WAR stars Spider-Man, the New Avengers, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men and the entirety of the Marvel pantheon! This issue reprints CIVIL WAR #1, and the “Embedded” and “Accused” stories from CIVIL WAR: FRONT LINE #1.

I’m actually pretty fascinated by this whole “Chronicles” scheme. With the singles already out, read, and analyzed and griped about (many of the key ones reprinted in extra-affordable collections), and now all the trades out or coming out, who wants to read it in this particular format, the ordering of the stories determined by Marvel editorial? Are there any potential readers left out there who either didn’t read the singles and and don’t want the trades, but wouldn’t mind reading the entire story in a series of portmanteau books like this?

Additionally, this format will really accentuate the story continuity glitches between the main mini and Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four.

And while a certain amount of bullshit is acceptable in solicitation copy, I think claiming the series “stars” the X-Men is reaaallly pushing it. One scene of Emma Frost talking with Tony Stark and a couple of Bishop and Cable appearances in crowd scenes probably isn’t what a lot of people think of when they here the words “stars” and “the X-Men.”







THE CHAMPIONS #1 Written by MATT FRACTION. Pencils and Cover by BARRY KITSON. Variant Cover by STEVE MCNIVEN THE CHAMPIONS introduces the all-new and Los Angeles-based crown jewel in Tony Stark’s FIFTY-STATE INITIATIVE. A team of Stark-branded and created super heroes, these young actors, athletes and models are infused with tremendous powers and even more tremendous fame, reborn as the First Super Hero Team of Tomorrow™ —THE CHAMPIONS. Here the same ol'-same ol' means hooking up at the Standard, drinks at SkyBar and a death-duel on Sunset Blvd. against some villain too stupid to realize that, in Hollywood, the good guys always win. The catch: you can be fired at any point along the way. And every inch of your life will be subjected to intense public scrutiny. And if you survive all that for a whole year, you'll face mandatory retirement. And there's no guarantee you'll live to see that retirement. If you had one year to save the world, what would you do?

I have a lot of resistance to this idea, in part because of Civil War exhaustion, in part because the second sentence sounds word for word like a description of 52’s Everyman Project and in part because it just doesn’t seem right not to have the actual Champions in a Marvel book called The Champions. Also, I’m already reading a dozen super-team titles, and Marvel’s launching 241 more in the next couple months.

But I’ve gotta say, Fraction’s work is more hit than miss, Kitson’s a great artist and I really dig that glowing cinder block thingy. This might be a wait-for-the-trader.




DEVIL DINOSAUR BY JACK KIRBY OMNIBUS HC Written by JACK KIRBY. Penciled by JACK KIRBY. Cover by JACK KIRBY. No gods from outer space could beat THIS Devil! Jack Kirby crossed into a new cosmos with this crimson carnivore and his faithful sidekick Moonboy! Now, for the first time, Marvel collects the King's saga of Devil Dinosaur in his prehistoric prime! Collecting DEVIL DINOSAUR #1-9.

Nooooo! I wanted an Essential volume of this, Marvel!







New Rule: The only Marvel superhero Michael Turner is allowed to draw from now on is Mr. Fantastic. Look how perfect that image is. Is the anatomy weirdly inhuman? Well that’s because he can stretch every part of his body, duh! Over at DC, the only characters Turner is allowed to draw from now on are Plastic Man, Elongated Man and maybe a couple Metal Men.








Squirrel in an old-timey bathing suit on the cover, eh? Sold. I’m easy that way.




THE HOOD PREMIERE HC Written by BRIAN K. VAUGHN. Penciled by KYLE HOTZ. Cover by KYLE HOTZ. With great power ...comes great opportunity. Nineteen-year-old Parker Robbins couldn’t afford college, but he was able to buy a ski mask and a Lorcin .380 handgun. After dropping out of high school, he hoped to follow in the footsteps of his late father, a soldier in the Kingpin’s vast criminal empire — but life in the mob isn’t always as glamorous as the movies make it seem. With a pregnant girlfriend, a demanding mistress and an institutionalized mother to care for, Parker can barely make ends meet. So when the small-time crook finds mystical apparel that grants him strange powers, he elects to forgo organized crime ... for the more prestigious and financially rewarding world of costumed villainy. Collecting THE HOOD #1-6.

Wait, can you have a premiere hardcover after you’ve already had a trade paperback collection, which has since gone out of print…?





INVADERS CLASSIC VOL. 1 TPB Written by ROY THOMAS. Penciled by FRANK ROBBINS, RICH BUCKLER, DICK AYERS & DON HECK. Cover by FRANK ROBBINS. The Big Three of Marvel's Golden Age—Captain America, the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner—entered their first alliance when the U.S. entered World War II! But the Axis had more than bombs to throw at them, as they soon learned in a battle with the Star-Gods! The Red Skull wants the Invaders themselves as Hitler's top hitmen, and only a second gathering of Golden Age greats can stop him! Featuring the first appearances of Spitfire, Union Jack and more!COLLECTING INVADERS #1-9, GIANT-SIZE INVADERS #1 and MARVEL PREMIERE #29-30.

Anyone know the word on these comics? I’m interested in Marvel’s WW II-era heroes, but I’ve seen a lot of jokes at Roy Thomas’ expense on this here Interent, usually in relation to his handling of Marvel’s WW II-era heroes. Is this gonna be worth $25, or should I spend it on drugs instead?



SUPER-VILLAIN TEAM-UP/M.O.D.O.K.'S 11 #1 (OF 5) Written by FRED VAN LENTE. Penciled by FRANCIS PORTELA.
Cover by ERIC POWELL. While the heroes are away fighting World War Hulk, the villains can play...M.O.D.O.K., sick of being hunted and hounded by A.I.M., gathers together an eclectic team of Marvel's Most Wanted to pull off one last, big score. But news travels fast along the grapevine of villainy —and pretty soon every bad guy in the Marvel Universe is gunning for the Big-Headed One's unspeakably powerful prize. Executing their heist may be the easy part, because getting away with their loot alive is going to be the real challenge for M.O.D.O.K.’s 11!

They had me at “M.O.D.O.K.’s 11 by Fred Van Lente.” I wonder what the point of the Super-Villain Team-Up in the title is, as it only buries the joke.








NEW AVENGERS: ILLUMINATI #4 (of 5) Written by BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS & BRIAN REED. Pencils and Cover by JIM CHEUNG. They have faced the Skrull empire, the Hulk, the Sentry, the Infinity Gems and the Beyonder... but now the secret society of Marvel is faced with the one thing too much for even them... and the cover to this issue says it all. Oh, and there's this guy named Marvel Boy who declared war on the Earth.

Does it? ‘Cause I only recognize three-fifths of the women on the cover. Maybe if I knew the other two then I’d get the whole message.

Seeing how Bendis dealt with Grant Morrison’s Xorn in House of M and New Avengers, I’m deeply afraid of what he’ll do with Marvel Boy, but what the hell, Namor and Doc Strange are on the team, which makes this the closest thing to a Defenders title we have right now.








NEW AVENGERS/TRANSFORMERS #1 (of 4) Written by STUART MOORE. Penciled by TYLER KIRKHAM. Cover by JIM CHEUNG_It’s time to Assemble–and Roll Out! What in the world could unite Earth's Mightiest Heroes and the Autobots? Maybe the Decepticons and Dr. Doom know! War is about to break out on the border between Latveria and Symkaria -- unless two unique teams of heroes can unravel a dark mystery… that is, if they don’t destroy each other first! Stuart Moore (WOLVERINE, PUNISHER X-MAS SPECIAL) and Tyler Kirkham (X-MEN: PHOENIX WARSONG) bring together fan-faves like Wolverine, Megatron, Spider-Man and Optimus Prime in this all-new, four-issue, widescreen adventure!

This is such a crazy-ass pair of comics franchises that it’s either going to be completely stupid or completely awesome. I can’t wait to find out which.








OMEGA FLIGHT #4 (of 5) Written by MICHAEL AVON OEMING . Penciles & Cover by SCOTT KOLINS. OMEGA FLIGHT VS. THE WRECKING CREW! Plus: the TRUE VILLAINS ARE REVEALED!

So Omega Flight is going to be fighting the Wrecking Crew for four months straight?





SHE-HULK #21 Written by DAN SLOTT. Penciled by RICK BURCHETT. Cover by GREG HORN. THE MOST IMPORTANT MARVEL COMIC YOU WILL READ ALL YEAR! "ANOTHER ME, ANOTHER U" Ever notice how in some Marvel comics, characters who are SUPPOSED to be dead show up with NO explanation whatsoever? Or in the wrong costume? Or acting in a way they NEVER have before? Well guess what, True Believer, there was a reason. And that reason is going to have She-Hulk and her friends working on some of their STRANGEST cases yet! Don't miss it—'cause this is the issue that fixes 90% of Marvel's continuity problems—from NOW ON!


I sometimes get the feeling that Dan Slott is the only writer at Marvel who actually reads Marvel comics, so if there’s a way to make sense of the discrepancies big and small, he’s probably the man to do it (Check out last week’s issue, for example, for an explanation as to why Armadillo and all those guys the Punisher “killed” at Stilt-Man’s wake aren’t, you know, actually dead).








Hmm. The Leader’s look really only works for the Leader, huh?











You know what’s great about this World War Hulk: X-Men cover? Hulk’s not wearing a tiara in it.






ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #111 Written by BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS. Penciled by MARK BAGLEY & STUART IMMONEN. Cover by MARK BAGLEY & RICHARD ISANOVE. 50/50 Variant Cover by STUART IMMONEN & RICHARD ISANOVE. The artistic baton is passed from longtime penciler Mark Bagley to stunning new ongoing artist Stuart Immonen, of Ultimate X-Men and Ultimate Fantastic Four fame! Peter and his Aunt May have perhaps the most important conversation of Peter’s life. It’s a gut-wrenching, emotional roller coaster you’ll never forget. And on the lighter side, we introduce the latest addition to the Spidey villains gallery—say hello to Ultimate Spot! We kid thee not.


I’m actually incredibly nervous about this baton-passing. US-M has long been one of my favorite super-series, and probably the best superhero ongoing since it’s launched. (Certainly it’s been the most consistent). I guess I’ll soon find out how much of that was due to Mark Bagley vs. Brian Michael Bendis. Stuart Immonen’s style changes pretty often; I like his early DC work and his Nextwave, but his previous Ultimate work left me pretty cold.

That said, I’m unequivocally stoked for the debut of Ultimate Spot.




UNION JACK: LONDON FALLING TPB Written by CHRISTOS GAGE. Penciled by MIKE PERKINS. Cover by MIKE PERKINS. Spinning out of CAPTAIN AMERICA, Britain’s premier super hero has mere hours to prevent multiple terrorist attacks on London by an army of super-villains! Union Jack leads Sabra and the new Arabian Knight into battle! But when his boss at MI5 risks innocent lives to bring down the enemy, Union Jack faces a tough choice—and the fate of London itself rests on his decision. Don’t miss the book that redefines Union Jack for the 21st century, with stunning pencils by fan-favorite Captain America artist Mike Perkins! Guest-starring Sabra, Arabian Knight, Batroc the Leaper, Machette, Zaran, Boomerang, Crossfire, Jack O’Lantern, Shockwave and more! Collecting UNION JACK #1-496 PGS./Rated T+ …$10.99

“Spinning out of Captain America” may be pushing it, but this was a very solid if shallow action adventure type series, featuring a horde of Marvel’s C-List merc villains. And at eleven bucks, it’s a steal.

DC's July previews reviewed

ALL-NEW ATOM #13Written by Gail Simone. Art by Mike Norton & Dan Green. Cover by Ladrönn. The Search for Ray Palmer continues as the Atom finds himself with people who knew Palmer very well: the jungle-dwelling little people from SWORD OF THE ATOM! And they may be hiding the Atom's predecessor among their people.


I just dropped A-NA on account of it not ever being very good, but this sure looks promising. Note to DC: Now would be a perfect time to release a Sword of the Atom trade paperback collection.




BATMAN CONFIDENTIAL #7 Written by Michael Green. Art and cover by Denys Cowan & John Floyd. What kind of person becomes a Joker? Writer Michael Green (Heroes writer/producer) and classic Batman artist Denys Cowan shed light on who the Joker was before he became the Joker…and how he and Batman crossed paths even before the day he was created.


Hmm, how did this conversation go? “Hey, Michael Green. You write for that shitty TV show, right? How would you like to write an in-continuity story about the Joker before he became the joker? Yeah, I know we’ve only really let Denny O’Neil and Alan Moore tease the pre-Joker Joker’s origin and kept it mysteriously up in the air, but I have a feeling you’re the perfect writer to do it.”




BATMAN: BLIND JUSTICEWritten by Sam Hamm. Cover by Walter Simonson. Art by Denys Cowan & Dick Giordano.Reoffered to coincide with BATMAN CONFIDENTIAL #7, also featuring art by Denys Cowan! This classic trade paperback collects DETECTIVE COMICS #598-600,written by Batman (1989) screenwriter Sam Hamm! Bruce Wayne discovers a series of murders linked to WayneTech in this tale that leaves him in a wheelchair!


Of course, that horrible-sounding Batman: Confidential story got this into trade, so that’s cool. It actually ends with a bit of a whimper, but the opening chapter is downright fantastic. Written by Hamm and in print the summer that Tim Burton’s original Batman film was in theaters, this was one of the first Batman comic book stories I’d ever read, and I have pretty fond memories of it.






BLACK CANARY #1 & #2 Written by Tony Bedard. Art and cover by Paulo Sequeira & Amilton Santos. Black Canary takes flight in a 4-issue miniseries written by Tony Bedard (52, SUPERGIRL AND THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES) with art by Paulo Sequiera (BIRDS OF PREY, Gypsy) & Amilton Santos! The League of Assassins tracks Black Canary to Star City in an effort to liberate the child, Sin, they believe to be the DCU's next greatest assassin. Luckily, Black Canary has other plans for Sin's abilities and future.


Pass. From here, this looks like a project that exists merely to make sense out of why the work on the character by two other writers in two different series hasn’t matched up just right (In this case, Gail Simone’s Birds of Prey and Brad Meltzer’s JLoA). And then there’s that cover…does DC have an art director? I’m no expert on female anatomy (at least, not as expert as I’d like to be. Heyo!), but should I be able to see both of Dinah’s breasts and both of her ass-cheeks at the same time without the use of mirrors? Are there hinges in her spinal column or what?









Yes, that appears to be Batman wearing a Legion flight ring on the cover of Brave and the Bold. No, it doesn’t matter what else happens in the book, because it has an image of Batman wearing a Legion flight ring.








Countdown #43-#40 This year-long weekly series featuring a cast of hundreds kicks into high gear in its third month! Learn more about the search for Ray Palmer! Travel into the Nanoverse! All this plus appearances by the Suicide Squad, the Penguin and the Atom!


What’s this? An open grave? Superheroes crying? A funeral? Could a superhero have fallen in the line of duty? What a shocking development! Who could it be, and how long will they stay dead?

With Bucky and Captain Marvel back in the universe next door, and Jason Todd and now Ice back in the DCU, the dramatic impact of “death” in superhero comics is at an all-time low, to the point where when I see an image like this, it has what I assume must be the opposite intended effect on me—I become 100% less interested.

But whatever, we’ll play their game. Who oh who could it be?

Is it Bart “The Flash” Allen? I actually kinda hope it is; as a character, Bart Allen’s been dead since they cancelled Impulse and Young Justice and Geoff Johns began gradually darkening the character.

Could it be Starfire, who we haven’t seen yet “One Year Later?” Again, this would be A-OK with me; I think Starfire’s story has been over for a loooong time now.

Could it be one of the new Titans they just introduced, like Kid Devil, Miss Martian or maybe on-again, off-again hero Ravager? One hopes not, as none of those would even illicit a shrug.

The one character death that would actually annoy me would be Cassandra “Batgirl” Cain. Mostly because if DC was going to kill her, they should have done so during Infinite Crisis or at the end of her own title, rather than keeping her around long enough to star in three of the worst DC stories of all time first*.

The text sounds a lot more intriguing than the image. I particularly love the way they single out the Penguin for mention, like readers are going to be all, “Sweet, the Penguin! My favorite!”






DC/TOP COW: CROSSOVER CLASSICS TPWritten by Jeph Loeb, Scott Lobdell and others. Art by Marc Silvestri, David Finch and others. Cover by Joe Benitez. The greatest heroes from two publishers — DC Comics and Top Cow — meet for the first time and face off against each other and their greatest foes in this staggering collection! This volume features the best-selling crossovers THE DARKNESS/BATMAN, THE DARKNESS/SUPERMAN #1-2, JLA/CYBERFORCE and JLA/WITCHBLADE.

I’ve only read half of these—the two JLA books—but I think that’s enough to safely say that these four stories are in all likelihood not, in fact, what one might consider “classics.”









As a kid watching Superfriends, I never understood why Sinestro’s ring shot out yellow energy, but he was a pink guy who wore a blue costume. So I definitely see matching his costume to his ring energy, especially now that he’s got his own Corps, but he just looks kinda weird in that suit to me for some reason. I don’t think the yellow matches his pink complexion very well. I don’t know, maybe I just need to get used to it.





GREEN ARROW: YEAR ONE #1 & #2Written by Andy Diggle. Art and cover by Jock.The incredible creative team of writer Andy Diggle and artist Jock (THE LOSERS) rejoin to tell the definitive origin of the Emerald Archer! Oliver Queen is a frivolous playboy with little care for anyone or anything — apparently even himself. But when he's double-crossed and marooned on a desrt island he finds that he does care about something... justice!

Fun fact: The abbreviation for this series is GAY1 or GAYO (if you spell out the number “one”). Shh! Don’t tell Chuck Dixon!

Green Arrow’s origin has been told perfectly well already in at least one recent, in-continuity DCU story, and has also been told in a story entitled Green Arrow: Year One, and I don’t really need to see it again**. But I do need to see another Diggle/Jock book, and I do need to see someone other than Judd Winick guiding the Emerald Archer’s adventures, so I think I’ll be reading the hell out of this series.








NIGHTWING #134 Written by Marv Wolfman. Art by Jamal Igle & Keith Champagne. Cover by Ryan Sook. “The Missing Year” continues with a startling rebirth: The return of the Vigilante! Yesterday, he challenged the Crimelords of Europe, Asia and Africa, and defeated them. Today, he controls the 21 Tigers, an international gang of murderers. But there was a time when Dick Grayson called him friend and mentor — and they both loved the same woman.

Okay, see, this is why it’s so hard for people who don’t already read super-comics to start. Vigilante, huh? This isn’t the first Viginlante, the one who was a cowboy hero who recently died and came back as a ghost cowboy hero in Seven Soldiers, is it? And it’s not the female Vigilante who hung out with Deathstroke, The Terminator (heh heh) back when he had his own title, is it? Is it the guy before her, whom I thought was dead, in a new costume? Or Vigilante IV? Or am I missing a Vigilante…?

Ah screw it, pass.

I do like the V-visor design though.





SHADOWPACT #15
Written by Bill Willingham
Art and cover by Tom Derenick & Wayne Faucher
Zauriel joins Shadowpact officially, Blue Devil learns what he needs to do to save his parents, and Doctor Gotham strikes at last!

Ah dammit. I really, really, really hated just about everything that occurred in Day of Vengeance and have avoided this title since, but Zauriel joins the team? Officially? Like, for the foreseeable future? Sigh. As one of Zauriel’s 14 fans, I feel obligated to start following the title now.

Nice to see Tom Derenick on art too; I really like his stuff.









There’s no way I’m not buying these, even though I’m waaay behind on my Showcase Presents reading.




TANGENT COMICS VOL. 1 TP
Written by Dan Jurgens, Kurt Busiek, James Robinson, Ron Marz and Todd Dezago
Art by Gary Frank, Mike McKone, J.H. Williams III, Jurgens and others
Cover by Jurgens & Norm Rapmund
In 1997, DC’s Tangent event presented a group of strange new heroes with very familiar names. Now, these hard-hitting heroes are back in a fantastic new collection including TANGENT COMICS: THE ATOM, METAL MEN, THE FLASH, GREEN LANTERN and SEA DEVILS!

I refuse to believe that anybody in the world requested these one-shots be collected into a trade paperback. In the likelihood of ever being published, I would have put this series somewhere between The Complete New Blood Omnibus and Heckler.

Yeah, I know they recently appeared in a panel of Infinite Crisis, but so did Neptune Perkins, and I don’t see any Young All-Stars trades in previews this month. And yeah, they appeared in Ion, but who’s reading Ion? If anyone’s really interested in reading these old stories, an interesting exercise in copyright renewal without actually having to put characters like the Secret Six, Doom Patrol, Metal Men and Sea Devils in in-continuity stories, they can easily find them in any back-issue bin. Or in my longboxes. I’ll totally sell you mine for cover price.







*Excepting, of course, the early issues of Extreme Justice, “War Games Act Three,” "War Crimes,” anything written but Judd Winick and Erik Larsen’s run on Aquaman. That should all go with out saying, however.


**But Wonder Woman, Black Canary and the Justice League of America all do need new Year One stories, rather badly, seeing as how Infinite Crisis undid their origin stories and we’ve yet to see what their new ones are. I also need to see all of those Mike Grell Green Arrow stories in a couple of trade collection, whenever you guys get a chance.

52 spin-offs I'd buy

I think it’s safe to declare this week’s issue of 52 the series’ climax, despite the fact that there are two more issues to follow. After all, this is the issue that features Black Adam fighting the rest of the world, and is accompanied by a four-part World War III miniseries. But either way, the best superhero comic of the last year that isnt’ All-Star Superman is not much longer for the world and I for one will be sorry to see it go.

Oh sure, DC’s launching a sequel of sorts, although Countdown will lack the all-star writing team, as well as its predecessor’s two main hooks, one good (a missing year in the life of the DCU) and one bad (a day-by-day real time epic). But there were a lot of really cool ideas introduced in the course of the last fifty weeks, ideas that would make easy story-seeds for future spin-offs.

In fact, DC’s already announced a couple, including a new Infinity Inc. series featuring the Steels and a Booster Gold series playing up the character's time-traveling aspects. Additionally Lady Styx has been appearing in some of the space books, and Egg-Fu is set to appear in an upcoming Outsiders/Checkmate crossover. It’s a good start, I guess, but I don’t see much potential beyond the Booster Gold series, which sounds a lot like the brilliant-but-cancelled Chronos, only with a (slightly) more high-profile protagonist.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see a Greg Rucka written Question series announced relatively soon, or the long-rumored Batwoman series (a logo design of which has already made the rounds on the Internet).

But you know what I’d really like to see?

No?

Well, I’ll tell you.



Doc Magnus and The Metal Men: The true breakout star of the series has been Doctor Will Magnus, who has spent the last few decades vacillating between being the Metal Men’s human sidekick and appearing for a few panels in other heroes’ stories when they need a robotics expert to say a few words. Hell, when 52 was announced and launched, Magnus didn’t even rate a star status; he’s missing from the first cover, and his storyline wasn’t pushed as one of the major ones.

But look what 50 issues has done. Lacking Metal Men of any kind for much of the story, Magnus was the least-mad mad scientist on Oolong Island, home of Egg-Fu’s Science Squad (and the setting for the zaniest, most fascinating storyline of the series). The clear alpha male among the likes of Sivana and Dr. Cyclops, he got the girl (even though he didn’t really want her) and totally saved the day, taking down Egg-Fu (over)easy. And he accomplished most of this without the help of the Metal Men, who were clearly more weapons in Magnus’ arsenal here than anything else.





While the explanation of how the Metal Men work in #49 was great, perhaps the most promising thing about 52 regarding the Metal Men was the mission statement Mark Waid gave ‘em in his back-up origin story: “The Metal Men specialize in defending earth from the unique menace of cutting-edge science gone wrong.”

Yeah, that sounds cool. Especially considering the fact that Magnus turned on his fellow mads and let the JSA in (and totally went all Frank Castle on Egg-Fu). Imagine a series devoted to dashing scientist Magnus and his robots defending the world from science gone mad, including such foes as Egg-Fu, Sivana and the other nut-jobs he shared a lab space with.

Of course, based on the dialogue, I would guess an awful lot of the mad scientist stuff came from the mind of Grant Morrison, who’s a notoriously hard writer for others to capitalize on the ideas of. And he’s busy, so I don’t see him helming a Metal Man monthly? So who could do such a thing? If I were in charge over at DC*, I’d hunt down Tom Peyer, who had great success with a Morrison concept in Hourman (and he also made it pretty funny, and humor is something that should be mandatory in a Metal Men story), and it even dealt with human-like robots and androids. Perfect! On art chores, it’d be hard to beat Rouleau’s designs on that origin (check out that beautiful responsometer!). So sign that man up too!

(Note: I think Evan Dorkin, Mike Allred, Nick Dragotta and Ty Templeton would also kick ass on art for a Metal Men comic).



The Croatoan Society: In 52 #18 , Ralph Dibny investigates a murder at the House of Mystery, where via dialogue and some tantalizing newspaper headlines hanging from the walls, we learn that the stretchable sleuth occasionally gets together with fellow DCU detectives like Detective Chimp and Teri Thirteen to solve impossible mysteries like who Kaspar Hauser was or what Stonehenge is all about. The Society only really appeared in this issue, which kicked off the whole Ralph and His Magic Helmet plot, but it is an absolutely awesome idea, and one which should be further explored in a miniseries immediately, either one detailing their first adventure or, better yet, something along the lines of New Avengers: The Illuminati, checking in with the team/club every now and then. And if that title is too goofy, how about just naming it after their “headquarters,” House of Mystery.

Noted Elongated Man fan Mark Waid would be a perfect writer for such a series, as would James Robinson, who did such nice work on Ralph in Starman (and whose work on that title kept both feet squarely in the DCU while leaning toward Vertigo quality and tone, as would be needed in a series about a detective chimp kicking it in the House of Mystery in these post-Sandman times) or maybe Bill Willingham, whose Day of Vengeance was pretty terrible, but whose recent Helmet of Fate: Detective Chimp was great. I bet John Ostrander could pull it off as well, based on his The Spectre and, to a slightly lesser extent, Martian Manhunter.

An artist would be trickier, as Bobo, Ralph and the House all seem to require slightly different tones. Guy Davis of BPRD and Sandman Mystery Theatre fame could easily nail it, however.



Batman/Robin/Nightwing: And speaking of goofy titles, I couldn’t think of one that was less stupid than this one. I can’t do all of DC’s work here! We’ve seen some glimpses of these characters in 52 (and one flashback to their boat trip in ‘TEC), and it seems like there’s some pretty interesting stuff going on there. At the end of Infinite Crisis, Batman says he’s taking Dick Grayson and Tim Drake with him to follow the steps he took to become Batman, rebuilding himself with his partners. Awesome, huh? So let’s see some more of it, huh?

Again, Morrison seemed to do the heavy lifting during these portions of 52, but Batman is a character that pretty much anyone can write pretty well, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Batman artist who just couldn’t seem to draw Batman (except this guy). I’d like to say, oh Devin Grayson, Scott Beatty and Norm Breyfogle do it, but honestly, I’d probably buy this series no matter who created it. Come on, Batman, Nightwing and Robin globe-trotting and fighting crime until Batman goes into some nutty mystical stuff, Nightwing says “Screw it, I’m heading back to Gotham,” and Robin’s stuck there trying to figure out what Batman’s gonna do next? How could that not be awesome.

And, worst-case scenario, it couldn’t possibly be any worse than this or this, could it?



Batwoman: Frankly, I don’t care much for the character, who’s sole hook seems to be that she’s a lesbian. Her costume design is an interesting mash-up of Barbara Gordon’s Batgirl costume and the Batman Beyond suit, but the visible lipstick, the long, flowing, easily pulled hair makes her seem like the anti-Cassandra Cain to me. And as a fan of Cassie Cain, I just never really saw the logic of Batman and Oracle completely ignoring their Batgirl while DC writers did…whatever they did to her, just so they could introduce another female version of Batman named “Kane.” I couldn’t imagine caring to read a monthly, ongoing featuring her.

But I am interested in the missing year in Gotham City, specifically how the city coped with it’s hero gone. Was it a factor in Kane deciding to become Batwoman then? How did Harvey Dent spend the year, exactly? When did Commissioner Gordon become commissioner again, and why did he come out of retirement? Did The Question and Montoya fight other super-crime in Gotham, or pretty much just stick to beating up animal men? With Mannheim setting Gotham City up as the Vatican City of his global crime faith, no Batman and a bunch of colorful crimefighters coming and going during the ocurse of the year, there has just got to be some awesome tales to be told of Gotham during the missing year, all centering around Batwoman (also, it’d be nice to see her encounter Oracle, who would presumably come into some contact with her at some point, even if it was just sending Black Canary and Huntress in to kick her around, and her encountering Batgirl, who seems to have spent her year-off studying English, forgetting how to fight, and getting hopped up on Slade Wilson’s science juice).

This would be another series that I think anybody who read all of 52, the “OYL” bat-books and bat-books in the past ten years could handle (so no Adam Beechen). Again, Devin Grayson, Scott Beatty and Norm Breyfogle? Perfect! Maybe John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake could handle it though, and atone for their recent Batman arc.




The Legion of Teen Titans: Geoff Johns had a lot of fun playing with some of the missing year’s Titans during his “Titans Around the World” story arc, and it was pretty cool seeing a new Titans line-up every time they team appeared in 52, given how chaotic their line-up has been historically, with new directions occurring every couple of years. Call me greedy, but I’d like to see more of those missing year Titans. I’m sure Adam Beechen will get to some of that during his upcoming Teen Titans run, at least regarding Miss Martian, but I’d really like to see more about Offspring (and, um, why he exists at all in this universe), Aquagirl, Hawk and Dove, Mas y Menos, Young Frankenstein and how these characters came and went during that year. And, of course, I’d love to see Osiris and Sobek’s time with the Titans. I think there’s a good miniseries in here somewhere.




Shazam: The Marvel Family had a couple of cameos in this series, but their villains owned this series. Much of the series has revolved around Black Adam’s acquiring his own Black Marvel Family (complete with talking animal sidekick) and then losing it, and Sivana has played a major role in the whole Oolong Island side of things. How is that Waid, Morrison, Rucka and Geoff Johns can write these two Marvel Big Bands in a way that is completely in keeping with their original iterations and in synch with the modern DCU and the result be one of DC’s best-selling titles, but Judd Winick had to go and re-invent the wheel with Trials of Shazam in order to make the concept work? Next to the Metal Men, the DC franchise that seems to be the most obvious spin-off of 52 would be a new, improved, de-Winickified Shazam! series (which I’d go ahead and call Captain Marvel if I were DC…what’s Marvel gonna do, sue you? Let ‘em…It’s not like Time Warner can’t take ‘em in a courtroom brawl).


And in the “random” category, after Infinity Inc. gets inevitably cancelled before it hits 15 issues, I’d like to see John Henry Irons’ Steel back in the Justice League where he belongs and Nat’s Steel in Teen Titans. I’d like to see Egg-Fu pop up in Gail Simone’s upcoming Wonder Woman. I’d like the 52 version of SABBAC be the official one now, instead of the dirty Winick version.

And I would love to see a one or two-issue JLA Classified arc detailing Firestorm’s incredibly short-lived version of the Justice League…you know, the one featuring Firehawk, Ambush Bug, Super Chief and Bulleteer. Yeah, I know they didn’t stay together long, but I can’t be the only one interested in how Firestorm found his predecessor’s signal device, and how he arrived at that group of heroes, and if they did anything other than get slaughtered by Skeets. (The Tomorrow Woman one-shot placed a League adventure during JLA #5, so it shouldn’t be hard to set one during 52 #24, which spanned a week).

Yeah, those would all be awesome. Even more awesome? If they did 52 spin-offs to 52. Of course, we’d need 46 more suggestions.

Like, say for example…


Terra-Man: Year One

DC Comics Presents Soder Cola Presents Booster Gold’s Ferris Air Adventure Sponsored By Sun Dollar Coffee

Supernova’s Pal Clark Kent

The Menace of Manthrax

Giant-Size Hawkgirl This doesn’t refer to the format of the book, but rather the protagonist.

Firestorm/Cyborg Ditto.

Coalition of the Killing Black Adam convenes super-powered representatives from the superpowers in a bit of anti-U.S. diplomacy, including members of the Great Ten, the Global Guardaians, Sonar, Ibis the Invincible and others I’d need some Who’s Who In the DC Universe pages to identity.

The Brave and the Bold All-Adam Edition Featuring Black Adam and Adam Strange Guest-starring Atom-Smasher

All-Straw Sue Dibny Steve Wacker wasn’t just kidding about that book, was he? Was he?

Super Chief: The Lost Days Covering the few days we didn’t see between the time he first donned his buffalo mask and his death.

The Crime Bible A one-shot told in the style of several Chick Tracts, only dealing with Dark Side worship instead of Christianity.

Batshit Insane Billy Batson and the Seven Deadly Enemies of Mankind

Mercury, The Only Superhero Who’s Liquid At Room Temperature

Booster Gold: Funeral For a Friend Come on, don’t you want to see 22 pages featuring paid mourners Beefeater, Odd Man, the Human Blimp at Booster’s funeral in Cincinnati, with Skeets giving a eulogy?

Gold Twilight In the tradition of “Emerald Twilight,” the vilifying of Skeets.

Wait, What’s Up With The Shadowpact Exactly? A one-shot explaining what they were doing outside their little “One Year Later”-cheating forcefield in 52 #18.

Dynamole Did you know this Everyman Project hero is a legacy hero? Well he is. (You can read about the original Dynamoll’s adventure here). Man, there are a ton of Everyman characters who were just name-dropped in 52 #24 whom I’d like to read more about. Take, for example, any of the next four suggestions.

The Tornado Ninja

E.S. Pete

The Crimson Ghost Mainly because I want to know why a ghost-themed hero would have those little ears on his futuristic looking battle helmet. And why he doesn’t look anything like a ghost. And why his costume’s more of a maroon than a crimson.

Poledancer Come on, who doesn’t want to learn what Poledancer’s powers are, what her secret origin is, and how she fights crime?

Ambush Bug vs. Baron Bug

SABBAC, King of Devils Halloween Special

Happy Halloween, Judeo-Christians!

Turkey Man Thanksgiving Special Call me crazy, but I’d kinda like to read more about the Everyman Project’s lamest superhero, Turkey Man and his tryptophan fingers. I’ve even got the cover slogan worked out; ready? “Evil Grows Drowsy at the Touch of the Turkey Man.” Eh? Eh?

The Beard Hunter Shaves the DC Universe The wacky Doom Patrol villain returns during DC’s missing year, with his sites set on Aquaman, Richard Dragon, Ralph Dibny, Adam Strange and Animal Man. Who’s beard will survive?

Pulsar, Master of Sound

The Sivana Family

Tawky Tawny/Sobek

Montoya Vs. Ralph Dibny In a drinking contest, not a fight.

The Brave and the Bold Featuring Renee Montoya and Animal Man In order to shut up the infernal narration running through Montoya’s head, she’ll need Buddy Baker’s help to travel outside the DC Universe, through the fourth wall, and all up in Greg Rucka’s grill.

The Brave and the Bold Featuring Dr. Mid-Nite and Renee Montoya “Wait, what? He was dying of cancer and you dragged him threw snowy mountaintops on a sled? Why didn’t you just call your pals Black Adam and Isis to fly you back there again? Or cure him they way they cured Osiris?”

Twenty-Two Pages of J.G. Jones Just Painting Stuff

The Ten-Eyed Surgeons of the Empty Quarter

Shut Up, Wonder Girl

Mini Metal Men

Red Tornado Down Under

The Triple Fish Code Just like the Da Vinci Code, with Lobo in the Tom Hanks role, and a talking space dolphin in Audrey Tatou’s.**

The Erotic Adventures of Dr. Veronica Cale We know from #46 what a turn-on she finds the apocalypse. In our world, that might be a particularly hard fetish to cater to, but in the DCU? It’s the end of the world like once a week. It’d have to be a Vertigo series though.

Batwoman Confidential This one too.

The Brave and the Bold Featuring Batwoman and The Question II Ditto.

Batwoman vs. The Question II And definitely this one, what with the costume’s being ripped off (tastefully so, of course) during the big fight scene.

Nanda Parbatman And if it proves successful, there’s always

Nanda Parbatman: The Shadow of Nanda Parbat Or maybe Nandaparbatman and Robin

Teen Titans Costume Special #1 Why did Robin change his costume, adopting Batman and Superman’s briefs-on-the-outside style? Why did Wonder Girl trade in her ugly red spandex costume for the more sensible and aesthetically pleasing jeans and blouse look? (Or did I answer my own questions?). All of your answers inside!

M.P.D.: The Odyssey You think 911 is a joke in your town? Learn the incredible adventure that befell the Metropolis Police Department when they tried arriving on the scene of a super-brawl and Lex Corp to arrest the perpetrators, and arrived six days later, with no memory of what happened during their lost time…until now!





* I’m not.

** Come on, there’s 52 jokes in this post. Of course some of ‘em are gonna be terrible ones.

The things you see while scanning Golden Age superhero comics...

The other day I was scanning some random images from an old Shazam! Archives Edition for my post about Captain Marvel's quest to punch one of each animal species in the face like some kind of sadistic, caped Noah, and part of the scanning process involves blowing the pages up real big and then cropping them to cut out everything that's not Captain Marvel abusing an animal.

One of my favorite images is this one, of Cap wrestling a rhino to save a beautiful damsel in distress:



I like the sheer manliness of putting a wild animal in a headlock, and I like wondering how the hell it is that this random white chick ended up in the predicament of being charged at by a rhinocerous (The story in the comic which once wore that cover didn't involve any rhinos or imperilled young women in jungle settings).

But what I really love about the image is the text, "Captain Marvel On The Job!" Like it's his job to wrestle wild animals. Like Billy Batson's PDA had "Check and see if any pretty ladies need saved from wild animals" between "Meeting with Sterling Morris" and "Six o' clock broadcast."

At least, I thought that was why I liked the image so much. When I went to scan and crop it, however, I happened upon a couple of possible croppings that made me think that, well, that maybe Wertham wasn't such a crackpot. So, presented without any further commentary, are two portions of the image zoomed in on and removed from anything else that might put them in a less salacious context:

April 13th's Meanwhile in Las Vegas...

This week's LVW column features Runaways #25, The Unusual Supsects and the afore-mentioned Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year —2007 Edition. Go read it. If you want. No pressure.

Remember Wednesday when I said I wouldn't be doing an installment of "Actually Essential Storylines" for this week's 52 origin because, well, it'd be too hard for me? (Justice Society history is one area of DCU minutae I lack the confidence to bloviate at length about).

Well, it turns out I don't have to, as Shotgunreviews.com editor and Best Shots @ Newsarama.com ringleader Troy Browfield already exhaustively mentioned just about every Justice Society story ever in a two-part piece you can read here and here.

Weekly Haul: April 11th

52 #49 (DC Comics) You know what I love about this series? (Well, one of the things I love about it?) It seems like every couple weeks I’ll see a J.G. Jones cover that seems so incredibly perfect, so iconic, so well-arranged, that not only do I forget the bad ones, but I think to myself, “Okay, this is the best 52 cover ever; Jones can’t possibly top that.” And then I see something like this week’s, in which Doc Magnus is firing little Metal Men bullets out of a gun, and see that JGJ has indeed topped himself again. I’m not even going to bother saying this one is the best, although the look on the Mercury and Tin bullets’ faces present a rather compelling argument that it may be, because right there in the Next Issue Box is a tiny little image of Adam facing off against the Marvels, the JSA, Steel, Plastic Man and—Good God, next Wednesday can’t get here soon enough!

On the inside, we’re only three issues out of the end of this thing, and this week brings another climax, when the JSA and Great Ten convene on Oolong Island, and Doc Magnus and his darling little inventions show Egg Fu what happens when you take a mad scientist’s meds away. Eddy Barrows handles the pencil duties, and he’s perfectly adequate at the task; I always feel like a jerk criticizing art that is done in such a rush, but, well, that’s clearly not a pistol Morrow’s packing, you know? The scene in which Magnus explains the Metal Men is amazing though, and well worth my $2.50. Don’t suppose there’s much chance of getting a quality Doc Magnus and the Metal Men and an Egg Fu’s Science Squad series out of this, is there?

The back-up origin story is that of the JSA—er, the Justice Society of America, as drawn by one-time JSA artist Don Kramer. Mark Waid once again plays a bit coy with what’s official continuity and what’s not regarding the two Earths; while the “Trinity” is absent from the first image of the JSA, Kramer does draw the séance scene, devoid of the more confusing characters (Black Canary, for example) and with equivocal wording saying only that the JSA was “summoned out of retirement by their successors.” So, it doesn’t seem like they’re from Earth-Two in this origin story, or that anything’s changed since Infinite Crisis (save Wonder Woman being on the JLoA back then).

This is perhaps the most unique of the back-up origins, in that it includes information not only from “One Year Later,” but also farther ahead in that year than the relevant book. For example, the final panel listing all of the Society members is the first appearance of the new Steel’s new codename, “Citizen Steel.” The origin also seems to cover next week’s World War III, with a panel of the team’s three old men triple-teaming Black Adam. The “Essential Storylines” is depressingly sparse, but don’t look for an “Actually Essential Storylines" feature this week, as JSA history is so damn tangly I’m afraid to approach it. I’d definitely suggest the entire last volume of JSA though, save maybe the final story arc, and the Starman, the Ostrander/Mandrake Spectre Hourman and Sandman Mystery Theatre ongoings, which occasionally touched on JSA history, and were all consistently great comics.



All-Star Superman #7 (DC) I’ve been looking forward to this particular story since Grant Morrison first mentioned a new take on Bizarro, as a sort of zombie plague that infects whatever it touches and creates Bizarro versions of it, in a Newsarama.com interview years ago (back when All-Star Superman was first announced). As far as elements of the Superman mythos goes, Bizarro is right up there with Mr. Mxyzptlk in my book. Here “Bizarro” is a gigantic organism that crudely imitates planets and then subverts them by adapting itself to resemble the inhabitants (hence, a square earth hovering on the horizon). No surprise that Morrison and Quitely find a way to tweak the backwards Superman idea, playing B. as simultaneously funny and scary. This is the first two-parter in the A-SS run, which I’m not exactly happy about given the delay between issues (the string of done-in-ones has made the schedule easy to take thus far), but if it means more Bizarro, it’s well worth it.




Big Bang Comics Presents #5: Teen Rex (Big Bang Comics) I’m never quite sure how to feel about BBC’s elaborate homage comics, which create analogues to beloved comics characters and then tell stories featuring those characters in the styles of their actual creators. This issue focus on Teen Rex, a rather inspired Jack Kirby pastiche that takes a little Kamandi, a little Devil Dinosaur and a little Eternals/Inhumans to give us a teenage boy with long blonde hair who can transform into a Tyrannosaurus Rex who lives in the ruins of an abandoned, ancient, advanced civilization. It’s a nice character design and a kinda cool back-story, but it reads like exactly what it is—a Kirby homage, and I vacillated between “Neat!” and “Eh, so what?” from panel to panel.




JLA: Classified #37 (DC) And speaking of looking forward to something, this sounded intriguing years ago when it was supposed to be a graphic novel by Peter Milligan and Rob Haynes. Then it got shifted into JLA:C (along with miniseries I Can’t Believe It’s Not the Justice League! and a few story arcs from the monthly), and was supposed to start last summer. But then it got bumped—repeatedly— and here we are. So, what’s the deal with the story? What was so controversial? No idea; there’s no real clue inside, although the artist is now Carlos D’Anda, so maybe it was simply a matter of changing artists midstream? The story is set somewhere between “Obsidian Age” and Infinite Crisis, with Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, original flavor Martian Manhunter and Green Lantern John Stewart hot on the heels of a wounded Amazo android, who’s attempting to visit his son, “Kid Amazo,” a troubled philosophy student at Berkley. The Milligan who writes this seems closer to the Vertigo and X-Statix Milligan than the X-Men Milligan, and the existential turmoil of our protagonist is interesting. The art is fine, but I can’t help but be a little disappointed in it, perhaps because Haynes’ looked so good, and I’ve been anticipating it for so long. A very solid cover by former JLA artist Howard Porter, rendering his old subjects in his new style though.




The Jungle Book (Marvel) I actually tried very hard to resist this book and leave it on the shelf. I’m not a huge fan of comic book adaptations in general, particularly if it’s of something—a book, a film—I’ve already experienced in its original medium. I probably shouldn’t have even touched the damn thing though. The P. Craig Russell certainly has a strong pull, right down to the logo, which features a darling little monkey silhouette, but it was the flip-through that proved just too much for my weak will. I mean, it’s Kipling’s Jungle Book, as adapted and penciled by Gil Kane, with Russell inking. How do you not buy something like that, particularly after you’ve caught a glimpse of all those Kane/Russell wolves, or scenes like Mowgli’s predator posse batting around an army of monkeys? And did I mention it was over 60-pages, for just $2.99? I didn’t know much else about the book before purchase (Marvel.com doesn’t even have it listed), but there’s a nice intro by Roy Thomas regarding the project’s history, and according to the fine print, the short stories within are from Marvel Fanfare in the early ‘80s. It’s a great value, and was easily one of the week’s better reads.





Legion of Monsters: Man-Thing #1 (Marvel) This particular Marvel book also involved a little bit of pondering as I stood before its shelf today. On the one hand, it features stories of Man-Thing and the original Marvel Zombie, Simon Garth, as drawn by Klaus Janson and Ted McKeever, respectively. On the other, it has Greg Land’s name on the cover, and I’ve since resolved to never buy another Greg Land book again, as they only hurt my soul (this kept me from the Legion of Monsters: Werewolf By Night). But since Land only did the cover, and it was of a muck monster and not a porn-faced, heavily photo-referenced woman, I went for it. Charlie Huston writes the Janson/Man-Thing story, and it’s a fine, creepy, little horror story, although it seems an awful lot like something I’ve seen in an issue of Swamp Thing (#159; the cover image at least is repeated using the head and shoulders of Man-Thing in the Marvel book. I can’t remember if anyone actually east Swampy in that issue though…I seem to recall a Swamp Dog, instead, but I don’t want to bust out my Vertigo long box to check). The climax, in which Huston works in the Man-Thing catchphrase, is pretty well handled. The back half of the book is devoted to Garth, and it’s a neat little zombie love story, with nice, quirky McKeever art.




The New Avengers #29 (Marvel)

The good stuff:

—Leinil Yu’s art in almost every panel. He makes the two-teams-facing-each-other cover looks fresher than it has any right to (although Marvel then proceeds to cover the top half of it up with logos). The first page ninjas-filling-up-the-room sequence is as dramatic as it could possibly be considering the fact that this is the fourteenth issue of New Avengers dealing with ninjas. That spread on pages four and vie is totally awesome (I particularly dig Spider-Woman’s putting her dukes up). He also manages to make Iron Man’s blank mask quite expressive throughout, as if the eyeholes could shift slightly like real eyes. And, for the most part, I love his page layouts.

—Spider-Man calling Iron Man’s trap “dirty pool.”

—The fact that Danny Rand is presented as a sort of anti-Stark in the rich guy who funds the Avengers role.

—Doctor Strange kicking the Mighty Avengers’ asses all by himself.

—Iron Man’s “Oh shit” face, in the bottom panel of this page:




The bad stuff:

—While I love Bendis’ Spider-Man, it seems weird to read him between issues of Amazing Spider-Man, where Peter’s so pissed off he put on the black costume to go totally murder someone (Psst, Pete—whoever ordered the hit, remember it’s Tony who pushed you out yourself, and he’s right freaking there.

—Yu’s Spider-Woman on page two. Come on, seriously.

—The fact that Strange has a goatee instead of just a sweet moustache, and that he’s wearing a billowing blouse (Yeah, I know he usually wears it, but come on Yu, he looked so cool in The Oath, can’t we draw him more like that?

—Why is Brother Voodoo helping out Stark? Last I saw him, he was in Wakanda, and most of Black Panther’s friends and associates kinda sorta totally hate Stark at the moment, don’t they?

—Cage trying to cut a deal with Elektra. Dude, you just kicked her in the vagina. Now you’re gonna try and deal with the lady?




Teen Titans #45 (DC) I realize that Geoff Johns has a lot on his plate here, but man, this is not the way to leave a title. Talk about going out on a low note. He gets credit for co-plotting, so the bad dialogue is all on the head of incoming writer Adam Beechen, but still, this book is at least partially the work of Johns, so this is unfortunately how readers might remember his Teen Titans work. Okay, so this is chapter three of the four-part “Titans East” storyline, in which Slade Wilson, aka “Deathstroke, The Terminator” (Heh) has assembled his own version of the Titans and created his own version of the Titans tower, complete with stupid little statues of various Titans getting beat up, just to…I don’t know…win his kids back? Or something? Anyway, part one of the story was the “All Ambush and Capture” issue. Part two was the “All Torture and Villain Gloating” issue. Part three? The “All Escaping the Traps and Fighting Villains” issue. In other words, its boring and predictable, right up to the last panel, which is Geoff Johns’ most tired and oft-repeated cliffhanger device, in which an unexpected guest-star or group of guest-stars show up and say, “Hey, you, get your damn hands off her!” or whatever. The cover is by semi-regular interior artist Tony S. Daniel, and features the Wilsons all rolling around each other in their matching blue and orange chainmail outfits. The interior art is by Al Barrionuevo and Bit, and its chockfull of unnecessary, wasted splash pages, stiff poses and some overdone coloring. To go all fanboy on you, why the hell is Risk a bad guy now? I thought he was on the science juice like Batgirl, but no dice…he’s just a dickhead all of a sudden. Second, how did he land a flying kick on super-ninja Batgirl? And, third and finally, no way on earth does Nightwing refer to Deathstroke as “Terminator” like that. “Slade” or “Wilson,” yeah, but “Terminator?” Nightwing wouldn’t really honor the selection of such a lame-ass codename, would he? I’ll buy one more issue to finish the storyline (yeah, I’m that guy) and that’s it, I’m out.




She-Hulk #17 (Marvel) File this one under “Perfect.” One page making fun of Marvel Comics and the people who make fun of Marvel Comics, a “debriefed” joke, the two most promiscuous Marvels getting promiscuous with one another, Zzzax, The U-Foes, fifty Nick Fury androids on a rampage, Batroc getting punched in the face, Two-Gun Kid trimming Electro’s costume, inter-book continuity, and the inevitable bombshell getting dropped. Artists Rick Burchett and Cliff Rathburn straight-up rule, and even the Greg Horn cover is pretty well-composed and funny this month.