DC's July previews reviewed

ALL-NEW ATOM #13Written by Gail Simone. Art by Mike Norton & Dan Green. Cover by Ladrönn. The Search for Ray Palmer continues as the Atom finds himself with people who knew Palmer very well: the jungle-dwelling little people from SWORD OF THE ATOM! And they may be hiding the Atom's predecessor among their people.


I just dropped A-NA on account of it not ever being very good, but this sure looks promising. Note to DC: Now would be a perfect time to release a Sword of the Atom trade paperback collection.




BATMAN CONFIDENTIAL #7 Written by Michael Green. Art and cover by Denys Cowan & John Floyd. What kind of person becomes a Joker? Writer Michael Green (Heroes writer/producer) and classic Batman artist Denys Cowan shed light on who the Joker was before he became the Joker…and how he and Batman crossed paths even before the day he was created.


Hmm, how did this conversation go? “Hey, Michael Green. You write for that shitty TV show, right? How would you like to write an in-continuity story about the Joker before he became the joker? Yeah, I know we’ve only really let Denny O’Neil and Alan Moore tease the pre-Joker Joker’s origin and kept it mysteriously up in the air, but I have a feeling you’re the perfect writer to do it.”




BATMAN: BLIND JUSTICEWritten by Sam Hamm. Cover by Walter Simonson. Art by Denys Cowan & Dick Giordano.Reoffered to coincide with BATMAN CONFIDENTIAL #7, also featuring art by Denys Cowan! This classic trade paperback collects DETECTIVE COMICS #598-600,written by Batman (1989) screenwriter Sam Hamm! Bruce Wayne discovers a series of murders linked to WayneTech in this tale that leaves him in a wheelchair!


Of course, that horrible-sounding Batman: Confidential story got this into trade, so that’s cool. It actually ends with a bit of a whimper, but the opening chapter is downright fantastic. Written by Hamm and in print the summer that Tim Burton’s original Batman film was in theaters, this was one of the first Batman comic book stories I’d ever read, and I have pretty fond memories of it.






BLACK CANARY #1 & #2 Written by Tony Bedard. Art and cover by Paulo Sequeira & Amilton Santos. Black Canary takes flight in a 4-issue miniseries written by Tony Bedard (52, SUPERGIRL AND THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES) with art by Paulo Sequiera (BIRDS OF PREY, Gypsy) & Amilton Santos! The League of Assassins tracks Black Canary to Star City in an effort to liberate the child, Sin, they believe to be the DCU's next greatest assassin. Luckily, Black Canary has other plans for Sin's abilities and future.


Pass. From here, this looks like a project that exists merely to make sense out of why the work on the character by two other writers in two different series hasn’t matched up just right (In this case, Gail Simone’s Birds of Prey and Brad Meltzer’s JLoA). And then there’s that cover…does DC have an art director? I’m no expert on female anatomy (at least, not as expert as I’d like to be. Heyo!), but should I be able to see both of Dinah’s breasts and both of her ass-cheeks at the same time without the use of mirrors? Are there hinges in her spinal column or what?









Yes, that appears to be Batman wearing a Legion flight ring on the cover of Brave and the Bold. No, it doesn’t matter what else happens in the book, because it has an image of Batman wearing a Legion flight ring.








Countdown #43-#40 This year-long weekly series featuring a cast of hundreds kicks into high gear in its third month! Learn more about the search for Ray Palmer! Travel into the Nanoverse! All this plus appearances by the Suicide Squad, the Penguin and the Atom!


What’s this? An open grave? Superheroes crying? A funeral? Could a superhero have fallen in the line of duty? What a shocking development! Who could it be, and how long will they stay dead?

With Bucky and Captain Marvel back in the universe next door, and Jason Todd and now Ice back in the DCU, the dramatic impact of “death” in superhero comics is at an all-time low, to the point where when I see an image like this, it has what I assume must be the opposite intended effect on me—I become 100% less interested.

But whatever, we’ll play their game. Who oh who could it be?

Is it Bart “The Flash” Allen? I actually kinda hope it is; as a character, Bart Allen’s been dead since they cancelled Impulse and Young Justice and Geoff Johns began gradually darkening the character.

Could it be Starfire, who we haven’t seen yet “One Year Later?” Again, this would be A-OK with me; I think Starfire’s story has been over for a loooong time now.

Could it be one of the new Titans they just introduced, like Kid Devil, Miss Martian or maybe on-again, off-again hero Ravager? One hopes not, as none of those would even illicit a shrug.

The one character death that would actually annoy me would be Cassandra “Batgirl” Cain. Mostly because if DC was going to kill her, they should have done so during Infinite Crisis or at the end of her own title, rather than keeping her around long enough to star in three of the worst DC stories of all time first*.

The text sounds a lot more intriguing than the image. I particularly love the way they single out the Penguin for mention, like readers are going to be all, “Sweet, the Penguin! My favorite!”






DC/TOP COW: CROSSOVER CLASSICS TPWritten by Jeph Loeb, Scott Lobdell and others. Art by Marc Silvestri, David Finch and others. Cover by Joe Benitez. The greatest heroes from two publishers — DC Comics and Top Cow — meet for the first time and face off against each other and their greatest foes in this staggering collection! This volume features the best-selling crossovers THE DARKNESS/BATMAN, THE DARKNESS/SUPERMAN #1-2, JLA/CYBERFORCE and JLA/WITCHBLADE.

I’ve only read half of these—the two JLA books—but I think that’s enough to safely say that these four stories are in all likelihood not, in fact, what one might consider “classics.”









As a kid watching Superfriends, I never understood why Sinestro’s ring shot out yellow energy, but he was a pink guy who wore a blue costume. So I definitely see matching his costume to his ring energy, especially now that he’s got his own Corps, but he just looks kinda weird in that suit to me for some reason. I don’t think the yellow matches his pink complexion very well. I don’t know, maybe I just need to get used to it.





GREEN ARROW: YEAR ONE #1 & #2Written by Andy Diggle. Art and cover by Jock.The incredible creative team of writer Andy Diggle and artist Jock (THE LOSERS) rejoin to tell the definitive origin of the Emerald Archer! Oliver Queen is a frivolous playboy with little care for anyone or anything — apparently even himself. But when he's double-crossed and marooned on a desrt island he finds that he does care about something... justice!

Fun fact: The abbreviation for this series is GAY1 or GAYO (if you spell out the number “one”). Shh! Don’t tell Chuck Dixon!

Green Arrow’s origin has been told perfectly well already in at least one recent, in-continuity DCU story, and has also been told in a story entitled Green Arrow: Year One, and I don’t really need to see it again**. But I do need to see another Diggle/Jock book, and I do need to see someone other than Judd Winick guiding the Emerald Archer’s adventures, so I think I’ll be reading the hell out of this series.








NIGHTWING #134 Written by Marv Wolfman. Art by Jamal Igle & Keith Champagne. Cover by Ryan Sook. “The Missing Year” continues with a startling rebirth: The return of the Vigilante! Yesterday, he challenged the Crimelords of Europe, Asia and Africa, and defeated them. Today, he controls the 21 Tigers, an international gang of murderers. But there was a time when Dick Grayson called him friend and mentor — and they both loved the same woman.

Okay, see, this is why it’s so hard for people who don’t already read super-comics to start. Vigilante, huh? This isn’t the first Viginlante, the one who was a cowboy hero who recently died and came back as a ghost cowboy hero in Seven Soldiers, is it? And it’s not the female Vigilante who hung out with Deathstroke, The Terminator (heh heh) back when he had his own title, is it? Is it the guy before her, whom I thought was dead, in a new costume? Or Vigilante IV? Or am I missing a Vigilante…?

Ah screw it, pass.

I do like the V-visor design though.





SHADOWPACT #15
Written by Bill Willingham
Art and cover by Tom Derenick & Wayne Faucher
Zauriel joins Shadowpact officially, Blue Devil learns what he needs to do to save his parents, and Doctor Gotham strikes at last!

Ah dammit. I really, really, really hated just about everything that occurred in Day of Vengeance and have avoided this title since, but Zauriel joins the team? Officially? Like, for the foreseeable future? Sigh. As one of Zauriel’s 14 fans, I feel obligated to start following the title now.

Nice to see Tom Derenick on art too; I really like his stuff.









There’s no way I’m not buying these, even though I’m waaay behind on my Showcase Presents reading.




TANGENT COMICS VOL. 1 TP
Written by Dan Jurgens, Kurt Busiek, James Robinson, Ron Marz and Todd Dezago
Art by Gary Frank, Mike McKone, J.H. Williams III, Jurgens and others
Cover by Jurgens & Norm Rapmund
In 1997, DC’s Tangent event presented a group of strange new heroes with very familiar names. Now, these hard-hitting heroes are back in a fantastic new collection including TANGENT COMICS: THE ATOM, METAL MEN, THE FLASH, GREEN LANTERN and SEA DEVILS!

I refuse to believe that anybody in the world requested these one-shots be collected into a trade paperback. In the likelihood of ever being published, I would have put this series somewhere between The Complete New Blood Omnibus and Heckler.

Yeah, I know they recently appeared in a panel of Infinite Crisis, but so did Neptune Perkins, and I don’t see any Young All-Stars trades in previews this month. And yeah, they appeared in Ion, but who’s reading Ion? If anyone’s really interested in reading these old stories, an interesting exercise in copyright renewal without actually having to put characters like the Secret Six, Doom Patrol, Metal Men and Sea Devils in in-continuity stories, they can easily find them in any back-issue bin. Or in my longboxes. I’ll totally sell you mine for cover price.







*Excepting, of course, the early issues of Extreme Justice, “War Games Act Three,” "War Crimes,” anything written but Judd Winick and Erik Larsen’s run on Aquaman. That should all go with out saying, however.


**But Wonder Woman, Black Canary and the Justice League of America all do need new Year One stories, rather badly, seeing as how Infinite Crisis undid their origin stories and we’ve yet to see what their new ones are. I also need to see all of those Mike Grell Green Arrow stories in a couple of trade collection, whenever you guys get a chance.