Comic Shop Comics: August 10th

All-New, All-Different Avengers Annual #1 (Marvel Entertainment) One of the several ways in which G. Willow Wilson immediately established Kamala Khan as a sort of superhero super-fan, not unlike any other reader of Marvel comics, which sort of took who to a whole new level as a reader-identification character, was by having Kamala regularly refer to her superhero fan-fiction. This she wrote before becoming a superhero herself, of course, although she apparently still continues to write it.

What we haven't seen in the pages of Wilson's Ms. Marvel yet is the comic book performance of that fan-fiction, not as fully as we've seen, say, Nancy Whitehead's Cat Thor fan comics in the pages of Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (Loki spending much of an adventure with Thor and Squirrel Girl in the form of Cat Thor just to mess with his brother remains a highlight of that comic book series for me). That changes here, in the All-New, All-Different Avengers Annual (Oh my God, please just abbreviate it to a Avengers already!).

The cover is just a completely generic Alex Ross cover of three members of the team, only one of whom plays any significant role, but at least there's a large blurb along the bottom promising "The Fan-Fiction World of Ms. Marvel," the last word in her logo, and a list of the contributors, which include Wilson herself and A-N,A-DA creators Mark Waid and Mahmud Asrar.

I still think this is a weird (well, dumb) place for this story to show up, rather than in a Ms. Marvel annual, but I suppose there's a marketing reason for its appearing under this title instead of the more natural place. It sure is a lot of fun, regardless.

The premise, delineated in a framing sequence by Wilson and Asrar entitled "Internet Randos," which features Kamala returning home to check how many likes her Avengers fan-fiction got, and discovering that she's now big enough a hero to have people writing fan-fic about her, like "Ms. Marvel and The Teenage Love Triangle From Space," illustrated by an image of Spider-Man Miles Morales and Nova at her feet. Against her better judgement, she reads on, and this is what she finds:

"The Once and Future Marvel," written by Mark Waid and drawn by Chip Zdarsky, in which Ms. Marvel and Captain Marvel team-up to fight Skrulls in space and deliver such stilted dialogue that it's pretty clear Waid did a little research into the world of fan-fic (the poor man). It's pretty much a straight parody, but when Marvel's original Captain Marvel (you know, the man one) reappears, snatched from the time stream just before his death (as kinda sorta happened once already, but turned out to be a trick, and also kinda sorta happened to Barry Allen in a Flash story Waid himself wrote, but also turned out to be a trick). It's funny stuff, particularly because Waid manages to hold off on the Internet politics until the very last page, when it really becomes a delight.

"The Adventures of She-Hulk," by Natasha Alleri (who drew the charming sixth issue of Patsy Walker, AKA Hellcat), doesn't really seem to fit here conceptually, as it would have to be a fan comic rather than fan-fiction, and isn't too terribly Avengers-y. It is darling and it is hilarious though, and is basically She-Hulk starring in a modern update of "Duck Amuck," only the unseen tormenter is actually just a pencil that hangs out around her.

"Up Close and Fursonal," by writer Zac Gorman and Jay Fosgitt, sounds like furry stuff, but is probably closest to something like Peter Porker, The Spectacular Spider-Ham or the original Captain Carrot comics. Or, I don't know, is that what Zootopia is, basically? It's a Marvel Universe where everyone is an animal, and animal puns abound. It stars Hss. Marvel (a snake, but with arms!) and The Spectacular Spider-Mole (Miles, not Peter).

"Squirrel Girl Vs. Ms. Marvel," by Faith Erin Hicks, is the contribution that made me want to read this now instead of wait for whatever trade the annual will eventually show up in. That's because it features Squirrel Girl, Ms. Marvel and is by Faith Erin Hicks, basically.

It's a battle between the two, although we pull out to reveal the nature of that battle, and it ends with the pair in a coffee shop full of superheroes, Squirrel Girl and her army of squirrels eating "macarons," which I assume are "macaroons." Are there different spellings? Is "Macaron" Canadian for "macaroon"...?

Finally, Scott Kurtz writes and draws "An Evening With Ms. Marvel: A True Story." It is not a true story, but it's pretty funny, and, like Waid's first story, is the one that reads most like true fan-fic.

Lumberjanes/Gotham Academy #3 (Boom Studios) As Chynna CLugston Flores, Rosemary Valero-O'Connell and Maddi Gonzalez's unlike crossover reaches the mid-way point, we finally get a pretty thorough explanation of what exactly is going on with that creepy lodge in the weird woods around the Lumberjanes camp, and learn that the lady who seems to be in charge of capturing imprisoning everyone in a weird recreation of a sweet sixteen party from the 1980s may be a victim of sorts herself, as she can't see what everyone else can (like the floating cloak-and-animal skull creatures).

I like Valero-O'Connell's pencil art, inked by Gonzalez and colored by Whitney Cogar, more and more each issue. I think it took a bit of adjustment precisely because it was so unlike the art of either Lumberjanes or Gotham Academy up to this point, but at this point I'm used to it, and really digging the degree of expression she brings to the characters, as well as all the great 1980s fashion everyone is wearing...mostly against their will.

SpongeBob Comics #59 (United Plankton Pictures) This month's theme is Westerns, and for the cover story "Dry Noon," editor Chris Duffy has lined up a contribution from Chuck Dixon and artist Raul The Third. The somewhat silly story involves Mister Krabs taking SpongeBob to the driest part of the ocean in order to procure a secret ingredient for his Krabby Patties: Black salt. And what makes black salt so salty? That's the well-executed gag. The art is pretty great, offering one of the many, many instances in which this book diverges wildly from the style and character designs of the cartoon its based on, and its colored so as if the paper, like the cover, looks old and beat-up, as if maybe it had somehow survived from cowboy times.

Most of the other stories are somehow Western related as well, and these include contributions from Maris Wicks, James Kochalka, Corey Barba and Gregg Schigiel, Jed Alexander and Sam Henderson and Greg Benton.

Wonder Woman #4 (DC Comics) This is the second chapter of Greg Rucka and Nicola Scott's "Year One" origin story of Wonder Woman, and, as she is still on the island but about to leave, this chapter centers on ticking off the boxes that have to happen: What to do with Steve, who will return him to Man's World, how they will decide, what she'll wear, etc.

Because of this, it is mostly a predictable march through expected elements, only interesting in the little ways in which it diverges from past stories. Here, for example, Hippolyta doesn't forbid Diana from competing to be the island's champion, but is resigned to the fact...just as she knows her daughter will almost certainly win (She does). I liked this version of the Amazons' crafting of Wonder Woman's costume, based on the symbols found on the uniforms of the dead soldiers; even that's not original to this telling, but it's executed well, as is the wrinkle with the bullets-and-bracelets.

It's fine then, but it should get more interesting in the next few chapters.

Oh, and it needs more kangas. This version of Themyscira is basically just a Bronze Age society with some magic stuff, not the high fantasy/sci-fi mash-up world of William Moulton Marston and H.G. Peter, or, more recently, Grant Morrison and Yanick Paquette.

Review: Dark Horse Comics/DC Comics: Superman

This 400-page collection is the latest big, fat, book of crossovers between DC characters and those owned or licensed to Dark Horse Comics. I can't quite figure out how they are organized. For example, this collection includes two Superman/Aliens crossovers, which seem like they could have just as easily appeared in the previously published DC Comics/Dark Horse Comics: Aliens (which did include the Superman/Batman/Aliens/Predator crossover), and the upcoming DC Comics/Dark Horse Comics: Justice League will include two Superman stories. I imagine it has something to do with which publisher technically publishes which collection–note the way the order of which publisher is named varies from book to book–but regardless of the behind-the-scenes organizing principal, these books include a bunch of harder-to-find-then-I'd like crossovers of the past couple decades, many of them quite good comics.

This particular volume features comics from 1995-2002, three of which are in Superman continuity (or in continuity as it existed at the time), with the fourth and final one being an Elseworlds story. Let's take them one at a time, shall we...?

Superman/Aliens by Dan Jurgens, Kevin Nowlan, Gregory Wright and Android Images

This three-issue, 1995 miniseries is among the best of the DC/Dark Horse crossovers, and one of the better inter-publisher crossovers I've ever read. Much of that is due to the skill that went into crafting it, but more still is due to the amount of care that writer/artist Dan Jurgens put into the book.

The Aliens, like the Predators, have become such frequent participants in crossovers due to their extreme flexibility–they're basically just cool monsters to fight–that such comics can often read as extremely lazy. Jurgens, however, brings a real sense of occasion to this story.

He manages to make the story almost as much of an Aliens story as it is a Superman story, and while the superhero is the protagonist of the story, Jurgens carefully sets it up in such a way that the Aliens and their horrifying life-cycle aren't just backdrops to a Superman beat 'em up. Rather, he evokes the sort of lonely setting and the horror/suspense mood that are so prominent in the film franchise, and even uses the single, female protagonist that powered the earlier films...although here she is, of course, teamed-up with Superman.

More remarkably still, not only does Jurgens handicap Superman in such a way that the Aliens pose a real threat to him–most of the story is spent far from Earth, so his solar-based powers are waning like a dying battery throughout, and he must struggle with his refusal to take a life, even the lives of the Aliens–but he instills about as real a sense of danger that can exist in a Superman comic.

At no point did I think Superman was going to die in this comic, but when the near-powerless Superman has an Alien implanted in his no-longer invulnerable chest cavity, I did find myself wondering how exactly he was going to survive (My guess, that he would plunge himself into the sun, burning out the embryo while restoring his own powers, as soon as he returned to the solar system, turned out to be wrong; the reality was much grosser).

Oh, and Jurgens sets this story firmly within Superman's post-Crisis, pre-Flashpoint continuity–inter-company crossover or no, this is canon guys–reflecting not only the status quo of the Super-books circa 1995, but also referencing a handful of previous stories from this continuity. Most of these aren't terribly important, although they are referred to in dialogue and asterisked editorial box, but one does play a big role: Superman's early career execution of the pocket universe Kryptonians, as that was when he swore never to kill again, an oath frequently tested by the Aliens (His first fight with a single Alien is actually kind of funny, as he keeps trying to communicate with it while it tries eating his face.)

Reporters Lois Lane and Clark Kent are covering LexCorp's space-division as they recover an alien probe and take it to their orbiting space-station. It's a distress pod of some kind, asking for help, and Superman recognizes the language it's using as Kryptonian. He insists that he and he alone find and help the people who sent it, with the help of LexCorp, who provides him with the space ship to do it in.

The destination? Argo City, a domed city in deep space (far from a yellow sun) and peopled with too-few Kryptonian-speaking humanoids. Superman loads some injured, unconscious residents into his ship and sends it back to the station, asking them to send it back for him (as otherwise he would be stranded here). Sure, his powers are slowly starting to wane, but how dangerous can the place be...?

Pretty dangerous, it turns out, as its swarming with Aliens, and, worse still, the unconscious people he sent back to the space station, where Lois is, are of course harboring gestating Aliens in their chests. At the end of the first issue, Jurgens provides a pretty big shock for his readers at the time: The blonde teenage girl who speaks Kryptonian and is fighting for her survival on Argo City tells Superman that her name is...wait for it...Kara.

That would have been a pretty big deal in 1995, as that would make her the only other survivor of Krypton in the post-Crisis continuity, it would also make her a new version of the original (read: real) Supergirl. The one in DC Comics at the time was the weird sentient protoplasm from a pocket universe one whose back-story just got more and more confusing until DC just let Jeph Loeb restart Supergirl's origin in Superman/Batman a decade or so after this saw publication).

As the series progresses, we learn whether or not this Kara is the Kara, but, more importantly from the stand-point of making a good Superman/Aliens crossover, Jurgens has effectively split the action into two settings, both evocative of the first two Aliens movies. On the space station, the hatched and escaped Aliens stalk Lois, LexCorp's Dr. Kimble and the rest of the much more expendable cast, while on Argo City, Superman gradually loses all of his powers and must face a series of blows to his confidence and optimism: That he can't just punch out the millions of Aliens, that he sent a ship-full of them towards a space station containing Lois and orbiting Earth, that no ship is coming to retrieve him and, ultimately, that he and Kara both have Aliens gestating in their chests.

As unlikely a pairing as the two multi-media franchises may be–seriously, pause and compare the films Superman and Superman II to Alien and Aliens in your mind for a moment–Jurgens makes them fit naturally, and manages to deliver a story that honors the attributes of Aliens while cutting to the core of what makes Superman such a great, aspirational, noble and heroic character.

You know what else is an unlikely pairing? Jurgens and Kevin Nowlan. Jurgens pencils the book, while Nolan inks it, but based on the results, it looks like Jurgens provided fairly full lay-outs and Nowlan finished them. It's a great collaboration, as it looks at once like the art of Jurgens and the art of Nowlan, two very distinctive, very prolific artists whose work is easily recognizable at a glance.

There are therefore a lot of the familiar lay-outs and heroic poses of Jurgens' Superman comics–having drawn Superman as long as he has, Jurgens' work often suggests the "real" Superman in the way that, say, long-time Batman artist the late Jim Aparo's Batman poses and expressions often seem genuine in a way that those of other artists don't–but here the art is all more detailed and smoother, with thicker, bolder black lines.

I enjoy the work of current Superman artists Doug Mahnke and Patrick Gleason, but honestly, I can't remember the last time I read a Superman comic where I enjoyed the artwork this much.

(I suppose it's also worth mentioning how odd it is to read this story after reading Geoff Johns and Jim Lee's first story arc of Justice League in 2011 and early 2012, the story in which Superman and his League allies so cavalierly kill Parademons without a second thought. This story is a good illustration of why that was so strange to see. Here Superman tries to communicate with an Alien before even striking it, and resolutely refuses to pick up a gun and destroy one even at his most hopeless, because a life is still a life. In Justice League, he was tearing apart Parademons that were, until recently, normal human beings, without even stopping to consider what they were.)

Superman/Aliens II: God War by Chuck Dixon, Jon Bogdanove, Kevin Nowlan and Dave Stewart

As is so often–too often–the case, the sequel is not nearly as good as the original. This 2002 miniseries, which retains only inker Kevin Nowlan from the first Superman/Aliens crossover, is as much a New Gods comic as it is a Superman or Aliens comic...in fact, Superman and the Aliens both seem like guest-stars in a New Gods comic.

Writer Chuck Dixon has Superman visiting New Genesis, just sort of hanging out with other humanoid super-aliens who can fly and are invulnerable and dress as colorfully as he does, when Darkseid launches a horrible attack. Having discovered the Aliens, Jack Kirby's god of evil impregnates a battalion of his warriors and sends them to attack New Genesis, essentially using them as trojan horses carrying the real weapon, the Aliens themselves.

During the course of the battle, which includes Lightray, Barda and Forager but no Mister Miracle, Orion gets an Alien implanted in his chest. Knowing his time is limited, he decided to go straight for Apokolips, with Superman tagging along. Meanwhile, Barda and her forces try to stave off the invasion of the Aliens that Darkseid rained down on them.

It is, in other words, everything the original Superman/Aliens was not. Here the Aliens are just cool-looking, dramatic monsters appearing in a Superman beat 'em up, but Superman is only one of several heroes doing the beating. If one wonders how Orion survived, I'll spoil it for you, although it should be noted that he should be invulnerable enough to survive in a manner more similar to that of Superman in the original. Basically, Darkseid shows mercy on his son, and uses the Omega beams to destroy the growing Alien. His long-term plan, he explains to lackeys like Desaad, is to instill a sense of indebtedness to his biological son, so that Orion may someday side with him over Highfather.

And, in the stinger ending, if not, well, Darkseid still has a hidden vault full of warriors with face-huggers on them, apparently in stasis to pull out when needed.

The only real pleasure I took in this particular story was the art. I like both Jon Bogdanove, a one-time constant presence on the Superman family of books, and Kevin Nowlan alot, although their styles seem even further apart from that of Jurgens and Nowlan.

Weirdly but understandably, Bogdanove seems to have attempted to town down the Bogdanovicity of his pencil work in an attempt to draw more Kirby-esque, and Nowlan followed his lead. The results are...weird. The New Gods characters all look extremely Kirby-esque, with some panels looking like Kirby himself drw them. Superman is a strange mixture of the thick-torsoed Silver Age Superman with flashes of a primal, angry Kirby face and Bogdanove's normal Man of Steel, and the Aliens look like, well, Aliens.

Dixon's Superman was so changed by his first meeting with these creatures, that he doesn't have any of the moral compunctions about seeing them exterminated that he originally had, and, even if he did, he spends much of the time fighting either alongside Barda or Orion, so it's not like it matters; he's not about to fight Orion to the death to stop the dying New God from turning massive Alien hives into pools of acidic blood.

Other than picking apart the various influences and letting one's eyes surf along the curious braiding of various art styles, there is still some pleasure to be had in the artwork. Dixon and company provide a few interesting images, particularly the scene that follows the mass-birthing of the Aliens from Darkseid's invasion troops, where we see a panel in which the just-born, snake-form of the baby Aliens cover the ground like a carpet.

It's a disappointing read, but then, it hardly matters in this particular collection, as it is but one of four stories, and it is sandwiched between two such great ones.

The Superman/Madman Hullabaloo by Mike Allred and Laura Allred

The second Aliens crossover is followed by Madman creator Mike Allred's three-issue, 1997 miniseries in which his signature creation meets the original and greatest superhero.

Allred was one of the greatest superhero comics artists of the time, and he remains as such–if anything, he's gotten better. His style is the sort that no longer seems as sought after by the Big Two as perhaps it should, but he he has a great line, and produces work that is clean, simple, just-flat-enough and classic-looking...more timeless than nostalgic. When I close my eyes and imagine "comic book art," its Allred's style that immediately springs to mind.

While the artist has long since done a great deal of work for both DC and Marvel, this was a rare and early example of Allred drawing non-Madman, non-Allred creations, and it is pretty glorious.

The plot finds Superman and Madman both aiding their respective bearded scientist friends in researching some weird energy at the same time, the result being a sort of cosmic collision in which they pass through one another and then materialize in one another's dimension.

Superman is in Madman's body, with an amalgamated costume (Allred is one of the great costume designers, and would have been up their with Alex Ross and Darwyn Cooke if I were Dan DiDio and I was trying to decide which artist to let redesign the whole DC Universe for The New 52; DiDio, obviously, went with Jim Lee instead), lands in Snap City. Madman, in Superman's considerably handsomer and more powerful body, lands in Metropolis, also with an amalgamated costume (here somewhat resembling a leather jacket-less '90s Superboy, but with more prominent yellow, and a strip of Madman-mask, so we'd recognize him).

While messing around on one another's Earth and meeting one another's supporting cast (Lois Lane and Professor Hamilton both get pretty big roles, while pretty much everyone from the Madman comics of the time show up), they figure out what's going on and how to fix it. Meanwhile, the collision dispersed bits of Superman's powers throughout both universes, so once restored the pair and their pals must track down individuals exhibiting super-strength and suck those powers out of them with a mad science device.

The root of all this madness? Mr. Mxyzptlk (Here pronounced "Mix-Yez-Pittle-Ick" rather than "Mix-Yez-Spit-Lick," as it was pronounced by Gilbert Gottfried on Superman: The Animated Series, which is how I've been pronouncing it since.)

While technically "in continuity," Allred's Superman and Lois are perfectly classic in their look and characterization, so that with only minor alterations to their clothing they could be Bronze Age, Silver Age or maybe even Golden Age Superman and Lois, or from various media. It's amazing what a good handle Allred had on the characters' essence, and the way he's able to boil them down so perfectly.

There's a neat scene where Madman asks Superman about God, and even a bit of a moral as Mxyzptlk challenges Madman to a magic-free challenge that can only be won physically. It's...well, it's pretty great.

The comic ends with a "The End?!" a gag referring to Dr. Flem's use of Madman as a sort of living crash-test dummy, but it's actually kind of disappointing that it did indeed turn out to be the end. At least we've since gotten to see Allred draw much of the DC Universe in his issue of Solo, and Metamorpho in the pages of Wednesday Comics and so many characters from the original Batman TV show on the covers of Batman '66 and...

Superman/Tarzan: Sons of The Jungle by Chuck Dixon, Carlos Meglia and Dave Stewart

The 2001 three-part miniseries Superman/Tarzan: Sons of The Jungle adhered to the popular (to the point of default) formula for Superman Elseworlds stories of the time: What if the rocket that carried baby Superman from the exploding Krypton to the planet Earth landed in some other place or some other time? Here the rocket crashes not only in late 19th Century Africa, but into the pages of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan origin story.

So just as the mutineers were about to strand Lord Greystoke and his pregnant wife Alice on the coast, they see a fireball from the sky and take it as a sign not to do so, instead taking them to the next port. The fireball was, of course, Superman's baby rocket. And so it is Kal-El rather than Tarzan who is discovered, adopted and raised by the apes, while the-man-who-would-have-been-Tarzan is born in English society, although he becomes a mopey, Byronic figure, aware that something's wrong, that he's not where he's supposed to be, and so he travels the world in a funk, looking for his place.

The characters' stories are too powerful to be altered for long, however, and the original Superman and Tarzan narratives gradually but inexorably reassert themselves. When Greystoke joins a aerial zeppelin expedition of the ruins of a lost city in Africa, an expedition covered by Lois Lane of the Daily Planet and her assistant Jane Porter,
they are shot down by Princess La and her people.

Superman, decked out in a leopard-skin loincloth with a red "S" drawn on his bare chest, comes to the aid of the white-skinned people who fell from the sky. Along the way, Lois falls for this powerful man of action, while Lord Greystoke and Porter ultimately decide to stay behind in Africa, Greystoke finally having found what he was missing there.

So, at the end, Superman becomes Superman (albeit a bit earlier than usual, and thus the costue he wears for a single panel at the end in Metropolis looks much more Flash Gordon than superehro, and Tarzan becomes Tarzan.

Of particular interest is a prose piece entitled "Sons of the Jungle?" written by Robert R. Barrett, identified as "Edgar Rice Burroughs archivist." He recounts the relationships between the two heroes who would eventually both become stars of prose stories, comic strips, comic books, film and television animation, highlighting Superman co-creator and writer Jerry Siegel's overture to Edgar Rice Burroughs in 1934, which included a treatment for a John Carter of Mars adaptation in "cartoon-form," to run alongside the Tarzan Sunday strips. Burroughs, as per policy, never even read the letter. Barrett also address Burroughs' reaction about bringing Tarzan from his jungle setting to the modern, civilized , urban world, which would of course have made him into more of a Superman-like figure, to which Burroughs objected, saying that if Tarzan could not "out-superman Superman...he might suffer by comparison."

As interesting as all this is, I particularly like the paragraph devoted to this comic book series, in which he says that Dixon's "quite...entertaining" story is "interestingly illustrated by the team of Carlos Meglia and Dave Stewart."

"Interesting" is certainly one way to refer to Meglia's art, which is unlike any generally applied to either Superman or Tarzan. Highly cartoony and animated, to the point that the static characters sometimes appear to lurch or launch across the panels, Meglia's arwork is exaggerated as it can be while still being readable. I like it–although I'm not so sure about his obsession with drawing individual strands of hair on a man's arm or chin–but it's certainly not what I would have thought to apply to a crossover of these two characters. I can't help but imagine what a Superman/Tarzan comic drawn by the likes of Joe Kubert circa 2001 might have looked like, for example.

Suicide Squad: Who Created What, and What One Should (and Shouldn't) Read Next

This week Warner Bros released Suicide Squad, the second film in their troubled but ongoing efforts to construct a shared, "cinematic universe" based on DC comics, akin to what Marvel Studios has accomplished. Reviews so far seem pretty mixed, but then, decent quality films based on DC comics characters tend to be exceptions that prove the rule.

Regardless of its ultimate box office, Rotten Tomatoes rating and whether or not it's able to generate a sequel and Captain Boomerang spin-off, I think it's safe to say that a lot of people made a lot of money for their work on this film, and a lot of people are going to be credited (or blamed) with their contributions to the film. And, I think it's just as safe to say, few of those people will be comic book people.

Comic book supehero movies of this nature--big, ensemble efforts, including the Avengers movies and Guardians of The Galaxy--are of particular interest to me on this front because the studios assemble them from characters owned by a single publisher, but created by many different writers and artists, in many different contexts, often across decades. So I personally think it's valuable to stop and take stock of where all this stuff comes from, exactly. The characters that appear in this film were created between 1940 and 2008, and the particular concepts span a good sixty years, from the mid-twentieth century first appearance of a "Suicide Squad" to the late 1980s conception of the team as a super-villain Dirty Dozen to the 2011 incorporation of some of the characters on this line-up.

So:

Suicide Squad was originally created in a 1959 issue of The Brave and The Bold by Robert Kanigher and Ross Andru, and the Squad's handful of Silver Age adventures revolved around a quartet of non-super-powered specialists encountering bizarre, Silver Age threats. It was seemingly only the name that survived to influence future iterations and comic books (not to mention the movie), but the Kanigher/Andru stories did introduce a few characters and would later be used to provide backstory for the 1980s iteration of the team (Additionally, this version makes a brief appearance in the late, great Darwyn Cooke's New Frontier, which imagined various non-powered comics teams filling-in for superheroes in the years between the Golden Age and Silver Age of superheroes).

The concept of super-villains released from jail in order to serve as a black-ops team on suicide missions was John Ostrander's, who wrote the Suicide Squad monthly, ongoing series from 1987-1992 (occasionally with his wife, the late Kim Yale).

The Joker was created in 1940 by Bill Finger, Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson.

Deadshot first appeared in a 1950 issue of Batman, and was created by Bob Kane,David Vern Reed and Lew Schwartz, but you woudn't recognize him in his top hat, tuxedo and domino mask. His most familiar costume, including a full face mask, a scope over one-eye and wrist-mounted machine guns, was designed by artist Marshall Rogers during he and writer Steve Englehart's influential run on the Bat-books in the 1970s.

Rick Flag was created in 1959 by Kanigher/Andru as part of the original Suicide Squad. Ostrander and company used his son for their Suicide Squad revival, adding a "Jr." and a more late 1980s characterization.

Captain Boomerang was a Flash villain created in 1960 by John Broome by Carmine Infantino.

Enchantress was created by Bob Haney and Howard Purcell in 1966; rather than a villain, she was the star of a strip in Strange Adventures #187, in which she was the hero.

The original El Diablo was created in 1970 by Robert Kanigher and Gray Morrow, although the version that appears in the film, El Diablo III, has little in common with the original save the name. The third iteration was created by Jai Nitz, Phil Hester and Ande Parks for a 2008 miniseries of the same name, in which their El Diablo was haunted by the ghost of the original.

Killer Croc was created by Gerry Conway and Gene Colan in 1983, when he began is long and successful career as a Batman villain.

Katana was created by Mike W. Barr and Jim Aparo in 1983 and first appeared in an issue of The Brave and The Bold. She was a hero rather than a villain, and spent most of her career as a member of Batman's team The Outsiders, which she was involved with most incarnations of (In The New 52, she was briefly a member of both The Birds of Prey and the short-lived, government-sponsored Justice League of America. She also had her own short-lived ongoing).

Slipknot was a minor villain created by Gerry Conway, Joey Cavalieri and Rafael Kayanan for The Fury of Firestorm in 1984.

Amanda Waller first appeared in 1986's Legends #1, the crossover miniseries that first introduced the new, Ostrander conception of the Suicide Squad. She was created by Ostrander, Len Wein and John Byrne.

Harley Quinn is a particularly unusual character, being of both relatively recent vintage and originating not in the comic books, but another adaptation of the comics. She was created by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm (and I don't know, should original voice actress Arleen Sorkin receive some credit for her creation?) for a 1992 episode of the television cartoon Batman: The Animated Series ("Joker's Favor").

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That is the right half of the a two-page ad that has been running in DC Comics lately (the other half is an ad for the film itself). The suggestions for what to read are...interesting.

First, based on the ad, this would seem to be as much a Joker movie as a Suicide Squad movie. Second, it appears as if DC wasn't quite ready, as there are books one might expect, including the entirety of the Ostrander run of Suicide Squad which aren't yet collected, and solo titles featuring Katana and El Diablo that either weren't collected, or fell out of print, or DC just didn't want to publicize.

I also found the credits a little curious, as in a few cases they list both writer and primary artist, but in others they only list the writer, perhaps because there were so many artists involved that none could even really be called "primary."

If you liked the movie and wanted to read more about these characters, this ad seems like a good place to start. But as someone who has read most of these, I should warn you that DC seems to have chosen books based on their availability, rather than their quality. So maybe I can help you out, if you need it.

Let's walk through the books they have listed as suggestions, in the order they appear, together.

Suicide Squad Vol. 1: Kicked in the Teeth This is the first collection of the New 52 Suicide Squad series, and the third ongoing monthly series, following the original and the short-lived 2001revival attempt. It is, to put it kindly, garbage.

Suicide Squad Vol.1: Trial By Fire This collection includes the first eight issues of the 1987-launched Ostrander series. It definitely reads like a product of the 1980s, but is infinitely more readable than any post-Ostrander Suicide Squad monthlies.

Joker This was an original graphic novel by Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo, released around the time Dark Knight was in theaters, and it sold pretty well. This was Azzarello back when he was probably still best known as the guy who wrote 100 Bullets, and not the guy who wrote some Before Watchmen stuff against the wishes and over the objections of Watchmen writer and co-creator Alan Moore, had a controversial (and boring!) run on Wonder Woman, either wrote or co-wrote Dark Knight III: The Master Race (depending on who you ask), helped script the Batman: The Killing Joke direct-to-DVD cartoon and called someone a "pussy" at a San Diego Comic-Con panel about that cartoon. It was an attempt to turn the homicidal clown character into a grittier, more "realistic" character and I hate, hate, hated it. Killer Croc and Harley both have minor roles in it, neither particularly flattering (Harley's a stripper).

Batman: The Killing Joke Speaking of! This is the classic 1988 Alan Moore/Brian Bolland original graphic novel intended as both an origin of The Joker and a "last" Batman/Joker story...although since the ending was sublte and superhero comics aren't known for their subtlety, no one got it back in the day. It's a weird book, in that I think it's only grown more controversial the farther away we get from its original release, due to what happens to retired Batgirl Barbara Gordon in it, in a sort of classic example of fridging–decades before the phrase "Women In Refrigerators" and the verb "fridge" were coined. It's also the only story DC seems to think is so sacrosanct that they exempt it from their reboots, like The New 52-boot. Interestingly, this story sees Barbara Gordon paralyzed from the waist down, making it impossible for her to ever return to being Batgirl, so she turns to fighting crime a different way by becoming Oracle. Eventually. In the pages of...wait for it...Suicide Squad.

Batman: Arkham Asylum 25th Anniversarry Another late 1980s classic. This original graphic novel was Grant Morrison's first big hit, and a rare example of interior art from Dave McKean, probably still best known for his Sandman covers. It really helped popularize Arkham Asylum, and you can trace countless Batman comics stories and multi-media adaptations back to it. Again, not sure what it could have to do with the movie, but it does prominently feature The Joker, Batman (obviously) and Killer Croc is in there too. I've read rumors that Ben Affleck would like his Batman movie to revolve around Arkham, and I wouldn't be surprised if the next Batman movie did. Those Arkham videogames sure seemed popular and, as I've said before, the filmmakers should attempt a narrative that gets all of Batman's enemies in, given that cycles of the film tend to top out at around three or four.

Harley Quinn Vol. 1: Hot In The City The first collection of Amanda Conner, Jimmy Palmiotti and friends' Harley Quinn monthly series, launched a few years into the New 52, but prior to the "DCYou" initiative. It's very popular, although I don't really care for it. This collection features a few of the issues that were illustrated via artists jams though, so there's a lot of interesting stuff to look at.

Deadshot: Bulletproof This collects the six-part, 2005 minseries written by Chritos Gage and drawn by Steven Cummings and Jimmy Palmiotti. I've never read it! I like the sound of the premise though, which seems like it would be the basis for a Deadshot spin-off movie if they ever did such a thing, although i don't know why they would, as by himself he's just a guy with guns and a cool mustache, so not that different from any other action movie chracter, really. They give Deadshot a makeover here, and his costume is pretty good; much better than his terrible New 52 one, anyway.

New Suicide Squad Vol. 1: Pure Insanity I read the first few issues of this, DC's second attempt at a Suicide Squad ongoing. It's a step up from Kicked In The Teeth, but still a long way from good. I reviewed the first issue here on the week of its release, if you're interested (scroll down; it's the third book covered).

Batman Vol. 7: Endgame The seventh volume of Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo's Batman run, this is the big Joker/Batman rematch following the events "Death of The Family" (and a pretty good argument for limiting The Joker's appearances, giving them a sense of occasion in the process). I liked it.

Batman: Harley Quinn This 200-page collection features canonical DCU Harley Quinn stories, including her introduction into the DCU. If I'm reading the contents right, there's only one New 52 comic herein--the Forever Evil tie-in in which she blows up scores of Gotham City children in a massive terrorist attack--that was immediately at odds with her portrayal in her own series, which launched shortly after that story. There are also a few "continuity-lite" stories that may or may not fit in to a particularly version of the character, if you care about such things. I'm pretty sure I've read almost all of these, but I haven't re-read some in a while, and would be interested in seeing how the collection reads. Maybe I'll hunt this down. Anyway, I'll go ahead and recommend it, as it should provide a nice cross-section of Harley stories, including one from her co-creator. Be warned that these will mostly be "original" Harley, rather than the decidedly more mask-less and pants-less version of the film.

What would I add? Well, DC has been very, very slowly collecting the original Suicide Squad monthly (i.e. the good one). So far you can find not only Vol. 1: Trial By Fire, included above, but also Vol. 2: The Nightshade Odyssey, Vol.3: Rogues and Vol. 4: The Janus Directive. DC recently released a 30th Anniversary edition of Legends, in which the Squad plays a small role...although it is their first appearance. It looks like DC is planning a release of the Silver Age iteration, in a hardcover entitled Suicide Squad: The Silver Age Omnibus; it looks pricey, but I'd be interested in reading it.

For more Deadshot, I'd recommend not only Deadshot: Bulletproof, but also Deadshot: Beginnings by John Ostrander, Kim Yale and Luke McDonnel, which features a spin-off miniseries from Suicide Squad and early battles with Batman. Also, you might want to check Gail Simone's run on Secret Six (pre-New 52), which prominently featured Deadshot. The book, featuring a team of six villains who had a habit of losing their sixth on a regular basis fighting worse villains, was something of a spiritual successor to Ostander's Suicide Squad.

For more Joker and Harley, there are so many comics and collections featuring each that its hard to know where to begin. Suffice it to say that if you walk into any comic shop you won't have too hard a time tracking down comics featuring them. For The Joker, I'd recommend 2014's The Joker: A Celebration of 75 Years, if only because it offers such a good overview of the character's various interpretations over the decades; for Harley Quinn, I'd recommend the Paul Dini/Bruce Timm "Mad Love," most recently collected as The Batman Adventures: Mad Love Deluxe Edition, but if you can find it, 2011's Batman: Mad Love and Other Stories is a better bet, as it collects a bunch of other, similar Harley stories.

For more Killer Croc, there's Batman Arkham: Killer Croc which is a greatest hits kind of collection. I haven't read it, but I've read many of the stories within, and I see it contains my two favorite Croc stories by my two favorite Batman artists, Norm Breyfogle and Kelley Jones.

I still think this is funny.

That's the second-to-last page of Green Lanterns #4, by writer Sam Humphries and so many artists that you wouldn't believe me if I told you how many there were (Okay, I 'll try. It's nine. It took three pencil artists and six inkers to draw this 20-page book...that bi-weekly schedule's looking like it might be such a great idea, huh?).

It's been years since former Green Lantern writer Geoff Johns first introduced Red Lantern Dex-Starr, a perfectly ordinary house cat from Earth who earned a Red Lantern ring, which he wears on his tail. Like all Red Lanterns, Dex-Starr now vomits laser-blood that burns like napalm. It's been years, but man, Dex-Starr's existence still hasn't ceased to amuse me.

I particularly liked Green Lantern Simon Baz's set-up to his appearance, the "Is that a...cat?" line.

It sure is, Simon. It sure is.

Afterbirth: DC's "Rebirth" initiative, week ten

Suicide Squad: Rebirth #1 by Rob Williams, Philip Tan, Jonathan Glapion, Scott Hanna, Sandu Florea and Alex Sinclair

It's not surprise at all that DC launched the Suicide Squad Rebirth special, essentially the first of two #1 issues of the next volume of the series designed as a jumping on point, the Wednesday of the week that the much-anticipated Suicide Squad movie opened (do not the the series that re-launched this week, Harley Quinn, the solo book of the Squad member who appears to be the most likely to be the breakout star of the film–although I could just be basing that on the fact that she seems to be the only burst of color in the film's line-up).

What is more surprising is that it took DC this long to so closely align their Suicide Squad monthly comic with the movie's look and line-up. I mean, I'm pretty sure the trailers have been unspooling for about 43 years or so now, Internet time, and yet DC decided to hold off until the actual release of the film to start trying to capitalize on the interest (Unless you want to count the Suicide Squad's Most Wanted series of anthology miniseries, and, I suppose, the Harley Quinn & The Suicide Squad April Fools' Special).

So let's quickly review the recent history here. The Suicide Squad concept was reinvented in 1987 by writer John Ostrander, who imagined a secret government task force lead by Amanda Waller that plucks pliable super-villains from prison, outfits them with explosive arm bracelets and more-or-less pressgangs them on accepting extremely dangerous, off-the-books black-ops missions. It was pretty damn popular, and remains particularly well regarded today–despite DC's sluggish pace at releasing the trade collections (which, it should be said, still read quite well, but do feel like mainstream comics published in the late 1980s).

DC hasn't really pulled off a successful revival of the book between the conclusion of that original series in 1992, despite a few attempts, ranging from guest-appearances in other books to a 12-issue 2001 attempt to an Ostrander-helmed miniseries.

When faced with the prospect of launching 52 new titles (and keeping 52 or so titles in publication at all times) in September of 2011, DC naturally revived the Suicide Squad, making the in retrospect brilliant decision to put the Batman: Arkham video-game sexy Joker version of Harley Quinn front and center (although, it should be noted, she did have something of an antecedent in the original book's run in the form of violent clown lady in love with violent clown guy, Jewlee). The first issue of that series was almost as poorly constructed as it was extremely unpleasant to read, and, like most New 52 books, it featured random redesigns that were usually bad (does anyone like the new Deadshot costume better than the previous two or, hell, three?), but also just mind-bogglingly off: Changing the type of shark King Shark resembled, shaving off Deadshot's signature mustache and, most notoriously, turning short, wide, middle-aged woman Waller into a tall, young, buxom Barbie-doll who half wears her shirts (Particularly galling when one considers that Waller is the DC Universe's most prominent full-figured woman, and has been since, I don't know, Etta Candy* in the 1940s, maybe...?).

The book did well enough that it wasn't canceled like so many New 52 books, but it sold poorly enough that it was relaunched as New Suicide Squad in 2014 (like Deathstroke and Teen Titans then, it was a book that DC kinda-sorta canceled only to immediately relaunch).

That brings us to this week, and the launch of Suicide Squad (volume...four, I guess), the book's third iteration since fall of 2011 (much like Red Hood, which we covered last week).

There are a few remarkable things about this launch, the most immediately apparent being how closely it's following the lead of the film version. Harley Quinn was recently redesigned to more closely resemble the version played by Margot Robie in the film, and while only one of the characters she's holding Polaroid photos of on the cover appears within, all three of them are on the roster in the film.

Inside, Waller has resumed her pre-New 52 appearance, and this issue is written by Williams in the "bridge" fashion that so many of the Rebirth one-shots, transitioning from the previous series (here, the last issues of New Suicide Squad) and the upcoming new series.

President Barack Obama yells at Waller in his office for a while about how goddam horrible and un-American the Suicide Squad is–and, I think it's worth noting, the book flourished in the Reagan and beginnings of the first Bush administration, but never found its footing again until 2011, when it survived, but wasn't actually any good. Politically, it's a very late Cold War, Reagan-esque concept that seems at odds with the Obama zeitgeist, even if he is the president who got Osama bin Laden and killed more terrorists, suspected terrorists and people standing too close to terrorists or suspected terrorists with drone strikes than even his predecessor, whose administration was generally perceived as a war-mongering one.

When Obama insists that "someone has to know" about what the Squad does, if, as Waller suggests, the public, the Justice League and even the president can't, that "someone has to represent the American people...someone must be held accountable," Waller agrees. She introduces readers to Colonel Rick Flag, a highly decorated and heroic Navy Seal who has recently disappeared from the public eye (This also serves in bringing the comic book Suicide Squad closer to that of the movie...and of the 1987-1992 run, where Flag performed a similar function, as the soldier leading the criminals rigged to explode). Obama agrees and dismisses her.

She then approaches Flag, who is himself in a position not too far removed from those of the various Squaddies: He's rotting away in Guantanamo Bay, but, in his case, for a crime he refused to commit. Waller makes an aggressive sales pitch to him that includes letting him out of his cell if he agrees to lead the Squad, along the way introducing him to three of the more popular members: Harley, Deadshot and Captain Boomerang.

Naturally, he agrees, and the end of the issue finds Flag–here dressed in standard issue military gear rather than the tight-fitting yellow t shirt that used to be his self-appointed uniform–helping rescue the trio from a seemingly impossible situation and leading them into a particularly poorly drawn splash page that concludes the book.

On the very next page is a full-page ad, featuring Jim Lee's cover for the first issue of the new series, which features just about everyone in the movie team, excepting only El Diablo, Flag and Slipknot, who I assume dies at some point in the movie, because, come on, it's Slipknot.

It's kind of difficult to assess where exactly the book is going based on these 20 pages, but Williams' story was a lot less unpleasant than other first issues featuring the New 52 Squad. The extended business with Obama and Flag at least recalls (or maybe just leans in the direction) of the occasional focus on geo-politics of the original, and, like I said, the line-up is at least reflective of the new multi-media version of the team. Williams' script highlights the cold-blooded, hardcore nature of these "heroes," and earns the book it's "T+" rating.

As I've said before, the New 52-era Squad is at a disadvantage to the original, in that it doesn't have the deep, deep bench of obscure villains and even more obscure superheroes, given that it is working with a history that is just about five years old. The character pool therefore lacks flexibility and expendability, and few if any of these characters have much in the way of "history," since almost no character in the DC Universe has a history anymore (Batman villains Harley Quinn and Killer Croc are best positioned in that regard). That said, the film is similarly working with characters that lack any history other than what it is inventing for them, so it's not like it can't work, it will just be a pretty different book. If Shade The Changing Man shows up here, for example, it's not quite the same as Ostrander plucking a character from limbo as it was in the late 1980s.

The artwork is fairly terrible, but then, there hasn't been a good-looking run of Suicide Squad in the previous two volumes, either. Lee's presence on the monthly should presumably boost sales and bring some quality to the proceedings. One major problem with the New 52, particular when it was first launched, is that the publisher seemed intent on producing a line that looked like it was drawn by people who were trying to draw like Jim Lee, which is exactly what they got, as only one of the guys drawing any of those 52 comics was Jim Lee.

Tan's style is very much of that school. The four inkers naturally give the book a rough, uneven look, although when frequent Lee collaborator Scott Williams inks Tan's work, it reaches its most Lee-like. There are a lot big panels and splash pages, and little in the way of good old-fashioned comic book storytelling.

The first page is a splash featuring a pile of photos. There are three more splashes, the last of which looks like a page Tan simply sketched (the characters are all kind of floating in free space, unaffected by gravity) and that Sinclair finished for him in the coloring stage, filling in all the white space with the coloring effects symbolizing explosions. I think six is the most number of panels on any one page, while many pages have no more than two to four panels a piece.

As I said, Waller is back to her original look. Deadshot is still wearing his terrible New 52 costume. Harley is wearing her latest costume from Harley Quinn and sporting a film-inspired look, making her look like a compromise between the Amanda Conner design and the film design, although Tan gives her a weird, wide, round baby-face. Captain Boomerang always looks "wrong" to me when he's not wearing his crazy Silver Age outfit with the boomerang-patterned shirt and silk scarf, but he too looks like something of a compromise design: The big, bushy sideburns seen in the film, and a dark-hued, more "bad-ass" version of the costume he's been wearing various iterations of since, I don't know, Identity Crisis or so.

I don't exactly have high hopes for the book, but DC has at least done a pretty good job in aligning it to the film version while simultaneously aligning it to the most successful iteration of the book. It therefore has the potential to please a lot more would-be readers or potential fans than it has to annoy, confound or confuse them.

Harley Quinn #1 by Amanda Conner, Jimmy Palmiotti, Chad Hardin and Alex Sinclair

As apparently the only DC Comics fan who doesn't find Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti's Harley Quinn comics the least bit funny, I was chagrinned to make it to page three of the first issue of the rebooted series only to find that the writing team chose to entitle their story "Afterbirth!", which, you'll note, is what I have been calling my weekly assessment of DC's "Rebirth" initiative. Given how far in advance comics tend to be written–as well as the fact that I'm fairly certain neither Palmiotti or Conner read my blog–I'm confident that it is sheer coincidence. But man, it does reflect rather poorly on me that the writers I don't find funny decided to make the exact joke about "Rebirth" that I did.

Sigh.

So this is a rather strange first issue and "jumping-on point" for Conner and Palmiotti's Harley Quinn comics, the main title of which, Harley Quinn, will still be written by that particular team, still drawn primarily by artist Chad Hardin and not exactly changing direction in any evident way.

There are two rather long info-dump sequences that account for the first six-to-eight pages of the 20-page comic, before the actual story begins. There are two pages of Harley and Poison Ivy enjoying a spa day together, while the two talk about the fact that Harley has become a community leader in Coney Island, running multiple businesses. And then there are four pages in which Harley stands on a stage with a microphone, recounting a version of her New 52 origin story and parading out her entire supporting cast, from Big Tony and the taxidermied beaver present in the book in order to make beaver jokes, to the sideshow freaks employed in the sideshow she kinda sorta runs now, to her gang (which recently earned their own miniseries, Harley Quinn and Her Gang of Harleys to the members of her roller derby team.

Then two pages are spent revealing her audience, Red Tool, a masked character who speaks in yellow, tool-shaped dialogue bubbles (who, I am ashamed to admit, I just realized a few weeks ago is meant to be a Deadpool stand-in, a rather ballsy move from one-time Deadpool writer Palmiotti, considering that when he and Conner launched their Harley Quinn series, it was essentially as a cheesecake version of Deadpool, with beaver jokes) and a now power-less genie characternamed Jimm Salabim.

And while she gives the pair a tour of the wax museum she's temporarily running, an zombie outbreak occurs. The cause? Well, we flashback 98 hours to a four-page sequence in which an alien shape-changer disguised as a cow is accidentally slaughtered for meat, and those who consume the tainted meat turn into zombies, apparently.

If that sounds familiar, then you've either read or heard of the 1995 Grant Morrison and Mark Millar-written Marvel series Skrull Kill Krew, in which shape-changing green aliens in the form of cows are slaughtered, and imbue some of those who eat the tainted meat are transformed; given that this book also has a Deadpool pastiche that's less parody than appropriation, it's difficult to tell what to make of this sequence, exactly.

Also familiar? When Deadpool/Red Tool gets bitten on the hand he worries aloud if that means he might be infected, Harley immediately chops most of his arm off. Did you guys read Hitman, specifically "Zombie Night at The Gotham Aquarium"...? Hopefully so, as that book is the best, and that story in particular is where the series started to come into its own. Anyway, when one of the characters gets bitten on the hand by a zombie, he immediately uses a chainsaw to cut off his own hand, based on the fact that in zombie movies he's seen that's the only way to prevent zombification after being bit (He is almost immediately informed by the mad scientist behind the zombie gas that he cut his hand off for no reason, however, as that's not how it works in real life).

And that's pretty much it. A long review of Harley Quinn continuity to date (skipping over the stuff that doesn't quite fit with Conner and Palmiotti's take on the character, which is basically all the stuff from the various New 52 Suicide Squad comics), followed by a zombie outbreak story that features two references of dubious nature to Big Two comics of the mid-to-late 1990s, which is at least one too many to fall within just 12-pages.

I don't think I'm going to like the post-"Rebirth" Harley Quinn any better than the pre-"Rebirth" Harley Quinn.

Chad Hardin's interior artwork, and Conner's covers, remain the book's strongest selling points.


*Who also saw a redesign that made her taller, slimmer, younger and all-around more traditionally sexy as part of the New 52's redesigns of the entire DC Universe.

Comic Shop Comics: August 3rd

Dark Horse Comics/DC Comics: Superman (Dark Horse/DC Comics) So a few months back I was going through my vast comics midden as part of a (sadly, still ongoing) reorganization project, during which I noticed that I had the first and third issue of the Superman/Tarzan: Sons of The Jungle crossover, but not the second, and found myself wishing they would collect it in trade, as that would be a lot easier to buy than to try tracking down the second issue–plus then I could get rid of those single issues.

And guess what? That story is in here, along with two Superman/Aliens crossovers and Mike Allred's Superman/Madman Hullabaloo. I've only read parts of the Tarzan crossover before and the Madman crossover, so the bulk of this collection is brand-new to me. But, as the above anecdote implies, it is basically a book that I was wishing for recently, so I'm glad to have it.

I obviously haven't read it just yet, but I'm just including it here since I did buy it at the shop this week. I'm sure I'll have a full review eventually.

DC Comics Bombshells #16 (DC) As writer Marguerite Bennett continues to expand the cast of her What If Scantily Clad Ladies Fought World War II When They Weren't Too Busy Flirting? comic, and delve deeper into the back-stories of those characters, it seems like the series may have lost a bit of focus. But then, those new characters are all so fun, and the back-stories often so engaging, that it's difficult to fault Bennett for these indulgences, either. Plus the art is, as always, amazing; ideally the series would have but one artist, but both Mirka Andolfo and Laura Braga (who draw this issue) are both great artists.

The two groups of characters who met underneath the streets of Berlin last issue–Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Catwoman, Batwoman, Renee Montoya, Zatanna, John Constantine and Raven–are met by still more allies, these ones lead by rockabilly Huntress and her "swing kids" rebels, including this universe's versions of Speedy/Arsenal (Rudi Harpfer) and Lady Nighthawk (Zinda Bleier).

Batwoman pulls Huntress aside to lecture her on how war isn't a kid's game, and we see extensive flashbacks starring each. Huntress, a German, tells her origin story and how she can't stand to stand idly by while her country commits atrocities. Batwoman, meanwhile, tells her what I guess is the Bombshells version of "A Death of The Family," when she and Renee saw their teenage mascot/ally Jason brutally gunned down during the Spanish Civil War (by a red-haired woman wearing a safari outfit with animal print highlights–I imagine she's supposed to be this book's version of either The Cheetah Priscilla Rich or perhaps original Huntress Paula Brooks).

The second half of the book checks in with Mera, and we learn Arthur Curry's secrets, and the secrets of his lighthouse and his island, and the pair travel to Atlantis to deal with the fucked-up political situation under the sea, which has only been hinted at before. This too involves rather lengthy flashbacks, detailing Mera's origins and what this version of Atlantis is like.

As I said, the book seems to meandering a bit–there's still a good four more years worth of World War yet to be fought–but the art is great, the constant reinvention of more and more of DC's character catalog is fun and, appropriate given the source material, the costume designs are appealing and sometimes even surprising. I suppose it's counterintuitive given that these heroes are set in 1941 rather than adventuring in 2016, but some of them boast much better, cooler costumes than their contemporaries. I mean, this Huntress and this Raven look far cooler than they do these days, or have at any time during the last few years.

Jughead #8 (Archie Comics) Well, this is the last issue of Chip Zdarsky's run on Jughead (for now...?), which I would normally find to be devastating news, given that this is one of my favorite, and probably the funniest, comic book I'm currently reading in this good old-fashioned, paper-and-staples format. I'm not devastated, however, because the guy following Zdarsky just so happens to be one of my favorite writers-of-funny comics, Ryan North (Whose Unbeatable Squirrel Girl is the only Marvel comic book funnier than Zdarsky's Howard The Duck*).

This issue concludes Zdarsky's two-parter with artist Derek Charm, in which Jughead and Archie have gone camping together to try and reconnect, only to find a variety of dangers in the woods, ranging from a bear attack to a Mantle family reunion. It's good stuff–and surprisingly emotionally potent–but it seems like a rather small story for Zdarsky to go out on after the six-part epic story that launched his eight-issue run. That is, in part, why I wonder if(/hope) he'll return to script future issues at some point.

Charm's artwork is charming (Ah ha ha ha! Get it?). I think his particular style may be even better-suited to the book than that of Erica Henderson, who drew the first six issues. Zdarsky's style was so different it did the job of providing a strong, aesthetic break from "old" Archie Comics, but Charm's style finds a nice balance between the "new" Archie Comics and the flatter, more cartoony old "house style." I'm glad to hear he's sticking around for the beginning of North's run.

There are a couple of pages in here where his work reminded me of that of Gilbert Hernandez, which...well, that's an artist any cartoonist should be happy to evoke thoughts of in his readers.

In addition to the above-mentioned conflicts, this issue also contains a lot of Mr. Weatherbee, the introduction of Mrs. Weatherbee and a new member of the Mantle family, as well as a pretty awesome flashback to the 1970s. Oh, and there is, of course, a classic back-up story to help justify the $3.99 price tag; this one in the form of a Frank Doyle-written, Bill Vigoda-drawn story in the style that Zdarsky told large portions of his first story arc in.

Paper Girls #8 (Image Comics) I suppose I could pretty much just run the same paragraph about this book with each consecutive issue. A bunch of weird stuff happens that continues to ensure that the narrative never settle down into anything remotely expected, and it ends with a killer cliffhanger that seems to make the story veer off into a completely different direction than what the previous pages might have lead a reader to believe. It is almost peerlessly drawn. There are some touches of local, Cleveland-area color.

Yeah, that would work for the previous seven issues or so of Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang's Paper Girls. I imagine it will also apply to the next seven as well, unless, Vaughan all of a sudden settles into something more predictable with his story of time travel and bizarre animals made into monsters by their sheer size or how out-of-place they are.



*Wait, Patsy Walker is pretty damn funny too, actually...

Afterbirth: DC's "Rebirth" initaitive, week nine

Red Hood and The Outlaws: Rebirth #1 by Scott Lobdell, Dexter Soy and Veronica Gandini

This book is probably the one that I was most confounded to learn that DC would be relaunching as part of their "Rebirth" initiative. The reason? The market and the audience seem to have pretty resoundingly rejected the idea of a Scott Lobdell-written book about Red Hood at this point.

Red Hood and The Outlaws was launched in September of 2011 as part of the New 52 initiative, written by Lobdell and starring the rebooted Jason Todd, Roy Harper and Starfire. It lasted a respectable 40-ish issues, with its sales seeing regular bumps thanks to its tenuous Batman connections, which were, of course, strong enough to tie into events like, say, "The Death of The Family."

Then DC relaunched it as Red Hood/Arsenal in 2015, with an altered line-up reflected in the title, and a different artist, but Lobdell still attached.

So here's Red Hood and The Outlaws volume two, still written by Lobdell and set to feature a third line-up of characters, who can be glimpsed on the cover, reflected in Red Hood's gun sites–some version of Bizarro* and a new version of the post-Crisis, pre-Flashpoint Amazon character Artemis. In this first issue, however, the only one of the three characters who actually appears is The Red Hood, Jason Todd.

Given the connections to Batman, I suppose it's understandable why DC keeps trying to make a Red Hood book happen, although I'm uncertain why they keep trying to make a Lobdell-written Red Hood book happen, given that he wrote the last two versions and hasn't had much success in either keeping books afloat (see "DCYou" launch Doomed, or have you already forgotten that book even existed?) or staying on books long enough to suggest they were terribly successful (Superman, Teen Titans). The fact that DC has tinkered with every other aspect of this book–the artists, the title, the line-up, the costumes–but not the guy writing it seems strange to me.

I've personally never "bought" the return of Jason Todd or his taking up of the name "Red Hood." I thought his resurrection was a bad move that took more away from Batman than it added to the character and the mega-story (I similarly wasn't pleased with the return of Barry Allen, or, later, the restoration of Barbara Gordon's status as Batgirl). I particularly didn't care for the way the return was handled, as Todd went back and forth from being a Punisher-style killer vigilante to an outright super-villain to an anti-hero in league with Batman, though a couple of the things he did along the way should be deal-breakers for Batman (i.e. killing people with guns, attempting to kill Tim Dake, attempting to kill Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne, etc).

The New 52 reboot did nothing to make a living Jason Todd calling himself "The Red Hood" anymore workable. Even with the excuse of the hard reboot of Flashpoint, DC stuck with the old resurrection story (Superboy punches and a Lazarus Pit, apparently) but the time compression makes the character's story hard to swallow, and Lobdell pretty liberally re-wrote his characterization and his relationship with other characters in his orbit, particularly those that appeared in the book alongside him.

The result is a pretty classic modern DC frustration, wherein the publisher wants to rely on the readership's familiarity with a character to help endear that character and sell that character's comics, while simultaneously telling the reader everything that they though they knew about the character was wrong, and here's a brand-new history and characterization for that character.

Not to get too far into the weeds here (too late, right?), but Jason Todd was Red Hood by "Year Five" of the current DCU timeline. Assuming Batman takes in Dick Grayson and trains him and makes him the first Robin in the first year of his career and Grayson is only Robin for a year, then we're already somewhere in Year Two or Year Three when Batman meets juvenile delinquent Jason Todd, takes him in, trains him, makes him Robin, adventures with him as Robin II, loses him to The Joker in some altered and updated version of "A Death In The Family," and then Todd is brought back to life and some form of the events of "Under The Hood" occurs. That's a lot of ground for two-to-three years...and consider that Batman has to squeeze two more Robins in before Year Five.

Lobdell reviews all of this in this one-shot, so none of that has been soft-rebooted away as part of "Rebirth" (It occurred to me while reading this book and, even more so, while reading Titans #1 that perhaps the "Rebirth" initiative should have waited until after DC does whatever it plans to do to restore their universe/continuity; DC Universe: Rebirth #1 intimated that ten years of time were stolen from the DCU and the New 52-ivers was created to weaken and fuck with the fabric of reality, so it will be presumably restored at some point...which will make necessary another reboot in the near-ish future anyway).

So in this issue, Red Hood narrates another re-telling of his origin story on his way to the presentation of what appears to be the premise for this newest Red Hood series.

There are seven pages about his first meeting with Batman (when he tries to steal the Batmobile's tires), and how be came Robin and how, even at a relatively young age, he was a bit more wild and violent than Batman was comfortable with.

This section benefits greatly from colorist Veronica Gandini's work, which keeps keeps the palette muted enough that it almost looks washed into black and whtie, save for the striking red of Jason's hoodie (Oh! A red hoodie! I get it!) and, later, his Robin costume, with yellows and flashes of flesh coloring or dull yellows breaking the blacks. It's very moody and very effective.

Then cut to the present, where Jason fights Batman, who is attempting to stop him from apparently gunning down a bunch of cops and the mayor of Gotham. Improbably, Jason wins the fight.

He retreats to what appears to be an all-villains bar, where he reminisces over the next phase of his back story–"A Death in The Family" through "Under The Hood"–over a large mug of beer which, hilariously, he doesn't remove his mask to drink. Not sure how that works, as he doesn't even have a little mouth hole to insert a straw into.

He's approached by another guy in a full face mask and jacket, and he has the gall to tell the guy who is dressed so similarly to himself, "Sorry, Pal. S&M's not really my thing..." That guy tries to recruit Jason into Black Mask's False Face Society (I thought Catwoman just did that story...?) Apparently the battle with Batman and the apparent shooting of all the city employees ingratiated Red Hood to the local bad guy scene (No one seems to notice or remark upon the fact that Red Hood wears a bat-symbol on his chest, of course).

Finally, we end in Jason Todd's current Gotham City base of operations, which Batman has of course found, and is standing there waiting for him. We learn that Todd had actually injected the mayor with a cure to some goofy super-villain weapon that had infected him, and that he had sedated the cops rather than shot them with bullets.

During the course of their discussion, Todd tells Batman he wants to follow up with the False Face Society, and go undercover as a bad guy to help fight crime within. That's a fine premise, even if it seems pretty similar to the premise of the current and previous Dick Grayson books and seems like a better one for a Red Hood comic launching on the heels of "Under The Hood" or even Batman, Incorporated rather than his third team book in five years, but whatever.

Artist Dexter Soy's work looks better here than I can remember it looking at any point in the near past and, again, I think a great deal of the credit goes to Gandini's coloring. As an introduction to The Red Hood character, I think this one-shot works perfectly well and, in fact, it probably serves better as an introduction than a re-introduction, since if you've been reading the character since Todd came back to life and took over that name and adopted that costume in 2005 or so, you'll know all of this (and be aware of how fluid and almost random his characterization has been in all that time).

How the book will incorporate "The Outlaws" Bizarro and Artemis will have to remain to be seen in the pages of Red Hood and The Outlaws #1 on August 10, when Lobdell and Soy launch the "Dark Trinity" storyline.

Batgirl #1 by Hope Larson, Rafael Albuquerque and Dave McCaig

(Quick note: This is the exact same review that I posted as part of last week's "Comic Shop Comics" column, included here for the sake of making this column a complete review of the the Rebirth specials and the launches of all their new titles). After how great the previous creative team of Cameron Stewart, Brenden K. Fletcher and Babs Tarr's run on the second half of the previous volume of Batgirl was, how luke-warm I was on the new team of Hope Larson (whose older work I've enjoyed, but whom I've only encountered as a writer/artist doing her own thing, not a writer of super-comics) and Rafael Albuquerque (a great artist, but not one with a style I personally found as exciting, unique and as much of a break with the rest of DC's line as I did Tarr), and how confusingly poor last week's Batgirl And The Birds of Prey: Rebirth #1 was (scroll down for a pair of reviews), my expectations for this issue were set pretty low.

It did manage to surpass them though.

Perhaps wisely, Larson takes Barbara Gordon out of Burnside, and Gotham City altogether. The rationale proffered in the last issues of the previous volume seemed a little weak, but, here in the real world, it does allow Larson and Albuquerque a way to avoid direct comparisons with the previous creative team. If Babs is journeying to Asia to re-find herself, well, it allows the new creative team, and the book itself, to find themselves before plunging back into the more familiar Barbara Gordon milieu of Gotham City (Although it may be worth noting that she is in Gotham in Batgirl and The Birds of Prey, which is set after the first story arc of Batgirl, and she was also there in the first issue of Nightwing, which also shipped this week).

She's gone to Japan, in part to interview 104-year-old former (?) bat-themed crime-fighting vigilante Fruit Bat, given the fact that the average lifespan of a superhero is 40 (Actually, I don't know how many superheroes have actually died in the post-Flashpoint DCU yet...and, of course, stayed dead. Damian died at 10, so if the average is 40, then that means someone really old must have died at some point too, but since there's only been a single generation of superheroes now, at least not that Barbara would know of, since DC Universe: Rebirth intimated the existence of the Justice Society's heroes. Batman and Jason Todd both died young, and came back to life. So maybe they, like Damian, don't count, since they didn't stay dead. Superman's dead, but he was also pretty young, somewhere in his twenties, right? Actually, let's not even think about it, okay?)

Babs gets to see the very old super-lady in action, as she takes on and frightens off a girl in a sailor suit and dumb face-paint (you can see the pair on the cover). She also meets an old friend from Chicago, who is coincidentally staying in the same room at the same hostel she is.

Larson's plotting and script are just fine. Albuquerque's artwork is also just fine. Babs appears a lot less stylish than I'm used to seeing her now, as she's dressed the entire issue as is she were out hiking, and I wasn't crazy with the designs of the new characters (Like, it always strikes me as a little weird when heroes in other cultures or countries dress in traditional or stereotypical costumes; it's not like all American heroes dress like Uncle Sam or cowboys, you know?).

The book does seem to be off to a pretty good start though, and I'm certainly planning on reading #2.

Hal Jordan and The Green Lantern Corps #1 by Robert Venditti, Rafa Sandoval, Jordi Tarragona and Tomeu Morey

In the first official issue of the new volume of Green Lantern, the Rebirth special's artist Evan Van Sciver is replaced by pencil artist Rafa Sandoval and inker Jordi Tarragona, for what appears to be something of a retreat from writer Robert Venditti's somewhat off-the-beaten path take on Hal Jordan and Green Lantern during the course of the book's "DCYou" period.

The Sinestro Corps is ascendant, as we saw in the special, and Sinestro has regained his youth (and a snazzier new yellow Parallax-style costume) by charging his ring directly from the imprisoned Parallax entity itself, apparently sucking the whole entity into his ring.

Meanwhile, Hal Jordan is looking for leads as to where the hell the Corps has disappeared to–and is temporarily affected by fear, which I think turns part of his recently regained corporeal body back into green pure will energy(?), and The Corps reappears from...wherever they were exactly during their last two miniseries.

So Hal, Guy, Kilowog, Arissa and Mogo are all back in the universe. And...that's this issue, really. Venditti seems to be re-setting the board for another Sinestro vs. Hal Jordan, Yellow Lanterns vs. Green Lanterns showdown.

I've seen it before, so am not terribly interested in what happens next, although I wonder if a certain segment of Green Lantern fans will be happy to see the franchise return to something more familiar after the last year or so of the unfamiliar.

Sandoval's art is fine, although the thing I like most about these Green Lantern comics with various armies of variously colored Lanterns is the designs of particular aliens in the ranks of each. As I mentioned previously, I like the fact that one of the new (or newer? I wasn't reading Sinestro) Sinestro Corps members is apparently just a giant gorilla with a power ring, and, looking at the GLC, I see there's a raccoon now, apparently distinct from B'dg or the late Ch'p. Maybe this is the Rocket of the DCU...?

I think this Green Lantern book is probably better written, and the characters seem more consistent with themselves, but of the two currently on the stands, I prefer Green Lanterns, which has an Earth setting (which seems novel after about a decade of Green Lantern comics set almost exclusively in outer space), two newer characters with interesting backgrounds, the intriguing promise of a "Phantom Ring" (presumably not the skull ring The Phantom wears to brand guys with skull-shaped bruises when he pounds it into their faces) and, of course, Dex-Starr, the napalm blood-vomiting Red Lantern house cat.

Nightwing #1 by Tim Seeley, Javier Fernandez and Christ Sotomayor

The first issue of the volume of a Nightwing monthly, still being written by Grayson co-writer Seeley, covers some similar ground as the Nightwing: Rebirth special, in which Dick Grayson decides to move on from his super-spy work and resume his Nightwing identity for another, similar mission: Infiltrate the new, international iteration of the Court of Owls and destroy it from within. Along the way, he checks in with old allies, including Batgirl Barbara Gordon and Batman and current Robin, Damian Wayne (These are both rather nice moments, in which he interrupts a Batman/Robin sparring match by advising Damian how to get past Batman's defense, and when he meets Batgirl in plain clothes thinking it was a date, not a team-up).

Seeley is setting up a war of sorts between Kobra and the black-masked Parliament of Owls, in which the Owls want Grayson to get increasingly offensive, ultimately pairing him with another bird-themed operateive, Raptor. They naturally don't get along so great.

I'm not terribly fond of Raptor's costume, which features a mask that is at once evocative of a luchadore mask and that of Hawk from Hawk and Dove, and a tight-fitting, sleeveless coat with a zipper and hood. The closest thing he has to a power is an elaborate, somewhat steampunk-looking claw that is somehow able to provide him whatever he needs in any particular situation...a little like a magical answer to Batman's utility belt.

I don't love Nightwing's current costume either, which features a too-small blue chest symbol and blue highlights in unusual places (strips on his calves, blue knuckles and palms on his gloves). It's a big improvement over his Agent 37 costume and his previous, red-and-black Nightwing costume, but I don't know, it's not quite there yet.

In the "Rebirth" era, DC seems to be retreating from The New 52 designs into the direction of the pre-Flashpoint designs, but not going so far as to just give characters versions of their classic costumes. So like Tim Drake's new duds, I think the new Nightwing costume is a vast improvement, but not quite there just yet.

Titans #1 by Dan Abnett, Brett Booth, Norm Rapmund and Andrew Dalhouse

Sigh. Okay, so this is the first issue of the new Titans ongoing series, following immediately on the heels of Titans: Rebirth #1, which reflected both the events of DC Universe: Rebirth #1 (in fact, this book seems most directly concerned with the follow-up to that universe-shaking revelations of that one-shot) and Titans Hunt, the Dan Abnett-written miniseries that was a sequel of sorts to Convergence.

So yeah, good luck!

After a brief, four-page recap of DC Comics: Universe #1, we're back in Dick Grayson's apartment, where the (new) original Teen Titans team of Robin-turned-Nightwing, Aqualad-turned-Garth, Speedy-turned-Arsenal, Wonder Girl-turned-Donna Troy and Lilith-turned-Omen are trying to help Kid Flash-turned-Flash Wally West figure out just what the hell is going on with DC continuity. They all remember the old, pre-Flashpoint continuity, or at least a new version of it, where they all had updated, post-Flashpoint versions of their original Silver Age costumes or whatever.

And I honestly can't wrap my head around this whole premise. I mean, I saw the creation of Donna Troy some five-to-seven years into The New 52-iverse timeline; how could she have existed before? When Dr. Manhattan and/or Pandora re-make the universe and reboot characters, what do they use as their raw material? Isn't New 52 Superman, for example, made out of pre-Flashpoint Superman...? (Apparently not, based on Convergence). This all just makes my head hurt.

And Booth's artwork doesn't do anything for my eyes.

It's not just his style, which I'm not a fan of, or his stylized, '90s take on anatomy, but the very lay-outs, which are all irregular, oddly-shaped panels presented at angles.

So in this issue, while Lilith/Omen tries to magic stuff clues to help them out of Wally's mind, Arsenal and Troy decide to go looking for Mammoth (which has something to do with Titans Hunt), and Nightwing and Garth decide to just hang around his trashed apartment.

Meanwhile, a pretty cool, classic Flash villain is reawakened somehow, and, like his foes, seems to know who Wally West is, and we catch up with New 52 Linda Park.

I would love to like this book, as I like almost all of these characters a whole lot, but these days they are really jut familiar names, as when you take away a character's history and relationships, what you're left with is just a name. I'm not quite sure I even follow Abnett/DC's plan here, to have these re-booted characters semi-remember some aspects of their old histories which, visually at least, seem to have been heavily altered so much that they aren't being de-rebooted (er, restored is probably a better word), just changed.

As mentioned previously, I think this book would be a better one had it been launched after whatever the endgame is for DC's Watchmen vs. The DCU storyline they've foreshadowed. That, or maybe set on a different Earth or continuity. That way the characters could at least remain themselves.

On the positive side, I do really like the way Booth drew the absurdly silly mustache on the villain and, while she doesn't appear in the issue at all, look, Bumblebee is on the cover! I like Bumblebee.



*We've had at least two since the last reboot so far, the Frankenstein's monster-like "B-Zero" from the pages of Forever Evil that died, and the one that starred alongside Jimmy Olsen in the Bizarro mini-series that launched during the "DCYou" initiative.

Based on the variant cover for this issue, this Bizarro is wearing a version of the current Superman costume, blue boots and all, with a backwards S-shield. It remains to be seen if it will be a third Bizarro or if the second one just changed clothes.