DC's august previews reviewed

This isn't supposed to be Steel on the cover of Action Comics #1046, is it? As in John Henry Irons Steel? Because it looks nothing like him. 

Batman: Haunted Knight, the collection of the three Legends of the Dark Knight Halloween specials Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale produced before their seminal collaboration The Long Halloween, gets rebranded as Batman: The Long Halloween: Haunted Knight. Whatever sells comics, I guess. I'm a big fan of these three comics, and would highly recommend this to anyone who has somehow missed them in their previous incarnations. 

DC never fails to surprise me with its constant innovation in wringing new material out of something Alan Moore once wrote for them decades ago. This time it's seemingly The Joker's belief in The Killing Joke that "one bad day" is all that stands between a normal person and the sort of madness that he typifies. 

DC is doing a series of 64-page prestige format specials featuring various villains by top talent, starting with the Riddler by Tom King and Mitch Gerards. The others include Two-Face, Mr. Freeze, The Penguin, Bane, Clayface and Ra's al Ghul—some of whom fit the one bad day rubric better than others—and, somewhat curiously, Catwoman, who has been more of a good buy than a bad guy for the last 30 years or so. 

Sadly, there's no Scarecrow one-shot, but I am looking forward to possibly seeing Osoito again in the Bane special. 

Dark Knights of Steel Vol. 1 collects the first chunk of Tom Taylor, Yasmine Putri and Bengal's Elseworlds-esque series that reimagines DC's heroes in a medieval setting (and not for the first, second or even third time). 

Have any of you been reading this? Is is it any good? Worth reading? Worth buying? I've generally liked every thing of Taylor's I've read; even his worst work (Injustice, DCeased) tends to be better than it has any right to be, if that makes any sense at all.

DC Saved By the Bell Reeve #1 features an awfully obscure joke for a title. I mean, I know there have been two Suicide Squad movies at this point, but still...why not just go with Saved By The Bell...? (Or maybe Detention Comics 80-Page Giant #1?)

Anyway, this looks like your standard DC seasonal special, an anthology weighing in at 80 pages. The solicitation copy mentions the Suicide Squad and Azrael, plus Art Baltazar and Franco's Tiny Titans and what sounds like a new Gotham Academy story.

I'm definitely pre-ordering this one. 

Here's James Stokoe's cover for DC Vs. Vampires: All-Out War #2. I wish he was drawing interiors too. Maybe for the next DC Vs. Vampires spin-off...

That's a gorgeous, if somewhat randomly deployed, Yoshitaka Amano variant cover for Detective Comics #1063.

DC is publishing four issues of Harley Quinn in August for some reason (plus an annual!), and there are as ever lots of variants. One set of variants are "homage" ones, inserting Harley into classic Batman covers. I like these two the best, from Harley Quinn #18 and #19. 

I want to be excited about The New Champion of Shazam, a new series starring Mary Marvel apparently taking her brother's place, but DC has screwed up the Marvel Family so badly over so many years that it's hard to approach almost any new outting with anything other than skepticism. 

At least they've got an ideal artist on board in Evan "Doc" Shaner. 

Hopefully one need not be up-to-date on the last few Shazam series to make sense of this, as I haven't read anything since the Geoff Johns/Gary Frank New 52 reboot of the character and concept. 

Poison Ivy #3 has six different covers. That seems like an awful lot of variant covers for the third issue of a miniseries, especially one that's not a big event, series. I mean, Dark Crisis #3, also shipping this month, only has four covers.

Wonder Woman #790 has a Paul Pope variant cover. 

I like the way Paul Pope draws.