DC's August previews reviewed

That's the look of a character who has just had his New 52 title canceled

It seems like it's been a bit since DC has announced any new series, and when reading through the publisher's solicitations for the books they plan to publish in August of this year, I noticed four more titles were being canceled. So I thought I'd count up the number of books set in the DC Universe proper (i.e., not stuff on the Vertigo imprint, or digital-first media adaptations and so on) to see how close they were to maintaining 52 ongoing monthlies, and it looks like as of August, they will only have 49 "New 52" books. And, as I said, four of those are being cancelled, which would knock the number down to 45.

So I suppose there could be as many as a half-dozen new ongoings announced for September 2013, the two-year anniversarry of the "New 52." (Or should I say "at least" a half-dozen new ongoings, as some of the current, not-yet-cancelled ongoings include ones with anemic sales, like Vibe and Katana.

The series shipping their final issues in August are Threshold, Legion of Super-Heroes, Demon Knights and Dial H.

None of those are surprising. Threshold was a $3.99 sci-fi series written by Keith Giffen with a Larfleeze back-up strip, perhaps best known for its indecipherable cover desgin and its reinvention of Captain Carrot as a Rocket Raccoon-like character. Honestly, that book looked like it was canceled form the moment it was green-lit.

Demon Knights is only a surprise in that it lasted this long, and thus seemed to have survived some sort of culling threshold (not the lower-case T of that instance of the word "threshold"). It was one of the original New 52 books and most of the ones that don't make it seem like they get canceled around the eighth issue or so, but this one lasted almost two full years. I thought the idea was sound, and the scripting of the first collection's worth of issues was good, but the art, as I noted previously, was pretty piss-poor (The writer has changed at least once since then, of course, and I imagine the artists have changed even more than once).

Ditto Legion of Super-Heroes, which also launched at the start of the New 52-iverse. I was always sort of perplexed by the inclusion of a LOSH title—actually, two, but the other one was already canceled—as nothing says Silver and Bronze Age nostalgia comics to me as loudly as the Legion of Super-Heroes. And, of course, DC had Paul Levitz writing the book, which made it, on paper anyway, seem like the oldest New 52 book imaginable.

I haven't read any of Dial H yet—I'm just about to get to the first trade, actually—but it's my understanding the writing's been on the wall for that one for a while now. Even having never read it, though, I'll be bummed to see it go, if only because it means there won't be an awesome Brian Bolland cover included in each new round of solicitations. Hopefully DC will find some other title for him to start covering ASAP.

For a complete list of what DC's planning on publishing in August, you can check out Comic Book Resources. Here's what jumped out at me this month...

BATMAN: LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT VOL. 1 TP
Written by DAMON LINDELOF, JONATHAN LARSEN, TOM TAYLOR, B. CLAY MOORE, STEVE NILES, T.J. FIXMAN, ANDREW DABB and JOSHUA HALE FIALKOV
Art by JEFF LEMIRE, J.G. JONES, NICOLA SCOTT, BEN TEMPLESMITH, TREVOR HAIRSINE, TAN ENG HUAT, PHIL HESTER and others
Cover by ETHAN VAN SCIVER
On sale SEPTEMBER 4 • 168 pg, FC, $14.99 US
These new tales of Batman explore unusual sides of The Dark Knight, including his early years as a crimefighter, his method of dealing with super-powered foes and more. Collecting issues #1-5 of the digital-first series.

Any librarians in the reading audience? I'd highly reccomend this collection of the Batman anthology series. The quality of the stories vary from installment to installment, but look at that list of contributors. Coupled with the time-less, continuity-free nature of the stories, this is the sort of book that you can't go wrong adding to your graphic novel collection.

BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT #23
Written by GREGG HURWITZ
Art and cover by ALEX MALEEV
...
On sale AUGUST 28 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
...
Batman and Commissioner Gordon are forced into a tight corner as Clayface embarks on a murder spree throughout Gotham City. But hope surfaces when the Mad Hatter emerges as an unlikely ally.

Hey look, long-time Brian Michael Bendis collaborator Alex Malleev! Drawing for DC!

BATMAN, INCORPORATED SPECIAL #1
Written by CHRIS BURNHAM, JOE KEATINGE, DAN DIDIO and others
Art by CHRIS BURNHAM, ETHAN VAN SCIVER, JASON MASTERS and others
Cover by CHRIS BURNHAM
...
On sale AUGUST 28 • 48 pg, FC, $4.99 US • RATED T
...
An all-star special featuring the various members of Batman Incorporated—Man-of-Bats, Red Raven, El Gaucho, Dark Ranger, Knight, Batman himself and more! In the wake of their epic struggle with Talia al Ghul, the Heretic and Leviathan see what’s next for the members of Batman’s army. Featuring stories written and drawn by a collection of industry greats! Plus: Bat-Cow makes her solo debut in a tale by writer Dan DiDio and artist Ethan Van Sciver!

I've wanted to see DC do a Club of Heroes title ever since Grant Morrison and J.H. Williams did that story reintroducing some of the above characters, either as a Justice-League-where-all-the-characters-are-Batman team title or a Legends of the Dark Knight style anthology.

That said, the lack of credits here is kind of discouraging (And of those given, I trust Burnham and Keating, and, like anyone else who has every read anthing he's written, I'm frightened whenever I see a "Written by...DAN DIDIO").

I don't like the look of that new Knight up there either; I haven't read Batman Inc since the New 52 reboot yet, but I'm guessing The Knight dies and The Squire takes over...? (Boo! Hiss!). But whatever the case, why on Earth does she need boob-shaped armor and metal high heels...?

LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT #11
Written by PAUL JENKINS
Art by OMAR FRANCIA
Cover by GREG LUZNIAK
On sale AUGUST 7 • 40 pg, FC, $3.99 US • RATED T • DIGITAL FIRST
“What Happened Was…” When Calendar Man and Batman battle during a Gotham Knights game, things go very, very wrong. But with everyone in the crowd giving a different eyewitness account, will the GCPD even be able to figure out what happened?

I'm really excited to read a Calendar Man story. I hope it's the Calendar Man with the calendar cape and red cowl, and not the Long Halloween version that's been appearing in those weird "Channel 52" advertorial comics DC's been publishing in the backs of their books.

Let's take a moment to appreciate Mike Allred. This is his cover to Batman '66 #2. I hope creators Jeff Parker and Ruben Procopio and Dean Haspiel (Dean Haspiel?! Awesome!) can live up to my sky-high expectations, because a solicit with the names Jeff Parker, Michael Allred, Dean Haspiel and Batman in it sure has a way of raising expectations.

This issue apparently introduces the Batman '66 version of Killer Croc, who was never actually on the show, which should be intersting.

DC ONE MILLION OMNIBUS HC
Written by GRANT MORRISON, MARK MILLAR, MARK WAID, RON MARZ, GARTH ENNIS, JAMES ROBINSON, GEOFF JOHNS and others
Art by VAL SEMEIKS, PHIL JIMENEZ, CULLY HAMNER, MARK BUCKINGHAM, J.H. WILLIAMS III, BRYAN HITCH, KEITH GIFFEN, SEAN PHILLIPS, DAN JURGENS and others
Cover by RYAN SOOK
On sale OCTOBER 30 • 1,080 pg, FC, $99.99 US
The 1999 event masterminded by Grant Morrison is collected in its entirety in one massive hardcover! In the 853rd century, Earth remains safe thanks to the descendants of Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash and others—but they’ve never met anything like the sentient super-computer Solaris. This incredible collection includes DC ONE MILLION #1-4, plus the #1,000,000 issues of ACTION COMICS, ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN, AQUAMAN, AZRAEL, BATMAN, BATMAN: SHADOW OF THE BAT, BOOSTER GOLD, CATWOMAN, CHASE, CHRONOS, THE CREEPER, DETECTIVE COMICS, THE FLASH, GREEN ARROW, GREEN LANTERN, HITMAN, IMPULSE, JLA, LEGION OF SUPER HEROES, LEGIONNAIRES, LOBO, MARTIAN MANHUNTER, NIGHTWING, POWER OF SHAZAM, RESURRECTION MAN, ROBIN, STARMAN, SUPERBOY, SUPERGIRL, SUPERMAN, SUPERMAN: THE MAN OF STEEL, SUPERMAN: THE MAN OF TOMORROW, WONDER WOMAN, YOUNG JUSTICE, as well as DC ONE MILLION 80-PAGE GIANT #1 and SUPERMAN/BATMAN #79-80.

As collections go, this one is probably way too complete.

I liked this story—a JLA story that ran in a single issue of JLA and its own miniseries, with a handful of relevant tie-ins, although the entire DC line tied in. When it was previously collected in trade, they just included the main series, the JLA issue and bits and pieces of the books that tied most directly into the story. Most of the above had very little to do with that story, and are only set in the world that Solaris and Justice Legion A hailed from.

So this includes about a month's worth of DC comics, an 80-Page Giant sorta sequel (with short stories set in the world of DC One Million) and even a Chris Roberson-written two-part Superman/Batman story from 2011 that guest-starred the System's Finest team of Superman and Batman.

There are a lot of good comics in here, and I suppose it would be interesting to read, like, every thing DC published in a single month of a partiucular year in one sitting, but I can't imagine dropping $100 on something like this. Especially when you shouldn't have much trouble at all finding all of those comics in quarter bins if you've got the patience to look for them.

DC UNIVERSE VS. THE MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE #1
Written by KEITH GIFFEN
Art by DEXTER SOY
Covers by ED BENES
On sale AUGUST 28 • 32 pg, FC, 1 of 6, $2.99 US • RATED T
...
After narrowly escaping his last battle with He-Man, Skeletor has fled to the most unexpected realm to recover: EARTH! Once there, he sets a plan in motion to siphon off Earth’s core magic. Forging an unlikely hunting party, He-Man and company go in search of Skeletor. Finding themselves at odds with the heroes of the DC Universe, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe must find a way to stop Skeletor and his mysterious new master!
This debut issue features two covers by Ed Benes, both available for ordering: one featuring the heroes of the DC Universe, and the other featuring The Masters of the Universe!

Given that He-Man has a lame-looking and completely unnecessary costume redesign, I guess that means that Eternia is actually in the New 52 Universe. Perhaps it's in the center of the hollow earth, where the sword and sorcery world of brawny men in loincloths of Skartaris was in the old DC Universe...?

I actually almost wrote a whole post about this particular product announcement over the weekend, as I was so excited/incensed/anxious about this. Suffice it to say that as someone who grew up with these superheroes and the Masters of the Universe (the first comics I read were the little ones that came pre-packaged with what I used to refer to as He-Man Guys; did you know Bruce Timm drew some of those...?), this is literally a dream project of mine; DC's superheroes meeting and fighting the characters of He-Man's world is something I would daydream about as a child.

I would like to hope this would be, oh, 1/100th as good as the DCUvMOTU of my fantasies, but the creative team doesn't give me a lot of hope (Now if JLoA writer and avowed He-Man fan Geoff Johns were writing it...).

I think Giffen's a talented writer and artist with a lot of good comics to his credit, but based on DC's usage of him over the past decade or so, there's a certain stink about his byline, where it only appears on doomed projects: He mostly seems to provide fills-in to keep a book on schedule or takes over a book after the first choice leaves or is fired (In fact, James Robinson wrote one issue of an MOTU series for DC, before Giffen took over as writer with the second issue).

Also, the last DC Universe vs. Another Universe's Characters story written by Keith Giffen that I tried to read—

—was so poorly done I only read the first issue and had no desire to read the second.

As for the artist, I know the name, but I can't think of something by him I've read—he's not the guy who drew the Captain Marvel series that half the Internet complained about the art on, is he...?

All that said, I may be bracing for the worst, but I'll be hoping for the best. This is a comic book I'd really like to like.

EARTH 2 #15
Written by JAMES ROBINSON
Art by NICOLA SCOTT and TREVOR SCOTT
Cover by JUAN DOE
...
On sale AUGUST 7 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
Retailers: This issue will ship with two covers. Please see the order form for more information.
Dr. Fate, Red Arrow, The Flash, Green Lantern and The Atom all fall victim to the Hunger Dogs of Apokolips as the war against the forces of Steppenwolf continues!

Red Arrow, huh? I remain pretty intrigued by this book, which more and more seems to sound like a rather weird Elseworlds series more than a This Is What's Up On The Earth Where All The Golden Age Characters Live sort of series. I still haven't read it yet, but I imagine the first volume ought to be showing up in Ohio libraries soon-ish.

I'm not super-crazy about that particular cover, which is more idea than illustration, but I'm a big fan of Doe's artwork and I hope to see a lot of him. If DC could give him a title to do interiors on that isn't horribly written, that would be ideal.


JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK #23
Written by JEFF LEMIRE
Art by MIKEL JANIN
Cover by DOUG MANHKE
...
On sale AUGUST 21 • 32 pg, FC, $3.99 US • RATED T
...
TRINITY WAR CHAPTER 5! The Justice Leagues continues to fracture as the murder of a hero is solved—and the line between justice and vengeance blurs as they head off to find those responsible!

The line between justice and vengeance is blurred, huh? I wonder if anyone's ever done a story about that in a sueprehro comic before.

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA’S VIBE #7
Written by STERLING GATES
Art by PETE WOODS and SEAN PARSONS
Cover by BRETT BOOTH and NORM RAPMUND
On sale AUGUST 21 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
Afraid that A.R.G.U.S. has been lying to him, Vibe goes on the run! But he doesn’t get very far before a new villain with ties to his past threatens to turn his future upside down!

Kinda surprised this one isn't tying into the "Trinity War" event (it's got the word "Justice League" in the title and everything), as that would have helped stave off the book's inevitable cancllation by another month or three.

SUPERGIRL #23
Written by MICHAEL ALAN NELSON
Art and cover by MAHMUD ASRAR
On sale AUGUST 21 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
Supergirl struggles to survive against one of the most dangerous villains in the entire universe – Cyborg Superman! But what could superman’s robotic doppleganger want with Supergirl? The answer will blow your mind—and set the stage for a massive story this fall!

I like what Asrar has done with the capes on this cover, and the way they form a big, bright red arrow that is striking even from afar.

I'm not sure how exciting the words "Cyborg Superman" can possibly be in the New 52 though, once the character is decoupled from his own history in "Reign of The Supermen" and the subsequent stories, which have been bounced out of continuity.

SUPERMAN UNCHAINED #3
Written by SCOTT SNYDER
Art and cover by JIM LEE and SCOTT WILLIAMS
Backup story art by DUSTIN NGUYEN
1:300 B&W Variant cover by JIM LEE and SCOTT WILLIAMS
On sale AUGUST 14 • 32 pg, FC, $3.99 US • RATED T
...
Retailers: This issue will ship with ten covers. Please see the order form for more information. Watch for further information on variant covers coming soon.
Superman’s found out the secret the U.S. Army tried desperately to keep from him—or more specifically, that secret’s found him! But with hijacked drone aircraft tearing Tokyo apart, there’s not much time for mystery…and with Lois Lane on the case as well, what’s in the darkness will come to the light!

Ten covers? Ten covers?! That seems like a lot of covers. Especially for the third-issue of an ongoing title. Are there ten different ways to show Superman breaking chains? Does that number take into account the 1-in-300 black and white variant, or would that be 11?

If DC feels the need to publish a Jim Lee comic with ten covers to sell the damn thing, well, something's really, really wrong.

I suppose the movie-i-fication of comic book Bane was inevitable, but I don't like the way this looks. The movie costume and mask would probably work okay on a more human-scaled comic book Bane, but it just looks ultra-weird on a hulking, Hulk-sized, Kelley Jones-style Bane.

In general, I am very pro-beard, but I'm not sure how I feel about War's licorice whip beard on this cover.

Aside from wanting to eat licorice now, of course.

Forget DC and listen to me: Here are the essential Wonder Woman stories

While I only linked to one Robot 6 post Thursday night (mine), it was hardly the post of greatest interest that the blog had that day. Personally, I was kinda partial to Tom Bondurant's Grumpy Old Fan column, in which he examined the DC Entertainment Essential Graphic Novels and Chronology 2013, a sort of massive user's guide to the DC Comics backlist, from a specific angle.

Such a thing, which is apparently oriented toward librarians and retailers, is a pretty good idea, but it's probably worth noting that its existence is in direct opposition to the publisher's ongoing "New 52" initiative, which was sold as We Were Doing It Wrong, So We're Starting Over From Scratch (The implication was even stronger than the times DC executives said something similar to that; you don't reset a video game when you're doing well at it, just as you don't delete your term paper or pitch a cake you just baked in order to start over when you think everything's going swell).

So while DC's backlist is pretty large, and full of a lot of great comics, DC has de-emphasized the value of it with their regular, week-to-week publishing strategy of the past 20 months or so. As far as the New 52 goes, there isn't really more than two trades or so of continuing import and value informing the monthly publications for each of their titles.

Everything DC published prior to September 2011 is now an "Imaginary Story," an out-of-continuity comic meant to be enjoyed on its own, with no bearing on the DC Universe or the "real" history of the characters. That doesn't mean they can't or shouldn't be read and enjoyed, of course, it just means there's a sort of wall erected between those books and the vital, ongoing concerns of the characters, the universe and the comics now.

Well, there's that, and, of course, that DC Comics is the wrong entity to be championing that backlist, given the amount of time and energy they've expended telling the world that's the old, lame stuff: The good stuff is all these shitty comics that look like bowdlerized videogame designs drawn by artists from 1993, the ones where the writers change every arc or so and everything's so ill-considered we're retconning stuff by the time we collect it in trade.

Ahem.

Anyway, the angle Bondurant explored was how the guide seemed to serve DC's major superheroine characters (spoiler alert: poorly), with Wonder Woman sharing her spread with Batgirl, Batwoman, Catwoman and The Huntress (The women of the DC Universe are thus Wonder Woman, and four supporting Batman characters, apparently). And as for the specific Wonder Woman stories suggested? They number five, and they are not even a very good five.

They are:

1.) The Greatest Wonder Woman Stories Ever Told: A 2007 collection in a format that Batman, Superman, Captain Marvel and a few other character enoyed. That is, "greatest" is defined as single-issue, done-in-ones that will fit into a single trade, generally chosen to include best-known creators and to serve as something representative of the character's entire history, with Alex Ross' portrait poster of the character re-purposed as a cover. They generally make for decent sampler platters of the characters' incarnations, a not-bad starting point from which you can determine which writers, artists or directions of the character you enjoy, and then go from there.

2.) Wonder Woman: The Twelve Labors: This just-rencently-ish published trade paperback collects a mid-seventies run of Wonder Woman comics that covered Wondy's transition back into straight, costumed super-heroics after the experiment with her as a de-powered, costume-less crime-fighter. She's essentially trying out for her spot on the Justice League again, with the various Satellite Era Leaguers taking turns secretly observing her in the field. It was written by Len Wein, Cary Bates, Elliot S. Maggin and Martin Pasko, and drawn by Curt Swan, Dick Dillin, Kurt Schaffenberger, Irv Novic, Vince Colletta and others. It's not very good and, it's perhaps worth noting, is a good three continuity reboots ago

3.) Wonder Woman: Odyssey Vol. 1: This is the J. Micheal Straczynski's companion to his awful Superman: Grounded story, a one-year story arc he embarked upon with much fanfare and a great deal of real-world media attention (here it was focused on Wonder Woman's new costume, which included pants and a jacket) and then almost immediately abandoned, leaving it to another writer to salvage his direction and plot while he went on to write a shitty Superman graphic novel, some Watchmen spin-offs and to publicly say some of the most ignorant, spiteful shit any comics professional has ever said about Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster and Alan Moore. Don Kramer was the artist, while artist-turned-writer Phil Hester was the pinch-scripter. This story was also booted out-of-continuity by the New 52boot, but is sort of in a weird place anyway, as it dealt with an altered time-line independent of the any of the universal-wide, Crisis-driven continuity reboots.

4.) Wonder Woman: Odyssey Vol. 2: See above.

5.) Wonder Woman Vol. 1: Blood: The sole in-continuity recommendation is the first volume of the Brian Azzarello, Cliff Chiang and Tony Akins New 52 Wonder Woman, which is among the higher-quality of the New 52 books (Vol. 2, Guts was just released in January; not sure why that wouldn't be in here too). I've been reading it monthly since the reboot, and it will be the only New 52 book I've read in serial format since, once Green Lantern gets a new creative team. It's good, but it's well worth noting it's not a particularly Wonder Woman-specific story, as she's the protagonist-by-default dealing with Azzarello and Chiang's reimagined Olympian gods, who are all squabbling over a half-divine child of Zeus prophesied to cause all sorts of trouble for the Olympians. It's got great art and a lot of neat designs, but can get pretty repetitive. Azzarello's take on the character is essentially the same bad-ass warrior version that's been predominant since Kingdom Come, and his main innovations have been to alter her origin for the worse (she's now the daughter of Zeus, the Amazons aren't immortal but replenished their race by raping sailors and then selling their male progeny into slavery in exchange for weapons, and Wonder Woman has less of a personality than ever before).

Can this list be improved upon? Of course it can. (It would be hard to make it worse, without maybe taking out the Greatest entry and replacing it with Amazons Attack or something). Bondurant offered up some suggestions (One important point he makes is how relatively stable Wonder Woman's post-Crisis publishing history is, and how very easy it would be for DC to collect its entirety into a few runs of a half-dozen trades or so, focusing on the work of George Perez, John Byrne, Phil Jimenez and writers Greg Rucka and Gail Simone; of those, I think Simone's was probably the weakest, but given that she still has a decent-ish relationship with the publisher, I imagine if nothing else hers should remain collected and in print. Rucka's should too, even if there's now bad blood between he and DC, if for no other reason than that his is the most television ready take, and the one most likely to inform any future live-action adaptations).

I'm going to offer up some of my own, but since I don't work for DC Entertainment and am not writing an article for their DC Entertainment Essential Graphic Novels and Chronology 2013, I'm not going to concern myself with what's currently in print and whether DC is the primary publisher or if they've merely licensed the character to another publisher.

These, though, are some of the best Wonder Woman graphic novels/distinct book-reading experiences available for librarians, retailers or readers who want to learn more about this wonderful Wonder Woman character, and what makes the Amazing Amazon so Amazon.

Wonder Woman: The Story of the Amazon Princess by Ralph Cosentino: This picture book is the third in a series of DC superhero picture books that Cosentino did for Penguin, following ones feature Batman and Superman. (I wrote about it at some length here.)

While not published by DC Comics Entertainment and not technically a graphic novel, it is an excellent, all-ages introduction to the character, one that streamlines and simplifies her into about as perfect a take as I've seen, outside her original Golden Age iteration (And if you read full-page illustrations as panels, it actually kinda is a comic book).

Wonder Woman Chronicles Vols. 1-3 by William Moulton Marston, H.G. Peter and others: The very best Wonder Woman stories ever told are without a doubt the original ones, by her creators Marston and his artist collaborators, most prominently Peter. They have something of a bad and unfair reputation for all the perceived pervy aspects of the story, with all of the tying up and talk of girl-on-girl love, but in context (that is, if you read the stories straight through), I was awfully surprised by how non-existent an sexual deviance is, aside from sub-text which, let's be honest, isn't any gayer or weirder or pervier than your average Batman story from the same era—or any era since.

In her original adventures, the "problems" of Wonder Woman's that would appear in later years, the ones that occurred when she was de-coupled form her World War II origins and attempts were made to update her to a more modern setting just aren't there (Batman, for example, fought crime, which is always with us; Wonder Woman fought the Axis Powers, which aren't).

Additionally, she had a big, colorful supporting cast including Etta Candy (who likewise doesn't always translate outside of Golden Age comics well...although I'd love to see what Ross Campbell could do with her), The Holiday Girls, Steve Trevor, The Amazons of Paradise Island, and a pretty incredible Rogue's Gallery, several members of which Wonder Woman is able to convert to the side of good.

For a long time, these stories only existed in DC's lovely but expensive Archives editions, but the Chronicles program put these comics in cheaper, easy-to-afford (for libraries and readers) trade paperbacks. Additionally, they are edited so as to include every story featuring the characters in chronological order, regardless of what title they might appear in. As far as I can tell, DC's only published three volumes of Wonder Woman Chronicles, though Batman and Superman also have Chronicles collections, as do The Flash and Green Lantern (but, oddly, the latter two are the Silver Age iterations, not the Golden Age iterations, whose adventures are even harder to find).

I sincerely hope DC continues to collect and publish Wonder Woman in this format up until they get to the point where the Showcase Presents volumes take over. I also hope they eventually publish The Plastic Man Chronicles and The Captain Marvel Shazam Chronicles. I wouldn't mind Red Bee and Uncle Sam Chronicles collections, either, to be honest, but Captain Marvel and Plastic Man are far more important Golden Age characters.

Showcase Presents: Wonder Woman Vols. 1-4 by Robert Kanigher, Ross Andru and others: I'm only halfway through DC's collection of Wonder Woman #98-#177, which goes right up until 1968's Denny O'Neil-driven "New Wonder Woman." Like all of the publisher's Showcase Presents volumes, these are huge black-and-white reprints with page-counts hovering around 500-pages a piece, and they are insanely good values. This era of Wonder Woman history saw the character losing a great deal of her Golden Age wildness, and the quirks and style of her original adventures were gradually being shed as she gravitated toward something closer to your standard superhero (a lot of these read like watered down, distaff Superman stories). That said, most of them are still DC Silver Age insane and, if you're going to read out-of-continuity Wonder Woman like, say, the JMS-started Odyssey, why not read about Wonder Woman fighting dinosaurs, marrying monsters, saving Steve Trevor's sorry ass (it got much sorrier here, as he entered his male Lois Lane phase, than it was during the war) and other Kanigher kraziness?

The DC Comics Presents: Wonder Woman Adventures by Steve Vance, John Delaney and others: DC's short-lived DC Comics Presents format was one I really dug; devoted mostly to 1990s comics, they were slim, almost-trade collections, featuring spines and a couple issue's worth of reprinted material, but also ads. Most of them were stories of some note or importance to ongoing DC Universe concerns or adventures, but were perhaps too short to carry their own trade paperback.

This one featured all-ages Wonder Woman stories, something so rare I'm really surprised DC hasn't commissioned at least a couple of original ones so they can put together a kid-friendly Wonder Woman trade to sell to little girls or stock in libraries.

The comics in here are all from the excellent (but short-lived) Adventures in the DC Universe series by Steve Vance and John Delaney, which really ought to have a complete collection (although, come to think of it, a lot of those stories were pretty era specific, so their Aquaman stories, for example, might seem weird now that he's not a long-haired, bearded grump with a harpoon hand).

I wrote about it a little bit here, but this 2012, 96-page, $8 hybrid of a trade paperback and a regular floppy comic book includes four Wonder Woman stories from AitDCU: A battle with the Cheetah, a Green Lantern (Kyle Rayner) team-up, a Catwoman fight-and-then-team-up and a Big Seven JLA story.

These are drawn in the Bruce Timm style of the Batman and Superman Animated Series shows, but pre-dated the Timm-produced Justice League cartoon, which starred Wonder Woman, so this was essentially the DC Universe of the late-nineties filtered through an all-ages, Timm-inspired prism.

This collection is one of the relatively few Wonder Woman comics you could give a little girl to read that was produced after the Silver Age (and thus doesn't seem horribly dated and hard to read), so it's well worth seeking out.

Wonder Woman: Spirit of Truth by Paul Dini and Alex Ross: This over-sized, 2001 graphic novel was the third in a series Alex Ross created, following ones featuring Superman and Batman. As with the others, it is specifically created to serve as an introduction to the character, or at least a no-threshold, complete in-and-of-itself experience that could be enjoyed by anyone reading it, even if it was there first (and last) Wonder Woman story.

Also like the other ones, it features a sort of day-in-the-life Wonder Woman story that leads the character to a sort of crisis of faith in herself, in which she decides who she is and how should she be, for the benefit of the reader as much as herself.

Those particularly enamored of Ross' Wonder Woman can also find her in his JLA: Secret Origins, which collects the origin sequence from the above trade along with those culled from his Superman, Batman and Captain Marvel volumes, plus the origins of nine other individual heroes, and the origin of the original Justice League of America, and JLA: Liberty and Justice, a full-length Justice League Adventure in the same format as the others.

Oh, and his 2005 maxi-series Justice, a sort of serious take on the Challenge of The Superfriends, prominently features Wonder Woman, and ain't half bad. For that, Ross plotted with writer Jim Krueger and painted over artist Dougie Braithwaite's pencils. The other books mentioned here were all scripted by Paul Dini.

Wonder Woman: The Hiketeia by Greg Rucka, J.G. Jones and others: Here's one that Bondurant mentioned, counting it as part of Greg Rucka's run on the character. It was a 2002 original graphic novel nominally starring Wonder Woman but, well, you can see whose face they decided to put on the cover. It was written at a time when Rucka was working on Batman comics and before he started a well-received run on Wonder Woman (which I found to be occasionally dull read serially, as its premised a bit like a TV show, specifically a West Wing set in the Amazons' embassy instead of the White House, but is actually pretty good in trade—at least up until Infinite Crisis intrudes and sinks the whole endeavor under nonsensical, editorially mandated nonsense).

It's a pretty good introduction to post-Crisis, pre-New 52 Wonder Woman, as it uses the more popular and more familiar Batman as a point-of-view character to define Wondy through contrast. In a lot of ways, it's like they more typical Batman/Superman sort of story, where they're differing methods and outlooks on life lead to a great deal of conflict that draws them both into sharper focus then solo stories can, while they attempt to work through their differences to reach their common goal of justice. Only instead of Superman, Rucka used Wonder Woman.

Another decent graphic novel from around that same general time period that uses similar approach is Christopher Moeller's 2000 JLA: A League of One, in which the League must face a powerful, fire-breathing dragon of myth. Wonder Woman learns that she's the only one who can stop it, and if her teammates in the then-JLA (The Morrison/Porter "Big 7" iteration) face it in combat, they'll be killed. So naturally she fights each of her teammates one by one, temporarily taking them down so she can fight the dragon herself.

I wouldn't call it a great graphic novel or anything, but it's one of the most Wonder Woman-specific JLA stories, and it's of interest for the way Moeller shows her bouncing off each of her teammates (figuratively and literally, given the plot). It's also not a bad starter Wonder Woman story since, like The Hiketeia, it's not strictly a Wonder Woman story, but another franchise story that happens to star Wonder Woman.

It's also easier to spell and pronounce than The Hiketeia.

Wednesday Comics by Various: I assume this is listed in that DC Entertainment Essential Graphic Novels and Chronology 2013 somewhere, even if it wasn't listed as an essential Wonder Woman comic. But the Wonder Woman strip featured in Wednesday Comics is a pretty essential one, as it features an accessible and broadly appealing take on the character that weaves the trappings of her own mythology with characters and tropes from world mythology into an episodic quest adventure that also reinvents supporting characters Etta Candy, The Cheetah and Doctor Poison.

It was by Ben Caldwell. None of the Wednesday Comics have been collected individually, or outside of this collection (at least, I don't think so, but I suspect that Batman one is going to be at some point, unless I dreamt that), but if you're a fan of DC's characters or the superhero comics in general, you're going to want to read Wednesday Comics (and if you waited for the trade, you'll get to see the awesome one-installment Plastic Man strip!).

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

The only Wonder Woman comics I have in my apartment at the moment—the bulk of my comics are in my comics midden in another city, and will soon be moved to the bowels of a giant pyramid I'm constructing, where I hope to be buried with them all some day—are the aforementioned Twelve Labors trade and the single issues of the New 52 series. No images from any of them lent themselves particularly well to illustrating this post, so I used a scan of that literacy-promoting bookmark. I like it because while I assume the kanga to the right of Wondy in the image is simply napping next to her while she reads, the way a cat or dog might curl up and fall asleep next to you while you read, it also looks a bit like she's readign a book to a dead kangaroo, and that's fantastic.

The other day I came home from work to find this mysterious package in front of my apartment door.

It was about nine inches by 12 inches, and about four and a half inches deep.

The address label, trimmed in blue and white, bore the signature "Peyo."
And what's this...?

A coupla stamps reading "Belgique," which, I believe, is Belgian for "Belgium." And Belgium is, of course, the country that Pierre "Peyo" Cuilliford hailed from.

Oh my God! You could rather comfortable sit three or four things that are three apples high in a box of this size, provided they were laying down!

Did...did Peyo personally air mail me some real, live Smurfs?! Wouldn't that be awesome? Why--Oh wait, hold up. I don't see any air holes in this box at all. So now I sincerely hope it isn't full of real, live Smurfs, because by the time that package shipped from Belgium to Ohio, they would probably be real dead Smurfs.

...

Okay, actually there were some Smurfs comics inside, as well as the first volume of Papercutz's Benny Breakiron, the Smurfs publisher's translated and repackaged version of another series of Peyo comics.

Meanwhile, at Robot 6...

I love the way Jess Fink swears, no matter which Jess Fink from which time period it is.

I also like the way she makes comics, and her latest is a really good one.

It's entitled We Can Fix It, and it's a kinda sorta memoir, in which the memoir stuff is embedded in a fiction story about the author time-traveling through her own past.

You can read my review of it here at Robot 6.

I did not go to the comic shop today.

The only comics on my pull-list, and thus the only comics that are out today that I would therefore definitely buy were I in my local comic shop, are Star Wars #5 and SpongeBob Comics #20. It didn't really seem worth driving to and from the shop just to drop six bucks on a pair of comic books, so I didn't go, and thus don't have an edition of "Comic shop comics" to post here tonight.

I did order Batman Incorporated Vol. 1: Demon Star (which is actually the second volume collecting Batman Inc) and Walt Disney's Donald Duck Vol. 3: The Old Castle's Secret, both of which should be in shops this week, online, because I am a jerk. (And I will order Showcase Presents: Superman Family Adventures Vol. 4, also out today, just as soon as I finish SP:SFA Vol. 3).

If you are in a comic shop today and looking for something to buy, and wanted advice on the matter, I would totally recommend any of the following books, all of which I've read and have either already written about or am currently in the process of writing about: Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong (which is like a cool high school comedy movie as drawn by Faith Erin Hicks, whose art looks better than ever here, and it looked pretty damn good the last time I saw it), Peyo's The Smurfs Vol. 15: The Smurflings and Benny Breakiron Vol. 1: The Red Taxis, Jess Fink's We Can Fix It, Tom Gauld's You're All Just Jealous of My Jetpack and the trade paperback version of Dave Taylor and Chip Kidd's Batman: Death By Design.

There are actually a ton of really great comics being released this week—brand-new works from current creators, great reprints of old comics, far-better-than-average Batman comics—it just seems that they're all being released as graphic novels rather than as serially-published comic book-comics.

I'm torn.

I don't think either the main Iron Man armor that Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark wears throughout Iron Man 3 (MK 44, I think he called it...?) or the Iron Patriot armor from the movie are particularly cool-looking, and I don't think these toy versions look all that cool either, what with their big, goofy toy weapons and chunky shoulder pads.

But I nevertheless think these Assemblers toys sound super-cool, and the idea of being able to buy a bunch of Iron Man toys that you can take apart and reassemble in something I would have really wanted to get in on if I were younger. Say, 8. Or 12. Or 18. Or 28.

Meanwhile, in DC comics last week, I saw this ad:

I can't help but notice a distinct lack of Stephen Amell's naked torso in it, which was the focus of the previous ads I've seen for it in my comics.

Come on, Arrow ad-makers: Less hood, more muscles. Don't you want anyone to watch the show...?

Comic shop comics: Free Comic Book Day

There were only two (2) new comic books in my pull-file this past week, so I didn't bother driving out to the shop to get them, but figured I'd wait another Wednesday or two until I had at least a handful of books built-up to justify the time spent getting to and from the shop.

But then Saturday rolled around, and I actually had the day off from both my day job and any tight deadline writing and I figured that since it was Free Comic Book Day, I should go check out the scene and pick up my two new comic books and see what freebies my shop still had available by the time I got there.

It was even more easy than usual to find my local comic shop, Comic Heaven in Willoughby, Ohio, as there was a Stormtrooper standing on the side of the road in front of the parking lot, waving at cars as they drove by.

Specifically, it was the type of Stormtrooper that pilots those low-flying speeder bike things through the forest of Endor in Return of the Jedi, which the Internet tells me is a type of Stormtrooper referred to as a "scout trooper," and that these are "light-armored stormtrooper variants, trained as reconnaissance troopers, spies and survivalists." (I was going to scroll through all the different types of stormtroopers in this crazy-long article about stormtroopers in order to find out if there was one that deals especially with traffic control and/or waving at cars, but the article is a billion words long, and I think I could finish a Star Wars novel before I finished reading that actual entry).

I kinda wanted to take a picture of him waving at cars, because the visual clash of stormtrooper armor and mundane stuff like northeast Ohio suburban traffic amuses me, but when I asked if I could photograph him, he said something I couldn't understand through his mask and posed for me:

I asked if he was hot in there, as it was in the low seventies and sunny, and he said something else I couldn't understand.

I guess it's a good thing he was wearing scout trooper light-armor, rather than the standard stormtrooper armor or, worse yet, snowtrooper armor.

Then I saw this young fellow, wearing a poncho and carrying a crossbow.

I took his photo form a discreet distance, as I generally try not to talk to strangers wearing weapons. At first I assumed he was just some random crazy person, as I couldn't think of any comic book superheroes or Star Wars characters who wear ponchos and crossbows, but maybe I'm just not all that hip to nerd media as I assumed I was. Later on I saw two or more other people with crossbows, so I have I imagine it was a thing of some sort.

That, or there's a small group of Ohioans who hunt cosplayers for sport.

There were only three more costumed folks at the shop during the 15 or 20 minutes I was there.

There was a couple wearing rather impressively realistic Black Widow and Loki (movie versions) costumes, who I took this creeper cam photo of as they browsed, because Black Widow and Loki browsing Marvel comics in a comic book shop is funnier to me than Black Widow and Loki posing for a photo.

And then, finally, on my way out, I saw a bigger (and plushier) than life-sized version of Beppo, the Super-Monkey:

Oddly, the big stuffed animal seemed to scare a few of the toddlers, who snuck peaks at it and clung tightly to their parents as they passed. Meanwhile the family of folks wearing crossbows or the guy dressed like a god of mischief with enormous horns on his heads didn't seem to frighten any children in the least.

The shop was more crowded than I'd ever seen it, with maybe 100 people of all shapes, sizes, ages and demographics within, and the employees rather hectically answering questions and rushing to and fro finding things for customers.

They were giving away seven free books per customer, and these were all stacked up on several tables and counter-top space apparently cleared off for the occasion. The DC book/s were already gone, and while I flipped through the Marvel book with Thanos on the cover, it looked so boring that I didn't think I wanted to read it, even for free. I picked up a couple of books for my nieces (Strawberry Shortcake, Archie's Pep Comics, Top Shelf Kids Club and the Disney Fairies book) and two for myself.

I generally try to buy a graphic novel or a couple of manga digests from my LCS on FCBD, because I always feel a little guilty taking free comic books when I'm already good and thoroughly hooked on the medium and thus am the opposite of the sort of person who should go to a comic shop on FCBD to avail myself of the free comics, but, like a heel, I didn't get anything (I'm pretty caught up on the trades I've been waiting to read, and they didn't have any of the few I'm looking for in stock. I considered buying a Showcase Presents volume, but I currently have four of 'em on an end table waiting to be read, so I figured I should read the over 2,000 pages of black-and-white DC Comics reprints I already have before buying another 500 pages).

Here are the four books I brought home from the shop on Saturday, and what I thought of 'em...

Hawkeye #10 (Marvel Entertainment) I suppose the idea of too much of a good thing is so ingrained in the American psyche that I shouldn't be too surprised that Marvel's been pumping out even their highest-quality, most standalone comics at a greater-than-monthly frequency, even if that means the artists who are largely responsible for that quality can't possibly keep up with the accelerated schedule.

So here's another David Aja-less issue of Matt Fraction and David Aja's Hawkeye, and, as in the past Aja-less issues, readers can at least take comfort in the fact that Marvel hired another of the best super-comics artists currently working for the Big Two to fill-in.

This time it's Francesco Francavilla, coloring himself, and the results are, as expected, lovely. The story pulls back from the cliffhanger of the previous issue, and then introduces us to the villain from that cliffhanger, telling his secret origin and what exactly he was getting up to just before putting on his mime make-up and drilling poor Grills. (Spoiler: Grills was shot to death in the previous issue).

Clint Barton, AKA Hawkeye, AKA Hawkguy, is largely absent from this issue, as the story belongs more to Kate Bishop, AKA Hawkeye, and this new killer who is apparently going to be a big threat to the Hawkeyes, given the build-up he's been given (more than one issue, in a series that has had a lot of done-in-one stories).

I feel a little weird about teenager Kate Bishop grabbing the charming but almost twice her age man she meets at a party and planting a deep kiss on him. I don't know if Bishop just likes older men (in all the Young Avengers comics I've read, she's only been romantically entangled with other teenagers) or if Fraction is just engaging in some thirtysomething male fantasies in the writing of this title or...what, but the romantic tension between the two Hawkeyes has always felt a little on the creepy side to me. And now here's another December for Bishop's May (Or is she more of an April or March...?)


Legends of The Dark Knight #8 (DC Comics) Two rather strong stories in the latest issue of DC's over-sized Batman anthology: One short, one long.

The first is a 10-page story written by the great Paul Tobin and drawn by Tradd Moore, an artist who is new to me, but whom I can't wait to see more of.

The plot is basic, Batman 101 stuff: Extremely bizarre, labor-intensive murders are being committed by a new killer with a hard-to-crack pattern (a one-off villain, I'm sure, as he lacks a name, costume or open-ended gimmick that would make return bouts of interest), Batman is on the case (wearing a disguise, intimidating thugs for info), Batman figures out the crimes and beats up the bad guy (Who it turns out is an artist and, from the look of it, one particularly badass artist: He takes three punches from Batman before going down).

Tobin does a fine job cramming that all into ten pages but making it read as if it all fits perfectly comfortably there; it's a pretty fine job of crafting a story so efficiently that it fits the half-as-big-as usual space afforded a done-in-one Batman story.

But I knew Tobin was a good writer before reading this; I didn't know what an amazing artist Moore was (That's his cover, and no, I don't know what all that glowy stuff is, but it sure looks dynamic, doesn't it?).

His artwork is smooth, clear, more than a little cartoony and extremely kinetic. When his Batman jumps, kicks, punches, falls or swings, he does so big and fast. Hell, even when his Batman gestures or changes expression, there's a sense of animation to it.

I really dig this Batman.

The second story is a full-length, 20-page one written by Ricardo Sanchez and drawn by Sergio Sandoval. This too is Batman 101, but the specific crime/s are even more outre, including finding a body that seems to have been mauled by a single animal that somehow left DNA evidence belonging to more than a dozen different animals, and the world's largest collector of "crypto-taxidermy" recently had his prize piece, a "barghest", stolen.

So Batman investigates, and has to eventually fight a real live barghest, which Sandoval draws to resemble very lizard-like dinosaur, like a Komodo dragon with a man and weird, eye-less face.

The exact nature of the creature's creation is fairly occult, which doesn't always sit well atop Batman comics, but Sanchez routes it in the alchemy/black magic that is deeply established in Batman comics, so it actually works quite well here. There are a few unexpected twists here, but it's probably the ending I liked the most, as it implies there will be a new, extremely weird addition to Bat-Family (Make way for Ace, The Bat-Barghest!)

Sandoval's art is very realistic and representational, a style I don't generally go in for much, but his storytelling is top-notch, so that while Batman's cowl may look an awful lot like, say, the one Michael Keaton had to wear in his Batman movies, the panels and pages all look, work and read like comic book panels and pages, rather than scans of photos. David Lopez and Santi Casas' coloring is extremely dark, which gives the art a dark, murky, occasionally washed-out look, pierced by the light of computer screens or the moon shining through a cloud, and, in another story, using another character, that might not work all that well, but this is a Batman comic, so those are, if not necessarily virtues, than at least perfectly appropriate to the content.

The Smurfs (Papercutz) This is the Papercutz FCBD offering, which includes:

1.) An eight-page Smurfs comic strip and two short, one-page Smurfs gag strips.

Even the Smurfs have trouble telling themselves apart, apparently

2.) An eight-page Annoying Orange strip that I could only make it half-way through (The art is really nice, but, uh, I dunno—anthropomorphic fruit bowling just didn't speak to me, I guess; maybe it's because a durian was involved, and it brought back traumatic flashbacks to the one time I had a sip of durian bubble tea and spent the next 12 hours trying to get the taste out of my mouth?)

3.) A 10-page story starring "ARiOL", a finely-cartooned, fine-line strip featuring anthropomorphic animal characters, that looks so European that I was not at all surprised to notice that the creative team was named Emmanuel Guibert and Marc Boutavant.

I liked them all save the Annoying Orange story; I'm already on board with any and all of the Smurfs reprints Papercutz has been putting out, and now I really want to see more of this ARiOL character and the comics he's in, even though I hate his name and am not sure if I'll be able to honor that capitalization scheme much longer.

The lead Smurfs story—in which an ogre tries to eat Gargamel, and Gargamel tries to convince him to eat the Smurfs instead, and then the Smurfs convince him to seriously, go ahead an eat Gargamel instead—is pretty aggressive in selling the line of Smurfs collections to new readers, with every page ending in a footnote referring to a particular volume.


Top Shelf Kids Club (Top Shelf) And finally, here's the other FCBD book I brought home for myself. It's a black-and-white anthology featuring a half-dozen kid-friendly Top Shelf characters, including a preview of an upcoming book, Rob Harrell's Monster on the Hill.

The others are:

1.) A typically charming four-page Owly story by Andy Runton (which reads a bit longer, as two of those pages feature 16 panels apiece)

2.) An elegantly drawn Korgi story by Ann and Christian Slade (eh)

3.) A Johnny Boo story by James Kochalka (God I love Johnny Boo; this one's about annoying boinging, and while the eighth panel is the funniest, the third is my favorite, as it features a completely upside down Squiggle, and I'm a big fan of Squiggle's expressions)

4.) A not particularly interesting Upside Down story by Jess Smart Smiley (whose debut Upside Down graphic novel I really rather liked)

5.) A Pirate Penguin Vs. Ninja Chicken strip by Ray Friesen that I didn't particularly like (I think it was the designs that put me off; that, and the the weird-but-not-that-weird-weirdness-for-weirdeness'-sake of it. I did like how the skull on the Penguin's pirate hat wold occasionally change expressions in order to match that of the Penguin.

As for the Harrell story, I didn't read it, as I plan to check out and review the graphic novel, and didn't want to read part of it before I read the whole of it. I did look at the pictures though, and they actually reminded me quite a bit of Jeff Smith's Bone, particularly in the look of the monsters, the landscape and the lines used.

Well, that was my Free Comic Book Day. What'd you get during yours...?

Another Mothman: Mothman (2010)

Connor Fox and Jewel Staite in a scene from the 2010 SyFy original movie Mothman. Not pictured: Mothman

Like the 2002 Richard Gere vehicle The Mothman Prophecies, this 2010 made-for-cable TV horror movie plays very fast and very loose with the real story of West Virginia monster made famous during a 1966-67 flaps o—or at least "real" as presented in John Keel's ostensibly non-fiction book the Gere film is named after.

Despite the fact that it's named after the monster rather than the Keel book, and that it doesn't put forth even an extremely truncated and bowdlerized version of Keel's theory of "ultraterrestrials," Mothman is in many ways a lot more accurate and true to the source material.

In modern-day Point Pleasant, WV—well, modern-day as in the year 2000—a group of attractive graduating high school seniors lead by actress Jewel Staite (from popular nerd show/cause Firefly) are out camping by a river and stuck babysitting one of their number's younger brothers. At one point, they try to spook him by telling him the story of the Mothman, who here is "buried under the incinerators at the old mill," rather than making his home in the spookier, more atmospheric "igloos," the abandoned TNT storage facilities he supposedly haunted in real life (The film only had a budget of $2 million, which seemed to dictate a lot of creative choices). He can escape his grave via the river, one of the older kids tells the younger, and, when he defiantly says he's not afraid, they all go swimming, and the older kids take turns pulling him underwater.

He accidentally drowns to death, and the kids all make a I Know What You Did Last Summer-style pledge of secrecy. Ten years later, Staite's character, who was the most resistant to the cover-up, has moved to Washington D.C. to become a reporter and try to forget about her past, but her editor sends her back home to cover the tenth annual Mothman festival, which is a totally real thing (And a thing I find pretty fascinating, particularly if the events described by those who saw Mothman during the original flap were really true and those witnesses, some of whom are still alive today, were genuinely traumatized by it. Seeing Mothman cosplay during a small-town festival has gotta be pretty damn weird to those folks, right?).

The night she arrives just so happens to be the night that her former friends all gather to drink a toast to the memory of the poor dead kid brother, and she reluctantly reunites with them for the occasion, starting off a horrifying chain of events in which the titular monster starts picking them off, one by one.

Staite's character and the handsomest and unmarried of her former friends (Connor Fox) must unravel the mystery of the Mothman and how to escape him before he kills his way to them (Unfortunately, the lovely Jessica Erin Sylvia, "aged" ten years by putting on a pair of fetching glasses, doesn't live as long as either of 'em). They get most of their intel from Jerry Leggio's blind old man, who has been studying the Mothman his whole life, and knows his origins, modus operandi and has a few ideas on how to kill him.

As the film is set in the present day, it keeps the real-world history of Mothman in tact (Mothman Prophecies moved the events of the late sixties into the 21st century; Mothma sets new 21st century events 40 years after those events), including the Silver Bridge collapse.

It also keeps one of Mothman's popular possible origins intact—that he was a sort of spirit of vengeance summoned by the horribly wronged and murdered Native American chief Cornstalk, who cursed the land with his dying breath. But in Mothman's telling, Cornstalk seems to start transforming into the Mothman himself, his eyes glowing read, and the white men who were in the process of torturing him finding their bullets were unable to kill him.

So, in the movie's telling, they chop him up and bury the pieces of his body in a mirror-lined coffin. Ever since, the Mothman can only appear through reflective surfaces, like mirrors (Yeah, obviously that doesn't jibe with, like, any sighting from the literature), which he does to avenge wrongs kept secret by conspirators (which you wouldn't think there'd be all that much of in a small rural town in West Virginia). He kills by taking and/or eating the eyes of his victims (another thing unique to the film), and he can only kill someone once he's locked eyes with them, according to the now suspiciously blind man.

The Mothman as mirror-travelling creatures is pretty bizarre, partly because there are whole other horror movies in which mirrors are kinda there thing, partly because it's such a random detail to attach to a story that already has plenty of weird, specific details attached to it (Like, Mothman traveling through electricity or sound or pone lines makes a lot more sense than Mothman traveling through mirrors, you know?). So to is the Mothman-as-avenging-angel-with-a-very-specific-set-of-criteria, but I guess it's one way to make a modern horror movie of the kid-killing variety with Mothman in it.

As for Mothman's appearance, they certainly moth him up quite a bit. There are lots of CGI made-up moths, with red "eye" patterns on their big black wings, fluttering around. And the creature itself is big and black and spindly. It's torso is human, with the black flesh pulled tight around skeletal ribs. It has long, spindly arms and legs, the latter bent in a goat-like, insectoid shape, with almost bird-like feet with two big toes in the front, one in the back.

It seems to have two sets of wings, which are neither leathery like a bat's, nor feathered like a bird's, nor gossamer like an insect's, but made of a net-like, tar-colored material. It's most striking feature is its glowing red eyes and it's head and face. This Mothman does indeed have a head, but it's smallish and set into the shoulders with a small-to-non-existent neck. It has a huge—like, comically large—gaping, always open mouth that looks an awful lot like the mask that the killers in the Scream franchise wear, only it's all black, and the eyes glow special-effect weird.

It's not a great design, really—if they lost the mouth, it'd improve immensely—but it works in that it differs from many other Mothman designs, it's not overly insectoid or moth-like, like a few of the more striking but not based on the record or folklore designs (like famous Frank Frazetta image, or the Point Pleasant statue), and it looks like the sort of creature that could conceivably have inspired the reports of Mothman, had witnesses seen this guy lurking around in the shadows or whizzing through the air in the 1960s.

Many of the events of the film are cliche and rather rote, but it has a few inspired moments—the existence of a particular weapon that can hurt the Mothman is kind of neat (it's a bone knife made of one of the few parts of Chief Cornstalk that didn't transform into the creature), and the scene set on the Silver Bridge, in which the POV points down at a convertible car full of guilty parties that the fast moving black aerial object makes disappear one by one is a pretty great film image.

It's perhaps not as good a film as the not-very-good Mothman Prophecies, but it is a much more standard model and more enjoyable horror film and, as I said, it hews much closer to the "real" Mothman and his story—despite its own out-of-left field innovations—than the feature film.

Oh, here's the cover for the copy of the DVD I found at a library:

I don't understand the DVD cover at all. The figure on the cover is not the Mothman as depicted in the movie, he's not the human villain, he's not the hero or any character in the film. I honestly don't know what the hell that image is supposed to represent, or what it has to do with the film. (I've seen a few more DVD covers online that do better reflect the film itself, however).

The Avengers probably wouldn't offer to help Iron Man move, either.

As Hollywood fell back in love with the comic book superhero at the dawn of the 21st century, it's been extremely interesting to me as a comic book reader to see the comic book superhero movie slowly start to emulate aspects of the comic book superhero comic books.

For example, with the X-Men, Spider-Man and Batman/Dark Knight franchises, we've gotten the film equivalents of runs by creative teams on sequential comics, with the same basic creators (actors, producers, directors, screenwriters) returning for a series of consecutive films continuing plots from installment to installment (most successfully in the Spider-Man trilogy, if you ask me).

With X-Men Origins: Wolverine and X-Men: First Class, we've seen the film equivalents of spin-off series.

With The Amazing Spider-Man, we've seen the equivalent of relaunches, with new creators and new directions for established characters.

And with Thor, Iron Man 2 and Captain America, we saw the beginnings of a shared universe like the Marvel Universe and DC Universe of the comic books, a shared film universe that came to fruition with last summer's The Avengers.

Now with Iron Man 3, we get another film equivalent of a comic book phenomenon—the problem with a shared universe.

Don't get me wrong, I thought Iron Man 3 was great, and loved almost every minute of it (except for the interminable wait for the post-credits stinger). It was the best Iron Man film, probably the best Marvel Studios Marvel movie and would be a perfectly fine last Iron Man movie, if they decide to stop making Iron Man movies after this.

But, the thought did occur to me while watching, perhaps in large part because the movie kept bringing up The Avengers and the shared universe, that it was kinda weird that SHIELD or The Avengers didn't ever lift a finger to help Tony Stark get out the jams he was in throughout this film.

I don't want to spoil anything about the movie, and really, the less you know the better it is, as there are some pretty potent surprises in the film, but Stark is suffering from a form of PTSD from the events of The Avengers (alien invasion, wormhole, etc), a child fan of Stark's asks him about the aliens and The Avengers, one of the villains talks about "the big guy with the hammer" that fell out of the sky and how that changed the world, and so on.

The major conflict of the movie is a global terrorist by the name of The Mandarin, who regularly hijacks national media and organizes spectacular terrorist attacks, regularly threatening the president of the United States.

Stark's house suffers a missile attack that is filmed and broadcast on national television.

At several points, he finds himself alone and without armor, with no allies and no one to call to for help.

Air Force One gets attacked by a hijacked suit of armor.

Stark and his friend James Rhodes storm a base full of super-powered terrorists in order to rescue the kidnapped president and the scantily-clad Gwyneth Paltrow with no armor and only a pair of handguns.

In many of those occasions, I found myself wondering what Captain America and Thor were doing. I suppose they were busy filming their own movies, but where were Nick Fury and SHIELD at? Black Widow and Hawkeye aren't doing anything, why didn't they help out? At the very least, you'd think Stark would be able to call up SHIELD on a pay phone and ask them for a ride when he finds himself stranded in a back road in Tennessee.

I note this not to complain—it would have hurt the movie if Captain America parachuted off a flying aircraft carrier or Sam Jackson showed up to put the cuffs on the bad guys at the end, I think—but I found it interesting to experience that same niggling, nagging feeling in the back of my mind while watching that would occur to me when I'm reading shared universe superhero comics. You know, like when Batman is stuck in a death trap in an issue of Batman or Detective Comics, and you wonder why he doesn't just call Superman for help, like he would in an issue of Justice League or World's Finest.

Just one more box in the checklist of Ways Superhero Movies Are Gradually Reflecting Superhero Comics that's been ticked.

Meanwhile...

At Good Comics For Kids I have reviews of Capstone's Superman Adventures: Men of Steel and Superman Adventures: Distant Thunder and Trina Robbins and Tyler Page's Chicagoland Detective Agency #5: The Bark In Space.

At Las Vegas Weekly, I have a few suggestions for Iron Man comics featuring The Mandarin for anyone who wants to compliment their viewing of Iron Man 3 with some comics (and here's LVW film critic Josh Bell's review of the movie).

And at Robot 6, I have short (for me, anyway) reviews of Letting It Go, Marble Season, Point of Impact, So Long, Silver Screen and Unico.

Some of my favorite parts from some of my favorite comics (that I read recently)

"What are you reading?" Niece #1 asked me the other day, in a tone of voice not unlike the one she might use to ask what I were wearing, were I wearing a ten-gallon cowboy hat.

"Unico," I said, lowering the cover, which features a close-up on an adorable baby unicorn with a pink mane, from my face.

"What's it Unico about?" she asked.

"It's about an adorable baby unicorn who has magical powers he can use to grant the wishes of the people he loves, but only if those people truly love him," I said.

"Why are you reading about a baby unicorn?"

"Because it's awesome," I said, and left it at that, without going into who Osamu Tezuka was, exactly. But I wasn't lying. Unico is awesome.

The dimensions of the book—about digest-sized, but almost 400-pages thick—make getting a decent scan of any page in it all but impossible. The above panel is a poorly scanned one from the story "Rosario The Beautiful," one of the fairy tale-inspired stories in the book. Unico has just kicked the ass of a wicked courtier all over the place in a series of vicious flying headbutts, and the cad eventually draws his sword.

Unico replies by growing his horn out to sword length, and then fencing with the bad guy. Unico disarms him, repeatedly stabs him in the butt and then throws him out a window.

This same story features a dance sequence between the romantic leads and a scene where Unico, who has shrunk down to about the size of a My Little Pony doll, jumps into the hand of the male lead and grows his horn out super-long, and then the hero uses Unico as a sword to fight off a bunch of bad guys with swords.

Unico is totally bad-ass. Did you use to watch that not-very-good Dungeons & Dragons Saturday morning cartoon in the '80s? (How about now?) Remember that lame-ass juvenile unicorn Uni? Well, Unico is the anti-Uni. The un-Uni, if you will.

Here's a panel of sorts from Miriam Katin's Letting It Go, in which she meets a dog, and comes up with a theory as to why the dog was so excited to meet her—obviously, the dog was a big fan of her work (I said "of sorts" because Katin's book uses implied panels, rather than boxes or borders).

Note how realistically the dog is drawn compared to Katin herself, particularly her face.

Finally, here's one of, like, my ten favorite pages from Gilbert Hernandez's Marble Season featuring my new favorite comics character, Chavo.

Chavo is the younger brother of Huey, the protagonist of the book, and Chavo can't yet talk (I think his only line is a Little Lulu-esque "Baw!" in one scene where he cries). Because of this, he just sort of wanders around, behaving in sometimes strange, inscrutable ways for his own inscrutable little kid reasons.

On this page, an older boy is confiding in him, a secret he doesn't want any of the older kids to know.

Sometimes Chavo just stands in a scene, taking in the conversation, and making it funnier simply by the presence of a little, silent observer. Take, for example, this poorly-scanned page:

Chavo was there, staring over that wall for some reason, before anyone else got there. And Chavo is still there, staring over that wall for some reason, after they all left.

That's a rare example of Chavo being in the center of a panel; often times he's mimicking his brothers, or screwing around, or hiding behind a tree. In one scene, he walks around without his shirt on, discovers a dead baby bird, and looks for help.

I'm having a hard time explaining why, I guess, but I love Chavo. He cracks me up. So come for the new Gilbert Hernandez, but stay for the Chavo. This book should been called Marble Chavo, not Marble Season.

Viva el Chavo!

Expect full reviews of each of these (and a few other books) tomorrow-ish. This is all I got in the mean time.