Comic Shop Comics: January 20

Batgirl #47 (DC Comics) This issue of Batgirl, featuring guest-art by Eleonora Carlini and Moritat, gives us a pretty good idea of what the theoretical, much hoped-for (at least by me) new iteration of the Birds of Prey could look like.

Batgirl Barbara Gordon recruits Spoiler for help on an undercover infiltration of a Gotham Police precinct to find out how they managed to access information that only she should have had access too, and naturally Spoiler invites along her roommate Bluebird. Frankie, who starts to call herself a name that begins with an "O" again before switching to "Operator" running the op from behind-the-scenes, Oracle-style, these newer, younger, cooler Birds of Prey go on what will be their first mission.

If, indeed, DC decides to launch a new BOP featuring these four and grumpy Black Canary, as the cover of March's Batgirl #49 sure seems to be hinting at. Hey, this issue also introduces two more artists who would be perfect for the gig of drawing such a Batgirl spin-off book, Moritat and Carlini.

This was a perfectly delightful comic, showcasing what makes three of Gotham's female vigilantes appealing and different from one another, and, if I'm being honest here, was a nice counterpoint to all the testosterone-fueled bromance of the recent "Robin War" event and large chunks of Batman & Robin Eternal (like this week's issue, which is all about how Tim Drake and Jason Todd are suddenly brothers or whatever in the New 52 continuity).

Special props should go to colorist Serge LaPointe who, as my friend (and Stephanie Brown fan) pointed out, took care to make sure Spoiler and Batgirl each wore different shades of purple. And hey, Bluebird's got some purple on her too; this is one very purple super-team!

Speaking of Bluebird, while both Carlini and Moritat drew here extremely well, it seems a shame that she's still wearing this nonsense:

Batgirl is a comic that, after all, got really good when they redesigned the title character's costume, and regular artist Babs Tarr gives everyone she draws really cool clothes. We really need to address this costume situation at some point, DC, and hey, maybe Cameron Stewart and Babs Tarr are just the folks to do it...

Batman & Robin Eternal #16 (DC) Remind me to never, ever complain about how dumb Jason Todd's various costumes are, because this issue ably demonstrates that, as terrible as they have all been, they could be much, much worse. That, for example, is what he wears in a chemically-induced dream/fantasy sequence where the adult Todd rescues his younger self from being beaten to death by The Joker.

The Red Hood/Red Robin/Azrael plot takes up most of this issue, with only a few pages devoted to the "several years ago" plot-line, and it's particularly poorly drawn this issue (by Andrea Mutti, Roger Robinson and Goran Sudzuka), with very basic, panel-to-panel continuity falling apart. Like, in one panel, Todd holds a crowbar in his right hand, in the next it's gone and he's holding the Joker's throat with his right hand, and then in the next the crowbar is back. Stuff like that.

Lumberjanes #22 (Boom Studios) The werewolf vs. selkies plot turns out to not be as simple as it originally seemed, which is cool, because I kinda like both sides of the conflict, and didn't want to believe either of them were truly in the wrong. Meanwhile, the Bear Witch, Molly and Ripley investigate The Other Place, which seems to hold the key to why the woods around the camp are so weird and, perhaps, just what is really going on in the shape-changer conflict. It took a little getting used to, but I'm really enjoying Carey Pietsch's take on the characters, and her art in general, now.

Patsy Walker, A.K.A. Hellcat! #2 (Marvel Entertainment) Despite really liking the first issue of this new series, I wasn't about to add it to my pull-list or anything. I mean, yes, it's great, but $3.99 for a 20-page Marvel comic regularly interrupted by ads for some dumb Marvel merch? No thank you, Marvel, I will just wait for the trade as I do with Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Howard The Duck and Ms. Marvel, thank you very much.

My friend and neighbor bought this issue though and, after reading it, insisted I read it too. I resisted, telling her that I planned on getting the trade, and I don't want to read too many of the individual issues, or by the time I get the trade I'll have already read a significant portion of it. But she could not be dissuaded; she insisted I read it so that I could review it here and 1.) Tell you all how awesome it is and 2.) Publicly advocate Marvel releasing a collection of the original Patsy Walker comics, as the reprinting of those comics is a major conflict within this comic.

So first of all, yes, this book is awesome. I laughed aloud repeatedly, and not only is Kate Leth's writing very sharp and artist Brittney L. Williams' art fantastic (she's great at costuming, everyone is ridiculously cute and I basically just want to eat this comic, it looks so good) but they work well together to tell subtle verbal/visual jokes (see panels one and four on page three, for a good example). The last two pages, a scene the cover covers, is amazing, and it was a genuine treat to see Williams' versions of all those Marvel heroines (That's Valkyrie, not the new Thor, by the way; I guess she got a new costume, with more Thor-ish colors...?). Man, just look at that cover. I love Squirrel Girl's conflict with her squirrel over that brownie, and the little detail of the acorns falling out of her pocket.

Second, Marvel? Yeah, you should really publish some old-school Patsy Walker comics, maybe with a Leth/Williams framing sequence if you don't think they'll sell all that well. Personally, I was thinking you should do trade collections, but my friend noted that you put together that weird-ass Night Nurse compilation comics simply because a character very loosely based on that comic character had a supporting role in the Netflix original series Daredevil, so you could easily publish some old-school Patsy Walker comics in that format; after all, if the fact that Patsy comics being reprinted weren't a key component of this new series wasn't a sufficient reason to publish them, how about the fact that Patsy Walker had a supporting role in the Netflix original series Jessica Jones...?

Anyway, Patsy Walker, A.K.A. Hellcat! is really good. Tuesday I was certain that Unbeatable Squirrel Girl was my favorite Marvel comic, and Howard The Duck my second favorite. Now I don't even know...

DC's April previews reviewed

The theme for DC's variant covers in April is apparently to just "John Romita JR drew these," and I'm totally okay with that. Here are a handful, in no particular order:

DC has previously done artist-specific variant months before, with Mike Allred, Darwyn Cooke and Neal Adams, and while JRJR's aren't necessarily as awesome as, say, Cooke's, they're still pretty awesome, and, despite how long he's been drawing Superman for DC now, he's still so strongly associated with Marvel Comics that seeing him draw, say, Wonder Girl or Robin or Sinestro seems slightly weird/wrong/unusual.

There's not a whole lot of variety to the covers–they all show one or two or five or seven DC heroes engaged in a tight, portrait-like action pose–but Romita's so damn good at boiling a character down to a sense of simple, basic physicality that he invests each of the characters with an icon-like sense of drama and emphasis. And while that may seem easy to do with, say, Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, or even The Flash or Cyborg, you try it with, say Red Hood and Arsenal or The New 52 Teen Titans (For example, these might be the very first cool covers to feature those characters, some 50 months into the New 52-boot).

I would happily purchase a comic book format "gallery" that was nothing but all of JRJR's variant covers for the month, but I doubt DC will publish one; if they didn't collect Cooke's in such a format, I'm sure they won't collect JRJR's.

For DC's complete solicitations for the month of April, you know where to go. And for me babbling on and one about them–Who wants to hear a few thousand words about 1994 annual crossover event Bloodlines? Anyone?–you also know where to go.

BATGIRL #51
Written by BRENDEN FLETCHER
Art by ELEANOR CARLINI
Cover by BABS TARR
On sale APRIL 27 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
After the events of issue #50, Barbara Gordon is at a crossroads in her life—will new horizons beckon her away from her home in Burnside?

I don't really care if you leave Burnside or not Barbara, but I sure hope you don't throw that costume away–that's, like, your best costume ever! The only one you've ever had that I liked better was the one from the The Batman cartoon.

Say, what's The Creeper doing in Arkham Asylum...? I didn't even know he had been re-introduced into the New 52-iverse yet, let alone incarcerated in Arkham.

Say, if The Creeper is still Jack Ryder in a transformed state, I wonder how him being in an institution for the criminally insane would work, exactly...? Wouldn't that be like putting The Hulk or Etrigan in jail...?

BATMAN: RAINBOW ACTION FIGURE 6-PACK
Inspired by the cover of DETECTIVE COMICS #241, Batman dons the colors of the rainbow in this new action figure 6-pack!
Each figure measures approximately 6.625" tall
$70.00 US • On Sale AUGUST 2016 * Allocations May Occur

I haven't really bought any toys since DC's Pocket Heroes series, but damn, if I had $70 to waste on toys I would never play with, as I'm an adult, this is what I'd waste it on. If only I had won that Powerball last week...

BLACK CANARY #11
Written by BRENDEN FLETCHER
Art by SANDY JARRELL
Cover by ANNIE WU
On sale APRIL 20 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
The true scope of what Dinah’s up against stands revealed—and it’s an infernal evil that’s out of this world! What did this sinister presence do to Dinah’s missing mother…and what horrible bargain has the mysterious white ninja made with it?

What are you talking about, Solicitation For Black Canary #11...? That cove is most definitely not by Annie Wu. It is obviously, obviously by Guillem March...which would be clear to anyone who has ever seen the art of either Annie Wu or Guillem March, whether it featured Mach's signature on the image or not.

BLOODLINES #1
“HOSTILE TAKEOVER”
Written by J.T. KRUL
Art and cover by V. KEN MARION
...
On sale APRIL 6 • 32 pg, FC, 1 of 6, $2.99 US • RATED T
...
When a meteor crashes to Earth, bringing with it an unspeakable alien presence that terrorizes a nearby small town, the lucky ones die first. As for the rest, they find themselves locked in a hellish struggle for control of their bodies and their minds. This isn’t just an invasion. It’s an infestation. What would you do if the greatest threat to humanity was hidden away inside you?
Award-winning writer J.T. Krul (Teen Titans, Green Arrow, Jirni) and superstar-in-the-making V. Ken Marion (All New Soulfire, Jirni) bring you their dark and horrifying science-fiction epic about tortured souls who are cursed to a fate worse than death...much worse.

Huh.

I can honestly say this was the last thing I expected to see DC solicit some form of revival of in this second decade of the 21st century, but as someone who read...let's see...fourteen tie-in books, I have fond(-ish) memories of the original "Bloodlines" event series, I suppose I am the exact target audience for this series, which looks and sounds fairly awful.

So, if you weren't reading DC Comics in the early '90s, "Bloodlines" was the publisher's summer annual event, which was how the Big Two were handling their big intra-company crossover events in those more organized days. Generally they would publish a two-issue miniseries, consisting of the beginning and end of a story, and then all of the various annuals would tie-in to the events of those books, detailing how particular characters and teams reacted to whatever the threat of the event might have been. Basically, one only needed to read the book-ends and the annuals of the comics they were already reading.

This one was structured slightly differently, in that all of the annuals culminated in a two-part climactic miniseries, entitled Bloodbath. It didn't really matter which of the annuals you read–and I read almost all of 'em, picking up many of them in back-issue bins over the years after having only bought the ones I was really interested in the first time around–as their stories were more or less identical.

The plot of the "Bloodlines" event was that our universe was being invaded by a small group of aliens called Parasites that were obviously inspired by H.R. Giger's alien-from-Alien design, although each were distinct. They additionally had the ability to transform into humanoid figures, that looked like weirdly-armored people that fit right in with the DC Universe heroes and villains.

These aliens fed off human spinal fluid, extracted via a scary-looking tongue-tube thing. Most of their victims died, but a very small percentage gained super-powers from the attack, and these new characters were dubbed "New Bloods." The circle of life aspect of Bloodlines was that the Parasites' attempts to kill off a planet also empowered that planet's population enough to give them a fighting chance to stop the world-ending threat that their life-cycle culminated in: Producing a gigantic, kaiju-sized monster spawn capable of taking down all meta-humans who weren't already inoculated against it like the New Bloods.

The annuals were fairly repetitive, as they all involved one of the half-dozen Parasites attacking people in or around the base of operations of whichever superhero or superhero team had their name on the cover, the superhero or superheroes attempting to stop the killings, one of the victims becoming a brand-new DC superhero and helping the established hero chase the Parasite away for the time being. In Bloodbath, the old heroes got taken out in the first half, but were then rescued by the New Bloods.

Creatively, the mandate seemed to be for each creative team to invent a new superhero for DC Comics that summer, and the results obviously varied from creative team to creative team. Some of the characters were pretty great, with the best (and most successful by far) being The Demon creative team of Garth Ennis and John McCrea's Tommy "Hitman" Monaghan (DC just recently released a collection of the first half of their Demon run, including the "Bloodlines" tie-in annual, so I just re-read that earlier this month).

I really liked Chuck Dixon and Tom Lyle's Razorsharp, who had the ability to turn her arms into swords, although the fact that she was also part of a computer hacker gang called The Psyba-Rats didn't age terrible well (Dixon also created a pretty decent Goham superhero with Jim Balent in Geist); Karl Kesel, Tom Grummet and Ed Hannigan's Sparx, an electric-powered teenager who came from a family of superheroes and would alter go on to co-star in Superboy and The Ravers, a short-lived series that is about 1,000 times better than it sounds; and Paul Witcover and Elizabeth Hand's Anima, who would go on to star in a short-lived ongoing series that was a favorite of mine at the time. Oh, I liked the two New Bloods who showed up in the Justice League titles that summer, too. They were named Lionheart and Terrorsmith, the latter of whom had a pretty fantastic super-power (he could create monsters).

There were a lot of bum characters though, but, again, it just depended on the creators. Tasked with coming up with a new superhero, for example, Jeph Loeb just gave DC The Hulk with a different codename and skin color (Loeb's innovation was that, in addition to getting stronger the angrier he got, he and Lee Moder's creator Loose Cannon would also change colors, so he would go from blue to purple to red as he got angrier/stronger).

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I like about Bloodlines. Sure, few of its 26 new characters went on to have much impact in the DC Universe, and none of them became the next Green Lantern or Flash (or even the next Lobo or Blue Beetle), but it was a fun experiment of the sort that probably couldn't even be attempted today, since there's so much money in superhero IP (like, if you had a great idea for a new superhero, why would you just give it to DC for some dumb crossover event, when you could keep it for yourself and that way, if it ever gets made into a movie, you'd make out like a bandit?).

And given the static, change-resistant nature of the Big Two comics universes, where only like 1-in-50 new characters ever catch on and the best chance at achieving anything approaching diversity is to create legacy characters with the names and/or powers of old white male characters, this was a pretty forceful attempt to create new characters, and to do so in the one format that super-comics readers always responded well too: A big crossover event that the publisher told them was important (Oh, and because it was 1993, there were also trading cards).

Reviewing Wikipedia's list of all the New Bloods, I see that at least seven of the 26 were female, and there was a Korean-American character (gun-nut Ballistic), an Indian woman (illusionist Chimera), a half-black, half-Vietnamese character (bad-boy with the worse name Mongrel), a Chinese-American man (regenerating martial artist Nightblade, whose powers made him a potentially pretty funny character) and another black character (Slingshot). Oh, and there was also a Canadian (Sparkx) and a surfer dude (Jamm), if those count.

I don't suppose DC will ever collect all of Bloodlines, as their annual crossover events don't really lend themselves to the collected format, but part of me kind of wishes they would, as each of them provide pretty good snapshots of what the DCU looked like during that particular year (In this case, for example, the Parasites started attacking when Bruce Wayne was still Batman, and their invasion was still going on when Jean-Paul Vallen assumed the mantle of the Bat; likewise, Superman's four replacements all dealt with Parasites and New Bloods that summer) and they all contain plenty of contributions from plenty of top talent.

Anyway, that was "Bloodlines," the 1993 annual crossover event. What's up with Bloodlines, the new DC comic book mini-series...?

Who knows. The creative team doesn't inspire much confidence (Krul wrote all kinds of terrible comics for DC just prior to the New 52-boot), nor does the solicitation's quoting of The Hills Have Eyes remake's tag-line or the promise of a "dark and horrifying science-fiction epic about tortured souls who are cursed to a fate worse than death...much worse." The first go-round was about scary aliens that looked like a cross between the aliens-from-Aliens and dragons with their skin removed sucking the spinal fluid out of victims with some kind of gross throat tentacle, so it's difficult to imagine it being too much darker or more horrifying (I assume by that they mean Jamm will not be included).

I don't know if the cover image is meant to suggest that the Parasites will be more...parasitic than the big, sentient aliens of the original, nor who all of the characters are. Sparx and Loose Cannon are definitely on there. The girl in the barely-there denim shorts could be Razorsharp, as sprouting blades looks to be closer to her power-set than those of any of the other New Bloods, and I'm not sure about the kids in the background, as they don't look like any New Blood I can recall.

My most sincere hope is that Krul and company just steer clear of any introducing a New 52 version of Hitman or Anima. I'm going to go ahead and set my expectations as low as possible for this one, that way if it's better than, say, Ultimates 3 or that Arsenal comic Krul wrote where he's clutching that dead cat, I'll be pleasantly surprised.

While Riley Rossmo's Deadman isn't nearly as cool as Kelley Jones' rotting-corpse version, I really like the effect of the elongated extremeities showing Boston either entering or exiting John Constantine on this cover for th latter's ongoing monthly.

DARK NIGHT: A TRUE BATMAN STORY HC
Written by PAUL DINI
Art and cover by EDUARDO RISSO
On sale JUNE 15 • 128 pg, FC, $22.99 US • MATURE READERS
The Caped Crusader has been the all-abiding icon of justice and authority for generations. But in this surprising original graphic novel, we see Batman in a new light—as the savior who helps a discouraged man recover from a brutal attack that left him unable to face the world.
In the 1990s, Eisner Award-winning writer Paul Dini had a flourishing career writing the hugely popular Batman: The Animated Series and Tiny Toon Adventures. Walking home one evening, he was jumped and viciously beaten within an inch of his life. His recovery process was arduous, hampered by the imagined antics of the villains he was writing for television including The Joker, Harley Quinn and the Penguin. But despite how bleak his circumstances were, or perhaps because of it, Dini also always imagined the Batman at his side during his darkest moments.
DARK NIGHT: A TRUE BATMAN STORY is the harrowing and eloquent autobiographical tale of Dini’s courageous struggle to overcome a truly desperate situation. It is a Batman story like none other and one that will truly resonate with fans. Art by the incredibly talented Eduardo Risso (100 BULLETS, DARK KNIGHT III: THE MASTER RACE).

This sounds interesting. I can't wait to read it.

This is Andy Kubert's cover for April's issue of DKIII, which, if it's anything like the previous issues of DKIII, will have somewhere in the neighborhoo of 10,000 or so differnt covers. It's a pretty good Superman vs. Batman image, I think; I like the way he uses the colors of their capes to set them up as opposite forces in conflict.

I note that the artist for the mini comic is credited as "TBA," which isn't a good sign. After reading the first issue, I was really hoping that Miller himself would at least be drawing all the mini-comics, but that hope was, alas, dashed by issue #2.


DOCTOR FATE #11
Written by PAUL LEVITZ
Art and cover by SONNY LIEW
On sale APRIL 20 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
The emperor Julius Caesar has reached out from beyond the grave to resume his campaign against the Egyptian people, and only the young Doctor Fate can protect his ancestral homeland from the ghost of its former conqueror.

I just asked my local comic shop shopkeep to take this off my pull-list last week. Long story short, I loved the art, and while the writing on an issue by issue basis was fine, it was just an incredibly slowly paced, deadly-dull ongoing.

Ironically, this sounds interesting...it's kinda too bad that it took Levitz something like seven or eight issues to tell the new Doctor Fate's origin story, which can be summed up in just five words: Pre-med student finds magic helmet.

HARLEY QUINN AND HER GANG OF HARLEYS #1
Written by FRANK TIERI and JIMMY PALMIOTTI
...
Cover by AMANDA CONNER
1:25 Variant cover by MAURICET
On sale APRIL 13 • 32 pg, FC, 1 of 6, $3.99 US • RATED T+
Retailers: This issue will ship with two covers. Please see the order form for more information.
Straight from the pages of HARLEY QUINN comes the story of her strange new army of assistants, the Gang of Harleys! In this new miniseries, they’ve been on the job for just a few months, and the Gang is ready to stand up and show what they can do without Harley…and they just might have to, because Harley’s been kidnapped! The Gang’s homes, their loved ones—they’re all in danger from a strange new villain with a very personal grudge against Harley!

One of four Harley Quinn comics available this month, including her regular monthly, her bi-monthly team-up book Harley's Little Black Book and a special Harley Quinn and Suicide Squad's April Fool's Day Special, the last of which is notable for lacking the involvement of the Harley Quinn creative team (i.e. the people who made her comics popular), but featuring art by DC Comics Co-Publisher Jim Lee.

Normally I would say that DC is at Peak Harley, and threatening to burn out any and all fan interest in the character by trying to squeeze too many dollars out of her fans (there are $18 worth of comics with Harley's name in the title this month, but many more dollars worth of Harley comics if you count comics she's appearing in or guest-starring in, like Suicide Squad and Injustice), but that new Suicide Squad trailer did look pretty good, so I suppose there's a good chance the prominently featured Harley Quinn will be as popular as ever, perhaps more popular than ever, this spring.

...

Say, it looks like she's got a new hairstyle here, which more closely resembles that of her Suicide Squad film counterpart. I'm guessing she dyed it, as in her New 52 origin, Harley's red-and-black hair is as permanent as The Joker's green hair, as they both acquired their distinctive hair colors in the same fashion.


JLA VOL. 8 TP
Written by JOHN BYRNE, CHRIS CLAREMONT, JOE KELLY and CHUCK AUSTIN
Art by JOHN BYRNE, JERRY ORDWAY, DOUG MAHNKE, TOM NGUYEN and RON GARNEY
Cover by JOHN BYRNE and JERRY ORDWAY
On sale MAY 4 • 360 pg, FC, $24.99 US
In this collection of JLA #94-106 and SECRET FILES 2004 #1, the team is under attack from a coven of vampires known as the Circle—and it’s only a matter of time before one of them will fall! And the JLA is forced to face their own failures—but can they help each other process the pain and go on?

Hey, it's a collection capturing the precise moment in which JLA stopped being DC's best super-team comic, a veritable jewel in the publisher's crown of a DCU line, and turned terrible! The much-hyped John Byrne/Chris Claremont reunion on a JLA arc was not only a terrible story arc in and of itself, but it signaled the beginning of the end of the title, as DC never really attempted to assign a new and permanent creative team to the book after the end of third writer Joe Kelly's run, but rather turned JLA into something of an anthology title telling continuity-lite stories...at the same time DC started publishing JLA Classified, which was also an anthology title telling continuity-lite stories by rotating creative teams.

Man, this is bringing back all kinds of bad memories for me now. Like, within these pages, is perhaps the precise moment where Everything Went Wrong (Or was that Identity Crisis #1...?).

Anyway, this collection includes a soft reboot of The Doom Patrol spearheaded by Byrne and then almost immediately forgotten by everyone, and Chuck Austin and Ron Garney's better-than-you-imagine story arc that devotes a single issue to each of the Leaguers facing their greatest fears or whatever.

If you're reading JLA in trade, you can sit this one out, but make sure you pick up the next volume, as that one will contain Kurt Busiek's pretty damn good (Why oh why didn't they just have him take over the book after Kelly's run ended?) story arc.

Nothing says peace, love and compassion like brandishing two big-ass guns.

Not only does Wonder Woman with guns look and feel completely wrong, even antithetical to the character, but the longer I look at this image, which is Bryan Hitch's cover for his April issue of Justice League of America (provided he stays on schedule; if not they might just run a random Martian Manhunter fill-in by whoever), the more confused I get.

Like, I can't imagine the circumstances under which the super-fast, super-strong, invulnerable Wonder Woman would ever even need guns. I think it's kind of dumb when she carries swords and spears and shields and such, since she doesn't need any of that stuff, but hey, maybe it's cultural. But what's she need a fucking gun for? Like Superman or The Flash, she could just pick up bullets or pebbles and throw them really hard, and they would hit with the same impact as a bullet.

Also, how will her teammates feel about her toting around guns? The JLA is pretty anti-gun. Why, Batman has almost a pathological hatred of firearms, what will Batman say when he sees Wonder Woman packing heat...?

Oh. Um...huh.

Never mind, I guess.

THE LEGEND OF WONDER WOMAN #4
Written by RENAE DE LIZ
Art by RENAE DE LIZ and RAY DILLON
Cover by RENAE DE LIZ
On sale APRIL 13 • 40 pg, FC, 4 of 9, $3.99 US • RATED T • DIGITAL FIRST
The seas have extracted a harsh price for Diana’s rescue of the outsider, casting her adrift upon the shores of Man’s World! A kind woman introduces her to this strange new home, and a new friend bolsters her confidence, but throughout the early days of her adventure, strange dreams of violence plague her nights.

Holy shit, it's the Holliday Girls! Hooray! I really rather liked the first issue of this, and am therefore looking forward to the rest of it. This cover makes me wonder when the story is set, though, as those look more like Golden Age college girls than modern ones...

Say, the girl in the front, that's not supposed to be Etta, is it...? I imagine it is. Hmm... I don't think I like that particular look for Etta. She seems...off, somehow, but she's probably, like, the hardest comic book character in the world to draw, so I suppose I will cut Renae De Liz slack on her Etta design. (You know who would draw a great Etta Candy? Sophie Campbell. In a perfect world, she would be writing and drawing Wonder Woman for DC.)

Gah! New 52 Metamorpho is fucking terrifying.

That, by the way, is Metamorpho, on the cover of DC's new Legends of Tomorrow anthology comic, which doesn't seem to have much of anything to do with the upcoming TV show of the same name, other than the fact that they both feature Firestorm prominently, I guess.

I have no idea what's going on here, other than the fact that this is Neal Adams' cover for Superman: The Coming of The Supermen, and it looks as insane, awesome and horrible as it looks confusing.

You know, in a perfect world, rather than Brian Azzarello and Andy Kubert, DC would have paired Frank Miller with Neal Adams for Dark Knight III. Could you even imagine...?

Here are the two covers for April's issue of Teen Titans. It's a pretty great example of just how good JRJR is. Look at how godawful poor Wonder Girl's costume is. And look at how JRJR draws it. Is it still awful? Yes. But it's a simpler, more stripped-down and simplified kind of awful. It doesn't look good, but it doesn't hurt your eyes to look at it anymore, does it...?

That's how good an artist JRJR is–he can render the New 52 Teen Titans comics in such a manner that one can look directly at them without feeling sick to one's stomach.

Marvel's April previews reviewed

Marvel Entertainment will be releasing a whole bunch of comic books this April. How many, and which ones? Well, this isn't the right place to look for that sort of information. Try here, instead. This is the place to look for the answer to the question, "What thoughts did Caleb have while reading through Marvel's April solicits?"

Amadeus Cho: GENIUS AT WORK
GREG PAK & FRED VAN LENTE (W) • TAKESHI MIYAZAWA, GARY FRANK & RODNEY BUCHEMI (A)
Cover by GARY FRANK
• Get to know Cho! That's teen genius Amadeus Cho, the seventh smartest person in the world -- but who's counting?
• When Cho is declared "Mastermind Excello" by an intelligence contest, his life suddenly spins out of control -- and now he'll need all his smarts just to stay alive!
• Luckily, Cho -- and his adorable coyote pup, Kirby -- quickly meet and befriend two of the Marvel Universe's strongest powerhouses: Hercules and the Incredible Hulk!
• When Cho investigates his sister's fate, a complex web begins to unravel. Who has been manipulating him? And why?
• Can the seventh smartest person on the planet solve the riddle of his own past and future?
• Collecting material from AMAZING FANTASY (2004) #15; INCREDIBLE HULK (2000) #100; and INCREDIBLE HERCULES #126, #133, #135 and #137.
104 PGS./ One-Shot/Rated T+ ...$7.99

I'm curious about the exact format of this "one-shot" collection–Will it have a spine or staples? Will there be ads or no?–as the page-count is high enough to be that of a trade paperback, but the cost is quite low. This is apparently being produced for readers of the The Totally Awesome Hulk, in which Amadeus Cho is the Marvel Universe's latest Hulk, who might have missed her earlier appearances in the well-named Incredible Hercules and other comics. I think I've read all of these previously, but it's now been long enough that I can't remember if I ever read Amazing Fantasy or not. So I might not be able to vouch for all 104 pages of this book, but I can vouch for most of them, and they are quite good.

So I'd recommend this. Actually, I'd recommend you track down Incredible Hercules first, but if that's too many trades for you or they are too hard to find, then this is probably a viable Plan B.

Oh my God Grizzly has got to be dying in that costume. That is one animal-themed power-suit that was definitely made for New York City weather, and not Miami weather.

I'm assuming April's eighth issue of the All-New, All-Different Avengers by Mark Waid and Adam Kubert chronicles the team's laundry day.

BLACK PANTHER #1
TA-NEHISI COATES (W) • BRIAN STELFREEZE (A/C)
...
A new era for the Black Panther starts here!
Written by MacArthur Genius and National Book Award winner TA-NEHISI COATES (Between the World and Me) and illustrated by living legend BRIAN STELFREEZE, "A Nation Under Our Feet" is a story about dramatic upheaval in Wakanda and the Black Panther's struggle to do right by his people as their ruler. The indomitable will of Wakanda -- the famed African nation known for its vast wealth, advanced technology and warrior traditions -- has long been reflected in the will of its monarchs, the Black Panthers. But now the current Black Panther, T'Challa, finds that will tested by a superhuman terrorist group called The People that has sparked a violent uprising among the citizens of Wakanda. T'Challa knows the country must change to survive -- the question is, will the Black Panther survive the change?
40 PGS./Rated T+ ...$4.99

I'm really excited about Coates coming on as writer for this new Black Panther series, which will mean Black Panther will have the highest-profile, most widely-known and read writer of any of Marvel's books come April. I'm not crazy about Stelfreeze's art, but then, it's been a really long time since I've seen him draw interiors, so there is a level of curiosity there.

I'm kind of curious to see how much the title will stand on its own, and how much it will deal with where Marvel "left off" with the Panther. I mean, the last place I saw him was New Avengers, where he spent a few years working shoulder to shoulder with Marvel's various science dicks to try and save the universe, no matter how many lives and/or planets would be lost in the process. In fact, the very last collection of New Avengers I read featured Panther attempting to murder Namor, so he's not exactly the most likable guy in the world. That was all leading in to Secret Wars though, where at least some degree of continuity/cosmic rejiggering must have went on, so perhaps he's not quite the broken character he seemed in New Avengers. We'll see.

Well, I'll see; I imagine most of you have already read Secret Wars by this point, right...?

At any rate, let's hear it for a brand-new series featuring Black Panther, and from about as high-profile creative team as one could imagine.

Arthur Adams' cover for Guardians of the Galaxy #7 looks incredible, doesn't it? Too bad the interior is by Valerie Schitt, and will thus look absolutely nothing like that.

Gwenpool #1
CHRISTOPHER HASTINGS (W) • GURIHIRU (A/C)
...
2015's overnight internet sensation takes center stage in her own ongoing series! Gwen Poole used to be a comic book reader just like you...until she woke up in a world where the characters she read about seemed to be real! But they can't be, right? This must all be fake, or a dream or something, right? And you know what that means...NO CONSEQUENCES! Could Gwenpool truly be Marvel's least responsible and least role-modely character to date? She can if she tries!
40 PGS./Rated T ...$4.99


I love GURIHIRU, and wish they were drawing...well, pretty much anything else for Marvel.


HOWARD THE DUCK VOL. 1: DUCK HUNT TPB
Written by CHIP ZDARSKY, CHRIS HASTINGS & RYAN NORTH
Penciled by JOE QUINONES, DANILO BEYRUTH & ERICA HENDERSON
Cover by JOE QUINONES
Trapped in a world he's grown accustomed to! The flightless fowl gets a new beginning, with the exact same superstar creative lineup as before! But this time, the whole entire universe is after Howard -- and that includes the would-be new herald of Galactus! As the duck hunt begins, things get totally cosmic with the Silver Surfer, the Collector, the Stranger and the Guardians of the Galaxy! Plus: Brace yourself for the two most sensational, fan-favorite, Internet-breaking Marvel team-ups of the year! She's a little nutty, he's downright quackers -- it's Squirrel Girl and Howard! And in a tale that will launch a thousand cosplay double-acts, meet Gwenpool! The Duck is back, and this means "Waugh!" Collecting HOWARD THE DUCK (2015B) #1-6 and UNBEATABLE SQUIRREL GIRL (2015B) #6.
160 PGS./Rated T+ ...$17.99

I was about to be pretty pissed at Marvel for publishing a second Howard The Duck Vol. 1 by the CHip Zdarsky and Joe Quinones team, but I just checked the spine of the collection I just recently bought, and I see now that it's actually labeled Howard The Duck Vol. 0, so that's cool. Well, it's still kinda stupid that Marvel relaunched the Zdarsky/Quinones Howard The Duck series after just five issues, but it would been far stupider to label the first two trades "Vol. 1," so, you know, it could have been worse.

Nick Bradshaw is a hell of an artist, as is evident on this cover for April's issue of Spidey. I'm not crazy about The Vulture wearing a hood, though. You're bald, Vulture! It's nothing to be ashamed of! Don't cover your bald head up; let the world see that you're bald...and proud!


THE MIGHTY THOR #6
JASON AARON (W) • RAFA GARRES (A)
COVER BY RUSSELL DAUTERMAN
CIVIL WAR VARIANT COVER BY TBA
THROWBACK THOR'S DAY!
• A special tale of young Thor adventuring in the age of Vikings!
• Meanwhile, LOKI conjures up a dark and powerful new enemy: VIKING HULK
• Guest artist RAFA GARRAS brings SAVAGE NORSE ACTION because YOU DEMANDED IT!
32 PGS./Rated T+ ...$3.99

"VIKING HULK" is one of those terms I didn't realize I really liked until I saw it in print.

MOCKINGBIRD #2
CHELSEA CAIN (W) • KATE NIEMCZYK (A)
Cover by JOELLE JONES
...
• Lance Hunter's undercover gig at the London Hellfire Club has gone south and it's up to Mockingbird to rescue him, save the Queen of England, and fight off a passel of kinkily clad sadist toffs.
• Plus zombis! And corgis!
32 PGS./Rated T+ ...$3.99

Glad they went with the corgis rather than the zombies on the cover. They provide a nice visual counterpoint to the BDSM stuff.


SCARLET WITCH #5
JAMES ROBINSON (W) • JAVIER PULIDO (A)
COVER BY DAVID AJA
• WANDA'S journey takes her to Spain!
• There she finds an old vineyard converted from a haunted church where witches used to be burned at the stake.
• But to unravel the mystery of the hauntings, she must first fight off the ghosts of the SPANISH INQUISITION!
32 PGS./Rated T+ ...$3.99

The Spanish Inquisition, huh? I must admit, I did not expect the Spanish Inquisition.

...

(sorry)

Here is Mike Allred's awesome cover for April's issue of The Silver Surfer, depicting a big chunk of the Marvel Universe, as drawn by Allred. The best part of this cover? It's on a book in which the insides will look just like the cover, as Allred is also the interior artist.


THE VISION #6
TOM KING (W) • GABRIEL HERNANDEZ WALTA (A)
Cover by MARCO D'ALFONSO
• The book everyone is talking about.
• The first arc of this acclaimed series comes to its frightening climax. The bodies will not stay buried. The truth will not remain hidden. And The Vision will never be the same.
32 PGS./Rated T+ ...$3.99

Are people talking about this book? If so, they seem to be doing it out of earshot of me.

Cute cover for Web Warriors #6 by Julian Totino Tedesco. If one of your teammates is an anthropomorphic pig, you really shouldn't eat hot dogs. Or pork. Or meat, really.

Superman: American Alien #3: The comic where Clark Kent drinks a lot and has sex with The Cheetah

In October of 2014, DC published Batgirl #35, in which the writing team of Cameron Stewart and Brenden Fletcher and the art team of Babs Tarr and Stewart pretty much completely reinvented the character, giving her a new costume, a new setting, a new supporting cast and, more noticeably (and importantly), giving her book a new tone, new aesthetic and a new, new-reader-friendly posture. Depending on how generous one wanted to be towards the creators of the book's previous 34 issues, the new take either made the book much better than it had been, or made it readable for the first time.

I was therefore slightly surprised and rather chagrined to find that the one aspect of the new direction that some fans focused on was this: During a house party, Barbara Gordon drank a lot of alcohol and made-out with a boy...which she forgot doing, because of the amount of alcohol she drank. To summarize, those who noted the scene at all were pretty unhappy about it, as they felt it depicted Barbara as a woman of low morals and bad judgement. It's just not the sort of a thing a hero should do, they contended.

In this issue of American Alien, the Max Landis-written limited series about a pre-Superman Clark Kent, the title character, who is, like Barbara in Batgirl, only in his early twenties, drinks a lot of alcohol and than makes-out with a girl...actually, he likely goes a lot farther, as they wake up naked next to a bed at one point (Barbara's friends put her to bed and her boy on the couch).

While I haven't seen it yet, I assume those same folks who condemned twenty-something Barbara for drinking and hooking up with a boy (with "hooking up" here defined as "being all over one another") were just as outraged to see twenty-something Clark drinking and hooking up with a girl (with "hooking up" here defined as "probably engaging in intercourse...or, at the very least, fooling around in a bed while not wearing any clothes").

If they didn't, well, that would be indicative of the fact that maybe there's a double-standard by which we judge the behavior of young men and young women, and a woman who engages in excessive drinking and romantic activity with someone she just met is judged to be a "slut," while a young man who does the same is dismissed with some platitude along the lines of "Boys will be boys."

Although maybe Superman engaged in such activity will be regarded by many as less egregious than Batgirl doing the same, as American Alien is now quite certainly meant to be an out-of-continuity, un-labeled Elseworlds story instead of part of DC canon, whereas Batgirl #35 featured the "real" Batgirl in the "real" DC Universe.

Due to the lack of an Elsweorlds label or old-school indication that it's an "Imaginary Story," American Alien's precise place in DC canon/continuity has been vague, a vagueness helped along by the fact that DC's September 2011 "New 52" continuity reboot left most of Clark Kent's pre-Superman history unknown. Since his formative years in Smallville were now mostly a blank slate, it seemed reasonable that Landis and his artistic collaborators were here filling in all those blanks. With this issue, though, it's rather abundantly clear that this is not set in the "real" DC Universe.

Why do I say that?

Well, for starters "Dibny" seems to be Sue Dibny's maiden name rather than her married name. One of the young, rich revelers on Bruce Wayne's yacht, the setting for this issue, she is introduced by Ollie Queen as "Sue Dibny." It's possible she was married at this point–in the next panel, Clark is introduced to "Vic Szasz and his wife"–although she would have had to have been married extremely young, and her husband Ralph Dibny is nowhere to be seen, nor is he even mentioned (The party is to celebrat Bruce Wayne's 21st birthday, so presumably Sue is somewhere near 21 at the time this story takes place). I haven't been reading Secret Six after the first few issues, where the New 52 Dibnys have been introduced, so I'm afraid I'm not up on their marital history in the current DC continuity. But, for the record, Sue's maiden name was Dearbon.

That could have just been a mistake, albeit an egregious one, on the part of the young, new-to-comics writer and/or his editors (There's little point in including a character in a minor-approaching-cameo role simply as a sort of inside joke/Easter egg, only to blow it so that the folks the reference is pointed at will see your mistake*).

There's a more dramatic indication that this takes place in some American Alien-iverse instead of the regular New 52-iverse on the story's last page. That's where we see young Bruce Wayne training under the tutelage of Ra's al Ghul...as he did in Batman Begins, but not in the DCU, pre- or post-Flashpoint.

In this issue, beautifully illustrated by Joelle Jones (for the last few months, this has been by far the best-looking of the Superman books), young Clark Kent wins a Caribbean vacation, but the little two-seater plane he's in crash lands in the water on the way there. Clark and the pilot are fished out of the water by a passing yacht, where everyone assumes that he is the yacht's owner, arriving in spectacular fashion to his own birthday party: Bruce Wayne.

The fact that Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent look nearly identical is something that was often played up back in the day, which allowed the pair to pose as one another when necessary to fake out crooks or maintain secret identities when they were occasionally endangered. It's not that weird to see it used here, particularly since Landis takes care to note that all of of Bruce's "friends" on the yacht barely know him, and that Wayne never attends his own birthday parties. Also, they're all pretty wasted.

The only one to see that Clark is definitely not Bruce is Barbara Minerva–who will of course eventually become Wonder Woman's archenemy The Cheetah–who rescues Clark from a throng of people. She convinces him to play Bruce and have fun for the day, which he does, with gusto.

They share a quiet conversation and some champagne together and then, well, this happens....

There's no reason to assume they definitely had sex together, but the implication is certainly there (and there's no moment, as there was in Batgirl, where a bit of dialogue is used to make it clear that they definitely did not).

After another tender, quiet conversation, Clark is definitely totally wasted, but it turns out that it's not the alcohol so much as a nerurotoxin placed in his champagne glass by Deathstroke, The Terminator, hired by Carmine Falcone to murder Bruce Wayne.

You can tell Clark's wasted because he thinks Deathstroke's costume is cool.

The ensuing fight, as you can imagine, doesn't go very well for 'Stroke:

Clark and Barbara go their separate ways for...well, vague reasons. Mostly because as weird as it is to have the future Superman hook up with the future Cheetah, it would be weirder still if they had a real relationship, I suppose.

They part with Clark saying "Maybe I'll see you again some day," and, after he's walked away, Barbara saying "...God, I hope so."

And she does!

From Justice League #13, pencils by Tony Daniel.

Although that's in The New 52 continuity, which, as I said, appears to be a different continuitiverse than that of the American Alien-iverse.

After all, it's pretty hard to imagine the "real" Superman, from any of the several continuity rejiggerings that the the DC Universe has gone through since its creation/solidification, behaving like this. Although, if it were, how crazy would it be if Superman lost his virginity** to the woman who would grow up to be his future girlfriend's archenemy...?

As with the previous issue, there's a one-page back-up story here, written by Landis and drawn by Mark Buckingham. Entitled "The Real Question," it's a pretty great little Mr. Mxyzptlk story about the nature of reality as it pertains to comic book characters (or fictional characters, or even ideas) and their relationship to their readers. It could basically be a story involving any comic book character, but Mxyzptlk's rather unique background as a Fifth Dimensional being dwelling a on a higher plane than the readers (and two planes higher than comics characters) makes him particularly well-suited for this sort of meta-commentary, which, at just nine panels, is short enough to never get tedious. Given it's brevity, this ought to be a good story for DC to tuck away for use in any future The Greatest Mr. Mxyzptlk Stories Ever Told-type collections.



*It's particularly strange given that Landis has Zsasz referencing making a bet, as his original origin story involved his gambling problem, and the fact that a minor character from an obscure comic gets name-dropped, in the form of Bobby Milestone from Silverblade.

**Unless he and Lana Lang had sex somewhere between #2 and #3 of this series; in the opening scene, Pete Ross mentions that the vacation could be just what Clark needs after, "y'know, after the whole thing with Lana."

Review: Marvel 1872

There’s a blurb on the back of this trade, which collects the four-issue 1872 miniseries, that cracked me up: “I’m not a fan of Westerns, but this comic book may have just changed my opinion of them.”

I didn’t read the entire review the quote is pulled from, and am unfamiliar with the website it’s attributed to, but the sentiment it implies amuses me. That all it takes to get a superhero comic fan to become a fan of the Western is to set a superhero comic in the Old West, and put cowboy hats on the fan’s favorite superheroes.

For that’s basically all 1872 does; I suppose you could call it a Western, but it’s more of a superhero comic in Western drag. One of the many, many highly tangential Secret Wars tie-ins, the series is more of a DC-style Elseworlds comic than a traditional Marvel What If…? comic. That is, rather than taking a particular moment in Marvel Comics history as a starting point and asking what if someone zagged instead of zigging, it simply transposes the modern Marvel superheroes to a different setting, and plops a simple, A-to-B storyline in the middle of that setting, letting the variants of the familiar characters do most of the heavy-lifting in terms of entertaining the readers.

The closest relative I can think of in an alternate universe Marvel comic is probably Marvel 1602, which the slightly re-titled trade collection at least seems to be trying to echo.

None of which is to imply that 1872 is bad, of course. It is, in fact, quite well-made, and I found it to be an extremely entertaining, even rip-roaring super-comic. It’s just not much of a Western, really, as that blurb implies (and Marvel's choice to use that blurb makes it all the more amusing), nor is much of a Secret Wars tie-in, despite the big “Warzones” logo emblazoned across the top and the smaller Secret Wars slug in the lower right corner.

One can, of course, roll one’s eyes at the tenuous rationale that Marvel had for publishing many of their Secret Wars miniseries while still being glad of the fact that they published them. And this is a good example. It’s got nothing to do with Secret Wars, really (other than the fact that Doctor Doom temporarily scrambled the world into a sort of Epcot Center of alternate realities, and this is one of ‘em). The flip side of that is, of course, one need not know anything at all about Secret Wars to be able to enjoy 1872.

The hero of the series, written by Gerry Duggan and drawn by Nick Virella, is Red Wolf, a reimagined version of the old, minor Marvel hero, who recently earned his own ongoing title, Marvel’s first to star a Native American character, for whatever that’s worth (after the publisher used this series as a means to reintroduce the character).

He is caught trying to blow up a dam that Governor Roxxon erected and that, incidentally, denies his people of water. The boys that caught him work for Mayor Fisk, and they are intent on lynching him, but Sheriff Steve Rogers intervenes, insisting that Red Wolf get a fair trial before a judge. Rogers is, of course, willing to shoot it out with anyone who insists on taking the law into their own hands.

Rogers is naturally killed by Fisk and Roxxon’s hired guns, but not before thoroughly inspiring the hell out of Red Wolf, who picks up Captain America Sheriff Rogers’ star by the end of the series.

With the help of various late 19th-century, American frontier variants of the Avengers, Red Wolf is intent on cleaning up the town of Timely (get it?) once and for all.

These include drunken, guilt-ridden arms dealer Tony Stark, inventor of a sort of hand-held Gatling gun; timid Timely apothecary owner Dr. Bruce Banner; and the late Deputy Bucky Barnes’ widow, Natasha (Get it? Black Widow is literally a widow here!).

The most easily Western-ized villains show up here, including sharp-shooting card shark Bullseye, mountain man Grizzly and exotic-looking Asian assassin Elektra. As well, as, rather randomly, Otto Octavius, who has six six-guns, four of which are mounted on spring-loaded mechanical arms mounted under his coat.

It’s interesting to see where Duggan finds room for various characters, like The Vision being a mechanical fortune-telling machine called Stark’s Vision of The Future, or Carol Danvers as a frontier suffragette (who’s movement includes Misty Knight, here with a brace on her arm instead of having an actual robot arm), or Simon Williams as a douche-bag Roxxon enforcer.

Duggan likely goes overboard with Marvel-izing Timely, so that Stark must naturally build an Iron Man suit to don instead of any more practical invention simply because he’s Iron Man in the regular Marvel Universe, and Banner isn’t merely forced to drink the luminescent, green liquid bombs he’s created to blow up the dam by the sinister Williams, but he eventually transforms into a monster because of it…if only off-panel, and in the epilogue.

Duggan seems to have been consciously setting up the upcoming Red Wolf title (which is written not by Duggan, but instead by Nathan Edmondson), or at least wanted to get all his ideas on the page, as the rather lengthy epilogue features a suggestion of an 1872 Spider-Man, as well as giving a few panels to 1872 Deadpool and 1872 Punisher, before the rather elegant reveal of the Red Wolf’s Avengers team.

“Rogers may not have lived to see his revolution take hold in Timely, but…” narrator newspaperman Ben Urich writes in the last panels, “…his Avengers are protecting Timely from within and without.”

Virella is probably the real star here. Sure, Duggan does a fine job of translating the current heroes of the Marvel Universe into Western version of themselves, but the art is extremely accomplished. The acting and figure-work are great, and there’s just enough scratchiness to the line-work to give it a sense of urgency.

Aesthetically, this isn’t my favorite art of the half-dozen or so Secret Wars books I’ve read so far, but I will admit this is probably the best-drawn of the half-dozen Secret Wars books I’ve read so far.

The last panel includes the words “THE AVENGERS OF THE WEST will return…”, and that is perhaps a reference to the Red Wolf ongoing, although it's kind of strange they don't just say as much there. Red Wolf is apparently set in this alternate Marvel Universe, which somehow survived the end of Secret Wars and the de-scrambling of Battleworld, I guess.

Because a four-issue miniseries does not a $15.99 trade make, so Marvel includes two bonus stories, both of which star Red Wolf. The first of these is a reprint of 1970's Avengers #80, by Roy Thomas and John Buscema, featuring the first appearance and origin of the character they created. It ends with a cliffhanger, which seems an odd choice to include, as we don't exactly get to see how Red Wolf's first act as a superhero turns out. The second is a short, 8-page Red Wolf solo story from 1994's Marvel Comics Presents #170, featuring a story by Alan Cowsill and art by Jimmy Chung and Martin Giffiths. It's an extremely '90s story of Red Wolf being an extremely '90s grim and gritty superhero, but props to Cowsill for fitting an entire story into so few pages, even if it is a derivative and ultimately uninteresting one. I like the way Chung draws Red Wolf's new pet wolf Lobo, who is here still an adorable little puppy that looks more pomeranian than wolf.

Comic Shop Comics: January 13

Batman & Robin Eternal #15 (DC Comics) Poor Guillem March. He's such a great artist, and all DC has for him in terms of work at the moment is drawing a cover of two characters with hideous costumes fighting one another. (The fire on Azrael's flaming sword looks pretty rad though, doesn't it?) With this issue, the present narrative returns its attention to Red Robin Tim Drake and Red Hood Jason Todd, as they infiltrate the Order of St. Dumas' secret high-tech city and have a rematch with Azrael Jean-Paul Valley, who seems set to be joining them shortly. The connection between the Order and Mother is made clear in this issue, but The New 52 Order is so big and weird and wild that it just seems goofy, and out-of-place in the world of Batman.

Christian Duce does a pretty great job on art throughout, and co-scripters Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly handle the techno-religious gobbledygook of the plot about as well as anyone this side of Grant Morrison could, I suppose; they even do a decent job giving Jason quips.

Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #2 (DC) Well, the advantages of having a writer primarily associated with Batman writing a Batman/TMNT crossover, at least from Batman's perspective, become quite clear in this issue. Not only does Batman kick all four of the Turtles' asses in the opening nine-page fight (which only ends when Master Splinter breaks it up and throws a smoke bomb), but no one can shut up about how awesome Batman is. "This guy is fighting on a whole other level," James Tynion IV has Leonardo say; Leo later gushes about how he's never faced an opponent like Batman, with the possible exception of The Shredder, and admires how Batman fights "like a detective."

"I admire your dedication to the martial arts," Splinter tells Batman, "It is rare to see one as well-trained as you."

Michaelangelo (or is it Michelangelo now?) is even less restrained, declaring " That dude was freaking AWESOME!" He then creates a chart to count the ways in which Batman is awesome.

Tynion has Raphael, at least, not that the rest of his brothers are a little too into Batman.

Given that there are only 20 pages in this comic, and the first nine are mostly a fight scene, relatively little happens. The Turtles and Batman fight, and then retreat to their own corners to discuss one another. Bruce Wayne takes one of Raphael's sai, stolen in the fight, to Lucius Fox, who is able to analyze it and theorize how it came from another dimension. Meanwhile, The Shredder and Foot Clan kick The Penguin around and screw him over in a black market deal for some part needed to build their Get Back To IDW machine.

Oh, and Splinter figures out Batman's secret identity and leads the Turtles in a Batcave break-in, which seems remarkably easily accomplished.

Like I've said before, I have way too many feelings about the Turtles and about Batman, let alone the two characters sharing a comic book, to be the most reliable critic of the series.

I'm not a huge fan of the IDW iteration of the Turtles and would have preferred to see either the original/"real" version, or a new, more neutral version specific to this particular story. I'm not a huge fan of the New 52 Batman either, though, and I just can't get used to seeing things like Batman blocking katana and sai with the big, spiky metal gauntlets he wears now. (Although I suppose it makes more sense that this Batman could take out these Turtles so easily, given that they're younger and less experienced, and their skills come mostly via reincarnation).

Freddie Williams' art remains fairly strong, although his action sequences aren't anything special. That may be due as much to the scripting as the way in which it's drawn, but Batman battling four ninjas who are also mutant turtles should be a lot more...exciting to look at and read than the fairly static, unconnected panels depicting their fight.

Also, I hate the way he drew Penguin's collar in the scene in which Shredder is dragging him by it...

Feh.

Gotham Academy #14 (DC) I'm not entirely sure what to make of Gotham Academy #14, which kicks off a new "Year Book" story arc in which guest creative teams tell short stories involving the cast and setting of the book.

Given Gotham Academy's persistently lower-than-one-might-like sales and how common the feeling that the book isn't quite as good (and/or as popular) as it should be, one possible reading is that this is some sort of last-ditch effort to "save" the book. Or, at the very least, show off to readers just how many fans it has among other creators said readers likely like, with each guest-story doubling as a sort of testimonial.

That possible reading may also be reading too much into the construction of the current story arc though; I suppose it's just as possible that the regular creative team, and/or the book's editors, wanted to invite a bunch of talented creators they like to collaborate with them on a few issues.

Whatever the reasoning, "Year Book" part one features a framing sequence by one of the book's regular writers, Brenden Fletcher. and one of its occasional artists, Adam Archer. The premise is that Maps wasn't allowed to join the school's yearbook club, as she is already a member of too many clubs, so Olive gives her a scrap book and they decide to make their own, special, secret yearbook, full of the sorts of stories that the rest of the school wouldn't be able to hear about, anyway. Those stories are the ones told by the guest teams, and this issue they are 1.) Derek Fridolfs and Dustin Nguyen's story about what happens when students break into Doctor Langstrom's lab, 2.) Katie Cook's story about Maps and Olive's defeat of a sinister plot by the Academy glee club and 3.) Hope Larson and Kris Mukai's story about Professor MacPherson's adventure in a Gotham mall back in 1985, when she was herself a teenager.

It's a great line-up of creators, with a rather incredible variety of art styles for a mainstream DC book like this. If you've never read an issue of Gotham Academy but like any or all of the above names, this is probably a pretty good issue to check out. Which I suppose was the idea behind the formulation of this story arc.

Sure, there's a #14 on the cover, but all you really need to know going in is that Gotham Academy is a private school where lots of weird stuff goes on, and Olive and Maps and their friends have an unofficial "detective club" devoted to investigating all that weird stuff.

The Legend of Wonder Woman #1 (DC) "The adventures of Wonder Woman when she was a girl" is a comic book story that the Internet has been asking DC for since about as long as I've been writing this blog. It also seems like the precise comic that various pop culture trends, particularly in youth literature, have assured the publisher would be a slam-dunk: Wonder Woman is a young woman, either a little girl or a teenage girl, who is both a princess and a superhero–also, magic and mythology. The story of her coming-of-age on Paradise Island/Themyscira seems like a winning card of YA Bingo.

Despite that, DC has seemingly resisted, the closest they've come being a handful of the short stories that have appeared in Sensation Comics (the Noelle Stevenson-drawn one being the best of the lot) and Ben Caldwell's strip in Wednesday Comics, which, like most of the strips in that book, didn't get the individual attention it deserved because it was part of such a dynamite line-up (the quality of the whole tended to obscure the quality of the parts in the case of Wednesday Comics, I fear).

Well, now DC's devoted itself to a nine-issue coming-of-age story of the sort the Internet has been asking for, courtesy of Renae De Liz and Ray Dillon. It's pretty good, and I wrote a formal review of this first issue of the series for GC4K, which you can read by clicking here.

I'm not sure that I have much to add here, so I should probably just shut up. De Liz rewrites elements of Wonder Woman's basic origin rather heavily, but they seem in keeping with her creator's original conception...thematically as well as in terms of events, if not exactly aesthetics (Ever since George Perez's redefining run, the mythological basis of the character has grown stronger and stronger, probably at least in part as a reaction to the aging of the target audience and the accompanying sophistication of their understanding of mythology and ancient Greek culture).

I imagine it will read better in eventual trade than it does in this single issue, particularly the story-within-a-story opening, which takes up a lot of space here percentage-wise, but won't in the final storyline. It reads fine here too, though. I'm really eager to see what happens next, and how De Liz brings her young Princess Diana to her eventual, inevitable fate as Wonder Woman.

And now I'm doubly eager to see what Morrison does with Wonder Woman in his Earth-One original graphic novel, as the ante on quality revised Wonder Woman origins has been rather significantly upped recently, thanks to both this issue and Marguerite Bennett's Wondy portions of Bombshells.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #0 (Boom Studios) I wasn't planning on buying this $3.99/20-page comic, despite my interest, but a strange thing happened at the shop.

First, I saw the half-dozen or so character-specific variants by Goni Montes all laid out in little stacks next to one another, and thought that, aversion to variants aside, they did look kind of cool. Secondly, a guy ran into the shop, saw them, pumped his fist, talked excitedly about the comic for a while, and purchased a copy of each of the variants he didn't already have (I guess he got the Red Ranger one earlier in the day). His excitement was so infectious that he actually infected me with it.

And so I bought a copy. The Pink Ranger variant cover, of course, because the Pink Ranger is the best. The only better cover would be an Amy Jo Johnson photo variant, really.

It's pretty good, and a much better Power Rangers comic than the last new Power Rangers comic I read. There are three short stories, a 12-page main story Kyle Higgins and Hendry Prasetya focusing on the Green Ranger's integration into the team (set in the present, though; they've got smart phones now!), a two-page Bulk & Skull back up by Steve Orlando and Corin Howell and then a well-made but rather empty six-pager by Mairghread Scott and Daniel Bayliss that is apparently a reprint.

I'll talk more in depth about this comic elsewhere in the near future.

...

Oh, I also realized that I would be a terrible comic shop employee, as later on in the evening, I felt a weird, random pang of guilt. I wondered if maybe I should have tried to stop that guy who bought all the Power Rangers comics. Did he need, like, an intervention? Or, at the very least, someone to say out loud, "Hey, you do realize you're spending twenty more dollars to buy five more copies of a comic you already bought, right...?" I mean, he was obviously happy with the purchase and all, but man, that's a whole graphic novel's worth of comics money, wasted on variants...

SpongeBob Comics #52 (United Plankton Pictures) The cover story in this issue is a 22-pager by David DeGrand in which SpongeBob and Patrick answer the Bikini Bottom version of Steve Jobs' call for an invention contest. Sandy excuses herself for a three-week vacation, but returns to find the city in ruins, and SpongeBob and Patrick in an alternate dimension where everyone is dumber than them.

I think this may have been the strongest issue, or at least one of the stronger ones, in a while. There's a great one-pager by Mark Martin that tells a simple visual, only-in-comics joke, a two-page Maris Wicks "FLotsam and Jetsam" that may be her best yet and a strangely elegiac Michael Kupperman story about the greatest comic book collection ever, featuring the comics-collecting pirates that usually appear on the credits page. There's also a short Corey Barba story, and your monthly does of James Kochalka.

Star Wars Vol. 2: Showdown on the Smuggler's Moon (Marvel Entertainment) I'm not sure when this actually came out, but I bought it at the shop this week, so in the column it goes. It opens with a one-issue Obi Wan Kenobi story drawn by Simone Bianchi and written by Jason Aaron, which loosely ties into Aaron's overall, ongoing story arc. The rest of the collection features a story arc drawn by Stuart Immonen and inked by his frequent collaborator Wade Von Grawbadger (I thought the art a great improvement over that of John Cassaday, who drew the stories in the first trade collection).

In the story, Luke's journey to find more about Jedi stuff is super-successful, as he finds the Star Wars universe's version of a Star Wars merchandise collector, but he doesn't get to spend much time learning stuff, as said collector wants to toss him into a ring for gladiatorial combat to the death (Rather incongruously, if you ask me; it doesn't seem like what a Jedi enthusiast would do with the last Jedi, but rather what a writer would do to bring his story arc to a quick conclusion at the appointed time). The various other characters all end up on the moon at the same time (I rather enjoyed the Threepio and Chewbacca team-up) for a rather satisfying climactic battle.

Aaron and Immonen introduce a few new characters, including Han's "wife" Sana Solo, who got all the attention when this was being published serially. I was much more charmed by Grakkus The Hutt, a much more fit and physically active Hutt, who gets around on robot spider leg implants and is built, having big, cut arms. I'm not sure how a Hutt gets arms; I imagine there's a lot of dumbbells involved, though.

The best scene is probably when R2-D2 steals a bunch of light sabers and shoots them out of his head for a cool Oprah moment, in which everyone gets a light saber. Hell, Chewbacca gets two!