DC's February previews reviewed

DC Comics has released their solicitations for the books they plan to publish in February of next year. Have you seen them already? If so, you're probably wondering, "Does Caleb have thoughts and/or feelings about any of these books?" And the answer is yes, yes I do. And I am willing to share those thoughts and feelings with you, below.

BATGIRL #8
Written by HOPE LARSON
Art and cover by CHRIS WILDGOOSE
...
“Son of Penguin” part two! It’s hard enough to juggle a new boyfriend when you’re not secretly investigating him for super-villainy! But is Batgirl dating Ethan Cobblepot to get to bottom of his new tech business…or could she actually like him? Plus, Magpie strikes!
On sale FEBRUARY 22 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T

So I have a confession to make: I did not like the first story arc of the Hope Larson-written Batgirl comics, like, at all. The artwork, provided by Rafael Albuquerque, was pretty solid, but as Barbara was outside of Gotham and removed from her supporting cast, it was difficult to get a sense of what he might bring to the book, long-term.

Now, that said, it's quite possible that some of dislike of that arc was me, not them–the previous Batgirl by the previous creative team was one of my favorite DC Comics, and this was a huge departure. I understood the wisdom of the departure to a degree–by temporarily relocating Barbara with a tour of Asia, it gave the Larson/Albuqureque team some space to avoid any kind of direct comparison to the preceding team, but it just wasn't very engaging.

This actually sounds a lot more interesting, although it looks like Albuquerque is taking a few issues off.

The main thing I wanted to point out here though? It's the return of Magpie! And it looks like they are using the redesign that (extremely) minor Bat-villain had in the short-lived Beware The Batman animated series. I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed that series, a large part of which, I think, was due to the fact that the producers purposely tried to restrict themselves to only using Batman villains that never (or just barely) appeared in previous Batman cartoons.

They used Magpie as essentially a Catwoman-like foil to Batman, and she had a pretty great re-design, I thought. That said, i think I've only seen three Magpie designs ever (that from her original comics appearance, the one in Beware and the one in the recent DC Super Hero Girls: Hits and Myths graphic novel).

Anyway: Hooray for Magpie!

DETECTIVE COMICS #950
Written by JAMES TYNION IV
Art by MARCIO TAKARA and others
Cover by EDDY BARROWS and EBER FERREIRA •
...
“League of Shadows” prologue! Celebrate 950 issues of the original Batman series with this extra-sized extravaganza! Cassandra Cain has stayed out of the spotlight on Batman’s team as she slowly comes to terms with the civilized world she was kept away from all her life…but the time for her to step up is fast approaching! Will she ever learn how to fit in among the masses, or will she always be more weapon than woman? Plus: a primer on the history of the League of Assassins, and an adventure with the team’s newest recruit: Azrael, the Avenging Angel!
On sale FEBRUARY 8 • 48 pg, FC, $3.99 US • RATED T

Hmm, you know what help Cassandra become more woman than weapon, and fit in better? If she stopped calling herself "Orphan" and took the name "The Black Bat," and also traded in her current, dumb-ass costume for either her old Batgirl costume or her old Black Bat costume, or something in-between (I bet the Black Bat costume sans cape would look pretty cool, too, for example).

I've been mostly digging Tynion's 'TEC, which features some of my favorite characters, even though they've all been mangled by their New 52 reboots. My main issue with the series–other than Tim and Cassandra's terrible costumes and the latter's terrible codename–is that the art, event at its best, hasn't been very good.

There are so many good comic books vying for ones dollars these days, it's really hard to commit to reading an ongoing just for the writing or characters.

EARTH 2: SOCIETY #21
Written by DAN ABNETT
Art by VICENTE CIFUENTES • Cover by BRUNO REDONDO
The Wonders battle the Sandmen army to free the new Earth 2 from a dystopian fate, but the new world Director has unleashed his terrifying secret weapon. Can Batman, Huntress and John, the weakest of the wonders, shut down the Director’s stronghold? It’s a dangerous, last-minute gamble…and the price may be too great to bear.
On sale FEBRUARY 8 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US RATED T • FINAL ISSUE

I honestly can't believe this book has lasted this long. I've been assuming it was a few issues away from cancellation ever since the original creative team left, and that was like two Batman, a different planet and a relaunch ago.

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA: REBIRTH #1
Written by STEVE ORLANDO
Art and cover by IVAN REIS and JOE PRADO
...
Batman, Black Canary, Killer Frost, the Ray, Vixen, the Atom, and…Lobo?! Spinning directly out of the events of JUSTICE LEAGUE VS. SUICIDE SQUAD, join the sensational team of writer Steve Orlando and artists Ivan Reis and Joe Prado and discover how Batman assembled the roughest, toughest Justice League of all time!
One-shot • On sale FEBRUARY 8 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T

Good creative team, interesting superhero team. Looking at the former, JLoA now seems to be the A book in the Justice League family of books, but looking at the latter, Bryan Hitch and company's Justice League seems to remain the A book.

The "roughest, toughest Justice League of all time" is a pretty bold claim. Lobo and Killer Frost? Sure. And Batman and Black Canary are certainly rough and tough in their weight class, but not ranked against Justice Leaguers.

Anyway, I'm curious about this new book, and wish DC would figure out a plan for the Justice League and stick with it, because the franchise has felt pretty confused and in flux since...I can't remember when. Infinite Crisis, maybe...?

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #1
Written by STEVE ORLANDO
Art and cover by IVAN REIS and JOE PRADO
...
Meet the Extremists—self-proclaimed saviors from another Earth, they thirst for peace, prosperity and total submission to the will of their leader, Lord Havok! How can the newly assembled JLA stop this group of misguided maniacs before the Extremists unleash their own unique—not to mention dangerous!—brand of law and order on our chaotic world?
On sale FEBRUARY 22 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T

The Extremists? Okay, in that case you can downgrade me from "curious" to "kinda curious."

SCOOBY-DOO TEAM-UP #23
Written by SHOLLY FISCH
Art and cover by SCOTT JERALDS
Quick Draw McGraw may be the high-falutin’est, fastest-shootin’est lawman on the lone prairie, but he needs help from Scooby and the gang when faced with that rustlin’ wraith, the Fastest Ghost in the West! Of course, if the ghost is too much for even this team-up to handle, they can ask for help from El Kabong.
On sale FEBRUARY 22 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED E

I am totally going to read this, but this particular pairing doesn't quite work for me. Scooby and maybe even Shaggy can interact with anthropomorphic animals without it blowing my mind (see Laff-A-Lympics), but when Fred, Velma and Daphne get involved, it just feels...wrong (see Scooby-Doo Team-Up #11, the one with Secret Squirrel).

Also, man, look at that cover. It's got Shaggy and Scooby riding on horses...while hanging out with another horse, who can walk and talk, leading to that whole Pluto/Goofy sort of uncomfortableness.

SUICIDE SQUAD #11
Written by ROB WILLIAMS
Art by RILEY ROSSMO
Cover by PHILIP TAN
...
“BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE” part one! Spinning directly out of the events of JUSTICE LEAGUE VS. SUICIDE SQUAD! Hidden somewhere deep within, the world is a burning flame. Its light is blinding. Its heat is deadly. It’s a fire fueled by hatred, by rage and by vengeance. Used, abused and left for dead, the greatest foe the Suicide Squad has ever faced returns, more powerful than ever, to burn down the world Amanda Waller has given everything to protect.
On sale FEBRUARY 8 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T+

SUICIDE SQUAD #12
Written by ROB WILLIAMS
Art by RILEY ROSSMO
Cover by PHILIP TAN
...
“BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE” part two! Determined to unmake all the world’s institutions of governance and control, [REDACTED] orchestrates a series of prison breakouts across the DC Universe, forcing Harley Quinn, Deadshot and the rest of the Suicide Squad into their most dangerous mission yet: keeping their former super-villain comrades in jail.
On sale FEBRUARY 22 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T+

Hey, Riley Rossmo! That guy's great! I think I like his art much more than I do previous Suicide Squad artist Jim Lee's art and, unlike Lee, I'm assuming he'll be drawing 20-pages of story per issue? At least, there's no mention of any other artists involved in these issues, so maybe their done doing what they've been doing in the weirdly-formatted early issues, in which a little more than half of each one told a chapter in a serial narrative, and the back half of the book was devoted to an origin story by a different artist.

SUPER SONS #1
Written by PETER J. TOMASI
Art and cover by JORGE JIMENEZ
...
“When I grow up” part one! The sons of Batman and Superman have graduated to their own monthly comic—but if they want to survive, they’re going to have to share it! Writer Peter J. Tomasi (BATMAN & ROBIN, SUPERMAN) teams with rising-star artist Jorge Jimenez (EARTH 2) to bring you the adventures of the World’s Smallest. This debut issue looks at the lives of Robin and Superboy and their destiny to follow in their fathers’ footsteps, while we meet a new villain whose ascension parallels the boys’ own understanding of their powers—except that he believes it’s his right to rule over every being on the planet!
On sale FEBRUARY 15 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T

I really enjoyed the introduction of the Super Sons to one another in the pages of Tomasi, Patrick Gelason, Doug Mahnke and company's Superman, which may be the all-around best of the Rebirth titles so far (despite a rocky first arc), so I'm really looking forward to this book.

Damian works best with another character to play off, and Jon was a pretty perfect foil in their first pairing. I'm glad Tomasi is writing too, as he's written Damian longer than just about anyone else at this point, and has probably written Jon as much or more than anyone else too (Jurgens uses Jon in Action Comics, but he gets much less panel-time there).

TEEN TITANS BY GEOFF JOHNS BOOK ONE TP
Written by GEOFF JOHNS • Art by MIKE McKONE, MARLO ALQUIZA, TOM GRUMMETT, NORM RAPMUND and KEVIN CONRAD Cover by MIKE McKONE and MARLO ALQUIZA
Superboy, Kid Flash, Robin, Wonder Girl, Cyborg and many more join together to fight iconic super-villains like Deathstroke and Ravager! With inner demons rising, can the team save one of their own—or will they succumb to darkness? This new title collects TEEN TITANS #1/2 and #1-12 plus TEEN TITANS/OUTSIDERS SECRET FILES 2003 #1.
On sale MARCH 8 • 368 pg, FC, $29.99 US

Don't read this; it will just make you depressed about the state of the Teen Titans franchise at DC (although the first few issues of the post-"Rebirth" book have been pretty A-OK), and wonder again about the wisdom of sacrificing all these characters and their continuity in the Flashpoint/New 52 reboot.

This looks like it's going to be one of those issues that's worth buying for the Dan Hipp cover alone; specifically, the various cute DC couples in the background. Even the tattooed Jared Leto Joker looks cute!

Well, the tower looks nice, at least.

THE WILD STORM #1
Written by WARREN ELLIS
Art and cover by JON DAVIS-HUNT
...
A troubled woman, barred by her employer from continuing her research, walks miserably through New York City. It takes her a moment to notice that everybody else is looking up. A man has been thrown from the upper floor of the Halo skyscraper.

And that woman—Angela Spica, sick from the transhuman implants she’s buried in her own body—is the only person who can save him.

What she doesn’t know is that the act of saving that one man will tip over a vast and secret house of cards that encloses the entire world, if not the inner solar system. This is how the Wild Storm begins, and it may destroy covert power structures, secret space programs and even all of human history.

New York Times best-selling writer Warren Ellis (TRANSMETROPOLITAN, RED, THE AUTHORITY) returns to DC to curate Jim Lee’s WildStorm world, with this debut issue resetting the WildStorm universe with new iterations of Grifter, Voodoo, the Engineer, Jenny Sparks and others.

“I couldn’t be more excited to see these characters that are so near and dear to me reintroduced under the guiding hand of Warren Ellis. WildStorm represents an incredibly fun and exciting period in my career, and I can’t wait to see what Warren and Jon have in store for fans in February.”—Jim Lee, DC Comics Co-Publisher
On sale FEBRUARY 15 • 32 pg, FC, $3.99 US • RATED T+

Huh. You know when might have been a good time to reboot the WildStorm Universe? Oh, somewhere around fall of 2011, when DC just kind of haphazardly fused a rebooted version of various WildStorm characters into their rebooted DCU, and then watched as the clumsy additions were slowly bled out of The New 52-iverse, to the point where miniseries Midnighter and Apollo is the last vestiges of the WildStorm Universe left in the current DCU.

Sounds like this is another reboot, but just of the WildStorm Universe as its own entity, an entity which, despite its much younger age, I'm pretty sure has had even more reboots than the DC Universe at this point.

WONDER WOMAN AND THE JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA VOL. 1 TP
Written by DAN VADO and CHUCK DIXON
Art by MIKE COLLINS, KEVIN WEST, RICK BURCHETT, MARC CAMPOS and others
Cover by MIKE COLLINS and JOSE MARZAN JR.
In these never-before-collected stories from the 1990s, Wonder Woman takes over as leader of the Justice League of America, whether Green Lantern Guy Gardner, Booster Gold and Blue Beetle like it or not. Acting at the behest of the United Nations, the team must respond to a human rights crisis in a remote African nation, only to find the populace under the thumbs of the super-powered Extremists. The team then must jet to Norway, where the young superhero called Ice struggles to keep the nation out of the hands of her older brother. Collects JUSTICE LEAGUE AMERICA #78-85, JUSTICE LEAGUE AMERICA ANNUAL #7 and GUY GARDNER #15.
On sale MARCH 15 • 264 pg, FC, $24.99 US

Ha, I was just wondering about this era of the Justice League after finishing Superman and The Justice League of America Vol. 2 (which contained very little Superman in it).

I'm all for DC collecting any and all pre-Morrison Justice League comics into trade that haven't yet been collected. My preferred format for these books would be Showcase Presents, but the publisher seems to have quite making those...which breaks my heart, given that they started but didn't finish collecting some series in that format (All-Star Squadron/Young All-Stars).

Finally, February will bring another crop of "Rebirth" collections.

Looking at what will be coming out, I would recommend Deathstroke Vol. 1: The Professional and Suicide Squad Vol. 1: The Black Vault Part One.

I would not recommend Batgirl Vol. 1: Beyond Burnside, Cyborg Vol. 1: The Imitation of Life, Harley Quinn Vol. 1: Die Laughing (Um, maybe they shoulda kept the old numbering for the Harley trades, given that nothing, not even the creative team, changed during the "Rebirth" re-branding?), The Hellblazer Vol. 1: The Poison Truth (great art, though!) or Titans Vol. 1: The Return of Wally West.

But hey, that's just me.

Review: El Diablo: The Haunted Horseman

I have recently been reorganizing my massive comics midden, a long overdue task forced upon me by a break-in, during which the would-be burglars dumped all of my long-boxes out in the middle of the room and rifled through the resulting pile, apparently convinced I had hidden $100 bills between random bagged-and-boarded comics (I don't think they stole any comics; I recently discovered that I seem to be missing my entire run of JSA and Justice Society of America, but I'm not sure if the box containing them was stolen in a previous break-in at a previous apartment, where I also lost all of my Robin, Batgirl and Nightwing comics, or if it was just lost in a move).

It's precisely because I have ever-so-gradually been going through every comic book I've ever bought that I know I never finished Jai Nitz, Phil Hester and Ande Parks' 2008 miniseries El Diablo. In fact, I seem to have given up on it after the second issue (Unless I did buy and read all six issues, and the thieves decided to just steal the last four issues of the series).

I became newly curious about that series and that creation upon seeing this year's Suicide Squad film, which prominently featured a version of the Nitz/Hester/Parks iteration of El Diablo in the cast, presumably because the post-Flashpoint "New 52" revival of Suicide Squad did so. I was able to track down a copy of the 2009 collection of the series, El Diablo: The Haunted Horseman, through the library, although it doesn't look like it is currently in print. That is unfortunate (as I imagine others might suddenly be interested in the character thanks to the movie as well), but also understandable (The New 52 version, and the one in the film, vary quite considerably from the one Nitz and company presented in their series).

Rereading the early chapters, I was reminded fairly instantly of two elements of the book I didn't care for.

Nitz picked up on the retconned version of the original El Diablo, a cowboy character created by Robert Kanigher and Gray Morrow, which had reimagined him as being a literally diabolical, supernatural character. In this series, that El Diablo, Lazarus Lane, appears as Rip Van Winkle-looking coma patient kept alive by his curse. At one point he shares his hospital room with the paralyzed prisoner Chato Santana, passing on his curse and making Chato the new El Diablo, "Hell's hitman." What does that entail? Well, he would transform into the guy you see on the cover, with super-strength, a degree of invulnerability and the ability to walk again. He gets a flaming whip and an enchanted pistol from cowboy times that fired brimstone bullets only capable of striking sinners (they would dissolve in the air if fired at the innocent). He also had access to the magic ghost horse that Lane used to ride.

Not a bad suite of supernatural powers, although the face resembling a skull and the flaming whip were pretty reminiscent of the actual skull face and the flaming chains of Marvel's Ghost Rider, as was the mission passed down from a cowboy era spirit of vengeance and El Diablo's specific remit: He was to kill evil men with his supernatural powers, consigning their souls to hell.

The Ghost Rider-iness was particularly strongly felt in 2008, as the Ghost Rider film was released in the previous year.

The other aspect was that grated with me at the time was that El Diablo III here was basically created to do the very same job that The Spectre and Ragman held. How many spirits of vengeance did the DCU need running around killing bad guys? Weren't theyse guys eventually going to get their capes all tangled up at some point? (Looking back, the last Spectre ongoing, the one starring the then-dead Hal Jordan, was cancelled in 2003; by this point, Crispus Allen was the host of the Specre, but, like Ragman, he didn't have his own series.)

Anyway, that was eight years ago. How does it read now?

Remarkably well. I was particularly impressed by the Hester and Parks art, which, were it published by today's DC Comics, would look particularly weird and unusual, as the publisher's range of art styles has gone through a couple rounds of contractions towards a house style and expansion away from that house style, but the contractions have always been more dramatic than the expansions.

In addition to being completely solid on the fundamentals of storytelling–sadly, no longer even a given for books from the two major direct market publishers–Hester and Parks offered thick, chunky figures on a relatively flat plane, in a highly individual style that couldn't really be mistaken for anyone else's. At least I have never seen a piece of Hester's art and thought it was anyone else's, nor have I ever seen anyone else's art and wondered if it might be Hester's (Nor have I ever heard anyone else mistake his work for anyone else's, or anyone else's work for his).

The design of the title character is, in passing, familiar to that of the version in The New 52 and the Suicide Squad film, mainly from the neck up, but not so much in context. Chato is a bald, built, Mexican man living in L.A., and when becoming El Diablo his skin turns ghost white and the markings of a skull appear, while he's clothed in garb that's vaguely cowboy-like (poncho, gloves, boots). The current conception of Chato is a more wiry figure, heavily tattooed (In the film, he's like ten times more heavily tattooed than the rather heavily tattooed Joker and Harley), and he has pyro-kinetic powers, given to him by a vague-ish source.

Chato is a fairly smart and fairly ruthless gangster with a heart if not gold, then at least at least of some valuable metal–he's not a 100% total bastard, but he is a real bastard. This being the DCU, his criminal empire involves more than just the usual, real-life criminal activities and, at the book's opening, he's in the midst of purchasing some high-tech laser guns from the HIVE. When the deal goes bad and the police try to bust it up, Chato's betrayed by his lieutenant and ends up getting shot and paralyzed.

He refuses to give up any information at all to the law, no matter what they do to him or offer him–including an experimental procedure to fix his legs–but his old gang comes for him anyway, and he's only saved by taking on El Diablo's curse.

Once empowered, he goes through a bit of training with Lane in which he learns more about his powers and their limitations, while going after various targets of vengeance assigned to him, and the one he wants, the guy who betrayed him.

Meanwhile, he gets mixed up in a DCU superhero-like plot involving an alliance of several villain agencies that mainly serve as Easter Eggs for long-time fans, gets his first villain in a sword-handed guy named Vorpal and discovers the origins of the curse, which goes back to prehistoric mythology and leads to a climax for the fate of the world (Spoiler: El Diablo saves the world).

Of particular interest is his encounter with "Brave New World"-Era Freedom Fighters, a battle which climaxes in Mexican-American drug dealer Chato Santana literally duking it out with the Spirit of America, arguing over who has more blood on their hands and who better represents the American dream. It's the kind of scene that could only occur in a superhero comic, as no matter how fraught with symbolism or commentary the scene might be, it's also perfectly natural, because Uncle Sam rubs shoulders with the other characters of the DCU. (I was actually pretty surprised by the presence of Invunche, those particularly disturbing monsters from Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, if only because such direct references to events from Swamp Thing would have been a little unusual then; Hester and Parks' versions manage to be creepy without being as completely terrifying as the more detailed version drawn by Rick Veitch).

While I had no interest in the character in 2008, and apparently not many other comics readers did either, based on El Diablo's vertual disappearance until 2011's Suicide Squad, now I can't help but wish this was the version that was still running around. As derivative as many elements of the character are, he's visually much more compelling (and easier to draw; New 52 El Diablo suffers from wandering, ever-changing tattoos) and has a much more interesting back story and status quo than "former gangsters who shoots fire out of his hands."

Also, I really like scary horses in my comic books.

I wonder if this version could have worked in the Suicide Squad, movie or comic book, though, given what we're told of the curse. Like, I'm not sure how Amanda Waller would keep this guy from killing his teammates and everyone else in Belle Reve, like, immediately.

I know Nitz has been given the opportunity to revisit his creation in DC's post-movie Suicide Squad's Most Wanted series. I read a few chapters of the El Diablo story, and I'm afraid they didn't do much of anything for me, mostly because of how poor the art was. I'm interested in re-reading them now though, having just completed this series.

Comic Shop Comics: November 16th

Archie #14 (Archie Comics) I've been able to justify shelling out $4 a pop for all of Archie Comics' new line of comics because each 20-page issue is generally followed by a classic reprint of some kind that adds to the page count, and often these are introduced by a prose piece by the writer, adding one more page of content. Not so this issue!

After Mark Waid and Joe Eisma's 20-page story comes...six pages of Jughead #10, which has already been released and which I have therefore already read. It's a really good comic and all, but I'm not entirely sure of the wisdom of reprinting so much of it (about a third of it) in the back of Archie as a sort of super-sized ad. I mean, even if it is effective and gets those who are reading Archie but not reading Jughead to start reading Jughead (Do such readers exist? The fools! Jughead is far superior to Archie!), it doesn't exactly add any value to the book.

Here's hoping it was a one-off thing, and next issue (and all future issues) will include reprints of classic Archie comics that are somehow relevant to the story that preceded them. Otherwise, I'll likely switch to reading Archie's line in trade and I'd really rather not. I like the comic book format, although it's getting increasingly difficult to find comics I feel comfortable reading in this format.

As for this issue, it is divided between Veronica and Cheryl's battle for social supremacy at their all-girls boarding school in Switzerland and the action back in Riverdale, wherein Archie has become Jughead-like and to save him, Jughead must become Archie-like.

Die Kitty Die! #2 (Chapter House Comics) And hey, speaking of Archie Comics...!

Archie Comics creators Dan Parent and Fernando Ruiz continue their story about an Archie Comics-like publishing company that wants to goose the sales on their Sabrina The Teenage Witch-like character's books by killing her off...and since she's a real person, that means murdering her. Here the Sabrina-like character battles the Casper-like ghost character and analogue's to Casper's supporting cast, ultimately winning the day by calling in a favor from the Lil' Hot Stuff-like character.

This book's weird as hell, despite it's super-simple premise. A lot of the jokes don't quite land for me, but I like these sorts of analogue comics, and while I've read what feels like a couple million high-concept comics using analogues to the most famous superhero characters, I don't recall ever reading one devoted to Archie and Harvey Comics characters like this. It certainly helps that the creators are ones whose work is so closely associated with one of those publishers, and while the subversive qualities are mainly relegated to a PG-13 level of naughtiness, the sexual stuff all works.

I'm not crazy about Chapter House's lay-out–I wish, for example, they relegated their many house ads to the back of the book like Archie does, which I think would help J. Bone's fashion spreads pop a bit more, so that they could serve either as centerfolds or back matter; right now they just kind of get lost among the comics content and the ads for other Chapter House books.

Suicide Squad #6 (DC) The Black Vault prison which had encased the giant General Zod has started driving everyone at Belle Reeve insane with murderous rage, which makes Harley Quinn...sane? "They've all gone insane, and it's had the opposite effect on me," as she tells it. I'm not entirely sure that's how mental illness works, but then, superhero comics have never been the best place for realistic depictions of mental illness, have they? I mean, Batman's devotes much of his life to fighting a bunch of domestic terrorists that are kept in something between a zoo and a Victorian insane asylum, after all.

I'm not entirely sure I'm ever going to quite get used to the weird pacing of this book, which is still divided into a 12-page main story penciled by Jim Lee and a 10-page back-up story featuring a guest artist and spotlighting the origin of a particular member of the Squad. This month the artist is Carlos D'Anda and the character is Killer Croc, given yet another origin story that differs slightly from his last origin story from the New 52 (His previous post-Flashpoint origin story had him born and growing up in Gotham City; here he's born and grows up in Florida, as he always had pre-Flashpoint).

I wonder how long they're going to be able to keep this format up, given that they're just about out of characters to tell the origin stories of, but then, the upcoming Justice League Vs. Suicide Squad crossover event, which is advertised in this issue, looks like it will swallow up Suicide Squad #8-#10, the content of which will presumably be by a completely different creative team and thus, one assumes, feature a different format.

In this issue, everyone in Belle Reve goes crazy and tries to kill everyone else. Of interest? El Diablo is apparently still around, as we see him in the mess hall with Deadshot and Harley (his tattoos look weird, like Lee and the other artists weren't sure what tattoos to give him, but then, there are four different inkers involved here, and consistent character designs haven't exactly been a strong suit of the publisher since the New 52 reboot, especially on this franchise). And Captain Boomerang appears, looking like a zombie and exploding into confetti; he's in the ad for the Justice League crossover, so one assumes he gets better eventually.

The back-up tells of an incident from Waylon Jones' childhood, in which he encounters a Lake Placid-sized salt water crocodile hanging out in the swamps of Florida, having apparently nibbled a kid to death and left him leaned up against a tree, awaiting Waylon and a friend of his to come find and fight him.

Super Powers Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye #2 (DC Comics) The new Doom Patrol is a pretty interesting, very well-drawn Grant Morrison tribute comic attempting to serve as a grand fusion of all Doom Patrol comics. Shade, The Changing Girl is just this side of unintelligible, and, if you ask me, extremely uninteresting. Mother Panic is a Batman comic with swear words, the most compelling aspect being how the design of the vigilante character's superhero costume clashes so violently with artist Tommy Lee Edwards' realistic art style. And then there's Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye, which is by far the best of the new Vertigo DC's Young Animal books, in large part because of its three-page back-up feature, Super Powers by Tom Scioli.

Out of curiosity, I counted panels, and there are 48 panels in Scioli's back-up which, remember, is just three pages long. The title feature, meanwhile, has 95 panels, but they are stretched out over 22 pages. Can you imagine what Scioli could do in 22 pages? Could you imagine him on a new volume of Wednesday Comics, filling those giant newspaper pages with his postage stamp-sized panels? The mind reels.

I honestly would not have expected Scioli to find the DC Universe such a fertile setting, particularly given what a reader might assume would be covered in a strip taking its name and logo from the 1980s cartoon and toy line (which was, essentially, just the Justice League vs. Darkseid). And yet in the first third of this installment, "Wonder Twins Part Two," he shows a Morrisonian ability to view all of DC's publishing history as a single universe, and to draw obviously if unlikely connections, like teaming Flipper Dipper from Jack Kirby's Newsboy Legion with the Sea-Devils, wherein they discover a temple of Darkseid's...and Captain Marvel Jr., Shazam and the original Mister Miracle also all make appearances...in that one single page.

I nodded furiously at the appearance of Thaddeus "Mister Miracle" Brown, who is the bearded fellow who gave Scott Free the moniker and costume after he escaped Apokolips scott-free and came to Earth (and shown here, during World War II, as Thaddeus Braun). After first encountering him in the collection of Kirby's Mister Miracle comics, I often imagined him adventuring in the post-WWII, Cold War era of DC history, during which the DCU was temporarily superhero-less (a time when, as per Darwyn Cooke's The New Frontier, teams of adventurers like The Sea Devils from a few panels previous filled the gap left by the retired Golden Age heroes), or perhaps even being one of the masters that a young Bruce Wayne sought out to help train him during his time wandering the world.

Aside from the sheer variety of characters squeezed into this page, what most impressed me was the middle section, above, in which we see Captain Marvel Jr., identified only as "Junior." Remember, DC has forbidden the use of the name "Captain Marvel," apparently, renaming Captain Marvel "Shazam," and thus making it really fucking hard to use the rest of the Marvel Family, consisting as it does of characters named Mary Marvel and Captain Marvel Jr, the latter of whom transforms by saying the magic words "Captain Marvel!" (Mary Shazam and Shazam Jr. just don't quite sound right, do they?).

I kind of love how Scioli has Captain Marvel Jr. simply say "Captain Marvel" and then have a big, black mark over the offending word, preemptively censoring or redacting it. It's both true to the concept and sensitive to whatever the current editorial thinking on the matter is, while also reading and feeling subversive in its execution. I'm glad he did it, and I'm glad DC let him do it.

As for the preceding 23 pages? Cave rebels against the evil corporation, steals his mole machine and teams up with Wild Dog. They kill so many people, and man, you don't really think about how well-suited drill machines are to car chases until you see one in action. Props to co-writers Gerard Way and Jon Rivera for turning out the one Young Animal book that feels most like a first generation Vertigo book, rather than a tribute to those books, which, with a swear word or two less, could fit rather neatly into the DCU just fine. Michael Avon Oeming's artwork makes it sing, although there's at least one passage where I have no idea what was supposed to have happened. Nick Filardi does some pretty great stuff with the coloring, too, particularly in the attempted abduction scene.

Meanwhile, at Good Comics For Kids...

I have a review of the recently-released trade collection of Abigail and The Snowman. It is written and drawn by Roger Langridge, which is, of course, another way of saying "It is a very good comic book." The above panels are perhaps my favorite passage of the book, in which the snowman explains the difference between yeti and bigfoot to Abigail, and draws two completely identical pictures to help illustrate the differences between the two.

If you haven't read it yet, either as it was serially published or in its present collected form, you probably should. If you'd like to read a few hundred words of me saying so, you can do so at the GC4K blog.

Review: Deadshot: Bulletproof

In 2005 DC published a five-issue Deadshot solo mini-series. This was well after the character's hey-day as a regular member of the 1987-1992 Suicide Squad cast, and just as writer Gail Simone was beginning to use him as a member of her Secret Six, a Suicide Squad-inspired villain team that began in the pages of a Villains United miniseries and eventually lead to an ongoing monthly.

Perhaps because of the higher-profile nature of the Villains United/Secret Six comics, which began as a lead-in to DC's big Infinite Crisis crossover event series, that Deadshot miniseries tends to get overlooked. Which is a damn shame, as it is pretty excellent, and writer Christos Gage found a way to use a character that was always best-suited as either a villain or a member of an ensemble of such characters as a solo protagonist.

Deadshot: Bulletproof includes that entire miniseries, a story entitled "Urban Renewal" in the table of contents, as well as a one-issue story tied to those events that Gage penned at the time for the still extant Batman: Legends of The Dark Knight.

In retrsopect--that is, read in 2016--there's an aura of the unfortunate about the book. Not only did it offer a viable take on the character as anti-hero and solo protagonist that didn't quite catch on (although it certainly influenced the portrayal of the character in this year's live-action film), and not only did it present a nice, clean "more realistic" redesign of his costume that is pretty much infinitely better than the one he was given in the publisher's 2011 "New 52" initiative (and still wears today), but this was apparently Gage's first comics work. After working for DC's long-suffering WildStorm imprint, on one of its many re-focusings, Gage went on to do a bunch of pretty good stuff for Marvel and other publishers, but nothing else for DC.

For the miniseries that fills most of the trade, he was paired with the art team of pencil artist Steve Cummings and inker Jimmy Palmiotti, and, while serviceable, clear and easy to read, the art is the weakest part of the package. Mike Zeck penciled and Jerry Ordway inked all of the cover though, which surely didn't help Cummings and Palmiotti look good; it's hard to turn the page from one of those great covers to find work that lacks the heft and tension of those images.

Gage opens with Deadshot Floyd Lawton in a familiar situation, working with a group of supervillains--Killer Frost, a new version of minor Gotham villain Firebug and new character The Closer--only this time as a mercenary, rather than as part of a government task force. During the opening action scene and its aftermath, we learn some relevant information about Deadshot regarding his late child, and establish a few character dynamics that will payoff later in the series.

When Lawton finds out he actually has a young daughter, conceived with a prostitute without his knowledge, he attempts to play the role of a father in some fashion. The mother refuses his duffel bag full of blood money, and so he instead tries to clean up the poor, crime-ridden neighborhood that his daughter and her mother live in. He is essentially forced into the role of a hero, or at least anti-hero, a Punisher-like criminal-killing vigilante doing bad things for a basically good reason.

That neighborhood is located in Star City rather than Deadshot's original stomping grounds of Gotham, which accomplishes two important things. First, it means Gage doesn't have to worry about introducing Batman into the narrative, which can be problematic, given that character's track record with taking down villains and his unbending, uncompromising moral stances and the fact that Deadshot is supposed to be a cold-blooded killer that never misses. When Batman encounters Deadshot, one of them has to lose, which usually means Deadshot, which kinda makes a Deadshot comic book difficult to continue too long after Batman enters the picture.

The other thing is that it allows for an easy introduction of a different Batman-lite like character, Green Arrow Oliver Queen, who has the additional benefit of being a preternaturally gifted super-marksman not unlike Deadshot. They have a pretty spectacular battle, which basically involves blocking one another's shots with shots of their own, so that Deadshot shoots Green Arrow's arrows out of the air just as fast as he can fire them, and so on. This is just one of several mini-boss fights though; the big showdown is the one alluded to on the cover of the collection, in which Deadshot must take on a whole host of supervillains he's worked with in the past who all want him dead.

The story ends as it must, but certainly serves as a rejuvenation of the character, one that offers a particularly appealing take on him that obviously attracted and influenced the movie makers, if not most of those working on the characters since 2011's New 52 revamp.

There's also that pretty great costume, which is basically a 21st century update of his rather '80s look. Sure, it's still busy, and does still look a little goofy when Floyd "hides" it under a trench coat, but compared to all other possible Deadshot costumes? Not bad; not bad at all. Note too that here the mask is more of a helmet than the silvery fabric ski mask that it was usually drawn as previously.

As for the Legends of The Dark Knight story, for that Gage is joined by artist Phil Winslade, and he puts Deadshot back in his classic costume and back in Gotham City, where he does face Batman this time. Deadshot's been hired to kill a criminal before that criminal can testify, and Batman wants to prevent the assassination so that the testimony can go forward. The two fight a little and circle one another, but Batman is unable to go full-force at Deadshot, and Deadshot either won't or can't kill Batman, who here Gage has repeat something from an older encounter in which Batman explains Deadshot unconsciously pulls his shot around Batman because, deep down, he doesn't really want to kill him.

It's a nice exploration of the two characters' peculiar characterizations, and how they relate to one another. It's a done-in-one, and a rare one that does a pretty exemplary job of defining both of them equally well. I know I just said previously Batman and Deadshot don't always work well together, as the fact that one must lose puts and end to their conflicts pretty quickly, but they do work in small doses like this; if you read it, you'll see their stand-off works, but it's not the sort of standoff that would work indefinitely.

The story is definitely one for any sort of greatest hits collection of Deadshot stories, though (and, for fans of the Suicide Squad movie, likely one that served as inspiration, given the nature of Deadshot's assignment here and in the opening scenes of the film).

Comic Shop Comics: November 9th

All-Star Batman #4 (DC Comics) So exactly how dark is the day after America elected its 45th president–and first president with no experience at all in either government or the military–which may or may not end up being known forever more as Black Wednesday, depending on badly things go during the course of the next four years?

Dark enough that reading a comic book drawn by John Romita Jr. in which Batman uses heavy metal music to defeat undead ninjas underwater failed to cheer me up.

Scott Snyder and JRJR's "My Own Worst Enemy" story arc seems to be nearing a conclusion as, at the very least, no new villains are introduced or pass through the story, which was the main joy of the previous three issues (Those ninjas, by the way, turned out to be Court of Owls Talons, dressed in costumes designed to appeal to Two-Face's aesthetic sensibility). Snyder is doing something very, very different with Two-Face's origin and relationship with Bruce Wayne, so different, in fact, that I'm tempted to reread the Peter Tomasi-written "Big Burn" story arc from Batman and Robin, which gave Two-Face a new, post-Flashpoint origin story. I'm not sure how or if these two stories even line up, although I'm not terribly bothered. Two-Face regularly gets origin tweaks.

The Declan Shalvey-drawn back-up starring Duke Thomas seems to have reached its conclusion here, as Duke figures everything out, and then is about to be murdered by Zsasz when Batman intervenes. I know I've said this before, but each installment of this reminds me of the fact that Snyder seems to be writing Duke with Tim Drake's origin story and general portrayal...right down to Duke being smart enough to solve crimes, but not yet good enough to take on supervillains hand-to-hand like Batman can.

Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures #1 (IDW Publishing) I did a lot of complaining around the first Batman/TMNT crossover comic, much of which came from the same place–the belief that these sorts of inter-company crossover stories should be regarded as, and created as if they were, real once-in-a-lifetime events, and thus ambitiously attempt to accomplish absolutely everything anyone could ever want from such a pairing of franchises (JLA/Avengers is probably the best example of such a crossover). The first Batman/TMNT pairing certainly didn't do that, and wasn't exactly anything at all like what I, as a lifelong fan of both, would have wanted, although it was well-made enough.

The fact that there is a second crossover between the two coming just a few weeks after the first was released as a trade collection is comforting, though, because if they are going to do more than one of these things, then it certainly relieves the pressure on each of them to be amazing. It helps too that this second one has such a particular focus: This isn't Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, it is the Batman from Batman: The Animated Series and the TMNT from the current Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon.

At first, that seems an odd pairing, if only because of the timing. New episodes of Batman: The Animated Series was on-air from 1992-1995, whereas TMNT debuted in 2012 and is still ongoing. I suppose pairing a TAS Batman with the Turtles from the original 1987 cartoon, or the Batman from Beware The Batman with the 2012 Turtles would make more sense in terms of timing, but it depends on how one wants to look at it. The TAS Batman is the best animated Batman, and the current cartoon's TMNT are the best animated TMNT, so there's your commonality.

(And I hope they keep doing these; it increases the likelihood of them producing one I really, really want like, say, an Alan Grant/Kevin Eastman/Eric Talbot black and white comic featuring late-era Mirage TMNT teaming with early 1990s Batman, for example.)

I'm honestly not familiar with the creative team here, although two-thirds of the names are familiar. It's written by Matrthew K. Manning, and drawn by Jon Sommariva (credited as "artist") and inked by Sean Parsons.

It's set in two different worlds, the Gotham of TAS and the New York City of TMNT. A bunch of inmates have escaped from Arkham Asylum at once, under extremely mysterious circumstances, and Batman is trying to track them down. He gets Two-Face, but a few others have appeared in TMNT's NYC: Clayface and, on the last page, The Joker and Harley Quinn.

Manning seems to write everyone well, and they all seem in character (There's a particularly sweet Alfred burn in here, too). The title characters have yet to meet, and the exact nature of the setting-swapping hasn't been explained yet, but so far, so good.

The artwork by Sommariva is a little awkward to my eye, and may take some getting used to. He does a fine job of using the designs of the source material, and drawing "neutral" things like civilians, settings and objects in a way that fits both shows' aesthetics. There's a certain fidelity lacking, though; scenes in Gotham look a little too detailed (And Two-Face is watching Pretty Pretty Pegasus from Teen Titans Go! on TV? Not Tiny Toons?), and those characters all look a bit more dynamic and stylized than they probably should.

Additionally, I'm not used to seeing these TMNT characters on the drawn page at all, so they always look weird to me.

Of course, maybe I'm operating under the wrong assumptions. Maybe this comic isn't meant to be a crossover of the two TV shows in comic book form, but a crossover of the two comic books based on those two TV shows...?

I don't know. It may take me a few issues to just get used to what is admittedly a pretty peculiar but fun crossover story.

There were two or three covers available at my shop, and I chose the one above (by Ciro Nieli). There's a two-page spread in the back showing all 20 different variants for the issues (20!), and the two probably worth noting are the one by Ty Templeton (who drew plenty of issues of the original Batman Adventures comic book) and another by Mirage's Steve Lavigne, inked by Peter Laird. Kevin Eastman also provides a cover, but he did so for the original series too; whenever he draws ninja turtles with pupils in their masks it really freaks me out.

Betty & Veronica #2 (Archie Comics) Pairing long-time pin-up style cover artist Adam Hughes with the subject matter of teenage girls–let alone Riverdale's teenage girls–still feels awkward, even when compared to all of the other publishing choices of the new Riverdale line of comics Archie has been publishing over the last few years (up to and including Afterlife With Archie, really).

It should be noted that there's little here that feels inappropriately oversexualized, and most of that awkwardness comes from what a reader might bring to the book regarding Hughes' oeuvre and Archie Comics' characters. Well, that and, perhaps, the fact that Hughes draws in such a realistic style that his teen girls look so much more like real teen girls than the flatter, coloring-book look that has been Archie's house style for so long. For example, there are a few classic pin-ups in the back of this issue, in which the girls wear bathing suits and are otherwise much more scantily-clad than they are at any point in the Hughes story, and they still look somehow more innocent than a Hughes drawing of Betty in a sweatshirt and jeans.

It's not the comic, though; it's us. (Well, me, I guess, but I'm extrapolating here).

I mean, there's a bikini car wash in this issue, and yet we don't really see any girls in bikinis–just in extreme long-shot, and then off-panel. (The top tier of panels on page 15 could prove objectionable, I suppose).

There's a little of that weirdness I noted in the first issue here, where it seems like maybe Hughes is filling space, but the story continues apace, and the dialogue is still surprisingly funny, with a quick clip to the number of jokes per panels.

Betty is trying to raise the $60,000 necessary to save Pop's from being turned into a Starbucks (er, a "Kweekwegs"), and Veronica, whose father owns the Kweekwegs chain, is trying to thwart her by simultaneously raising money for charity in more attractive ways, sucking up everyone's would-be donations.

I didn't understand the ending, and I remain confused over whether that's supposed to be Kevin Keller standing with Veronica throughout, or just a generic blonde guy.

Otherwise, pretty solid stuff.

Lumberjanes/Gotham Academy #6 (Boom Studios) This is it! The conclusion of the six-issue miniseries teaming Gotham Academy's Detective Club with The Lumberjanes' Roanoke Cabin to combat a weird magical threat involving time-twisting and teenage emotions!

Most of the action occurred in the penultimate issue, with Rosie and April wrestling the amalgamated bone monster and then everyone tying it up constituting the biggest action scene in this issue (I'm surprised writer Chynna Clugston Flores failed to make any jokes or references to knot-tying when the 'Janes tied it up; surely one of the benefits of being a Lumberjane tying up supernatural threats is that you know your way around knots, right? I'm pretty sure they've all got badges in that).

Otherwise, the climax is all about talking, understanding and realization...a pretty nice conclusion that is in keeping with the spirit of the home comics. Overall, I liked Rosemary Valero-O'Connell's art work, but her style didn't serve the resolution particularly well, as I was unclear if the girl at the center of the spell aged into adulthood like the rest of the kidnapped grown-ups upon the spell breaking, or if she retained her youth. Valero-O'Connell's artwork was so abstracted and smoothed that her forty-somethings don't look any different than her teenagers, for the most part.

Gotham Academy: Second Semester #3 (DC) It's Detective Club vs. Witch Club! The Withes go down remarkably easily, considering that they are just other students wearing witch hats (with mind-control circuitry on the inside; The Mad Hatter is never evoked, but it looks just like Jervis Tetch's tech). So, basically, in order to stop the witches, all the good guys need to do is to knock their hats off. This is somehow still presented as seriously dramatic, rather than ironically so.

As to what the weird plot, which involves stealing and burning books is all about, it's never really revealed, but it clearly has something to do with the witch and school librarian Mister Scarlet. The bigger events happen around the margins, however, as we learn that Colton is apparently gay (and has a crush on Kyle) and that he's to be expelled from Gotham Academy.

Wonder Woman #10 (DC) Back to "Year One" with Nicola Scott. In this issue, Steve, Etta and Barbara take Diana to the mall in an attemnpt to acclimate her to American culture, and they get her a margarita--a strong departure from the ice cream she has so previously expressed joy and wonderment in during other first trips into Man's world (like Geoff Johns' first Justice League arc, the direct-to-DVD animated adaptation of that arc Justice League: War and that awesome James Tynion/Noelle Stevenson short from Sensation Comics). Naturally, terrorists attack the mall with machine guns and grenades, and Wonder Woman discovers her new gods-given superpowers during the melee, including her ability to block bullets with her bracelets, in what writer Greg Rucka and artist Scott present as a big, important moment.

And to think, Wednesdays used to be my favorite day of the week.

Review: All-New, All-Different Avengers Vol. 2: Family Business

This second collection of the Mark Waid-written A-title of the Avengers franchise contains six issues and an out-of-order interruption from a Free Comic Book Day giveaway, and it takes a while to get going, as the first two issues are tie-ins to the "Standoff" crossover storyline. These first two issues, both drawn by Adam Kubert, don't quite work on their own, particularly as the second of these ends with Winter Solider and the Captain Americas Captains America rallying all of the various Avengers teams for a big battle that...happens elsewhere.

If you're a trade-reader and have already read Avengers: Standoff, then you can skip these two issues here. If you haven't yet read Avengers: Standoff and want to know the specifics of what's going on and how it gets revolved, you'll want to read Standoff.

That's followed immediately by a short story drawn by Alan Davis and Mark Farmer in which the All-New, All-Different Wasp narrates her infiltration of The Vision's body and her planting of bombs within it, which blows him up; it originally appeared in Free Comic Book Day 2016 [Civil War II] #1.

And then the volume starts for real and, yeah, 50 pages or so into a 140-ish page collection isn't the ideal place for a story to start for real. Mahmud Asrar takes over the art chores for the rest of the book.

The Vision starts malfunctioning very strangely, attacking the other Avengers in their hangar base, and then a new Wasp shows up, helping them deal with The Vision problem...which we already read about, as that what was happening in the Alan Davis-drawn short (an asterisk in the bottom of a panel of the issue refers readers to the FCBD special). This new Wasp is Nadia Pym, daughter of the currently dead Hank Pym and his late first wife, who was being raised by bad Russians and used her knowledge of Pym particles to escape, break into her late father's lab and build herself a Wasp suit.

Given that there are now two Captains America, Spider-Men, Hawkeyes, Hulks, Thors and Iron Men, it's not so unusual that Marvel would introduce a second Wasp, although it is somewhat unusual that a) The original Wasp is still around, in full possession of her powers and still actively super heroing, and b) As the daughter of Pym and his Silver Age wife, Nadia is a white-skinned woman of European descent, just as Janet Van Dyne is; in every other case of Marvel introducing a second version of a character it was to bring some diversity to their universe, either in terms of race or gender or both.

Because of that, I have to assume Waid (or someone else) has longer-term plot reasons for introducing a new, second Wasp...unless Marvel Comics just wanted to have a daughter of Hank Pym be their current Wasp, in order to more closely reflect the status quo of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but if that's the case Nadia is pretty different than Ant-Man's Hope Van Dyne in a couple ways. Starting with her name.

Jarvis, who is particularly sensitive about Janet Van Dyne's legacy, decides to take Nadia to meet her namesake and kinda sorta but not really step-mom Janet, and the pair hang out together. Meanwhile, the rest of these Avengers all go out into outer space in order to help Nova look for his father. They don't find him, but they do find a curious space trap that embroils them in a battle with a particularly formidable classic Marvel villain. Waid uses a pair of items from Marvel lore in a rather inventive way to have our heroes triumph over him.

All in all, it's a pretty messy package, and not one that is particularly well-suited to casual, trade-only readers. Of course, if you missed the single issues, there isn't really any other way to read it.

Review: Superman and The Justice League of America Vol. 2

As I had previously noted, packaging writer/artist Dan Jurgens' brief 18-ish issue 1992-1993 run on the era's main Justice League book as "Superman and Justice League America" made a lot of sense if you're trying to sell these comics in trade form in 2016...at least until you get to volume two, as Superman dies in the first of the monthly issues collected here (his Justice League encounters Doomsday before Superman does), is mourned in the next one and then is completely absent for the rest of the run.

I was a little surprised by the actual contents of this collection though, as it opens not with Justice League America #66 (the League vs. Doomsday issue that tied into the "Death of Superman" storyline in the Superman books of the time), but with Justice League America Annual #6. That gives us another 58-pages of the Justice League America comics featuring a still-living Superman.

That annual is from the "Eclipso: The Darkness Within" crossover event storyline that ran through all of DC's annuals that year. As with similar events of the time, the relevance of each tie-in varied considerably from instance to instance, but this one is a great deal more relevant than, say, any of the Batman-related ones.

Jurgens is merely credited with "Dark Design," which I suppose could mean either plotting, or lay-outs or both, although it doesn't look like he designed the pages themselves. Dan Mishkin writes, while Dave Cockrum pencils and Jose Marzan Jr. inks. Dr. Bruce Gordon and a few other heroes join Superman and the League at their headquarters–including Wonder Woman and Metamorpho–as they strategize about the threat of Eclipso. This is relatively early in the villain's attack, but he manages to possess Maxima and send her to Nevada to cause destruction on a scale that draws the League there, while he himself stalks and battles Blue Beetle throughout the team's headquarters. In the end, his plan is only advanced a step or so, as he gets another "eclipsed" soldier for his army, but it's pretty remarkable how much action the longer page-count offers. These days, an annual is generally only slightly longer than a regular issues, maybe twice as long if you're lucky, but this is just shy of three times the length of an ordinary issue, allowing the scenes to be drawn out much longer. You sure got a lot more punching and blasting back in the day!

Of course, there's no real resolution to the story, as this was just one of the 20 parts of the storyline, and the collection jumps ahead to JLA #66 from there. I personally missed this annual the first time around, as I was a teenager with little money to waste on comics, cheap as they were, back in 1992. Looking now, I see that I've actually only read about a half-dozen of the 20 discrete chapters of the story. It was designed so one need only read the first and last chapters Eclipso: The Darkness Within #1 and #2, with few of the issues in-between being all that relevant, but there sure was some cool stuff in there, as when pretty much all of the un-eclipsed heroes had to fight an eclipsed Superman. I wouldn't mind reading a collection of this entire storyline, but like similar annual events Armageddon 2001 and Bloodlines, collecting it into trade would prove challenging, based on its size alone.

The next issue is also one that occurs mid-storyline. Doomsday takes on Guy Gardner, Booster Gold, Blue Beetle, Bloodwynd, Maxima, Fire and Ice and has pretty much torn them apart by the time Superman arrives on the last page. And that's that issue (Spoiler alert: Superman and Doomsday kill one another in a brawl that continues all the way into downtown Metropolis. They both get better and come back to life about a year later though).

And then it's time for the "Funeral for a Friend" tie-in issue, where the superhero community convenes at New York City's JLA HQ to mourn Superman, and Oberon passes out the black arm-bands with the S-shield on them. From here on, the collection tells a cohesive ongoing story...albeit a rather rocky one that must have seemed entirely unexpected at the start of Jurgens' run.

In the "Funeral for a Friend" issue, the League takes stock after their battle with Doomsday: Fire is powerless, Ice decides to quit, Booster Gold's costume was destroyed rendering him powerless and Blue Beetle is still in a coma. These characters are still the focus of the issue, but Jurgens lavishes attention on the many guest-stars, each of whom get a few lines about Superman and/or death, and each of whom is introduced in a dramatic action pose. Reading it now, it's actually a bit of a surprise that DC resisted the temptation to just launch a new team of their biggest heroes right then and there. With Superman dead, there was certainly an in-story rationale and motivation for the "old" Justice Leaguers, who the publisher was for whatever reasons resistant to use more than one or two of at a time on a League roster, to form a new, all-star League of the sort we wouldn't get into Grant Morrison, Howard Porter and John Dell's JLA.

The first to arrive? The Flash, Aquaman, Batman and Robin, Green Lantern and Hawkman–that's six right there. They are followed immediately by Starfire and Nightwing, then Green Lantern Alan Scott, The Flash Jay Garrick, Power Girl, Elongated Man, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow and Black Canary.

The actual make-up of the League that follows the Doomsday-damaged one is a little more interesting, and they are formed by the end of the next issue: Maxima, Guy Gardner and Bloodwynd are joined by new recruits Agent Liberty, The Ray, Black Condor and new leader Wonder Woman. They...don't last long. At that point, there are only two story arcs left in Jurgens' run: The fairly epic five-part "Destiny's Hand," and then a two-parter finally resolving the issue of Bloodwynd.

With "Destiny's Hand," Jurgens at least gets to use many of the classic Justice Leaguers that merely cameo-ed in the "Funeral" issue. Classic Justice League villain Doctor Destiny returns, and essentially merges a nightmare version of a fascist, world-ruling, near-future version of the Satellite Era Justice League, with the "real world" of the real Justice League.

And so Jurgens' League finds itself up against evil versions of The Flash (in black!), Hawkman, Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern Hal Jordan, Firestorm, Green Arrow, Black Canary and The Atom. It's a precursor of sorts to the "Justice Lords" episodes of Justice League Unlimited and the video game/comics of Injustice: Gods Among Us, which gives Jurgens the opportunity to draw the Satellite Era league, his League, some classic villains and bring his apparent favorite character The Atom Ray Palmer into the pages of his Justice League America.

The ending of this book, and thus of Jurgens' run, seems pretty abrupt, and some of the characters introduced seem to have barely been there at all. Agent Liberty, for example, has few lines after he's officially recruited to the team. Looking ahead, this was the start of a pretty chaotic period for the franchise. Dan Vado takes over as writer for a little bit, adding a few characters to the extant line-up (Captain Atom and Garrick), then there's the controversial "Judgement Day" crossover story with the other Justice League titles of the day, the "Zero Hour" crossover that introduced Triumph and, finally, Gerard Jones takes over for an almost-two-year run that brings the series to its conclusion, making way for the previously mentioned Morrison, Porter and Dell JLA.

I will be curious to see if what follows gets collected at all and, if so, how (Maybe as Wonder Woman and The Justice League of America...?). The "Judgement Day" and "Zero Hour" are easily collectible as standalone trades (the former can have Mark Waid's name splashed across it, the latter, which is a three-part story and might need paired with other material, can have Christopher Priest and Phil Jimenez's names highlighted), but given that the Vado and Jones runs aren't terribly well remembered as anything other than the stuff between the Giffen/Jones JLI era and the Morrison JLA era, demand is probably limited only to committed fans like me who would rather own trades that back-issues at this point.

They are still a lot better than a bunch of other Justice League comics that have been collected though! Like, almost everything since Identity Crisis, maybe...?

Comic Shop Comics: November 2nd

DC Comics Bombshells #19 (DC Comics) It's back to the home front, which means another issue featuring Gotham City's way too many Batgirls (a few of whom are boys). It's reading such issues that I really wish the book would provide an old-school Justice League style roll call with headshots, so I can remember who is who (there's about a baseball team's worth of Batgirls, all of whom just go by their first, civilian names, and many of whom aren't as immediately identifiable as, say, Harper Row or Tim Drake).

This issue also picks up on the plots from earlier Batgirls issues, which means we get paper girl Lois Lane, compromised politician Harvey Dent (whose face gets marred in this issue), The Penguin, Killer Frost and Hugo Strange. And introducing The Reaper. That's right; the series has been going on long enough that they've introduced The Reaper!

It's fine, but a rather unremarkable issue of the series, particularly after some of the bigger goings-on overseas of late. Marguerite Bennett is of course still writing (Hey, I just realized I bought exactly two comic book-format comics this week at the shop, and both were by Bennett!) and the art chores are split between Mirka Andolfo, Laura Braga, Sandy Jarrell and Pasquale Quanlo. As usual, each of the artists is a good one, but there are still too many of them for a single story.

DC Super Hero Girls: Hits and Myths (DC) I'll discuss this second graphic novel based on the titular toy line and cartoon at greater length elsewhere in the near future, but for now I just wanted to note a couple of fannish things. First of all, above is artist Yancey Labat's Raven, who is apparently being introduced to the kids from Super Hero High School for the first time. I like the design, which is a nice compromise between her classic design (at least as familiar from the Teen Titans and Teen Titans Go cartoons) and her current "Rebirth" design, with some extra reds to highlight her new red highlights.

This volume actually includes a lot more characters I was surprised to see, including Lobo, Trigon, Etrigan (SHHS's poetry teacher, whose ID read's "not just A Demon, The Demon") and the members of Black Canary's band "Black Canary and The Birds of Prey."

These are Magpie (a really great redesign) and Black Condor (the design most closely resembling that of Black Condor III), and they are all played as bad guys–even Black Canary, who steals the Batplane after a battle of the bands and requires being chased down, fought and captured by our heroines. Interesting to see Black Canary in such a role.

Oh! And Lion Mane is in this. Lion Mane!

Made for kids, obviously, but a blast for DC fans of any age.

JLA Presents: Aztek The Ultimate Man (DC) It was a light week, so I finally purchased this 2008 collection of the 10-issue 1996-1997 series. This is one of the most fascinating books from that creatively fruitful period at DC Comics, not only being one of several great high-concept comics that didn't last that long, but because it was a book featuring a brand-new character created and written by Grant Morrison and Mark Millar and it only lasted 10 issues. Granted, this was pre-Authority, pre-Ultimate X-Men Mark Millar, when he was writing whatever minor DC gigs he could get, often in a style much like that of Morrison, rather than adjusting his old DC and Marvel superhero pitches to write for the Hollywood adaptations, but man, crazy to think two writers DC would publish just about anything from at this point couldn't sustain a series back then, huh?

I was never able to read the tenth and final issue, during which Aztek joins the JLA, so I've been meaning to buy this (which will also clear up some space in my longboxes). I just read that issue tonight. It's set during and around JLA #5, when the new "Magnificent 7" line-up held their first recruitment drive (during which they chose new character Tomorrow Woman; Aztek wouldn't show up until "Rock of Ages" in #10-15).

Looking at these pages now, I imagine that artists N. Steven Harris and Keith Champagne may have been at least one factor in the book's swift demise. The lay-outs are messy and hard to read, even when compared to say, Howard Porter's JLA, and Morrison at least doesn't seem like a writer who writes to his artist's strengths or weaknesses, apparently leaving it to his editors to make sure he and the artist are on the same page (sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't; his Batman run is a perfect example of how quality fluctuates from arc to arc and issue to issue based on who he's paired with).

It made me awfully nostalgic for the era of Justice League stories, though, and a time period where the League seemed to make sense and the characters and their histories still felt genuine (that is, before all the reboots). Me, I like the table with the symbol chairs, Martian Manhunter referring to himself as the chairman, rookie Green Lantern Kyle Rayner with a clipboard giving prospective Leaguers tests and, especially, the intimaion of an initiation ritual at the end, involving the costume of the Crimson Avenger and a Bible "written by the Justice Society" (?).

The plot of this particular issue, oddly enough, involves Professor Ivo, one of the villains of Morrison's JLA #5, and Amazo, the villain for Millar's eventual JLA fill-in, 1999's #27. It's pretty clear that the pair had a lot more plans for the series, as there is a two-page sequence that features little one-panel epilogues for various characters, each suggesting future plots...which don't come to fruition. The final, romantic sub-plot resolution is pretty funny and, as we saw in JLA, Aztek gets a pretty big, heroic send-off at the climax of Morrison's run.


But, for the most part, this felt a little like finding a "lost" issue of Morrison's JLA, still one of my favorite comic book series.

I hope to re-read the whole of Aztek now that I have it between a single set of covers in the near future, and will perhaps to discuss it here later.

Josie and The Pussycats #2 (Archie Comics) Co-writers Marguerite Bennett and Cameron Deordio have mostly reintroduced and set-up the cast. Alan only had a panel or two last issue, and just gets mentioned in this issue, while Alexander has yet to appear (he only does so in the back-up reprint this issue), but with this second issue the curiosity factor of how the creators will reboot the series has begun to subside, and a reader can begin to appreciate what they're doing with the characters and the comic instead of just noting and beginning to process the choices.

The key word here seems to be clever. Bennett and Deorido's script is relentlessly clever, with more wordplay and meta-gags than any of the other Archie Comics relaunches. The girls refer to themselves as comic book characters aware that they are in a comic book (generally in passing though; it's the dialogue and not the plot that makes note of this), and the climax involves the sound effect "COMIC BOOK SCIENCE" and a dare for Neil DeGrasse Tyson to "come at" the Pussycats for it).

Bad puns, awkward incorporation of song lyrics, Melody's non-sequiturs (they continue to play her as more weird than dumb, which is working out quite well) and an all-around steady stream of witty dialogue makes this the most verbally ambitious of Archie's new line of rebooted humor comics, and maybe it's most rewarding.

The plot involves the band, which has only been a band for a few hours, off on tour in a big, fancy tour bus that stretches credibility (something Valerie notes) heading out on tour. Their first stop could also be their last, thanks to the ill-advised signing of autographs on the signature lines of contracts forcing them to be the houseband and a sketchy biker bar full of decidely cool, young, good-looking bikers. Their only hope to escape? A motorcycle race, obviously.

Audrey Mok's art is great. It took me an issue to adjust my expectations from the Josie that exists in my head (That is, Dan DeCarlo's) to the one on these pages, but Mok's artwork is a great compromise between emotive and cartoony and more realistic, blending the looks of the new Archie Comics series into an aesthetic that synthesizes the styles. It looks like part of the line, and to be a superior part of that line, visually (Derke Charm's art on Jughead is still my favorite though, and I'm not thinking about Adam Hughes' work on Betty and Veronica, which is the real aesthetic outlier so far...of course, he's only done the one issue, so it's hard to assess it in relation to the rest of the artists who have worked on the line so far).

Review: Invincible Iron Man Vol. 2: The War Machines

I really liked the first volume of Brian Michael Bendis' new Iron Man title, much to my own surprise. But few of the nice things I said about that first collection can be transferred to this second collection, which is, admittedly, a little weird, but it seems to be a pattern with some of Marvel's post-Secret Wars relaunches. For example, I also really enjoyed the first volume of the new Daredevil, and the second volume? Not so much.

Here the major problem is that artist David Marquez is gone, replaced by frequent Bendis collaborator Michael Deodato. I'm not a fan of Deodato's style for several reasons. The most immediate in this particular instance, however, is that it looks absolutely nothing like that of Marquez, so there's a real sense of aesthetic whiplash between the two Invincible Iron Man collections Bendis has written so far, despite the fact that the characterization, the plotting and the sense of humor remain unchanged. Simply put, as all of you and Bendis himself and surely the people at charge at Marvel know, comics is a visual medium, and it hardly matters if the writer stays the same but the artist changes–and changes so drastically–because the scripting may be the same underneath, but this looks, reads and feels like an entirely different book.

The single most distracting thing about Deodato's artwork here, aside from the fact that Deodato is suddenly drawing the book in a completely different style, is his reliance on celebrity likenesses throughout. His Tony Stark, his Mary Jane Watson, his James Rhodes and his Amara Perera may all very well be based on actual actors, but, if so, I couldn't place them; Stark doesn't look like he's being "played" by Robert Downey Jr. in Deodato's artwork, which is actually kind of unusual, given that Bendis is so clearly inspired by RDJ's performance of the character.

Doctor Victor Von Doom, however, is given such a particular, even peculiar face (remember, he's got his face back and is no longer rocking the metal mask, thanks to the events of Secret Wars) as opposed to the sort of generically handsome one Marquez drew that it was driving me crazy trying to place him while I was reading this volume. I eventually Googled the guy from the last Fantastic Four movie and, it turns out, Deodato is in fact drawing Von Doom as the actor who played him in it, Toby Kebbell (UPDATE: Or is he? Please see Lee Carey's comment below, which suggests that Deodato is actually drawing Doom as Vincent Cassel, which looks right to me now that it's been pointed out to me. Feel free to ignore the rest of this paragraph then!). This is so weird on so many levels; if you were for whatever reason determined to base all of your drawings of a fictional character on a particular actor instead of just drawing him in whatever way you think might be most fun to draw, or might best convey the spirit of the character or might best tell that story, and you could fan-cast anyone as Doctor Doom, why on earth would you choose the guy who played him poorly in the worst Fantastic Four movie ever made (yes, I did see the Roger Corman one), or that could conceivably have been made?

Worse still, in the second half of the volume, Tony Stark adopts a high-tech disguise that gives him a different head while he's going deep undercover, and Deodato chooses to draw him as Luke Perry, circa Beverly Hills, 90210. I don't know if that was meant to be a joke on Deodato's part (there are no moments where any of Tony's American friends say he looks vaguely familiar, or ask why he chose that particular face), but it sure is weird and frustrating to see Luke Perry's face traced into various panels.

(And I say that as maybe the biggest Luke Perry fan in what remains of the comics blogosphere; there is no one who would rather read a comic book about Luke Perry fighting ninjas with laser swords than I would.)

It boggles my mind that this stuff still happens, and that it happens in one of the major comic book publisher's premier books with its premier writers attached. I'm not a lawyer, but can Kebbel or Perry sue for having their likenesses appropriated like that? They should. Even if they don't personally care, even if they don't need or want the money, they should do so if only to discourage artist like Deodato and Greg Land (does he still do that? I gave up on him a long time ago) borrowing their likenesses to draw into comics.

(While we're on the subject, I have a question. Is it really easier to trace or draw particular actors from particular frames of particular TV shows or films into a comic book panel? To do it right, it seems like you would have to spend a hell of a lot of time searching for the right images to parrot for a particular panel. Even if you keep pretty extensive files of reference material, down to "Toby Kebbel smiling" or "Luke Perry raising his eyebrows quizzically," I can't imagine the amount of work saved by not just drawing characters' freehand to suit the panel is worth what goes into the research. Now, to do it wrong, as Land used to do, you don't even bother with a consistent source of inspiration, but draw characters as different actors, professional wrestlers or models from panel to panel. I haven't seen his work in a long time, so I don't know if he still does that or not, but he didn't even bother "casting" real people into his art as particular characters, but seemed to simply change the reference material from panel to panel based on the pose he wanted.)

As for the story of the six issues collected herein, Tony Stark is still interested in figuring out what the hell Madame Masque was up to in the previous volume, and just what is up with those ninjas with the laser katanas. Rather than investigating a break-in that occurred at a Stark facility in Japan personally, he sends his pal Rhodey to scope it out for him for...reasons. There's no real logical reason to delegate the task provided in the book, but I suspect I know the real rationale, which is to remind readers that Rhodey exists and that he is pals with Tony Stark, given that they and their relationship apparently play a role in Civil War II (the text on the back of the collection makes repeated references to Civil War, alluding to the fact that this somehow sets the stage for the series, although it's not terribly clear how any of this plotting will lead to that conflict).

When Rhodey gets in trouble, Iron Man and Spider-Man Peter Parker investigate, and also get in trouble. Stark's answer is to fake his own death, disguise himself as an ex-SHIELD agent that looks exactly like a young Luke Perry and then try to infiltrate the ninjas-with-laser-swords organization. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence girl friday Friday and his reluctant recruit Mary Jane Watson try to keep his company afloat while his board of directors thinks he's dead. Finally  Rhodey has enough of Tony's spy game, and he  brings the All-New, All-Different Avengers and SHIELD in to help extract Tony...against his will.

I liked this panel:

I guess Bendis doesn't get the glowing spider-symbol, either. So we totally agree on that.

But Bendis, man, quit running around with this Deodato character, and maybe give a little thought to how the comics you write look, issue to issue and collection to collection, huh?

This collection is also notable for introducing Riri Williams, the 15-year-old girl who is going to become the new "Iron Man"...under a less male codename, of course.  She only gets three scenes spanning about seven pages, and so far hasn't connected to Tony or the wider plot at all yet. She's just a young girl who builds a flying suit of super-armor that looks a bit like a homemade Optimus Prime and decides to try her hand at being a superhero, since she's about to get kicked out of M.I.T. anyway.

I imagine we'll be seeing a lot more of her in the near future.