Monday, July 29, 2019

Marvel's October previews reviewed

Is this October going to be a particularly big month for Marvel Entertainment? I...honestly can't tell. There doesn't really seem to be a big crossover event that's active, other than Absolute Carnage, which seems like it will be concluding in October, as several of the tie-ins wrap up and what looks like they might be spin-offs start up, and then there's the final issues of the two Jonathan Hickman-miniseries that serve as the relaunching point of his X-Men rejiggering and the launch of his new series. Instead of just the one X-Men title though, it looks like we'll be up to three ongoing titles right out of the gate, which seems to be at least one X-Men title too many at this early point.

That might be what Marvel considers to be the biggest deal in October, given that the theme for the month's True Believers $1 reprint comics are all X-Men-related. On the other hand, the main theme of their variant covers is Mary Jane Watson, apparently in celebration of the launch of her own ongoing solo series, The Amazing Mary Jane by Leah Williams and Carlos Gomez (the above cover is by Humberto Ramos though, not Gomez).

MJ seems a rather unlikely candidate for a solo series, but I suppose it will remain to be seen if this is actually an ongoing series, or one of those occasional limited series that Marvel launches as an ongoing and then cancel and collect into trade in six months to a year. Personally, if we were going to get a major member of Spider-Man's supporting cast in a solo series, I would have preferred it be The Amazing J. Jonah Jameson, but then, that's just me.

Let's see what else Marvel might be up to three months hence...


AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #32
NICK SPENCER (W) PATRICK GLEASON (A/C)
...
THE FUTURE IS IN PERIL!
As seen in ASM #25, Miguel O’Hara is back in the present and NEEDS to get to Peter Parker.
But as he’s currently being held in an off-the-books ROXXON prison, this is easier said than done.
And J. JONAH JAMESON has a new scheme which means one thing-- TROUBLE FOR SPIDER-MAN!
32 PGS./Rated T …$3.99


Long-time DC Comics artist Patrick Gleason makes his Marvel debut.* He's a really great artist, and not one I would have pegged for an ideal Spider-Man artist, especially during this run of ASM, where his style will seem fairly divergent from that of artist Ryan Ottley, although it does pair pretty well with another regular artist, Chris Bachalo. One of Gleason's great strengths is in the drawing of faces, which is why he doesn't seem the ideal artist for a superhero who only kinda sorta has a face. Like, I didn't recognize that Spider-Man above as Gleason's Spider-Man, although the line work definitely looks like his.

I'm looking forward to seeing what he does on the title, though. I...only have the vaguest notions who Miguel O'Hara is, but so far I've enjoyed the heck out of writer Nick Spencer's run, so I imagine this issue will be good too.


AMAZING SPIDER-MAN: FULL CIRCLE #1
NICK SPENCER, JONATHAN HICKMAN, GERRY DUGGAN, AL EWING, CHIP ZDARSKY, KELLY THOMPSON & JASON AARON (W)
CHRIS BACHALO, CHRIS SPROUSE, GREG SMALLWOOD, MICHAEL ALLRED, RACHAEL STOTT, VALERIO SCHITI, CAMERON STEWART & MARK BAGLEY (A) Cover by ROD REIS
VARIANT COVER BY MIKE ALLRED
VARIANT COVER BY CHRIS BACHALO
VARIANT COVER BY GREG SMALLWOOD
VARIANT COVER BY CHRIS SPROUSE
BLANK VARIANT COVER ALSO AVAILABLE
A summons from SHIELD leads Peter Parker into a globe-spanning adventure that will test him as never before, one in which the future of all mankind lies in his gloved, webbed hands! Who is the mysterious prisoner in the steel box who keeps propelling the wall-crawler onward?
Nick Spencer and an all-star team of Marvel’s biggest writers and artists take up the challenge to create the wildest, maddest, most unconventional AMAZING SPIDER-MAN story of all! Guest-starring Nick Fury, Wolverine and Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham!
96 PGS./ONE-SHOT/Rated T …$9.99


There are a whole lot of creators I like a lot involved with this, including one whose art work I don't see nearly as much as I would like, Cameron Stewart. The writers are an interesting mix too, because some of them seem like, you know, obvious choices for any kinda Spider-Man comic, while others I don't think I've ever seen write a story with Spidey in it before.

Given the title and Spencer's attachment, I assume this will end up in an ASM trade, which is how I've been reading the current run, but this will be one of those books that will be hard to wait a few months for.

That seems like a few too many variant covers for a $10 comic though, doesn't it...?


BIZARRE ADVENTURES #1
JED MACKAY, CHRIS ONSTAD, BECKY CLOONAN
& SEBASTIAN GIRNER (W)
FRANCESCO MANNA, CHRIS MOONEYHAM & BECKY CLOONAN (A)
COVER by CARLOS PACHECO
VARIANT COVER BY NICK KLEIN
VARIANT COVER BY TBA
PREPARE FOR THE BIZARRE!
To celebrate Marvel’s 80th we’re resurrecting one of its wildest creations, BIZARRE ADVENTURES! Within these pages you will see Shang-Chi take on a martial arts master, Ulysses Bloodstone battle a master of the dark arts, Dracula meet his match, and the Marvel debut of Achewood’s Chris Onstad! These adventures will be thrilling, exciting and most definitely BIZARRE!
40 PGS./One-Shot/Rated T+ …$4.99


Hmm, none of those things sound particularly bizarre, but they all do sound pretty fun. I'm not sure who is doing what here, but it all sounds random enough to maybe be worth a blind purchase. I'm especially curious about Onstad's contribuion, although it looks like he's just writing, rather than writing and drawing, which would have made me more curious still.

Because this is Marvel and it is 2019, there are naturally multiple covers. I hope I get the Carlos Pacheco one featuring Dracula jumping on a werewolf. Comics just don't have enough fight scenes involving guys in tuxedos anymore.



These are two covers for Fantastic Four #15, and I like them both. The Nick Bradshaw one is just an all-around good cover. The J. Scott Campbell-drawn Mary Jane variant has the expected issues, but I confess to kind of liking MJ's Spider-Man-themed FF costume, with a Spidey face where the "4" in a circle would usually be on one of the FF's uniforms.

I know Spidey has had various FF-themed costumes before during his brief stints as a member, but how cool would it be if he had a costume just like the rest of the team's, only with his own face on it instead of their symbol...?



FANTASTIC FOUR: GRAND DESIGN #1 (OF 2)
TOM SCIOLI (W) TOM SCIOLI (A/C)
...
Because you demanded it! The bestselling GRAND DESIGN franchise continues with Marvel’s First Family! Brought to you by critically-acclaimed cartoonist TOM SCIOLI (GODLAND, TRANSFORMERS VS. GI JOE) in the sole-authorship tradition made famous by ED PISKOR’S X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN trilogy! Join the Watcher and witness how it all began… Plus appearances by your faves: Doctor Doom! Black Panther! Namor! Galactus! Mole Man! The Inhumans!
48 PGS./Rated T …$5.99


I'm excited about anything Tom Scioli does now, although I would personally have preferred him do, like, 200 pages worth of Super Powers comics for DC, rather than the rather short back-up stories he crafted for them (From what I've seen on Twitter, it looks like he has an infinity worth of ideas for the property).

Given his past work and obvious affection for Jack Kirby, having Scioli do anything Kirby related seems like a slam dunk of an idea. This has an added wrinkle though, in that if it's anything like Ed Piskor's X-Men: Grand Design, and given the title and the solicitation copy referring to it as in the tradition made famous by Piskor's X-Men: Grand Design, I have to assume that it is, then it will be a sort of remixed retelling of a huge chunk of the original FF comics. But it's my understanding (and limited experience) that the original FF comics all fit together fairly seamlessly, being the work of a single creative team, whereas the X-Men franchise started with one team in one direction, and then the X-Men were essentially re-created by another, at which point they achieved their more traditional iteration.

In other words, the X-Men saga seemed like it was particularly ripe for some kinda making-sense-of-it-all, smoothing-certain-stuff-over kinda remix, where the FF saga does not. I guess we'll see.

I would have thought the Avengers the next Marvel franchise most appropriate for a Grand Design treatment, as that book, like X-Men, seemed more fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants than the early FF comics, but if Scioli's Grand Design does well, maybe that will be next. Who would be good for that, though? Jim Rugg seems the obvious choice when looking for a third cartoonist to group with Scioli and Piskor, although personally I'd prefer Rugg keep making Street Angel comics (I tell you what, Marvel; let's compromise, and have Piskor do a Street Angel Vs. The Avengers comic).

I bet Michel Fiffe would be pretty killer on such a project, too...


Well that's a terrible cover for Invisible Woman. She's not invisible at all! I can see her quite clearly. At best, she's transparent woman.




MAGNIFICENT MS. MARVEL #8
SALADIN AHMED (W) JOEY VAZQUEZ (A)
Cover by EDUARD PETROVICH
The villainous MONOPOLY has his sights set on Ms. Marvel, and his new recruits DISCORD and LOCKDOWN are more than happy to deliver her on a silver platter. Can Kamala survive a zombie invasion AND an all-too-literal corporate merger?
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99


I'm not sure who this "villainous MONOPOLY" character is, but I hope he looks like this:


MARVEL ZOMBIES: RESPAWN #1
PHILLIP KENNEDY JOHNSON (W) LEONARD KIRK (A) Cover by INHYUK LEE
...
THE HORROR SMASH-HIT LIVES AGAIN!
When Galactus’ corpse appears at the edge of Earth’s solar system, the Avengers, X-Men and Fantastic Four investigate. Too late, they discover that Galactus’ body is now the vessel of an interstellar terror, which one-by-one transforms Earth’s Mightiest Heroes into the universe’s most terrifying predators! As our heroes try to escape the superpowered, cannibalistic aberrations that were once their friends and family, will any survive? And even if they do, can they hope to protect Earth from the infestation that has already claimed half of the known universe?
Don’t miss the FIRST ISSUE of this terrifying new vision of the classic Marvel tale!
40 PGS./ONE-SHOT/Rated T+ …$4.99


Wait, Marvel Zombies is a "classic Marvel tale" already...? It hasn't been that long since the concept was first introduced. Can't they at least say "modern classic Marvel tale," if only to not make me feel old...?

So, what do you think the chances are that Marvel decided to resurrect the franchise simply because DC's DCeased turned out to be something of a surprise hit...? I think the fact that this is a one-shot would argue in favor of it being a somewhat hastily decided-upon project. (Although the solicitation copy also refers to it as "the FIRST ISSUE" so, um, maybe Marvel has plans to follow it up elsehwere in the future, I guess...?)


THE PUNISHER #16
MATTHEW ROSENBERG (W) Szymon Kudranski (A)
Cover by GREG SMALLWOOD
MARY JANE VARIANT COVER BY BELEN ORTEGA
ZEMO DARK THIRTY!
New York City is under siege as the new Thunderbolts, Black Widow’s squad, mayor Fisk’s personal V.I.G.I.L. soldiers, and everyone in between get caught in the crossfire, but it all comes down to two men.
Punisher.
Zemo.
32 PGS./Parental Advisory …$3.99


I heartily applaud whoever decided to call this "Zemo Dark Thirty."


RED GOBLIN: RED DEATH #1
PAT GLEASON, ROB FEE, AND SEAN RYAN (W) PETE WOODS (A)
Cover by PHILIP TAN
...
DEAD IS THE NEW RED!
In order to finally destroy Spider-Man once and for all Norman Osborn joined
himself with the Carnage symbiote, becoming the Red Goblin! Here, at last, is the Red Goblin’s reign of madness and mayhem! So grab your greatest goblin gear and rend your raiments red, for the Red Goblin rides again!
40 PGS./ONE-SHOT/Parental Advisory …$4.99


Oh, Norman Osborn merged with Carnage to become the Red Goblin...so that's why he's red...



SAVAGE AVENGERS #6
GERRY DUGGAN (W) MIKE DEODATO JR. (A) Cover by DAVID FINCH
Conan & The Punisher attempt to walk out of the Savage Land hauling the caskets of Frank’s family...through Antarctica.
Frank Castle never was much of a religious man...but now he’s firmly “Crom-curious”
Watch out for the last page, it’s a doozy.
32 PGS./Parental Advisory …$3.99


I'm very excited about Crom-curious Frank Castle.



SAVAGE AVENGERS ANNUAL #1
GERRY DUGGAN (W) RON GARNEY (A) Cover MIKE DEODATO
...
A barbarian walks into a brothel and thus begins another adventure in the life of Conan of Cimmeria. Human traffickers finally meet an immovable human. Black Widow is drawn into the intrigue by following the trail of bodies left by Kulan Gath’s henchman, and a last prayer from one of the trafficked women summons an unexpected angel, the Son Of Satan himself, Daimon Hellstrom. It’s the Marvel team-up you didn’t know you needed until now. Pre-order Savage Avengers Annual # 1 or go to hell.
48 PGS./Parental Advisory …$4.99


Let's linger a bit on cover artist Mike Deodato's Son of Satan for a moment. His legs do not match one another. Like, at all. At first I assumed this was some sort of horrible art mistake. But then I realized that if Daimon is still supposed to be the literal son of Satan, and thus a half-demon, perhaps something is currently going on with him I'm not aware of; perhaps Deodato has purposefully drawn him with a goat-like left leg and a human-like right leg. But, if that is the case, why is Daimon wearing leather fucking pants? Surely that's not flexible enough to fit two differently-shaped and sized legs that well, is it? And wouldn't Deodato want to drawn him dressed differently, so as to emphasize his goat leg? Other clues are that Daimon's left arm also looks screwed up, suggesting that perhaps Deodato is drawing him in some state of demonic mutation and, arguing in the opposite direction, Black Widow's feet don't look quite right either.

So this is a pretty bad cover, but I'm not sure how bad, I guess is what I am saying.

Here's Tradd Moore's totally rad cover for the final issue of Silver Surfer: Black. There's four variant covers, including an MJ one, but dang, I can't imagine wanting a cover other than Moore's.


X-MEN #1
JONATHAN HICKMAN (W) LEINIL FRANCIS YU (A/C)
VARIANT COVER BY ARTGERM
VIRGIN VARIANT COVER BY ARTGERM
EVERY MUTANT EVER VARIANT COVER BY MARK BAGLEY
YOUNG GUNS VARIANT COVER BY MARCO CHECCHETTO
VARIANT COVER BY RUSSELL DAUTERMAN
DESIGN VARIANT COVER BY JONATHAN HICKMAN
HIDDEN GEM VARIANT COVER BY TBA
VARIANT COVER BY TBA
PARTY VARIANT COVER BY MARK BROOKS
PREMIERE VARIANT COVER BY LEINIL FRANCIS YU
DAWN OF X!
The X-Men find themselves in a whole new world of possibility… and things have never been better! Jonathan Hickman (HOUSE OF X, POWERS OF X, SECRET WARS) and superstar artist Leinil Yu (NEW AVENGERS, CAPTAIN AMERICA) reveal the saga of Cyclops and his hand-picked squad of mutant powerhouses!
40 PGS./Rated T+ …$4.99


The new X-Men comic, which seems to primarily be a vehicle for variant cover generation, will feature a line-up consisting of Cyclops, Wolverine and...that's all I am 100% sure on. Like, I recognize the two ladies there, but I've no idea which versions they are or what timeline they are from or whatever. I'm assuming the guy with the mustache is Cyclops' dad and the guy with the big gun is the new de-aged Cable, in which case this book looks like it is mainly...Cyclops' family, plus Wolverine...? Hmmm.

Based from what I've seen online, people seem pretty excited by Hickman taking over the franchise, and I have to admit that I'm curious (I thought Hickman's Avengers run was the best Avengers run I've ever read), but this cover doesn't fill me with hope. But hey, maybe one of the other ten covers features a line-up I find more compelling.

EXCALIBUR #1
TINI HOWARD (W) MARCUS TO (A) Cover by MAHMUD ASRAR
EVERY MUTANT EVER VARIANT COVER BY MARK BAGLEY
YOUNG GUNS VARIANT COVER BY MIKE DEL MUNDO
DESIGN VARIANT COVER BY JONATHAN HICKMAN
VARIANT COVER BY MIKE MCKONE
VARIANT COVER BY KRIS ANKA
HIDDEN GEM VARIANT COVER BY TBA
A NEW DAWN IS FORGED!
The Otherworld is rocked by war! It is a new era for mutantkind as a new Captain Britain holds the amulet, fighting for the Kingdom of Avalon with her Excalibur at her side - Rogue, Gambit, Rictor, Jubilee...and Apocalypse.
40 PGS./Rated T+ …$4.99


You can tell this book isn't as important as X-Men because it only has half as many variant covers.

So, that's an unusual line-up for an Excalibur team, right? There's, what, one British mutant on the team, maybe...?

I'm also not clear if this and the other X-Men book below is a one-shot or the first series in an ongoing. The solicits don't say "one-shot" in them, like the solicit for Marvel Zombies did, but the premises sound a little more temporary than one might expect.


MARAUDERS #1
GERRY DUGGAN (W) MATTEO LOLLI (A) Cover by RUSSEL DAUTERMAN
EVERY MUTANT EVER VARIANT COVER BY MARK BAGLEY
YOUNG GUNS VARIANT COVER BY Aaron Kuder
DESIGN VARIANT COVER BY JONATHAN HICKMAN
VARIANT COVER BY PHILIP TAN
HIDDEN GEM VARIANT COVER BY TBA
VARIANT COVER BY TODD NAUCK
THE X-MEN SAIL AT DAWN!
Even in this glorious new dawn, Mutantkind faces hardships and oppression from their human counterparts. Led by Captain Kate Pryde and funded by Emma Frost and the Hellfire Trading Company, Marauders Storm, Pyro, Bishop and Iceman sail the seas of the world to protect those hated and feared!
40 PGS./Rated T+ …$4.99


The bold new direction for the X-Men franchise is that...they are pirates now...? Huh. Okay. I guess that's something. It's certainly a nice cover. The two weird things that stand out to me here is that 1.) They are doing an X-men-as-pirates comic and Nightcrawler is not on the team and that's, like, his whole deal and 2.) The Marauders are a team of lame-o X-Men villains, so using their name without any obvious connection to them seems strange. Although maybe that just goes to show what marauders the X-men are now! They've totally mauraded the mauraders' very name...!



*I think. Look, I read Marvel in trade now, so I'm always six months behind now. As my knowledge of Marvel goings-on...? Never up-to-date!

Thursday, July 25, 2019

DC's October previews reviewed

It took me a distressingly long time to realize that the covers like the one above are DCeased variant covers, rather than just an image of, say, a particularly battle-damaged Aquaman. The scratches on his face aren't from Ocean Master's trident or some rebellious swordfish, but rather because the zombie infection in DCeased is a Black Racer-infused version of the Anti-Life Equation, which victims try to rip out of their own heads with their bare hands.

Anyway, the result is that if you scroll through DC's solicitations for October, you'll see  image after image of various DC heroes covered in blood--sometimes their own, sometimes someone else's. The above image, for Aquaman #53, is at least mildly creative in that it has droplets of blood underwater, I guess...?

As much as DCeased seems to be a fairly straightforward answer to Marvel's Marvel Zombies comics, one definite difference is that the covers are infinitely less fun. Right out of the gate Marvel hit upon having artist Arthur Suydam put together zombie "cover versions" of various famous Marvel covers, with rotting, undead versions of the heroes, villains and supporting characters reenacting the covers of Uncanny X-Men #1, Amazing Fantasy #15 and so on.

The concept was a good one, and all of the covers tended to have a macabre sense of humor about them. DC stopped short of imitating that aspect of Marvel Zombies though, opting instead of homages to horror movies created or owned by Warner Bros, it seems. I imagine that the fact that the DCeased zombies are actually "zombies" more than the actual undead might also have been a factor.

Of all the DCeased variants I saw, I think James Harren's variant for Hawkman #17 was probably the best of them, as the artist went in a Hawkman-as-a-scary-zombie direction rather than a Hawkman-with-lots-of-blood direction.
Given that October is the month that Halloween is in, though, if DC was going to spend a month cranking out gory variant covers, than October is the month to do it.

That might also explain why The Joker is all over this month's solicits...but, more likely, DC wanted to get plenty of Joker (sometimes with Harley Quinn, sometimes without) content on the shelves should the release of the film in early October spur an unexpected bout of Jokermania.
As for a more direct celebration of Halloween, DC is once again publishing a season-specific one-shot. This $10 80-page giant is called Secrets of Sinister House #1, and will star the usual suspects, from a group of creators that is only half-announced. One of those is Paul Dini, though, and one hopes he will be providing the framing sequences, given that those were probably the best part of the Harley Quinn-hosted Christmas party issue he did for a past holiday special.

What else can we look forward to in October? Let's take a look, shall we...?



BASKETFUL OF HEADS #1
written by JOE HILL
art by LEOMACS
backup story art by CREDIT
cover by REIKO MURAKAMI
...
The rain lashes the grassy dunes of Brody Island, and seagulls scream above the bay. A slender figure in a raincoat carries a large wicker basket, which looks like it might be full of melons…covered by a bloodstained scrap of the American flag.

This is the story of June Branch, a young woman trapped with four cunning criminals who have snatched her boyfriend for deranged reasons of their own. Now she must fight for her life with the help of an impossible 8th-century Viking axe that can pass through a man’s neck in a single swipe—and leave the severed head still conscious and capable of supernatural speech.

Each disembodied head has a malevolent story of its own to tell, and it isn’t long before June finds herself in a desperate struggle to hack through their lies and manipulations...racing to save the man she loves before time runs out.
Plus, in the premiere chapter of the backup story “Sea Dogs,” which sails across all the Hill House Comics titles!
ON SALE 10.30.19
$3.99 US | 1 of 6 | 32 PAGES
...
FC | MATURE READERS


I'm not really familiar with Joe Hill at all, having never read Locke & Key or any of his prose, so this doesn't seem like too terribly exciting an event to me personally, but, on the other hand, I have seen Hill's books around the library quite a bit, so I imagine he's at least something of a get for DC.

The premise of this book though--hoo boy. It's a lot of premise. It's not necessarily too much or too weird, but it seems like maybe not all of that information needs to be in solicitation, if that makes sense.

Like, when looking at late summer movies last time I was in the theater, all I really needed to know about the movie Crawl, for example, was that it was an alligator horror movie. Like, okay, got it, good; I don't need to know the character's name, the precise set-up, the mode of storytelling and the major themes of the work. What's that you say, this 47 Meters Down: Uncaged is a sequel to 47 Meters? Huh. That's weird. Is Mandy Moore in it? No? Are there still sharks in it? Okay yeah, that might be good.

I don't know, this might end up being brilliant, but for now I'm pretty skeptical of it, based solely on the generic horror movie poster image of the cover, Hill's background as a prose writer and the trying-so-hard solicitation. I hope it's good, and not a first draft of a screenplay. I guess we'll see...


BATMAN #80
written by TOM KING
art and cover by JOHN ROMITA JR. and KLAUS JANSON
...
The bad guys thought they had it made with Bane in control, but with Batman back in Gotham they’ll be reminded what justice feels like…and how it hurts when it hits you in the face. With Catwoman at his side, the Caped Crusader is looking to take down Bane’s army and reclaim his city. But what happens when old allies like Gotham Girl also stand in his way? The legendary art team of John Romita Jr. and Klaus Janson join BATMAN for two action-packed issues that will rock Gotham City to its foundation.
ON SALE 10.02.19
$3.99 US | 32 PAGES
CARD STOCK VARIANT COVER $4.99 US
FC | RATED T


Honestly, by far the most exciting thing about this is the words "art and cover by JOHN ROMITA JR. and KLAUS JANSON." I've kinda missed seeing Romita's art on the superhero scene of late, and given how great his arc with Scott Snyder on All-Star Batman was, I imagine two issues of him drawing Batman beating people up will be fun. I can't remember the last time King's Batman run seemed genuinely fun to me...

Here's JRJR's cover for Batman #81. I don't know if the Bane-signal is actually part of the story line (based on its dumbness, I assume not) or just an artistic metaphor, but it looks kinda neat here, and I love the over-the-top villain pose Bane is striking. Given the little white lines appearing around his head, I imagine he is probably yelling something, and the lettering isn't ready yet.

Personally, I hope it is "Osoiiiiiiiittoooooooooo!!!"


BATMAN: THE 1989 MOVIE ADAPTATION DELUXE EDITION HC
written by DENNIS O’NEIL
art and cover by JERRY ORDWAY
In time for the 30th anniversary of the blockbuster movie Batman, DC reprints the official comics adaptation in hardcover for the first time. Written by Dennis O’Neil, the dean of Batman writers, with lush artwork by Jerry Ordway, this story faithfully brings to comics the story from the Academy Award-winning 1989 movie! Collects BATMAN: MOVIE SPECIAL #1, plus high-quality scans of each page of original art presented in black and white to accompany the final colored pages.
ON SALE 11.20.19
$19.99 US | 7.0625” x 10.875” | 144 PAGES
FC | ISBN: 978-1-77950-050-2


Oh hey, it's my first Batman! I don't recall ever reading this comic--I do recall reading the novelization of the film that summer--but that original Batman film was my initial introduction to Batman as a "grown-up" (a grown-up of, um, 13-years-old), and, through the gateway the movie provided, Batman comics and then DC superhero comics and then super-comics in general.

I imagine it will be quite interesting to revisit that particular version of Batman (Michael Keaton is still my favorite live-action Batman by a mile) so far removed from the film itself, and to read that comic in today's environment, wherein comic book adaptions of movies are all but unheard of.

I don't know if it's necessarily ironic that, in a time when so much of Hollywood's output is adapted from comic book material and seemingly any movie or TV show with any sizable fandom has spin-off comics building a sort of Star Wars-style expanded universe around it, that we no longer see these sorts of direct comic book adaptations of feature films, or if it's just that the historic amounts of crossovers between film IP and comic book IP makes them superfluous.

I actually hadn't stopped to consider how long it's been since I've actually read a comic book adaptation of a movie, or even seen one in the wild. I mean, I've read these...



...but the most recent of those is from 2000, almost 20 years ago. Aside from the multi-issue adaptations of Star Wars movies, does any publisher still do straight adaptations of feature films...? I feel like there has to have been one since that Kelley Jones-drawn adaptation of Tim Burton's Legend of Sleepy Hollow, but I'll be damned if I can think of one.

Ever since 2000's X-Men re-ignited the superhero trend in Hollywood, I can't think of an adaptation of any of the Marvel or DC superhero films, and the comics related to movies I can think of all tend to be prequels, sequels or side-stories of some kind, stories set in the "universe" of particular movies, but not straight adaptations of said movies. Weird.


THE BATMAN’S GRAVE #1
written by WARREN ELLIS
art by BRYAN HITCH and KEVIN NOWLAN
cover by BRYAN HITCH
...
The World’s Greatest Detective must try to inhabit the mind of a murder victim to solve a case—without filling the empty grave next to those of his parents. Can Batman imagine the life of a corpse with a half-eaten face without dying himself?


Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch, one of the most legendary creative partnerships of the modern age, reunite in this maxiseries about life, death and the questions most are too afraid to ask.
ON SALE 10.09.19
$3.99 US | 1 of 12 | 32 PAGES
...
FC | RATED T+


Well I have to imagine that this is gonna sell pretty well. Ellis has written relatively little Batman, and the two Batman solo stories he's written that most immediately come to my mind were good but weird, featuring a very particular, very peculiar version of the character.

In terms of dialogue or panels featuring the character, I have to assume Ellis' Batman has appeared more in his various crossover comics or his JLA: Classified arc, "New Maps of Hell" (Warren Ellis on JLA following Joe Kelly is one of those great JLA runs that never happened, up there with Mark Millar's, Kurt Busiek's or Christopher Priest's, all of whom did some JLA issues or JLA-related stories around that time, but, for whatever reason, DC decided to turn the book into an anthology as Kelly's run neared it's end. Something I guess I am now going to discuss on a monthly basis.)

Anyway, it should be interesting to see Ellis spend this much time with the character. Also interesting will be seeing Ellis re-teamed with his old The Authority partner Bryan Hitch (still boggles my mind that DC never published a JLA/Authority crossover back in the day, when the two teams were at the apex of their popularity).

Hitch also has plenty of experience drawing Batman but, again, that experience is mostly of drawing Batman in the context of League comics. I'm not a huge fan of Hitch's style, and don't think he's particularly well-suited to the Batman character and milieu (preferring, as I do, more expressionistic artists who get as weird as possible when drawing such weird characters in such a weird place), but that is pretty good cover image (a better one than the recent Hitch-drawn variants featuring the character I've seen) and Kevin Nowlan is one of the greatest inkers to work in super-comics in my life time, so I'm really looking forward to seeing what Nowlan-over-Hitch on Batman ends up looking like.


BIRDS OF PREY #1
written by BRIAN AZZARELLO
art and cover by EMANUELA LUPACCHINO and RAY McCARTHY
card stock variant cover by J. SCOTT CAMPBELL
...
Black Canary’s life has spiraled out of control: her personal life is going through the ringer and her band is in crisis when an old flame resurfaces only to flicker out and set her on an all-new mission against an all-new opponent. The only thing she can be grateful for is the fact that she’s not alone, as Huntress finds herself on a collision course with Black Canary’s quarry at Detective Montoya’s urging. Meanwhile, Harley Quinn has resurfaced outside of Gotham City and out of the Suicide Squad, with a new lease on life that is sure to make everyone else’s life more complicated. And that’s only the first five pages.


Needless to say, the Birds are back in town! With more pressure and higher stakes than they have ever faced before, brought to you by hard-boiled superstar writer Brian Azzarello and the bombshell art team of Emanuela Lupacchino and Ray McCarthy.
ON SALE 10.30.19
$3.99 US | 32 PAGES
CARD STOCK VARIANT COVER $4.99 US
FC | RATED T+


I don't even know what to say about this comic, except that it seems weird to me that DC is having another go at the franchise so soon after the last cancellation...although given that there's a movie coming out, it does make a certain amount of sense that they would want a Birds of Prey book in shops just in case people come in looking for BOP comics. That would also explain why the comic seems to closely echo the upcoming film, at least in terms of which Gotham City characters are in it.

From what little I've seen so far, the film seems a confused jumble to me, featuring as it does Black Canary, The Huntress, Harley Quinn, Renee Montoya, Cassandra Cain and Black Mask and...no Oracle or Barbara Gordon? Is that right? It's early days in the film's promotion, of course, but it just seems like its makers collected a bunch of random Batman-related stuff no one else was using, including the name "Birds of Prey."

Given that the original Birds of Prey concept was an alliance between Oracle Barbara Gordon and Black Canary, to not have one half of the equation involved at all in a Birds of Prey movie makes the premise seem slightly strained, but then, the New 52-boots rejiggering of Barbara Gordon, the recreation of The Huntress(es) and the jettisoning of all the previous Birds of Prey stories kinda broke the franchise anyway.

I tried the first few issues of the last few efforts, but the most excited I ever got about a post-Flashpoint Birds of Prey comic is when Babs Tarr and the Batgirl writing team of Cameron Stewart and Brenden Fletcher teased a weird new line-up in the pages of their Batgirl, a line-up that didn't actually show up in the "Rebirth"-branded relaunch of the book (you know, the one they most recently cancelled).
Spoiler! Black Canary! Batgirl! Bluebird! And Frankie Charles as Oracle II, and not "Operator"...! This Birds of Prey woulda been so good!
Anyway, that's a good four paragraphs of me saying, "Eh, this doesn't look so good to me"...


DCEASED #6
written by TOM TAYLOR
art by TREVOR HAIRSINE, NEIL EDWARDS and STEFANO GAUDIANO
cover by MARK BROOKS
...
Humanity is on the brink of extinction, and only a few remaining members of the Justice League stand between life and annihilation. As the remnants of humanity make their last gamble for survival, will there even be a planet left to call home when all is said and done? The senses-shattering conclusion to the year’s surprise blockbuster is here!
ON SALE 10.30.19
$4.99 US | 6 of 6 | 40 PAGES
...
FC | RATED T+


Jeez, what's going on with the art on this book? I thought it bizarre the very first issue of a miniseries had two artists on it, but here, by the sixth issue, the number of artists has increased to three artists for a single issue. Weird.

Not that it seems to have mattered much in regards to how well the book has been selling, of course. Which isn't good news, as it just encourages the minimization of the importance of prioritizing good, solid artwork in super-comics from the mainstream publishers.


DOLLAR COMICS: BATMAN #497
writtenby DOUG MOENCH
art by JIM APARO and DICK GIORDANO | cover by KELLEY JONES
Reprinting the pivotal chapter of “Knightfall” in which Bane breaks the Bat! Solicited to coincide with TALES FROM THE DARK MULTIVERSE: BATMAN: KNIGHTFALL #1 (page 22).
ON SALE 10.16.19
$1.00 US | 32 PAGES | FC


It's been a while, but if I recall the issue correctly, this is basically a full-issue fight scene, which recounts the events of the "Knightfall" story up to that point, and it was a pretty great showcase for the artwork of penciller Jim Aparo, the definitive Batman artist (Plus, a Kelley Jones cover!). As the solicit says, this is being released in conjunction with the Tales From The Dark Multiverse riff on the story line, and it makes me feel both sad and old to think that there are people who will be buying that book who haven't read "Knightfall."

But then, I am sad and old, aren't I...?

Similarly, this month's slate of Dollar Comics reprints will include one for Superman #75, the death of Superman issue in which Doomsday and Superman seemingly "kill" one another in battle (the basis for another "What If...?"-like riff of a one-shot). The other Dollar Comics are reprints of 1975's The Joker #1 (because there's just never enough Joker), Watchmen #1 (I guess because of the TV show...?) and the first Swamp Thing #1, the one by the character's creators Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson (that's the only one I can't see a compelling reason for at the moment; I thought the Swamp Thing TV show was already out, and that it was being cancelled after its first season).


THE JOKER: YEAR OF THE VILLAIN #1
written by JOHN CARPENTER
and ANTHONY BURCH
art and cover by PHILIP TAN and MARC DEERING
In the Year of the Villain, what’s a Clown Prince of Crime to do when the world has started to accept doing bad as the only way to live? Out-bad everyone else, of course! The Joker is on a mission to get his mojo back and prove to the world that there is no greater villainy than the kind that leaves you laughing.

This special one-shot is co-written by legendary film auteur John Carpenter (The Thing, Halloween) and Anthony Burch (the Borderlands video games), making for a Joker comic that’s twisted in ways you never imagined!
ONE-SHOT | ON SALE 10.09.19
$4.99 US | 40 PAGES
FC | RATED T+


Weird. John Carpenter is a pretty huge, high-profile creator to be attached to a one-shot tie-in to an event series, isn't he? I would expect a John Carpenter co-written Joker comic to be, like, its own thing, than one of the many character-specific Year of The Villain one-shots. (This month there's also a Black Adam one.)

This is the first of three Joker-specific new comics, and, oddly, it's the shortest of them and the one directly tied into the events of the DCU, but it features the biggest name creator.


JOKER/HARLEY: CRIMINAL SANITY #1
written by KAMI GARCIA
art by MICO SUAYAN and MIKE MAYHEW
cover by FRANCESCO MATTINA
...
In Gotham City, where heinous acts of violence are a daily occurrence, the GCPD relies on Harley Quinn, a young forensic psychiatrist and profiler, to consult on their toughest cases. But Harley is haunted by one unsolved case—the night she discovered her roommate’s body marked with the signature of a notorious serial killer known as The Joker.

Five years later, the case remains unsolved and a new series of horrific murders occur throughout the city. As the murders escalate, Harley’s obsession with finding the depraved psychopath responsible leads her down a dangerous path. When the past and the present finally collide, Harley has to decide how far she is willing to go—and how many lines she is willing to cross—to solve these cases once and for all.

Writtenby #1 New York Times and international bestselling author Kami Garcia (co-author of Beautiful Creatures, author of Unbreakable and X-Files: Agents of Chaos) with art by Mico Suayan (Bloodshot: Reborn) and Mike Mayhew (The Star Wars), JOKER/HARLEY: CRIMINAL SANITY introduces readers to a Joker and Harley Quinn unlike any they’ve seen before, utilizing forensic psychiatry, behavior analysis (profiling) and psychological profiles to create a true-to-life take on these iconic characters that is more terrifying than any psychotic fantasy.
PRESTIGE FORMAT | ON SALE 10.09.19
$5.99 US | 1 of 9 | 40 PAGES
FC | APPROX. 8.5” x 10.875”
MATURE READERS


Here's another of this month's Joker projects, noteworthy (perhaps) for also being about Harley Quinn, who is also awfully over-exposed. This one's of interest for its writer, I think. I have never read Garcia's prose, but I was really quite impressed with how good her Teen Titans: Raven original graphic novel (for DC's DC Ink line of books for YA readers which, in what strikes me as a questionable move by the publisher, is abandoning its just-established branding, so that the line's identity is being abandoned, but the projects are apparently moving forward as just plain old DC-branded comics).

I have a review of the Raven book here, but, in general, there's usually reason to be skeptical of writers from other fields moving to comics, in large part because what makes one's writing good in a field like, say, prose or film is often rather different than what makes for good comics writing. But Garcia really sold me on that book and her emerging version of the Teen Titans, and I thought that was shaping up to be infinitely more compelling than the somewhat similar Teen Titans: Earth One original graphic novels by comics people. So I'm fairly confident that she'll be able to write a good story featuring The Joker and Harley Queen, both of whom seem like infinitely easier characters to build stories around than Raven...especially in this sort of project, where it appears to be it's own continuity.

The other noteworthy thing is that this book looks improbably large. A nine-issue miniseries, each issue of which has an over-sized page-count and will cost six bucks? I'm not entirely sure why this isn't an original graphic novel, or two or three ogns, based on that size/price tag.

Regardless, of all the Joker comics being published this month, I think those two factors make this one not only the most noteworthy, but the one with the most potential.


THE JOKER: KILLER SMILE #1
written by JEFF LEMIRE
art and cover by ANDREA SORRENTINO
variant cover by KAARE ANDREWS
Everyone knows The Joker doesn’t have the most promising history with psychotherapists. In fact, no one’s even been able to diagnose him. But that doesn’t matter to the confident, world-beating Dr. Ben Arnell; he’s going to be the one to unravel this unknowable mind. There’s no way The Joker could ever get through the therapeutic walls Ben has built around himself. Right? There’s no way The Joker’s been entering his house at night…right? There’s no way The Joker has stood over his son’s bed, and put that book in his hands, the one with the, the, the…
The Eisner-nominated creative team of Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino (GREEN ARROW, Gideon Falls) reunite for a psychological horror story where nothing is as it seems, your eyes can’t be trusted and Mr. Smiles is waiting behind the basement door.
Wait, who’s Mr. Smiles?
PRESTIGE FORMAT | ON SALE 10.30.19
$5.99 US | 1 of 3 | 32 PAGES
FC | APPROX. 8.5” x 10.875”
MATURE READERS


Here's another one, that looks both a lot simpler and a lot shorter than Garcia's project. I'm not much of a fan of Lemire's super-comics writing, which has all struck me as pretty mediocre--perhaps in large part because it's also so well-praised, that whenever I do read a comic of his I find myself struggling to see what other see in it--and I just plain can't read Sorrentino's art. I mean I can, but I find the style personally unappealing that it's hard for me to look at.


JUSTICE LEAGUE ODYSSEY #14
written by DAN ABNETT
art and cover by WILL CONRAD
...
An unknown warrior assembles Green Lantern Jessica Cruz and various heroes to form a new JLO as guardians of the Ghost Sector. Vastly outnumbered against Darkseid’s savage para-angel strikeforce, they’re going to have to fight their way through Darkseid’s new multi-planet realm of Apokolips to take control of Sepulkore or die trying. What choice do they have? The entire universe is depending on them...
ON SALE 10.09.19
$3.99 US | 32 PAGES
FC | RATED T+


I love that the "various heroes" mentioned in the solicit appear only as silhouettes on the cover, apparently to keep a degree of suspense about who these characters are, and yet one of them is quite clearly a flying house cat, of which there is only in the DC Universe. Well, one without a cape...I'm not actually sure of Streaky's current status in the DCU.

Of course, I guess it will be funny if that flying house cat ends up not being Red Lantern Dex-Starr, though...


METAL MEN #1
written by DAN DiDIO
art by SHANE DAVIS and MICHELLE DELECKI
cover by SHANE DAVIS
...
The Metal Men are back! And back and back and back again, as we take a deep look into Doc Magnus’ lab as he experiments with what it means to be sentient. Meanwhile, a mysterious liquid Nth metal has appeared in the science site at Challengers Mountain that appears to have come through from the Dark Multiverse…
ON SALE 10.16.19
$3.99 US | 1 of 12 | 32 PAGES
FC | RATED T


Say, what do you know? DC's publisher Dan DiDio has given himself another writing assignment! Yes, the publisher of one of the biggest comics publishing houses in the North American direct market has once again surveyed all of the comics writers and all of the potential comics writers in the entire world and decided that none of them would do as good a job at writing a 12-issue Metal Men comic as well as he could.

I guess something similar happens whenever DiDio's co-pubisher Jim Lee gets an art assignment with the company he oversees, although the major difference there is that Lee remains a hot commodity in the market, and his presence on a book seems to always help move more copies of it in an appreciable way. That is not the case with DiDio.

Although I guess, as a mini-series, it's already pre-cancelled...

Oh hey, so the solicitation for the first issue mentions Nth metal appearing in Doc Magnus' lab. What are the chances of that metal getting a responsometer at some point in the next 11 issues? Probably pretty good, right? (Please read the footnote to my review of Dark Nights: Metal #2 from 2017 for my thoughts on potential Super-Metal Men.)


SCOOBY-DOO 50TH ANNIVERSARY GIANT #1
Includes 30 pages of new stories plus classic reprints!
ON SALE 09.25.19
$4.99 US | FC | 96 PAGES


Reading this solicitation, I was at first struck by the fact that this seems like a not-very-good way to celebrate Scooby-Doo's fiftieth anniversary. Everyone loves Scooby-Doo! It would not be hard at all to get a huge swathe of all of the greatest and most popular writers, artists and cartoonists to contribute Scooby-Doo comics, pin-ups and redesigns to some giant anthology hardcover or miniseries that could so easily be the greatest Scooby-Doo comic book ever. (And why are we doing a month of DCeased variant covers instead of Scooby-Doo variant covers? Jesus, DC!)

Even if those 30 pages of new stories were three 10-page stories from Neil Gaiman and Jim Lee, Akira Toriyama and Raina Telgemeir, that would still seem not ambitious enough, but I imagine that those are not the folks who will be contributing those 30 new pages.

But then I saw all the other Giants DC has listed, and then this made a bit more sense. Like, sure, DC could/should do something gigantic and historic--at least as big as their Action Comics #1,000 and DC Comics #1,000 specials for Scooby's 50th, but this appears to be just one of a line DC is publishing in the month of October. None of the books have cover images yet, nor creators or contents listed, but the page-count, price tag and mix of new material with reprints suggests these are the equivalent of their Walmart-exclusive books.

Also solicited for October are giants featuring Aquaman, Batman, The Flash, DC Super Hero Girls, DC Villains, Swamp Thing, Teen Titans Go!, Wonder Woman and, most interesting to me, "DC Ghosts." (This being the month of Halloween, after all.)


SUPERMAN SMASHES THE KLAN #1
written by GENE LUEN YANG
art and cover by GURIHIRU
variant cover by KYLE BAKER
The year is 1946, and the Lee family has moved from Metropolis’ Chinatown to the center of the bustling city. While Dr. Lee is greeted warmly in his new position at the Metropolis Health Department, his two kids, Roberta and Tommy, are more excited about being closer to their famous hero, Superman!
While Tommy adjusts to the fast pace of the city, Roberta feels out of place, as she tries and fails to fit in with the neighborhood kids. As the Lees try to adjust to their new lives, an evil is stirring in Metropolis: the Ku Klux Klan. When the Lee family awakens one night to find a burning cross on their lawn, they consider leaving town. But the Daily Planet offers a reward for information on the KKK, and their top two reporters, Lois Lane and Clark Kent, dig into the story.
When Tommy is kidnapped by the KKK, Superman leaps into action—with help from Roberta! But Superman is still new to his powers—he hasn’t even worked out how to fly yet, so he has to run across town. Will Superman and Roberta reach Tommy in time?
Inspired by the 1940s Superman radio serial “Clan of the Fiery Cross,” Gene Luen Yang (American Born Chinese, Boxers and Saints, The Terrifics, New Super-Man) presents his personal retelling of the adventures of the Lee family as they team up with Superman to smash the Klan.
PRESTIGE FORMAT
BIMONTHLY | ON SALE 10.16.19
APPROXIMATELY 6” x 9”
$7.99 US | 1 of 3 | 80 PAGES
FC | RATED T+


This is one I've been looking forward to for a while now. Of the first crop of DC Zoom and DC Ink books announced, this was the one that seemed most promising to me, in large part because it had Gene Luen Yang attached, and original graphic novels for young readers is where he's from. All of the other announced writers were prose authors making their first attempts at comics. (Additionally, DC hasn't quite made the best use out of Yang since he started working with them. His characters and the basic story of New Superman were good, but the artwork was generally sub-par, and guaranteed that the book looked like everything else in DC's superhero line. That is, it didn't look like something from Gene Luen Yang that fans of his other comics should check out.

Then, of course, there was the fact that the Superman vs. the Ku Klux Klan is such an oft-told story in the history of Superman and in comics, but not one most of the people who have read about it have ever been able to experience for themselves. So yeah, a comic book adaptation of that? Sign me up!

And, finally, when they announced the artists attached, it was only the ideal art team for kid-friendly superhero comics, GURIHIRU. (Although I must confess that I am at least curious to see what Yang's Superman would look like, and I do hope he gets to write and draw a Superman comic at some point, even if it's just a 10-page short or a single, 20-page issue somewhere.

All that said, I do find myself somewhat distressed to see that Kyle Baker is going to be drawing a variant cover. Distressed because Baker is so good, and now the idea has been planted in my head to imagine a Kyle Baker-drawn Superman vs. The Klan story... The wisest course of action, fiscally, would be to trade-wait the book, but I am so excited about this, I'm not sure I will be able to.

There is one curious thing about this solicit. The book was originally announced as part of DC's Zoom line, which is targeted towards middle school readers. But here it is labeled "RATED T+," which means the publisher suggests it for readers 15 and older. I can't imagine they decided to re-rate it for an older audience as the project progressed, so perhaps it was just a mistake. Given the fact that the vas majority of their superhero output is rated T+, maybe it was simple force of habit to include that in the Superman Smashes The Klan solicitation...


SUPERMAN YEAR ONE #3
written by FRANK MILLER
art by JOHN ROMITA JR. and DANNY MIKI
cover by JOHN ROMITA JR. and DANNY MIKI
cover by FRANK MILLER
It’s the jaw-dropping conclusion to Frank Miller and John Romita Jr.’s blockbuster reimagining of Superman’s origin! In this final chapter, Clark Kent arrives in Metropolis, the city where he will fulfill his heroic destiny. Witness the first meeting between Superman and Lois Lane, the beginnings of Clark Kent’s career at the Daily Planet, and the birth of his rivalry with Lex Luthor. But when The Joker arrives on the scene, the Man of Steel must enlist the help of his two strange new friends: Wonder Woman and Batman!
PRESTIGE FORMAT
ON SALE 10.16.19
$7.99 US | 3 of 3 | 64 PAGES
FC | APPROX. 8.5“ x 10.875” | RATED T+


When this was first announced, I wasn't sure if this was meant to be the new "real" origin of Superman, ala the Miller-scripted "Batman: Year One" or its own, discrete thing, but the presence of that Wonder Woman design on the cover suggests that not only is this not a new official, canonical Superman origin, but it looks like it will be set in Miller's Dark Knight-iverse.

The collection of the entire series is also solicited this month.


TALES FROM THE DARK MULTIVERSE: BATMAN: KNIGHTFALL #1
written by SCOTT SNYDER and KYLE HIGGINS
art by JAVIER FERNANDEZ
cover by LEE WEEKS
Don’t miss this twisted tale from the pages of the game-changing event “Batman: Knightfall”! Thirty years after Bruce Wayne was broken and failed to take back the mantle of the Bat, Jean-Paul Valley, now known as Saint Batman, has turned Gotham into the city of his dreams. In his new order, killing has become commonplace and criminals live in constant fear—all in the name of justice. But just when all seems lost, a new hope for Gotham City rises…the son of Bane!
ONE-SHOT
PRESTIGE FORMAT
ON SALE 10.16.19
$5.99 US | 48 PAGES
FC | RATED T+


DC flirted with similar branding at one point, releasing a collection of Doug Moench, Kelley Jones and company's trilogy of Batman-as-a-vampire comics as Tales of The Multiverse: Batman: Vampire, but apparently it never caught on. Maybe all it was missing was the word "dark"...? (Yeah, I know, the "Dark Multiverse" is actually a thing, introduced in Dark Nights: Metal, and all the comics set there sold pretty well so sure, why not combine that concept with some of DC's all-time best-selling events like the Knightfall saga and the Death of Superman?).

I'd be pretty skeptical of this were it not for the presence of Scott Snyder, who came up with the Dark Multiverse concept and has also proven to be a pretty great Batman writer...certainly the best attached to the character on a regular basis since, I don't know, maybe Grant Morrison...? I also like the term "Saint Batman," which makes a degree of sense in the context of the Jean-Paul Valley story, but also just kinda sounds cool to my Catholic comic book reader sensibilities.


TALES FROM THE DARK MULTIVERSE: THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN #1
written by JEFF LOVENESS
art by BRAD WALKER and ANDREW HENNESSY
cover by LEE WEEKS
The Dark Multiverse takes on the highest-selling comic book event of all time—the Death of Superman! In a broken world much like our own, Lois Lane, twisted by rage and grief, becomes the Eradicator and takes revenge on those who let Superman die, and the corrupt world he could never defeat. Now, with the power of a god, she’s going to end the battle by any means necessary…and the Reign of the Supermen will be over before it begins!
ONE-SHOT
PRESTIGE FORMAT
ON SALE 10.30.19
$5.99 US | 48 PAGES
FC | RATED T+


While I'm not completely sold on this concept of "Elseworlds...but darker!", I am interested in DC continuing to publish comics that might compel Mike Sterling, the Internet's #1 talker-about "The Death of Superman" event, to generate more "Death of Superman" content on his progressiveruin.com. (Speaking of which, this month's solicits also include a reprint of Superman #75, in which said death occurred, and a print collection of a Louise Simonson-written digital series set during that time entitled The Death of Superman: The Wake).

This was the period in which I first started reading Superman comics, and I have a lot of affection for the work of creators from that period as well as the "Reign of The Supermen" versions of Superboy and Steel (who was then still "The Man of Steel" for a bit). If this story includes those two, I'll be a lot more likely to pick it up.

Saturday, July 06, 2019

A Month of Wednesdays: May 2019



BOUGHT:


DC's Year of The Villain Special #1 (DC Comics) At just 25 cents for an original 24-page story, this is one of those occasional so-cheaply-priced super-comics that seem like one would be foolish not to buy a copy, and so I but it I did--although I suppose I would have paid as much as $3.99 for it, given that it is basically a chapter of Scott Snyder and company's Justice League series, interrupted by a preview chapter of Brian Michael Bendis's story that will be playing out in Event Leviathan.

There's a lot of DC's better-selling talent involved in this--in addition to Snyder and Bendis, there's a sequence written by James Tynion IV, and the artists include Justice League's Jim Cheung and Francis Manapul and Event Leviathan's Alex Maleev--and I imagine it will be quite effective at getting people to try out the books it's essentially advertising (or, more likely, to get the people who were always planning on buying those books to be more excited about doing so).

Set up as three "chapters," it opens with an eight-page sequence by Snyder and Cheung entitled "Doom." The Legion of Doom attack Amanda Waller in the Oval Office, Brainiac sucks information out of her brain, Luthor and Brainiac go back to the former's skyscraper and, after previewing his plan to Brainiac, Luthor kills himself by detonating the building.

This is the first time I really stopped and thought about Brainiac's Christmas-colored dialogue balloons and I've decided I don't like them and don't really get them. I have no idea what they are meant to indicate that his voice would sound like, other than "different from everyone else's".

A full page of this story seems to be devoted to previewing whatever Tom King is up to in Batman, as there's a splash page break in the Luthor/Brainiac conversation depicting a swollen Bane hunched uncomfortably on a throne--it's probably his scuba tank full of neon green steroids making it hard to sit--with Flashpoint Bat-Dad and Psycho Pirate on either side of him. Luthor's dialogue is imposed over the image: "See how even those who have grand plans of their own, like our 'friends' in Gotham, are helping build to the same end."

That Snyder/Cheung story is followed by an eight-page chapter two, by Bendis and his old Daredevil partner Maleev. Teasing Event Leviathan, it features Green Arrow and Batgirl Barbara Gordon cornering a panicky Merlyn in Seattle, after which point something happens--a building blows up? Or implodes? Or gets sucked into a portal?--and someone in a mask makes Barbara Gordon an offer, referencing her out-of-continuity continuity, like the fact that she hacked her way into the Suicide Squad back in the '80s, and was even a member of an ad hoc Seven Soldiers of Victory for all of one adventure during the Mark Waid-lead 2000 Silver Age event series* (that team appeared in the Geoff Johns-written, Dick Giordano-drawn Silver Age: Showcase issue). He/she/it makes Babs an offer, but it is a different offer than the offer that Luthor is making supervillains as part of "Year of The Villain", and then there's a page set in the Batcave, where Damian tells Batman he needs to help disproving a theory, that "this new Leviathan threat... ...isn't The RED HOOD of Gotham. Your old partner... ...Jason Todd."

That isn't just phrased extremely oddly, but it's almost certainly not true, given the exchange we just witnessed between the Leviathan person and Batgirl.

This chapter/story left a lot to be desired. Bendis' Leviathan arc and Snyder's Justice vs. Doom war storyline don't really seem compatible with one another, or at least they don't really seem like they should be running at the same time. Both represent big threats, but Bendis' is very much in the smaller, more grounded analogous-to-the-real world part of the DCU setting, seemingly involving various espionage and law enforcement and intelligence agencies and crime syndicates, while Snyder's story is at a cosmic scale involving the multiverse, gods, creation and the end of all things. Both are all-hands-on-deck kind of stories, but the Leviathan thing so far seems like relatively extremely small potatoes, something Batman doesn't have time to deal with when he and the Justice League are consumed by trying to keep all of existence in existence.

It doesn't help that the thing which apparently convinced DC that the two storylines are thematically similar enough to tease in the same special, that they both involve villains, are maybe too similar, and that both Luthor and the mysterious, masked Leviathan character are simultaneously making offers to various players in the DCU.

I also just found the storytelling in this sequence irritatingly familiar. Perhaps it is just because Bendis is here once again working with a long-time partner from his Marvel days, but this all felt like the same old tired Bendis scripting I've read a million times, rather than the more exciting "new" Bendis I've seen of late, as he's been paired with new-to-him artists on new-to-him characters in a new-to-him setting. Maleevs's art is realistic to a fault, the action all vaguely implied by fairly static poses in the art (or, in the case of Meryln blocking Green Arrow's arrow by shooting it out of the air with his own arrow, the sound effects). There's one three-panel sequence that that makes no visual sense at all. A ship appears in the sky, it either shines a spotlight or shoots some sort of weapon at the rooftop the three are standing on, and then there's either an explosion or a blast of electricity or a flash of light, and then part of the building is missing...or maybe not, since we never got an establishing shot of the building, there's no way of knowing if the top few floors blew up or teleported or collapsed or if they were never even there, and the lighting effect was just so big that it obscured the space above the building, rather than the building itself.

Anyway. Lots of dialogue, Barbara and Ollie bantering like Stock Bendis Hero Character #1 and Stock Bendis Hero Character #2, and lots of repeating panels of tight head shots, with Maleev barely altering the images or repeating them at different levels of closeness to spare himself drawing too much (in an eight-page story!). This is basically what I most feared we would be getting when Bendis' move to DC was first announced. I was rather pleasantly surprised that we didn't get it...at least, not until now.

After that interlude, it's back to the Justice League for chapter three, only now Justice League fill-in writer Tynion is scripting, as is obvious from the over-narration of a couple of sequences that don't really need words, let alone 500 words in little boxes. The long and the short of it is basically that the Justice League is back from the future, and they are still dealing with the repercussions of the breaking of the Source Wall, evacuating planets and stuff like that. At one point, the League has one of their psychic meetings, at the end of which Batman dramatically declares, "We call everyone. And then we go to war." He says this on a two-page spread over which Manapul draws what looks like most of the DC Universe that is currently starring in comic book series, including the teams from the pages of Teen Titans, The Titans, Justice League Dark, and The Terrifics, plus a handful of the currently book-less, like Firestorm, Animal Man, Captain Atom and Metamorpho. There's also a bit featuring Perpetua, a reminder that The Batman Who Laughs is still around and then an indication that, shock of shocks, maybe, just maybe Lex Luthor isn't really totally dead forever after all.

After those three eight-page stories, there's another eight-pages of advertorial type material, basically prose pieces with images from other comics inserted into them. These include a checklist of sorts of the 20 July comics tied into "The Offer" portion of the "Year of The Villain" branding event/mega-story/crossover.


DCeased #1 (DC) I really liked the title of this comic; it is a really solid clever/dumb gag. Unfortunately, that was the sole part of this first issue I liked, and I stopped enjoying it immediately as I read past the title and got to the cover image, a pretty uninspired image of Batman fighting off a SWAT team; you'll even have to look somewhat closely to see that they lack pupils and a couple are tearing at their own scalps; the blood stains aren't from Batman beating on them. They are, instead, DCeased's version of zombies.

Writer Tom Taylor is a pretty great super-comic writer, and one who has consistently managed to surprise me with his ability to turn even dross like, say, a years-long adaptation of that dumb-looking Injustice video game into...well, if not gold, than at least not-dross. And this is a real lay-up of a comic book premise: An out-of-continuity DC Universe vs. Zombies comic, DC's belated answer to Marvel Zombies, only less inspired (That is, this is just straight up heroes fighting a zombie pandemic of the sort that has been in 500,000 different movies since 28 Days Later reignited zombie interest in the mainstream, rather than Marvel's What If...All Our Heroes Had Been Turned Into Zombies? take).

I am sure it has crossed the minds of, like, everyone who writes super-comics and/or reads them; hell, it generally crosses my mind every time I watch a zombie movie, because, um, Batman, Superman and The Justice League are, like, always in the back of my mind. And because I have given some thought to this before, I do think there are some pretty interesting directions one could go in with this, like how the World's Finest's complete and total refusal to ever kill would apply to fighting a horde of the undead...do they just capture them and transfer them to giant zombie prisons while trying to figure out a cure? Do they come to blows with Wonder Woman and Hawkman or whoever over whether or not it's "okay" to kill the undead? Does Batman find himself at a disadvantage when it comes to killing his foes, because he's trained his whole life to fight without killing?

Taylor, at least in this first issue, doesn't seem to do much but fill in the blanks necessary to buttress the pitch though, and so the main points of interest are seeing the writer solve relatively easy problems like, for example, how a zombie apocalypse scenario might come about in the DCU, and how zombies might even prove a threat to the DC heroes, considering their abilities (Plop Superman down in pretty much any zombie movie you've ever seen, for example, and he would solve the problem before Patient Zero manages to bite three victims; and even if the pandemic does manage to spread to a few thousand people before he gets involved, if Superman did have no qualms about killing zombies, then, dang, it would take about five minutes for him to save the day).

An unseen, never identified narrator who is apparently one of the superheroes--or at least on speaking terms with Cyborg--tells us that the Justice League has just staved off Darkseid's latest invasion of Earth, a week-long battle between the heroes and the forces of Apokolips. (Here, the League means The Trinity, The Flash, Hawkgirl, Green Lantern Hal Jordan, Black Lightning, Green Arrow, Black Canary and Nightwing, all costumed as they are in current DCU continuity).

As Darkseid retreats into a Boom Tube and tells the heroes he got what he came for, they suddenly notice that Cyborg is missing. That's because Desaad--as with the other New Gods characters featured, he appears in his New 52 incarnation--already has Cyborg nailed down to a table. Apparently, Darkseid has found the other half of the Anti-Life Equation inside of Cyborg, and as the dark gods prepare to unleash it, they pump a bit of extract from The Black Racer into Cyborg in order to control how quickly he dies, introducing an x-factor that instead turns the Anti-Life Equation into some kind of modern zombie movie disease that makes those afflicted try to rip open their own heads to get it out before they turn into ravenous, flesh-eating fast zombies.

To save himself, Desaad Boom Tube's Cyborg back to Earth, and there the equation/disease starts to leap through the Internet onto people's screens, turning them (similar to the Stephen King novel Cell, and the movie adaptation of the same name). Superman manages to save Lois, his son Jon and Jon's friend Damian Wayne, who is visiting, but things don't go so well over at Wayne Manor. Batman is immediately confronted by the already equated Dick Grayson and Tim Drake, both in Wayne Manor and in costume for some reason, who attack him; the last image is of Nightwing biting deep into Batman's neck and Tim's gloved fingers somehow scooping right through Batman's costume and deep into his flesh.

And that's the premise, really. DC Universe vs. Zombies by way of Darkseid and Cell.

There's some clever-ish dialogue in here, mostly in the passage where Cyborg tries to trash talk his captors and a few lines from Green Arrow in his traditional questioning-authority role on the League, but it's mostly a Point A-to-Point B sort of plot, and one that brings nothing fresh or original to the zombie genre, and, given how violent DC Comics have gotten in the last few decades, nothing particularly noteworthy to the DCU setting, either.

The apparent loss of Batman right at the start of the story--after some panel-time is spent demonstrating once again how he is a few steps ahead of all of his peers and plans for absolutely everything--is somewhat subversive, I suppose, but it too is disappointing, as Batman vs. Nightwing and Robin fight to the former's death should be a lot more intense and emotional than the six panels it gets here (Maybe if DCeased was an ongoing like Injustice was, Taylor could have fleshed this stuff out more).

It obviously doesn't help that Taylor doesn't really have an artistic partner in the endeavor, but there are instead two art teams on the very first issue. Trevor Hairsine and Stefano Gaudiano draw 18 pages, while James Harren draws an eight-page passage that separates the Hairsine/Gaudiano passages. The separation of the art teams is somewhat organic in that the former draws the stuff set on Earth, while the latter draws the part set on Apokolips, but their styles don't really mesh, and it's not a great sign that a six-issue miniseries couldn't go even one issue with a single art team.

I suppose there is still plenty of time for Taylor and company to turn the book around, but the issue certainly failed the baseline test of the first issue of any comic book series. That is, it didn't make me the least bit interested in picking up the next issue.


Drawing Blood #1 (Kevin Eastman Studios) Okay, I've read this comic a couple times now, and am writing about it almost a full month after I read it for the first time, and I'm still not entirely sure what to think of it. This is the latest work from Kevin Eastman, and while he's been productive to the point of prolific contributing covers and artwork to IDW, DC Comics and even Marvel comics of late, this is his first self-published work in a while, and his most ambitious.

It stars a rather Keven Eastman-like character, Shane Bookman, who co-created a comic book property that became successful beyond his wildest imagination, and then fell on hard times. Now Eastman and his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator Peter Laird have maybe the most interesting real-life stories in all of comics to tell. Through hard work, perseverance and a bit of eureka, bolt from the blue inspiration, they were joking around one day and came up with a weird concept, and a four-word title for a comic book that was practically a magical spell.

Together they managed to create a comic book that fused their various influences and passions into something entirely new, a work that took the best of both of them to succeed (I don't think it's too controversial an opinion to state that the very best Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics were those by Eastman and Laird, and that the Eastman-without-Laird and Laird-without-Eastman TMNT comics were inferior to those they did together). Mindful of how their comics creator heroes were often screwed over by their publishers, and how those creators suffered by virtue of not owning their own work, Eastman and Laird did pretty much everything themselves, even as their creations swelled to global phenomenon status, and eventually the amount of work necessary and the time spent together destroyed their working relationship--although the exact details seem to be known only by the two men themselves, and those around them. I certainly don't know the specifics, but it seems somewhat tragic that Eastman eventually sold his part of the property to Laird, and then Laird eventually sold it all to Nickelodeon, and the creations they labored so hard to protect eventually ended up being owned by a big entertainment corporation anyway, and, somewhat sadly, Eastman is now working on TMNT comics for IDW, who has the license from Nickelodeon.

I mean, I say "somewhat sadly," but I don't know how sad Eastman really is about it. Nor am I sad about it, as it means we get to see the characters' co-creator working on them rather regularly. Just, seen from a distance, there's an element of a cosmic tragedy in the Eastman and Laird story.

So Eastman doing a semi-autobiographical comic book about an Eastman-like cartoonist's life after his TMNT-like creation? That sounds amazing. I'd love to read that (Not as much as I'd love to read a straight Eastman biography, though, or a straight Laird one. I hope both of those men are writing or co-writing their own biographies, preferably in prose format, although I guess comics memoirs would be interesting, too. I also hope some enterprising comics journalist with my level of interest in the subject, but with far more social skills, far more interviewing and writing talent and far fewer anxiety disorders is busting his or her ass interviewing the hell out of Eastman and/or Laird and trying to write the definitive book on what is maybe the most interesting comic book industry story of all time. Seriously, I assume there will be a prestige Eastman and Laird biopic released in some award season in our life time...maybe a decade or so after the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby biopics).

Anyway, this is not that. This is...I don't know what it is. I knew more after I finished reading it, when I got to the back matter, and I didn't like that at all.

But first, the comic. Eastman shares a "Created By" and "Story By" credit with David Avallone, a writer whose name I had never heard before, but who, according to comics.org, has written a sizable number of books for Dynamite and American Mythology, mostly Bettie Page comics. There's a David Avallone on IMDb.com, but I'm not sure it's the same guy; in any case, that David Avallone's credits are mostly as editor, and there are only two writing credits, both from the '90s.

The artwork is where it gets really interesting. That isn't by Eastman either...or, at least, most of it isn't. Instead, a Ben Bishop draws the bulk of the book. All of it save for the flashbacks, which are laid out by Bishop but finished by Eastman, and the "hallucinations", which are finished by artist Troy Little.
Ben Bishop
My mind started to boggle on the very first page, in which we see our narrator and protagonist, the Eastman-like artist character, sitting in a parked car on a dock, snorting cocaine with his best friend Nigel "Beastly" Boswell, who hands him a pistol. On the second page, some gangsters show up in a second car and, well,it becomes quickly apparent that this is just another fucking crime comic. That...that is extremely disappointing. As the meet goes south, as ten out of ten such meets go in crime comics, TV shows and movies, Shane "Books" Bookman's narration resumes with "I guess the first thing I should have told you is... I'm a cartoonist. "

And then we get a flashback leading us to this point. Shane is trying to get a Broadway show going when an artist friend tells him that his publishing partner Frank Forrest has just killed himself. Shane then flashes back--yeah, a flashback within a flashback--to a 1986 New England comic con, where Shane and his brother Paul first met Frank. They were kids, he was a successful cartoonist. When young Shane tells his hero he wants to grow up to be a comics artist some day and wants to know what it's like, he responds, "Honestly? If I'd known what the life of a professional cartoonist was like, I'd have cut my drawing hand clean off." After he reviews Shane's art, he gives him his condolences: "The is good. That means someday you're going to feel exactly the same way I do about it. Sorry, kid."
Bishop and Eastman
Shane soon discovers that Frank had embezzled a lot of money from their company, leaving Shane with a great deal of debt, some of which is owed to organized crime. Hence the opening sequence.

There are hints from Shane's life that seem to reflect Eastman's own life. For example, when his lawyer tells him exactly how dire his financial straits are and he asks what he should do, she responds, "Can you create another beloved billion dollar worldwide franchise by next week? I mean...you did it once, right?" Later, when he's trying to process his feelings at the drawing board, one of his creations--the Raphael-like member of the Radically Rearranged Ronin Ragdolls, a mutant cat analogue to Eastman's TMNT--appears to him in a hallucination, berates him, beats him and accuses him: "You betrayed us! You sold us like slaves and gave up!"
Bishop and Troy Little
How reflective this is of the real Eastman's real feelings--certainly the former bit with the lawyer has occurred to him repeatedly in his life time--is anyone's guess, but it makes a reader curious. Of course, that's one of the problems with this book...or, at least, this initial issue. Sorting out what's real and what's not, and what's meant to be real and what's not is kind of troubling. Honestly, if Eastman cast himself as the star of the book, and then went off in a crime direction with his own life, that would be one thing, but because Shane is an analogue character, and a transparent one, it's hard for a reader to get swept up in the story and stop wondering if other characters are meant to correspond to real people. For example, is Frank supposed to be Peter Laird (no), Jack Kirby (no), Frank Miller (nope), some real-life business partner of Eastman's, a complete fabrication pulled form the ether, or some sort of composite...? I don't know. But I wondered, and would tick off the various way the character might have corresponded to real people from Eastman's career I might know of, and other ways that eliminated them. I don't think this is a good way to read a comic, and yet with each new character I found myself doing the same (For what it's worth, if there's a Laird analogue in here, I have to assume it's going to be Shane's brother Paul, as that was his co-creator on his analogue TMNT).

I was still puzzling over why Eastman and Avallone decided to go in such an uninspired, generic crime story direction given how much more interesting, unusual and compelling the behind the scenes stuff of a cartoonist who lost control of his greatest creation and was now struggling to find something else as creatively fulfilling and financially successful really is (That is a story only Eastman could tell, while anyone who's watched four episodes of Law and Order coulda come up with these crime comic scenes).

I got the disappointing answer in the back matter. There's a two-page prose piece from Avallone dated "July 2018, Hollywood" explaining how the book came about. The pair were talking and drinking at a hotel bar at a comic con when Eastman told Avallone about his idea for a movie called On The Shoulders of Giants about "a comic book creator facing a personal crisis...a man with a biography similar to Kevin's, but not identical."

After Avallone gave him the better, more Hollywood-friendly title of Drawing Blood, he told him "This isn't a movie. It's a TV show. Like a 'quality TV' cable show." And, ugh, that's where this Kickstarter-funded series really came from. Avallone explains that this is planned as a nine-issue series that would cover the first season of the TV show.

Given that ambition, I suppose the fact that there's a faux-Eastman in it makes more sense, as Nickelodeon certainly wouldn't let an animated Raphael appear to punch out the actor playing Kevin Eastman, but there's something...sad about the whole thing. Comics-as-Hollywood pitches seems like a very '00s phenomenon, back when publishers were flooding the market with high-concept miniseries that were transparently the work of wannabe screen writers adapting their pitches into comics with the end goal of getting a trade paperback collection to bring with them to pitch meetings. Most of those comics not only weren't very good--it's not easy to take a film script and turn it into a compelling comic, particularly when compelling comics aren't even the goal--and all of them were depressing, making the comics industry seem like a stepping stone overly-ambitious writers would try to slum in, even though they were the only ones who thought they were actually slumming.

It's quite depressing to see Eastman, one of the most successful comics creators of all time by many metrics, engaged in that now, even though I know some of his past comics projects were created with an eye towards mass media adaptation (Fistful of Blood, for example). On the other hand, because Eastman has made comics for so goddam long, and to have made them pretty much from scratch back in the 1980s, he knows a thing or two thousand about putting quality comics together, and Drawing Blood is therefore much, much more compelling than pretty much every comics miniseries-as-Hollywood pitch comic that has preceded since the turn of the century. Even something simple, like the three artists for different types of scenes, isn't something one would have seen from similar projects from the publishers who specialized in this sort of thing (most of whom are no longer around, and those that are still around seem to have minimized those sorts of books in their overall output).

I...don't really need to or want to watch Drawing Blood on Netflix in a few years. I do want to read the rest of this comic book series though. And, someday, read that Eastman biography...


Radically Rearranged Ronin Ragdolls #1 (Kevin Eastman Studios) This comic is pure gimmick, but it's straightforward and unapologetic in its gimmickry, and it's a pretty clever gimmick, really. This is a real one-shot by Kevin Eastman and company that is meant to be read as the comic within the comic Drawing Blood; that is, this is the comic book that Drawing Blood's protagonist Shane Bookman supposedly created with his brother Paul, the book that became a runaway media sensation and global phenomenon he's been unable to top. It is also, obviously, a pretty transparent stand-in for Eastman's own Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic with Peter Laird, making this a rather heady, meta-comic. This is the co-creator of Eastman and Laird's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, an indie comics juggernaut that spawned a half-dozen barely-veiled imitators, analogue and parodies, first in comics and later in cartoons, doing his own TMNT imitations/analogue/parody.

That, in and of itself, is pretty remarkable, and justifies this issue's existence.

In addition to providing the rather Frank Miller-esque cover, complete with TMNT-style lettering, Eastman handled the lay-outs, and gets credits for creation, character designs and story. His Drawing Blood co-creator Daivd Avallone handles the script, and gets story and created by credits, while Troy Little is credited with "final artwork"; Little is one of the three artists who drew portions of Drawing Blood, handling the "hallucination" sequences featuring the in-story TMNT-knock offs.

These particular knock-offs are cats--I eventually realized that it may be intentional that Eastman's own TMNT copycat characters are actual cats, and they are three rather than four in number. They are also sisters, rather than brothers. But much of their story will sound familiar, although I suppose it's worth noting that Avalone and Eastman didn't follow the TMNT template as closely as they could have; the book echoes the original, first issue of the Mirage TMNT comic quite directly at points, but not so zealously that it's a point-for-point pastiche (In the storytelling, I thought the most direct echo was the two-page spread on pages two and three, when the RRRR are introduced leaping towards the reader in the same way the TMNT did in pages two and three of their first issue.

Tezuka, Otomo and Miyazaki are sword-wielding mutant cats who are busting up the designer drug operation of a villain named Overdog. On their way back to Tiger Sushi, where they live with their adopted parents, they save a young boy from bullies and, their existence revealed, take him into the restaurant. They tell him their story, of how they were once orginally kittens who were taken to a secret laboratory and exposed to a serum that made them smarter. When the lab is attacked, they flee gunfire, running through the gamma ray lab, the cosmic ray lab and the genetic mutagen lab. Thoroughly mutated--or "radically rearranged," I guess--they run into the city, eventually finding an old man and his wife being threatened at gunpoint by a protection racket. They intervene, and are rewarded by being adopted. Their new father trains them in martial arts, but he is later killed, and the three of them have sworn vengeance on the an responsible, Overdog.

I don't know that I would want to read a whole series featuring these characters or anything, but for 36-pages it was fun. Eastman is really good at action lay-outs, and while I probably would have preferred to see him draw the whole book, Little is a pretty great artist; his cat-women reminded me a bit of Jeff Smith's art, while his human beings reminded me a bit of Judd Winick's character designs. No one gets a lettering credit, but those look a bit like those of Steve Lavigne or Eastman's in the old Mirage comics, so even those looked a bit familiar to me. It's in full-color, but other than that, this is a very TMNT-y homage/parody to the TMNT...by one of the guys who did TMNT, given the excuse to do so by the fact that although this comic is a comic, it's meant to be read as the comic within a comic.

There are no less than eight covers for the issue--so it's really a product of its time, rather than trying too hard to imitate the original TMNT #1--and some of these are pretty interesting. Eastman provides two of teh covers; one of which is sort of similar to the general lay-out and poses of the Turtles on TMNT #1. Two of the covers are by artist Alan Quah, and those are even more closely modeled on TMNT #1. Among the other covers are one by Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles artist Freddie Williams II and one by Stan Sakai, featuring Usagi Yojimbo fighting side-by-side with the Ragdolls.


Hamlet Starring Donald Duck (Dark Horse Books) Hamlet, perhaps the best-known drama to feature a conflict between an uncle and nephew in the entire Western canon, is perfectly suited for an adaptation casting Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge and the various Disney ducks as the principals. After all, the the cast of Disney's duck comics are almost exclusively uncles and nephews, and almost always in some state of conflict with one another.

Sadly, this book by writer Giorgio Salati and artist Paolo De Lorenzi isn't at all what I originally expected when I originally ordered it, nor is it precisely what I wanted it to be. It is not an adaptation of Hamlet in the way that Mickey's Christmas Carol was an adaptation of Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol, wherein the various Disney characters are playing the parts of characters from the original work, with character-specific jokes and parodic elements thrown in.

Instead, it is akin to Disney Don Quixote, in which Disney's cartoon characters find themselves in a highly fictionalized plot that parallels the plot of a work of classic literature, rather than any sort of direct adaptation. As with the Don Quixote comic, the only one of these I've previously read, if one weren't pretty familiar with the work being adapted already, one might not necessarily be able to recognize it from the resultant comic.

It is worth noting, however, that the Hamlet adaptation lacks a layer of complexity that the Don Quixote comic had, as the latter featured Mickey, Goofy and their supporting cast playing different versions of themselves who then enacted the Cervantes-inspired plot. Here, the action begins with Uncle Scrooge taking his nephews Donald, Huey, Dewey and Louie to Denmark to inspect his smoked kipper supplier, and there the nephews sneak off to read William Duckspeare's tragedy "Ducklet," the bulk of the comic being the dramatization of "Ducklet", starring Donald, Scrooge and their supporting cast.

While Donald obviously stars as the Hamlet analog, Scrooge doesn't play his antagonist uncle Claudius, but, instead, the ghost of "King Scrooge" (I suppose casting the heroic Scrooge as a murderous, wife-stealing Shakespeare villain was a bit too far for the creators and/or Disney). The Claudius role instead goes to John D. Rockerduck, who plays Rocklaudius (all of the character names are basically clumsy portmanteaus smooshing the ducks' original names into those of the Shakespeare characters).

The Ophelia and Laertes roles are obviously filled by Daisy and Gladstone, while Ludwig Von Drake plays their father, Polonius/Drakonius. Rounding out the cast are Gyro as Horatio, Brigitta MacBridge as Queen Gertrude and Gus Goose and Fethry as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. The boys play multiple roles, appearing first as the traveling players who Ducklet enlists to perform a play to prove Rocklaudius' guilt, and, later, as the gravediggers who appear in the scene with Yorrick's skull, which is now played by a pumpkin.

Perhaps because this is a Disney comic book, all of the death, madness and allusions to sex are taken out of the play...which means there is a lot that needs to be sanitized. Because Hamlet is a tragedy and pretty much the entire cast is dead by the end of it, that means writer Giorgio Salati had to go to some pretty absurd lengths to make a death-free version of Hamlet and, luckily, it's absurd enough that the changes all play like gags.

So the "ghost" of Scrooge isn't really a ghost at all. Rather than pouring poison in a sleeping Scrooge's ear, Rocklaudius poured "nonsense juice" in his ear, rendering him "transparent and incorporeal... ...like a ghost", so that only a very close relative like Donald--er, Ducklet could see him.

Rocklaudius wasn't interested in the queen as much as the crown...and Scrooge's wealth. In fact, neither Scrooge nor Rocklaudius seem to have any real interest in the queen, whom they regard as if she has cooties. Ducklet doesn't stab Draklonius through the curtain, but instead steps on his foot; this sends him hopping about on his other foot until he konks his head with Ophelia/Duckphelia, knocking him unconscious and rendering her...silly, I guess. It is for these injustices that Gladertes wants revenge on Ducklet rather than, you know, killing his dad and driving his sister to suicide.

And as for Yorrick's skull in the graveyard, it has been replaced by a "Yorick-O'-Lantern" in the pumpkin patch.

Some of these changes are obviously greater reaches than others, but even the least elegant solutions are at least funny in the great lengths to which the creators have gone. Additionally, while some of the relationships are somewhat mangled by being run through a Hamlet-ization process, others work extremely well, like Scrooge haranguing Donald (albeit it here in a ghostly form no one else can see or hear) and Donald and Gladstone coming to blows with one another over Daisy (here with maces dipped in nonsense juice).

While I didn't much care for Don Quixote, and was disappointed by the premise of this one--and likely will be by all those that will follow, if the pattern of these two holds for the Dracula and Frankenstein books I've already ordered--I liked this one a lot more. I'm not sure if it was because there were fewer hoops involved with the adaption process, or my preference for Donald and Scrooge over Mickey and Goofy, or my greater familiarity with the source material, or if it was just plain better made, but I suspect all of those factors played some role.



Justice League #23 (DC) This is only chapter four of "The Sixth Dimension," but it feels more like chapter fourteen to me. There's not much forward progression, at least not any more than one could assume from having read the last issue. Superman is stuck in an inescapable trap of sorts (although I guess his flashback to hanging out with his son was unexpected and interesting, particularly as I worry that that Superboy might be in the process of going away), Batman is still talking with the World Forger, and the imps are still battling on fourth-dimensional Earth. Most of the action of this issue is concerned with the rest of the League's attempts to escape the future's Apokalyptian prison, and the unexpected help they get from the future's remaining Legion of Doom members. It's all perfectly okay, and aside from the somewhat slow and stalled-out pacing of the arc, the only thing that really bugged me was the continued misunderstanding of Martian Manhunter's powers. This issue seems to suggest, for example, that he is a powerful telekenitic which...is not the case. Or at least wasn't the case. Who can keep up with things like character, consistency or continuity in a constantly rebooting shared universe setting, anyway...?

The best part was probably a riff on a the "Darkseid Is" slogan from Grant Morrison, Howard Porter and company's "Rock of Ages" arc from JLA; the moment is actually kind of dumb, but just the right sort of dumb to make the gag work.

I got the variant cover, which I liked better than the regular cover...
...despite the fact that it features two characters who haven't been in the book for a while now--Aquaman and Cyborg--and that it has John Stewart using the most powerful weapon in the universe to wish for a coupla guns yet again, once more demonstrating a lack of imagination and/or cultural awareness on the part of the character and/or his creators.


Justice League #24 (DC) The bit where the Legion of the Doom of the future prepare to stay behind and fight to the death while sending the League back to fix this whole fucked up timeline for them gave us the above bit with Grodd--who appears to have had an Ultrahumanite make-over at some point, which artist Jorge Jimenez uses to illustrate his having gotten old. That's actually just the first and weaker of the jokes that Scott Snyder has Grodd tell on that very page, though.

The sequences in this issue are pretty much identical to those in the last: Superman remembers time spent with Jon as he seeks to escape the prison he's in, the League attempts to escape the Apokalyptian prison with the help of the Legion, Batman talks to the World Forger. At least it ends with a couple of big splashes indicating a League vs. League climactic battle...which I just realize will occur in the 25th issue of the series. Perhaps that explains why this arc seemed to drag a bit (Well, the fill-in issue scripted by James Tynion IV didn't help, obviously). Perhaps Snyder and Jimenez were trying to time it so that the arc would end in issues #25 because that's a number that serially-published comic books generally treat as a big deal.


Marvel's Greatest Creators: Invaders #1 (Marvel Entertainment) Given that this is a one dollar reprint of an old Marvel comic, I'm not entirely sure how Marvel's Greatest Creators varies from True Believers, but, as a reader, I guess it doesn't really matter. This is a reprint of 1975's Invaders #1 by writer/editor Roy Thomas, artist Frank Robbins and inker Vince Colletta.

It is apparently not just the start of a new series, but of a story arc, as the first page is a splash page featuring the words "The Ring of The Nebulas!" as a title, and the last panel features the appearance of a trio of Axis-aligned Teutonic gods challenging our heroes to battle ("Continued in Invaders Classic: The Complete Collection Vol. 1 TPB", the slug on the bottom of the page informs us). So while this doesn't provide a whole story, it does provide some World War II-era adventuring starring the unlikely team of Namor, The Human Torch, Captain America and sidekicks Toro and Bucky. There's plenty of Nazi-fighting--in the air over Britain, no less!--and plenty of in-fighting, as Toro and Bucky bicker with each other, and Namor is a sassy, sarcastic bitch to everyone.

There's a bit on the second page where Cap and The Torch discuss their dislike of the team name Churchill gave them, and Torch says "I'd like a name like the Revenge Squadron, or the American Avengers, or--" and then Namor cuts him off.
"My name means "Avenging Son"-- and I prefer to keep it to myself!", he says while literally giving Torch side-eye. Which makes me wonder, when Namor came out of his amnesia or whatever in the 1960s, did he have words with The Avengers about using that name? Because he seems like he considers the word "Avenge" and all derivations of it to be proprietary here.

Actually, all the best parts of this issue are just those of Namor piloting his special bat-winged Atlantean submarine airplane with the rest of The Invaders irritating him from the backseat, like a grumpy dad driving his restless children on a road trip. I half expected him to snap at them, "Settle down back there, or I'll turn this submarine plane around and no one will get to invade Nazi Germany!"


Scooby-Doo Team-Up #48 (DC) While not as great as Batman's rogues gallery, there's no denying that The Flash has one of the better sets of adversaries in the all of super-comics, maybe falling third or so, after Batman's and Spider-Man's, but before Superman's. This issue, by the regular creative team of Sholly Fisch and Dario Brizuela, offers some supporting evidence of just how compelling The Flash's villains are--compelling enough that they are the characters that Scooby-Doo and the gang are teaming up with in this issue, rather than The Flash (Of course, Scooby-Doo had previously teamed-up with The Flash in 2016's #15).

The gang answer a summons from The Flash to meet him at the outskirts of Central City, but instead of the Scarlet Speedster waiting for them they find The Rogues. It turns out it was they who sent the message, in the hopes of engaging Mystery Inc's services. Our teenage heroes are reluctant to help The Rogues--here, Captains Cold and Boomerang, Heatwave, The Trickster, Mirror Master and Golden Glider--who want them to catch The Top, who has been stealing all of their ill-gotten gains as soon as they complete a heist. Among the excuses they offer the armed villains is that they specialize in supernatural mysteries, at which point The Rogues reveal that this is precisely why they've contacted them. See, "The Top hasn't been alive for a long time!" Mirror Master announces, just as the ghost of The Top makes a timely entrance.

The kids are eventually cajoled into helping, and suggest that the Rogues try to pull off an even bigger heist to attract The Ghost of The Top. So they all visit The Flash Museum, where Fred, Daphne and Velma attempt to use the various weapons on display there to fight the bad guys, in the process summoning The Top and "unmasking" the ghost as another Flash villain. In their usual thoroughness, Fisch and Brizuela manage to catalog a pretty huge swathe of characters. In addition to the seven or so Rogues with speaking parts, another handful of Flash bad guys get name-dropped or make cameos, and, spoiler alert, Kid Flash Wally West and original Flash Jay Garrick both appear for a couple of panels.

As is usually the case, Fisch gets an amazing amount of content into such a short, relatively simple story, with enough Easter eggs and gags to please older fans like me, and Brizuela takes advantage of the opportunity to draw as many DC Comics characters as he can get away with. There are a lot of neat details in the art, like several sequences in which Brizuela draws homages to famous covers and images from Flash history, and I particularly liked the way he drew some of the Rogues, with Captain Boomerang looking a bit like a compromise between his Bruce Timm-derived Justice League design and Brizuela's own style, or Captain Cold looking a bit like a compromise between his Super Friends design and Brizuela's style. Oh, and Brizuela also draws Trickster as considerably younger-looking than his fellow rogues, even though his costume is that of classic Trickster rather than the later one, a detail long-time Flash readers might notice, even if many in the all-ages target audience don't.

I know I say this almost every month, but Scooby-Doo Team-Up is honestly one of the best comics featuring the best versions of DC's superhero stable, and I'm pretty bummed to hear that it's not going to be around much longer. Hopefully DC finds a home for Fisch's particular abilities to tell short, sharp stories distilling various corners of the DCU into their most compelling elements.


BORROWED:


Birding Is My Favorite Video Game: Cartoons about the Natural World From Bird and Moon (Andrews McMeel) I picked this one up solely for its clever title and cover image, completely unaware of cartoonist Rosemary Mosco's online presence, although now that I am looking still more closely at the cover I see Bird and Moon, her website, is quite prominently featured in the sub-title for the book. So you could theoretically begin reading her comics right this very second, without having to buy her book or borrow it from your local library or wasted another second of your life reading a these sentences of me writing about it.

Mosco's subject matter is the nature, which is really a broad enough subject so as to be boundless. Her approach varies form strip to strip. Some of them are more or less straight informational, just colorful charts or diagrams with animal facts in them, like one entitled "Relatives Sizes of Some Animal Relatives, which shows silhouettes of, say, the meter-long Hyacinth Macaw next to the teeny tiny Buff-faced Pygmy Parrot. Some are just plain silliness, like one entitled "Top Ten Posts," which is a drawing of ten different fence posts in various natural settings. Most blend such educational content with a degree of silliness, making for strips that pair dumb jokes with smart content.

Maybe the best example of this element of her work is the strip entitled "Foraging Patterns." Four-panels long, the first three show the different foraging patterns of three different birds and they move about the trunk of a tree. So panel one shows the Brown Creeper moving diagonally up around the trunk of a tree. Panel two depicts the White-breasted Nuthatch moving diagonally down. Panel three shows the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker as it moves horizontally around the trunk. And, in the climactic panel four, they all collide into one another, complete with a little yellow explosion symbol and a "BONK" sound effect.

And those are the kinds of comics Mosco excels at, marrying basic slapstick gags to the lives of plants and animals, or having animals and plants give voice comment on their behaviors in very human-sounding dialogue. (A good example of this might be a strip on the "Threat Displays of Non-threatening Animals," in which the animals announce their defense mechanisms, like the Red Cornsnake saying, "I am shaking my tail vigorously!")

Mosco is even able to tell jokes about maybe the scariest, least funny subject in all of human history: Climate change. They're obviously not exactly knee-slappers, but she tackles that subject, and the general fragility of some animal species' very existence, bravely and repeatedly.

Her artwork has a very pristine, almost diagram-like preciseness, with relatively little variation--only the humans generally look "cartoony," while the animals mostly look as if they could have come straight out of a science textbook, albeit a very brightly-colored one.

Anyway, if you don't check the book itself out, do give Bird and Moon a few clicks to sample Mosco's unusual, particular approach to her subject matter.


PTSD (First Second) This is First Second's translated and re-published edition of artist Guillaume Singelin's graphic novel about a veteran's struggle with the post-traumatic stress disorder, drug addiction and homelessness after she returns home from a brutal jungle war, where the government and too many citizens refuse to engage with veterans and their problems. As an American reader, the particulars of the war and the general experience of protagonist Jun reminded me of the Vietnam War--or, at least, what I learned of it in school and read about later--but Singelin's story isn't meant to be specific to any single conflict or even setting.

The nameless city the the graphic novel takes place in is apparently an Asian one, although of the sort seen in anime movies set in the near-term future. It is huge, crowded and colorful, a riot of urban details and signifiers piled atop of one another to create a megatropolis that is every city, all cities and no city in particular. Singelin's plot meanders a bit, focusing on Jun's initial suffering and flashbacks to her time in the service as she rebuffs offers of help from a kindly single mother who runs a noodle shop...before Jun starts to get her life in order and becames a vengeful vigilante striking back against the drug-dealing gangs that prey on her fellow veterans, and then becomes something of a freelance doctor, aided in her path toward recovery by a loyal dog and an older veteran who seems to have gone through much of what she did.

It's a bit shaggy, but it all hangs together, and the great pleasure of the book isn't necessarily tight-plotting, so much as the detailed and compelling world-building of Singelin's art, and the the time spent living in that world with that character. The Japanese popular art influence extends far beyond the anime dystopia-inspired city, as his big-headed, cute-faced, large-eyed characters also have a distinctly Japanese feel to them. He gives his characters four digits per hand instead of five, with each of the three fingers being the same size. I know cartoon characters having four fingers per hand is a thing, but I don't like it, and it felt particularly off-putting here. But that's just me.

I'm sure this book won't be to everyone's taste, but it is certainly fun to look at and spend time with.


Return of Wolverine (Marvel Entertainment) It doesn't seem like Marvel and writer Charles Soule were quite on the same page regarding the resurrection of Wolverine, which makes this follow-up to 2014's Death of Wolverine rather fitting, as they didn't quite seem to agree on how big a deal his death was, how absent he would really be from the Marvel Universe during all that time, and how big a deal his return would be--Hell, even when, where and how he returned seemed to be something of a work in progress, as he started "returning" in other books before this, something that needed hand-waved away when someone somewhere on the upper floors of the House of Ideas changed their minds.

So just as Death of Wolverine read like a rather small story, like writer Charles Soule's response to an assignment by Marvel, so too does Return. The five-issue miniseries has no connection to the Death, despite the fact that Soule wrote it, and doesn't really act as any sort of payoff to that story or the years of Wolverine's absence (an absence blunted, of course, by the fact that another Wolverine from another dimension immediately replaced Logan upon his death). Despite the character's long-time centrality to the Marvel Universe (and Marvel's publishing plans), this is more-or-less a solo Wolverine story; the X-Men guest-star in the third issue, in which they go looking for Wolverine, find him and fight him, and then retreat.

Let me tell you the plot. Wolverine awakens in a surreal and violent scene, having apparently regained consciousness after having participated in a terrible battle. He has no memory, though; it's like his brain just suddenly turned on. This is, in fact, exactly what happened. Soule introduces a new mutant villain with the very convenient plot-specific mutant ability of being able to resurrect the dead. Or at least semi-resurrect them. She can bring the dead back to life and control them as more-or-less mindless drones, but they lack consciousness. Given Wolverine's abilities, he was an attractive drone (As to how he got out of the adamantium shell he was left in at the end of Death Of, that's not covered or even mentioned here; that happened in a different comic).

This new mutant villain's long-term plan is to kill off everyone on the planet--save for the scientist and other special people she has secured on a base orbiting Earth to help her with the annihilation and management of the world to come--and then use her powers to bring them all back, under her control. What she didn't plan for was Wolverine's healing factor, which apparently restarted when she raised him, as it allowed him to break her control. And that's basically it: An amnesiac Wolverine, urged on by his memories and aspects of his personality, must save the world while gradually remembering who he really is.

Oh, and he has "hot" claws now, for some reason.

It's a fine story on its own terms, and would likely have seemed excellent had it been published in, say, issues #146-150 of a Wolverine ongoing series, but it feels oddly small and flat given the build-up to the event. Because not only did Marvel put this storyline in its own special miniseries--there being no Wolverine comic it could have run in--but it was preceded by a Hunt For Wolverine one-shot (written by Soule himself, despite barely connecting to Return of) and five separate mini-series sharing the "Hunt For Wolverine" branding, in which large swathes of the Marvel Universe try to find out where Wolverine ended up after his grave was discovered to be empty (Oh yeah, Hunt For is the comic that explains how his corpse got out of the adamantium shell).

I didn't read any of those comics yet, but if they somehow tied into this story, it wasn't apparent from reading it. As I mentioned, the only other Marvel characters to appear is a handful of X-Men, who are only present for about one-fifth of the story. That's fine, of course; Wolverine should be the star of a Wolverine story, but how can such a tight focus on a single character not feel disappointing after 20+ issues of half the Marvel Universe looking for the guy in a manhunt marketed as the lead-in to this very story...?

The artwork leaves something to be desired, too. Soule reunited with Steve McNiven, who drew the entirety of Death Of...but only temporarily. McNiven pencils the first and fifth issues of the series, while Declan Shalvey draws the three issues in-between. Both are solid superhero artists, although I personally prefer Shalvey's style, but regardless of their talents and skills, their styles are quite far apart, and thus the book looks pretty inconsistent (and not just in the style or level of detail; there's a pretty weird and glaring costume change that apparently took place between the last scene Shalvey drew and the first scene of the last issue that McNiven drew). It's easy to see why Marvel would want to have McNiven attached to this book, keeping the Death Of team together, but if McNiven didn't have time to draw all of it, they probably would have been better off just having Shalvey draw the whole thing.

Read in a vacuum, it's a really rather solid Wolverine story that stands pretty well on its own. Read as part of the ongoing Marvel shared-universe story, it's a disappointingly inconsequential story incapable of justifying the build up to it.


REVIEWED:


Disney Princess: Ariel and the Sea Wolf (Dark Horse Books) Sea Wolf is the name of an aquatic Nazi supervillain introduced in Roy Thomas' Young All-Stars, although I first saw the character in a late-in-the-run issue of Peter David's 1990s Aquaman. He was basically a sea-going werewolf. A Seawolf--one word--is also the name of a Dungeons & Dragons monster; a lycanthrope whose monster form is basically just a seal with a scary wolf's head on it. These two facts lead me to believe that there is probably some folkloric antecedent to aquatic werewolves called sea wolves, probably from Germany, but now that I am actively searching on Wikipedia for some confirmation, I can't find it. The term's gotta come from somewhere though; the Pennsylvania town I went to college in had a baseball team called the Sea Wolves, and there's a rock band and and all sorts of military stuff named "Sea Wolf."

Anyway, I mention this all here because I--not unreasonably, I'd say!--assumed from the title that this was an original graphic novel for young readers in which The Little Mermaid fights an underwater werewolf and, on that point at least, I was sorely disappointed.

This is still a pretty good first graphic novel for young readers, of course.


Spidey: Freshman Year and Unstoppable Wasp: GIRL Power (Marvel Entertainment) What's that you say? Didn't I already discuss these books at some length in last month's installment of "A Month of Wednesdays"...? Yes. Yes I did. Those were just my just-finished-reading-them reactions; basically first drafts for later, more focused reviews in which I would think about things like, who my audience was, rather than just babbling at whoever still reads this blog, like I generally do in these posts. Look, you don't have to go read the reviews at Good Comics For Kids just because I'm linking to them here, okay?


The Worst Book Ever (Drawn & Quarterly) Another cute, funny, rather silly comic book/picture book from Elise Gravel, The Worst Book Ever provides a nice, thorough list of all the "don'ts" a young person just beginning to think about writing should keep in mind. Don't believe the title though; it's nowhere near actually unseating the champ.



*Have they really still not collected this series? I know I've said this before, but it's a Justice League comic featuring the writing of some of the most popular writers in the market, including Waid, Johns, Kurt Busiek and Mark fucking Millar! There are also a bunch of other talented writers and a murderers' row of great artists involved, but it seems like any comic with Waid, Johns and Millar's names on it should probably be an easy-ish sell in today's market, no matter how intentionally retro it is.