Meanwhile...

This week at Robot 6, I have a review of Dean Trippe's stunning autobiographical comic Something Terrible, which, in all honesty, is one of the best Batman stories I've ever read, and on par with anything Grant Morrison's ever written about the interface between or relationship of fictional super-characters and our real world. And the fact that Trippe does it all in so few pages? I'm still a little awed by it, to be honest.

And earlier in the week at Good Comics For Kids, I reviewed Neon Genesis Evangelion: Shinji Ikari Detective Diary Vol. 1, the first in a new series of manga based on the anime, this one reimagining our hero as a boy detective. It's kind of insane, but a funnier, more pleasant sort of insane than the recent Campus Apocalypse reimagining was.

Comic book shop: October 9-16

Afterlife With Archie #1 (Archie Comics) Archie comics exploring, parodying or otherwise exploiting various pop culture trends or other genres is nothing new, in fact it's kind of been their business model for a while now. Usually when they look beyond Riverdale for plot points or gag material, they do so with tongue firmly in cheek. Not this time; if there's a parodic element to Afterlife, the publisher is delivering it with one hell of a straight face.

That is due in large part to the presence of artist Francesco Francavilla, who is working far, far outside the usual Archie Comics spectrum of style, redesigning the characters by integrating them into his own personal style. This doesn't look like an Archie comic, it looks like a Francavilla comic, and though the characters are recognizable, it is more through their signifiers than particular physical traits (Jughead, for example, no longer has the elongated, finger-like nose and pointed chin, but he does wear his little crown hat, so you know it's Jughead. Also, everyone calls him "Jughead").

The proceedings are remarkably good-looking too...I honestly can't remember the last time I picked up an Archie comic and thought to myself, "Hey, this is fantastic artwork!" (As much as I dig Dan Parent and Norm Breyfogle and some of the others who work on Archie Comics these days, they still look like Archie Comics; this looks like a Dark Horse comic).

In addition to the style and storytelling, Francavilla ratchets up the spooky, horror aspects through Halloween coloring (Most of the book is colored in various shades black and orange, with some whites and purplish blues here and there) and the staging which keeps characters faces mostly in shadow or otherwise somewhat obscured.

As for the story, it is by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, and the full-page opening in which the words "This is How the End of the World Begins..." seem to be scrawled on a black wall in orange-ish blood is a pretty good indication of just how dark and...not teen gag comic-y this comic book is.

The plot? Jughead Jones appears on the steps of Sabrina the Teenage Witch's house, cradling the body of his beloved dog Hot Dog, who was hit by a car, and begging for help. Eventually she relents in her opposition to using necromancy, and they return Hot Dog to life, or something like it ("Sometimes dead is better," one of her aunts quotes Pet Semetary to the kids).

Well, Hot Dog comes back, but he's been...changed, and, after biting Jughead, Jughead is changed as well, and he bites a character I think is supposed to be Mr. Weatherbee (It's hard to tell with their noses so...realistic) and then stalks toward the Halloween dance. And you know what Jughead's appetite is like!

So it's a zombie apocalypse in Riverdale, essentially. In some of the copious back-matter, Aguirre-Sacasa mentions that the book is "an ongoing comic book," which sounds...difficult to pull off, to say the least as I can't imagine they'll go all Walking Dead with it. Perhaps there will be other Archie/horror mash-ups with other artists drawing them in the future...? Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. For now, this was an incredible, remarkably, surprisingly good horror comic that just so happens to feature the Riverdale gang, and if you like Archie comics, zombie comics and/or Francavilla, you're going to want to read this, either now or in eventual trade.

Apparently, there was one of those weird variant schemes where the publisher publishes covers particular to a particular comics shop if they order enough comics. My shop apparently did so, which explains why a week after release I had no trouble finding a copy; I think I counted somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 left on the shelf. Unfortunately, they were all this cover, and while it's a nice cover and all, I would have preferred the Andrew Pepoy variant, featuring, as it does, Betty in sheer negligee.

Batman '66 #4 (DC Comics) While a relatively minor Batman villain, The Mad Hatter is particularly long-lived on, debuting way back in 1948. Over the years, there have been a couple different ways of portraying his particular brand of criminal insanity: At times he's obsessed with hats and the stealing of rare and valuable hats like some kind of crazy collector (With Batman's cowl being a favorite target), at other times he's obsessed with Lewis Carroll's Alice books and sometimes he's a little of both (The Carroll-obsession has become the prevailing portrayal, which I approve of, although the guy who is just plain crazy for hats is pretty funny; apparently there are a lot of different ways to play a comic book character named The Mad Hatter).

The one that appears in the first half of the latest issue of Batman '66 is, of course, the one from the television show: The one just plain crazy for hats, one who never even mentions Carroll's creations or wears a "In this size" card in his top hat. In this story, by Jeff Parker, Batman and Robin—as Batman and Robin—take Alfred to London, where they must stop the Hatter from stealing the most valuable of all hats, The Crown Jewels. Johnathan Case draws this one, and I think it might have featured my favorite script so far.

Parker has a few great moments, as in one where a bystander to the robbery asks the Hatter what's so great about hats, and gets a two-page speech in response, or the last panel featuring the character being hauled off to jail.

The second story still finds the pair in England, but now drawn by Sandy Jarrell. There they discover that everything they thought they knew about the relationship between The Mad Hatter and The Clock King was wrong!

Sadly, no cameo from Knight and Squire '66.

Classic Popeye #15 (IDW) Hey, it's another issue of the absolute hardest comic I ever try to review—or "review," as the case may be—as each issue feature the same basic cast, the same creator and is of the same level of fairly high quality!

In this issue, a mad scientist tries to turn Popeye into a dog, and accidentally gifts him with the power of animal speech, turning him into a Dr. Doolittle—at least for the length of a single story. Perhaps the powers wore off after the end of the story...

Then there's a story of Popeye's railroad, shorts featuring solo stories of Wimpy and Ham Gravy, and two one-page gag strips. The most notable difference in this particular issues is the fact that the prose story, "Bugtown Capers," is not a Popeye story, and thus I was even less likely to read it than I was all the other prose stories I don't ever actually read (I did skim it, just to see if the words "Swee'pea" or "Pappy" appeared at all, but, as far as I could tell, it had nothing to do with Popeye.

Forever Evil: Arkham War #1 (DC) Following up on the events promised in the Bane and Scarecrow issues from Villains Month, this tells the story set-up in those: Following the apparent deaths of Batman and the Justice Leaguers (and Nightwing and Red Robin in no position to fight armies of villains), the Crime Syndicate has given Gotham to The Scarecrow and The Penguin, the formers serving as their go-between, the latter as the new mayor of post-apocalyptic Gotham (Penguin as mayor! Just like in that old Batman '66 TV show, and Batman Returns, and Batman: Earth One!) The various villains freed from Arkham are all assigned sections of the city to (somehow) rule and defend (although I imagine ten or twenty concerned citizens with firearms or even baseball bats and chains could destroy many of the inmates, most of whom aren't known for their physical prowess or for having super-powers). (Bat-villains with territories! Just like "No Man's Land!" And, I don't know, maybe Arkham City...? Is that the plot of that game...?).

But Bane is invading Gotham City with an army form his home country, all of whom wear symbols that look like the white part of his mask on their uniforms (and which actually rather resemble Ra's al Ghul's demon head logo). They immediately take over Blackgate Prison, and recruit the inmates there into their army (Bane with an army of freed Blackgate Prisoners! Just like in The Dark Knight Rises!)

It is all leading up to a Bane Vs. Pretty Much Everyone Else war, which should occupy the majority of the next five issues, although here he just deals with a non-dancing Professor Pyg, breaking his hands but not killing him, so that he can "spread the message" (and, of course, reappear in future Batman comics down the road).

The plot is jury-rigged from various components, or, to be kind, "allusions" to other Batman comics, and it remains to be seen how it will play out, and/or how interesting it can possibly be, given the fact that Bane is basically Batman on super-steroids with an army of gun-wielding terrorists, so he can personally take pretty much anyone Arkham can throw at him (and I think he has defeated almost all of these guys in the past at one point or another) and it doesn't seem like the Syndicate would let Bane conquer Gotham and take it away from their appointed lieutenants in The Society (see the next review for an example).

A couple of nitpicky, nerdy observations:

—I don't care for the way Scot Eaton, who pencils the issue but is inked by three different artists (and the shifts in style are quite noticeable) draws Bane; he's bulked up to silly proportions, with a build more like that of the Incredible Hulk than a human being of any kind. His hands, for example, are bigger than the heads of most of the other characters, and his own head looks tiny atop his Thanksgiving Day parade balloon of a body.

—Eaton's Penguin is gigantic; about as tall as The Scarecrow, which can't be right. 

—A one-page splash of a riot in Blackgate (see above) reveals some of the villains being kept there: The big, muscular New 52 Tweedles (traditonally Arkham inmates), David Finch's White Rabbit character from the first arc of the second volume of Batman: The Dark Knight, someone who looks like he might be The Reaper (Batman: Year Two can't possibly be continuity anymore, can it...?), The Emperor Penguin character that I think appeared during Jon Layman's TEC run and, most surprisingly, a character that looks like Ragdoll II from Gail Simone's run on Secret Six, who as both a legacy character and a character descended from a Golden Age Villain should probably be on Earth 2 rather than here (But then, Johns is using Stargirl in JLoA, so I don't really get how the New 52 universe was composed, at least when it came to particular ingredients from particular Earths).

—I was curious where Gotham's other heroes have all gone. Batman and Catwoman are "dead" (Or are they?), Red Robin is lost in time and Nightwing has been captured by The Society, but where's Batgirl? Or the The Birds of Prey? Or Huntress and her Earth 2 pal Powergirl...? Seems like there's a lot of work for the girls of Gotham to do at the moment, and, so far, they are conspicuously absent.

It's not great, but it's not terrible, either. It's a mediocre comic, but I read so few super-comics these days that I'll happily read a mediocre comic tied into an exciting event comic I'm reading.

Forever Evil: Rogues Rebellion #1 (DC) And hey, speaking of mediocre comics tied into event comics...! An impulse buy spurred on by the relative quality of the Villains Month issue of The Flash featuring The Rogues (I guess that event did get me to buy at least one comic I wouldn't have otherwise) and, to a lesser extent, the Grodd issue and the events of Forever Evil #2, I found myself interested in enough in seeing how the New 52 Flash villains fare in a world ruled by actually evil, villains-with-a-capital-V villains (As writer Brian Buccellato and, before him, Geoff Johns and Mark Waid, write The Rogues, they're basically bank robbers and fairly decent—at least for supervillains—human beings who aren't into murder and mayhem for murder and mayhem's sake.

This issue is pretty much pure fight comic, with Buccellato backtracking a bit to re-cover elements of Forever Evil, and then sending The Rogues home to Central City to see the horror inflicted on it by a Flash-powered Grodd. While checking on Golden Glider in the hospital, a bunch of mostly Firestorm villains appear to inform The Rogues they need to get with the Syndicates program (Black Bison, Plastique, Hyena, Typhoon and Multiplex), and then they all fight.

When the fight is over, The Syndicate's Deathstorm and Power Ring appear to fight The Rogues—I imagine that will be issue #2.

The artwork leaves a lot to be desired. Part of it is by Patrick Zircher and part of it is by Scott Hepburn. Both are fine, but their styles aren't the least bit compatible.

Zircher, who draws the early portions of the book, works in a very realistic, slightly gritty style that seems appropriate to a world lit only by the fire of burning buildings.  (There's no electricity, and a full eclipse).

Hepburn's artwork is much more cartoony, with fun, exaggerated character designs, but it sure clashes with Zircher's work.

Hawkeye #13 (Marvel Entertainment) I was a little lost with this issue, to be honest. I took me a while to figure out that this was actually set before and during parts of  the last Hawkeye comic or comics (It seems like it's been a while since I last read an issue of this series, annual or otherwise) I read. On a tighter schedule or in a trade paperback, that probably wouldn't be a problem but it took me a while to figure out that this was re-showing various scenes from earlier comics from different points of view, mainly that of Hawkeye Clint Barton rather than Hawkeye Kate Bishop or their dog.

That aside, it was pretty excellent. David Aja returns for this issue. I am shocked to see that The Avengers still use pagers. Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Hank Pym...none of those guys have invented anything more super-sciencey than a pager...?

SpongeBob Comics #25 (United Plankton Pictures) Wow, 25 issues already?

This is a Haloween issue, as the image of SpongeBob dressed as a witch on the cover no doubt clued you in on. All eigh of the stories—nine, if you count Nate Neals six-page strip on the table of contents page—are Halloween themed, dealing with either kid-friendly "horror" or costumes. This issue's contributors include the likes of Andy Rementer, Stephen DeStefano, Marc Rosenthal, James Kochalka and Michael T. Gilbert. As per usual, it's more treat than trick.

Review: Superman/Wonder Woman #1

The first stumbling block that I personally as a consumer of comic books and fan of DC superhero characters would encounter is on the cover of this issue, right below the big, over-sized "#1": It costs $3.99.

DC's gradual creep toward the $3.99 price point continues, and here the extra buck gets you four extra story pages and a wrap-around, fold-out cover the size of three covers all lined up, with half of it depicting various Superman allies and enemies (only one of which, Cat Grant, appears within the book) and the other half various Wonder Woman allies and enemies (none of whom appear within).

The next, is, of course, the premise: This is a book about Superman and Wonder Woman, who are currently dating, a romance that so far seems to have played out almost entirely in the pages of Geoff Johns' Justice League comics (When I was reading Wonder Woman, it wasn't clear that Superman even existed in the setting of that book, and while I believe Wondy's appeared in the Super-comics a few times). So apparently the space to explore their relationship is being carved out here in this new book.

The relationship itself  feels rather weird and wrong, and I suppose part of that is unavoidable, in large part because Lois Lane is so foundational to all Superman stories in all media—and there are a lot of 'em—up until this point. Superman doesn't have to be married to Lois, especially if he's a younger, rebooted, "Ultimate" Superman, but having him single or dating a mermaid or Lana Lang and at least rebuffing, being rebuffed by or verbally jousting screwball comedy-style with Lois would work far better than having him date another hero from another franchise (In much the same way it would feel...off if Batman were dating Mera or Green Lantern were dating Catwoman).

But mostly the relationship doesn't feel right because there was no real thought or effort put into developing one between the characters, a problem that is somewhat endemic to The New 52, which is a very young "universe"—about two years old in our time, five years old in their time—in which we've only been shown a few glimpses of the past in flashback, and then the present, with a long stretch of "lost" time in between.

So Superman and Wonder Woman meet one another while battling Darkseid's invasion in Justice League #1-#6 and, after five years of being teammates in many adventures we as readers aren't privy to, suddenly they start making out and decide to be a couple.

It wasn't a love at first sight thing, nor was it a drunken accidental hook-up that leads to something more, nor, as far as we can tell, was it some sort of mutual crush that circumstance kept from reaching fruition for half a decade, nor was it a gradual, budding romance between friends. The way it was presented in the Johns-written Justice League #12 was that they were going to kiss and then start dating, because that's what the script said to do.

With a book now devoted to their relationship, one might expect DC to be able to at least retroactively convince readers that there's anything at all between the characters aside from complimentary color schemes on their costumes, but writer Charles Soule either isn't up to the challenge, or couldn't work out how to meet it while also meeting the demands of a superhero fight comic.

I don't mean this to sound like the gay joke it probably will, but I got a better sense of Batman and Superman's relationship in the recently launched Batman/Superman (and in plenty of other "first" meetings between the World's Finest characters) than I got a sense of Wonder Woman and Superman's relationship here.

I suppose it doesn't help much that these new versions of the characters are still pretty ill-defined, and Soule seems to be writing a "Year One" version of Superman from the first arc of Justice League and Action Comics, but a "Year Five" Wonder Woman from the later arcs of Justice League (although the world seems to react to the superheroes as if it were still Year One too, so...I don't know, I guess it's just a mess all around).

Soule opens in medias res, as Wonder Woman is about to watch Superman dismantle a massive storm, and, when he sees a plane headed into the danger zone, they split up.

The rest of the book is divided between scenes of derring do, with Superman fighting the storm and Wonder Woman first saving a plane and then being attacked by a military ship which she immediately counterattacks (In keeping with most modern depictions of Wonder Woman, this one is all warrior, no princess), and conversation scenes.

We see Clark Kent talking with Cat Grant about blogging and online business models, we see Diana training and talking with an unnamed Amazon who for some reason wasn't on Paradise Island when its entire population was turned to stone (Not sure why she's here at all, as the role of Someone For Wonder Woman To Talk To could easily have gone to someone in her own massive supporting cast...unless there's some rule where Soule's not allowed to touch anyone else from the Wonder Woman cast...?).

And then we see the two of them talking about their relationship, which Superman wants to keep secret for...reasons I'm not clear about (Obviously, Clark Kent can't be seen dating Wonder Woman, but why can't Superman...? If his enemies go after her to get to him well, she's just as capable of tearing apart Lex Luthor's giant robots and battle suits as Superman is).

There's a rather weird exchange where Wonder Woman disses Superman's fighting ability, saying "You have things to learn, and I'm just the woman to teach you," and, in the big fight scene at the climax of the book, we see panels of Wonder Woman fighting a Superman foe with inset panels of our heroes kissing and touching one another, implying that Wondy was talking about more than combat when she said she had things to teach Superman (Which is, again, kinda weird; she grew to adulthood in an all-female culture, and her only relationship was with the first man she had ever met, Steve Trevor. Superman, on the other hand, grew up in a world of male and female relationships, and whether he has much more sexual experience than she does or not, he is at least much more familiar with the concept than this Wonder Woman would or should be).

As for the Superman foe that shows up, it's Doomsday, which is a bit of surprise. He just recently appeared in the Greg Pak-written Batman/Superman #3.1, suggesting the most likely place for Doomsday to show up next would be Batman/Superman and/or Action Comics, which Pak is also writing.

Meanwhile, someone somewhere has sent a flash drive with a picture of Superman and Wonder Woman kissing on it to Cat Grant, but she hasn't opened her mail yet. If Doomsday doesn't kill Superman and Wonder Woman (and I'm not clear if Doomsday has killed Superman in The New 52's five "lost" years, or if he's even ever appeared on Earth before), then they may have to deal with their secret relationship getting out in the open sooner than Superman would like.

The artwork, which I've so far neglected to mention, is penciled by Tony S. Daniel and inked by Matt Banning. Daniel's presences is usually enough to drive me from a book, but I must admit that this is the best work I've seen from him to date. I feel like I've said that a couple of times previously too, which, if it's true and it's not just me thinking that, then it's a good sign: He continues to improve.

I think some of that may be down to the coloring by Tomeu Morey, who usually works with Guillem March, whose work almost always looks good. Daniel does a lot of big, Jim Lee-like lay-outs, splash pages and splashy panels that bleed from one page into the next, but he also handles the talky scenes fairly well, and the aforementioned romantic scene was actually handled with quite a bit of subtlety.

That said, Daniel still isn't a good enough artist with a unique enough style to make up for the flaws in the script, premise and characterization, and, I think, even the most forgiving and generous of readers will find this is little more than a pretty generic New 52 book, reading like a Justice League fill-in issue during which the other 2/3 of the team were too busy.

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It's rated T for Teen, so here's some of that "mild violence":

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Oh wait, I forgot to complain about the splash pages! There are 24 pages in the book altogether, but a lot of wasted space.  There are three full-page splashes, showing rather innocuous action panels like Wonder Woman caught in an explosion, Superman being punched out of the water and into a plane, and Doomsday's hand on a bloodied Wonder Woman's throat.

There's a single two-page splash, seen above (it doesn't really look that bad; that's all I could fit on my scanner). So there's five of the 24 pages right there.

But there are a few other pages that are so close to being splashes that they might as well be splashes. Take the first page of the book, the first image from the interior in this post (essentially a splash with two tiny inset panels). Pages 2 and 3 contain just six panels, the first of those occupying all of page 2 and bleeding over into page 3.

And there are two instances of Wonder Woman in action filling up two pages, with smaller inset panels. So pages 8 and 9 are almost a double-page splash of Wondy trying to right a falling airplane, with three smaller, inset panels bordering it. Similarly, pages 18 and 19 show Wondy tearing the guns off a Norweigian destroyer that fired on her, with five smaller panels around it.

I suppose in a trade all these big, bold images might be welcome—certainly they'd be common in a manga collection—but when you're already feeling a bit ripped-off by paying $4 for a comic book, it sure doesn't make one feel better about the purchase to see so much of the comic devoted to pages devoted to single panels.

Yeah, it's 24 pages of comics, but it reads more like 12.

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Oh hey, here's a positive thing! I like the logo. I don't really like the stamp-like quality of the current Wonder Woman title's logo, which they ditch here, and I really like how unusual and, I don't know, fresh, I guess, the "Superman" in the title looks rendered in more simple white text on a blue field, rather than in the traditional Superman font with the big, yellow letters forming a sort of monument of a logo. 

I'm especially pleased they didn't try to somehow entwine the Superman S-Shield and a "WW" together like they did with the S-Shield and Bat-symbol in the pre-New 52 Superman/Batman title.

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Now that you've read my poorly organized thoughts on the book, might I suggest you check out Tom Bondurant's better-organized and better-written review at Robot 6...? During the course of it, he offers an intriguing thought: What if a Superman/Wonder Woman book came out in the old DCU, where the two were close friends and long-time allies, with a platonic relationship more akin to the one that powered Superman/Batman...? That would have been an interesting book to read, to say the least, and I think it would have been kind of fascinating to see Wonder Woman and her allies and enemies essentially "promoted" to World's Finest status. I think it would have went a way towards helping legitimize the character as part of DC's so-called Trinity, and might have generated more interest in the monthly title.

DC's January previews reviewed

I counted only 49-51 New 52U books this month, depending on whether or not you want to count the He-Man/DCU crossover story and the possible future Damian Wayne miniseries, and a whole bunch of those are miniseries revolving around the events of miniseries Forever Evil. That is, they're temporary comics.

So we should probably see some new books like The Black Bat, Plastic Man Unchained, Enemy Ace: 2013, Wrath of The Red Bee, Dungeons & Richard Dragon and Mr. Mxyzptlk De-Reboots The New 52 debuting in the spring, when Forever Evil wraps up.

In the meantime, you can see what DC plans to publish in Janary of next year here, and see what I had to say about some of those books below.

ACTION COMICS #27
Written by GREG PAK
Art and cover by AARON KUDER
1:25 SCRIBBLENAUTS UNMASKED variant cover
On sale JANUARY 8 • 32 pg, FC, $3.99 US • RATED T
Retailers: This issue will ship with two covers. Please see the order form for more information.
Superman takes on the brutal Beast Lord as startling revelations are made about our Earth’s underground world! Plus: more on the mysterious Ghost Soldier!

Hey, this actually looks and sounds sort of interesting...!

Now, what the fuck is a SCRIBBLENAUT...? (Don't answer; I don't really care).

Jeez, Superman must have been floating there forever to give Hex enough time to keep reloading and shooting in order to produce that many shell casings. And Hex must not be all that bright if he keeps shooting—I would imagine that after the first 150 or so shots failed to hurt Superman, Hex might try a different approach.

Weird. Aquaman looks like a bad special effect in a cheap movie here, like a stunt man on wires in front of a green screen being yanked out of the digitally-drawn water, rather than a swimming superhero torpedoing himself out of the water...

BATGIRL #27
Written by GAIL SIMONE
Art by FERNANDO PASARIN
Cover by ALEX GARNER
...
On sale JANUARY 15 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
Retailers: This issue will ship with two covers. Please see the order form for more information.
In this tale tying into “GOTHTOPIA,” what kind of sick world pairs up Batgirl and the woman who tried to kill Jim Gordon — Knightfall?!

Aaa! Batman & Robin's Batgirl is in my head, and I can't get it out! Get it out! Damn you, cover to Batgirl #27!

BATMAN BY DOUG MOENCH AND KELLEY JONES VOL. 1 HC
Written by DOUG MOENCH
Art by KELLEY JONES, JOHN BEATTY and EDUARDO BARRETO
Cover by KELLEY JONES
On sale MARCH 19 • 432 pg, FC, $39.99 US
In these moody 1990s tales from BATMAN #515-525, 527-532 and 535-536, Batman emerges from the shadows to face foes including Killer Croc, The Scarecrow, Mr. Freeze, Two-Face and more. Plus, don’t miss guest-appearances by Nightwing, Robin, Deadman and Swamp Thing.

Oh man, here's a rare instance of my wanting to buy a trade featuring comics I already own in single issues just because I love the comics it contains so very much. I suppose I could buy this for my book shelf, and it would allow me to empty a sizable stack of comics from my longbox comics midden (I'd want to hang on to those Deadman issues though, as they feature awesome glow-in-the-dark covers).

This is probably my all-time favorite Batman creative team, perhaps tied with that Alan Grant and Norm Breyfogle. These comics aren't perfect, and Moench's writing could be a bit purple, his dialogue so portentous and artificial that seemed like something from a 1950s horror comic or a mystery murder stage play. But he and the Kelley Jones/John Beatty art team played off one another pretty perfectly, and these comics were all some really great character portrait type stories featuring Batman's greatest villains and some incredibly unlikely allies, including Swampt Thing, making an extremely rare DCU appearance.

I'm a huge fan of Jones' artwork, and he's at the very height of his powers here. Highest possible EDILW recommendation! (So long as they don't also collect the letter pages, which featured more than a few gushing, embarrassing letters from yours truly).

BATWOMAN #27
Written by MARC ANDREYKO
Art by JEREMY HAUN
Cover by STEPHANE ROUX
...
On sale JANUARY 22 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T+
Retailers: This issue will ship with two covers. Please see the order form for more information.
Batwoman faces off against the new Black Spider as the mystery deepens! What do the wealthy citizens of Gotham City have that he wants? Will Batwoman’s overconfidence cost her her life? And on the personal front: Kate meets Maggie’s daughter!

Jeez, the New 52U is just 27 months old, and they're already on a second Black Spider...? Yeesh, Andreyko's already facing an uphill climb on this book, and it doesn't sound like he's off to the most imaginative of starts.


BIRDS OF PREY #27
Written by CHRISTY MARX
Art by ROMANO MOLENAAR and JONATHAN GLAPION
Cover by JORGE MOLINA
On sale JANUARY 22 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
A “GOTHTOPIA” tie-in! We reach a major turning point in the series as the Birds find a new benefactor and a new mission to take down one of the ancient evils of the DC Universe: Ra’s al Ghul!

Huh. This is sorta weird, only in that this month's Red Hood and the Outlaws solicit reads, "The Outlaws have their final bloody showdown with Ra’s al Ghul and the League of Assassins!" Does that mean that Red Hood and The Outlaws lose and are totally killed by Ra's al Ghul? (I'd be totally okay with that, by the way.)

Whatever the in-story circumstances of one Batman spin-off book finishing its Ra's arc the exact same month that another Batman spin-off book begins its Ra's arc, both books ship on the exact same Wednesday, meaning there is exactly zero time between arcs.

CATWOMAN #27
Written by ANN NOCENTI
Art by RAFA SANDOVAL and JORDI TARRAGONA
Cover by TERRY DODSON and RACHEL DODSON
On sale JANUARY 29 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T+
A “GOTHTOPIA” tie-In! Everything’s all right in Selina Kyle’s world. As the fabled Catbird of Gotham City, she fights alongside Batman to keep the city safe. So why does it all feel so wrong?

"Catbird"...? Ugh.

Nice...what is that, an apron? Nice apron, Spectre.

DETECTIVE COMICS #27
Written by JOHN LAYMAN, SCOTT SNYDER, PAUL DINI, BRAD MELTZER, GREGG HURWITZ and PETER J. TOMASI
Art by JASON FABOK, NEAL ADAMS, DUSTIN NGUYEN, GUILLEM MARCH, FRANK MILLER and others
Cover by GREG CAPULLO
...
1:50 Variant cover by KELLEY JONES
...
On sale JANUARY 8 • 96 pg, FC, $7.99 US • RATED T
 ...
DC Entertainment presents this mega-sized issue featuring an all-star roster of Batman creators past and present!

Don’t miss a modern-day retelling of The Dark Knight’s origin by the incredible team of writer Brad Meltzer and artist Bryan Hitch! Plus, all-new stories by Scott Snyder and Sean Murphy, Peter J. Tomasi and Guillem March, Paul Dini and Dustin Nguyen, Gregg Hurwitz and Neal Adams, new art by legendary Batman writer/artist Frank Miller and more!

Also in this issue, John Layman and Jason Fabok kick off the new storyline “GOTHTOPIA”! It’s a bright, shiny, happy place where dreams come true...as long as you don’t look at things too closely.

I mentioned this briefly the other night, and now we get some more details. Odd that they were able to round up classic Batman artists like Neal Adams and Frank Miller and (for a variant cover, at least) Kelley Jones, but as far as writers go they went with the guys currently writing the Batman comics, plus Paul Dini (who wrote great Batman cartoons, a few good Batman comics and a whole bunch of really shitty Batman comics) and Brad Meltzer, who, to my knowledge, only wrote Batman in a few super-shitty Justice League comics.

The "...and more!" gives me hope that we'll see an appearance by Norm Breyfogle, as well as some Jones interiors. I wouldn't mind seeing Graham Nolan or Bruce Timm none either.

Rather curious cover there, which is the Chris Burnham variant. It's got Batman, Batwoman, Talon, Batwing (I think?) and...Batowl, maybe?

Also, why do you have Capullo, Fabok or the talented Jones and Burnham providing covers instead of Frank fucking Miller? That guy does big, bold, Batman iconography perfect for covers like nobody's business.

FOREVER EVIL #5
Written by GEOFF JOHNS
Art and cover by DAVID FINCH and RICHARD FRIEND
...
On sale JANUARY 22 • 32 pg, FC, 5 of 7, $3.99 US
RATED T • Combo pack edition: $4.99 US
...
With everything to lose, Lex Luthor and his Injustice League raid the stronghold of the Crime Syndicate with consequences so devastating, the DC Universe will never be the same!

I'm assuming that whoever had to write "will never be the same!" in this solicitation copy must really, really hate themselves.

It rather distresses me that issue #5, which won't ship for another three months, is still playing out an extremely predictable conflict. Hopefully Johns will have some surprises in store before it's all over.

More distressing still? Look how bland this cover is. I'm pretty sure that's the fifth straight Forever Evil cover Finch has drawn that features a group of villains not really doing anything in a background-less void.

FOREVER EVIL: ROGUES REBELLION #4
Written by BRIAN BUCCELLATO
Art by SCOTT HEPBURN
Cover by DECLAN SHALVEY
...
On sale JANUARY 15 • 32 pg, FC, 4 of 6, $2.99 US • RATED T
Retailers: This issue will ship with two covers. Please see the order form for more information.
The Rogues just can’t catch a break! On the run from the Crime Syndicate and the Secret Society, the Rogues are forced into a showdown with an army of escapees from Arkham Asylum!

I've often wondered about how the rogues galleries of Batman and The Flash would get along—particularly what Mr. Freeze and Captain Cold think of one another—and while I imagine this won't be all that deep a character study, it might prove interesting none-the-less. I don't know these creators all that well though, so this is one I'll likely library trade-wait.


THE GREEN TEAM: TEEN TRILLIONAIRES #8
Written by ART BALTAZAR and FRANCO
Art by IG GUARA
Cover by IG GUARA and J.P. MAYER
On sale JANUARY 29 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T • FINAL ISSUE
Through thick and thin, the Green Team has endured more pain and suffering than any teen trillionaire can withstand. Will this final issue be their breaking point

Canceled right on time with the eighth issue, which is the precise point at which DC cancels its most immediate failing titles (And I'm talking failure in terms of finding an audience, rather than a creative failure. I read and liked the first issue, and read and disliked the second, and then gave up, but there are a lot of comics I don't even make it to the second issue of).

Meanwhile, Baltazar and Franco's Tiny Titans series is set to return. Coincidence?!

Somewhat surprisingly, the Gail Simone-written title The Movement, which launched at the same time as Green Team and shared a promotional campaign with it, has not been canceled...just yet.

Hopefully all of those animals were merely trying to help Harley dye the right half of her head, and things got pretty messy.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER: SON OF MARS TP
Written by JOHN OSTRANDER and JOHN ARCUDI
Art by TOM MANDRAKE and JAN DUURSEMA
Cover by TOM MANDRAKE
On sale FEBRUARY 19 • 240 pg, FC, $19.99 US
These tales from MARTIAN MANHUNTER #0-9 begin as the Manhunter tells Superman how he came to Earth. In his guise as Detective John Jones, he tracks a serial killer and investigates a mystery at Cadmus Laboratories, then saves the Justice League from the threat of Malefic.

I'm not sure why DC is publishing these super-out-of-continuity comics at the moment, but these are remarkably strong supehero comics from the creative team of The Spectre. I remember really loving what they did with the character to distinguish him from Superman and other similar heroes, including giving him various secret identities, including some of which are other superheroes.

Ostrander also made him a pretty integral spoke in a wheel of the DC Universe, thanks to his long life and his many years of service on many different incarnations of the Justice League. Before the series ended, he would seemingly team-up with everyone, but these very early issues functioned quite a bit like a B-Side companion book to Grant Morrison's JLA run (as they cover they chose illustrates). J'onn's battle with Malefic draws various Leaguers of that particular era into conflict in various ways.

SCOOBY-DOO TEAM-UP #2
Written by SHOLLY FISCH
Art by and cover by DARIO BRIZUELA
On sale JANUARY 8 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED E
Holy overactive imagination! When Scarecrow attacks using his fear gas, only humans are affected, leaving Batman, Robin and the Mystery Inc. gang trapped facing “monsters” from their own imaginations. Now, it’s up to canine crusaders Scooby-Doo and Ace the Bat-Hound to save the day!

What could be better than Batman/Scooby-Doo Team-Up comic? Oh, only one where they face off against my favorite Batman villain!


SHOWCASE PRESENTS: MEN OF WAR TP
Written by ROBERT KANIGHER, DAVID MICHELINIE and others
Art by ED DAVIS, DICK AYERS, HOWARD CHAYKIN and others
Cover by JOE KUBERT
On sale FEBRUARY 19 • 496 pg, B&W, $19.99 US
These 1970s war stories star Enemy Ace and Code Name: Gravedigger, an African American soldier who goes undercover behind enemy lines. Collects MEN OF WAR #1-26, the entire series.

What's that? Enemy Ace? Okay, I'll take one.

Yikes. Might want to see if your boyfriend has any super-glue you can borrow, Di.

Review: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1: Cosmic Avengers

Remember how Peter Jackson's last Lord of the Rings movie had, like, six different endings, just piled one on top of the next, each seemingly complete unto itself, and you found yourself about to get up from the theater seat repeatedly, just to realize that what seemed like the ending wasn't really the ending, and there was at least one more scene to go?

The first collection of the new volume of Guardians of the Galaxy is sort of like that, only it's all beginnings instead of endings. This volume, which collects the Brian Michael Bendis-written series that spun out of the first Brian Michael Bendis-written arc of the Avengers Assemble series, collects five different comic books, but it reads like a series of three different beginnings of the same series (Come to think of it, Avengers Assemble Vol. 1 was also basically a beginning for this series, too).

The first beginning is that from Guardians of the Galaxy #.1, penciled by Steve McNiven, who also draws all of the parts of the first three issues that Sara Pichelli does not (the credits on this book are kind of a mess, and I had a hard time matching them up with the art that I saw later on, which all looked a lot like a rather rough version of McNiven; in addition to Pichelli pencilling and inking parts of two of the issues, there are two other inkers involved in issues #1-3).

I've actually read and wrote about this beginning already (although not in any great detail). It is essentially the origin story of Peter "Star-Lord" Quill, or at least of his childhood: How his Earthling mother met his marooned spaceman father and nursed him back to health, how his dad left her after he was conceived but before he was born, how the alien Badoon came to earth to kill he and his mom, how he survived and found a raygun.

It skips from that to a modern-day, adult Quill, finishing telling the story with "The second I could find a way off planet earth I took it...I got up here and here I am," before the camera pans out to show Quill standing in a spaceship, surrounded by the current Guardians line-up in their new, less-retro (and less cool) costumes, with Iron Man, also in a new costume, thanking him for telling him the story and saying that he has decided to take them up on their invitation to join them in outer space for a while (an invitation extended in the previously linked-to Avengers Assemble comic, and something he was considering doing at the end of Matt Fraction's run on Invincible Iron Man).

"Now we show them how it's done," Quill tells Stark, as their space ship zooms off to start the new series.

And then we get Beginning #2, which consists of the first three issues of the monthly series.

Quill is in a bar trying to talk a blue lady that looks like Gamora, the green lady on his team, into having sex with him (This isn't a plot point; McNiven just sorta draws them the same). Quill's dad, the king of Spartax, come in and has a long, Bendis-y conversation. Apparently Quill's dad and a Space Illuminati (The cosmic Marvel equivalent of all those scenes Bendis wrote of "The Illuminati" and Norman Osborn's "Dark Reign" cabal) have got together and talked about what they should do about the planet Earth, and they ultimately decide it is off-limits to all alien interference.

Meanwhile, Iron Man is apparently flying around solo in space in his new space-faring costume, which looks like his regular armor save with a higher red-to-yellow ratio, and a mask which somewhat resembles the one Star-Lord was wearing in the Keith Giffen-written StarLord miniseries.

The Badoon attack him, and the Guardians come to his rescue. Fight scene. Another check-in with Quill's dad's space meetings, in a two-page spread featuring a Bendis balloon chain.

It's the raised-hand posed that really annoys me, as it implies he's been in that position for the whole five-minute scene.

The Badoon attack London. Another fight scene (Weirdly, Rocket Raccoon seems kind of...Deadpool-like, shooting his foes in the face over and over and repeating, "Blam! Murdered you" to each as he does so. I don't think one needs to try so hard to make Rocket "funny;" the cognitive dissonance of his role in these stories vs. his appearance kind of does that all by itself).

The Spartax guys capture the Guardians. Another space meeting, where the space board of directors wonder if Quill's dad isn't being pretty manipulative. The Guardians escape, Quill making a speech to his people challenging his dad's authority, and setting the book's premise: This is going to be a book about a group of outsiders banded together to protect Earth from the sinister manipulations of the Galaxies various empires and invaders. It's the good guys from the original Star Wars trilogy versus the bad guys from the second Star Wars trilogy.

Or it's Bendis in space: Lots of chatter, clever repartee, plot-delineating exposition conversations, disregard for whatever was written about these characters by whoever was writing them previously, intimations of the importance of the conflicts to the entire Marvel Universe, better-than-average comics-making in general (Regarding Bendis' disregard, Quill was apparently dead before Bendis started writing him; there's a scene where his dad says "I get updates on you, you know...Heard you dragged yourself back from the dead," which is as much as an explanation as we're given in this whole volume. Gladiator appears in the space-meetings, and seems oddly disconnected from the character I just read in those Annihilators collections; one of which featured Gladiator battling to save Earth alongside a team that had taken over the Guardians of the Galaxy's role in the, um, galaxy. Also, his mohawk looks funny here).

This storyline will apparently continue in the next volume, and the rest of this volume contains Beginning #3, the one-shot special Guardians of The Galaxy: Tomorrow's Avengers #1, featuring a hodge-podge of solo-ish stories featuring the Guardians who are neither Quill nor Iron Man, each written by Bendis and drawn by different artists (Although a Yves Bigerel is credited with lay-outs on three of the four stories).

The first of these features nice (but, in two instances, surprisingly difficult to read) art by Bendis' frequent collaborator Michael Avon Oeming (and Rain Beredo, who I am guessing colored it, but it's unclear from the credits). This features Drax fighting some guys, and then Quill appearing to re-recruit him at the end, setting up expectations that maybe this is a getting-the-band-back-together series of shorts (I think it was the line "We need to get the Guardians back together" that gave me this impression).

But the second, by Michael Del Mundo, scuttles those expectations. It's an over-narrated story told from the perspective of an alien on an alien planet that's being harassed by other, meaner aliens, until Groot shows up and kicks their asses, and then Rocket and the Guardians arrive to pick up Groot in the last panel (So in story #2, the band is already back together, thanks).

The third, nicely drawn by Ming Doyle and either inked or colored (or both?) by Javier Rodriguez, Rocket is in a space-bar, bragging about his adventures and trying to hit on a lady that does not look at all attractive by human or raccoon standards. At some point, a mouthy guy says he saw "another one" like Rocket on Rigel Seven and leaves. Rocket interrogates him by gunpoint, but all he learns is that he once saw "one" just like Rocket, but it was a different color and it wasn't "up on both legs...walking and talkin'..."

Rocket seems to thing this is big, important news. But, um, a creature that looks like Rocket, but is a different color, and doesn't walk and talk? That's a fucking raccoon, and Earth is lousy with 'em. If this was meant to be the revelation that it's presented as (a mysterious assassin kills the mouthy guy before he can say too much, then disappears), then Bendis probably shoulda scripted it a little more carefully.

The final story, this one by Del Mundo again, is just Gamora fighting and killing some dude, with Quill showing up on the last page to pick her up.

So it's a series of beginnings, stopping and starting. I would guess Marvel published these two specials, the "#.1" issue and the Tomorrow's Avengers special, to introduce the characters a little better (though most of the shorts don't; all we learn of Drax and Gamora are that they are green-skinned violent bad-asses, all we learn of Groot is that he is a big tree that says "I am Groot," and all we learn of Rocket is that he is an obnoxious, violent drinker who has never heard of raccoons, despite having "Raccoon" as his surname). Well, that and to promote the series as a sort of big deal, what with the multiple #1s, and the word "Avengers" in the third #1, and so on.

And then I suppose when it came time to collect the first volume, they had little choice but to put them all between the same set of covers. Perhaps a different ordering would have helped, with Tomorrow's Avengers coming first, as it precedes the other two by story chronology, if not publication date? (Actually, the short stories in it seem to pre-date Avengers Assemble Vol. 1 as well).

Regardless of the decent quality of all three basic story units—GotG #.1, GotG #1-3 and Tomorrow's Avengers—they don't read smoothly as a complete whole, and the first collection of the new, higher-profile Guardians of the Galaxy series is a bunch of starts, which are presented in fits and starts.

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

One thing I noticed, when I linked to that review of Avengers Assemble was that in that particular story, Rocket Raccoon had his own, distinct style of dialogue bubble, most noticeable in that it was yellow, indicating that his voice sounds much different than all of the humans/humanoid voices, who had yellow dialogue balloons (How different, and in what ways, I can't imagine; I do hope he's not meant to have, like, an Alvin and The Chipmunks chipmunk voice, because good God will that make that movie intolerable).

*******************
Another thing I noticed? There were soooo many variant covers for these issues. Some of them are character-specific. You'll see lots of Rocket-only covers, by the likes of Joe Quesada. There's a really great Gamora, wearing her costume from the previous volume, by Milo Manara. There are a few Ed McGuinness covers and a Joe Madueira one. And there were so many for the first issue that the last few pages of the collection don't show the variants at full-size, but are divided into fourths, so they can show some sixteen variants in just four pages.

Many of these are retailer specific, indicating there was probably some weird ordering scheme I don't understand that triggered the production of a variant. Deadpool appears in a few of the retailer-specific ones—which is kinda weird, as he's not in the book at all—in addition to appearing in the "Deadpool Variant" and the "Hastings Variant." There's something called a "Phantom Variant" that kinda confuses the "Days of Future Past" cover with Wolvie and and Kitty in front of the poster image, showing villain Thanos in front of a poster with various Guardians' pictures and the words "fugitive" stamped/posted over them.

Of these 16 in the last few pages (and there are other full-size variants included throughout the book, like the aforementioned Quesadas and Manara), the only one I really liked was the Marcos Martin one:

He did a Guardians Pose image, but unlike many of them, he puts them all on there, and he does it in a way that is inventive, appealing and striking. I really love this Marcos Martin character.

Stephanie Brown coming to the New 52U, convention questions about Cassandra Cain expected to double.

News from New York Comic Con! Stephanie Brown, aka The Spoiler, aka Robin IV, aka Batgirl III, is making her New 52 debut in the rather goofily-entitled, Scott Snyder-showran Batman Eternal! If you like the character, this is either great news (she is no longer non-existent in The New 52U) or terrible news (I know when I've seen some favorite DC characters of mine re-introduced into The New 52 so far, my thought process has generally been something along the lines of, "Oh cool, it' s Captain Marv---AAAAH!").

There's been no revelation of what, exactly, Stephanie Brown will be wearing or what she'll look like, but the few articles I've read have said she'll most likely be appearing in her Spoiler identity (although with Damian Wayne dead and Robin III Tim Drake's superheroic identity retconned so that he was always "Red Robin" and never [just] Robin, there does seem to be an opening for a new Robin).

As for the costume, I assume it will look a lot like her original duds, maybe with more black or a darker purple, and certainly with visible seams, armor plating, treads on her boots and fussily detailed gloves. You know, New 52 (If she's first appearing in issue #3, and Jason Fabok is drawing the first story arc, he'll be the first to draw her in a story, but that doesn't necessarily mean he'll be designing her).

So why did I post the above picture, of a Spoiler costume designed by the great Dean Trippe a few years back? Oh, just because I love that costume, and the way it cleverly yet organically blends her Spoiler and Robin costumes together (Her Batgirl costume was fairly awful, her Spoiler costume not so great unless Damion Scott or Jeff Parker were drawing it and her Robin costume was just Tim Drake's with a longer shirt to act as a mini-dress; that Trippe costume is the best she's ever looked, if you ask me. And you didn't. But I'm answering anyway).

I've said this before—long before the New 52 was announced—but Trippe is such a good designer, and so adept at designing costumes for DC's teen superheroes, that I wish DC would have hired him in some Re-Design All Our Teen Heroes capacity.

Now, they obviously went with Jim Lee, a handful of his WildStorm cohorts and/or whatever artists happened to be drawing whatever title was in question when they redesigned the costumes of their entire universe. If I were in charge, I probably would have went to Darwyn Cooke* and asked him to re-design much of the DC Universe, coming up with costumes that were instantly recognizable to anyone who had ever heard of heroes like Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel, but more streamlined, and taking this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to re-tweak them into "ultimate" costumes. And then I would have looked to folks with similar abilities and sensibilities to design different corners of the DCU, asking Trippe to take on the younger heroes, from Nightwing own down (It goes without saying that I would not have condensed the entire history of the DC Universe into five years, so there would actually still be a bunch of different superheroes of various ages running around).


*And if I were the Boss of All DC and was in charge of the New 52-boot, and Cooke said no, I probably would have next asked Bruce Timm, and then maybe Frank Miller (Shut up there are some totally awesome costumes in Dark Knight Strikes Again I don't care what you say!) and/or Alex Ross. I'm actually surprised they didn't ask Alex Ross, given how much everyone, the current DCU regime included, have loved so many of his designs from Kingdom Come, importing the likes of Red Robin, Zatara, Offspring, Wildcat, Gog and others into the DCU in the years between Infinite Crisis and The New 52-boot. I suspect there's some hard feelings somewhere, as Ross has been notably absent from DC for so long, but who knows. 

Hey, wait a second! If this is The Creeper...

...then who is the yellow-skinned, green-haired guy with the creepy red shawl and boots in this splash page from September 2011's Justice League International #1...?

Meanwhile, at Robot 6...

I've only got one piece of writing up at places that aren't EDILW this week, but it deals with maybe the greatest thing I've seen with the words "DC" on the cover in years, a book that could hardly be more directly targeted towards me personally if it had a big, fat "Dedicated to J. Caleb Mozzocco, The Most Radical Dude Who Ever Lived" on the first page: The DC Super-Pets Character Encyclopedia by artist Art Baltazaar, writer Steve Korte and foreword-writer Geoff Johns.  You can read my piece on it at Robot 6, where you'll see profiles of about ten more of the 200+ pets and animal characters detailed in the book.

Since I don't have any other Caleb-writing to link to at the moment, let me instead link to a few things of note that I read in the last 24 hours or so.

First, here's too-infrequent-comics-critic, outspoken retailer advocate and guy who sells comic books Brian Hibbs on DC's Villains Month, listing the numbers of the special $3.99, 3D-ish cover-bearing issues that the publisher printed along with the estimated sales numbers of the last issues of each title they printed before them.

Here's my favorite bit:

JUSTICE LEAGUE #23: 104k (I’m going to round from here on, look to those links in previous paragraph for “real” numbers)

Darkseid: 78k

Secret Society: 44k

Lobo: 36k

Dial E: 26k

Those last two are insane, as the 2D VERSION HAS HIGHER ORDERS FILLED — 39k on Lobo, and 34k on Dial E. DIAL H #15 (the August issue) was 11k.

The "Dial E" issue of Justice League always intrigued me because it seemed almost impossible for a retailer to guess how to order on it: It was technically an issue of Justice League, one of the publisher's best-selling titles, but it was actually more like an epilogue issue of Dial H, one of the publisher's worst-selling (and already canceled) titles. Apparently, DC had no idea how many issues of such a weird hybrid book people might want either...?

If you care about this sort of thing, do read the whole column, as it seems to reveal a bit about what DC thinks of its own line in terms of what they think is or will be popular.

Given the number of Villains Month issues that were printed at lower levels than August's order, it seems like DC expected to sell fewer issues rather than more, which isn't even logical; if they really expected to sell fewer issues, than they probably wouldn't have done it in the first place (the only other benefit it offered was giving regular creative teams a month off), and they certainly wouldn't have done it in the way they did, choosing to publish multiple issues of the most popular titles like the main Batman books and Green Lantern rather than lower-selling spin-off books like Batgirl, Green Lantern: New Guardians and so on.

The more logical explanation, one that a commenter brings up, is that DC ordered fewer copies on purpose, knowing all along they could and would publish the 2D versions to meet the demand they were intentionally not meeting. Why? To turn the books into collectibles and spark a early-nineties like boom of speculation, and the attendant attention and coverage that would come with it. (I do think there's some evidence that DC wanted this to be the case, although I don't see any real long-term benefit to it, and it seems like one of those things that ultimately does more harm than good).

Hibbs rejects the notion though, as he doesn't want to cast sinister motives on the publisher when "incompetence" seems to explain it just as easily.

I don't know. The whole thing is weird—not as weird as the announced but ultimately aborted WTF? Certified month, but close!—and the more you learn, the more weird it becomes.

If I were DC Comics,  I don't know what I'd find the more troubling accusation: That I was incompetent or that I was manipulating the market and deceiving partners for my own benefit. As a business, I suppose the latter is actually a better thing to be, isn't it?

As for future DC projects, two of note were announced at the New York Comic Con, apparently.

First, the current, second volume of Detective Comics will soon hit its twenty-seventh issue, which is a magic number for the series, given that Batman first appeared in the original volume's twenty-seventh issue. They're going to have a bunch of different Bat-creators from various eras contribute to the new Detective Comics #27, including EDILW-favorite Kelley Jones. But where's Norm Breyfogle? I'm sorry, I meant WHERE'S NORM BREYFOGLE?!

The issue will introduce the new creative team of Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato, The New 52 Flash creative team, which explains why those guys are leaving The Flash after so long (In The New 52, where bold, new eras can last as few as a single issue, and some writers' runs on titles literally end before they begin, Manapul and Buccellato's Flash run was the equivalent of a five-year run in the old days).

I can't imagine the gig will be all that terribly creatively satisfying for the pir, given the fact that TEC is clearly the B-title and Scott Sndyer and Greg Capullo have already done so much to re-create Batman, his allies and enemies and his city that they won't be able to create as much as they did with their rebooted Flash. On the other hand, they'll be making a lot more in royalties, so good for them.

The bigger Bat-news is that DC is going to launch their first new 52-issue weekly series in a few years, a Batman book featuring Scott Snyder as the head-writer and different artists drawing different arcs. It will be entitled Batman Eternal for some reason, probably because no one at the publisher seems to be able to think of titles that aren't dumb anymore (This is right up there with Superman Unchained, right?).

DC has tried a couple of different methods when it came to creating their weeklies, never repeating the same method twice.

The original 52-issue weekly series, 52, featured a "rock band" approach to the writing, with four writers writing everything together-ish. And then a single artist handled layouts and different artists drawing different parts of the books, usually rather willy-nilly. That was their best-written weekly book, and neither the best nor the worst-looking book (I think we all cut the art a lot of slack on 52; partly because the writing was so damn good and partly because it was such a new format).

That was followed by Countdown, perhaps the nadir of DC Comics' entire publishing history (From what relatively little I managed to read; tellingly, I've never had any interest in reading the rest of it in trades, which, remember, are absolutely free to borrow from libraries). For that one, they used a TV model, with a "showrunner" writer plotting the story, a rotating team of writers handling the scripts and the art drawn by right-handed chimpanzees that were only allowed to draw with their left hands (If I recall correctly; it's been a while).

And then there was Trinity, which featured a single writer and just a handful of artists, with one of them—Mark Bagley—pencilling the majority of each issue, with back-up features featuring art by Scott McDaniel and...I don't know, maybe someone else too...? Or was it all just Bagley, McDaniel and inkers? All I remember are Bagley and McDaniel. That one featured the best and (obviously) most consistent art, and told a pretty great story that only suffered from being written by one great comics writer (Kurt Busiek) rather than four (Grant Morrison, Mark Waid, Greg Rucka and Geoff Johns), as was the case with 52.

Batman Forever Eternal will follow the least successful of those three writing models, the showrunner one from Countdown, but this showrunner (Scott Snyder) will be one much more engaged and familiar with the setting and cast the book is featuring, so hopefully it will work out much better than it did on Countdown.

Using a single artist for distinct story arcs is a pretty good idea, and seems to be what Amazing Spider-Man was doing early in its weekly-ish phase, and as long as the creators have enough lead-time on the book, this sure sounds like it could be closer to a Trinity or a localized 52 than a Countdown.

I do hope it does well though, as the New 52 could use a new 52, complete with revised, two-page origins for all the characters. Of course, before DC can really do that, it has to figure out its own rebooted continuity, and that still seems to be very much a work in progress.

A few quick thoughts on JLA: Earth 2: The Deluxe Edition

DC Comics is re-releasing Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's 2000 original graphic novel JLA: Earth 2 in a special "deluxe edition." Given the plot of the book—The DCU's heroic Justice League vs. the villainous Crime Syndicate, from an alternate Earth where everything is opposite—it's easy to see why DC might want to sell the book now. That's the same conflict driving their big, seven-month, line-wide crossover story Forever Evil, and while Geoff Johns and David Finch have re-re-created the CSA characters, theirs are closer to Morrison and Quitely's version than the Silver Age originals.

At the same time, if I were someone at DC closely involved in Forever Evil, I'd be reluctant to have too many readers read JLA: Earth 2, as it's so good it's likely to make the current comics look fairly awful in comparison. Visually, it's already clear the newer incarnations are greatly inferior. Even making allowances for variances in taste, I think it's fairly universally agreed upon that Quitely is a superior artist to Finch, and he and Morrison's designs for their evil JLA certainly eclipse those of Finch's.

Additionally, Morrison's story was a rather brilliant riff on an old standard comic book plot, one of those Morrisonian stories that seems very clever and, as soon as you've digested it, extremely obvious. It seems right, it seems true, and one wonders why another writer hadn't already written such a story (To spoil the 13-year-old story, the League tries to save the Syndicate's world, where evil always triumphs, and the Syndicate tries to conquer the League's world, where good always triumphs; both fail, because of the rules of those respective universes are as immutable as laws of physics).

Johns seems to be leaning in a different direction with his story, but as for his hopes of besting Morrison, it doesn't look good: Earth 2 was only about 90 pages long, while Forever Evil is already over 60 pages (and follows a 120-page prologue story), and hasn't hit upon anything particularly new or novel yet. (Earth 2 also had probably the most badass moment in Martian Manhunter's career, in which he destroys The Evil Superman in a matter of panels, and a nice example of how to make Aquaman seem powerful and badass without him having to whine and shout or have other characters express shock at how awesome he is; Morrison and Quitely just show Aquaman quietly and calmly defeating Evil Green Lantern in a couple of panels).

What's new in the Deluxe Edition? Well, there is apparently a new cover, but it's similar enough to the original, which I don't have in front of me, that I can't remember in what way exactly it's different; it still has that nice image of the characters casting reflections of their opposites, with Aquaman and Manhunter, who did not have CSA opposites, framed just so. There's one version, with the CSA on top, on the dustjacket (Note Wonder Woman's off-model blue boots; they were correctly colored red on the original collection covers), and a second version on the cover beneath it, with the JLA on top.

There's also an awful lot of backmatter, an additional 42 pages, most of it in the form of script pages or rough thumbnails and breakdowns. My favorite part is probably Morrison's own character designs, which demonstrate something people tend to forget or not realize about Morrison: The guy can actualluy draw pretty well, too.

He also puts a great deal of thought into the look of things like costumes and symbols (I believe this came out around the time he was mentioning sigil magic a lot in interviews, too), something that might not always be apparent, given the way DC has assigned him artists almost willy-nilly over the course of the last six or seven years now.

His designs for the CSA characters were apparently little changed, with a more Kyle Rayner version of Power Ring getting the most tinkering from sketch to final version.

Here's his Power Ring design:

I like the parenthetical "I don't know what it is either" regarding Power Ring's insignia,  the same one that his creator Mike Sekowsky and Gardner Fox gave him.

And here's his Owlman:

Aside from some minor tinkering with the cape and the helmet's "ears," Morrison's Owlman is pretty much finished. Brilliant summary of the character's design though: "Batman as an owl basically."

There are a few pages of cover sketches in here as well, and here are a few neat ones:

In the upper left, you can see apparently earlier versions of some of the CSA members (Superwoman's got a mask, Power Ring has a different mask), and apparently at one point Anti-Matter Universe versions of Martian Manhunter and Aquaman were to be included.

The Aquaman appears to have scaly skin, not unlike his ancestor Kordax, or the One Million version of the character that showed up in the DC One Million crossover spearheaded by Morrison.

In the upper right, you can see how Quitely defines the super-abstracted figures: Superman and Ultraman and The Flash by their symbols, Owlman and Batman by their ears, the aliens by their collars, and Superwoman and Wonder Woman by their huge boobs.