DC Versus Marvel Omnibus Pt. 15: Superman/Fantastic Four #1

Despite their place of honor as Marvel's First Family and theirs being the original comic book that kicked off what would quite quickly become the Marvel Universe, the Fantastic Four had yet to appear in a DC/Marvel crossover as the 20th century was drawing to a close. Not even the 1996 DC Versus Marvel series, which seemed to feature everyone, had made any real room for them, with The Human Torch and The Thing sharing only a single-panel cameo in all of its pages, and the other half of the team not even getting that much space.

Perhaps that was simply because their number made them harder to pair with DC characters. Maybe it seemed like with four of them, there were just too many of them to meet up with DC's traditional crossover stars Superman or Batman, and yet there was also too few of them to battle against and/or team-up with a whole DC team, like the Justice League, Titans or New Gods. DC did have a couple of quartets in their character catalog, in the form of the Doom Patrol and Kirby-created Challengers of the Unknown, but perhaps neither was considered a good fit for the FF and a high-profile book like an inter-company crossover.

Whatever the reason, they seemed pretty low on the DC/Marvel crossover priority list, not being featured until they shared this 1999 book with The Man of Steel (Who, like the FF, was the first character in what would grow into a whole superhero universe).

It seems to have been writer/artist Dan Jurgens—who had at that point long been associated with DC Comics and Superman in particular but had more recently branched out to work for Marvel on Sensational Spider-Man and Thor—who found some connective tissue between the two franchises. 

He drew a line between Superman as the Last Son of Krypton and the FF's planet-destroying opponent Galactus, and further involved his own creation and pet character Cyborg Superman, whose own origin was so clearly based on that of the Fantastic Four. 

The resultant comic, officially entitled "The Infinite Destruction", would differ from most of the other DC/Marvel crossovers in two ways.

First, while it's not obvious from its collection in the DC Versus Marvel Omnibus we've been reviewing our way through, the book was published at the same bigger, 10-inch by 13.5-inch "treasury format" that the first three DC/Marvel crossovers of the late '70s and early '80s were.

This was no doubt a great showcase for Jurgens' art, which is here finished by Art Thibert and colored by Gregory Wright. Even at the smaller size, it looks good; cleaner and smoother than usual. (Although, having seen so much of Jurgens' '90s art of late, I still think it looks best inked by Jerry Ordway in 1994's Zero Hour: Crisis in Time). 

The cover is pretty cool, too. You can't really tell from that bum image at the top of my post, but it was by Alex Ross, painting over Jurgens' pencils, and no doubt instilling the image with an epic sweep that flattered the book. 

Second, in terms of its premise, Superman/Fantastic Four was one of the few such stories in which the DC and Marvel Universes were treated as separate and distinct dimensions within the greater multiverse, their barrier breachable only under certain conditions. 

This was, of course, the case with the1996 Green Lantern/Silver Surfer: Unholy Alliances and Silver Surfer/Superman and, obviously, that same year's DC Versus Marvel, which established a regular means for traveling between the universes going forward in its character Access, who would go on to star in the DC/Marvel: All Access and Unlimited Access, both of which involved Superman travelling to the Marvel Universe (Though he never met the FF on either occasion). 

Here, the people in the Marvel Universe seem to know Superman quite well, but in a way similar to that in which the people of our universe know him: He has a cartoon show that Franklin Richards and Ben Grimm both watch, and Franklin has a Superman toy he carries around with him, apparently occasionally peppering his mother with questions about the DC Universe's hero.

When Superman receives a Kryptonian communication crystal that projects a hologram of his father Jor-El that tells him that Krypton's destruction was actually hastened along by a feeding Galactus, the Man of Steel notes aloud that he has "heard whispers of his existence from the heroes of the other universe." Realizing that if Galactus is able to enter into Superman's own universe, then he could potentially pose a threat to his Earth someday, and he flies off to find experts on the dangerous cosmic entity.

"And to find them...I need Access," he says.

Superman apparently finds him off-panel, and through his powers makes his way to the Marvel Universe, where the story picks up with Superman arriving at the Fantastic Four's then-base, Pier Four. No sooner does Superman arrive though, then villains attack. 

Hank Henshaw, the Cyborg Superman, emerges from the Kryptonian crystal (he had apparently seen it arriving in Earth orbit and hitched a ride) and he immediately possesses the FF's computers and defenses and uses them against the heroes. 

Meanwhile, Galactus arrives, abducts Superman, infuses him with the power cosmic and makes him his new herald, which involves a bit of a makeover: Superman's cape disappears, and his skin and costume both turn a shiny gold color.

Galactus teleports his new herald aboard his ship, with Reed wrapped around him, and then sets off to resume his planet-eating lifestyle.

Meanwhile, the remaining Fantastic three strike a bargain with Cyborg Superman: If he will help them track Galactus through space, using the Kryptonian crystal, then they will release him from Sue's forcefield cage. He agrees, largely because he wants to become Galactus' all-powerful herald (That is, after all, why he had been hiding in the intercepted crystal after all). 

What follows is an adventure through space, as the FF try to stop Superman and Galactus from finding and eating new, inhabited planets. This involves the FF fighting Superman and Galactus. But as Superman is in his new, souped-up herald form—Reed calls him the second most powerful being in existence, presumably behind only Galactus—they're even a less of a match for him then they would usually be.

It will eventually take Reed's smarts and Franklin reminding Superman of his true self to free the Man of Steel from Galactus' thrall, thwart the planet-eating giant, and reach a sort of detente with him that resolves the conflict long enough to end the book. 

There's not much more to it, really, and it turns out to be not necessarily that great of a Fantastic Four story, which was perhaps inevitable, given its main contributor being such a longtime Superman creator. That is, it's not that difficult to imagine this story existing without the FF in it at all; it can certainly be seen as a Superman/Galactus story more than a Superman/Fantastic Four story. 

As for concerns that Jurgens here irrevocably changes Superman lore by putting Galactus at Krypton as it dies, it turns out that story was an invention of the Cyborg Superman, who had over-written and altered the contents of the Kryptonian crystal when he possessed it. 

Thus, things go back to normal for all of the characters involved at the end of the crossover, as is ever the case. Although Franklin does get to keep Superman's cape as a souvenir.

At this late date, the crossovers were winding down, with only three more to go before they officially ceased. One of these—in fact, the very next one—would again feature Superman, and end up being perhaps one of the better, if not the all-around best, of the DC/Marvel crossovers.

Next: 1999's Incredible Hulk vs. Superman

Reviews: Birds of Prey: End Run, Birds of Prey: The Death of Oracle, Batgirls Vol. 3 and Spirit World

Birds of Prey: End Run. Birds of Prey: The Death of Oracle. Batgirls Vol. 3: Girls to the Front. Spirit World. 

What do these four comics collections have in common?

Well, they are all published by DC Comics. And they are all written (or co-written) by female (or non-binary) writers. And they all star female (or non-binary) heroes. 

But the reason I read them all in the last month or so, and the reason I decided to group reviews of them all together in a single post, is that they are all comics I decided to read during the course of writing about the first year or so of writer Kelly Thompson's run on the new Birds of Prey series.

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DC relaunched Birds of Prey in 2010, just about a year after the first volume of the series was canceled. They did so as part of their "Brightest Day" initiative, an event which included a bi-monthly, year-long series with that tile, and various branded tie-in series, of which BOP was one (At least, the first five issues, and the first collection, included the "Brightest Day" branding on their covers). 

The premise of the series and its tie-ins was that, after the events of "Darkest Night," a dozen dead superheroes and supervillains had been resurrected for mysterious purposes and they would have to discover what those purposes were. 

In a sign of just how erratic DC's planning was at that point, that particular Birds of Prey series only lasted 15 issues, before it was cancelled and then re-relaunched as part of the New 52 initiative, which—temporarily, at least—rebooted the entire DC Universe continuity and all the extant books were relaunched with new #1 issues. 

The real sales hook of the 2010-2011 Birds of Prey though was that it marked the return of fan-favorite writer Gail Simone, who had a four-year, 52-issue run on the original series. And, for some fans I suppose, it also featured the return of artist Ed Benes, who was the first artist to work with Simone on that earlier run.  

While I confess to having quite enjoyed Benes' work on BOP in the early '00s, when his style was much looser and more obviously manga inspired, I had since tired of it by 2010, due largely to his tendency to draw all of his characters exactly the same (with two body types, male and female) and the exploitive nature of his drawing of female characters, which could, at times, be wholly contrary to the tone of the story he was drawing (His brief run on the troubled 2006-2011 Justice League of America was the breaking point for me). 

His presence on this volume of Birds of Prey is almost certainly why I had skipped it when it was originally released, although I guess 2010 Caleb need not have worried: He ended up only drawing most of the first four issues, before other artists took over. 

Reviewing the history of this team book in my post on Kelly Thompson's run, I remembered that I had never actually read this short iteration of Birds of Prey, one that I imagine is now probably neglected by newer readers, being so incredibly short—filling just two trade paperbacks—and coming between two much longer runs.

Luckily, there are public libraries though, and I was able to find collections of it quite easily.

Gail Simone seems to have taken the title of the comic a little more literally as she and her team were relaunching the book, adding to her old, core team of Oracle, Black Canary, Huntress and Lady Blackhawk two more bird-themed character, the late-80s version of the Steve Ditko and Steve Skeates characters Hawk and Dove. 

Oh, and another bird-themed character, The Penguin, plays a major role in the first story arc, as a kinda sorta ally of the Birds. 

I do wonder if including Hawk and Dove in the book was Simone's idea, or an editorial mandate, given that Hawk had been resurrected as part of the "Blackest Night"/"Brightest Day" storyline, and thus maybe needed a home or status quo somewhere outside of the Brightest Day limited series. Reading the first collection of the 15-issue series, Birds of Prey: End Run (2011), it's not really that hard to imagine Simone, Benes and the other artists telling the exact same story without Hawk and Dove in it, their roles either eliminated or taken by other—really, almost any other—heroes.

For the most part, the focus is on the core team, their relationships to one another and their pasts. Hawk and Dove are the focus of just a few pages of the first issue/chapter, a two-page fight scene followed by two pages of them in plainclothes at a bar, Lady Blackhawk Zinda Blake arriving there to recruit them for Oracle. 

The rationale for her doing so seems to be that they need Oracle more than she needs them, "And your boy don't look like he's gonna make it without her," Zinda tells Dawn after giving her a card. The pair will spend the majority of the first, four-part story arc from which the collection gets its title in the background, Dove carrying the wounded Penguin around, while Hawk acts as occasional muscle.

That first issue introduces us to the rest of the team (their first appearances each heralded by a block of text announcing their names and skills or powers, which will get tiresome quickly, as these intros continue throughout each issue/chapter of the entire collection). They have all continued to do superhero or vigilante stuff, but solo, after...whatever happened to break them up in the last issues of the previous series (I, um, didn't read those either...or, if I did, I have now completely forgotten them). 

Oracle, now operating out of the empty Batcave, calls them all back together to announce a terrible new threat facing them: Someone has sent her extremely detailed files containing all of their secrets and those of many of their allies. Not just their secret identities, but the names and addresses of their loved ones too.

This seems to be happening simultaneous to an elaborate plot to frame the Birds as bad guys, an extremely skilled martial artist having killed someone Canary recently fought with a rare technique few know (Canary being one of them), and later (and on panel), a new player lures them to a particular location, grabs one of Huntress' crossbow bolts, and stabs The Penguin in the throat with it, just as the pre-called police arrive. 

That new player turns out to be another extremely skilled martial artist by the name of White Canary, who Benes draws in what looks like a long white coat over lingerie skimpy enough to make Black Canary's bathing suit-and-fishnets get-up look like business attire. She is working with two other surprise players, one with a long history with the Birds and another an old Batman villain, but she seems to be the driving force behind the plot...as well as being intent on betraying her partners after she gets what she wants.

While Oracle deals with one of those villains, who comes at her in the Batcave, the rest of the team deal with the other two, fleeing the police carrying the wounded Penguin to the Iceberg Lounge, where a Gotham SWAT team lays siege to them. 

As an excuse to get the team back together and recruit Hawk and Dove, the plot works well enough (After the scene in the bar with Zinda, Hawk and Dove appear as Oracle-sent back-up, there to save Black Canary and Huntress from White Canary, who is kicking their asses pretty badly). It also seems to set up a new status quo for the team, that of outlaws, although it's not clear if this will stick—or even have time to. After "End Run", there are only 11 more issues left in the series, and only nine of those will be written by Simone. 

The art is...well, it's as predicted. 

Benes is still drawing just two different body types (with the short, round Penguin an unusual departure for him), and his women are all exact clones of one another, their big-breasted, well-muscled forms all identical to one another, with only their hair colors and costumes distinguishing them (In an amusing scene, Hawk refers to Zinda as "the blonde with the legs", although she, of course, has the exact same pair of legs as all the other characters).

Benes is also drawing the already mostly skimpy costumes as skimpy as possible, so that Zinda's skirt is so short that it barely covers his ass, and Canary and Huntress's costumes similarly revealing as much ass as editorial would probably let him get away with (Although he does seem to have pushed it pretty far, here; if you look closely at all of the images of Huntress he draws, there's often no ink line between her exposed stomach and the purple panels covering her breasts; colorist Nei Ruffino is responsible for filling in the white portions of the costume there).

I don't think it's great work, although I suppose the Charlie's Angels-esque premise of the book excuses a high degree of cheesecake. Simone also seemed to be encouraging this tendency in Benes' art, as the third issue contains an eight-panel sequence in which The Penguin, apparently hallucinating due to blood loss, imagines the Birds all coming on to him, stripping out of their costumes and, in Huntress' case, straddling his lap and kissing him. (Hawk is there in the hallucination too, but merely tells The Penguin, "Hey. Don't look at me, man.")

While Benes manages the entire first issue himself, by the second, fill-in art is needed, and this arc includes a lot of really sloppily constructed and rendered work. There are no credits for each issue in the trade—they could reproduce those introductions of each character issue after issue for the trade, but not the credits?—and, instead, all of the artists are simply listed at the beginning of the collection. A few minutes at comics.org, however, will reveal that Benes got help on the pencils for the second, third and fourth issues from Adriana Melo and on inks by Mariah Benes.

It looks pretty rough, and like Melo didn't get much time to work on those issues at all. There are quite a few panels that it's kind of surprising DC even published, like ones where characters might be having conversations, but one of the participants won't be drawn at all, their dialogue bubbles coming from off-panel, or a few in which the figures are just unbelievably wrong and amateurish (If you happen have a copy of the collection in your hands for some odd reason, see, for example, Black Canary on page 62, panel 1). 

The collection also includes a two-part story, "Two Nights in Bangkok," which flows directly from the first. It mostly stars Black Canary, Huntress and Lady Blackhawk (Oracle is mostly busy setting up a new base for the Birds in a Gotham City building owned by Ted Kord with her re-recruits Savant and Creote, and Hawk and Dove are in the hospital—Hawk does get a scene related to his "Brightest Day" status quo here, though, appearing in a "White Lantern" costume and conversing with his dead brother Don Hall, the original Dove, in a dream sequence). 

White Canary has convinced Black Canary to travel with her to Bangkok and face Lady Shiva in a fight to the death to save her kinda sorta adopted daughter Sin (here, still very young; writer Kelly Thompson, who states her age as 16 in the current Birds of Prey, must be assuming a lot of time has passed since this series). While Black Canary wouldn't have much of a chance against Shiva under the best of circumstances—no matter what Tom King might have to say on the matter 15 years later—here she has a broken wrist and is wearing a sling around one arm. The fight is a death sentence.

Huntress intervenes, forcing Shiva to fight her instead, and Huntress is even less of a match for the world's greatest martial artist (Or second greatest if you count Cassandra Cain...or third greatest if you count Richard Dragon). She wins anyway...or at least survives through a mix of belligerence and dirty tricks long enough that the rationale for the fight expires before she does.

These two issues are drawn by Alvin Lee and Melo, with inkers Jack Purcell and J.P. Mayer. It seems a vast improvement over Benes' arc...not necessarily because of style, but because of consistency. (Lee and/or Melo are also very cheesecake-focused; there's a panel where Huntress is shown zipping up her top in which her breasts are falling out, even though it isn't clear her top had a zipper there) 

It's pretty clear that Simone had no idea that the New 52 was coming at this point—one wonders how many folks at DC did, including editorial—as she is here still setting up a new status quo for the team, but it would turn out that her run was already about half over at this point.

The volume collecting the rest of the series, Birds of Prey: The Death of Oracle (2011) provides more evidence of this fact still. The four-part title story arc has Barbara Gordon showing elements of her new base off to the recently resurrected Batman, as well as initiating a new plan that involves faking her own death as part of an effort to reduce the number of people who actually know about her existence and work (At that point, she had become the "infojock" serving pretty much the entire superhero community; after the events of the story, she has shrunk her circle of operatives and allies down to just the Birds and most of the Bats). 

Heck, the very last issue that Simone writes, the thirteenth of the series' fifteen issues, ends with the Birds having been defeated by a terrifying new enemy, and Oracle vowing to go back after her and bring her down. But that doesn't go anywhere, obviously. The last two issues of the series wouldn't follow up on that plot. Instead, writer Marc Andreyko would write what reads like a two-part inventory story (Another portentous scene in this volume, in which Hawk visits The Penguin for some secret business that is never revealed to the readers, would also go unresolved anywhere).

In "The Death of Oracle", Barbara provokes a battle with The Calculator, a particularly goofy old supervillain that writer Brad Meltzer had previously transformed into a villainous analogue of Oracle, playing the same role she does in the superhero community for DC's supervillains. Their conflict apparently hinges on something that happened in the pages of Batgirl (the Stephanie Brown-starring series), at least according to an asterisk and an editorial box, but essentially wants to convince him that he has successfully killed her.

This involves The Calculator sending his agents Mammoth, new characters Current and Mortis and a host of H.I.V.E. soldiers to abduct the female Birds, who are celebrating Dove's birthday at a strip club. 

That story is followed by two more Simone-written ones. The first, a done-in-one, focuses on The Huntress, and Catman's elaborate efforts to manipulate her into not liking him anymore, while the second, a two-parter, involves most of the Birds trying to infiltrate a mysterious building that turns out to be the base of Junior, the daughter of the Golden Age Rag Doll (and thus the brother of Secret Six's Rag Doll) while The Huntress attempts to recruit Question Renee Montoya to the team.

Again, Simone doesn't really have an artistic partner in this volume either (You'll note hers is the only name on the cover above), but the art is at least much better this time around.  Ardian Syaf pencils the first issue of "Death", Guillem March the second and Inaki Miranda the third and fourth. Pere Perez draws the Huntress/Catman issue, and Jesus Saiz and Diego Olmos each draw an issue of the last story arc.

Stylistically, the art is all over the place, but it was a treat to see March's work here. Like Benes, he seems to have a special interest in drawing sexy women, but he's much better at it, giving his figures a slightly more cartoony sheen, and he's able to pull off a variety of body types (He also does a wonderful Penguin, and draws the hell out of Batman in a few panels). I also like Miranda's work here quite a bit. 

The Andreyko-written issues are drawn by Billy Tucci and Adriana Melo, both of whom contribute to both issues and, like most of the issues in the first volume, the art looks pretty rushed. 

These Andreyko issues are completely disconnected from the stories that precede them. The original, Golden Age Phantom Lady, now a senior citizen, joins Lady Blackhawk and Black Canary in an event for World War II veterans organized by her granddaughter Kate Spencer (secretly Manhunter).

Flashbacks to a 1950 adventure Phantom Lady, Lady Blackhawk and Canary's mom detail an encounter with a Nazi mad scientist in Argentina, and he and his followers return in the present to seek their.

The story itself is fine, if weird in how free-floating it is, not being connected to the preceding series in anyway and, unfortunately, not reading at all like it was the last Birds of Prey story of the post-Crisis continuity. 

And with that, the short-lived second Birds of Prey ongoing reached its conclusion.

The series would be relaunched in November of 2011 in a new, third ongoing by Duane Swierczynski and Jesus Saiz, the new line-up consisting of Black Canary, Poison Ivy, Katana and new character Starling. As for the other characters from the 2010 Birds of Prey of series, Barbara Gordon would appear in a new Batgirl series written by Gail Simone that reverted the character back to the role she abandoned back in 1988 and Hawk and Dove would appear in Hawk & Dove by Sterling Gates and Rob Liefeld, which lasted all of eight issues. 

All three series looked pretty terrible to me, and I didn't read any of them. 

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In discussing my immediate reactions to the new Birds of Prey, based solely on that first Leonardo Romero image that was released, I mentioned that, upon seeing Cassandra Cain, I wondered how her being on the team would square with where I had last seen her. 

That was, of course, in the pages of the (very) short-lived Batgirls series, which, despite its weaknesses, was at least a great status quo for Gotham City's three Batgirls: All active heroes, working together as partners and living together as friends.

Of course, that reminded me that I never actually finished reading Batgirls...and thus I had no idea if the team had, like, broken up or something at the end of it. I wasn't overly enamored with the series, which I found quite wanting, despite my affection for the characters and my agreement with the basic premise, but, as a Cassandra Cain fan, I figured I should at least do my due diligence and read the final issues of the series. (I talked about the first volume, in regard to trying to fathom why it did so much more poorly than past Batgirl series, here, and then reviewed the second one in this column.)

I was glad to see that my hope that the book would continue to get better, with each new volume being better than the one that preceded it, was met. Despite the rather...un-Batmanly story that opens the collection, Batgirls Vol. 3: Girls to the Front (2023) is the best-written collection of the 19-issue series. Although I guess that trend line doesn't matter too much; sure, a potential fourth volume would seem to accordingly be even better still, but, well, there's no fourth volume coming. 

The rather stuffed 144-page collection opens with the sole Batgirls annual, drawn by artist Robbi Rodriguez, who contributed some art to the previous volume (As for the artist who launched the book with writers Becky Cloonan and Michael W. Conrad, Jorge Corona, he remains on cover duty only). 

There's a sizable change to the status quo in its story, with Barbara Gordon moving out of the team's loft in Gotham neighborhood The Hill and back into her Clocktower headquarters (which has apparently been rebuilt after being destroyed in the earlier issues of the series), but the main focus is on Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown expressing their interest in trading places with one another, if only for a day.

This casually articulated wish actually comes true, thanks to a magical coin that a mysterious old lady hands Steph after she rescues a cat from a tree, and the two junior Batgirls swap bodies, Freaky Friday style (Or Ultimate Spider-Man #66-67 style, I guess; I don't know, has this also happened in other superhero comics I haven't read, too...?). 

The timing could be better. While Babs, Batman and magical consultant Zatanna try to figure a way out of the problem for the girls, their supervillain parents both come calling simultaneously, with Lady Shiva asking Steph-in-Cass' body to board a helicopter, and Cass-in-Steph's body being drugged and delivered to Cluemaster. For reasons never made clear, Steph doesn't try to explain to Shiva what happened at first but tries to trick her into believing she is actually the real Cassandra. 

In this volume, one story leads to the next pretty organically. When their minds revert back to their correct bodies, Cass knows the danger Steph is now in, and  she goes to rescue her from Cluemaster, who I guess has recently been brought back to life...? (Odd; I don't remember him dying...at least not this time. I do recall him dying in the short-lived 2001 Suicide Squad relaunch, but not this particular death. Did he get killed at the end of Batman Eternal, which I totally read, and I simply forgot about it...?). At any rate, the now-alive Cluemaster is holding his daughter captive and forcing her to play along in a game show he's set up in a remote, trap-filled cabin. 

(Oddly, the body-swapping shenanigans focus completely on Steph-in-Cass'-body. Cass-in-Steph's-body spends the entire time tied-up, gagged and in the backseat of a car).

Cluemaster reveals that The Mad Hatter brought him back from the dead, and so then the next issue focuses on the girls battling the Hatter.

Only the last story, the three-part "From Hill's Heart", doesn't flow from the preceding issue. In that one, there's a mysterious sniper targeting random civilians in The Hill, a sniper with an apparent vendetta against the Batgirls. It turns out to be minor, Chuck Dixon-created villain Gunbunny (who, to my knowledge, has never even met any of the Batgirls). She, in turn, is confronted by a counter-sniper, who appears to be her dead partner Gunhawk, but is actually Batgirls villain Assisi from the first volume, disguised as Gunhawk for, um, some reason...?

Obviously, Cloonan and Conrad's scripting still leaves much to be desired, even if the series has gotten much better at getting inside the girls' heads and exploring Steph and Cass' friendship as it progressed. 

There is, as unfortunately seems to the case far too often now, no regular artist on the series. Rodriguez draws the annual and issues #17-#19 ("From Hill's Heart). Jonathan Case draws issues #13 and #14 (the rest of the body swap story that starts in the annual). Neil Googe, who contributed art to the second volume, draws issue #15 (The Cluemaster story). And Geraldo Borges and Rico Renzi draw issue #16 (the Mad Hatter story).

All are excellent artists, and I like each of their styles just fine (despite Rodriguez's reliance on using manipulated photographs for backgrounds), but none of them go particularly well together, and the book suffers in the most basic, panel-to-panel continuity. Case, whose style is the most dramatic departure, gives Cassandra a radical new hairstyle, in which she seems to have cut three to six inches off between issues, for example, and while one issue ends with a captive Steph covered in electrodes, the next picks up without any electrodes on her (as Case also colors and letters his own work, his issues are an especially sharp departure from what precedes and follows them).

To answer the question I had before reading this volume though, no, the team doesn't break up or anything at the end. The two junior Batgirls jump off a building together, presumably on their way to their next adventure, in the last panel of the series, with only Cloonan and Conrad's omniscient, third-person narration indicating that the series is ending. 

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Near the climax of Birds of Prey Vol. 2: Worlds Without End, in which the team is trapped in an ever-changing pocket dimension that can be manipulated by their thoughts, Batgirl Cassandra Cain comes up with a plan to defeat the villain pursuing them. This involves making the dimension resemble "Spirit World", which an asterisk leading to an editorial box reminds readers she visited in the 2023 miniseries Spirit World. 

This reminded me that I had never read Spirit World, despite my affection for the Cassandra Cain character. 

Spirit World's star, Xanthe Zhou, also appears briefly in the story, called in by the Birds' ally John Constantine to help investigate the mysterious portal that the team disappeared into. When the Birds and the story's villain all emerge from that portal, zhou helps them fight the villain with their giant sword (Xanthe, by the way, is, like their co-creator Alyssa Wong, non-binary).

Luckily, DC made it easy to catch up on the six-issue Spirit World in a collected edition, which also contains its 10-page prologue "The Envoy" from one-shot anthology Lazarus Planet: Dark Fate #1 by the Spirit World creators and  an eight-page Batwoman team-up from the pages of DC Pride 2023 by Jeremy Holt and Andrew Drilon. I'm pretty sure that means it has all of Xanthe Zhou's appearances up to the point that the book was published, then. 

And as for that book? 

Spirit World (2024) is the work of writer Alyssa Wong (probably best known for her 40-issue run on Marvel's Star Wars: Doctor Aphra, although she has done some writing for both of the big two superhero publishers), and artist Haining. (Both creators are credited both by these names and in Chinese characters, as are the colorists and letterers). 

It introduces a brand-new character to the DC Universe, the codename-less Xanthe Zhou, who serves as a sort of go-between for the real, living world and the title locale, an afterlife inspired by Chinese beliefs. They also have magical superpowers similarly inspired by Chinese superstition: They can make folded paper constructions into the objects they represent, most often a giant sword. 

It's an always welcome effort by the publisher to introduce a new character and expand the DC Universe.

In the 2023 "Lazarus Planet" crossover storyline, a volcano on Lazarus Island erupted, ultimately causing magical storms and rain all over the world that have strange, unpredictable effects on the people and characters. The events played out in a variety of "Lazarus Planet"-branded specials, like the aforementioned Lazarus Planet: Dark Fate. These events are apparently what Wong and Haining use to incite the introduction of Zhou, who hails from Gotham City's little-visited Chinatown. 

Zhou is visiting the grave of her grandmother in a Gotham cemetery when they are suddenly set upon by jiangshi, the hopping vampires readers might be familiar with from kung fu movies or other pop culture; the creatures have apparently awakened by the magic rain. 

Zhou is soon joined in battle by Batgirl Cassandra Cain, who helps them put the undead attackers down by kicking them in the head and affixing magical pieces of paper (talismans) to their heads. The pair are soon joined by a rather unlikely third character, making for a rather eclectic cast for the Spirit World story that is being set up in this short: John Constantine. 

After the vampires are all vanquished, a new threat emerges: A "collective" of angry spirits, which take the form of a scary tree; it is the "necromantic" energy of this which had drawn Constantine to the cemetery. Zhou manages to exorcise it and send it back to the underworld, but not before it grabs Cassandra in a branch-like limb and drags her with it. 

And thus the plot for the series to follow is established: Cassandra Cain is trapped in the spirit world, and it's up to Zhou and Constantine to mount a rescue mission.

There's a slight hiccup as the short, Lazarus Planet prologue leads into the Spirit World series proper, as the story essentially restarts, and some amount of time seems to have passed since Cassandra was taken and Zhou and Constantine re-meet one another, the urgency of the situation somewhat downplayed by their having separated in the first place. 

Wong and Haining start off the narrative on parallel tracks. There's the characters in the living world trying to find their way to get to spirit world, which involves a meeting with Zhou's family, who have been mourning their loss since they first ventured into spirit world (Zhou's own status is somewhat ambiguous throughout much of the story; they are apparently simultaneously alive and dead, able to travel between the two worlds when presented with a portal or other opportunity to do so). 

And then there's Cassandra in the Chinese underworld, where the various undead are irresistibly drawn to her as a living being, and seek to eat her. She luckily finds allies in the form of Po Po and Bowen, friends of Zhou's who help her mask her presence with a new, temporary costume and some magical tea. 

When the heroes finally all reunite, they find themselves facing a new threat to the underworld, in the form of another collective (or is this the same on that they saw surface in Gotham?), one that once attempted to absorb Cassandra during her short trip to spirit world years ago, and is now currently absorbing other innocent spirits at an alarming rate in an attempt to challenge the remote gods who rule this afterlife.

(Don't remember Cass visiting spirit world? You wouldn't, as it wasn't actually depicted in the comics at the time, but remember when she dies* near the Andersen Gabrych-written end of her series in 2006, before Lady Shiva resurrects her in a Lazarus pit? Wong posits that her spirit briefly visited spirit world, and Haining draws highlights of her trip. Cassandra is, remember, part Chinese). 

At Spirit World's climax, which involves our unlikely trio of heroes battling both the now giant collective and an honest-to-goodness god, it is Zhou who manages to save the day, with both their understanding of what ultimately drives the dead of this particular underworld, and a bit of negotiating and deal-making that reminded me a bit of some past Constantine storylines. 

Xanthe Zhou proves to be a unique and compelling character, and one that I hope sticks around the DC Universe. They seem to be doing well so far, appearing not just in Birds of Prey, but also, apparently, in an early issue of the new Mark Waid and Dan Mora Justice League Unlimited. 

I was quite taken with Haining's art, which, based on her online credits, I must have seen a few times before in other books. I was especially impressed with the fact that the artist drew the entire six-issue arc, as that is, quite unfortunately, something of a rarity today, even on miniseries.

I suppose that, at a glance, the big-eyed character designs will suggest manga art, but it actually suggested Chinese comics art to me, as little of that as I've actually read (Publisher ComicsOne published some Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon collections in the first years of the new millennium, before I had even started EDILW, which I quite enjoyed at the time). 

The layouts and panel-flow don't suggest Asian comics at all, though; this reads very much like a traditional Western superhero comic, if one with more dynamic, creative layouts than some others (Which lead me to wonder how the team made the book; if it was done "Marvel style", or in a more rigorously scripted manner). 

Given how much of the book is set in a fantasy underworld, there is obviously a lot of cool stuff for Haining to draw, and the book is filled with weird characters from Chinese folklore and, one imagines, the creators' own imaginations. 

I'm...not 100% sure how I feel about Constantine's smoking here. He almost always has a cigarette in his mouth, which he lights with a burst of magic energy from his fingertip, and he rarely seems to take it out, even to hold in his hand. It looks really unnatural, but, as the book went on, it gradually started to become endearing to me, as if Constantine is so committed to smoking that he never spits out his cigarette, no matter how dangerous the circumstances or pitched the battle (And this is very much a more superheroic DCU Constantine than the Vertigo one I'm more familiar with, constantly summoning, using and fighting with magic like Dr. Strange in a trench coat).

Haining's Xanthe Zhou and Cassandra Cain are both beautiful, the latter looking quite a bit younger, perhaps because her bigger, wider eyes. As I was reading, I did question why Zhou's shaven head never seems to grow out any—they spend three straight days unconscious at one point in this adventure—and I did wonder if they were ever going to change clothes, given that they don't wear a costume, just (admittedly cool-looking) street clothes. But then I realized Constantine's constant stubble never seems to grow either, and he seems to be wearing the same damn outfit he's been wearing since 1985.

An extremely well-made, beautifully drawn comic that introduces a great new character, a cool new corner of the DC Universe and proves a nice showcase for one of my favorite characters, I was quite pleased I finally got around to reading Spirit World.**

The end of the Spirit World mini-series isn't the end of the Spirit World trade paperback, though. There's still that DC Pride short story. I was a little surprised to see that it wasn't by Wong and Haining, but by writer Jeremy Holt and artist Andrew Drilon. 

In their story, Xanthe Zhou, still wearing the same outfit as in the previous series and short story, is in the world of the living, and is bored, narrating about how living their life can feel like a burden. They eventually break into a cemetery after dark and practice folding objects out of paper. Suddenly, vandals with ridiculously high-tech equipment—gauntlets that generate what look like laser Wolverine claws—arrive to attack the Kane family mausoleum, and Batwoman promptly appears to defend it from them.

The two team-up to fight the bad guys and rather swiftly drive them off, and they then have a three-page conversation, in which Batwoman seems to rather randomly reveal her secret identity to this person she just met (Or, at least, she tells Zhou her late mother's name, which is pretty darn close to doing so). 

There's a bit about relationships with the dead, and birth families versus found families. And the story seems to indicate that Zhou might like women. "Batwoman?! Okay. Stealth is officially hot," they narrate when Kate Kane first appears. Later, Kate says "If I didn't know better, I'd say you're... ...flirting with me," although I saw no indication that Zhou was.

Like many of the shorts from such anthologies, there's not really much to it, but I suppose it's good that they included it in the collection, making it easier for readers who want to have all of Xanthe Zhou's appearances in one place able to do so.

 Of course, now they have to also track down two issues of Birds of Prey and at least one issue of JLU...

*I'm actually unclear on this point, as it's been almost twenty years since I read that story (It, um, wasn't so good that it was one I ever revisited). Here, Haining draws Shiva holding a gun and shooting Cassandra through the chest, and later, after a two-page spread depicting her journey through Spirit World, Cass exclaims, "My mother. She killed me. Then brought me back." But checking Wikipedia, it says that Cass was actually mortally wounded by a character trained by her father David Cain, known as Mad Dog. I am too lazy to go dig through long boxes just to settle the question for myself at this point. I don't suppose anyone has a trade paperback of Batgirl: Destruction's Daughter handy, do they...?

**If, like me, you enjoyed the book, and the various bits of Chinese myth, legend and folklore seen throughout it, from the setting to the rules and practices involving the dead, I would heartily recommend you also check out Remy Lai's exellent 2023 graphic novel Ghost Book, which I reviewed here. 

Although the tones and art styles of the two books are quite different, both seem to be drawn from the same well of inspiration, with Ghost Book's two heroes trapped between the two worlds similarly to Xanthe Zhou, and much of Lai's book also being set in the Chinese underworld. There's even some slight overlap of characters. While psychopomps Oxhead and Horseface have more substantial roles in Lai's work, they do make a brief cameo in Haining's art, appearing in the spread where Cass remembers her first trip through the spirit world. 

I wondered if Ghost Book might have provided any inspiration to Wong's Spirit World, but it looks like the first issue of the latter shipped in July of 2023, while Ghost Book was released in August of 2023, so the two came out pretty much at the same time, and Lai and Wong and Haining must have all been working on their stories at around the same time. 

DC Versus Marvel Omnibus Pt. 14: Batman & Spider-Man #1

Two years after their initial meeting in Spider-Man and Batman, the two heroes would re-team once again in an adventure from returning writer J.M. DeMatteis. While that first team-up was drawn by an artist primarily known as a Spider-Man artist (Mark Bagley), this second one would be drawn by an artist primarily known as a Batman artist, the great Graham Nolan, here inked by Karl Kesel. 

By 1997, Nolan had already had a healthy run on Detective Comics (a chunk of which was finally collected in 2020's Batman: Knight Out) and penciled the original graphic novel The Joker: Devil Advocate, working with writer Chuck Dixon on both. He had also, again with Dixon, co-created the villain Bane in the pages of 1993's one-shot special Batman: Vengeance of Bane. 

Teenage Caleb held great esteem for Nolan's work, particularly that during the Tec run, as Nolan's take on the Batman character and his world seemed to strike a precise, perfect balance between the sturdy realism of Jim Aparo and the dynamic, expressionism of Norm Breyfogle.

By the end of the decade, though, Nolan's work with DC, which included a Bane vs. Ra's al Ghul limited series and the extremely weird JLA Versus Predator, seemed to peter out. I had often wondered what had happened to him (it turns out he turned his attention to drawing a couple of legacy newspaper strips) and was quite happy to get new work from him when he and Dixon reunited for the 12-part series Bane: Conquest in 2017. 

A few years later, I looked him up on what was then still Twitter, found him and followed him...and then quickly realized one of the reasons he doesn't seem to be getting much high-profile work in the modern comics industry equivalent to his level of talent. In rapid succession he posted a couple of tweets that I found politically objectionable, including ones hash-tagging or seemingly speaking positively of Comicsgate, of all things. (Nolan is also on an "unofficial listing" of creators who support Comicsgate on comicsgate.org.)

And then I saw his name listed here among comics professionals who participated in a livestream reacting negatively to Superman's son Jonathan Kent coming out as bisexual and DC updating Superman's World War II-era slogan of "Truth, Justice and the American Way" to "Truth, Justice and a Better Tomorrow." (For what it's worth, I like the original just fine and always imagined it to refer to the ideals America as a nation supposedly represented and strove to embody, not an endorsement of the country's often reprehensible actions like, you know, invading Iraq or electing Donald Trump...twice). 

Now obviously Comicsgate is...not company a responsible professional should be keeping, regardless of their political views. But reprehensible views are, I guess, something else that Nolan has in common with his frequent collaborator Dixon, and so I suppose it's unsurprising we're not seeing him drawing Batman or Superman these days. (He seems to be keeping himself busy self-publishing crowd-funded books through his Compass Comics, which he claims are free of the "moralizing and political messages so prevalent at the 'big two' publishers.")

While it is understandable why publishers and other professionals wouldn't want to work with anyone in the Comicsgate orbit, and it is understandable why readers wouldn't want to support creators who hold intolerant beliefs (I know I wouldn't want to buy, say, a new Dixon/Nolan comic today), it doesn't change the fact that Graham Nolan is a hell of an artist, a fact attested to by this very story.

In it, he not only does his usual fine job of drawing Batman and the Dark Knight's perennial foes Ra's al Ghul and Talia, Nolan also gives us a great Spider-Man, one who looks and moves like a classic iteration, evoking the work of John Romita Sr, one of the probably two artists who defined the character's look (The other, of course, being his creator Steve Ditko).

Nolan also draws the Kingpin, who is the Spider-Man villain used in the story. And DeMatteis makes pretty great use out of him here, too. What seems to unite the villains in this particular crossover is their nature as master schemers and plotters, each seeming to exert an impressive degree of control over their particular kingdoms, only really differing in the scale of their ambitions. 

Kingpin, of course, wants to—and sometimes does—rule over all crime in New York City, if not the entire city itself. Ra's' criminal enterprise is global in scale, and he has his sights set on ruling the entire world.

This similarity, and this difference, is at the core of DeMatteis' story, which, more so than anything else, is a great character study of the Kingpin: The lengths he will go to save the woman he loves, the way his mind works and where he draws the line when it comes to his own super-villainy. 

You may remember—if you have a particularly good memory, anyway—that when I was writing about these two heroes during my discussion of their first pairing, I noted the similarity in the types of stories told about each, as they tended to spend the issues of their comic book series defending their home cities from the machinations of their big and colorful rogues galleries. 

I even explicitly said they don't generally engage in globe-trotting adventures, or those in which the fate of the whole world is at stake. 

Well, guess what? 

This story, entitled "New Age Dawning" is an exception. Parts of the story are set in Gotham, New York City, Paris and Tibet, our heroes ultimately travelling to the distant roof of the world just in time to stop Ra's and Kingpin from pressing the button on a doomsday machine that will wipe NYC off the map and ready the world for Ra's' assumption of its complete control.

As I said, while it reads like a character portrait of Kingpin Wilson Fisk, it also scans an awful lot like a Batman story, particularly one of the many in which he faces Ra's al Ghul and the villain's plans to save the world and its environment by drastically, violently reducing its population. 

Although instead of Robin and/or Nightwing around to give Batman someone to banter with, here it's Spidey.

The story opens with a narration-heavy sequence in which a wild-eyed, wild-haired television evangelist preaches about the sorry state of the world—earthquake, flood, a bombing in Jerusalem—as signs that we are entering the end times. And though he plays the role of a Christian evangelist, he doesn't really evoke Christianity, but an unnamed, secular savior of some sort. "There's only one hope for us," he says. "Only one man who can save us from the firestorm that's coming. Look up, children of sin! Look up-- --and see the savior." 

Jesus? 

No. 

The scene then shifts to that would-be savior, dwelling in a hidden, paradisical city nestled in the mountains of Tibet. He is shown praying before an altar filled with candles and the icons of several different religions (a crucifix among them), while his concerned daughter looks on, unseen.

This is, of course, Ra's al Ghul.

Meanwhile, our other villain, Wilson Fisk, is introduced in Paris, where he confronts his apparently estranged love, Vanessa, and embraces her in a kiss.

And as for our heroes? 

Well, Spidey is introduced suiting up and leaving his wife Mary Jane to study while he goes out crime-fighting. (Nolan somewhat surprisingly draws her remarkably less busty than the bombshell version of the character that was more prevalent in the '90s; here her design more closely resembles that of Mark Bagley's Ultimate Mary Jane). Spidey busts up an arms deal that he assumes must be Fisk's work, although readers will note the demon's head symbol tattooed on one of the gunmen's palms. 

And as for Batman, he swings through a rainy Gotham sky to meet his kinda sorta lover/mortal enemy Talia, who tells him she has business in America, but wanted to drop by and see him. Then she sics a bunch of ninjas on him. ("You knew those men would never stand a chance against me," Batman tells her. "I...had to at least go through the motions of an assassination attempt," she replies.)

With all of the players introduced, it is now time to commence with the crossing-over. Talia and Fisk talk business in his penthouse office. Apparently, Fisk has been working for her and her mysterious employer for some months now, and though he suspects them of being a terrorist organization, as long as they leave their "madness" out of his country and his city, he doesn't mind. Talia pointedly corrects him that the real aim of her organization is not terror, but "resurrection", a word that briefly stops Fisk and elicits a shocked expression from him, given what his wife is going through.

As will soon be revealed, Vanessa is apparently dying of cancer—I obviously have no idea how this squares with the events of the regular Spider-Man and Daredevil comics of the time. Fisk is uninterested in Ra's al Ghul's plans, laid out in a few pages of dialogue that jumps from a conversation between Talia and Fisk to another of Batman and Spider-Man. 

This time around those plans involve using special devices that control the weather and tectonic plates to sink the island of Manhattan and cause other such disasters until Ra's emerges from the apocalyptic chaos to "offer redemption to a sick and dying world." 

Again, Fisk is uninterested, but Talia has a very strong closing offer for tailored to him.

"My father has the power to cure your wife's cancer," she tells him. 

During their meetings, Batman has been spying on the pair, and he is eventually interrupted by the arrival of Spider-Man ("I wondered when you'd show up," he says to Spidey over his shoulder without looking at him.) 

Batman is just as reluctant to work with Spider-Man this time as he was last time, and when the web-slinger puts his hand on Batman's shoulder while talking to him, the Dark Knight snatches him by the wrist and twists it. Spidey throws him across the rooftop, Batman landing on his feet and striking a cool, Mazzucchelli-inspired pose in the mist.

This is the only real fighting the two do, ultimately shaking hands again and deciding to work together. Nolan does a particularly good job of contrasting the two heroes, two characters whose basic designs are so far apart from one another, with the sleek, colorful Spider-Man a head or so shorter than the big, black triangularly shaped Batman. 

Faced with the inevitability of Vanessa's death, Fisk eventually makes a deal with Ra's, and Talia delivers he and his ailing wife to the Tibetan stronghold. There, Ra's makes clear his plans for the world and Fisk's place in them, holding the cure for Vanessa's cancer—in actuality, a cancer-like disease that Ra's engineered in his laboratories specifically to infect her—over him as irresistible leverage.

In order to make him prove his loyalty, Ra's insists that Fisk be the one to push the button that will destroy New York.

That is, of course, where Spider-Man and Batman come in. They have chased the villains to Tibet in some rather charmingly silly disguises and, after they are waylaid by Ra's forces along the way, they must travel the snowy wastes with parkas over their costumes, with Batman at one point riding piggy-back as Spidey climbs the sheer face of a mountain cliff.

To say much at all about the ending would risk spoiling a clever and effective twist, but it's safe to say that New York City is not destroyed and Ra's does not take over the world. Even Vanessa's life is saved. 

DeMatteis does a fine job of portraying all of the various and varied characters, including their at-times complex roles, like Spider-Man working to save Vanessa even if it means helping the Kingpin, and Talia's moral ambiguity, as she vacillates between working for and against her father...and against but sometimes with Batman.

The last panel, a half-page splash of the two heroes in a moon-filled big city night sky together, is the very stuff these crossovers are made for, as both look perfectly like themselves and perfectly strange appearing side by side like this, but also, under Nolan and Kesel's pens and Gloria Vasquez's colors, also seeming to belong together.

This would be the final crossover in which this particular pair would appear together, and, in fact, this was Spidey's last standalone DC/Marvel crossover. Both Batman and Kingpin would appear one more time in the DC Versus Marvel Omnibus collection though, in 2000's Batman/Daredevil: King of New York #1, by Alan Grant and Eduardo Barreto.

Next: 1999's Superman/Fantastic Four #1

A few brief spoiler-free thoughts on Captain America: Brave New World

•I finally saw Captain America: Brave New World this past week. I would have tried to see it opening weekend, when I suppose the studios and other stakeholders would have preferred I see it, but, unfortunately, my hometown no longer has a movie theater in it, so I had to wait until I was in a city with one and had a few hours to kill (We had two movie theaters when I was growing up here!).

•It was fine, like the vast majority of Marvel movies, neither one of the better ones, nor one of the worst ones. As I've said before, they've really rather perfected the process of making perfectly fine superhero movies. 

•I was pleasantly surprised that I was perfectly able to follow the film's plot, despite not having seen two of the three previous Marvel productions that seem to have fed into this one (The Eternals and The Falcon and Winter Soldier, both from 2021). 

•I did wonder what viewers who haven't long read Marvel comics might have made of some of it. For example, even though there are some brief lines of dialogue dedicated to explaining, I only really knew and understood one particular character's whole deal because I happened to read a particular comic book series 22 years ago. 

•I was really happy for that one particular actor, who has probably been waiting to perform this particular character (and collect this particular paycheck) for over 15 years now.

•They explained the absence of one moustache, but not the other. 

•I preferred the first suit Sam wore to the second one. The first was brighter, with lots of white in it, and seemed to better resemble what I remember his Captain America suit looking like in the comics. The second one was much darker and more drab looking. 

•I don't like when comic book movies use superhero characters, but then never use their superhero or supervillain names, instead just using their civilian identities. 

•It was great to see and hear Liv Tyler again after so long (The last movie I saw her in was 2014's Space Station 76). Marvel needs to get her Betty Ross back together with Bruce Banner, who is now Mark Ruffalo rather than Edward Norton, in the movies. I think they would make a cute couple. 

A Month of Wednesdays: February 2025

 BOUGHT: 

Shazam! Vol. 2: Moving Day (DC Comics) Well, that didn't last long.

The World's Finest team of Mark Waid and Dan Mora launched the latest Captain Marvel series, this one simply entitled Shazam!, in the summer of 2023. Mora lasted six issues, the entirety of the first story arc, before moving on. This was, perhaps, inevitable, given how labor-intensive drawing comics is, and the fact that he had other Mark Waid-written comics to draw too, like the then-upcoming Absolute Power and the aforementioned World's Finest...not to mention covers for books throughout DC's line. 

Waid stuck around for three more issues than Mora did, penning the two-parter that opens this second collection of the series and then a done-in-one featuring a team-up with The Creeper, of all characters. The former was drawn by Goran Sudzuka and the latter by Emanuela Lupacchino. 

Lupacchino remained on art duties when the new writer, The New Champion of Shazam!'s Josie Campbell, took over, drawing most of her first three issues, although Mike Norton helps out on the last of these. (Yes, that's a lot of artists for just six issues, and unfortunately none of them are Chris Samnee, who is literally right there, providing variant covers for the series). 

I imagine that Waid and Mora never intended to stick around too long, given the many other books they're working on, and instead wanted to give the new series a strong start, lending not only their considerable talents to the cause, but also the audiences they could be expected to bring. 

The thing is, Captain Marvel/Shazam/"The Captain" has been around for 85 years now, and though DC has been struggling for the last the few decades to produce really good comics featuring him for a longer than a one-shot or miniseries or so, I'm pretty sure the modern comics market knows the character and his whole deal by now, so it's unlikely that fans of Waid's and/or Mora's were going to be learning about him for the first time with this series, getting hooked and then sticking around monthly indefinitely.

While it's easy to understand that Waid and Mora had bigger, more important (and likely more profitable) books on their to-do lists, it doesn't inspire much confidence in the reader that the creator turnover is quite as quick as this. I mean, if the people being paid to make the comics aren't that interested in them, why should readers be? 

The creative churn certainly does take a toll on the book. 

Not only is there no consistent style, but the designs are a more fluid than they should be (Luppacchino, for example, draws The Captain's cape differently than everybody else). 

More surprisingly, there's at least one part of the script that I couldn't make any sense out of.

Waid's half of the book is, obviously, solidly written. The Sudzuka-drawn two-parter "The Captain Vs. Black Adam" opens with the hero battling a counterfeit "Bizarro Captain" and an old Justice League villain, before he and Adam come to blows over the presence of the paperwork-obsessed alien dinosaurs from the previous volume. The story finally resolves that particular conflict and ends with a detente between the two big guys with lightning bolts on their chests. Important to what follows, their fight ends up destroying the house that Billy lives in with his foster parents and siblings, but Zeus magically restores it and all its contents.

Far more interesting is "Creeped Out!", which pairs Captain Marvel with The Creeper, a typically weird Steve Ditko creation from the late '60s who I don't think has been seen or heard from in quite some time now (I guess there was a New 52 version in some comic or other, but that one would have been over-written in later continuity reboots and refreshes). In fact, I'm pretty sure I've seen and heard more of his secret identity Jack Ryder over the last decade or so than I've seen of The Creeper.

Despite some attempts to use the character in more magical or supernatural settings (and a drastic Vertigo re-creation), Waid reverts to the classic version, the one most likely to be known to readers, who might have seen his appearances in The New Batman Adventures or Justice League Unlimited. 

Abrasive a-hole newscaster Jack Ryder has podcaster Billy Batson on his show to discuss superheroes—I guess there's the connection between the characters; their secret identities are both traditionally involved in broadcasting—and, when they are alone afterwards, Jack tricks Billy into transforming into The Captain, reveals that he is The Creepr, and then enlists his help in tackling old Hawkman villain The Shadow Thief. (The issue also namedrops Daphne Dean, who is so obscure a character I had to look her up online, and there's also a couple of panels of Metamorpho, the last of which is really, really weird). 

That probably feels like a real mishmash of DC IP right there, but then, that is what's fun about such superhero universe comics, and Waid is obviously enjoying being able to play with DC's seemingly endless toybox of characters again. 

I was pretty impressed with Lupacchino's work on this issue (despite the cape looking wrong). There are some really great facial expressions throughout, mostly involving Ryder and The Creeper, although there's at least a panel or two where The Captain looks very Fred MacMurray-y.  Also, Lupacchino does a fine job of giving Ryder and Creeper the same face, so it's clear they are actually the same person, despite how incredibly different they look otherwise. 

When we get to Campbell's half of the book, the three-part story "Moving Day," there's a lot more turbulence than there should be in an ongoing comic series. The title refers to the fact that Billy's family is moving...not to the new house they were looking at just a few issues previous in Waid's half of the book, but back into their own house, the one that Black Adam and The Captain destroyed but Zeus brought back with his magic.

"Freddy, we're all excited to move our stuff back--" Mr. Vasquez says to Freddy Freeman in one panel, but, um, they never moved their stuff out...? Zeus rebuilt their home almost immediately after it was destroyed, restoring all of their destroyed possessions in the process. I couldn't make any sense out of what Mr. Vasquez was talking about, or Billy narrating about earlier; how could they move back in if they never moved out? 

Then there's a barrage of new plot points. Freddy got his driver's license and a new van he calls the Shaz-Van between issues. Zeus and the other patrons apparently attached their own, extra-dimensional "rooms" to the rebuilt house via magical portals. A swarm of three-eyed snake-like horrors attack. The Vasquez's say they want to adopt all five kids, and a Child Protective Services representative comes to interview them. A flock of humanoid bats attacks (These are apparently the race that old Monster Society of Evil bat man Jeepers used to be the last of; they refer to themselves in the plural as "Jeepers"). We learn that The Captain has been "taking over" Billy periodically, to burn the letters that his birth mom keeps sending him. Billy birth mom shows up and wants custody of him again now that she's turned her life around. There's a "leak" in the magic of The Rock of Eternity. 

It's a lot. 

During the pair of monster attacks, Campbell has Billy and Mary both transform into their heroic counterparts, and Luppacchino's Captain Marvel looks really...off. He looks much younger and slimmer than the other artists had drawn him earlier in the book, and even somewhat smaller than Luppacchino drew him in the Creeper story. 

I wasn't sure if this was because Billy was sharing the magic with Mary, or...wait, that couldn't be it, as she gets her powers from her own patron goddesses and thus doesn't really share power with Billy. Huh. I don't even have a guess as to why Luppacchino draws Billy like this in the last few issues of the collection, then. (Norton's Captain, who only appears on two pages, seems to be his regular size, and to have his regular cape on.)

There are perhaps some fun and interesting ideas in what Campbell's doing, but the issues seem a bit random, over-stuffed and disorganized, and it was hard to get into them after that weird speedbump about moving day at the beginning. The last pages seem to signal a sizable status quo change, and I confess to some curiosity about what happens next, but from what I've seen here, I'm disinclined to stick with the book for another volume.

 If I do read the next one, it will be a copy I borrow from the library, rather than one I buy. 

BORROWED: 

Kagurabachi Vol. 2 (Viz Media) Significant progress seems to be made on the quest structure driving the narrative of Takeru Hokazono's Kagurabachi, as vengeful young swordsman Chihiro Rokuhira battles the villainous weapons dealer Sojo and manages to recover the first of the six enchanted blades his swordsmith father made. 

Sojo wields Cloud Gouger, a sword that has various weather-related powers. The fact that he has one of Chihiro's father's magic swords isn't the only thing he has in common with Chihiro, though. He says he's studied his father, and has reached an understanding—or, perhaps, a belief—about his father and the purpose of the blades. And that is that they were made specifically to kill and cause destruction.

This rankles the usually affectless Chihiro, who, of course, knew his dad better than anyone (And, of course, readers got to know his dad pretty well too, in the opening scenes of the first volume). Terribly wounded after absorbing a devastating lightning attack meant to kill bystanders, our young hero seems barely able to stand when he must take up his sword and mount a rescue mission, one that ends with a battle-to-the death with Sojo. 

Hokazono engages in a bit more world-building of his familiar but still strange alternate version of modern Japan, a seemingly gun-less world where, in addition to magic swords, there are sorcerers; bad ones who work with the yakuza (and who killed Chichiro's dad and stole his swords), and good ones who seem to make up some sort of weird police force. 

Also, we learn a little more about the little girl Char Kyongi, her powers and her past, as well as a bit about the source of the metal used in the swords.

It's essentially an action-packed fight manga, and this volume seems much lighter on humor than the first, and more devoted to the fighting, as, in addition to the Chihiro and Sojo fights, there's a long-ish sequence in which the sorcerer police go after Sojo with their various powers. 

I'm not entirely sure how long I'll stick with it. Maybe until I miss a volume, and it gets away from me, and the new volumes pile up so high catching up seems hopeless? That seems to be what happens with so many of the new manga series I start. 

Now That We Draw Vol. 1 (Seven Seas Entertainment) Can you judge a book by its cover? If so, this new manga series by writer Kyu Takahata and artist Yuwji Kaba appears to be about...boobs...? 

And it is. At least sort of. There is definitely an awful lot of what was traditionally referred to as cheesecake in American comics and would be referred to as fan service in manga and anime. 

This all comes in the form of revealing imagery of female lead Miyamoto Niina, whose school uniform skirt is so short it barely conceals the curves of her butt and quite frequently reveals her panties. She's often drawn spilling out of her unbuttoned blouse, as she is on the cover, and the creators find excuses to draw her in more revealing situations, like soaking wet from a plunge into the school pool or, near the climax, undressing to take a bath at a love hotel. (I suppose it's worth mentioning that Seven Seas suggests the book for older teens, 15 and over.)

While this is all presented for the prurient interest of the reader, it is also all played for laughs, as it is all extremely distressing to the book's male lead, and a source of extreme frustration to him. Not that he's immune to Miyamoto's sex appeal; it's just that he's completely inexperienced with the opposite sex, and Miyamoto doesn't at all comport with his idea of the ideal woman.

This is Uehara Yuuki, a still very short—he's exactly cleavage-high when facing Miyamoto, one scene reveals—high school geek and aspiring manga artist. When we first meet him, he has taken his 45-page romance manga, starring his ideal woman—who is quiet, shy, modest and chaste—to a professional manga editor for review. The editor pretty thoroughly, savagely tears Uehara's manga apart, though he does so matter-of-factly, concluding that the teenage artist doesn't seem to have any real, firsthand experience with romance, and it shows through in his work.

Just as he's considering giving up completely on his dreams and deciding how to properly dispose of his manga pages so that no one will discover them, he has a chance meeting with the gorgeous and outgoing Miyamoto, the most popular girl in his class. She discovers his manga, reads it against his will (while running through the halls of the school, with him giving chase to stop her), and becomes enamored with it.

She reveals that she too has dreams of being a manga artist and she shows her work to Uehara. It turns out she's a really good artist—far better than Uehara, to his chagrin—but her editor told her something similar to what Uehara was told. She doesn't seem to have any firsthand experience with romance either and it shows in her work.

Seeing that they have similar dreams and a similar impediment to achieving them, Miyamoto comes to the obvious conclusion: She and Uehara should date one another, thus gaining the romantic experience they both so sorely lack!

One might think Uehara would be delighted that the most popular girl in school is asking him out, but it flusters him to no end, not just because the thought of doing anything at all with a girl, even holding hands, freaks him out, but because he is apparently all too aware of a social hierarchy at school...and that no one would accept the two of them as a real couple. 

So he insists that their relationship is a fake one, even as he goes along with Miyamoto's plans. These are mostly obviously wrongheaded, as she tries to get Uehara to join her in acting out the various tropes they've seen in other manga, rather than, you know, just talking to one another a lot, getting to know each other and actually going out on dates. 

They do seem to grow closer almost by accident, however, between Miyamoto's plans to live out a romance manga. In fact, it does seem to be working...if only slowly. When Uehara next takes a manga to review with the same editor, with Miyamoto now cheering him on, the editor notes that it's improved somewhat. When talking with a colleague, the editor tells him Uehara's new manga was also terrible...but there was still clearly...something different (and better) about it than his first.

This being sold as a romantic comedy, it would seem pretty obvious that the pair will end up developing real feelings for one another and will end up together...eventually. At present, it seems like they have a long way (that is, many more volumes) to go, and it is frankly hard to imagine the pair together at this point, given how Kaba has designed them to look so visually opposite of one another. 

I'm pretty curious to see what happens next, although Seven Seas doesn't exactly make it an easy book to read. I mean, I certainly wouldn't want to be seen in public reading a comic with that particular cover. Luckily, the cover of the second volume looks much less...well, less, I guess. 

Titans Vol. 2: The Dark-Winged Queen (DC Comics) The back cover copy for the latest Titans collection refers to this as "the electrifying conclusion of visionary writer Tom Taylor's...truly epic run". Putting aside "electrifying" and "visionary", words different readers will have different definitions of, referring to Taylor's time on the book as a "run" seems like a bit of a stretch, really, even allowing for the hyperbole and salesmanship expected from back cover copy.

I mean, Taylor wrote just 15 issues, plus the six issues of the tie-in series Titans: Beast World, which adds up to all of three trade paperback collections. That sounds like a maxi-series almost as much as it does a run on a title or franchise. For comparison's sake, Taylor spent close to a decade off and on scripting various series inspired by the cut scenes from a fighting game. Now that's an epic run!

Regardless, his time on the Titans ongoing ends here, with the eight-part title story. I remain somewhat disappointed, even frustrated with his work on the book, as I feel he left unexplored what to me (and hey, maybe it's just me) seemed like the single most interesting aspect of the team being active at this particular point in DC history: With no Justice League currently in existence, the Titans have essentially "graduated" to finally (if, this being comics, only temporarily) replace their one-time mentors, becoming Earth's primary defenders and the superhero community's de facto leaders.

I mentioned this in my review of the first volume, Out of the Shadows (reviewed here) too, but aside from some of the major moments in Beast World, like Beast Boy stepping up to save the day or Nightwing taking the Boss of All Superheroes role usually occupied in such stories by Superman or Batman, Taylor hasn't really engaged with the idea of the Titans as the new Justice League, giving them League-level threats or stepping up to fight the sorts of villains the League usually handles (Although, to be fair, they do encounter an old Justice League villain in this trade paperback; I'll get to him in a bit). 

Instead, Taylor has mostly had the team dealing with their perennial adversaries, even if he has new spins on them. In the first volume, that meant a re-branded Brother Blood. In this volume, it's Trigon. One imagines that if Taylor had another arc in him, it would feature Deathstroke the Terminator. 

Aside from Taylor not doing what I had hoped, and maybe even expected, he would do with the book, I think the only real criticism one can level at his writing here is that it feels somewhat superficial, prioritizing plotting over characterization, to the extent that, after the 15-21 issues of his I've read now, I don't really get a sense of any of the characters, other than Beast Boy and Raven, who seem to been the focus of the series. 

To an extent, this makes sense. Certainly Nightwing and The Flash have their own books in which they have the spotlight and in which their inner lives can be explored, and even Cyborg has had ongoings in the rather recent past (not to mention a new-ish miniseries), but the other characters seem present mostly as sets of powers. Starfire doesn't even seem to get a big moment in this book like Donna or Tempest and, in fact, I think you could cut her from the team completely and it wouldn't really have much in the way of an effect on the series up to this point (Her major contribution so far was to offer background on the Necrostar in Beast World). 

With all that said, this is still a pretty good superhero team book, and one that makes for an enjoyable enough read. I'm sure there is someone on social media somewhere who would disagree, but I don't think there's much in the way of an argument that Tom Taylor isn't a very talented writer who can produce fun and exciting superhero comics on a regular basis. And so even if a book of his doesn't meet one's expectations, even if some aspects are wanting, he has never really produced any comics that aren't at least somewhat worthwhile.

The overarching story of The Dark-Winged Queen deals with something teased in Beast World, something that apparently (and somewhat oddly), happened in a Nightwing story rather than an issue of Titans: Raven has secretly imprisoned her "good" self in the little crystal she wears on her forehead, and the character hanging out with the Titans since then has been the "bad" Raven. She's been following the path laid out for her by her evil father Trigon, which will eventually lead to her ascension to her role as the...well, it's the title of the story. This final form is essentially a Trigon-esque, world-threatening being, one significant enough to warrant the attention of The Quintessence and, eventually, the intervention of The Spectre.

While readers are privy to this plotline and Raven's various, secret actions, the Titans are all in the dark and kept there by Raven regularly manipulating their minds whenever they begin to suspect anything. 

Meanwhile, the hero team keeps doing hero team stuff: Evacuating people trapped in the path of a devastating hurricane, fighting a powered-up version of one of Raven's demonic siblings, investigating a supervillain's assassination attempt on the president of a fictional country and fighting a cyborg android programmed to destroy them (This last, by the way, is essentially a Titans version of Amazo, created by T.O. Morrow—although he does mention repurposing "a lot of Ivo's tech", so it's not like Taylor doesn't know which villainous mad scientist is responsible for which android—sicced on them by Amanda Waller. As in Out of the Shadows and Beast World, Waller remains the ongoing villain facing the Titans. How villainous has she become? Well, she makes a deal with Trigon, who comes into her office for a meeting. So she's rather literally making deals with devils now). 

Raven eventually turns into the Queen, taking on a gigantic stature like that of Trigon and a creepy redesign, but the team is able to get through to her (mostly via Beast Boy's efforts), convincing her that even the "bad" Raven isn't really all that bad, and then powering her up enough that she's able to best her father in giant hand-to-hand combat. 

As relatively strong as the writing is, the art, quite unfortunately, is inconsistent. Which is no surprise, as three different artists contribute to this arc (Notably, none of them are the great Nicola Scott, who was originally announced as Taylor's partner on the series but only drew its first five issues).

The primary artist is top-billed Lucas Meyer, who draws six of the eight issues in the collection. I wasn't a big fan of the style. It's very photo-reference-y. Not only does his Peacemaker look exactly like John Cena, but buildings and backgrounds look like repurposed photos, many of the figures have an uncanny realism to them, and they tend to stand out on the page, as if they aren't really part of the environments they are drawn into it.

The storytelling is fine, and it's not really bad art, but it's not a style I particularly, personally care for. I much preferred the looser, more expressive, more drawn looking art provided by Stephen Segovia, who draws the first issue in the collection, and Daniele Di Nicuolo, who draws the sixth.  

The book seems to have done well enough that DC is going to continue it after Taylor's departure. It looks like John Layman takes over writing duties, while Pete Woods is the next artist. Oh, and Arsenal Roy Harper finally joins the team. 

 

Wesley Dodds: The Sandman (DC) I do not envy writer Robert Venditti the task of crafting a new story starring the Golden Age Sandman Wesley Dodds. 

It must be daunting to tackle a character who has previously starred in a series as good, as long and as unique as to be definitive, as Sandman Mystery Theatre, the 1993-1999 Vertigo crime series written by Matt Wagner and Steven T. Seagle, was for Wesley Dodds (Newer readers got the opportunity to experience that series in 2023, when DC released a collection of the first 26 issues in The Sandman Mystery Theatre Compendium...I'm still waiting for a second compendium, by the way, DC...!).

Luckily, Venditti is working with artist Riley Rossmo, whose highly distinct, somewhat cartoony style (which here seems to have the occasional accent of Tim Sales-ishness), could not be more different than the style employed by Mystery Theatre's primary artist Guy Davis...or, in fact, that of any other artist one might find on the current comics rack.

In that respect, and the more mainstream DC Comics presentation of the book, Wesley Dodds seems to rather effectively separate itself from the earlier mature readers series, while still acknowledging it (a first-issue montage of Dodds' dreams includes reference to The Tarantula, a villain from that earlier book) and seemingly fitting into its continuity quite nicely. 

So if you enjoyed Mystery Theatre, chances are you'll enjoy this book too. While a little more superhero-y, including a brief instance of the evil opposite trope, some nods to DCU continuity and a few fun cameos by the JSoA, Wesley Dodds is still a crime comic, and one with something of a mystery narrative to it (Even if that mystery is pretty easy for a reader to solve).

It's 1940, and Dodds is fighting street crime in New York City as the vigilante The Sandman, terrorizing the underworld with his striking gas-masked appearance, creepy voice and devastatingly effective sleep gas. He has greater ambitions though, including a way to stop the sort of mass slaughter that haunted his late World War I veteran father, and seems to be in danger of repeating itself, as another world war brews in Europe. 

And so with an introduction from his father's industrialist friend to an army colonel, Dodds pitches a sleep gas as a humane, non-lethal weapon of war to the U.S. military, a way to knock out and capture enemy combatants without having to kill them.

The colonel flatly, immediately shoots down the idea as extremely impractical in a matter of a single page of the book, dressing down Dodds in the process. ("Mr. Dodds, what do you think we do here?...Maiming and killing is simpler. Cheaper. Lethal is what we do.")

While the army might not be interested in Dodds' sleep gas, someone is interested his work, as is evidenced by the fact that his safe is emptied, his house burned down, and a known burglar's charred remains are found in the ruins. Only Dodds realizes other things are missing, though, including some of his gas masks and, more alarmingly, the notebook in which he recorded his many, many experiments to perfect a non-lethal sleeping gas...experiments which inadvertently lead to formulas for a variety of deadly poison gases.

Working with his girlfriend/crime-fighting partner Dian Belmont, Dodds desperately searches for the mastermind behind the break-in and robbery, hoping to recover the book before it can fall into the wrong hands, and his accidental discoveries can be employed to commit the very sorts of mass murder he was hoping his sleep gas could prevent. Meanwhile, he encounters a sort of evil Sandman wearing a black coat and hat, both in his dreams and in reality.

While the various story beats and plot points will be familiar from crime fiction, the 1940s setting gives the book a more unusual feel, and Venditti's focus on Dodds' creations allows him to get at key aspects of the character, like the fact that he is an obviously talented fighter who is nevertheless a pacifist, the fears that drive him, his essential optimism retained despite how much time he spends wallowing in the darkness of human nature and, somewhat unusually, the fact that he's not necessarily a paragon of virtue (There's a scene where Dodds is exposed to a dose of his own gas, and he finally experiences its effects firsthand; not only does it knock people out, but it instills a weird and desperate fear, one borne of empathy, as its victims experience every wrong they've ever committed. For Dodds, this is a variety of little sins, most committed when he was younger, but it's an unusual sequence; it's difficult to imagine, say, the similarly two-fisted vigilante hero Bruce Wayne being depicted in such a manner).

In both Venditti's plotting and scripting, and in Rossmo's idiosyncratic designs and rendering, it's a satisfying story, and one that serves as something of a bridge between the darker, dirtier Mystery Theater adventures and the simpler, brighter Justice Society adventures, both tonally and quite literally.

In the very last pages of the book, Dodds—who Rossmo draws bigger and more square-jawed than the more owlish, regular-looking guy that Davis used to draw—meets Dian's very young nephew, Sandy, and is then called to the back door, where a splash page reveals the assembled Justice Society of America*, a shirtless, hairy, smiling Hawkman extending his hand and saying "We're admirers of your work...we'd like you to join a new group we're forming."

It's a strong enough story that I hope it's not the last time we'll see Venditti and Rosmo's Wesley Dodds...nor the last time DC revisits its original Sandman, be it in solo stories or alongside the Golden Age Justice Society (The adventures of which sound like a much more appealing prospect than...whatever Geoff Johns is doing with the modern JSA, which seems to involve a lot of time-travel and retcons and to focus on old Earth-2 inspired characters.

Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead Vol. 16 (Viz) With Akira and Shizuka now officially a couple, the majority of this volume features just Takemina and Izzy. When the gang's vehicle comes to an abrupt stop in the mountains when they run out of gas and they all set to arguing over what to do, Takemina, who has spied a light in the distance, and Izzy set off on their own, hoping to find some gas there.

There is gas there, but to get it, they will have to survive the three-chapter story entitled "Horror Mansion of the Dead." It turns out that the house is home to a hulking, horror movie-like serial killer in the style of Jason or Leatherface, both of whom are name-dropped and drawn by artist Kotaro Takata earlier in the story as foreshadowing. 

The killer, who wears a creepy mask and wields an old-fashioned mochi hammer (the purpose of which rather grossly extends beyond simply killing victims) proves a far more formidable foe than the hordes of zombies that our heroes are used to. It is somewhat strange to see Takata and writer Haro Aso engage in a scary, gory, horror narrative that isn't really related to the zombie survival premise of the book, but they are amazingly effective at it, as Takemina and Izzy seem to have wandered from one kind of horror story into that of another genre (There is a zombie element to "Horror Mansion of the Dead," but it's rather tangential, the story owing more to, say, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre than to Night of the Living Dead). 

When Izzy reveals that it's actually impossible for even the most skilled gamer to survive a horror videogame on the first playthrough, it's up to Takemina's skills as a gambler to save the day, and get the pair safely back to the rest of their traveling companions (A trio of new characters who are introduced seemingly just to be killed off a few pages later, aren't so lucky).

The book ends with a standalone story, "Happiness of the Dead," in which Akira learns an important lesson about finding true happiness. It's an evergreen lesson that would seem to apply to everyone in any circumstances, not just characters trying to survive a zombie apocalypse. Although a break in the book's ongoing action—and in sharp contrast to the story that preceded it—"Happiness" is a pretty perfect encapsulation of Zom 100, the most life-affirming of zombie stories. 

REVIEWED:

MegaGhost Vol. 1 (Dark Horse Books) Gabe Soria and Gideon Kendall's comic about a kid occultist who finds a magic ring that allows him to summon three ghosts, combine them into a single, giant ghost robot and then coach it in battles against giant monsters is just as weird and awesome as it sounds. Even weirder? Kendall's art style, which is cartoony in the way of older, twentieth century cartoonists (I saw a lot of Jack Davis in it, personally, and maybe some Mike Ploog), rather than cartoony in the way of animated television...although the latter proves to be a pretty big inspiration for the whole book. Do check it out. While a good comic for kids, it's also a pretty great all-ages comic, meaning you'll probably like it too. More here. 

Speechless (Graphix/Scholastic) There's a scene in Aron Nels Steinke's new original graphic novel where the protagonist Mira, who can't talk at school at all, has to convey some information to her extremely understanding friend Alex, and she opts to write what she has to say down on a piece of paper and show it to him. It reminded me a bit of one of my favorite current manga series, Komi Can't Communicate (Other than the school setting and the lead character's difficulty speaking at school, the comics have almost nothing else in common). Still, I was surprised to see that in Steinke's author's note at the back of the book—in which he draws himself speaking directly to readers in 50 tiny panels—he suggests Komi as a comic to read for those who were interested in Speechless and Mira's troubles. I'm not sure the reverse is true—that is, if you like Komi you will like Speechless—but then, I guess, I like Komi and I liked Speechless. But, like I said, they're very different. Anyway, I reviewed Speechless here. 

Swing (Feiwel and Friends) Audrey Meeker's debut graphic novel is a lot of fun (It actually came out way back in October; sorry it took me so long to get to it!). She basically takes the format and formula of a romantic comedy and applies it to a couple of middle-schoolers, who have no real concept of romance, and thus the will-they, won't-they element is applied to their burgeoning friendship...and their collaboration on a swing dance performance at the school talent show that they are more or less forced into doing. Add in bullying, the pressure of parental expectations and learning to be yourself, and it's a really charming, even inspirational book. Meeker's art is of an entirely different aesthetic school than the Raina Telgemeier-esque one that seems to predominate among original graphic novels for kids these days, being even simpler, a bit rougher and a little more cartoony. I kind of loved it. More here. 

Very Bad at Math (HarperAlley) Cartoonist Hope Larson's latest book, which she both writes and draws, stars a middle-schooler named Very, who is popular at school, class president and seemingly effortlessly good at every subject—except for one (It's in the title). The book, which sees Larson working in a somewhat different style than usual, follows Very's attempts to address her problem with math, as student council has grade requirements, and if she doesn't get her grade up, her whole world and sense of self will seemingly crumble. Doing so will lead to a discovery about herself, and Very will set a good example for young readers who may find themselves in similar circumstances. More here. 

Weirdo (First Second) Here's another fall release it took me a little too long to get to; I blame my local library for adding it to the collection a few months after its initial release. It's a fictionalized memoir by writer Tony Weaver Jr. and the sibling art team of Jes and Cin Wibowo Is it just me, or have we been seeing a lot of fictionalized memoires for younger readers recently?). 

Weaver is apparently a social media influencer, making his comics-writing debut here, and he does a rather fine job; it helps that he has such a powerful story to tell. That story is about his troubles at a new school, which involved severe bullying, both online and in real life, bullying that got so bad he eventually tried to take his own life. Not your average kids comic, then. Weaver handles the intense subject matter in a way that seems appropriate for young readers, and once his comics avatar transfers to a new school and finds a new group of similarly "weird" friends he fits in with, he gets what appears to be a happy ending. 

What I think many kids will find striking are that the very things that marked the real young Tony Weaver Jr. as an outsider at the time—a love of comics and manga, anime and cartoons, video games, fan-fiction—are thing they themselves probably grew up liking and still like, and, in fact, are things that have more or less conquered mainstream pop culture. As an aficionado of some of those things myself, I took a special pleasure in hearing Tony dropping comics trivia in conversation (like referring to Animal Man without naming him while trying to talk to a girl) and, especially, in seeing the Wibowos' various attempts to draw familiar characters like those of, say, Inuyasha or Haikyu! in their own style, and just off-model enough that one imagines their respective owners wouldn't raise any legal objections to their appearances here. My formal (and far more focused) review is here.

*This JSA includes Doctor Fate, Green Lantern, The Spectre, The Flash, Hourman, Hawkman and, streaking past in the background, Johnny Thunder's Thunderbolt (sans Johnny), although readers of the publisher's recently released DC Finest: Justice Society of America—For America and Democracy (reviewed here) will know that Johnny doesn't join the group until after The Sandman does.