DC's January previews reviewed

I confess that I'm not really feeling the matching jackets that the Superman family seems to be adopting on the cover of Action Comics #1051, although it is a nicely rendered cover. 

Also, should I recognize those two little kids behind Superman..?.

What kind of maniac eats with gloves on...? 

That's one of the covers for Batgirls #14. I prefer this one, as it doesn't include anything as crazy as people eating hamburgers and french fries while wearing gloves:

That's nice. 

Brian Bolland draws Bane, for the cover of Batman—One Bad Day: Bane #1, part of a series that is one of DC's stealthier attempts to wring blood out of Alan Moore's brief career writing for them decades ago. 

DC's doing another season of their book set within the continuity of the old Batman: The Animated Series cartoon, written by B:TAS alumni Paul Dini and Alan Burnett, and they got Kelley Jones to draw, well, everybody for the cover of Batman: The Adventures Continue Season Three #1. It's interesting to see the show's Bruce Timm designs in Jones' style; look how small Batman's ears are!

There's also a variant cover in which Kevin Nowlan draws not everybody, but a lot of folks, that allows for the same sort of pleasure:

Neat. Interiors will be drawn by Jordan Gibson. 

After one-shot specials devoted to heroes of Asian descent and LGBTQ+ heroes, DC's finally getting around to a special focused on their black heroes, DC Power: A Celebration #1. 

This particular cover shows the difficulty of creating diversity among characters in the superhero market, as the easiest strategy is to just give a black character someone else's laundry, as David Brothers wrote so memorably years ago. Thus we have a Black Superman, a Black Batman, a Back Wonder Woman, a Black Aqualad and Kid Flash and not one but two Black Green Lanterns.

Far harder is to come up with original characters with their own names, power-sets and stories that aren't related to one of the handful of successful franchises like, on this cover, Black Lightning, Vixen and Cyborg. 

According to the solicitation copy, we can expect stories featuring Cyborg, John Stewart, Aqualad, Kid Flash, Batwing, Vixen, Amazing-Man "and more." I'll be curious to see how many of those within the book are legacy characters vs. original ones, and I'll be curious to see which version of Amazing-Man shows up; I always liked that character, and while his costume colors aren't the greatest, he's an interesting enough hero with plenty of potential and, again, isn't just a lieutenant version of a white hero. 

This is one of the few books I'll be pre-ordering (Along with, if you're keeping score at home, Harley Quinn Romances, Batman: Dark Knight Detective Vol. 7 and mmmmaaaybe Batgirls Vol. 2. Everything else I can trade-wait at the library). 

Kind of amazing that DC has done so many Valentine's Day-themed romance specials over the years and they're just now getting to one with the obvious-in-retrospect name of Harley Quinn Romances #1. All of the covers are pretty great, but I liked this one the best, as it feels the most like a romance paperback...albeit with Brainac's ship in the background.

It sounds like it will start the predictable usual suspects (Harley and Ivy, Apollo and Midnighter, John Constantine), but there will be some unexpected characters appearing, like Fire and Ice (are they a couple now?) and Power Girl. 

What's this on the cover of Nightwing #100? Is Nightwing...taking off Batgirl's costume...? I see bare shoulder! I know we're all adults here, and obviously this is a Babs Tarr image, but I have to ask: Is it too sexy? 

It's one of several great variants for the issue, which also include these:

See? Nice.

I really like this cover for Tim Drake: Robin #5. I hope the series is really good.