DC's March previews reviewed

ATOMIC KNIGHTS HC
Advance-solicited • On sale MAY 19 • 192 pg, FC $39.99 US
Written by JOHN BROOME
Art and cover by MURPHY ANDERSON
In a post-apocalyptic future, the Atomic Knights protect the surviving citizens against threats of all sorts in tales from STRANGE ADVENTURES #117, 120, 123, 126, 129, 132, 135, 136, 138, 141, 144, 147, 150, 153 156 and 160. Collected here for the first time!

I found this to be the most surprising thing listed in DC’s solicitations this time around. It looks like they’ll be giving Broome and Anderson’s Atomic Knights stories the same treatment that they’ve previously only given Jack Kirby works (and, I think, at least one Ditko book). I didn’t realize that Broome or Anderson or this particular property was beloved or popular or influential enough to earn a $40 collection, but I’m not doubting that it is—I’m just expressing my surprise.


BATMAN #697
On sale MARCH 17 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US
Written by TONY DANIEL
Art by TONY DANIEL & SANDU FLOREA
Cover by TONY DANIEL
Who wears the Black Mask? The true identity of Gotham City’s new crimelord is finally revealed and that identity will surprise everybody – especially Batman! And after the final showdown between Black Mask and The Dark Knight, will things ever be the same for Kittyhawk and the Reaper?

My guess is Orpheus, although I have no reason for guessing that.


BILLY BATSON AND THE MAGIC OF SHAZAM # 14
On sale MARCH 31 • 32 pg, FC, $2.50 US
Written by Art Baltazar & Franco • Art and cover by Mike Norton
Black Adam’s made a shocking new friend – and Freddy Freeman may be just what it takes to tip the scales and bring an end to Captain Marvel! It’s a history-making brawl in the Natural History Museum, with art by fantastic new series regular Mike Norton (BLUE BEETLE, GREEN ARROW/BLACK CANARY)!

I lost interest in this title shortly after they started having people who were neither Mike Kunkel nor Stephen DeStefano draw it, but this issue looks like it should be well worth checking out if only to see what “new series regular” artist Mike Norton does with the characters. Norton’s been working on DCU properties for a few years now, most recently the Blue Beetle back-ups in Booster Gold, and his style is thus quite a few degrees different than any of the artists who have been handling the all-ages Shazam stuff, from Jeff Smith to Kunkel to Byron Vaughns. The cover image doesn’t look like what I’d expect a Mike Norton-drawn Captain Marvel and company to look like, so I’m eager to see more (Actually, if you told me Ted Naifeh penciled or finished that image, I would believe you).

Oh hey, I just checked his website to see if he had some art up there yet, and it looks like he’s actually drawing February’s issue of Billy Batson as well. See, I told you I lost track of the series…


George Perez, ladies and gentleman. This looks like a new cover for the latest volume of Crisis on Multiple Earths JLA/JSA team-ups. I do hope the existence of these volumes doesn't preclude some of these later stories eventually getting collected in Showcase Presents. I would like nothing more than to see DC collect JLoA all the way up to at least Crisis on Infinite Earths (if not all the way up to the Morrison/Porter/Dell relaunch).


DONG XAOI, VIETNAM 1965 HC
Advance-solicited • On sale MAY 5 • 200 pg, FC, 24.99 US
Written by JOE KUBERT
Art and cover by JOE KUBERT
Joe Kubert, one of the most influential storytellers in comics history, tells the harrowing, true story of a detachment of Special Forces soldiers on a simple recon mission into the village of Dong Xoai, Vietnam, that turned suddenly deadly. DONG XOAI, VIETNAM 1965 has a unique perspective, since Kubert based the story on extensive information gathered from the surviving members of the unit. It covers not only the action of the event but the details of deployment and build-up that led to the deadly encounter for these young American G.I.s. For decades, Joe Kubert has shown readers the true face of war – all the suffering, horror, loss and heroism of our fighting forces. With DONG XAOI, he goes a step beyond to tell a gut-wrenching tale of sacrifice that will linger long after you are done reading.

I can not wait to see this book.


HUMAN TARGET #2
On sale MARCH 10 • 2 of 6 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US
Written by LEN WEIN & PETER JOHNSON
Art by BRUNO REDONDO, SERGIO SANDOVAL & SIMON COLEBY
Cover by JP Leon
Based on the anticipated series from Warner Bros. TV premiering on Fox this January! Christopher Chance, the Human Target, has undertaken a deadly mission to protect an informant against organized crime families while he collects evidence throughout Europe. Unfortunately, the mob’s next stop is at the Vatican. Can even Chance’s considerable skills get them inside the holiest and most heavily guarded of locales?

Okay, so this is a comic book series that’s going to be based on the upcoming TV show, which is itself based on a comic book series…?

I guess we’ll see how that works out. I wonder if this is going to be a “DC” branded book or a “WildStorm” one though, since it is based on a TV show, and “WildStorm” has been gradually becoming the umbrella under which DC publishes its media adaptation stuff (I think there are seriously like 545 different based-on-video game books in March’s WildStorm solicitations).


JONAH HEX: NO WAY BACK HC
Advance-solicited • On sale MAY 5 • 136 pg, FC, $19.99 US
Written by JUSTIN GRAY & JIMMY PALMIOTTI
Art and cover by TONY DEZUNIGA
Discover how Jonah Hex’s rough family life transformed him into the justice-thirsty vigilante he became. Legendary Hex artist Tony DeZuniga returns to illustrate a new, archetypal epic written by the acclaimed HEX team of Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray. This heartbreaking, brutal original graphic novel is set against the unforgiving landscape of the Wild West and delves into Hex’s painful past, revealing for the first time how his difficult upbringing made him that era’s most feared bounty hunter. Along the way, Hex must come to terms with the death of a loved one, long thought lost, battle El Papagayo and his gang of bandits, and attempt to make peace with his own past.

After the DC’s announcement of their “Earth One” initiative of ongoing original graphic novels, there was a lot of talk about the publisher’s strategy regarding the serialized comic format versus original graphic novel format.

I suppose it’s worth pointing to this then. It’s the equivalent of a six-issue comic book series, and it’s being written by the exact same writing team that pumps out a (rather dismally selling) monthly Jonah Hex title already. Yet instead of serializing this particular story over six issues and then publishing a trade, they’re going straight to trade with this.

I know there’s been some talk recently about whether such a strategy makes any sense or not, but clearly DC thinks it does.


JUSTICE LEAGUE: THE RISE OF ARSENAL #1
On sale MARCH 24 • 1 of 4 • 40 pg, FC, $3.99 US
Written by J.T. KRUL
Art by GERALDO BORGES & MARLO ALQUIZA
Cover by GREG HORN
1:25 variant cover by MIKE MAYHEW
In JUSTICE LEAGUE: CRY FOR JUSTICE, Roy Harper lost everything at the hands of Prometheus, barely surviving the brutal severing of his arm. But when he finally awakens from his coma, Roy will find that his dangerous journey into despair is just beginning.

Just three years after abandoning the perfectly fine codename “Arsenal” and taking the (lame) name “Red Arrow,” Roy Harper is going to switch back to his previous? Huh. Way to long-term plan, guys!

Like the March 2010 issue of Green Arrow, I find myself kind of torn on this. I really, really, really like the character of Roy Harper for no real rational reason, but think that (probably temporarily) ripping off his arm for no real reason isn't really a story I feel like subjecting myself too (it's going to have to be more angsty than fun, right? I mean, it promises a “journey into despair” that is “just beginning” in the solicitation), and I don't know anything about any of the creators involved...other than the fact that Krul has been one of the poor folks playing musical chairs with the Titans franchise.

Also, I haven't been reading Cry or any Titans business, but what's this "lost everything?" Did they actually kill Lian off? They didn't kill off Lian did they?

Also also, for a lame joke about Roy Harper's arm loss, please see Blog@Newsarama.


JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #43
On sale MARCH 31 • 40 pg, FC, $3.99 US
Written by JAMES ROBINSON
Art by MARK BAGLEY & ROB HUNTER
1:25 Variant cover by MIKE MAYHEW
Following the decision that occurred in JUSTICE LEAGUE: CRY FOR JUSTICE and the events of JUSTICE LEAGUE: THE RISE AND FALL SPECIAL #1, the World’s Greatest Heroes must come to terms with who they are and what they represent. Meanwhile, an all-new danger threatens the existence of everything past and present in the exciting finale of “Team History.”

Just wanted to note that it appears JLoA is going to be sticking with the over-sized, $4 format. I would have bee super-excited about that if it happened during Grant Morrison's or Joe Kelly's or Mark Waid's run on JLA, now it just sort of fills me with dread. Current writer James Robinson simply used the extra space in the last few issues to pack in more unpleasant dialogue.

I sure hope he finds his A-game again soon, wherever he left it...


MAGOG #7
On sale MARCH 10 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US
Written by KEITH GIFFEN
Art and cover by HOWARD PORTER & JOHN DELL
Magog’s goddess mate goes undercover – in his friend Lauren’s body! Top that with a new threat rearing its head toward Earth. It’s too bad Magog’s not a member of the JSA anymore – he could sure use the help! Guest-starring Zatanna.

Still not canceled! I haven’t mentioned it for a while, so I guess I’ll take the opportunity to do so again now—I really like Howard Porter’s superhero art. There’s a weird, awkward, lurching energy about his poses that I find tremendously exciting, and I don’t think it’s purely residual excitement left over from the JLA days.


MILESTONE FOREVER #2
Prestige format • On sale MARCH 3 • 2 of 2 • 48 pg, FC, $5.99 US
Written by DWAYNE MCDUFFIE
Art by JOHN PAUL LEON, DENYS COWAN, PRENTIS ROLLINS, CHRISCROSS, & ROB STULL
Cover by STANLEY “ARTGERM” LAU
You’ve read Dwayne McDuffie’s JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA arc, “When Worlds Collide”! Now find out what pushed Dharma into madness and how Dakota came to the DCU. Witness the triumphant return of some of Milestone’s original creative teams as they give you a story that no one else could!

I just read that JLoA story arc, “When Worlds Collide,” this past week, and it was revealed that the Milestone Universe was fused with the DC Universe (retroactively altering the history of both so that it was like they were always connected, similar to the way in which the DCU absorbed, say the characters of Quality, Charlton or Fawcett).

But if DC’s not putting and Milestoners on the Justice League, if Static’s inclusion on the Teen Titans is up in the air, and there are no new books featuring any Milestone characters (Wouldn’t an Icon book with a Static “co-feature” make at least as much sense as a Web/Hangman ongoing?), what was the point of the whole endeavor?

Is the Milestone Universe going to remain fused to the DCU, or is this Milestone Forever event really about undoing that? Because it seems odd that Icon and Hardware and company are MIA from the big, post “When Worlds Collide” events, doesn’t it? Shouldn’t they have had something to do with Final Crisis? Why haven’t any of ‘em showed up in Coast City to help the rest of the heroes of the DCU fight off the invasion of Black Lanterns yet?


I'm almost disappointed in myself for how much I like the new trade dress for The Sandman. I mean, I already have all these in trade—the second half of the series in singles and trade. I definitely do not need to re-buy them all just because the new covers look kinda cool. And yet, there's a little voice in the back of my head saying "You need that." I suppose I'm lucky I'm too poor to listen to that voice, as if I were rich I'd just make myself poor again by re-buying and re-re-buying comics I already own.

Anyway, neat cover Vertigo.


SECRET SIX #19
On sale MARCH 10 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US
Written by GAIL SIMONE
Art by JIM CALAFIORE
Cover by DANIEL LUVISI
Catman’s past crawls back to haunt him as Cheshire returns! Could the secret she’s carrying spell the end of the Secret Six?

Another issue with art by Jim Calafiore? DC, I hope you realize Calafiore art is enough to get me to drop this book, and right now it’s one of the…let me check…four remaining DC monthlies on my pull-list. Wherever did Nicola Scott go?


THE SHIELD #7
On sale MARCH 17 • 40 pg, FC, $3.99 US
Written by ERIC TRAUTMANN
Co-feature written by BRANDON JERWA
Art by MARCO RUDY & MICK GRAY
Co-feature art by MICHAEL AVON OEMING
cover by SAMI BASRI
Fan-favorite artist Michael Avon Oeming (Powers) joins Brandon Jerwa in debuting the latest Red Circle hero – The Fox! Filmmaker Paul Patten Jr. heads from Seattle to the underbelly of Tokyo gangster life, caught up in a mission to discover the truth behind his late father’s adventures, but becomes the modern embodiment of the Kitsune totem known as the Fox!
Meanwhile, a new mission kicks off for the Shield – Operation Gunslinger! Hot on the trail of the mysterious H.I.V.E. splinter group Black Seven the Shield must lead a group of special operatives, one of whom strongly has his faith strongly shaken in his commanding officer. Will the Shield uphold his loyalty oath? Or is he about to go AWOL?

Wow, not only has DC yet to cancel the “Red Circle” books, but they’re even adding new characters and new creators into the mix! I’m sort of interested in seeing the Michael Avon Oeming co-feature, but not enough to actually buy the whole comic just to see it…


SHOWCASE PRESENTS: DIAL H FOR HERO TP
Advance-solicited • On sale APRIL 21 • 288 pg, B&W, $9.99 US
Written by DAVE WOOD
Art by JIM MOONEY & others
Cover by JIM MOONEY
The quirky series from HOUSE OF MYSTERY #156-173 is collected for the first time in this title introducing teenaged Robby Reed, whose discovery of the H-E-R-O dial leads to costumed adventure!

This is the single most exciting superhero offering from DC I see in this month’s solicitations. What does that fact mean?

a) I am an old man

b) DC’s not offering very many exciting-looking superhero comics in March of 2010

c) The old Dial H For Hero comics are totally awesome

d) All of the above


SUPERMAN/BATMAN #70
On sale MARCH 24 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US
Written by JOE CASEY
Art and cover by ARDIAN SYAF & VICENTE CIFUENTES
As Batman springs his trap for the shape-shifting Durlan terrorist stranded on Earth, Superman and NRG-X battle out Round Two in the Fortress of Solitude!

NRG-X...?


TITANS #23
On sale MARCH 17 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US
Written by EDDIE BERGANZA
Art and cover by ANGEL UNZUETA
Spotlight on Red Arrow! As Roy Harper lies in critical condition after the events of JUSTICE LEAGUE: CRY FOR JUSTICE #5, his fever dreams show him the perfect future life he wants for the Titans. Unfortunately for him, it’s a life the Titans will never see.

From the writer of the nigh-unreadable Teen Titans strip in Wednesday Comics!


WONDER WOMAN #42
On sale MARCH 31 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US
Written by GAIL SIMONE
Art and cover by NICOLA SCOTT & DOUG HAZLEWOOD
Gail Simone and fan-favorite artist Nicola Scott reunite for this explosive tale featuring the stunning return of a star-spanning threat from Diana’s past! Can even Wonder Woman stop Earth from this world-destroying madwoman? Guest-starring the Green Lantern Corps! Don’t miss “The Wrath of The Silver Serpent”!

Oh hey, here’s where Nicola Scott has gone to, and she’s taken her Secret Six collaborator Doug Hazlewood with her.

Well, that sucks for me, as I enjoy spending time with Simone’s Catman and Ragdoll, but find her Wonder Woman unbearable to be around.

It’s great for Scott though. I don’t think Wonder Woman sells all that much better than Secret Six (Only about 3,000 units better, according to the latest analysis), but it will certainly make it easier for Scott to explain what comic she draws when someone at a party hears she’s a comics artist and starts asking about her work.

Only 11 more days left in 2009, and I still haven't read Asterios Polyp

Damn it, it's the second half of December already, huh? This is the time of year when people who write things feel compelled to write about those things in terms of the calendar year, and make lists of which of those things were better than the rest of those things.

For me, that means comics, and this is usually a semi-annoying time of year for me, when I feel I better set aside my Showcase Presents and Essential collection long enough to get to Asterios Polyp and The Book of Genesis Illustrated and Go Go Monster and Driven By Lemons and all those comics I've either heard a lot about all year but haven't got around to reading yet, or just look super-awesome (I don't know if Go Go Monster will end up being in my top ten or anything, but wow, is that a gorgeously designed book. It's a book I kind of just want to have around the house to look at every once in a while).

Anyway, my superiors at Newsarama.com came up with a kind of fun way to address the end of the year of comics. They've set up five different tournaments, which pits creators, covers and books against each other, college basketball style. Readers/posters can vote for their favorites in each round, until Newsarama declares a favorite.

The categories are writer, artist, cover, limited series/original graphic novel and ongoing series. Here's a link to the ongoing post; there are links to all the others there as well, and even if you don't want to play along, it's probably worth scanning the results and comments for the snapshot of mainstream super-comics fandom in 2009 it offers.

Regarding the criteria, this is explained at the site, but the way Newsarama went about picking the 16 contenders in each category was by having 11 of the site and Blog@'s contributors select their 20 favorite in each category. Then, math was done. Like, the top selection each person suggested was worth 20 points, the twentieth worth one point, and like that. I'm sure a calculator was involved. (An abacus, at the very least).

I was one of those 11, so I thought I'd share mine here, if only because I went to the trouble of making up the lists, and I generally post every stray thought I have about comics on here. I should note that these are "favorite," not "best," which is a pretty different thing (She's All That and Empire Records are among my favorite movies, for example, but I'd have a pretty hard time arguing that they're among two of the best films ever made). And I didn't agonize over them too much—like, I put Roger Langridge above Jeff Parker, but I'm not 100% positive that I liked Langridge's Muppet Show comic 5% more than Parker's books this year. I may have just thought of Langridge first, and figured a 5% margin of error in my affection for a particular comic book writer was close enough.

I should also note I didn't include an ongoing, because I realized while trying to put these together that I don't actually read 20 ongoing series. (It's not me, it's comics' fault for not being more awesome).

And, obviously this applies to stuff published during calendar year 2009...for limited series, if started in '08 but finished in '09, it counted. And if it was republished material, I also counted it (Nancy and King City, for example).

So, lists!



CALEB'S FAVORITE WRITERS

1.) Grant Morrison (Batman, Batman and Robin, Seaguy: The Slaves of Mickey Eye, Final Crisis)

2.) Chris Onstad (Achewood)

3.) Adam Warren (Empowered)

4.) Fred Van Lente (Incredible Hercules, Comic Book Comics)

5.) Roger Langridge (The Muppet Show)

6.) Jeff Parker (Agents of Atlas, Underground, Age of The Sentry)

7.) Fred Chao (Johnny Hiro Vol. 1)

8.) Naoki Urasawa (Pluto)

9.) Kyle Baker (Special Forces, “Hawkman” from Wednesday Comics)

10.) James Kochalka (American Elf, Johny Boo Vol. 3)

11.) Lamar Abrams (Remake)

12.) Paul Tobin (Marvel Adventures Avengers, Marvel Adventures Spider-Man, Age of The Sentry, etc.)

13.) Art Baltazar (Tiny Titans)

14.) Larry Marder (Beanworld)

15.) Hitoshi Shioya (Dinosaur Hour)

16.) Brian Azzarello ("Batman" from Wednesday Comics)

17.) C. Tyler (You'll Never Know: A Good and Decent Man)

18.) Kim Dong Hwa (The Color of Earth, ...Water, ...Heaven)

19.) Kevin Cannon (Far Arden)

20.) Neil Gaiman ("Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?" from Batman and Detective Comics)



CALEB'S FAVORITE ARTISTS


1.) J. H. Williams III (Detective Comics)

2.) Paul Pope (“Strange Adventures" from Wednesday Comics)

3.) Darwyn Cooke (Jonah Hex #50, Richard Stark's Parker: The Hunter)

4.) Marcos Martin (Amazing Spider-Man)

5.) Mike Allred (“Metamorpho” from Wednesday Comics)

6.) Frank Quitely (Batman and Robin)

7.) Kelley Jones (Batman: Gotham After Midnight, Batman: Unseen)

8.) Adam Warren (Empowered)

9.) Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez (“Metal Men” from Wednesday Comics, Batman Confidential #26-#28)

10.) Guillem March (Gotham City Sirens, etc.)

11.) Sara Pichelli (Runaways)

12.) Art Baltazar (Tiny Titans)

13.) J. Bone (Super Friends #18)

14.) Brandon Graham (King City)

15.) Hellen Jo (Jin & Jam #1)

16.) Kevin Maguire ("Metal Men" from Doom Patrol)

17.) Stan Sakai (Usagi Yojimbo)

18.) Jeff Smith (Rasl, Little Mouse Gets Ready)

19.) Dave Sim (Glamourpuss)

20.) George Perez (Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds)



CALEB'S FAVORITE COVERS


1.) Amazing Spider-Man #590 (Wolverine Art Appreciation Variant)

2.) Super Friends #12

3.) Scott Pilgrim Vol. 5: Vs. The Universe (For the shininess as much as the image/design)

4.) Prison Pit Book 1

5.) Comic Book Comics #4

6.) Strange Tales #1

7.) Amazing Spider-Man #592 (Wolverine Art Appreciation variant)

8.) Exiles #1 (Wolverine Art Appreciation variant)

9.) Supermen!: The First Wave of Comic Book Heroes

10.) John Stanley Library: Nancy Vol. 1

11.) Super Friends #11

12.) Thor #601 (The ipod one)

13.) Invincible Iron Man #21

14.) Marvel Adventures Spider-Man #54 (Skottie Young's been knocking these all out of the park, actually)

15.) Batman and Robin #1 (The Quitely version, obviously—his covers for this series have all been pretty striking, with a great use of color)

16.) Last Days of Animal Man #1

17.) Skrull Kill Krew #5

18.) King City #2

19.) All Hail Megatron #1 (the one with the jets, that is)

20.) Underground #3



CALEB'S FAVORITE LIMITED SERIES and/or ORIGINAL GRAPHIC NOVELS


1.) Final Crisis: Superman Beyond

2.) Wednesday Comics

3.) Jin and Jam #1

4.) Adventures in Cartooning

5.) Remake

6.) Far Arden

7.) Age of The Sentry

8.) The Bun Field

9.) Batman: Unseen

10.) Richard Stark's Parker: The Hunter

11.) Red Snow

12.) Marvel’s 70th Anniversary Special one-shots

13.) Trinity

14.) Black Cat Crossing

15.) A Drifting Life

16.) Johnny Hiro

17.) Sulk

18.) Strange Tales

19.) 365 Samurai and a Few Bowls of Rice

20.) The Red Monkey Double Happiness Book

Having just finished reading

Showcase Presents: Warlord Vol. 1, which collects the first 28-issues of the 133-issue, 1976-1988 sword, sorcery and sci-fi hollow earth fantasy series launched by writer/artist Mike Grell, I would like to make a request of whoever it is at DC who decides what gets collected into Showcase Presents volumes.

(Ahem)

More, please.

THE JUSTICE LEAGUE

...are pretty much going to fuck Hardware.

...

....Wait, what?

Man, sometimes I really don't get superhero comics...

Roy Harper's secret superpower is...

...his ability to put on his costume really, really quickly. He got his shirt, arm stockings and gloves on all in the space of a second! No wonder he used to go by the codename Speedy. (Well, he either put his costume on really fast between that second and third panel, or else he spent a really long time thinking of a retort to Hawkgirl's unfinished statement in the second panel).



(Panel from Justice League of America #27, written by Dwayne McDuffie, pencilled by Ed Benes and inked by any one of four different inkers)

Because (one of) you demanded (well, kinda sorta asked for) it!

In Wednesday night's review post, I mentioned Spider-Man's winter gear in Amazing Spider-Man #615, and commenter "Kid Kyoto" commented that he or she (or possibly it?) wanted a scan of Spidey's winter wear.

I am happy to oblige. Here's one:

That image is drawn by Javier Pulido and colored by Javier Rodriguez; Fred Van Lente wrote the issue, so maybe he gets credit too, depending on what the script said about dressing Spidey.

I can't say enough good things about Pulido's work on this issue—if the book looked like this each week, and were written at least this well, I wouldn't dare miss one.

Anyway, I've been contemplating Spider-Man's winter gear for a few days now, and at first I wasn't sure why he didn't wear gloves or boots, but now I think maybe it would have interfered with his sticky powers somehow...? Like, he's already sticking through his costume, maybe sticking through the booties of his costume and a pair of winter boots would be impossible.

Whatever the reason, that is an awesome costume update, and an awesome drawing of it.

The scarf performs other functions aside from keeping our hero toasty and making him look a little more visually interesting than usual (not that there's anything wrong with his regular costume, it's just kind of neat to see him wearing something different, you know?) For example, the scarf really draws attention to his hanging upside-down, when he's standing on the ceiling:


It also jazzes up action scenes a bit, giving the usually sleek Spidey something hang-y to whip around when he's fighting:


Yes, this is a great look for Spider-Man, and Pulido draws one great-looking Spider-Man. I could basically scan any panel of the book and just say, "Look! Look at how cool that is! Check out the way that panel is organized, let your eyes drink deep of that line work!"

I'll just do two more, which I think do a great job of depicting the freedom and fun of Spider-Man's powers, as he flings himself through the sky, and then gets all creep-crawly around a window:


So that's what Javier Pulido's Spider-Man looks like. Please give him a 500% raise and have him draw every single issue of Amazing Spider-Man that Marcos Martin or John Romita Jr. don't, Mr. Stephen Wacker, sir.

Being Free Doesn't Make Them Any Better Pt. 4: Justice League of America: When Worlds Collide

Justice League of America: When Worlds Collide is the final collection of writer Dwayne McDuffie’s short, ill-fated run on the Justice League title, and it probably represents his best work.

It would be something of a stretch to call it “good,” but, taken in an isolated chunk like this instead of doled out chapter-by-chapter, a month between each, the book’s strange, fluid relationship with the DC Universe it was supposedly set in is no longer such an obstacle.

There is a noticeably dramatic derailing of the overall story that the collection represents, however, when halfway through the book McDuffie stops telling the story he was telling in the previous chapter to spend 22 pages shedding half of his cast, before picking up with the story right where it left off before the bizarre interruption.

It’s easy to see how that could have ruined the book as a monthly, but as a collection it’s just this really weird passage and, oddly enough, once it’s ended and McDuffie has lost access to most of the characters he began his run with—hell, most of the characters this story arc began with—the book actually improves immensely.

Fans certainly complained when all the “big guns” left the line-up, and the Justice League roster dwindled to just Vixen, Green Lantern John Stewart, Dr. Light II, Firestorm II and Zatanna, but that’s a more manageable group of characters, and McDuffie’s writing suddenly felt more focused and comfortable. In the previous story arcs, in the beginning of this story arc, he simply seemed to have too many superheroes on the page at any given time, and thus had a hard time writing them convincingly.

But by the end of this volume, McDuffie was seemingly doing his best JLoA scripting to date—and then he got yanked off the title (If I’m recalling correctly, there was even some confusion over whether or not he scripted this final issues, as DC’s solicitations for JLoA were often off; according to the credits here, he did).

This volume takes its title from a mid-nineties crossover between the Milestone Universe and the Superman franchise, which is apropos, given that the subject here is a crossover between the Milestone Universe characters and the Justice League.

As one of the progenitors of the Milestone Universe and the then-current writer of JLoA, McDuffie was obviously the man for the job, although I’m sure JLoA readers at the time, already sick of the title becoming a place where other books had their storylines pushed, may not have welcomed the crossover all that enthusiastically. It’s also odd that the premise involved the merging of the two universes, the DCU and the Milestone Universe, under very particular circumstances—this was published just a few years after the multiverse rejiggering of Infnite Crisis/52, and concurrently with the mutliverse re-rejiggering of Final Crisis…seems like a more organized DC Universe might have simply included the merging of the Milestone Earth with the DC’s “New Earth” in one of those cosmology reboots.

Sloppy editing and poor-to-decent writing may be chronic problems for JLoA, but it’s still the art that remains the book’s biggest problem. This collection includes seven issues (JLoA #27-#34, excepting #29, a “Faces of Evil” fill-in by Len Wein and CrissCross which at least looks relevant), and yet there are six (6) different pencillers and twelve (12) different inkers. For seven issues. Published over the course of eight months.

It looks about what you’d expect it to look like. The book’s “regular” pencil artist Ed Benes seems slightly improved here over his work in the previous volume (and doesn’t seem to be actively working against McDuffie the way he did during their first arc together), but that could simply be the influence of one or more of his inkers—he clicks better with some than he does with others, I suppose. (This probably isn’t on Benes, but it would have been nice if they redesigned the Milestone costumes to make some of them look less mid-nineties. There are some terrible, terrible looks among the Milestone set, and they seem out of place both in the year 2009 and the DC Universe in general).

The pencil artists are all of varying skill levels and styles, but Rags Morales contributes almost two entire issues to the collection, which coincides with the improvement of the writing. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the characters start to have facial expressions when Morales is drawing them…?

Having finally tied up the loose ends that previous writer Brad Meltzer left for him to deal with, McDuffie is able to move on to something new-ish here, although new is sort of relative. The story is a fairly standard superhero team-up one, what with the misunderstanding and the fighting.

Dr. Light II comes home from a hard day’s work at S.T.A.R. Labs to find the superhero team The Shadow Cabinet waiting for her. This Milestone team consists of Icon, Hardware and a half-dozen superheroes with terrible names and costumes, none of whom I had ever heard of before (DC should give this Twilight guy his own book, though…I bet the accidental sales that title alone would generate would make it worthwhile).

They are on a secret mission that involves breaking in to the Justice League satellite and stealing the mortal remains of Dr. Light I. The mission is so secret, they can’t tell the League about, and so fighting ensues. (And, oddly, it lasts a few pages, despite the fact that either The Flash or Green Lantern could have taken out everyone who isn’t Icon in about a second or two). Hawkman and Shadow Thief get involved.

Then, suddenly, Justice League #31! Black Canary calls Hal Jordan and her husband Green Arrow into a meeting, punches her husband and calls them both faggots (I’m paraphrasing) for some reason (In the original issue, there was a little yellow box saying that this issue was set after Justice League: Cry For Justice, a miniseries that hadn’t even begun when this was published as a monthly. Here, nothing). Then Hal mentions that the Martian Manhunter and Batman are dead, which is kinda weird, since I just saw Batman 12 pages ago and he looked fine.

Between the chapters of this collection, apparently all of Final Crisis and at least the first two issues of Justice League: Cry For Justice happened. Oh, and the start of World of New Krypton too. I could kind of make sense of this while reading, because I blog about this crap every day, but it’s gotta read weird to someone picking it up cold.

Anyway, this issue consists of 22-pages of people quitting left and right—including Oliver Queen, who wasn’t even on the team! The excuses for most of them are vague and nonsensical, amounting to “I can’t be on the League anymore, because of the events of my own book and/or an upcoming crossover series.”

McDuffie handles most of it pretty well—beyond the weird bit of spousal abuse and calling Hal and Ollie gay—although there’s not even room for some of them to be explained away. Black Lightning, a character who just joined the Justice League within the past few years (just three story arcs ago, at the pace the title moves) after hanging around the DCU being one of its most eligible black superheroes for about 30 years, gets a three-sentence send-off—he left the League to lead the Outsiders, because “it was one of Batman’s last requests.”

That interruption over, the cast has been whittled down to a more manageable five characters, and McDuffie picks up where he left off with the Shadow Thief and Milestone characters. These last few chapters are I think the zenith of his run, featuring solid art by Rags Morales for the first two-ish and a Benes-free final issue by Adrian Syaf, Eddy Barrows and five different inkers (Jesus), nicely written, individual characters with dynamic relationships to one another, and a serious, League-level threat that, for the first time in the book’s 34-issue run, actually seems like something the Justice League might need to spend it’s time on.

It was kind of weird reading these final few issues in December of 2009 though, after McDuffie has left the book, and he’s made so many details about how frustrating his experience on the book actually was (editors snatching away characters mid-story and scenes being re-written after the art was finished are clear on the printed page, so one can only imagine how much worse it must have been behind the scenes).

I still don’t understand why continuity between this book and the rest of the DCU was enforced so rigidly. It’s generally assumed that the books aren’t occurring in real time, and DC’s usual policy is to just have readers and writers slot the stories together once they’re finished—if continuity is being enforced at all (For example, there have been at least two completely different Jokers in Grant Morrison’s Batman writing and Paul Dini’s). It’s especially problematic here, because Final Crisis’s rejiggering of the mutliverse renders the conflict that it bisected here irrelevant. Whatever the state of the DCU and Milestone Universe at the beginning of the arc, Final Crisis would have completely changed it when it occurred, despite the fact that the second half of the arc proceeds as if Final Crisis didn’t re-re-recreate the multiverse. (Did I lose you? I lost myself in there somewhere…)

Anyway, by the end of the volume, the Justice League is John Stewart, Dr. Light,Vixen, Zatanna and Firestorm…although they’re hanging out with Hardware and Icon…and a Bruce Wayne from a different dimension where he went to see a cowboy movie instead of a Zorro movie the night his parents were killed and ended up a gun-toting vigilante named Paladin. All three are in the position heroes usually find themselves in when someone on the team says, “Hey, we worked pretty well together, would you consider joining the team?”

Having a Justice League led by Icon, who is basically Superman only black, might have lead to some interesting, exciting stories. Instead, McDuffie was off the book, Len Wein and another small army of pencillers and inkers came in to fill the pages for three months, and James Robinson and Mark Bagley finally came in to fill the void.

They’ve done three issues so far—each full of little more than the few remaining Leaguers getting the holy hell beat out of them and/or threatened with sexual violence.

So far at least, the quality of the book seems to have turned around—it was practically unreadable due to poor writing and bad art, now it’s practically unreadable due solely to repulsive content.

Meanwhile, in Las Vegas...

Can't get enough of me? I have a short review of Image Comic's original graphic novel One Model Nation in Las Vegas Weekly this week. You can read it here. The review that is, not the graphic novel. You'll have to buy that at a comics shop, or borrow it from your local library. (And I think you should, as it's pretty great).

Weekly Haul: December 16th

Amazing Spider-Man #615 (Marvel Comics) I’m not a regular reader of ASM, but this particular issue is written by Fred Van Lente, drawn by the great Javier Pulido and didn’t look like it would be too hard a place to jump back into the Spider-Man soap opera.

I’m glad I did; it was a lot of fun.

This is apparently part of “The Gauntlet,” an effort by the Spider-office to re-introduce Spidey’s classic rogues gallery after having taken a while off to introduce new characters.

In this issue, it’s The Sandman, and Van Lente offers a pretty interesting take, easing the reader into a well-executed revelation at the end of the first scene. After some updates on the ongoing plot-lines I’m unfamiliar with, Spidey goes looking for The Sandman, they fight, and there’s a cliffhanger ending that implies are hero might finally be down for the count.

In other words, classic superhero comics—but done quite well. Pulido’s work is just this side of stunning; every panel is a treat. To put it as succinctly as possible, it’s exactly what Marvel comics should look like.

Oh, and Van Lente and Pulido give Spidey a scarf, knit-cap, ear muffs and leg warmers to wear over his costume. He can’t afford the fancy heated costumes that Batman and his crew run around in during the winter months, apparently.


Justice League of America #40 (DC Comics) It’s the second half of writer James Robinson and pencil artist Mark Bagley’s first story arc on the title, and over-sized Blackest Night tie-in entitled “Reunion.”

It’s also a special, all women-in-peril issue. With the male heroes Plastic Man and Red Tornado take out of commission last issue, Robinson’s free to write 28-pages of zombie male superheroes trash-talking and trying to tear the costumes off our female heroines. It’s Vibe vs. Vixen! Steel vs. Gypsy! Zatara vs. Zatanna! And Dr Light I vs. Dr. Light II!

Unsurprisingly, it’s that last match-up that is the skeeviest, as the undead zombie rapist supervillain Dr. Light spends most of the comic attempting to rape the heroine Dr. Light, managing to get her about half-way out of her costume. It’s not until he threatens her children (“Don’t worry about your kids though…After I’m done with you, I’ll come up with some fun games to entertain them”) that she’s able to dig down and find the strength to use her light powers to their full extent, vanquishing all of the League’s foes. A side-effect of her burst of light-power is, of course, that she burns the rest of her costume off entirely.

So yeah, this is one of those “Jesus God, who is this supposed to be for, exactly?!” sorts of DC comics, the sort where the zombie rapist supervillain will talk for pages about how his victim is really asking for it, but prints “&@%$” in place of the word “bitch” over and over because, well, this is an all-ages comic, right?

The best I can say about this comic book is that Mark Bagley and Rob Hunter do a pretty great job on art, marking the first time I can remember since this particular volume of JLoA’s inception that two consecutive issues of it were pleasing to the eye.


Silver Streak Comics #24 (Image Comics) Twenty-two months after the first issue, Erik Larsen and company return for the next issue of "the Next Issue Project," in which modern creators pick up the half-forgotten characters from a defunct Golden Age title and put together an anthology posing as the next issue of said title.

Image shaved the page count and the price off their Fantastic Comis issue, but the size and shape remain Golden-Age proportioned, and the interior design remains the same.

This ish is obviously a quicker read, and feels a bit less exciting, lacking the number of characters and creators as the previous issue (as well as the aura of curiosity that surrounds any such brand-new endeavor). But it’s still interesting creators doing stories with interesting characters who, for one reason or another, never achieved Captain America, Namor, Dr. Fate or Hawkman level fame.

It kicks off with a Daredevil story by Erik Larsen which has all the gravity, weight and importance of a marshmallow, but I still really dug because a) I love Daredevil (as you may have noticed) and b) I love Erik Larsen’s artwork, especially when it’s as loose as it is here (And I’ve unfortunately never really been able to get into his Savage Dragon, despite a handful of tries over the years).

Next us is a Silver Streak story by Paul Grist, in which the scarlet and yellow clad speedster without a bit of silver anywhere on him helps save one of his favorite cowboy program’s stars…live on television! (Damn, Grist does good superhero work).

Rounding out the book is a funny (but depressing-funny) one-page strip by Joe Keatinge featuring Kelly The Cop, Michael T. Gilbert’s reinvention of the greatest Golden Age villain Claw as an anachronistic monster trying to make it through the day in a 21st century he doesn’t really belong in (Props for the word “acidtini”) and a Captain Battle story by Steve Horton and Alan Weiss which features nice art but is otherwise so straightforward I went back and reread it immediately to see if I was missing something.

If you’ve got $4 to burn and a love of these crazy old characters, it’s well worth a read, but it’s hardly mandatory reading for those that don’t already have vast reserves of good will for the likes of Silver Streak and The Claw.


Superman/Batman #67 (DC) Despite liking the idea of Bizarro and Man-Bat filling in as a monster version of the World’s Finest team, I wasn’t that impressed with the previous issue of this two-part Blackest Night tie-in, and was planning on skipping its conclusion.

But then my shop was shorted the two books I was looking forward to this week, and then I made the mistake of flipping through this issue, where I noted the little curly tips artist Scott Kolins draws on Bizzaro’s S-shield and a panel of Solomon Grundy ripping out Morrison and Mahnke’s Frankenstein’s heart and, well, I’m not made of stone!

Like the first issue, this is a pretty quick and inconsequential issue (Like JLoA, this is probably a “black skies” tie-in to Blackest Night), but it sure does have a lot of DC’s fun, monster characters experiencing conflict. The Man-Bat portions are odd in that they seem to have little to do with the rest of the events—they’re more a means to qualifying this story to be included in this particular title—but I enjoyed Kolins’ homage to Alan Moore’s “Burn.” panel, and the climax of Bizarro and Grundy’s fight.

I’m not sure what’s taking Hal Jordan and Barry Allen so long finishing off these Black Lanterns; Bizarro knows how to get the job done in the space of a few panels.


Thunderbolts #139 (Marvel) Oh dear.

So, um, this is EDILW-favorite writer Jeff Parker’s second issue of Thunderbolts, in which a rag tag band of supervillains I’ve mostly never heard of serve as Norman Osborn’s minor league, black ops Dark Avengers team. Following up on the first story arc from Parker’s canceled Agents of Atlas series, Osborn decides to sic ‘em on the Agents, so The Grizzly (in a lamer, more “realistic” costume than the bad-ass furry suit he used to wear), and in this issue the two teams fight.

It’s…God, it’s hard to look at. The artist is Miguel Sepulveda, and, to put it mildly, I do not care for his work one bit. Computers…computers must have had something to do with it. Everyone looks like Greg Land renditions, and there are several scenes where the figures are standing in front of and, in one panel, on what look like grainy photos of trees taken through some sort of night-vision filters. The textures are all strange, particular Venus’ hair and cloak.

I don’t even like thinking about this art long enough to type this much about it. I suppose someone somewhere likes this stuff—God knows Marvel publishes a lot of art in this style—but I am not that someone.

Reading this after reading this week’s ASM, it’s hard to believe the same publisher is even responsible for both books. Parker’s one of my favorite writers, and I once thought I’d follow him into hell, but now that I’ve seen what hell looks like, I don’t think I can follow him any further into it after all.

Let me know if the Agents survive or not, guys.

Of course She-Hulk is stronger than Iron Man. But there's no way she woulda beat The Hulk.

So hey, kinda big, exciting news for fans of superhero comics today—Marvel will be publishing a three-issue anthology series "in the spirit of Strange Tales" created by female writers, artists, colorists, letterers and editors. The somewhat unfortunate title will be Girl Comics and it will feature work by Kathryn Immonen, Marjorie Liu, Devin Grayson, Ann Nocenti, Trina Robbins, G. Willow Wilson, Amanda Conner, Jill Thompson, Louise Simonson, Colleen Coover, Molly Crabapple, Ming Doyle, Abby Denson, Carla Speed McNeil and others.

Marvel gave the exclusive announcement to Heidi MacDonald, a known woman, so you should go read her interview with editor Jeanine Schaefer at The Beat...and stick around for the lively comments section, which should feature some familiar names chiming in.

Okay, are you back yet? Great, welcome back! I had some thoughts while you were gone.

—Yes, the title is lousy. While it shouldn't be too hard to think of a better one (Stan Lee's Sister? Marvel For Her? Cooties Comics?), they could have picked a much worse one (Note, for example, the lack of the words "vagina" or "dames" or "diva" or "girl power" or "girl superpower" in the title, or a play on the word "monthly"). In The Beat comments section, knower-of-things Douglas Wolk points out that Girl Comics is actually the name of an old Marvel/Atlas comic series.

So maybe this project isn't really about promoting women in comics after all...maybe it's just an exercise in copyright or trademark renewal, like when Marvel occasionally publishes something random with one of their cowboy or monster characters?


—A lot of the comments I've seen today have predictably talked about reverse sexism, the ghettoization of female creators, that the book's existence is a somewhat sad fact in that it highlights the need for books like this just to get a bunch of women working on Marvel Comics, or that it would be better news if some of these creators were announced as parts of creative teams of some of Marvel's regular titles.

I suppose there are arguments to made about some of those charges, but, as a comics fan, what I see when I look at the announcement is a book with some of my favorite creators on it, including several creators from my own personal "I'll buy anything that this person does" list.

I'm down for anything that has Jill Thompson, Colleen Coover and Amanda Conner involved, for example, or anything that gives Ming Doyle, Molly Crabapple and Carla Speed McNeil access to the Marvel characters to play with.


—That Amanda Conner cover sure is awesome (Tony needs to shave though—STAT!, but I was surprised to see it though. How is it that Amanda Conner isn't exclusive to DC? She's drawing a monthly book for the publisher; if she still has time to draw more things beyond Power Girl, then DC really oughta get her some more work. Their superhero line needs as much Amanda Conner as it can get.


—Also, G. Willow Wilson is writing a monthly for DC's Vertigo imprint, and has dabbled in their superhero line, often with surprisingly good results (By which I mean she wrote something called Outsiders: Five of a Kind—Metamorpho/Aquaman and it was surprisingly unterrible). How come she's not exclusive to DC? Someone at the company better be drawing up some paperwork after seeing this announcement...


—I was pleased to see Devin Grayson's name on that list. I really, really liked Grayson's work for the Bat-office, particularly Gotham Knights, and I really, really liked her Titans series (particularly the three-issue miniseries with Phil Jiminez that kicked off her short run on the ongoing).

There seems to be a lot of venom on the Internet regarding Grayson though, especially for her handling of the title Nightwing, which I don't understand. I only lasted about four or five issues of her Nightwing, and no, it wasn't any damn good, but it was a Nightwing comic. They're never any good. I don't think I've ever lasted more than four or five issues of anyone's run on Nightwing without extenuating circumstances (Like, say, Rags Morales drawing it).

Anyway, I just wanted to take a moment to say "Yay, Devin Grayson!"


—I assume this is more of a just-something-fun-to-do sort of project than an honest outreach to attempt and win over a whole new demographic for the company. I've heard a few people mention Minx already, and this seems like a completely different thing. With Minx, DC was trying to create comics outside of their superhero universe specifically targeted at comics evangelism for young, female YA fiction readers (They also seemed to be trying to create their own niche with a sort of original graphic novel line that distanced itself from associations with both manga and Western super-stuff).

This sounds like it's just going to be Marvel superheroes by lady creators.


—This is practically guaranteed to sell like hell. Marvel's various attempts at anthologies always sell terribly in the direct market...even Strange Tales, which had some of the best and most successful cartoonist you can think of working on it, sold poorly in the DM. When it comes time for Marvel to assess the book's performance, I hope the bean-counters keep that in mind, and that no one in editorial jumps to the conclusion that the low sales are specifically the fault of any of the particular creators involved.

It's not often that Mark Trail blows my mind, but...

Okay, so, in general, this is a pretty awesome strip...for a Mark Trail strip. He throws a garbage can through a window, he looks about all sweaty-faced and frantic—lots of action and drama, right?

But check out that last panel. "That looks like an old Jack," he says, while staring down at a bunch of items...including the byline of artist Jack Elrod! Is...is Mark seeing the byline on its white disc, propped up against the back wall of the hardware store? Is he about to become aware that he's in a comic strip...?

Oh my God, he has become aware! Check out the third panel of this past Sunday's strip! He addresses the readers directly! Mark Trail's going all Animal Man #26!

Being Free Doesn't Make Them Any Better Pt. 3: Batman: Battle for the Cowl Companion

If there was a pointlessness about Batman: Battle for the Cowl, it does double for Batman: Battle for the Cowl Companion, a trade paperback collecting a half-dozen one-shots, each with two-colon titles beginning with Batman: Battle for the Cowl: that were published around the same time as the main Battle miniseries.

That series focused mainly on the three contenders to be the replacement Batman, and answered the not-terribly-important questions regarding why the most obvious candidate took the job. The stories in these one-shots check in with various Batman supporting characters to see what they were up to while the three Robins were fighting and Black Mask II entered into a gang war with The Penguin, Two-Face and all the random theme gangs Tony S. Daniel created.

As such, they’re even less important than the completely unimportant Battle miniseries, if we’re judging these things by their “importance” to the overall, overarching Batman story, which is, after all, how they were being sold.

I suppose they may work better when read in this sort of trade collection. They seem more like chapters in an anthology, like a collection of vignettes, which relieves each of them of some pressure of having to stand on their own (And this way, we’re not subjected to all those terrible, two-colon titles; each comic is presented as a chapter of an anthology, with the title of the story before it, so instead of seeing Batman: Battle for the Cowl: Commissioner Gordon #1, you just see “A Cold Day in Hell.”)

The flip side of that is, of course, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot binding them together, beyond the fact that they’re stories about Batman’s supporting characters in Batman-less stories.

Anyway, let’s take ‘me one at a time…


Batman: Battle for the Cowl: Commissioner Gordon #1 by Royal McGraw and Tom Mandrake

The worst policeman in comic book history—who went something like 45 years before ever actually closing a case—gets the spotlight, as Gordon is captured by Mister Freeze and then manages to escape, bring Freeze down and save Gotham City from an icy WMD without any help from Batman or any other superhero types.

There’s a panel in the third issue of Battle for the Cowl where Gordon says “After what freeze put me through, nothing scares me anymore.” If you read that were all like, “Wait, what? Did I miss something?” then this is what it is that you missed.


Batman: Battle for the Cowl: Man-Bat #1 by Joe Harris and Jim Calafiore

It was while I was reading this issue that I realized I’ve probably read too many Batman comics in my life; I’ve certainly read all of the Man-Bat-as-tortured-werewolf-type stories I’ll ever need to.

In this story, Dr. Kirk Langstrom is having bad dreams and being angsty about the fact that he sometimes turns into a half-bat, half-man. Then he gets kidnapped by Doctor Phosphorus. Then he gets away.

This one features the Outsiders in it, who look at Man-Bat on one page and then, later, return at the end to look at him again. Also, Alfred is lurking in the shadows during the final scene.

I assume this is some sort of set-up to a story arc in The Outsiders title, but it reminded me of one of Tim O’Neil’s recent-ish criticisms of The Outsiders as a book devoted to depicting the adventures of a bunch of characters who aren’t Batman trying to fill in for Batman.

A couple of months ago, I read Gotham Underground in trade, and I’ve now read all of the Calafiore-drawn comics I ever need to read.


Batman: Battle for the Cowl: Arkham Asylum #1 by David Hine and Jeremy Haun

Just as I’ve probably read all the Man-Bat-as-tortured-werewolf-type stories I’ll ever need to read, at this point I’ve read all the Dr. Jeremiah Arkham-is-in-charge-of-the-asylum-but-maybe-he-should-be-an-inmate-himself stories I’ll ever need to read.

This is one more of those. Set sometime after Black Mask II destroys the asylum and lets loose the inmates, it deals with Arkham returning to rescue a trio of extraordinary patients who were kept in a secret place only he had access to.

Hine does create some new characters, which is a relief–too few Batman writers seem to spend any time adding villains, preferring to play with the same ten or so over and over again. (At least, I think these characters are all new. It’s the first I’ve heard of any of them).

While I don’t think any of them will end up being the next Joker, they’re colorful and seem to fit in with the rest of the inmates fairly well.

This creative team is also responsible for Arkham Reborn, a three-issue miniseries which actually oughta be wrapping up sometime soon. This story reads more like a prelude to that then a tie-in to Battle, but I suppose the point was to serve as a bridge leading from a big Bat-event into a miniseries.


Batman: Battle for the Cowl: The Underground #1 by Chris Yost and Pablo Raimondi

This is one of the two stories that ties most directly into the events of Battle. The focus is on The Penguin, drawn to resemble Danny DeVito in Batman Returns so completely that he looks nothing like The Penguin in Battle, hiring The Riddler, who also doesn’t’ look anything like he does in Battle, to find out what Black Mask II is up to. Additionally, we see a little more of the Penguin/Two-Face/Mask gang war, we see the gun-toting Batman fight Catwoman, and we see Riddler and the gals who will eventually star in Gotham City Sirens come together.

I didn’t find anything terribly interesting about it, but it didn’t really do anything terribly wrong either (outside of Raimondi’s weird character designs). It basically just went through the motions, but it didn’t stumble while doing so.


Batman: Battle for the Cowl: The Network #1 by Fabian Nicieza, Jim Calafiore, Don Kramer and Mark McKenna

This is an issue of Birds of Prey, save with a different title and with art mostly provided by Calafiore. Oracle manages the small army of vigilantes that cameo-ed throughout Battle, while most of her attention for this issue is focused on having Batgirl Cassandra Cain and The Huntress bust up a Saw-like Internet gambling/game show thing that Hugo Strange has set up.

As with the previous one-shot/chapter, it’s nothing worth seeking out, but nothing to be tied to a stake and burnt as a witch either. The writing’s maybe a little better than Daniel’s in Battle, but the story is less eventful. I like Calafiore’s art style less than Daniel’s, but the former has a better sense of story-telling than the latter.


Taken all together, it’s extremely inessential reading, even if you’re super-interested in Battle, and really only fit for people who have read every other Batman-related trade available and want one more.

Being Free Doesn't Make Them Any Better Pt. 2: Batman: Battle for the Cowl

Batman: Battle for The Cowl was such a pointless endeavor that even discussing it at all seems like a waste of everyone’s time—certainly reading it was.

What precisely happened between the time Batman Bruce Wayne was “killed” by Darkseid in Final Crisis and when an all-new Batman and Robin showed up in Batman and Robin wasn’t all that important to writer Grant Morrison, the creative force currently driving the Batman franchise.

One of Morrison’s great strengths as a comic book writer is that he intentionally leaves blank spaces in his narratives, blank spaces the readers perhaps half-subconsciously fill in with their own imaginations, resulting in adventures that are infinitely more satisfying to the individual reader than anything DC Comics could come up with precisely because the stories are the reader’s own stories.

Occasionally, the publisher will attempt to fill in those spaces however, and that’s what Battle for the Cowl was—the Batman office asking writer/artist Tony S. Daniel to come up with a Point A-and-a-half to stick between Morrison’s Point A and Point B.

Over the past few years, I’ve talked a lot of smack about Daniel’s work, but I do genuinely feel bad for the guy. He’s not a great artist, and is, in fact, still a relatively weak one, having never moved beyond the design-an-image-to-avoid-having-to-draw-human-feet level of artistic development, and yet DC asked him to partner with Grant Morrison, perhaps the comics industry’s most popular creator who is also almost universally critically lauded (generally superhero writers are one or the other) on one of the industry’s premier publisher’s biggest titles. Daniel would have been a fool to turn down the gig, whether he was ready for it or not.

And he wasn’t. His work on Batman with Morrison was cringe inducing. Rather than complementing Morrison’s work and helping to tell the story, Daniel’s art was generally running interference; it was something to be overcome by the reader in order to figure out the script.

With Battle for the Cowl, Daniel had a chance to redeem himself a bit. As great a superhero writer as Morrison may be, he’s not the world’s greatest collaborator—some artists he meshes with perfectly, others seem to be at odds with him. That’s just the nature of making comics piecemeal, I suppose, and it’s unfortunate that Morrison was writing some of the most interesting and exciting Batman stories in a generation, only to have so many of them hampered by the artist.

But here Daniel would be writing as well as drawing, so there shouldn’t be any excuse for any disconnect between the writer and the artist, the script and the printed page. If this artwork wasn’t any good, Daniel had little excuse.

The storytelling is somewhat improved than it was during his work with Morrison on Batman on arcs like “The Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul” or “Batman R.I.P.” It’s generally clear what’s happening on every page or in every panel, even if it’s not communicated terribly gracefully or doesn’t look all that nice. There wasn’t a single instance where I had no idea what I was looking at, and had to wait a few panels or pages for the dialogue to explain the visuals to me, as happened during Morrison/Daniel collaborations.

That said, Daniel still strikes me as a weak comic book artist. His work still resembles a collage of rough Hollywood storyboards and pin-up sketches more than a fully functional and polished comic book page. He changes scenes with the comic book equivalent of a smash-cut, there’s rarely a sense of space or place or that the characters are interacting with either and some seriously odd, layout choices, like this one of Commissioner Gordon walking across the page:

And even when working from a script he himself wrote, there are weird inconsistencies from panel to panel. In perhaps the most egregious example, the second chapter of the story ends with one of the contenders for the cowl seemingly murdering the other by jamming a sharpened batarang into his rival’s abdomen.

In the panel where the wound is revealed, it’s facing in one direction, but in the very next panel—a splash page which concludes the chapter and would have been the cliffhanger ending of that particular issue, the Batarang was drawn facing the opposite direction (The depth, placement and severity of the wound will change in the next issue too, but jeez, that’s supposed to be a pivotal moment in the issue, but it’s hard to give oneself over to the drama when one’s eye is drawn to the art mistakes in two adjacent panels).

The writing isn’t all that great either, but, again, there was a pointlessness to the series that precluded it being all that good anyway. Battle of the Cowl was simply marking time between Morrison scripts, giving the most obsessive Batman fans something to buy while the new creative teams assumed their positions and geared up new titles and new directions for old ones.

It’s a three-issue series, and in each issue a different one of the three real contenders for the cowl take turns narrating.

Gotham has apparently gone to hell as soon as Batman “died” (one wonders how the whole city managed to keep its shit together while Batman took that year off in 52), with groups of theme gangs running wild in the streets (Daniel does invent some neat gangs with weird, visual hooks all their own, but we never hear anything about them at all, so they become one more screech in the visual white noise of the book).

Also, Black Mask (who is dead) releases all of the Arkham Asylum inmates (like Bane did in Knightfall) and put some kind of chemical thingee in them to make them serve him while he goes to war with Two-Face and the Penguin.

How many heroes does it take to fill the void Batman left? Well, in addition to Dick Grayson, Tim Drake and Jason Todd, all of these folks make cameos: The Knight and Squire, Black Canary, Wildcat, Man-Bat, Lynx*, Batwoman, Batgirl, Oracle, Huntress, Catwoman, Lady Blackhawk, Owlman, Geo-Force, Halo**, Katana, The Creeper, Metamorpho, Black Lightning, Misfit, Manhunter and Ragman.

How useless are all these folks? It takes about 25 of ‘em to equal one Batman.

Okay, maybe that’s a petty, nerd-centric concern, but that’s the target audience here, right? The sort of fan who will suspend disbelief enough to care about what happened between Point A and Point B of Morrison’s story, right?

I tried, but too much of the story seemed off and hard to match up with what I know of the characters and events from other books. There were just too, too many of those little petty, nerd-centric concerns for me to lose myself in the story at all.

Perhaps the most unfortunate part is the ending, where the most obvious candidate to replace Batman finally does so—and it’s not made explicit he does.

Because Battle for the Cowl employs the personalized narration boxes, in which each narration box is color-coded to reflect the narrator’s costume and or symbol, when Nightwing Dick Grayson assumes the role of Batman, his narration box changes colors and adds a Bat-symbol, so it’s no longer clear that it’s Dick talking, only that it’s Batman.

The last two pages are drawn from the new Batman’s point of view (or, a point of view just behind his head) so we only know that it’s a dark-haired man. So it could be Dick Grayson. Or Jason Todd. Or Tim Drake.

It’s Grayson, of course; DC didn’t really do much to keep that any great mystery, but you couldn’t be sure of that from the story. If you were invested in the mystery of who will be the new Batman, it had to have been a frustrating way to end the series.

That was the end of Battle for the Cowl, but it wasn’t the end of the Batman: Battle for the Cowl hardcover collection, which included two one-shots after Daneil’s series—Gotham Gazette: Batman Dead? #1 and Gotham Gazette: Batman Alive? #1.

Despite the goofy titles and numbering, this was essentially a two-part miniseries in which writer Fabian Nicieza checks in five different Gothamites, each character’s story drawn by a different art team.

Each one opens and closes with narration from The Veil, a spirit-of-the-city type of character introduced by Denny O’Neil and Guillem March in one of the many “Batman R.I.P.” epilogues, her sequences drawn by Dustin Nguyen (The Streets of Gotham artist).

The other Gothamites checked in with include Vicki Vale (as drawn by Gotham City Sirens artist March), Stephanie “The Spoiler” Brown (as drawn by ChrisCross), Dr. Leslie Thompkins (by Jamie McKelvie) and Harvey Bullock (by Alex Konat and Mark McKenna).

None of the stories really stand on their own as complete works, but I don’t think they were meant to either—it’s basically a sampler platter of plot points and conflicts that will be picked up on in other Bat-books during the line’s “Batman: Reborn!” branding effort. As such, it functions fairly well, even though I’m not sure which storylines were picked up where exactly (The Vicki Vale figuring out the Bat-family’s secrets plot, for instance, struck me as the most interesting, but I’m not sure where to look for its continuation).

I don’t know if Nicieza could have done much better with the limited story space and collection of beats to hit than Daniel did in Battle, but he seems to have gotten more of the characters’ voices righter in these vignettes, and certainly each of the artists who drew them were far superior in skill to what Daniel was able to demonstrate in his story.

The result was that as I was reading these segments in the back of the collection, I kept wondering what a Nicieza/March or Nicieza/McKelvie Battle for the Cowl might have looked like.



*I guess. The woman in the white cat mask is supposed to be Lynx right? She died though, so I’m not sure if this is a new Lynx or…what, exactly. I guess I don’t read enough Batman comics to be able to keep up with who’s even alive or dead anymore.

**Huh. I thought she died too.



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On the other hand, if it weren’t for Battle for the Cowl, we never would have had the sequence from Tiny Titans that began with this page:

Being Free Doesn't Make Them Any Better Pt. 1: Justice League of America: Second Coming

Earlier this week, three collections I reserved at my local library became available on the same day. What all three had in common was that they were bad comics I had started reading in comic book format as they were being published, but I quickly abandoned due to their exceptionally poor quality and my desire not to reward the publisher for producing them with my money (even though I felt some need to read them to keep up with the goings-on in the fictional universe in which they’re set).

As I discovered, even getting the comics for free, and reading them in big chunks without a month between every 22 pages to consider their faults didn’t do much of anything to improve their quality.

I’m going to review one of them at probably too-great length each day this weekend.


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DC has been publishing Justice League comics for just under 50 years now, and those that they've been publishing since 2006 or so have been the absolute worst. I know that sounds pretty harsh, and some modern readers probably think it insane to say the current volume is worse than the original Silver Age comics with their rudimentary, written-for-kids plots and dialogue, and the stocky, blocky art, but even those comics had a certain degree of professionalism and competence about them, as did any of the previous eras of Justice League comics readers are likely to point to as the nadir of the franchise (the early Extreme Justice run, when DC was trying to turn the Giffen/DeMatteis team into something Rob Liefeld fans might enjoy, or the Detroit League, when stabs at a new generation of heroes replaced the likes of Superman and Wonder Woman).

The current volume was produced from the start by people who just honestly didn't give a shit about what they were doing. Original writer Brad Meltzer may have had some interesting ideas here and there among the professional fan fiction he wrote during his brief run, but there was a very basic, fundamental level of not-caring emanating from the scripts, to the point where the 1939's World's Fair occurred in Washington DC instead of New York City (a fact Meltzer or editors would have known if only from reading the other DC super-comics they were referencing in the story) and the dead character Aquaman was used as a living character, but drawn by the artist to resemble a completely different character (who was alive).

There was a certain level of contempt for the material and the audience expressed by Meltzer and/or his editors that made reading the comics actively unpleasant, a contempt never better evidenced than in the choice of artists on the book, the most regular of which was pencil artist Ed Benes.

I've complained at such great length and detail about how poor Benes' art is that even I'm tired of hearing me do so, but, to quickly recap, Benes is a fairy decent pin-up artist who can draw big, brawny bosomy super-babes in suggestive poses and ridiculously muscled men with painted on costumes, and absolutely nothing else. Those are the only two designs he's capable of, and he has no range at all with them—the women can look sexy, the men angry, and that's about as far as Benes' "acting" skills go. He has no command of mis en scene, page design, panel-to-panel continuity or background. He's pretty much the last artist you'd want on a comic book about a dozen or so superheroes, whether they're actually having big adventures, or just having action-packed conversations like characters in a Brian Michael Bendis comic book.

That only added up to Benes being a poor comic book artist, of course—what was worse was his focus on the sexiness of the handful of female super-characters at the expense of everything else. Often times, he was drawing an entirely different comic story than his writers were writing, and the meaning of scenes was completely changed by the way he staged and rendered them.

Anyway, the Meltzer/Benes Justice League of America comic book of 2006 was a terrible, terrible comic book, and my mind remains boggled that one of the biggest publishers of comic books proudly produced that during a time when comics as entertainment and art have never seemed stronger.

When Meltzer left as planned in the middle of his story, Dwayne McDuffie was brought in, and the quality of the book dipped even further, with even worse fill-in artists (Joe Benitez) and a change of focus away from telling Justice League stories to telling tie-ins to other comics—for a couple months, every issue of JLoA was like a red skies tie-in to something, only instead of acknowledging something important to the DC Universe like Crisis on Infinite Earths, they tied in to Tangent and Salvation Run (itself a tie-in...to Countdown, a prequel in name to Final Crisis).

The fifth collection of the current volume of Justice League of America is entitled The Second Coming. I'm not sure why, beyond the fact that McDuffie quotes lines from William Butler Yeats' poem of that name in the titles of the individual chapters (Oddly, DC is also currently publishing a Batman miniseries titled after a line from the poem—Batman: The Widening Gyre). It could refer to the return of Red Tornado to a body, but as the character himself notes this is like the eighth time he's been reborn in a new body (the second within the first two years of this very series!). It could refer to the return of Amazon, but this is more like his twenty-second coming than his second. Perhaps DC had a big retreat where they all talked about Yeats, and his poetry is just filtering into the comics...?

At any rate, this is also a terrible, terrible comic book.

This is due in large part to the continued presence of Benes, whose deficincies are made so clear in this issue that it's actually kind of hilarious. For example, Red Tornado's significant other Kathy, who is blond, is distinguishable from Black Canary only in that the latter wears fishnet stockings. That's the sort of poor work a reader might expect from Benes as his off-and-on tenure on the book reaches its second year. But the first issue collected here contains this image of Professor Niles Caulder, the elderly, wheelchair bound leader of The Doom Patrol. Benes draws him just like Superman, in a fake beard and wig:

(I know I made fun of that image before, but it still makes me laugh).

Benes hasn’t become any stronger of an artist in the issues collected in this volume than he was in the issues collected in previous volumes (although, according to the credits, he’s now inking his own work). The art is still confoundingly amateurish, with odd panel to panel slip-ups like, say, a mace appearing in and out of Hawkgirl’s hand from panel to panel, and still suffers from Benes’ insistence of reducing everything he an to a picture of a sexy lady. Perhaps the most egregious example in this volume is a two-page spread in #26, in which the entire Justice League squares off against an entire Justice League of alternate versions of themselves. There are over 20 superheroes in action on the page, but Benes draws a super huge close-up of Wonder Woman in the immediate foreground, blocking the bulk of the battle from view.


The art isn’t the only problem with the book, however. Because writer Dwayne McDuffie has been so vocal about his dissatisfaction with the way the book turned out and the constraints put on him during its writing (and by “so vocal” I mean that he talked to anyone about it at all, which is somewhat unusual among Big Two comics writers), I think there’s temptation to forgive him for the lack of quality in the work, to assume he was simply shafted by his editors and by not having a real artistic partner (In addition to doing poor work, Benes had some serious deadline issues for someone who rarely even draws backgrounds—six other pencillers and eight other inkers are needed during this five-issue run).

McDuffie has a few moments of life within these issues—notably the inclusion of The Brown Bomber, a character up for behind-the-scenes consideration for DC’s first black superhero that ultimately evolved into Black Lightning—but the quality of work is overall quite poor.

The story—if it is a story, rather than just five issues of the comic chopped into a unit for collection’s sake—isn’t about anything at all. There’s literally nothing to the book other than familiar characters going through familiar motions to no discernable effect or impact. In short, there aren’t any ideas in the comic; it reads like tiresome pay check-collection on McDuffie’s part.

It’s possible that may be due simply to McDuffie operating in clean-up mode, trying to honor Meltzer’s run by wrapping up all the storyline’s his predecessor left unresolved before doing what he wanted. The arc opens with Red Tornado about to put into another new body, and still struggling with his Am I robot or a man? issues that Meltzer had him dealing with in the first few issues of JLoA. It closes with Vixen getting to the bottom of why her powers aren’t working right anymore, another conflict Meltzer introduced and then abandoned. In between, there’s some talk about the Roy Harper/Hawkgirl relationship Meltzer initiated.

If that is the case, it’s unfortunate it took McDuffie over 100 pages to deal with it in this book.

As for the superheroic stuff, it feels incredibly small, claustrophobic and tired. See all those characters trying to hide their feet on the cover? They and John Henry Irons must pool all their powers and abilities to combat Amazo, an android enemy the League’s been fighting about twice a year since the early sixties. McDuffie doesn’t do anything new or interesting with the character the way, say, Tom Peyer did repeatedly throughout his Hourman, or even Mark Millar did in his one-issue fill-in during Grant Morrison’s run on JLA. It’s just one more the Justice League-battles-a-robot-with-all-their-powers fight, lasting far too many pages.

Once Amazo’s defeated, the League tries to solve Vixen’s power problems, which involve a trip within her magical Tantu totem, where they encounter Anansi the West African spider god who functions as a stand-in for the writer. If there is a hint of freshness to the idea, McDuffie spoils it himself by involving Animal Man, and reminding readers of Grant Morrison’s insertion of the comic book writer into the comic book superhero narrative back in…Jesus, the late eighties? Early ‘90s? (And then again more recently in 52).

McDuffie does do a fairly admirable job of giving each character a moment of some sort, but he’s dealing with so many characters that all they get is a moment—a few pages of narration, a few lines of dialogue, a single scene to shine in, and then they completely disappear.

McDuffie’s Justice League appears as alien and remote as Morrison’s did, but not because they’re written that way, simply because McDuffie can’t find room for them all in the storyline. That may be in part due to a lack of ambition—should it take 20 superheroes and three issues to fight Amazo?

The sad part is that this is apparently the best part of McDuffie’s run on the title. The previous issues were the ones in which a co-writer was called in to help him handle the tie-ins to Salvation Run and Tangent, and the ones that follow this will deal with the since aborted attempt to integrate the Milestone Universe into the DC Universe for some reason, to reconcile the title with the changes of Final Crisis (in which Hawkgirl died, but then editorial told McDuffie she was still alive after an issue in which her death is being mourned had already been written and drawn, and to deal with the fall-out of the Justice League: Cry for Justice miniseries, which was so late it had yet to begin while McDuffie was writing its aftermath.

This then represents McDuffie at his least interfered with, and—even if you ignore the inappropriate, amateurish art completely—the results were terrible.

It’s really a shame. McDuffie’s a pretty talented writer, and as his work just prior for Marvel Comics proved, he’s adept at marrying big, crazy cosmic superhero adventure with lighthearted humor and solid character work. He should have been perfect for JLoA, but…well, whatever went wrong, to whatever degree he or whoever else was responsible, the comic books that resulted were shockingly bad.