Okay, current Bat-people predictions,

based on these solicits for June releases:

—There are two new Batman, Jason Todd, who will be appearing in Batman, and Dick Grayson, who will be appearing in Batman and Robin (and, hopefully, Streets of Gotham, as who that Batman is will probably factor into if I buy it or not).

—Damian al Ghul...or does he go by Damian Wayne?...will be the new Robin, in Batman and Robin.

—Tim Drake will take the name Red Robin, and will be appearing in Red Robin, which would seem to contradict the fact that he temporarily adopted and abandoned the costume in his own title recently, from what I saw during flip-throughs, and be kinda stupid in general, but whatever.

—I'm going to be buying a lot more Batman comics. Batman is the only one with a creative team I find completely repellent, and Red Robin's team does nothing for me, but the other books all have good-go-great writers and great artists on them, and their two back-ups are exciting sounding...a nice solution to the we-want-to-keep-publishing-this-Manhunter-comic-even-though-only-like-20,000-people-will-buy-it dilemma, as well as the "How can we raise the price of our comics by a dollar without being total dicks like Marvel?" problem. As long as the back-ups are six-to-eight pages long, DC will have succeeded at raising the value at the same time as the price.

I assume if the previews are out this weekend, that means the full solicits will be out on Monday and Tuesday, which means I'll be quite nerdily discussing the DC and Marvel universes at much greater length early next week. In the mean time, let's all get excited about the fact that there's a light at the end of the current Batman franchise sucky comic tunnel!