DC's December previews reviewed

There are no huge announcements in this latest round of DC Comics solicitations, certainly nothing on the scale or caliber of the previous round's Dark Knight III, with the two biggest books launching in December apparently being the previously announced inter-company crossover between Batman and IDW's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and a new, bi-monthly Harley Quinn ongoing team-up series...which, given how many one-shots and specials DC has had Harley writers Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner cranking out, doesn't seem like it will be more Harley comics as much as more organized Harley comics (Unless, of course, they plan to keep up the pace of the one-shots and specials and miniseries, while also publishing a second Harley ongoing; in which case, yeah, that's a lot of Harley comics).

Maybe the biggest news in DC's December solicitations isn't what they're planning on publishing that month, but what they plan to stop publishing after that month: About a half-dozen titles, including a hard shift in direction for Catwoman, pivoting from its current realistic crime drama format back to straight superheroics (Also, I notice two of the digital-first series I buy and read on a regular basis are also shipping their final issues).

None of the cancellations are too terribly surprising, although I did raise my eyebrow at the news that one of those titles being canceled would be Omega Men. Not because Omega Men is such a salable entity or anything–it's not, and was one of the many "Well, let's throw this at the wall" books that have characterized DC's output in the last few year–but because it's creative team was deliberately telling such a deliberately paced, slow-boiling story that it seems like DC would have (should have) either decided not to greenlight it as conceived at all, or to give it a year to find its audience. I've read each issue that's come out so far (three, I think), and it's still very much a story in-progress, with the characters still being introduced and the premise still being revealed. Everyone who has read it seemed to like it, though, and that's the sort of book that really needs to make it to trade before a publisher decides whether or not to keep publishing it. That DC is deciding to pull the plug on it after just three issues seems sort of insane; were they simply looking at the sales for the first two issues and, noting that it was already dipping below 20,000, decided to cancel it as soon as possible?

Looking at The Beat's latest sales chart analysis, Omega Men #2 moved about 17,000 copies in July (a huge drop of almost 50% from #1's 33,000-ish issues), making it one of DC's lowest sellers along with fellow cancel-ees Prez, Lobo, Doomed and Gotham By Midnight. In July, the also critically acclaimed Midnighter moved 19,800 copies, Justice League 30001 moved 21,300 and Gotham Academy 22,350.

One hopes that DC will be a little more judicious the next time they take the scalpel to their current line, and that they'll realize that books like Midnighter or Gotham Academy are different enough from the rest of their DCU line, and targeted towards different enough audiences that they may be worth keeping around even if they're selling slightly less than, say, Justice League 3001 or Secret Six or Sinestro or whatever.

Also of note this month is DC's variant program, which is...well, it's weird this month (What, no TMNT variants?). The theme is, once again, Harley Quinn (I lost track; is this the second time or the third time?), although this time the artists are of particularly superstar status and, weirdest of all, the variants are all coming polybagged. I can only assume this is because all of the covers feature nude drawings of Harley.

For DC's complete solicitations, you can visit Comic Book Resources. For my commentary–including a long summary of the fan-fiction I used to imagine as a high schooler, stay right where you are.


BATMAN BEYOND #7
Written by DAN JURGENS
Art by STEPHEN THOMPSON
Cover by PHILIP TAN
On sale DECEMBER 2 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US
RATED T
The sun rises on a new day in BATMAN BEYOND! With the threat of Brother Eye finally gone, Tim Drake is a man lost in time and without a mission. But now that he finally has the opportunity to explore this new Gotham City, he may find it just as dark as ever beneath its shiny new surface. And what Justice League secret does Matt McGinnis think will be unlocked with Green Lantern’s severed hand? Guest artist and FUTURES END veteran Stephen Thompson kicks things off in this prologue to “City of Yesterday”!

This book, for example, seems particularly ripe for cancellation. It's not selling horribly or anything, but the Batman Beyond concept was growing rather creatively exhausted well before the launch of this series, which puts the Tim Drake from the pages of Futures End into the Batman Beyond costume and sends him to the nightmare future of the earlier chapters of Futures End.

Not to be a jerk or anything, but I don't recall anyone really clamoring for more comics about the world of Futures End after the 52nd issue of that series shipped, nor for more featuring the Batman Beyond costume after the cancellation of the last few stabs at a Batman Beyond series, nor for more Dan Jurgens-written comics.

BATMAN ‘66 #30
Written by LEE ALLRED
Art and cover by MICHAEL ALLRED
On sale DECEMBER 16 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED E • DIGITAL FIRST • FINAL ISSUE
BATMAN ‘66 comes to a close as we unleash cover artist Michael Allred on the entire issue! Mobs of villains arrive in Gotham City for what appears to be a full-blown Criminal Convention. But one bad guy is not happy with how he’s being treated, and decides to tip off Batman and Robin. Will even this valuable bit of information be enough to help the Dynamic Duo overcome the overwhelming odds?

Based on the fact that this is issue #30 of the series, I think I have been wishing aloud that cover artist Michael Allred would also draw the interiors one of these days for almost 30 months now. And in December, I'll finally get my whish!

That's the good fantastic news. The bad devastating news? This is the last issue of the entire series.

I guess it couldn't have been 1966 forever, but I was hoping for at least a few more years...

BATMAN ‘66 MEETS THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. #1
Written by JEFF PARKER
Art by DAVID HAHN
Cover by MICHAEL ALLRED
1:25 Variant cover by JOSE LUIS GARCIA-LOPEZ
On sale DECEMBER 23 • 32 pg, FC, 1 of 6, $2.99 US • RATED T
Retailers: This issue will ship with two covers. Please see the order form for details.
Two 1960s television icons cross paths for a groovy, globe-spanning adventure in this one-of-a-kind miniseries. The deadly organization known as T.H.R.U.S.H. has a new twist in their plans for world conquest—they’re recruiting some of Gotham City’s most infamous villains! Agents Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin bring this information to the one man who knows everything about these new enemies: Batman. Before you can say “Open channel D,” the Dynamic Duo and the Men from U.N.C.L.E. are jetting off to Europe to thwart the schemes of this deadly criminal cartel.

I've never seen a single episode of Man From UNCLE and know next to nothing about it, but after this and the Green Hornet crossover, I'm really hoping we're in for a whole series of Batman '66 crossovers, with the Caped Crusader teaming up with every TV show from 1966. I want to see Darrin Stephens invite Bruce Wayne to a dinner party at his house while he tries to land the Wayne account for his advertising firm; I want to see Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson summering in Collinsport, Maine; I want to see Batman and Robin helping Dr. Marsh Tracy to protect African big cats from getting recruited to a life of crime by Catwoman and Catman; I want to see the Dynamic Duo fighting Nazis with the Rat Patrol, visiting Hooterville, pursuing Richard Kimble and rescuing the castaways from Gilligan's Island

BATMAN/TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES #1
Written by JAMES TYNION IV
Art and cover by FREDDIE E. WILLIAMS II
1:50 Variant cover by KEVIN EASTMAN
...
On sale DECEMBER 9 • 32 pg, FC, 1 of 6, $3.99 US • RATED T
...
DC Comics and IDW team up for the crossover you never saw coming as two of the greatest entertainment icons meet for the first time! In Gotham City, a series of deadly raids leads Batman to believe he’s up against a group of highly trained ninjas known as the Foot Clan! Somehow, they’ve crossed over to another dimension and are determined to take advantage of the situation while looking to get back home. But they haven’t come alone: Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo are hot on their trail. Get ready for excitement as heroes and villains from both worlds clash and team up in an epic battle that threatens the very fabric of reality!

This is one of those very crossovers that I actually used to fantasize about as a kid, spending God-knows-how-long in class or car trips or wherever day-dreaming about a comic like this (Daredevil/TMNT and X-Men/TMNT were among the others; I really liked the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics, okay?).

Here was my version: Batman would be on patrol one night and run across Casey Jones savagely beating gang members in Robinson Park. Batman would intervene, they would fight, Batman would do his whole "This is my town; beat it vigilante thing!", there would be the requisite joke about Casey being the real "bat" man, and it would end with Jones hauled away by the cops. Casey would have been in Gotham scouting the place out for his allies, the Turtles, who were planning on joining him. A mysterious group of ninjas would have been slowly consolidating power in Gotham, taking down the Street Demonz (who might be introduced in a gang fight with the Purple Dragons) and The Ghost Dragons and Gotham gangster types like The Penguin, THe Ventriloquist and whoever was still alive to run the Falcone family.

The Foot Clan would have been seeking to branch out and take control of the Gotham City criminal underworld, and while they would be doing a bang-up job taking on and down most of the competition, they would repeatedly find attempts on certain targets foiled by Batman.

Meanwhile, the Turtles (who break Casey out of a police van en route to Arkham Asylum For The Criminally Insane, where he would have been sentenced to for being a crazy man in a hockey mask beating the hell out of people with sporting equipment) have followed The Foot to Gotham in order to thwart their plans of expansion. They try to set up shop in the Gotham CIty Sewer System, but find it an even more dangerous place than the New York sewers, and they have to deal with the likes of Killer Croc, Ratcatcher and maybe Solomon Grundy while down there.

Naturally all the fighting brings them to the attention of Batman, who is seeking the escaped Casey and puzzling over the ninjitsu in the supposed maniac's fighting style, and the mysterious group of ninjas he's allied with...especially since they use the same weapons and fight in the same style as The Foot Clan.

While the heroes remain in conflict, The Shredder is forced to come to Gotham City himself to remove The Batman as an obstacle. When Batman and The Shredder are engaged in their battle, Batman's getting torn to pieces, and likely wouldn't survive the fight without the timely intervention of The Turtles and Casey. THe Shredder's still holding his own against those guys when, ultimately, Lady Shiva arrives, swats the Mirage gang away and claims Shredder for herself, claiming his ability to defeat Batman makes him the best fighter in the world at the moment. They're fight would end with Shredder pulling out a thermite grenade and blowing the top off of the rooftop they are fighting on.

Neither Shredder's body nor that of Shiva are found when the Turtles comb through the wreckage, however.

Or at least, that's how I would have written it at 14. Now I'd do something completely different. There are two Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles storylines I'd really like to write someday, one of which no one has really done with any version of the turtles before, but which lends itself to a crossover with the DC Universe at large. But that is, I suppose, neither here nor there.

...

Wait, what was I posting about...? Oh yeah, DC's December solicits! So yeah, Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is quite literally a dream come true for me, although I'm tempering my hopes. The creative team is a solid one, but it leaves a lot to be desired for a story like this, which really ought to be treated as a bigger occasion. Ideally it would have the biggest-name creators associated with the characters involved, so I would expect a team more along the lines of Geoff Johns or Scott Snyder co-plotting with Kevin Eastman, and writing the script, with Eastman penciling or inking or at least laying-out the art for a Batman artist. This would be a rare opportunity to let Batman creators do the Turtles, and Turtles creators do Batman (I'd prefer to see some of the old Mirage guys like Eric Talbot, Jim Lawson, Mike Dooney and so on getting to do covers or back-ups or something to DC guys, but let's get a Jim Lee cover in here somewhere at least, you know?).

Writer James Tynion IV is a Batman writer, although he's not the definitive one that his frequent collaborator Scott Snyder is, and, as far as I know, he doesn't have any Turtle experience (I'm actually a little surprised this isn't being co-written by whoever's currently writing the IDW series...the last volume I read was scripted by Tom Waltz from stories by Kevin Eastman, Bobby Curnow and Waltz). Freddie Williams' art is good, and seems like a good fit for both sets of characters, but, again, he's not exactly a definitive Batman or Turtle artist.

At least Eastman is doing covers. I can't tell you how excited I am to see a Kevin Eastman-drawn Batman...even in just that one image, with Batman in the background.

Beyond the team involved, the solicitation doesn't give us too much to go on. Given that crossing dimensional borders is mentioned, then I suppose that means this is going to be set in-continuity for probably both the Turtles and Batman...or at least the Turtles, who are wearing their color-coded masks, as they do in the current IDW comics, all of which revolve around their particular, peculiar take on the Turtles.

Part of me can't wait to read this as soon as it comes out, but I see the Eastman cover is a 1-in-50 variant, meaning it won't be on the already-too-expensive issue that will be for sale in my comic shop come September. But I should be able to wait for the trade on this one. I mean, I've waited like 25 years to read a Batman/TMNT comic, what's another year or so...?

CATWOMAN #47
Written by FRANK TIERI
Art and cover by INAKI MIRANDA
On sale DECEMBER 9 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T+
Catwoman is back in action! Leaving the mob behind, Selina is on the prowl again. When she gets wind of what might be the biggest score of her life, she’ll need to remind everyone just who is the greatest thief around.

This is a little disappointing. The current Genevieve Valentine-written direction of the book, in which Catwoman kinda sorta went into temporary semi-retirement as Catwoman in order to consolidate and run the Gotham mob (spinning out of events in Batman Eternal made for a fresh, new take, and about as dramatic a new direction for the character as she's taken since the launch of the previous volume, when her new, Darwyn Cooke-designed costume debuted and the book became a sort of cartoon noir crime comic.

The New 52 version looked to be straight superheroics, and I bought and read exactly zero issues of it (Wait, that's not right; I read the "Death of The Family" tie-in that was collected in The Joker: The Death of The Family. I may have also read a #0 issue or Futures End tie in. The fact that I can't even remember though is a pretty good indication of how generic the book was, though). I've read and liked all of the Vanetine-written issues so far though; it's not a great comic or anything, but I'm reading Catwoman. It also seems to be a particularly-easy-to-adapt-into-a-TV-show take on the character, something DC seems very interested in these days, but with Gotham already on the air, perhaps that's not a concern. The similarly-canceled Gotham By Midnight, which is basically just Gotham Central + Spooks, also reads like a based-on-a-comic book TV show waiting to happen.

At any rate, it's kinda disappointing to see that Catwoman is going back to being just another super-book. On the other hand: Inaki Miranda art. That ought to make this one of the better looking DC superhero comics.

Check out Ant Lucia's cover for DC Comics Bombshells #7, featuring "The Batgirls." I imagine they're all-new characters, given that none of them are blonde like Stephanie Brown or red-haired like Barbara Gordon, but I guess the girl on the far right could be Bombshell-iverse Cassandra Cain; her costume/uniform has the same color scheme as Cassandra's Batgirl costume did, anyway...

DC COMICS PRESENTS: ROBIN WAR 100-PAGE SUPER SPECTACULAR #1
Written by GEOFF JOHNS, GRANT MORRISON, TONY S. DANIEL and FABIAN NICIEZA
Art by ANDY KUBERT, TONY S. DANIEL and others
Cover by RYAN SOOK
On sale DECEMBER 2 • 96 pg, FC, $7.99 US
It’s Robin vs. Robin vs. Robin in these stories from TEEN TITANS #29, BATMAN #657, NIGHTWING #139 and BATMAN: BATTLE FOR THE COWL #3.

Interesting to see this book existing at all. It is apparently some Robin vs. Robin fights from recent-ish Batman comics history, collected together for no reason other than the fact that DC is doing a Robins-fighting-people crossover storyline called "Robin War."

The credits say that it will feature a cover by Ryan Sook, but the one above is by Andy Kubert (and from the Grant Morrison-written Batman #657, in which Robin Tim Drake comes to blows with Damian al Ghul, shortly after the latter arrived in the Batcave during Morrison's "Batman and Son" story arc.

The other comics are...well, they're all pretty bad, actually. Johns and Daniel's Teen Titans issue is a kinda-sorta Infinite Crisis tie-in, in which the resurrected-by-Superboy-punches Jason Todd, aka The Red Hood, infiltrates Titans Tower in order to fight Robin Tim Drake. I recall it having a pretty hilarious scene in which Todd rips off his Red Hood costume to reveal a Robin costume beneath it, but he does it all in one panel, so it appears as if he was wearing, like, another pair of boots under his Red Hood boots, another pair of pants under hps Red Hood pants, et cetera.

The Nightwing issue is by Fabian Nicieza, Don Kramer and Wayne Faucher and features Tim Drake fighting Dick Grayson. It's also part six of the seven-part, completely unintelligible "Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul" crossover.

Finally, the Battle For The Cowl story is written and drawn by Daniel, and it is probably the worst of the lot. That's the story where Jason Todd was trying to murder everyone to be Batman, and Dick Grayson reluctantly decided to become Batman while Bruce Wayne was dead/Omega Sanction-ed.

So not only are these comics all out of continuity now--like, way out--they're all parts of bigger storylines. I wonder how much sense any of them will make divorced from any sort of context...

DOCTOR FATE #7
Written by PAUL LEVITZ
Art and cover by SONNY LIEW
On sale DECEMBER 16 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
One of the most acclaimed new DC Comics series concludes its first amazing epic as Anubis defeats Fate and takes his body and soul on a surreal journey into the ancient and mystical House of the Dead.

If you look at this book's place on the sales chart in relation to the books DC is cancelling, then this looks like it could well be a near-future casualty. I certainly hope not. While Levitz's writing leaves a lot to be desired, and the book is paced for a trade (as is Omega Men), Sonny Liew's art is fantastic, and this is one of the relatively few DC books that is easy to recommend to young people and relative newcomers to the DCU, as you don't need to know anything about the characters, setting and their history that isn't contained in Doctor Fate itself.

Also, look at that cover.

EARTH 2: SOCIETY #7
Written by DANIEL H. WILSON
Art by JORGE JIMENEZ
Cover by ANDY KUBERT
On sale DECEMBER 9 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
As the fledgling society of new Earth threatens to disintegrate into chaos, can the raw power of the Green Lantern overcome the godlike abilities of Doctor Impossible? Or is Alan Scott just a man, after all?

I'm honestly surprised this wasn't one of the book's that was canceled. In addition to being pretty terrible, the entire premise just seems exhausted. Since DC launched Earth 2, this is the third or fourth writer, and it's already been renumbered and relaunched once. It's also a continuation of Convergence which, despite not being too terribly popular a series, has apparently spawned this on-going follow-up and 2-3 additional spin-off ongoings (I'm not sure how the upcoming Titans Hunt spins out of Convergence, but DC is saying it does.)

HARLEY'S LITTLE BLACK BOOK #1
Written by AMANDA CONNER and JIMMY PALMIOTTI
Art by AMANDA CONNER and a bunch of people who owe her favors
Cover by AMANDA CONNER
Variant covers by J. SCOTT CAMPBELL
On sale DECEMBER 2 • 48 pg, FC, $4.99 US • RATED T+
...
It’s the sensational debut of a bimonthly, overstuffed, oversized team-up series in which Harley meets (and almost certainly annoys) the greatest heroes and villains of the DC Universe! First up? The incredible Wonder Woman! There’s a plot to assassinate Wondy, and Harley is convinced that only she could possibly stop it! (Hey, you want to tell her about all the other options? We tried.)

This issue features open-to-order variant covers by J. Scott Campbell that will be shipped in opaque polybags.

As I mentioned earlier, based on how much Conner/Palmiotti-written Harley DC releases, a 32-page bimonthly ongoing may not actually be much of an increase. I'm a little surprised by the title; I assume it has an in-story explanation, but it doesn't sound much like an ongoing comic book title. I would have expected something more like Harley Quinn Team-Up or Harley Quinn: The Brave and The Bonkers.

I'm not a fan of Connimotti's sense of humor, like, at all, but a couple of those anthology issues have featured some really great artists, so if the bunch of people who owe Conner favors includes the likes of Paul Pope and Darwyn Cooke, this book may be well worth keeping an eye on.

JUSTICE LEAGUE UNITED #16
Written by JEFF PARKER
Art and cover by TRAVEL FOREMAN
On sale DECEMBER 9 • 32 pg, FC, $3.99 US • RATED T • FINAL ISSUE
Artist Travel Foreman returns for this “trippy” trip to the House of Secrets to reveal at last how Adam Strange came to be trapped in the Zeta Beam! And just what will that mean for the mysterious, reality-warping Breakers that have brought so many disparate heroes and villains to the team?

This isn't the first time DC has canceled a Justice League comic that was doing decently in sales since they launched The New 52; they previously canceled Justice League International and Justice League, the latter of which introduced one of this book's ongoing cast members, Stargirl.

The premise of this series, post-Convergence, seems to be that a handful of the characters from "Justice League Canada" (Stargirl, Animal Man, the new Equinox and the New 52 Adam and Alanna Strange) recruit random characters a la Justice League Task Force. The first two were completley unreadable to me (I really can't take Foreman's art; it hurts my eyes). The last issue, which I think came out just last week or so, was a great improvement (Paul Pelletier on art) and full of characters I know and/or like (Steel, Robot Man, Batgirl, Vandal Savage, Enemy Ace, Sgt. Rock), but since this is the NEw 52-iverse, I actually don't know most of them, and so it read a lot like an Elseworlds story to me.

I'm not surprised to see this getting canceled, therefore, as I imagine it has more to do with trying to keep the Justice League brand focused than actual sales. I expect Justice Leage 3001 to soon follow for the same reasons (well, that and the fact that its sales are so close to those of some of the titles that got canceled this month).

ROBIN WAR #1
Written by TOM KING
Art and cover by KHARY RANDOLPH
1:25 Variant cover by LEE BERMEJO
On sale DECEMBER 2 • 48 pg, FC, 1 of 2, $4.99 US • RATED T
...
THE ROBINS FACE THE COURT OF OWLS!
In part 1 of this new epic, it’s Robins vs. cops! Robins vs. Robins! Robins vs. Batman! And Robins vs. the Court of Owls?!
Damian Wayne returns to Gotham City, and he is not happy. There are kids all over the city calling themselves Robin, Bruce Wayne is no longer Batman and the GCPD, led by the new, armored-up Batman, is cracking down on anybody wearing the “R.” And things only get worse when Red Hood, Red Robin and Grayson all come back to Gotham City…

Oh good, The Court of Owls. I'm definitely not sick of those guys at all.

SENSATION COMICS FEATURING WONDER WOMAN #17
Written by TRINA ROBBINS
Art by CHRIS GUGLIOTTI
Cover by ANNA DITTMAN
On sale DECEMBER 2 • 40 pg, FC, $3.99 US • RATED T • DIGITAL FIRST • FINAL ISSUE
Diana’s compassion is tested when Dr. Barbara Minerva appears, begging for assistance as she seeks out the last remaining source of urzkatarga, the plant that supplies the serum that transforms her into the Cheetah. And if she can’t use it to replenish her supply, she’ll die. But when the Amazon princess/super-hero and the scientist/super-villain make their way to the “Island of Lost Souls,” they find more is at stake than expected!

If DC was going to cancel a Wonder Woman comic, why did they have to go and cancel the good one...?

Well, I'm super-bummed about this, and of all the titles shipping their final issues in December, this will be the one I miss the most. It varied in quality from issue to issue, naturally, but some of the most fun comics I've read in the last year or two have been published within these pages.

Also, this is, like, the only DC-published comic book I could ever imagine writing a story for...

I'm very disappointed in Amanda Conner for drawing Starfire's butt rather than Dick Grayson's legendarily cute butt on the cover of December's issue of Starfire. Like, everyone always talks about how awesome Dick's butt is, but we never really see it looking all that awesome, you know? This is comics, people; show, don't tell!

SUPERMAN #47
Written by GENE LUEN YANG
Art and cover by HOWARD PORTER
Variant covers by LEE BERMEJO
On sale DECEMBER 23 • 32 pg, FC, $3.99 US • RATED T
Retailers: This issue will ship with a standard cover, as well as polybagged variant editions. Please see the order form for more information.
What would happen if the powers of all of Superman’s foes were contained in one villain? You’ll find out when you meet the Amalgam of Composite Superman Foes—and this is one nightmare a semi-powered Man of Steel may not survive! Join series writer Gene Luen Yang and guest artist Howard Porter for an unforgettable new epic!
This issue features open-to-order variant covers by Lee Bermejo that will be shipped in opaque polybags.

There are relatively few proper nouns that I like more than "Composite Superman," but I do believe "Amalgam of Composite Suerman Foes," which I've just heard for the first time, is now one of them.


SUPERMAN: LOIS AND CLARK #3
Written by DAN JURGENS
Art by LEE WEEKS
Cover by STEPHEN SEGOVIA
On sale DECEMBER 2 • 32 pg, FC, $3.99 US • RATED T
Who—or what—is Blanque? What is being held in this Superman’s Fortress of Solitude? And what is Intergang, and why is their discovery dangerous to Lois? Whatever the answers, neither Clark nor Lois want their son to learn the truth…

TELOS #3
Written by JEFF KING
Art by CARLO PAGULAYAN and JASON PAZ
Cover by STEPHEN SEGOVIA
On sale DECEMBER 2 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
Telos battles Validus while his revolutionary allies—K’Rot, Captain Comet, Stealth and Techne—make a horrifying discovery about Computo. He’s creating a super-powered clone army! Techne asks Telos to fight alongside her team. But is Techne who she seems? And will Telos abandon his personal quest for his fellow prisoners’ cause?

Based on how quickly Omega Men was canceled, I believe we can expect the announcement of these two books' cancellations in late December, with their final issues shipping in April. That's just a guess, mind you. The book starring the alternate universe version of Superman and Lois Lane may last a few months longer than the book starring the generic character from the crossover no one liked, who will be teaming up with some characters from a quickly canceled series I've already forgotten the name of.

...Threshold? Was it Threshold...?

WE ARE ROBIN #7
Written by LEE BERMEJO
Art by KHARY RANDOLPH
Cover by JORGE CORONA
On sale DECEMBER 16 • 32 pg, FC, $3.99 US • RATED T
RED ROBIN VS. RED HOOD—TO THE DEATH! “Robin War” part 4 pits Tim Drake against Jason Todd in a steel-cage match—and only the Court of Owls can say who will escape the cage with his life!

Do they really fight to the death? Does one of them really die? Can we pick which one? Maybe vote on it? With a phone number or something? If so, I say death to Jason Todd. If both Todd and Tim Drake survive, however, perhaps they can at least kill off Red Robin's costume? I hate that thing so much.

Review: All-New X-Men Vol. 7: The Utopians

Imagine a big, red stick of dynamite the size of a grain solo, with an incredibly, almost unbelievably long fuse. Imagine someone lighting that fuse, and then imagine watching as the spark traveled slowly down the fuse over the course of, say, two and a half years. Then imagine the spark finally reaching the end of the fuse, disappearing as it came into contact with the impossibly large explosive and...nothing at all happening.

That should give you a pretty good idea of how Brian Michael Bendis concluded his 41-issue run on All-New X-Men, the last five mismatched issues of which are collected in the poorly-named All-New X-Men Vol. 7: The Utopians.

To say it fizzled at the end wouldn't even be accurate, as fizzling is something happening. Rather, Bendis' run just ends. To keep casting about for metaphors, his All-New X-Men wasn't a journey of any kind. Sure, the starting point might have been rather compelling, and yes, there was a great deal of movement, but there was apparently never destination in mind–Bendis just packed up his characters and readers and started driving in a particular direction until the car ran out of gas.

I honestly don't know how typical this is of Bendis' long-form comics writing, as I didn't make it to the end of his much longer tenure on the Avengers franchise or Ultimate Spider-Man, driven away from both by the price increases and constant rebooting that has made it difficult to find where I left off (His Ultimate Spider-Man run had at least three different titles and relaunches, for example; I would need a list of reading order and a lot of patience to find all those trades and read them...and that would be if I skipped all the Ultimate "event" comics, like that series where Marvel Universe Peter Parker first met Ultimate Universe Miles Morales).

This is particularly frustrating in the case of All-New X-Men, as the title launched with one of those big violations of the status quo that really doesn't seem as if it can or should last forever: After the events of Avengers Vs. X-Men, in which Cyclops and a handful of other mutants possessed or were possessed by the Phoenix Force and essentially went crazy and conquered the world for a while, a dying Beast used a time machine to bring the original, teenage X-Men to the present in order to remind Cyclops of who he (and they) used to be. But then they decided to stay in the present rather than go back and live their miserable lives full of death, horror and loss.

Such time-travel has been done on a temporary basis before, and this read an awful lot like a reversal of what DC did with Legion of Super-Hero characters a couple of times, but in the context of X-Men comics, it was was kind of clever, since the modern team travels to or otherwise interacts with nightmarish dystopian futures on a pretty regular basis (the twist here being that the nigmarish, dystopian future was actually our present...which has also been done before by the Distinguished Competition).

The fact that the past team wouldn't go back and then, eventually, couldn't go back was a pretty big deal, as it would violate all the laws of time travel known to man and mutant, in the Marvel Universe or otherwise. It was pretty much taken for granted that Bendis' run would end with either a restoration of the status quo, some sort of tweak, or, at the very least, an explanation. The fact that the end of his run was aligning nicely with Marvel's Crisis On Infinite Earths-like line-wide crossover story, the premise of which involved crashing alternate realities, suggested that Bendis could just take the easy way out and let Secret Wars hit the reboot button for him.

Well, to Marvel's credit, based on the books they've solicited post-Secret Wars, they don't seem to be using it as a way to un-do recent dramatic storylines, like the death of Wolverine, or the replacement of Captain America or Thor with new characters using their names and weapons. But the teenage X-Men all still seem to be hanging around after Secret Wars too, in a pair of books (most of them in a relaunched All-New X-Men, Jean Grey in Extraordinary X-Men), although Bendis is writing either. It really seems as if he's just passing the baton mid-story.

That's fine, I suppose; I'm sure the writers taking the baton aren't going to complain over-much since they're getting the paycheck associated with writing X-Men books, but it's unusual in these days of, a creator-specific runs on titles, which Marvel often talks about in terms of television-like "seasons," and certainly an unsatisfying pay-off to reading a book for so long.

It should be said that All-New X-Men does have the words "To be concluded...in Uncanny X-Men #600" at the botto of its last panel. Uncanny X-Men is the sister book to All-New, following the grown-up Cyclops and his allies at a rogue X-Men school, and also written by Bendis. That hasn't come out yet, nor will it...until after the conclusion of Secret Wars, which, evidence suggests will not put the teenage X-Men back where Bendis found them. (By the way, the last issue of Uncanny that Marvel published was #35, so they are apparently doing one of those random re-numbering stunts where big numbers are preferable to small ones, but only when they have two zeros in them.)

So if the final collection of the final issues of All-New X-Men doesn't include a conclusion, what does it include?

Well, nothing very good, that's for sure.

The first issue is by artist Mike Del Mundo, a rather prolific Marvel cover artist–one of their best–and it is a done-in-one story in which Emma Frost takes Jean Grey to Madripoor for some field training in the arts of psychic combat. She temporary blocks Jean's telepathy so that she'll have to rely solely on her telekinesis. Then she picks a fight with The Blob, who's been in Madripoor and addicted to Mutant Growth Hormone in the pages of Uncanny. There are a few, interesting and salient points about how Xavier and The X-Men turned out from the perspective of villainous mutants (including Emma, who is now at least more hero than villain), and perhaps something in a way of Bendis settling the "When is Jean going to freak out and become Dark Phoenix?" question for now. More annoying is his resolution of Cyclops' teams unreliable, "broken" powers. Emma declares that she fixed it off-panel, when no one was looking.

The art is predictably great.

That's followed by the two All-New X-Men chapters of the 13-part "Black Vortex" storyline, meaning that All-New followed the pattern of Legendary Star-Lord, and just stuck a few random chapters of the crossover into a trade collection. I've expressed my confusion at DC's habit of double-collecting crossover storylines like this in the past, but "Black Vortex" is the first time I've noticed Marvel doing it.

For an overlong aside, the problem is this. If you're an All-New X-Men reader following the book in trade, you're probably going to want to read all of "Black Vortex." Sure, there are a lot of wasted, pointless pages, but there are a few relevant bits to "your" storyline: Teen Cyclops is reunited with his team, Grown-Up Beast learns that the time-stream is irrevocably screwed-up and he can't return the kids home, Iceman and Angel get different designs, and their Professor Kitty Pryde gets engaged to Star-Lord. But here you just get 2/13ths of the story, and they are essentially unreadable in this form; I mean, you can read them, but they won't make a whole hell of a lot of sense. And if you then buy the "Black Vortex" collection, Guardians of The Galaxy & X-Men: Black Vortex, these issues will also be in there. So if you don't buy both trades, you're missing a chunk of story and getting charged for unreadable nonsense in All-New Vol. 7. If you do buy both All-New Vol. 7 and Black Vortex, you're paying for twice for the same 40 pages. (The solution? Just get your Marvel collections from the library like I do, I guess; it's still annoying to see the middle of this book full of Andrea Sorrentino's inappropriately realistic art, but at least you're spending any money on it!)

That, finally, brings us to the last two issues, "The Utopians" story from which the book takes its sub-title. Or, I suppose, I should say "story," as it's not really much of a story.

Back on earth after the events of "Black Vortex," the teen X-Men are just hanging out, enjoying not being in space, and eating fast food that Professor Magik brought them. Iceman Bobby Drake comments on how hot Magik is, at which point Jean pulls him aside and tells him he's gay. Yes, this is the Teen Iceman Is gay issue that you've likely heard about.

I can understand Bendis' intention, and it's not a bad one. The diversification of a superhero universe like The Marvel Universe is a noble goal, but, problematically, reaching that goal often involves legacy characters, which can boil down to simply giving new characters of color the  hand-me-down costumes and codenames of white characters...who almost always return to either reclaim or share the role with their one-time replacements (Think Green Lantern John Stewart, for example). This is because when the Marvel Universe was founded, there were few or any non-white, non-straight characters...and because it's extremely difficult to get a brand-new character to stick, regardless of race or sexual orientation. Even the legacy strategy doesn't always work, as readers simply don't embrace new characters or ideas or approaches in large enough numbers on a regular basis to guarantee success (Looking at recent books starring legacy characters that I personally enjoyed, Ms. Marvel sells well enough to stay in publication, but Ghost Rider did not, and was cancelled).

Outting a character previously thought of as straight is a little easier, since a reader can't "see" sexual orientation in the same way they can see race. Like, you can make The Punisher gay, but you can't make him black (Er, for very long, anyway). And if you're going to make a pre-existing, semi-prominent-ish Marvel character gay, why not Iceman? He seems pretty straight and all, having dated women (like Kitty Pryde, in the rather recent past), but, at the same time, he doesn't have, say, a Mary Jane Watson in his life or anything, you know? (Actually, has Beast had any long-term, serious, character-defining relationships with women? I know he's currently dating SWORD's Abigail Brand off-and-on, but before that? When Grant Morrison first took over the X-Men, he had Beast outting himself as gay, and Cyclops continually arguing with Beast that he's not gay, he's just trying to be provocative. Those were weird exchanges, and nothing ever came of them, either way, that I recall.)

The way Bendis handles it, however, is pretty problematic, from Jean telling Bobby he's gay and then arguing with him that he's gay, definitely not bi, but gay. More problematic still is the fact that they both seem to agree that grown-up Bobby Drake isn't gay (and Jean should know, if she knows teen Bobby is gay). That implies that being gay is a choice, and that grown-up Bobby chose not to be gay because he came of age in the 1960s (or, on a sliding timeline, is it the 1980s or 1990s now?) when society was less accepting of gays, but now teen Bobby is coming of age in a post-Obergefell world, so he can choose to be gay if he wants. I know there are still plenty of folks that do think it's a choice, and while I doubt Bendis is one of them, his story seems to imply that it's a choice rather than something determined at birth. (Also, with two Icemen running around the Marvel Universe, this isn't so much the same thing as Marvel's Iceman being gay as it is a Iceman being gay; technically they're the same person, but, looked at another way, this Iceman is an alternate version, and having him be gay isn't really as big a deal, in the same way Ultimate Colossus being gay wouldn't be the same as Colossus being gay, you know?)

Given the fact that this is Bendis' second-to-last issue of the series, it also seems somewhat mercenary. I hate to assign motivations to someone, so maybe it's unfair to say this is here simply to gain attention (and money), but it can seem that way, given the fact that Bendis is doing it right before jumping ship, rather than, say, 40 issues ago.

Anyway, a few other things happen in this first chapter of "The Utopians," although the Bobby conversation accounts for six of the 20 pages. The Utopian-related business lasts only six pages (two of which are a double-page spread).

Remember Utopia, the island nation the X-Men founded prior to the Cyclops/Wolverine schism? Well, it's been abandoned for a while, but recently seven completely random mutants wearing blue and gold uniforms (only one of whom I recognized on sight) have decided to make their home in the ruins of Utopia, and violently repel invaders.

Having attacked scavengers and then a SHIELD team, they appear to be trouble for the outside world. So, in part two, Maria Hill asks the teen X-Men to look into it for her, and they do. In this second issue, captions name all of The Utopians, and so I can name the ones who aren't Boom Boom: Random, Masque, Elixir, Karma and Madison Jeffries. So the All-New X-Men and The Utopians fight for a few pages. Then they decide to stop fighting, and the All-New X-Men take them back to their base, the recently-shuttered New Xavier School (the repurposed Weapon X facility), and the X-Men invite the other mutants to live there, and that doesn't seem any worse a place to live than the ruins of an island. At the very least, it ought to be easier to get food.

Jean wonders what they can change, since it's hard out there for a mutant, and then the issue, and thus All-New X-Men ends. Thanks for reading! I guess!

These last two issues were both drawn by Mahmud Asrar, who is very good at his job, and whose style is a nice fit with the general style of this title, although his are the only issues that look like they adhere to that style in this particular volume. I suppose we'll–well, I'll–have to wait until the final collection of Uncanny X-Men to see if Bendis does indeed have an ending in mind for his X-Men epic or not, and before Marvel publishes that, they need to publish Uncanny X-Men #600, but before they publish that, they have to publish Secret Wars, I guess.

But for now? Everyone out of the car; All-New X-Men is over. Not concluded, just over.

Meanwhile, at Comics Alliance...

Here's a list of things I thought about while reading Benjamin Marra's Terror Assaulter: O.M.W.O.T. (One Man War On Terror), in terms of things it reminded me of: Jack Kirby, G.I. Joe, Derf, Paul Gulacy, Doug Moench, Jean-Claude Van Damme, James Bond, Internet porn, stand-up comedy, 9/11, Robert Anton Wilson, Red Dawn, G.I. Joe again, Internet porn again, Gran Torino, Chick Tracks and Fletcher Hanks.

I reviewed the book at Comics Alliance, if you'd like to go read about it. It's...not for everyone. In fact, the sex scenes, while very funny (at least in the dialogue) and effective in their criticism of the American dream and the modern male fantasy life, will likely repel a lot of readers. So it's kind of a hard book to recommend, despite how goddam awesome it is.

This is probably my favorite scene...or at least one of my top ten favorite scenes in the 100-page graphic novel:

That was one of the several scenes that reminded me of the 1980s G.I. Joe cartoon, what with the animal sidekicks and all. I love how O.M.W.O.T. dispatches of the second villain though, and just how thoroughly he kills him. Not only is he shot out of a rather high window, but he also gets set on fire while plummeting to his death...atop the metal spikes of a fence.

It's the fact that O.M.W.O.T. apparently runs to go get a flame-thrower specifically to set that dude on fire while he's falling to his death that cracks me up. Welll, that and the fact that he was fast enough to pull it off.

I was a little surprised by how seemingly apolitical the book was too. Well, that's not right. It's not apolitical. I guess I was surprised by how unpartisan it was. I expected harsher criticism of the Bush administration, I guess, give the fact that the title features the "War On Terror" phrase from the Bush era lexicon, and the fact that George W. Bush in name-checked as the creator of the Terror Assaulter program.

But Marra's criticism of the military-industrial-political complex isn't limited to a single president or presidential administration (which is probably a good thing, given the fact that the current president has ramped up certain aspects of the so-called Global War On Terror–like drone strikes, for example–while downplaying other aspects, like using the term "Global War On Terror").

The "About The Author" section in the back of the book says that Marra "is also into world politics: 'Let me tell you something, bro...we are addicted to oil.'" That's about as direct as he gets anywhere, although the statement, like that page is suspect (His author photo, after all, has him posing in his underwear and a fur vest and sunglasses, holding a drink glass as he reclines in his bed.

The political nature of the book is more subtle, despite how un-subtle every other aspect of the book is. O.M.W.O.T. kills the bad guys–in fact, when his first sexual conquest confesses she doesn't even know his name, he replies, "Let's just say...'I kill the bad guys'"–he also kills plenty of other folks who happen to be standing anywhere near the bad guys.

One way to read it, then, is that O.M.W.O.T. himself is simply a metaphor for U.S. foreign policy, and this comic book is basically a political cartoon stretched into an awesome, novel-length comic book adventure.

Another aspect I didn't get into in my Comics Alliance review was that, in the last chapter, O.M.W.O.T. is forced to marry a woman who was his mortal enemy but who then had a sex change in prison and became a woman, who he repeatedly has sex with. While reading the last chapter of this book, I found myself wondering what those who were surprised, annoyed or offended by James Robinson and Greg Hinkle's second issue of Airboy might make of this comic.

Comic Shop Comics: September 9

Age of Reptiles: Ancient Egyptians #4 (Dark Horse Comics) Oh my God, is that eve possible?! That sauropod is walking with at least eight carnivores of considerable size (and about as many smaller ones) riding it while simultaneously eating it alive! A Spinosaurus rips it open and knocks it down, and then all these other carnivores pounce on it and just start eating it, and it gets up and just starts walking away. Is that the most bad-ass thing any dinosaur has ever done? Is it the most bad-ass thing any living creature of any kind in the history of the world has ever done?

Sadly, he doesn't walk far, falling to the ground under the weight of the carnivores riding on him while eating him alive in a two-page splash on the following page. The next five pages then detail what happens to him (I guess I've decided without consciously deciding to do so that it's a him) and his body.

This is maybe the goriest, most violent comic released in the direct market this week. Which is saying something, because this came out on Wednesday, too.

In the final issue of his miniseries, writer/artist Ricardo Delgado resolves all of the various conflicts involving all of the characters who have survived to this issue in a pretty satisfying conclusion. I must confess, however, that in this issue, unlike the previous three, I kept writing dialogue in my head to accompany the silent images of the dinosaurs interacting.

Like the sauropod in this panel? He's totally saying, "'Sup"...but in a menacing fashion.

And here in the sequence the Spinosaurus clearly says something very rude about that sauropod's mother.

And, in the dramatic climax, the Spinosaurus definitely thinks morosely to himself that he couldn't be no kind of father to no one as he wanders off into the sunset, leaving his mate with her clutch of eggs.

Gotham Academy #10 (DC Comics) The ladies of Detective Club take parts in Gotham Academy's production of Macbeth The Scottish Play in order to thoroughly investigate the seemingly-haunted theater from a ghost that might be that of Olive's late mother, the pyrokinetic super-villain Calamity, or might be an unrelated Phantom of the Theater.

Turns out the villain is the one most likely to have a beef with a thespian, and who is fairly spoiled on the cover. Keeping the book's tradition of repurposing minor characters from Batman TV shows as members of the faculty, the director of the school play is one Simon Trent (the actor character who played The Gray Ghost on a TV show within the TV show Batman: The Animated Series). It is perhaps appropriate then that the real identity of "The Phantom" is a Bat-villain who appears here in the same form he did on Batman: The Animated Series.

I'm not entirely sure I understood the villain's relationship to a student at the school, but that's par for the course with this title: The plots and storytelling are always just a little too muddy, and the comic a bit more confusing than it needs to be. Most issues seem like their illustrated from the second-to-last drafts of a comic script that still needs a bit more tweaking.

That said, this was one of the stronger issues in the series to date, and features a pretty much done-in-one story. It's taking this book a long time–way too long, really–to find its groove, but it seems to be just about there. I do hope it gets there before DC makes any final decisions about what books to cancel and what books to give more slack.

SpongeBob Cmoics #48 (United Plankton Pictures) It's an all-Gary issue of SpongeBob, featuring a fantastic cover by Jacob Chabot in which Gary is drawn and colored in the style of many other famous cartoon cats and dogs (and one cricket and one sponge). I think I've figured them all out, with the exception of the one behind Gary's right eyeball and the orange one with the prominent blue pupils between the Heathcliff and Bill The Cat-style Garys in the second column down.

I'm going to give up on the one behind the eyball...

...not having enough to go on.

But I'd be interested in any suggestions on the other one, this guy–

It's not Pokey, Gumby's horse friend is it? Wait...

(Googles Pokey)

Damn, I think it is!

Okay, never mind then; I guess I got 'em all except the one mostly obscured by Gary's right eye. I'm going to guess it's Marmaduke, but that's just a guess.

The longest story is Mark Martin's 16-pager about what Gary gets up to when SpongeBob leaves him alone to go to work. It's followed by a two-page strip by Jen Wang, a four-page strip drawn in typically distubing fashion by Tony Millionaire, four-pagers by Richard Pursel/Jacob Chabot and James Kochalka (check out his amazing panel above), a one-page story by David Lewman featuring oddly off-kilter art by Stephanie Yue that makes all of the characters look cuter than ever before, and Maris Wick's "Flotsam and Jetsam: Ocean Fact" feature, this time detailing four strange snails that live in the sea.

I found the most exciting page to be the issue's single ad, however, for next month's horror-themed issue:

Kelley Jones! Drawing monstrous versions of Patrick, SpongeBob and Squidward! I had seen that image online before, but it looks even better on paper and in-person. More exciting still are some of the other contributors: Tony Millionaire, Stephen Bissette and Richard Sala? They've got some of my most favorite cartoonists in the whole damn world contributing to next month's issue of SpongeBob?! I can't wait.

Review: Guardians of The Galaxy & X-Men: Black Vortex

The awkwardly-titled hardcover collection of "The Black Vortex" crossover storyline is a huge one. Enlarged from the standard 6.5-by-10-inch format to a 7.5-by-11-inch format, its 300 pages or so worth of story are taken from 13 issues of seven different ongoing titles and two one-shots published especially to bookend the storyline. There is a fairly significant event that could potentially have big ramifications for the two franchises named in the title, and it has next to nothing to do with The Black Vortex; Marvel could probably have entitled this Guardians of The Galaxy & The X-Men: Maguffin, for all the scary space artifact has to do with the actual event, Guardian of The Galaxy Star-Lord Peter Quill and X-Man Kitty Pryde deciding to take their relationship to the next level.

For that pair of characters in particular, this story is potentially a big, game-changing deal–although given what happened the last time an X-Lady married a character from outside the franchise, perhaps it's really not all that big a deal after all. Storm and The Black Panther's marriage simply fizzled in the corner of a panel of a crossover story having little to do with either of them, and their temporary union is already on its way to becoming a minor footnote in both characters' Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe entries.

Regardless of how the plot point plays out, however–and we won't know for sometime, thanks to Secret Wars preempting any and all other non-Secret Wars ongoing plots–it certainly didn't need a 300-page story involving far more characters than the storyline's primary writers Sam Humphies and Brian Michael Bendis can even keep track of, let alone find things to keep them occupied (For the sake of comparison, Avengers & X-Men: Axis is only 264 pages, Original Sin 240 pages and X-Men: Battle of The Atom about 250 pages). One might expect Marvel to be much better at crafting crossover stories at this point, given the fact that they are almost always engaged in at least one line-wide story of that nature, but this one is noticeably poorly put-together, reading more like one from the '90s, when they were transparent boosts to flailing and failing titles. Which explains the participation of not only Guardians of The Galaxy, Legendary Star-Lord, Guardians Team-Up and All-New X-Men (the X-Men book currently featuring Kitty Pryde), but also Cyclops, Captain Marvel and, most random of all, Nova.

The story would be big and unwieldy without the extra books, but it would also be a lot tighter, a lot less meandering and a lot less transparent in its mercenary conception. It would also significantly reduce the numbers of cooks in the kitchen. Star-Lord writer Humphries scripts six of the 13 issues (makes sense; this is basically a Star-Lord story arc gone mad), and Bendis four (the issues of his regular titles Guardians and All-New X-Men), while the inclusion of the hangers-on titles mean John Layman, Gerry Duggan and Kelly Sue DeConnick also script about 20 pages apiece. There are nine primary artists (not counting the inkers), a number which could have reduced by at least two without the less necessary tie-ins. Of course, the artists are so numerous and so varied, it hardly matters: Ed McGuinness, Kris Anka, Valerio Schiti, Andrea Sorrentino...there was no way that this storyline would have looked like it fit together visually, anyway.

McGuinness...

...and Sorrentino, who aren't exactly on the same page when it comes to drawing Rocket.

So, what's a "Black Vortex," anyway...?

Well, it is a full-length mirror seemingly created by a black Celestial referred to as "Godhead" 12 billion years ago in answer to the prayer of an alien named Gara who looked like final-form Frieza with breasts and capri pants. If you look into the mirror, you see a redesigned, more powerful and somehow vaguely "cosmically enhanced" version of yourself. If you "submit" to the mirror, you turn into that version of yourself.

In other words, it's a character-redesigning maguffin, capable of giving the way-too-many characters new, temporary looks, but, more importantly, it's something for the huge cast to chase around for 13 issues. It had fallen into the hands of Star-Lord and Guardians villain Mister Knife/J-Son and his new ally, Thane, son of Thanos. Kitty Pryde, on a space-date with her long-distance boyfriend Peter Quill, made a post-coital decision to steal it from Knife (Peter's dad) mainly to annoy him. Naturally, this gets them in trouble, as Knife sends his already-upgraded team of mercenaries The Slaughter Lords after them.

To their aid come the X-Men and The Guardians.

The former are Kitty's current "class," the time misplaced original teenage X-Men Angel, Beast, Iceman and Jean Grey, plus X-22, as well as Magik, grown-up Beast and Storm. Magik and the kids make sense, as they are all Kitty's close allies at Grown-Up Cylops' New Xavier School (I'm not sure of the publishing order, and if this was published before, after or simultaneous to its dissolution in the pages of Bendis' Uncanny X-Men), but Beast and Storm seem particularly random. I'd say they were wholly unnecessary and simply clutter up the cast, but Beast at least has something to do in the story, which is more than many of the other characters get.

As for the latter, they are Rocket, Groot, Gamora, Drax, Venom/Flash Thompson and Captain Marvel. So that's sixteen heroes so far, and we haven't even got to Teen Cyclops or Nova yet! A brief argument breaks out over whether or not to use the magic mirror, with Kitty and Peter finding themselves on opposite sides of the argument, testing their relationship (Kitty says no, because evil magic artifacts probably have bad side-effects; Peter says why not, because why not?) When The Slaughter Lords and Gara arrive to take it by force, the fighting and transforming starts...and pretty much doesn't let up for the next 280 pages or so.

Gamora and Beast immediately submit, the former getting a better new look, the latter getting a much worse (and thankfully temporary) one; she wants power to beat up the bad guys, he want cosmic understanding to help him fix time and space, which he's afraid he sort of broke when he brought the teenage X-Men forward in time a few years ago our time (that gets a full two panels worth of explanation, so look close!). Angel follows right behind them, getting a weird skull-shaped mask and fire wings.

Fearing the 16 heroes might not be enough to stop the cosmically enhanced bad guys, Peter makes an emergency broadcast for help, and turns up exactly one more character: Nova. He'll hang around for the duration.

Then things get complicated.

The transformed Beast, Gamora and Angel take off with the mirror, which Gara, The Slaughter Lords and our heroes all want to get back from them. Meanwhile, Knife and Thane are making a deal with the Brood, in which a cosmically-enhanced Thane promises to freeze a planet in amber (that's his super-power, by the way, covering things in amber) for The Brood so they can eat and breed in its population at their leisure. Hala, homeworld of the Kree Empire, gets attacked, and Ronan looks in the mirror and submits, getting a not-too-severe new look, in order to defend it; he fails though, and it's destroyed. Cyclops and his dad, space pirate Corsair, show up. The Collector briefly shows up. There's a lot of fighting, shouting and flying around. Other characters get upgrades. The narrative takes over-long detours to accommodate the participation of other books (There's 20 pages of Nova visiting Earth with the Vortex and The Collector meeting his family, because it's an issue of Nova, for example; later Carol Danvers get something to do, and rather than spending a panel or four on it, they spend 20 pages on it, because now it's an issue of Captain Marvel and so on).

This particular team-up is referred to as a "Locket Heedcoon."

At the end, all that really matters is that the characters who submitted get a chance to de-submit and resume their normal forms, and most of them do (I believe just Ronan and Gamora remain completely enhanced), while a handful of characters get mild, lasting redesigns: Teen Iceman is no longer made of snow when iced-up, but made of ice, looking as he did in Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends; Groot looks like a slightly different type of tree-man  (I think); and Angel keeps his fire wings and his dumb new costume, sans mask. The latter is the only one I really hate; partly because as far as X-Men go, Angel is one of the few perfect superheroes whose codename, appearance and powers all reinforce one another, and in part because the earthbound angel with fire wings schtick was already done in the pages of Peter David's Supergirl (and was fairly dumb then).

The important thing, though, is that Kitty and Peter get past their argument–regarding whether submitting to ancient magical artifacts is good or bad or not–and Kitty makes a realization about space (Earth is in space, it turns out!) and he gets down on one knee and proposes.

I did choke up a little on this page; I'm a critic, not a stone.

And then the Marvel Universe went on hold for like a year to accommodate Secret Wars.

Humprhies and Bendis are both fun writers, and despite what weaknesses there are in the plotting of both, they are both on pretty solid ground when writing dialogue and witty repartee, of which there is a lot, given this book's cast of thirty or so smart-asses.

I liked some of the art (particularly McGuinnesses'; dude draws the best Rocket) and hated some of it (particularly Sorrentino's photorealistic work, which couldn't be more out of place here among the cartoonier style of most of the other artists).

All in all, it's a complete mess though, and an at-times challenging slog. It's actually a decent argument for not waiting for the trade, as this likely would have read better if readers had a chance to self-currate it, and were savvy enough to skip the unimportant chapters...but then, the first and last chapters are really the only important ones. Everything else is just filler. And that's a lot of filler.

Oh yeah, Nite Owl from Watchmen is also totally in an episode of Teen Titans Go! too

As Ashton Burge noted in the comments section to my previous post on Watchmen characters cameoing via signature in an episode of Teen Titans Go!, Watchmen character Nite Owl did one better and actually appeared on-scren for a split-second in the episode "Real Boy Adventures."

I was surprised to learn that, if only because I had just watched that episode within days of seeing the "Yearbook Madness" episode. If you haven't seen "Real Boy Adventures," and you should, the plot is this: Cyborg is disappointed that his mostly-robot body doesn't allow him to enjoy hot tubs, so Raven uses her magic to make him "a real boy" again. No longer a cyborg, he's forced to change his name from "Cyborg" to "Fleshy Guy," one of the many negative consequences to being a real boy.

Robin, a fellow real boy, tries to cheer him up by taking him on a "real boy adventure," which includes a musical number. That's the part where Nite Owl appears, chanting the chorus to the song along many other comics characters and historical figures. I didn't notice him the first time through, probably because I was so distracted by Batman's guitar solo after the lyrics ("You can dance all night in the rain real boy/Did you know Bruce Wayne is a real real boy?").

I'm fairly certain either Beast Boy or Robin also has a Nite Owl poster hanging in his bedroom, but I didn't check for screen-capping purposes.

Comic Shop Comics: September 2

Aliens: Salvation (Dark Horse Comics) When I first heard that there was a Dave Gibbons, Mike Mignola and Kevin Nowlan comic book in existence (published before I'd seen any Alien movies, or knew who Mike Mignola was), I immediately ordered a copy of Aliens Omnibus Vol. 3, which collected it. Then, a few days later, when I was in the shop and saw this new version on the counter, I just couldn't resist Mignola's new cover, so I bought it. I'm glad I did. I have a much fuller (i.e. an actual) review of it over at Robot 6, if you'd like to listen to me sing its praises at some length.

Bat-Mite #4 (DC Comics) Writer Dan Jurgens and artist Corin Howell have Booster Gold and Skeets seek out Bat-Mite's aid in finding the new mystery villain Gridlock, a comics reader/collector/fanboy stand-in who has appeared in previous issues. In this issue, our heroes invade his home base, where they find comics and other collectibles perfectly stored to keep them in perfectly mint condition. The masked villain's exact agenda isn't precisely clear just yet, although he is clearly opposed to change and the march of time, trying to keep things as they were when he was a child.

When Booster attacks Gridlock, telling him that he can't stop time, the villain responds: "No, but I can stop the effect. The years can pass! I'll age-- --But I'll preserve the world at the point it was best!"

"Best for ten-year-old you, maybe," Booster counters (while kicking Gridlock in the stomach), "But you don't get to force your culture down the throats of the young."

It's all pretty obvious, and the criticism might bear a little more weight were it not coming from Dan Jurgens, who has been writing DC superhero comics almost as long as I've been able to read. And he's been writing Booster Gold and Skeets, who Jurgens created almost 30 years ago, off and on for years, frequently returnint to the characters (The title of this story is even "The Gold Standard," with the "G" in "Gold" crossed out so it reads "The Old Standard.")

That's just rubbing the hypocrisy in...at least if you're a reader who knows who Dan Jurgens is. (A  much more elegant criticism of the same phenomena can be found in the Teen Titans Go! episode "The Return of Slade," in which Beast Boy and Cyborg insist that Robin hire a clown to entertain them, and when they find they don't enjoy clowns as much as they did when they were children, they decided the fault lies not in that they've outgrown clowns, but that the clown must be made more mature and adult–the even dunk it in an "X-Tremification" vat–to suit their current tastes. Sorry if I've been talking about Teen Titans Go! too much lately; it's just that it's the best thing ever is all).

Booster and Skeets show up on Bat-Mite's (borrowed) doorstep because they are trying to find and defeat Gridlock, whose efforts to stop progress are apparently deleterious to the timestream itself, and together the three of them tackle the villain, who naturally escapes...and then Booster and Skeets just drop it and leave, having not actually accomplished anything (but if Bat-Mite is capable of teleporting to wherever Gridlock is, then they could just pursue him to wherever he went, and keep doing so until they defeat him, right? Right. Although that wouldn't fit the demands of the book's format, which is essentially that of a  Bat-Mite Team-Up comic).

Bat-Mite's redesign of Booster Gold (who does have an extremely dumb name, and one I've never actually heard explained) is kind of funny, as is his new codename of "Black Gold." Surely "Booster Black" would be funnier still, as it changes the non-lame part of his codename, and more logically swaps out one color for another. An actually cooler name would be Black Star, but that's taken by at least one manga character, and I have a feeling if I Google it, I'll find at least one DC character and probably a Marvel character with that name. But I'm not going to Google it, because I don't actually care that much.

The funniest part of Bat-Mite's attempts to fix Booster Gold by giving him a cooler costume is that DC unironically did the very same thing during when they launched the ill-considered Extreme Justice title, in which Booster got a new look that just made him look like a Rob Liefeld redesign of NFL SuperPro, wearing blue and yellow.

Bat-Mite's Black Gold is nowhere near as ridiculous an attempt to make Booster Gold cool and relevant as that was.

DC Comics Bombshells #2 (DC) A bad news, good news situation, this second issue of DC's digital-first series based on a line of collectible statuettes is absent the work of Marguerite Sauvage, whose work was one of the reasons (the primary one, really) that the first issue was so damn good.

That's the bad news. The good news? It's still based on Ant Lucia's winning designs, it's still written by Marguerite Bennett, who did a fine job of starting to tell a World War II story tying those diverse character designs to characters in a single narrative, and the three artists who draw this issue ain't bad. They are, in order, Laura Braga, Stephen Mooney and Ted Naifeh. Braga's artwork is probably closest to exact design style of Luca, and it looks the closest to the work of Sauvage, and I've long liked the work of Naifeh, who I really wouldn't mind seeing doing something on a more permanent basis than popping up in occasional digital-first DC comics like this one (he's also drawn for Legends of The Dark Knight and Ame-Comi Girls). The second of the three passages, by Mooney,is the weakest, as something apparently got muddled between the scripting and drawing. I have no idea what was supposed to have happened in that segment in which the portrait of Bombshell Supergirl and Stargirl (in Soviet red, rather than blue) appeared...did Supergirl paint it with eyebeams, or at super-speed, or...what?

In terms of story, the first chapter featuring Wonder Woman and Mera diverges rather dramatically from Wonder Woman's Golden Age origin, which is only noteworthy because the Wonder Woman section of the first issue was pretty much a straight re-telling of it, albeit with cooler, more modern designs. She's joined by ocean princess Mera, who alludes to a sister and her sister's husband (no idea who either of them might be, although I suppose it's possible the husband is Aquaman) who rule the sea. Wondy and Mera team-up to break Steve Trevor out of Amazon jail and join him and his country in his fight against the Axis powers. I've already mentioned the Soviet passage featuring the characters who will become Supergirl and Stargirl and, in the final pages, we meet two new Bombshells...and the first real male DC hero. This Naifeh-drawn section is set in a German cabaret, where a scantily-clad Joker's Daughter (who looks flawless, as long as she doesn't smile) introduces a scantily-clad Zatanna, who performs and then has a brief magical battle with an undercover Englishman posing as a German soldier: One John Constantine.

Providence #4 (Avatar Press) This is "The Dunwich Horror" issue of Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows' weird tour of H.P. Lovecraft's body of work. I had previously referred to their Providence as a sort of League of Extraordinary Gentleman-style take on Lovecraft's bibliography, imagining a shared universe for all of the characters. Between this and the last issue though, which cover two of the stories I'm most familiar with (and/or understood the easiest, as they were among the more straightforward, with "Dunwich" reading almost like a pre-Hollywood horror movie of sorts), I realize that a more apt comparison to something else in Moore's own bibliography may be Lost Girls. Like Lost Girls did with the children's writing of Lewis Carrol, L. Frank Baum and J.M. Barrie, Providence seems to be imagining a version of the real world that could have inspired Lovecraft's cosmic horror mythology. Unlike Lost Girls, which reverse-engineered scenes of high nursery fantasy into real-world sexual experiences, the "real world" of Providence is still fairly fantastic; Moore is imagining a world that Lovecraft could have fictionalized, but not by much...while simultaneously meticulously rearranging Lovecraft's stories so that they are all inter-connected.

It's as much intellectual exercise for Moore himself and the readers as it is entertainment, I suppose, but it's on a subject matter I've always been interested in/amused by, and in a medium I enjoy reading. The presentation is the same as that of the previous issues: Our reporter character wanders to a locale, chats up the surprisingly loquacious occultists for a book he's writing and never takes a single note. Dude must have a photographic memory.

It's not as good as the story it's pulling characters from to de- and then re-fictionalize slightly, which would have been disappointing had this been the first instead of the fourth issue (at this point, I knew what to expect going in). There's a brief "appearance" by the less human of Lavina's sons, who isn't normally visible. That's one of the elements of that story I liked the best, that story and all of Lovecraft's stories, the way his horrors or "marvels" (as he sometimes called them) were invisible, while interacting physically in the real world. Was it in a Lovecraft story, or a story about a Lovecraft story in which Alhazred was said to have been eaten alive in a crowded market by invisible animals...?

Man, I wish this book was coming out when I was in college and more up on all this stuff...

As always, there are a bonus too-many pages of prose in the back, which likely adds a great deal of context and texture to the comic, but I didn't read them, because I bought a comic book, dammit, not a book-book, and if I wanted to read words without pictures I would not have bought a comic book (dammit!).

We Stand On Guard #3 (Image Comics) Jeez let's hope the U.S. government never develops the sort of realistic brain-hijacking that Brian K. Vaughan imagines they have for use of torturing people in this issue and, if they ever do, no one involved with interrogating detainees ever reads this particular comic, because holy shit. Vaughan and Steve Skroce effectively render a scene in which a lady who can take being burned over and over in a pool of flaming gasoline breaks within a second or so of just anticipating something more horrible still, and, the scariest part of the scene is, it's not hard to imagine us actually using such tactics, since they occur only in the mind, and thus don't seem to violate our recent-past legal parsing of the difference between pretty much torture ("enhanced interrogation") and actual torture ("torture").

This issue also actually lays out why the U.S. and Canada could coneivably go to war some day (water; the two countries do currently share the Great Lakes, after all) and features a hobo; I am always happy to see a hobo turn up in my comics.

The best two seconds in DC animation history (and the most unexpected Watchmen crossover of them all)

Teen Titans Go! is often jam-packed with allusions and in-jokes to the wider DC Universe, far beyond the cast of characters that regularly appear or cameo in the series. The episode "Yearbook Madness" from season two, however, features an insane amount of allusions and in-jokes–so many that they are impossible to even take in, unless you, I don't know, are watching it on DVD and decide to pause a few seconds from the climax frame by frame and thoroughly study every centimeter of the screen.

In this particular episode of the show, Cyborg and Beast Boy decide to make yearbooks for the Teen Titans, which brings out Robin's hyper-competitive side, and he attempts to win the yearbook by appearing in the most photos. When the books finally arrive, he finds that he has failed, appearing only in a single photo on a single page–that's gotta be particularly devastating when the whole "class" consists of only five people.

Trying to snatch a victory from the jaws of defeat, he goes off to try and collect more signatures in his yearbook than any of the other Titans, and after cajoling and beating various characters into signing his yearbook, he returns only to find the other Titans have filled their books with signatures.

It is this that leads to the greatest two seconds in DC animation history, as dozens of DC heroes and villains–even two characters from Watchmen–appear to have signed Starfire and Raven's yearbooks.

Robin looks at Starfire's book, and then shouts increduously, "Green Lantern? Aquaman? Haunted Tank?"

And these images flash on the screen in rapid succession:

The first time I saw this two seconds of Teen Titans Go!, I was just amused by the fact that Robin counted Haunted Tank among the "popular" heroes, and then I really got to thinking about how The Haunted Tank would sign a yearbook. Who did the actual signing, and drew that little Haunted Tank cartoon? Was it a member of the tank crew? If so, why did they sign it "Haunted Tank," rather than their name? Was it the ghost of General J.E.B. Stuart? And, if so, again, why did he sign it "Haunted Tank" rather than his name?

And then when I went back to look for clues, I saw the glory of those three images: Starfire getting signatures from all three GLs (I love Hal's smiley face ring, and the fact that Kyle included a sketch of Star with his), Alfred's classy signature, Batgirl and Damian involving themselves in the non-existent Robin/Starfire romance and so on.

The crazies bit by far, however, was the one to the right of Aquaman's signature: "Time is meaningless and so are you...Have a great summer. –Dr. Manhatten." Okay, sure, the name may be spelled wrong, but clearly that's meant to be Dr. Manhattan, making this the first crossover between Watchmen and any version of the DC Universe in pretty much forever, right? And on Teen Titans Go! of all places!

Being so thoroughly defeated in the signature-gathering as well naturally only drives Robin further into Yearbook Madness, to the point that he asks Raven to use her magic to literally transport him inside the yearbook. When she refuses, he asks to sign her book instead, and have her read what he wrote. She does, and it turns out to be her all-purpose magic words, "Azarath Metrion Zinthos."

And so Robin is teleported within the pages of the yearbook, where he runs around joyfully. At the climax, he appears as an animated sketch on her "Autographs" page, and we get to see more DC character signatures. Raven, being Raven, has quite a few different friends and fans among DC's characters than Star does, with Darkseid, Ra's al Ghul and Etrigan all signing her yearbook. Here are two screen caps of Robin rising up on her autographs page, so you can see all of the signatures:

Look who signed right below Bizarro, and to the right of the magic words Robin scribbled in. There appears to be a drawing of a butterfly or your parents fighting or a woman unfulfilled after having sex with you (or whatever you might see in the image), and the message, "I will be watching you. –Rorshach." His name is spelled wrong too, as if they were intentionally skirting using the exact names of characters from Watchmen, but dang, Teen Titans Go!...those are some hardcore unexpected Watchmen allusions semi-hidden in your silly, absurdist comedy show for little kids and grown-ups who like things that are awesome (Teen Titans Go! is the only television show that both I and my four-year-old nephew are equally enthusiastic about).