DC's October previews reviewed

Great cover on Action Comics #1048, I think by back-up artist David Lapham. It's a variant cover. Of course it is. But I can't imagine why; like, who on Earth would want a cover for a comic book that is not this one...?

The greatest team-up of comics is back in The Batman & Scooby-Doo Mysteries #1. Apparently, this team is uncancellable...thank God!

Well it's about time. I've been saying DC should do a Club of Heroes comic since Grant Morrison recycled the concept early in his Batman run (circa 2007). I mean, a Justice League where all of the members are Batman? How could that fail to sell? Anyway, the publisher is finally going through with it, using the perhaps more marketable, definitely less generic name of Batman Incorporated. Ed Brisson and John Timms are the creators, and it looks like relatively new character Ghost-Maker is going to be quite literally front and center. I hope this is as good as it has the potential to be; I like quite a lot of the characters introduced to the Club/Batman Inc fold. 

One good thing about these Batman—One Bad Day specials...? We're getting nice, portrait-style covers of each Batman villain by Brian Bolland. Here's his cover for Batman—One Bad Day: Penguin #1, which blends the two predominant designs of the character, the original Bill Finger/Bob Kane design with the more animalistic version from Batman Returns. 

They're officially adding the words "On Infinite Earths" to the title of Dark Crisis with issue #5, presumably as a way of more formally telegraphing the book as a sequel to Crisis On Infinite Earths. As if the fact that it was about the same goddam Multiverse/mega-narrative management that COIE and it's many, many previous sequels were about wasn't enough of a clue. I look forward to the trade...and to this hopefully being the last attempt at establishing a status quo for the DCU. At least for a couple decades. Wouldn't that be nice? 

Your monthly reminder that James Stokoe rules. This is the cover for DC Vs. Vampires: All-Out War #4.

Let's do some quick math here. I don't much care for the work of the writer (-), I love the work of the artist (+), and I'm just interested in but not particularly excited about the main character (0). I'm afraid that equals passing on Gotham City: Year One, which will apparently follow Slam Bradley around town in the years before the Wayne murder and the beginning of Batman. 

I kinda hope the series includes all the stars of the first 26 issues of Detective Comics somehow, including the guy on the cover of #1 that Gene Luen Yang used in his Chinese Superman comics, but I guess we'll see. Well, I won't see. But I'm sure someone will. DC certainly seems to thing the book will be a big deal, based on the announcement it got at San Diego. 

The Joker gets a new solo series, The Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing, courtesy of Matthew Rosenberg and Carmine Di Giandomenico. I have to confess, without the involvement of artist Guillem March, my interest in a Joker solo series plummets.

Wait, are these pogs on what I assume must be the 1:25 "'90s bedroom variant cover" to Superman: Son of Kal-El #16 by Megan Huang...? Perhaps this will be covered at Mike Sterling's Pogressive Ruin. I mean, Progressive Ruin. 

Also, '90s bedroom variant...? That's awfully random and specific, isn't it...? 

According to the solicitation for Dark Crisis: Young Justice #5, a being with god-like powers has created a perfect world where he and Robin, Impulse and Superboy don't need to worry about the pressures of grown-ups or, indeed, of growing up themselves. I know it's just a generic synopsis, but it sounds an awfully lot like the plot of JLA: World Without Grown-Ups, doesn't it...?