Marvel's February previews reviewed

Marvel finally got around to releasing their full solicitations for the books they plan to release in February of 2012 today. (You can read them here).

So, what's going on with Marvel's line? Well, as you've probably already heard, pretty much everyting is canceled, especially their last remaining book starring a female protagonist (Thunderbolts, X-Factor, Avengers Academy and Generation Hope are the only four so-far un-canceled ongoings currently charting lower than the presumably canceled X-23; as all four belong to either the huge line of Avengers or huge line of X-Men books, they all certainly fall into the category of Fat That Could Probably Be Cut).

Yes, everything is canceled except for Avengers collections. As you'll see if you head on over to Comic Book Resources and start skimming the solicitations, seemingly every single Avengers comic book ever published will be available in an expensive hardcover format come next spring.

What else is happening? Let's take a look...


John Tyler Christopher’s cover for Amazing Spider-Man #679.1 is kinda neat, but doesn’t really work for me. If it were black instead of sky-blue, that would work.

And by the way, #679.1…? Jesus.


AVENGERS: THE CROSSING OMNIBUS HC SCHERBERGER COVER
WRITTEN BY BOB HARRAS, TERRY KAVANAGH, BEN RAAB, DAN ABNETT & ANDY LANNING
PENCILED BY VARIOUS
COVERS BY PATRICK SCHERBERGER & MIKE DEODATO
One of the nineties' most notorious narratives! It was a day unlike any other, but in which timeline? Warriors from the future and secrets from the past abound when Kang the Conqueror appears to set the Avengers and Force Works against each other in a game for a prize no one can imagine! Starring Iron Man, War Machine, Crystal and Quicksilver, Hawkeye and the Black Widow, Hercules, the Vision and the Scarlet Witch, Dr. Doom, and more! Collecting AVENGERS (1963) #390-395, AVENGERS: THE CROSSING, AVENGERS: TIMESLIDE, IRON MAN (1968) #319-325, FORCE WORKS #16-22, WAR MACHINE (1994) #20-25 and AGE OF INNOCENCE: THE REBIRTH OF IRON MAN.
792 PGS./Rated T - $99.99

Oh my God. Oh my God. Is that really what the Avengers looked like in the ‘90s? Or are Marvel’s solicits just being sarcastic? Look at Iron Man’s arms, and Liefeld leg posing! Look at Thor! Look at Thor’s hair! Look at Thor’s hair!!!

Nineties Thor's hairstyle makes Nineties Aquaman's hairstyle look like a crew cut.

And man, I don't care how many hundreds of pages are in this thing, I can’t imagine anyone on earth paying $100 for it. There have gotta be back issue bins full of these books all over the country...


AVENGERS: KREE/SKRULL WAR HC
WRITTEN BY ROY THOMAS_PENCILED BY SAL BUSCEMA, NEAL ADAMS & JOHN BUSCEMA
COVER BY NEAL ADAMS
A conflict of star-spanning proportions -- with Earth caught in the crossfire! For those eternal intergalactic enemies, the merciless Kree and the shape-changing Skrulls, have gone to war, and our planet is situated on the front lines! Can Earth's Mightiest Heroes, the Avengers, bring about an end to the fighting before humanity becomes a casualty of war? And what good are even a dozen super-powered champions against the vast military machines of two of the great empires of the cosmos? The key to victory lies with the expatriate Kree Captain Mar-Vell and his human host, honorary Avenger Rick Jones! Featuring the trend-setting artwork of Neal Adams, the Kree/Skrull War is universally acknowledged as one of the finest and most important sagas in the Marvel canon. Collecting AVENGERS (1963) #89-97.
240 PGS./Rated T - $34.99

Grant Morrison really talked this one up in Supergods. I can't imagine that it would read the same in a $35 oversized hardcover collection in the year 2011, but young Morrison was apparently really quite affected by it.


Come on now, Marvel; how are we supposed to make fun of your covers if the covers already make fun of themselves this thoroughly? There's nothing I could add that would be any more gratuitous than Ed McGuinness drawing a picture of The Red Hulk raping Cable for some reason.


AVENGING SPIDER-MAN #4
ZEB WELLS (W)
GREG LAND (A/C)
Greg Land (Uncanny X-Men) and Hawkeye (Avengers) drop in on the biggest new title of the year!
• Two stars of next summer's biggest films, together.
32 PGS./Rated T+ - $3.99
*COVERS WILL BE POLYBAGGED

What, just the covers…?


DEFENDERS #3
MATT FRACTION (W)
TERRY DODSON (A/C)
...
• Deep inside Wundagore Mountain, the Concordance Engine comes to life, and the Defenders' mission snaps into crystal-clear focus.
• What does this miraculous machine do? What happens if it DOESN'T do its job? And how many more are there around the world?
• The team gains a secret member and discovers a conspiracy ten-thousand years in the making.
32 PGS./Rated T+ - $3.99

Sooooooo Marvel is going to go ahead and charge $4 for a 22- or possibly even 20-page Defenders comic?

Why don't they save themselves some trouble and go ahead and cancel it now?


FEAR ITSELF: DEADPOOL/ FEARSOME FOUR PREMIERE HC
WRITTEN BY CHRISTOPHER HASTINGS & BRANDON MONTCLARE
PENCILED BY BONG DAZO, MICHAEL KALUTA, RYAN BODENHEIM, SIMON BISLEY, HENRY FLINT & TIMOTHY GREEN II
COVER BY RYAN STEGMAN
As the Marvel Universe is wracked with FEAR ITSELF, only Deadpool sees it for what it truly is: a way to make money. Has Deadpool really been chosen as one of the Worthy, granted one of the Serpent's Hammers? Or did he just take any old hammer and go to town with some rhinestones? Either way, when Deadpool hits the street with his shiny new mallet it's -- STOP! Hammer time. Plus: Do you fear- your protectors turning on you? Man-Thing has gone mad as fear consumes the world, and Manhattan will burn. The only heroes that seek to stop him have given into fear themselves, and no one is safe! Experience FEAR ITSELF through the eyes of fallen heroes Howard the Duck, Nighthawk, Frankenstein and She-Hulk! Collecting FEAR ITSELF: DEADPOOL #1-3 and FEAR ITSELF: FEARSOME FOUR #1-4.
168 PGS./Rated T+ -$24.99

Aw, I was kinda interested in the Fear Itself: Fearsome Four trade, but am completely uninterested in the FI: Deadpool trade. And now it seems they’ve gone and up ‘em between the same set of covers? Lame. (Speaking of covers, is that the cover of the collection? Because it leaves out the “Fearsome Four” part. Maybe it’s a flip-book trade…?


NEW AVENGERS BY BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS VOL. 2 TPB
WRITTEN BY BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS
PENCILED BY STUART IMMONEN, DANIEL ACUNA, MIKE DEODATO & HOWARD CHAYKIN_COVER BY STUART IMMONEN
The year is 1959. Under presidential orders, Nick Fury assembles the first Avengers: Victor Creed. Namora. Kraven the Hunter. Dominic Fortune. Silver Sable. Ulysses Bloodstone. Their mission? Stop the rise of the Red Skull's Fourth Reich -- or die trying. In the present day, Luke Cage's New Avengers are settling in to life at Avengers Mansion. But as the team begins to gel, Norman Osborn's HAMMER is secretly rebuilding. Stopping these bad guys will test the New Avengers with death and betrayal -- and bring a startling revelation regarding Nick Fury and his 1959 Avengers Initiative. Collecting NEW AVENGERS (2010) #7-13.
168 PGS./Rated A - $19.99

Wait, is this New Avengers Vol. 1 Vol. 2 or New Avengers Vol.2 Vol. 2…?


I think I liked the old Scarlet Spider costume better. Not the hoodie half-shirt, but the spandex suit under the hodie half-shirt. If you'd like to see how artist Ryan Stegman arrived at this design, Comics Alliance has a post exploring his sketches of various Scarlet Spidey costumes.


We’ve seen Ape Beast, Blue Wolverine With Bi-Focals Beast, Cat Beast and Horse Beast, but I believe this cover to Secret Avengers #22 by Arthur Adams is the first time we’ve seen Baboon Beast.

He scares me.


THE TWELVE #9 (OF 12)
J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI (W) CHRIS WESTON (A)_COVER BY PAOLO RIVERA
• THE TIME-STRANDED HEROES OF WORLD WAR II ARE BACK!
• ONE MEMBER OF THE TWELVE WILL FALL!
• WHO'S BEHIND THE MYTERIOUS KILLINGS? THE ANSWER IS ELECTRIFYING!
32 PGS./Rated T+ - $2.99

Right, like I still remember/care what was happening in this 12-part murder mystery starring the publisher’s most obscure characters that Marvel launched in early 2008 and then just quit publishing all-of-a-sudden about three years ago.


UNCANNY X-FORCE VOL. 2: DEATHLOK NATION TPB
WRITTEN BY RICK REMENDER
PENCILED BY ESAD RIBIC & RAFAEL ALBUQUERQUE
COVER BY ESAD RIBIC
There are innumerable and varying potential futures awaiting mankind. Among them exists only one constant: the rise of the Deathloks! Seeded in our present they grow, spreading across all possibilities, infiltrating the fate of mankind. One thing stands in their way: a man who shouldn't exist. They come in waves, an army of time-displaced Deathlok troopers forged from Earth's greatest warriors -- Captain America, Spider-Man, Elektra, Cyclops, Venom, the Thing, Bullseye -- all soldiers in the army of Deathlok. All operating under one directive: Fantomex must die! Collecting UNCANNY X-FORCE #5-7 & #5.1.
112 PGS./Parental Advisory - $15.99

Is this good? I liked the first volume quite a bit, but I see the artists have changed. Ribic’s name is familiar, but while it rings a bell I can’t conjure any visual memories of his art. Albuquerque’s pretty great, though.

I think I may have gotten my fill of Deathloks in that Wolverine: Weapon X trade.


VENOM #13
RICK REMENDER (W)
TONY MOORE (A)
COVER BY STEFANO CASELLI...
• PART ONE OF A SIX PART EVENT!
40 PGS./Rated T+ - $3.99

VENOM #13.1 - #13.4
ISSUE #13.1 - LEE GARBETT (A)
ISSUE #13.2 - SANA TAKEDA (A)
• Hell is spreading across the Earth from out of Las Vegas.
• Ghost Rider is responsible but what price is she willing to pay to save mankind?!
• X-23, Venom & Hulk must defeat their worst enemies, buying Ghost Rider time to stop hell's march across the globe!
• As a clone, X-23 has often wondered if she has a soul. This is where she gets her answer!
• Who is Ichor and why has he targeted Venom for Death?!
32 PGS. (each) /Rated T+ - $2.99 (each)
SSUE #13.3 - JULIAN TOTINO (A)
ISSUE #13.4 - LAN MEDINA (A)

What the hell…? What does Marvel have against whole numbers all of a sudden, and why do they love decimals so damn much?


WINTER SOLDIER #1
ED BRUBAKER (W)
BUTCH GUICE (A)
COVER BY LEE BERMEJO
..
• Winter Soldier and Black Widow are the super-spies of the Marvel U!
• Ex-Russian Sleeper Agents awaken, but under who's control?
• Is that Dr. Doom? Uh oh._32 PGS./Rated T+ - $2.99

Wait, I thought Bucky died again in Fear Itself…? Or is this series set in the past…?


Wow, that’s quite a cover on Wolverine and The X-Men #6…

This week's links.

Here's the great thing about Superman. The suits at Warner Brothers can fight his creators families in court for years and refuse to settle honorably just to be dicks. DC can publish comics where he sheds a tear at the funeral for the wife of the Elongated Man who was raped on the Justice League table by Dr. Light and then blowtorched to death by The Atom's ex-wife because just because. They can publish a year of comics where all he does is walk around being poorly drawn and acting like a huge douchebag to everyone he meets. They can take away his trunks, make him wear blue armor instead of blue spandex and have him fight badguys like his rocket ship crash-landed in a no-holds-barred mixed martial arts fighting circuit instead of a Kansas farm.

But no matter what they do, none of that will ever change the fact that, this one time, DC Comics published a story where the Daily Planet fashion editor called in sick and left her finished column in a locked filing cabinet, so Editor-in-Chief Perry White asks Superman to sit down at a typewriter and, using his X-Ray vision to see inside the filing cabinet and read the column, transcribe it, and Lois Lane walked in and thought that Superman was actually writing a fashion column for The Daily Planet and thought by following this fashion advice she'd be able to succeed in finally getting him to go steady with her.

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Who's not sick of talking about cranky old Frank Miller and the Occupy movement yet? I mean, besides me? You? Okay, read on then.

I thought this letter from Kim Thompson to Tom "The Comics Reporter" Spurgeon was pretty funny. I particularly like it whenever someone uses Darth Vader as a unit of measurement when discussing one's politics.

I was gonna write something in response to Mark Millar's defense of Miller, which seemed to misread what Miller said originally and what fans and commenters were saying about it as fundamentally and as thoroughly as Miller misread the Occupy movement and the police reaction to it, but then Laura Hudson wrote exactly what I would want to say to Millar, only more efficiently and elegantly than I would have been able to manage. Plus, no swear words!

Richard Pace's massively linked-to strip "The Dick Knight" is formally great, even if it didn't exactly split my side. He did a hell of a job reproducing Miller's Dark Knight style though, and I really admire creators who are able to wrangle form like that.

Chris Sims' piece for Comics Alliance did threaten my sides, however. He and Pace (and others) zeroed in on the very same, very famous Batman Vs. The Rich and Corrupt moment.

And, finally, whatever one particular old Batman writer may think of the Occupy movement, they're apparently using Batman technology to get their message out. Go Occupiers!

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And on the subject of Occupy, I've seen so much disgusting footage of police brutality and/or police enthusiasm that I'm beginning to feel queasy and scared every time I see a policeman now. I wonder if 2011 is going to end up completely eroding the heroic auras they and other first responders took on after 9/11...?

If you'd like to feel sick and/or depressed yourself, I'd recommend this Wonkette piece, in which Ken Layne notes the Egyptian cops during the uprising were gentler with the mobs that completely overthrew their government than so many United States city cops have been with freaking protesters organizing old-school sit-ins targeting nationally loathed financial entities. There's also an inspired juxtaposition of a quote from President Obama regarding the Egyptian protests juxtaposed with an image of a quartet of burly police officers in riot equipment subduing and cuffing an occupier.

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How successful was DC Comics at getting their "New 52" reboot into public consciousness? Successful enough that Ward Sutton used it as a springboard for this very funny politicos-as-DC superheroes piece in The Village Voice.

His drawings of the heads of Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachman on the fit young bodies of Robin and Batgirl are probably going to give me nightmares for a while, but I liked how the majority of the heroes—characters?—had normal, chubby, Silver Age bodies, and several were dripping beads of flop sweat.

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This Zack Smith interview with John Hodgman, The Funniest Man Alive*, that ran on Newsarama was a great surprise. It's not the greatest interview—through no fault of Smith's, I should note, but rather as a function of the nature of the piece—as it essentially is just Smith getting out of Hodgman's way and letting him talk.

That talk revolves around comics, particularly DC's "New 52" (Men of War gets a celebrity endorsement!), and Hodgman seems to not be "on," but simply being his real self, which is...well, frankly, it's a little disorienting, like hearing Stephen Colbert being interviewed as Stephen Colbert rather than as his character Stephen Colbert (as I once did on NPR's Fresh Air and, I think, on Meet The Press when Tim Russert was still alive. So weird!)

Anyway, Hodgman's a smart, witty guy and Smith gets him talking comics and sharing, so it's well worth a read if you like Hodgman, comics or, like me, Hodgman and comics.

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Did you know that in the Justice Society of America feature film that exists only in my head, John Hodgman plays Wesley "The Sandman" Dodds? It's true! The Justice Society film that only exists in my head will never actually exist outside of my head, though. I know this because it's directed by Guy Maddin. And is black-and-white. And not 3D. That's too many impossible things to imagine in a feature film.

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Joe Shuster draws giant robots. (Via Craig Yoe)

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This was really great to see. And it's really great to see a modern comics creator so openly acknowledging the debt he owes an earlier creator, from whose work the younger writer has benefited enormously from. (It also reminds me I have to review Vision Machine for you guys yet...)

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This is a really great interview with Mark Waid, conducted by Tucker Stone. Lots of interesting comics-related stuff gets covered, but the main subject is Waid's stellar run on Daredevil, with two of the greatest artist working in super-comics at the moment alternating arcs

I would heartily second that anyone who likes superhero comics check out an issue of Daredevil, and the idea that a whole lot of people don't seem to have realized just how special Martin is just yet.

I was a little bummed to hear that the art team will be going through some changes soon, however, and I wasn't reassured by Waid's statement that he trusts editor Steve Wacker's taste when it comes to teaming him with new artists (Wacker also edits Avenging Spider-Man, which will follow its first arc drawn by Joe Madureira with one drawn by Greg Land, The Worst Comic Book Artist In The World).

While there's a lot of good stuff in the interview, I think this was my favorite part (Stone in bold, Waid in, um, not-bold):

The thing about Daredevil is that it reads like proof. It's proof that you can take somebody who can write a good story and you put them together with somebody who can draw really well and you get some decent, non-over-the-top coloring on the book, then you're probably going to end up with a comic book that people want to buy that makes them happy. It's that easy, you know? It's not "easy", but it's that simple.

It is that easy. What we do is not the easiest work in the world, but it's not that brilliant a revelation. Everything you said is absolutely true, but you would think--the way the market behaves, the way the publisher behaves--that you were speaking in tongues when you said what you just said.

So yeah. Read that interview (if you haven't already) and then read Daredevil (if you haven't already).

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I don't know who this lady is exactly, but I think I'm madly in love with her.

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Here's Brian Hibbs' latest Tilting column about retail at Comic Book Resources. It's a potpourri column, but the subject I was specifically linking to it here regarding was his assertion that he thinks the under-performing "New 52" books will end up being canceled really quickly because "the integrity of the magic number '52' is much less important than not having anchors that drag you down."

That's the exact opposite of what my thinking has been, as I assumed because DC promoted the books a line with a specific, set number of books, admitting the failure of any one book would be tantamount to admitting failure of the initiative.

Hibbs follows that up with a great point though. Given the amount of press and promotion DC put into the line, there' s zero argument to be made that the underperforming books just haven't had a chance to succeed yet. Essentially, no DC book is ever going to get a bigger chance to succeed than those 52 books did, and if all of that couldn't get a, say, Green Arrow book over, then continuing to publish it for 12 more months in the hopes an audience will find it won't help any.

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I haven't been watching Batman: The Brave and The Bold this past season (I'll catch up on DVD someday), but I hear he teamed-up with Ambush Bug in the season finale. I was curious, did the other hero in this comic ever make an appearance...?

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This Cracked article of "The 7 Stupidest Attempts to Reinvent Batman" (via Comics Reporter) is a lot of fun to read, and pretty funny as well, but I should point out that, while focusing on the insanity of many of the plots, the writers fail to note that most of these have incredibly awesome artwork from the likes of Norm Breyfogle, Kelley Jones, Bo Hampton, Dick Giordano and Alcatena.

I've read all but three of the stories covered—Batman: Hollywood Knight, Batman: Holy Terror and Countdown To Adventure, a spin-off to a series nobody on Earth liked—and the four I read were all between pretty good to totally awesome in quality (Although, granted, the ones with weaker, sillier plots tended to have amazing art to make up for it.

I really have a hard time wrapping my head around comics in which Pirate Batman kicks a shark to save Pirate Catwoman or, in the authors' own words, Batman as "a ghost vampire made of blood" being referred to as "stupidest," but hey, maybe I'm just a sucker for Batman as a ghost vampire made out of blood.(Above: Batman as a ghost vampire made out of blood, as drawn by Kelley Jones, the number one artist for drawing things like that)



*I'm awarding Hodgman this title based solely on the number of times his 2006 book The Areas of My Expertise caused me to laugh out loud. It was a higher number than the times pretty much any other individual still alive has been able to get me to laugh out loud.

Here are some rather poor sketches of some rather pretty girls.

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I just recently completed the process of moving out of my ancestral home for, like, the fourth time since I've went away to college, and into a new apartment. Part of that process involved cleaning and de-Calebifying the most heavily Caleb-ed parts of my ancestral home, including the room I referred to as my "office," which was basically just a pile of comics and art supplies and sketches and notes emanating from my drawing table that filled the entire room ankle-high or so. These images were among the detritus I've been organizing this weekend instead of blogging. So I'm just gonna post them here and count that as a Friday night/Saturday night post.

At some point before the start of the previous season of 90210 (not Beverly Hills 90210, but the current, ongoing 90210 on the CW), I decided it would be more constructive to draw while watching it for an hour a week than to not draw while watching it for an hour a week, and I thought I would do little cartoon synopses of each new episode to post on EDILW the following nights (If I weren't blogging about comics already, I very well might have ended up blogging about 90210; you could be reading Every Day Is Like Tuesday Night on The CW instead of EDILW).

In preparation, I spent an afternoon at the CW's home page, looking at the promotional photos of the cast up at the time, and drawing Rob Estes and Matt Lanter and Ryan Eggold and Shenae Grimes over and over and over again to try to get their faces right in something that landed halfway between my "style" (dots for eyes, shadows for noses, etc) and what they really look like (drawing real people in my style is pretty impossible though, since everyone looks the same with only hair and clothes and accessories to differentiate 'em).

I couldn't get any of 'em right though, and gave up on the idea by the time the season had actually started (As I recall, it had just moved to Tuesday nights at 8, putting it in direct opposition with Dancing With The Stars, and I chose to watch the latter as it occurred and the catch up with 90210 on DVD later, as Dancing was live).

Anyway, these are the only three sketches that I kept (and by "kept" I mean left in one of the piles on the floor in my office, instead of put in the recycling bin that night). They're of Jessica Lowndes/Adrianna Tate-Duncan, AnnaLynne MacCord/Naomi Clark and Jessica Stroup/Erin Silver. The Silver is the only way I don't completely hate.

And if you think those are bad, you should see what my Rob Estes looked like...sort of like if Willem DaFoe was bitten by Ray Wise, and every full moon aftewards, DaFoe turned into a Were-Ray Wise, and an police sketch artist tried to draw what DaFoe would look like during mid-transformation. That's what my Rob Estes looked like.

Meanwhile...

Drawn and Quarterly has a new Lynda Barry book out, and I have a review of it in this week's Las Vegas Weekly. And over at Robot 6, I collected a few instances of Geoff Johns-written Justice Leaguers killing their opponents and wondered aloud what that means in "The New 52," if you'd like to read that and chime in on the discussion, which has replies from across the spectrum (I was kinda expecting the thread to be mostly "Shut up Caleb you big baby"). I forgot to mention it at the time of that writing, but another strange thing about Justice League was that the Parademons Superman and Wonder Woman were tearing to pieces weren't actually killing anyone. The bad guys were taking prisoners, the good guys weren't.

Comics shop comics: Nov. 16th

Justice League #3 (DC Comics) Alright Justice League, that’s three strikes. You’re out. Or off, I guess. Off my pull-list.

I was letting your first issue or two slide by at the 22-page/$3.99 price point, despite your publisher’s “drawing the line at $2.99” pledge, and despite the fact that the solicitations for the issues promised that they would be 40-pages (minus 10 pages for ads, they should still have each included 30 pages of comics).

But this is the thire issue in a row in which I’ve paid efor 30 pages of comics and received just 22 pages. And I honestly can’t believe that you ro the guys who make and publish you think this or thisis just as much comics, or has the exact same value to a comics reader, as this or thisBesides, Jim Lee’s well-drawn (if often rather poorly-told) storyboard for Geoff Johns’ first draft of a rejected Justice League movie screenplay obviously isn’t for me. With the new Wonder Woman title focused on a story set in her present, this issue is where we first meet Wonder Woman in the New 52 (chronologically in New 52 time, if not in real-world time, as she’s had several appearances in other books set five years after this issue) and, given the chance to completely reinvent the charater as something closer to her original conception, or something brand-new for the 21st century, Johns and Lee opted so change the blue in her costume to black.

They go with the naïve, fish-out-of-water characterization of George Perez’s ‘80s reboot and, weirdly, Jodi Picoult’s short run (which was set some ten years after Perez’s), and the Amazons are once more a militant, warrior culture, with Wonder Woman their most fight-happy member. The men of Man’s World fear her and her phallic, penis-chopping sword, little girls liker her, and she lives to dismember and skewer her enemies.

It’s not just Wonder Woman that seems too hardcore here. Superman dismembers and decapitates his foes as well. I suppose the Parademons (they haven’t used that word yet, but that’s what Darkseid’s footsoldiers were called in the Old 52 U) might be cyborgs made out robot bits grafted to dead organic material or something, but the story lacked the bit where Superman says, “My X-ray vision reveals these things are already dead, so no need to hold back!” It does show him kneeing one’s jaw so hard it explodes and telling another to “Smile for me” before hitting it in the face with a truck.

Even if the Parademons are already dead, allowing him to knock their heads clean off their bodies, why does Superman cutting loose result in such sadistic violence? Is that what New 52 Superman wishes he could always do when he’s in a fight? Yuck.

And, upon her first appearance before her fellow superheroes, in which she chops an enemy’s arm off above the elbow, Hal Jordan reacts to the savage, scantily-clad Wonder Woman thusly: Again: Yuck. The last page is devoted to a full-page splash revealing Aquaman, and we learn that he has sideburns so severe they are threatening to become muttonchops, he loves jewelry, and he’s arrogant, and while my interest in, and fascination with Aquaman and the other characters of the DC Universe is deep, and I do really want to see what Johns and company do with them (For example, here we learn old Justice League villains T.O. Morrow and Professor Ivo are working alongside Titans supporting characters Silas Stone and Sarah Charles at STAR Labs, and that Cyborg is apparently being rebuilt with Apokalyptian technology; so far, Johns’ seems to be trying to tie everything together to form a grand, unified origin of the new DCU in much the same way Brian Michael Bendis tried to make everything connected in Marvel’s Ultimate Universe).

But I really haven’t liked any of what I’ve seen so far, and I’m not going to continue paying an extra buck for it. Comics are free if you wait long enough, and I’d much rather pay in patience, waiting for a library trade to satiate my curiosity, then with money.


Wonder Woman #3 (DC) With Justice League Dark and Justice League both dropped, I’ve down to three of the five New 52 books I tried out—Aquaman, Green Lantern and this one. I don’t expect to drop any of those three any time soon and, of them, Wonder Woman is by far the best.

Writer Brian Azzarello and artist Cliff Chiang are doing a superior job on both the writing and the art end of this book, and its head and shoulders above the bulk of the DC Unvierse product that’s coming out now, or has been coming out over the course of the past few years.

Their take on Wonder Woman certainly isn’t one I would have initiated were I in their shoes, nor is it one I particularly embrace, but they sure are doing it well. I particularly liked the rather old school Vertigo-like take on the Greek gods—specifically Strife, who here seems like a distant cousin of Gaiman’s Endless.

This issue offers the full reveal of Wonder Woman’s new origin—Rather than created by the Greek goddesses and given their gifts at her birth, she’s now a demi-god created by Zeus banging her mom, making her a female Hercules. Again, not a choice I would have made nor even really wanted to see, but when comics are this well made, one hardly has to agree with the creators’ take on a character or concept to enjoy the hell out of them.

Recent Marvel Trades I Waited For (Pt. 4): Uncanny X-Force Vol. 1: The Apocalypse Solution

This is another Marvel series that I fully intended to buy the trade collection of once it became available/I got around to it, but then I saw the trade sitting there on the shelf at the library and decided “Hey, why wait and pay, when I can read it tonight for free?”

The latest Marvel use of the name “X-Force” was applied to Cyclops’ Wolverine-lead wetwork/assassination/black-ops squad, which, from a safe distance, doesn’t really seem like the sort of thing Cyclops would create, but as I’ve been catching up on Astonishing X-Men, it’s become clear Marvel’s been gradually pushing Cyke into the dark, troubled, ends-justify-the-means role of a leader whose entire race is on the brink of extinction.

I thought the initial line-up was pretty amusing: It was basically all the stabbiest X-Men who had knives. But my interest wasn’t really piqued until Marvel announced they would be ending that short run of X-Force comics with issue #28, only to relaunch it with a new number one in a series that would add the popular mutant adjective “Uncanny” to the title.

This line-up included characters I knew and/or liked, like Wolverine, Deadpool and Fantomex (the French mutant super-thief from Grant Morrison’s New X-Men) and Angel/Archangel. Plus Psylocke. (The psychic ninja lady who sometimes looks Asian and sometimes doesn’t, and sometimes has purple hair and sometimes doesn’t. But who never, ever, ever seems to wear any pants at all).

I liked the fact that they would all be wearing matching gray and black versions of their own costumes even better. There’s something about small alterations to familiar costumes that I find exciting, something I can’t really explain (although I assume it has something to do with the admixture of the comfortable familiar with the exciting newness). That’s one of the things I really enjoyed about Geoff Johns’ black and white Lanterns in Blackest Night and Brightest Day.

Having read the first story arc and some of the filler material that comprises Uncanny X-Force Vol. 1: The Apocalypse Solution by Rick Remender, Jerome Opena and company, I see that the line-up works extremely well for the purposes of the book.

Old-school X-characters Angel (one of the oldest half dozen or so) and Psylocke provide the book a melodramatic center, where emotional conflicts can blossom and excuses can be provided so that the stories can potentially be “about something,” while Wolverine, Fantomex and Deadpool serve as foils. The three are similarly straightforward in their characterization, their mysteriousness, their bad-assedness and not-really-X-Men-material natures, but they all have pretty distinct personality traits and foibles and super-character markers, and are thus all different enough from one another that they’re fun to watch bounce off one another and off the straightmutants.

The premise of this X-Force series remains the same as the previous one, and both seem like they could very easily succumb to a sense of having too many Wolverines in the kitchen. But because Remender has chosen such flamboyantly distinct characters as the other Wolverines here, that is most assuredly not the case. (At least in Uncanny X-Force; I don't know how adjectiveless X-Force worked out, but just looking at the covers I can see that they did have a literal clone of Wolverine in the lineup).

The book gets off to a very, very rocky start, so rocky in fact that I had to flip ahead to make sure the whole thing didn’t look like the opening. That’s a seven-page sequence from some Wolverine: Road To Hell comic book that Marvel apparently published to hype their emergent Wolverine line about the time writer Jason Aaron launched a new Wolverine series with his “Wolverine Goes To Hell” storyline.

This story-like tidbit is written by Remender, but, in the context of what follows, it like reads like two scenes he might have cut out of story arc “The Apocalypse Solution” between the first and second drafts. In it, Fantomex gives Wolverine a ride in this UFO (That’s another thing I like about Fantomex; he has his own UFO) while they talk and drink PBR. Then they meet up with the rest of the cast, explaining the purpose of the team in the process.

And that’s it. The story starts over on the next page with the first issue of Uncanny X-Force. While there’s nothing really to the segment, it’s the art that is most offensive. It’s by Leonardo Manco and, to put it nicely, it’s not done in a style I enjoy.To put it less nicely…well, let’s just stick with nicely. Suffice it to say it is heavily photo-referenced to the point that all of the lines, which are actually dots, seem applied on top of photos, with little to nothing actually looking like it was drawn.

Opena’s art throughout the rest of the book is a definite improvement, with everything looking drawn, and looking excitingly, dramatically drawn. In addition to handling the figures in motion and faces expressing emotion well, Opena’s layouts and the angles he chooses help give the scenes—even the quiter, more mundane ones—a sense of motion and urgency.The story is fairly simple. The new X-Force team has a lead on Apocalypse, one of the X-Men’s greatest enemies, and the sort of threat that endangers the whole world. Angel has history with him, as Apocalypse once possessed him or mind-controlled him or whatever and turned him into one of his Horsemen, which meant he got blue skin and wings made out of knives for a while. That must be a pretty important X-Men storyline, because they adapted it into that awesome/terrible X-Men cartoon from the '90s.

Angel/Archangel (he can switch back and forth at will now, apparently) has a plan to deal with Apocalypse: X-Force are going to hunt him down and kill him immediately, before Cyclops and the rest of the X-Men get involved.

The hunt occurs fairly quickly, and the majority of the action is devoted to introducing four new horsemen of the apocalypse, colorful characters with bizarre mutant abilities plucked from throughout history, and having X-Force fight and then dispatch them. As for Apocalpyse, he’s not yet the big gorilla with pile-driver arms and a huge A belt buckle yet. He’s been somehow recincarnated as a little boy in a private elementary school uniform, whose main interests include toys and comics, although his followers/worshipers are intent on educating him so that he grows up to be the supervillian they want him to be one day.

So the seemingly amoral heroes of X-Force are faced with a moral dilemma, the X-Men equivalent of whether or not you’d kill Hitler as a baby if given the opportunity.

The book climaxes with the varying ways the heroes decide that question for themselves, (presumably) leaving the fallout to the next volume. Remender’s plotting and characterization was quite engaging throughout, and I do like the fact that his storyline pivoted on confronting his team of hardcore heroes with the choice to perform the very hardcore act that they tell themselves and each other they are committed to doing, in this case the act being such an extreme one that committing it actually seems beyond most of them.

The collection also includes a back-of-the-book gallery all of the many, many covers for the first four issues, including work from such disparate artists as Marko Djurdjevic, J. Scott Campbell, Rob Liefeld and Clayton Crain, a few pages of process stuff showing the evolution of a single page from script to final colors, and an exhaustingly complicated six-page prose summary of the 28-issue, 2008-2010 run of X-Force that preceded the launch of X-Force. I was actually glad they included this, as I liked this volume well enough to read another like it and, knowing it would be a few months before Uncanny X-Force Vol. 2 came out, I was sort of tempted to look for trades of the X-Force series that preceded this one. Skimming this history of X-Force, however, was more than enough to convince me not to even make the attempt: It apparently tied in very closely to all the X-Men meta-story business involving Cable and timetravel and mutant Messiah Hope and Mister Sinister and the space cat-lady that used to date Cyclops' dad in outer space or something and Greg Land art. (It looks like Wolverine had a snappy red and blue costume on for at least one panel of the run though...?).

But as for The Apocalypse Solution? I liked it an awful lot, and given my resistance to all things X-Men, I have to assume that means it's really, really good. I'll read the next collection of Remender and Opena's run on this series, when it comes out. Maybe I'll even buy it, if I don't run across it in a library before I run across it in a comic shop...

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

By the way, what are the comics that the child who will grow up to be Apcalypse reads when he's not playing with his toys?I recognize Debbie Huey's Bumperboy Loses His Marbles and Lark Pien's Long Tail Kitty.

DC's February previews reviewed

DC Comics released their solicitations for comics they plan to publish in February of 2012, and though that's the month of Valentines Day, I'm afraid I don't see a whole lot in them that I'm in love with.

In fact, the first one damn near breaks my heart.

ALL-NEW BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #16
Written by SHOLLY FISCH
Art and cover by RICK BURCHETT and DAN DAVIS
On sale FEBRUARY 8 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED E • FINAL ISSUE
It’s Valentine’s Day, and love is in the air. But so is a whole lot of sheer magical insanity, because Batgirl has a not-so-secret admirer: Bat-Mite!

F-F-Final issue? But-- but-- No! No! Nooooooooooooooo!

Brave and The Bold is like DC's best title! How could they do this?!

I imagine the reason they're doing it has something to do with the show it's based on being canceled, as they've previously canceled all of the other comics based on TV cartoons in the past once those shows end their runs.

I don't know why they have to do that though, as all-ages Batman team-up comics (especially those of the exceptionally high quality that Fisch and Burchett have been producing), should be able to stand on their own, with or without the logo of a TV show on the cover. Simply put, there will always be little boys that want to read about Batman, and it seems a damn shame not to have a comic book on the shelves each month to give them.

As with the cancelation of Justice League Unlimited the comic a few years ago, I think this is a bad idea, and one that leaves money on the table, in addition to shutting down one of the relatively few gateway comics DC still publishes for young readers (And, like JLU, this title was specifically dedicated to introducing those readers to new characters and concepts from the deep DCU each month).

Not that DC cares what I think or anything.

I'm now especially glad to hear that Fisch has gotten a new assignment starting in February with the back-ups in Action (which I mentioned in yesterday's links round-up), and I hope I see Burchett and Davis' names crop up somewhere in one of these solicitation posts soon too.


ALL-STAR WESTERN #6
Written by JUSTIN GRAY and JIMMY PALMIOTTI
Art by MORITAT and PHIL WINSLADE
Cover by LADRONN
On sale FEBRUARY 22 • 40 pg, FC, $3.99 US RATED T+
Jonah Hex fights a giant bat to the death! But even with his winged foe slain, will he and Amadeus Arkham survive being trapped in a cave with the lost tribe of Miagani Indians? Hex and Arkham must enlist help – including some familiar faces and some surprising saviors – if they’re going to make it out of this death trap and bring justice to the enslaver of Gotham’s underprivileged children. Plus: The Barbary Ghost proves that a girl can be a gang boss’s worst nightmare when she has vengeance on her mind.

That's a hell of a cover. I love the giant bat's dainty little feet. He's at once scary and cute—just like a real bat!

I don't think the solicitation writer needed to try quite so hard with this one though. Surely he or she could have just stopped writing after "Jonah Hex fights a giant bat to the death!"


BATMAN #6
Written by SCOTT SNYDER
Art by GREG CAPULLO and JONATHAN GLAPION
Cover by GREG CAPULLO
...
On sale FEBRUARY 15 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
...
Trapped far beneath Gotham City and hunted by the Talon – the Court of Owls’ unstoppable killer – Batman lies bleeding and broken. With no way out and no one to help, is this the end for The Dark Knight?

Say, that's a pretty striking cover by Capullo!

Is it a coincidence that the Court of Owls' unstoppable killer is named the Talon, while one of the alternate evil Earth's from the post-52 DCU featured an evil Robin to Owlman's Batman named Talon (A character that, if I remember correctly, first appeared on the Teen Titans cartoon and, at this point, has logged more appearances in Tiny Titans than in any other DC comics).

Oh, and this is probably a good time to point out that the flagship Batman book is rated "T for Teen," which, in DC's system, means “Appropriate for readers age 12 and older. May contain mild violence, language and/or suggestive themes.” Of course, TEC is and was rated T as well, and the first issue of that series ended with an image of the Joker's face carefully skinned from his head and nailed to a wall.

So I have my doubts that the DCU Bat-books, numerous though they are, are going to fill the void of a kid-friendly Batman comic left by the cancellation of Brave and the Bold. None of them are meant for anyone under 12, and, as you're probably aware if you've read many of DC's T-rated books, saying they're fit for 12-year-olds is assuming rather generously that the 12-year-olds like gore and killing (And perhaps a whole lot of them do, although their parents, who may or may not want to buy them comics, might like them liking it a lot less).


BATMAN BEYOND UNLIMITED #1
Written by ADAM BEECHEN, DEREK FRIDOLFS and DUSTIN NGUYEN
Art by NORM BREYFOGLE, DUSTIN NGUYEN and DEREK FRIDOLFS
Cover by DUSTIN NGUYEN
On sale FEBRUARY 29 • 48 pg, FC, $3.99 US • RATED T
A new era begins with the debut of the oversized, monthly BATMAN BEYOND UNLIMITED, featuring the print debut of the new Justice League Beyond!_In the Batman Beyond chapter, legendary Batman artist Norm Breyfogle returns to draw the Dark Knight of the future with best-selling writer Adam Beechen. In “10,000 Clowns,” an onslaught of new Jokerz is plaguing Gotham City – and the implications of this chaotic clown menace could have disastrous consequences for Terry McGinnis and Bruce Wayne!_And the debut of the Justice League Beyond is here, courtesy of the BATMAN: STREETS OF GOTHAM art team of Dustin Nguyen and Derek Fridolfs, as the first two digital-first chapters are available in print for the first time! Batman Beyond is a new recruit in the mighty Justice League, but the team will be immediately tested by a very Neo Gotham-related enemy! How will the team work together to combat this threat?

Damn you DC, why have you done this to me…? I go way out of my way to find Norm Breyfogle art, especially Norm Breyfogle Batman art, but, at the same time, I go way out of my way to avoid Adamn Beechen scripts. And they're paired as a creative team on this title?

Further complicating things, this is a split book featuring Batman Beyond, which I'm not really interested in, and the Justice League from Batman Beyond, which I'm a lot more interested in (I love bikini top and hot pants Barda).

Oh man I don't know...the art team of Dustin Nguyen and Derek Fridolfs on the back-up is pretty awesome too...

I'm gonna have to think on this for a while. Luckily I've still got about three more months to do so.

Oh hey! Note that this is a comic book based on a long since canceled cartoon show! Like Batman: The Brave and The Bold, it was originally canceled when the show it was based on was canceled, but was then brought back years later to soldier on without the show, and it was a modest enough success that DC turned it from a miniseries into an ongoing to a new, post-"New 52" ongoing.

Note also that even though this is based on a cartoon show, it's rated T instead of E for Everyone.


BIRDS OF PREY #6
Written by DUANE SWIERCZYNSKI
Art and cover by JAVIER PINA
On sale FEBRUARY 15 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
You’ve never felt better. You’re eating right, sleeping soundly, kicking butt at work. But there’s one tiny problem. You’re being hunted through the streets of Gotham City by five women who seem dead-set on sticking you with syringes and even chopping your head off with a sword. But listen, buddy – you don’t understand. These women? The so-called Birds of Prey? They’re the only things standing between you and instant death, triggered by some creepy guy who’s been secretly controlling your mind for a year now…

Let's see, Black Canary, Starling, Katana, Poison Ivy...that's four. Is Barbara "Batgirl" Gordon officially part of the team now? Because she would make five. And she's on the cover again.


That's a pretty interesting cover by Stanley "Artgerm" Lau for February's issue of Captain Atom. I like the asymmetry of it, and the idiosyncratic jumble of monster markers on the left-half of Cap's face.


Simon Bisley’s covers for Deathstroke have been awesome every month, I particularly love this one, as it shows Slade crying through his eye patch.


That's a pretty interesting collection of heroes on the cover of DC Universe Online Legends, and would make for a fine Justice League line-up. I dropped the title pretty early on due to its sheer awfulness, but maybe I should check out the eventual trades from a library in the future though.

If nothing else, it has all the old, superior costumes in it...!


That's a pretty swell cover on Demon Knights. I think it'd look even better with some speed lines or something though; took me a second to realize what that lady was doing with that dinosaur.


THE FLASH #6
Written by FRANCIS MANAPUL and BRIAN BUCCELLATO
Art and cover by FRANCIS MANAPUL
...
On sale FEBRUARY 22 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
...
Struggling with the climactic aftermath of his battle with Mob Rule last issue, The Flash must solve a murder mystery that dates back 150 years! Is this case too cold even for Barry Allen? Also: Learn the origins of Central and Keystone City!

I kind of like the way Barry's Flash suit is exploding in a little red starburst out of his Flash ring on this cover. I've been hearing good thing about Manapul's Flash—anyone care to confirm or deny this?

This issue in particular sounds kind of interesting; one of the things I really like about fictional universes like the DCU is the world-building involved, and while I enjoyed all of the effort Geoff Johns put into Gotham-icizing (or Opali-izing) Keystone and Central Cities, I don't think I ever read anything about their foundings.


FLASHPOINT: THE WORLD OF FLASHPOINT FEATURING BATMAN TP
Written by BRIAN AZZARELLO, J.T. KRUL, JIMMY PALMIOTTI and PETER MILLIGAN
Art by EDUARDO RISSO, MIKEL JANIN, JOE BENNETT, GEORGE PEREZ, FERNANDO BLANCO, SCOTT KOBLISH and JOHN DELL
Cover by DAVE JOHNSON
On sale MARCH 14 • 272 pg, FC, $17.99 US
Don’t miss this Batman volume collecting BATMAN: KNIGHT OF VENGEANCE #1-3, DEADMAN AND THE FLYING GRAYSONS #1- 3, DEATHSTROKE AND THE CURSE OF THE RAVAGER #1-3 and SECRET SEVEN #1-3.
Not a dream, not an imaginary story, not an elseworld. This is Flash Fact: When Barry Allen wakes at his desk, he discovers the world has changed. Family is alive, loved ones are strangers, and close friends are different, gone or worse. It’s a world on the brink of a cataclysmic war – but where are Earth’s Greatest Heroes to stop it?

Ooh, I don’t like the way they’re collecting Flahspoint at all. At only three issues, collecting the individual minis by themselves would have made for some exceptionally slim volumes. Grouping them by character makes some amount of sense, but only half of these really seem to have a strong Batman connection (I"m guessing anyway; I only read two of them, and I know no Bat-related folks show up in Secret Seven; there doesn't seem to be any Batman connections in the Deathstroke series, but I don't actually know what I'm talking about.

Of the Flashopint books I read, Batman and maybe the Cantebury Cricket are the only one’s I’d recommend to anyone beyond the main miniseries, and the various Flashopint trades in this month's solicitations don't really allow readers to be all that selective in their reading, as all of the good bits are going to be packaged with a whole lot of the...less good bits.


Wow, those are some pretty serious cameras that John and the gang are rocking...


Ha! Is this the first time Liefeld has drawn Batman? I’m assuming it must be, as I’m pretty sure I’d remember a Batman as hilarious as that one. He looks like a Macy parade balloon.


Not quite sure how I feel about this cover. I kind of love it and hate it simultaneously. I think it's the chin-strap of the helmet-shaped mushroom cloud that's causing most of the hate.

I do want to point out the back-up in this issue is by John Arcudi and Richard Corben, and it deals with the supernatural. Are they doing Weird War Stories in the back of this title now, instead of just straight war stories? Because that seems like a pretty good idea. As good an idea as hiring Arcudi and Corben to do just about anything at DC.


THE SAVAGE HAWKMAN #6
Written by TONY S. DANIEL and JAMES BONNEY
Art and cover by PHILIP TAN
On sale FEBRUARY 22 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
Hawkman comes face to face with Jim Craddock, a.k.a. the Gentleman Ghost, a malevolent spirit obsessed with finding an ancient relic called the Mortis Orb. Can Hawkman stop Craddock from using the power of the Orb to unleash hell on Earth?

I kind of love the Gentleman Ghost, who has a hell of a great design, by Joe Kubert. He's basically an invisible man in formal wear.As for the new "New 52" Gentleman Ghost? Ugh. That's all I can say about it. Well, maybe "blah" and "ick," as well as "ugh."


SHOWCASE PRESENTS: THE LOSERS VOL. 1 TP
Written by ROBERT KANIGHER
Art by RUSS HEATH, ROSS ANDRU, MIKE ESPOSITO, KEN BARR and JOHN SEVERIN
Cover by JOE KUBERT
On sale MARCH 21 • 432 pg, B&W, $19.99 US
Collected from G.I. COMBAT #138 and OUR FIGHTING FORCES #123- 150, Captain Johnny Cloud, Captain Storm, Gunner Mackey and Sarge Clay – team up as The Losers. Even though these heroes always won in the end, they had to do everything the hard way!

Hooray! This month's solicitations are sadly light on Showcases and DCCPs, so this is especially welcome.


STORMWATCH #6
Written by PAUL CORNELL
Art and cover by MIGUEL SEPULVEDA
...
On sale FEBRUARY 1 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US RATED T+
What lurks within the Stormwatch space station? As the origin of their alien HQ is revealed, what’s left of the decimated Stormwatch roster regroups and a new team is formed! Apollo, Midnighter, Martian Manhunter...who’s in, who’s out and who’s the new team leader? Note: The catastrophic events of this issue – especially the secret of Stormwatch HQ – will be felt in upcoming issues of GRIFTER and VOODOO!

The solicitations for the first few issues of this series read like Cornell was molding the team in the spirit of Grant Morrison’s JLA. The first issues connected with Cornell's own Demon Knight, and had some small intersection with the first issues of Superman. Here two more titles are explicitly mentioned, and the solicit for Suicide Squad also mentions a connection to Stormwatch. In a sense, I wonder if this isn't the super-team book that's actually serving as the new DCU's true flagship title, at least in the way it apparently weaves in and out of so many other books.

The things happening in it seem to affect the rest of the DCU in a way that the events in, say, Justice League don't. Of course, that could simply be because come February, JL will still be focused on its opening Justice League: Year One story arc, while Stormwatch is set in the present.


SWAMP THING #6
Written by SCOTT SNYDER_Art by MARCO RUDY
Cover by YANICK PAQUETTE_
...
On sale FEBRUARY 1 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T+
...
The Rot is winning, and its necropolis in the American desert is nearly complete. With Abigail Arcane all but lost to its power and the herald of Sethe risen, Alec Holland will bitterly regret trying to flee his destiny as Swamp Thing…but even if he wanted to do the right thing, it’s too late now!

ANIMAL MAN #6
Written by JEFF LEMIRE
Art by JOHN PAUL LEON, TRAVEL FOREMAN and JEFF HUET
Cover by TRAVEL FOREMAN
On sale FEBRUARY 1 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T+
Before he and his family became hunted by The Rot, Buddy Baker starred in a low budget indie Super Hero film. Now we get to “watch” the movie, courtesy of director Jeff Lemire and guest cinematographer John Paul Leon!

I didn't realize it until just now, but apparently Swamp Thing and Animal Man are pretty closely connected? Or, at the very least, the two protagonists are facing the same villains?


This is a very nice cover by Cliff Chiang.


Is that tattoo on Aqualad’s arm an eel? Has it always been an eel? And it took me this long to notice it?