Review: Avengers: Standoff

This massive, 400-page collection is a bunch of bound comic books, and thus meets at least one of the most generic definitions of the term "graphic novel," and, it certainly has the length and scope of an actual novel. It doesn't read much of anything like a novel though, and really, how could it, given its contents? It collects a trio of Standoff one-shots and then the various chapters that ran through all of Marvel's Avengers and SHIELD-related titled, some completely integral to the plot, some obviously awarded sub-plots so that they could participate in the cross-over (and hopefully earn a sales boost) and at least two that are just sort of there.

The results are therefore quite shaggy, with the protagonist of one chapter disappearing for a long period of time, or becoming the antagonist later. An exciting plot point will be raised, and then the reader might have to wait a few dozen or a hundred pages to return to it. Some scenes repeat verbatim in different chapters, scores of pages between them, because they are necessary to more than one of the ongoing comics they appear in, and Marvel had no guarantee that a reader would read both of those single issues. Some plot points are raised, but not resolved, because they are part of the individual titles' ongoing storylines, not the "Standoff" story arc those titles are temporarily tying in to.

That is perhaps the necessary nature of a big storyline like this, as it was published serially in 15 individual publications, not all of which any given Marvel reader would read all of, but all of which a reader of this particular collection is forced to.

Honestly, I'm not sure which method is the best; I like this method, obviously, as it allows a reader to read the whole she-bang for cheaper (the trade is $50) or free (from your local library, the best way to read corporate comic), and not worry about making sure they are self-curating the best possible reading experience, since it's not like Marvel is going to help the reader make that easy by, like, telling everyone that you don't really need to read th Howling Commandos of SHIELD or Illuminati issues if you weren't already following those titles, as they're connected but trivial.

Then there's the matter of tone–many of these writers write funny superhero comics, but they have different senses of humor and tell very different kind of jokes–and ever-shifting art-styles. If all of these writers weren't somewhere between good and great, and if the artists weren't of similar caliber, I would be tempted to call this collection a mess, but it's not. It's just a little too big, a little shaggy and a little weird as a reading experience, but it tells a pretty solid, pretty dramatic, pretty funny superhero crossover story with a compelling premise, and a minimum of narrative dead-ends (That is, things that you have to read some other book to see how they turn out) and pointless tie-ins (If Marvel really wanted to go big, they could have had an issue of all of the characters who appear herein with solo titles of their own have "Standoff" issues).

So there are 15 individual issues/chapters within this book. There are three Avengers Standoff one-shots that could probably have been published as a 3-issue miniseries, were it not for the publisher's fetishization of the digits 0-12. And so these are sub-titled Welcome To Pleasant Hill, Assault on Pleasant Hill Alpha and Assault on Pleasant Hill Omega. There are two issues apiece of Agents of SHIELD, All-New, All-Different Avengers, Captain America: Sam Wilson, New Avengers and Uncanny Avengers and the previously mentioned single issues of  Howling Commandos and Illuminati.

There are seven writers involved–Frank J. Barbiere, Gary Duggan, Al Ewing, Marc Guggenheim, Nick Spencer, Mark Waid and Joshua Williamson–although Spencer writes the lion's share (five issues, including the three entitled Avengers Standoff), with everyone else scripting one-to-two issues. There are ten different pencils or penciler/inkers, and more inkers than I have fingers to count.

Here is the perhaps overly-detailed synopsis section of this "review." SHIELD Director Maria Hill's plan to create and weaponize a reality-altering Cosmic Cube was leaked by mysterious computer hacker The Whisperer previously, and she had very publicly said SHIELD was abandoning the project. They did not, but rather than making it into a weapon-weapon, they decided to use it for an experiment in fool-proof super-criminal incarceration.

She essentially founded the small, Norman Rockwell painting of a town named Pleasant Hill, and the Cosmic Cube transformed the incarcerated villains so that their appearances completely changed, they had no memories of their previous lives and they now hadve happy, even idyllic lives in a happy, even idyllic community in Connecticut.

Not everyone agrees this plan is quite ethical, especially the villains getting the cube treatment, and one imagines that should they ever wake up, they would be understandably pretty upset with Hill and SHIELD...and in fairly close proximity to a Cosmic Cube. But what are the chances of that happening? Well, this being a superhero comic book, 100%.

Bucky "The Winter Soldier" Barnes returns from space to put a stop to this, tipping off Old Man Steve about it in the process. Hill takes Steve there to see it for himself and try to convince him she's doing the right thing. The Whisperer reveals his secret identity to Sam Wilson (Surprise! It's that guy!) and tells him of Pleasant Hill, so that's three guys who all wear stars and were at one time or another named Captain America on-site.

The villains regain their identities, and all hell breaks loose, as SHIELD has packed the place with villains, including Baron Zemo, our Big Bad for this story (although there's an even worse guy there too).

To give all the Avengers who are not and have never been Captain America something to do, well, The Unity Squad (from Uncanny Avengers) and The Avengers (from All-New, All-Different Avengers) are summoned there under mysterious circumstances, and end up getting cubed themselves. The SHIELD agents (from Agents of SHIELD) are charged with arresting the now outted Whisperer, who calls to Roberto Da Costa's new A.I.M. (which is Avengers Idea Mechanics, from the pages of New Avengers) to rescue him, putting them in conflict with SHIELD.

And the Howling Commandos show up to save one of their members who stuck there and then basically bug out, and The Hood and Titania show up to save Absorbing Man and also bug out, in the Howling Commandos and Illuminati chapters.

I thought the premise was a strong one, even if it felt familiar. I can't place where exactly it originated, but it reminded me of a handful of second- and third-hand, everything-you-know-is-wrong kind of narratives. It is certainly an interesting new twist as presented in the Marvel Universe here by Spencer, however, and is morally murky enough that it's conceivable to see both how it could be considered a good thing by some people and a bad thing by other people (this seems like a better thing for heroes to fight over than the catalyst of either of Marvel's two miniseries entitled Civil War, for example, and while there is some hero vs. hero fighting here, it is mostly of the misunderstanding variety).

This is basically Spencer's story, a three Captain America team-up involving SHIELD and The Avengers, and he does a couple of pretty impressive things, including a surprisingly effective fake-out in his introduction of Pleasant Hill to readers, his presentation of Hill's acknowledgment of just how sketchy all this is and how she plans to live with herself for doing it and the way he manages to keep the story funny while also life-and-death serious.

For example, near the end of the book, Zemo calls upon Kraven The Hunter to seek out the cube, which has become sentient and taken the form of a little girl, and it was at first strange to see Kraven here given the last two places I saw him (The first Unbeatable Squirrel Girl trade, and then the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl/Howard The Duck crossover "Animal House," at the end of which he has reinvented himself as "A Hunter of Hunters" and is last seen pouncing on a fisherman).

Rest assured, while he is presented as a ruthlessly efficient tracker here, he's also perfectly zany in his exact method of capturing this particular prey.

Taken altogether, I think this was a fun read that achieved at least two noteworthy accomplishments. First, it demonstrated that these sorts of big supehero crossover stories, whether line-wide or more franchise specific like this one, can be fun and positive, and need not revolve around mass death and destruction and the ritual sacrifice of characters to make it seem important–the storyline dramatically changes the status quo for Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, it sets up multiple new books that will spin directly out of this storyline and it introduces a new legacy character back into the Marvel Universe, essentially adding to rather than subtracting from the number of heroes.

Secondly, it will serve as a decent sampler story–and, in time, a time capsule–of just where Marvel's Captain America, Avengers and SHIELD-related comics were circa early 2016 or so.

A couple more-or-less random thoughts:

•Glad to see the character who was The Whisperer back in action. That person is a really great character, although that person is kind of difficult to use on a long-term basis, and it seems like it's been a very, very long time since Marvel has known precisely what to do with that character.

•Quicksilver's new costume is terrible, and I don't understand that speed effects artist Ryan Stegman gives him.

•The Unity Squad seems so random now. I haven't read Uncanny Avengers since the first volume, when Rick Remender was writing it, and it has since been relaunched under writer Duggan. The original concept was a team that was half mutant and half non-mutant, a team consisting of both Avengers and X-Men meant to demonstrate the two factions that were at war in Avengers Vs. X-Men were friends now.

They have since added an Inhuman character too in Synapse, and given how Inhumans are basically being presented as just mutants-with-a-different name, when the Unity Squad first appears, they look like just another X-Men team: Rogue, Cable, Quicksilver, Deadpool and Synapse. Later on they meet up with Doctor Voodoo and...The Human Torch Johnny Storm...? He's not mutant or Inhuman, and not an X-Men or an Avenger. So the line-ups only former Avenger is Doctor Voodoo, who is a relatively new character (Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the superhero formerly known as Brother Voodoo join an Avengers team near the end of Brian Michael Bendis' run on the franchise?) and Quicksilver, who was a mutant.

I can't speak to the quality of the book–although nothing says "X-Men Comic" and "Something Caleb Won't Like At All" to me quite as loudly as the presence of Cable–but it seems to have drifted awfully far from its original premise.

•How bright is Cable's fucking eye, by the way? Stegman draws it like there's a fire burning in the socket, and it's leaping out of it. It doesn't just glow or shine, but it gives off light like a powerful flashlight. How hard must it be to talk to that fucking guy, face to face?

•I like that Orrgo isn't turned into a person, like so many of the others who get imprisoned in Pleasant Hill, but a Pomeranian. Similarly, a shark-themed villain who is never named and never gets any dialogue was turned into an actual shark in the town aquarium.

•Because of their attack on a SHIELD battlecarrier in their rescue of The Whisperer, the U.S. government retaliates against AIM by siccing American Kaiju on them. I've mentioned how awesome this character sounds when the solicits for these issues first became public.

I like kaiju in general, but the pairing of that noun with that particular modifier? Brilliant. High five, writer Al Ewing! We see his origin, in which General Robert L. Maverick (described in a narration box thusly: "Thunderbolt Ross thinks he's kind of heavy-handed") bullies a scientist into shooting Corporate Ziller (GET IT?!) full of a new attempt at the super-soldier serum that contains gamma radiation and even "The Connors formula, for Pete's sake! Lizard serum!"

The result? A Godzilla with a big-ass flag tattoo on his forehead (like Nuke) and a star-spangled underbelly. His roar? "YUUUU! ESSSSS! AAYYY!" (The first word is red, the second white and the third blue).

I don't like his design quite as much as his concept (I think the coloring needs work, personally), but seriously, American Kaiju. I want that thing to have its own book, STAT.

•I didn't think that this was a very good way to return Steve Rogers to his original, more-or-less immortal look. He had previously been stripped of his super-soldier serum, which turned him into a very old man, and so he had returned to being Commander Rogers and working with SHIELD, whereas now he's got the serum back in him and is young and hunky and super-powered again.

It was accomplished via Cosmic Cube, of course, and it's a little awkward, as the transformation is hailed by everyone, Rogers included, as being a good thing, when this entire story is basically all about how using the cube is playing God and is a bad thing.

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

Hal Jordan and The Green Lantern Corps: Rebirth #1 by Robert Venditti, Ethan Van Sciver and Jason Wright

Ethan Van Sciver, who has collaborated with Geoff Johns on Green Lantern: Rebirth, Flash: Rebirth and DC Universe: Rebirth, obviously really like Green Lantern. Given the artist's talent, prestige and past sales, one assumes he could pick whatever titles he wants to work on for DC, and yet he keeps returning to various Green Lantern comics, most recently a minor miniseries about John Stewart, Guy Gardner and other members of the GLC lost in an alternate universe.

And here he is again, teamed with Johns' successor on Green Lantern, writer Robert Venditti.

This particular Rebirth one-shot is more of the bridge variety than the sample of what to expect variety (as is the Nightwing special, below, actually), essentially moving us from where Venditti left Hal Jordan (rather abruptly, it must be said), catching us up on where everyone else in franchise is at the moment and then having a rather pivotal, if slightly silly scene altering Jordan's current status quo.

That status quo? Well, last time we saw him, he was battling a version of his post-Crisis, pre-Flashpoint self (the "Emerald Twilight" Parallax from the pages of Convergence who made it into the New 52-iverse much like a Superman, a Lois and their son Jonathan did). He won the fight, but in the process turned himself into a being of pure green energy.

In this special, in an event that is both kind of awesome and kind of stupid at the same time (something it shares with the best of Johns' Green Lantern writing), the big, green, energy version of Hal creates energy constructs of a rock, an anvil and a huge hammer, and then forges his own Green Lantern ring, each blow knocking him back into his flesh and blood form and sending ripples throughout the extended cast: The Corps, White Lantern Kyle Rayner, Agent Orange Larfleeze, Star Sapphire Carol Ferris and so on.

Naturally he's successful, he says his oath and he wills away his trench coat in favor of his traditional GL costume and flies off and towards the pages of Hal Jordan and The Green Lantern Corps #1. Venditti seems to be now doubling down on business from Johns' run, with all of the variously-colored Lanterns and a mysteriously aged Sinestro (who, after goring gray, looks remarkably like a pink Vincent Price) in a Parallax-powered Warworld taking Oa's place in the center of the universe.

The continuity is a little glitchy if one tries to match this up with various other books. For example, I guess there are still two Hal Jordans and two Parallax entities in the universe (The Convergence Jordan will have a Parallax entity semi-possessing him too, right?), and I have no idea how this matches up to what we've been seeing the pages of Justice League in the "Darkseid War" arc, or even Green Lanterns...although I suppose this issue could be set before Green Lanterns: Rebirth...?

That aside, I imagine if you've liked Johns' Green Lantern, particularly from about the "Emotional Spectrum" business on, then Venditti and Van Sciver have successfully set the stage for a new comic that you will more than likely also like, although do be warned that Van Sciver was here for the special and not the ongoing, which will be drawn by Jordi Tarrogano and Rafa Sandoval.

Nightwing: Rebirth #1 by Tim Seeley, Yanick Paquette and Nathan Fairbairn

The Grayson iteration of the Dick Grayson character--who became Agent 37 of super-spy organization Spyral after having his secret identity outted to the world and faking his own death--was never built to last, and, personally, I never thought it made a whole lot of sense if you thought about it for too long (like, a minute), but co-writers Tom King and Tim Seeley managed to tell some really surprisingly great stories during the two years or so of that particular status quo, and had a great handle on the character of Dick Grayson.

It's something of a relief then to see that Dick is reclaiming the codename and costume of Nightwing (even if how they put the secret identity genie back in the bottle was fairly cheap), and that Seeley is sticking with the character in the new, upcoming Nightwing book.

For the Rebirth special, Seeley's paired with Yanick Paquette, and the pair devote themselves to tying-up various loose ends left over from Grayson and other Dick-specific storylines (like "Robin War"), as Dick narrates (pointing out, on the first page, where he got the name Nightwing) his way through a hang-out session with Damian Wayne and, later, Batman, all the while saying goodbye to various characters from Grayson. He attempts to say goodbye to his former Spyral boss "Matron" (Helena Bertinelli, who is about to become The Huntress and, in fact, is shown suiting up; she'll be in next week's Batgirl and The Birds of Prey: Rebirth #1), he hangs out with Midnighter in order to defeat "Project: Killicorn" (My favorite part is when Dick says that Midnighter refers to them as "arch-frenemies" or "nemesisters," although the Killicorn is, of course, a close second) and runs one-last mission with Tiger, who is the new leader of the new and less-evil Spyral.

Finally, there's some more Court/Parliament of Owls stuff, which looks like it will dominate at least the first story arc of the upcoming Nightwing.

As I said, I wasn't a big fan of the entire Grayson milieu, despite what King and Seeley were occasionally able to pull off with it, but this particular issue does a pretty good job of filing all that stuff away without blowing it up, so that characters and concepts can be returned to if needed in the future. That's wise. I particularly liked Dick's interactions with Midnighter who, remember, was created as a sort of Batman parody, and is always defined in relation to Dick's first and greatest partner.

Like, um, every comic book DC has published in the post-Flaspoint DCU, this would be a hell of a lot better if there weren' a reboot accompanying the introduction of The New 52. For example, prior to that reboot, we knew that there was a legendary Kryptonian hero named Nightwing, we knew that Dick had a long-time relationship with Superman, since he was Batman's junior partner throughout their entire "World's Finest" relationship and Chuck Dixon and Scott Beatty even wrote a nice scene in their 2005 "Year One" Nightwing story arc in which Superman suggests the name to Dick.

In the New 52, I can't recall if Superman and Dick Grayson ever even met until after Grayson became Agent 37.

Also, the climax involves Dick looking at his original, retconned Robin costume in its glass case in the Batcave and, I don't know, maybe it's me, but I just can't get used to seeing that costume and thinking "Dick Grayson's Robin" costume, as it looks more like a Tim Drake costume from some videogame adaptation.

When he does finally suit up as Nightwing, it's worth noting that he's wearing a new costume, this one with the blue and black color scheme he wore for most of his career as Nightwing, only with an abstract "bird head" shape to the blue V element, like that of his costume from Batman: The Animated Series. I think the costume from the Dixon/Scott McDaniel run of Nightwing is his best costume, and this is close enough, certainly better than the red and black costume of the first New 52 Nightwing series.

Please note that Nightwing will be drawn by Javier Fernandez, so if you love Paquette's art here, don't expect to see it on a monthly basis.

New Super-Man #1 by Gene Luen Yang, Viktor Bogdanovic, Richard Friend and Hi-Fi

DC has moved Gene Luen Yang from Superman to a brand-new book, featuring a brand-new character of his own creation, and rather than a demotion, it seems like this new book will have the potential to make far better use of Yang's writing talents (His time on Superman was bogged down with telling one-third or so of the story about Superman losing his powers and secret identity, which was never really resolved satisfactorily).

This new Superman, er, Super-Man is Kenan Kong, and he is a Chinese teenager. Not a Chinese-American teenager, mind you, but a Chinese teenager. Living in China. This immediately promises an unusual direction for a superhero, especially a Superman, narrative, as a character known for fighting for "Truth, Justice and The American Way" doesn't transplant directly into a non-American country, let alone one that is still Communist and currently America's next most powerful economic and military rival.

Kenan's father lists a different set of ideals when ranting against the corrupt government in one panel: Truth, justice and democracy.

The other interesting choice is to take a more Spider-Man origin route, and make Kenan an arrogant jerk who, one assumes, will learn in future issues that with great power comes great responsibility...or that he will at least stop being such a jerk as Superman's powers more-or-less transform him into a more Superman-like figure (Remember at the climax of All-Star Superman, when Lex Luthor gained Superman-like powers and found himself more-or-less infected with empathy and goodness, as his new super-senses unlocked a new understanding of humanity?).

When we first meet Kenan, long before he's super-powered, he's not only an arrogant jerk--which one could say of the 1994 Superboy, whose personality Kenan's reflects in several aspects--he's also a bully, stealing the lunch from a smaller, chubby classmate who can't fight back.

In a moment of stress, he acts heroically, and is basking in newfound fame until his father deflates him, and we learn about a tragic event in his life, one that is an intersection connecting his father's political views, his lashing out against that particular target and even Superman. By book's end, Kenan has volunteered for an experiment conducted by a mysterious Dr. Omen to grant him super-powers.

Naturally it works, or else there would likely be no second issue, and Kenan becomes the Super-Man of China. And, in a last-panel reveal, when he seems out of control, he's faced with The Bat-Man and Wonder-Woman of China.

Yang's story, from conception to dialogue, is all on point. Superman's been around in every medium imaginable for just about ever, so pretty much any time someone comes up with a new take that can explore little-seen aspects of the character deserves at least a slow clap, and while putting Superman in different countries and cultures has been done in short, imaginary stories before (most commercially successfully by writer Mark Millar with 2003's Red Son), but Yang's story has the advantage of being "real," and, by not using the Superman character himself in a Superman story he has the opportunity to do things he wouldn't otherwise be able to do.

I admit to being pretty disappointed by penciller Viktor Bogdanovic and inker Richard Friend's art in the designs. I really like the design of the new Super-Man costume (which I've mentioned before), and i particularly liked the way that it substituted one of the other primary colors in the original Superman's costume as the primary primary color--although, because I am dumb, it didn't occur to me until I read this issue and saw the little stars like those on the Chinese flag on his shoulder that it likely had as much (or more) to do with red being China's color than it did with making a striking opposite to Superman's own blue-dominated costume.

The Bat-Man and Wonder-Woman are similarly cool designs. The Batman is big and blockly, like the Dark Knight Returns Batman, colored with the blue, gray and yellow that American Batman abandoned so long ago. Wonder Woman on the other hand, is in green, and doesn't look much of anything like any other Wonder Woman, save for the fact that she also has a luminous lariat (pink-ish rather than gold). All three costumes have the stars on the shoulders, and matching borders around their chest sigils.

But Bogdanovic's art has a generic quality to it, so much so that it is not immediately his and, were a reader presented with it in a comic with no credits, it would be impossible to assign it to him rather than any of another dozen or so artists that have worked regularly with DC in the past five years or so. This book, despite the high-profile author, despite the unusual and unusually compelling premise, just looks, stylistically, like any other DC comic.

As I said the other day, that may be a deliberate choice, to make the entire narrative more subversive by making it look more like every other DC comic, but I think it is instead just a poor pairing of art team and writer. Once this is collected into a graphic novel, it will sit very uneasily alongside all the other books Yang has written that fill library shelves, both those he illustrated himself, those he collaborated with other artists on and even the licensed, franchise comics he's done, like Avatar: The Last Airbender.

It's a good comic book, but it really should be a better one.

Comic Shop Comics: July 6-13

DC Comics Bombshells #15 (DC Comics) This particular issue, featuring three distinct storylines, with flashback stories embedded within those stories, is a pretty good example of what a big, strange, wonderful tapestry Marguerite Bennett's ongoing epic answer to the question of "What if a bunch of sexy 'ships had fought World War II?" has gradually become.

Teamed with artists Laura Braga, Mirka Andolfo and Sandy Jarrell, Bennett tells the story of Irish lighthouse keeper Arthur Curry and the princess from Atlantis who washed up on his island, and how she fought to defend it from a creature of Celtic folkore (I think this is Braga's section, but whoever drew it, that is a fine depiction of a "water horse"); Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, Zatanna, Constatntine and Raven on various levels of the tunnels beneath Berlin; and of Kate Kane and Renee Montoya's time as romantic warriors who signed up to fight in the Spanish Revolution (featuring a cameo by Ernest Hemingway).

I really dug this version of Raven, which is a rather radical redesign that stays true to the spirit of the original in a way that other redesigns (i.e. The New 52 one) did not, and updating her origin story into a kind of old European folk tale version of the Beauty and The Beast story was a nice tough.

Catwoman appears during the beautifully-illustrated recounting of Kate's time in Spain (drawn by Sandy Jarrell, I think?).

This book isn't always on, but when it is, there's pretty much nothing else like it on the stands.

The Legend of Wonder Woman #8 (DC) This is the penultimate issue of the original series, although word on the street Internet is that it is going to continue past the originally-announced nine-issue run. I'm not sure if that means there will be a tenth issue, or if it will relaunch with a new #1 and turn into a series of mini-series kind of thing, but I'm glad they are continuing it. It's the best comic book prominently featuring Wonder Woman DC is publishing at the moment, and a great argument for Etta Candy's presence in the world of Wonder Woman. Writer/artist Renae De Liz's Etta isn't the exact same as that of creators William Moulton Marston and H.G. Peter, but De Liz managed to update her in a way that serves the character and her role in the narrative extremely well.

There seems to be too much story to wrap-up in just one more issue, especially considering how much Amazonian business is left to attend to from the early issues of the series, so I suspect we will be getting a #10 of this series, and that perhaps De Liz got word of the green-lighting for future issues while working on this comic, and thus started to shift her story-telling plans during its creation.

That's just a guess though, based on how much is yet to be done. Here Diana, Etta and the Holliday Girls board an experimental plane that converts into an "invisible jet" (allowing for the expected jokes, including an old-timey one with alcohol you never see anymore) and take off to help Steve Trevor and the allies take on the Nazis and The Duke of Deception, who is about to raise a The Titan, a humanity-extinction event that Zeus told Diana about last issue, in trying to get her to sign on as his champion (and sign up for his world-cleansing program).

The Titan just awakes in the last panel, so fighting it will wait until the next issue. This issue includes a rousing aerial battle, lots of nice dresses at a nice party with multiple musical numbers, Wonder Woman "turning" a foe through compassion and understanding, the promotion of a just-introduced villain into a more adversarial role and the revelation of her dual identity to pretty much everyone close to her.

But foreget all that. The big event in this story? The introduction of nine-year-old Alfred Pennyworth, a Dickensian street urchin who pops out of a crate in the ladies dressing room and introduces to Etta with a "May'aps I can hel, Miss! The name's Alfred Pennyworth, Miss! World-class juggler, singer, actor, and all 'round entertainer extraordinaire!"

He's only in like eight panels, but they are among the best eight panels.

Lumberjanes/Gotham Academy #2 (Boom Studios) I really love the cover of this particular issue, and spent some time just staring at it. I love how beautiful everyone–especially on the 'Janes side of the cover–looks, and the range of expressions on both sides. The little Maps/Ripley face off is particular great, as they're drawn to look almost like mirror images, like Ripley is the Earth-3 version of Maps or something (The story establishes the pair as sort of being cut from the same, or at least similar cloth, "Hey!" Ripley yells at one point, "My fellow tiny friend has a plan!").

Looking to see who drew this awesome cover, I saw it was none other than Natacha Bustos, a name I just learned this weekend upon reading the ridiculously charming Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, which Bustos draws for Marvel.

Anyway, hooray for Natacha Bustos!

The interior artists are still Rosemary Valero-O'Connell on pencils and Maddi Gonzalez on inks. I like the art, and it's growing on me, but as with Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles a few months back, I wish the artist was someone associated with one or the other franchise, as right now the crossover is happening more in the script (and, of course, the reader's imagination) than visually, on the page. On the other hand, it gives the two groups of characters from two very different books a sort of "neutral" aesthetic, not attached to either of them, which makes a certain amount of sense...although since we're at the Lumberjanes Camp now, perhaps the book should look more like an issue of Lumberjanes....? These are the things I think about it.

The plot takes a turn for the much-weirder here, and weird in a different direction than the sort of weird associated with either of the books crossing over here. And weird in a sort of way that seems like the sort of comic I would have expected from writer Chynna Clugston Flores.

As you'll recall, the director of the 'Janes' camp and a professor from Gotham Academy went missing, and so both groups of kids went off rescue them...which lead to Olive and Jen both getting captured, too. So now our young heroes have to rescue twice as many people as they had originally attended, and much of this issue is divided between the kids retreating back to camp to argue, plan and gear up, while Olive and Jen explore their new and weird prison.

I'm stil having fun with it, and I imagine it is a good introduction to Lumberjanes for Gotham Academy readers, and vice versa.

New Super-Man #1 (DC) Listening to NPR's "Morning Edition" today, I was pleasantly surprised to hear host Renee Montagne interviewing Gene Luen Yang about New Super-Man #1. The angle was that superheroes, who used to be universally white men and boys, are now growing more diverse, and she mentioned years-old examples like the bi-racial Spider-Man and the Muslim Ms. Marvel, plus the new Iron Man, who will be a black teenage girl. From those three Marvel Comics examples, they jumped to DC and Yang.

It highlighted what a "get" for DC Yang is, I think, that NPR cared enough to cover the fact that one of the five new Super-people starring in a new title as part of the "Rebirth" initiative is a Chinese man, and Yang did a nice job defending all diversity within superhero lines as being story driven rather than diversity for diversty's sake (I think the latter is the motivation, but in all of the examples listed above and, in fact, all of the examples I can think of that I've read so far, the emerging legacy characters who aren't straight white guys have all been sold with compelling stories). Yang pointed out that just moving the Superman character and his never-ending fight for Truth, Justice and The American Way to China in and of itself is enough to open up unexplored territory for the concept of the character.

And then I read New Super-Man #1 a few hours later and man was it disappointing. The story and the script are great, and the art by pencil artist Viktor Bogdanovic and Richard Friend isn't bad, but it's not great either, and just looks like any random DC Comic of today, and not even one of the more distinct ones, like so many of those we saw coming out of the "DCYou" initiative.

And then when you compare it to Yang's own art, or the art of any of his collaborators on any of the comics he's written but not drawn (with the exception, perhaps, of some of the non-John Romita Jr. books), it just looks really weak, and not like something that belongs on the shelves with the rest of the Yang's books.

Granted, that is likely intentional, and that DC and Yang wanted to make this look as much like a generic DC Comics comic book of the moment as possible, since the real deviation was going to be in transporting American superhero concepts (China's Bat-Man and Wonder-Woman show up on the last page), but it didn't work for me, and I already find myself wondering how much rope DC will give this book should sales fall to about where I would expect them to fall for a comic featuring a brand-new character relatively far removed from the "important" books of the DCU.

I'll talk about this much more, or at least in greater, more book-specific detail, later in the week when we look at this week's various "Rebirth" debuts, but my initial, general impression was that this was a decent book that should have been much better.

Paper Girls #7 (Image Comics) Cliff Chiang and Brian K. Vaughan turn to the most horrifying-looking creature in the real world and blow it up kaiju-size and plop a pair of them into the Cuyahoga River. Luckily for us, they are, in reality, microscopic, but when I first saw photos of them, I thought about how terrifying they would be were they the size of, say, dogs or bears. Oddly, seeing them as big as Godzilla make them appear less scary, and more like hook-clawed Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons.

This series' weirdness and time travel make it a slightly disconcerting read, and as someone who lives a short drive from all these settings, it feels particularly surreal to me. Like, I've seen that bridge in the background, and I've been to that abandoned mall.

Less a love letter to the Cleveland suburbs of his youth than a complex science fiction novel, Paper Girls is far from the most fun or accessible of Vaughan's recent books, but it is his most fascinating.


Renato Jones The One% #3 (Image) D'oh! I just saw "Kaare Kyle Andrews" real big along the bottom of this cover and thought, "Oh, a new Kaare Andrews comic? I like that guy's art!" and threw it atop my stack. It was the very definitions of an impulse buy. Apparently I could use a little impulse control, however, as it wasn't until I got home and sat down to read it that I noticed the words "Issue Three" real small and in a lighter gray font under the big, bold black logo.

The art did look nice, and on skim-through the words "Frank Miller" and "Midnighter" flashed through my head, but I guess I will wait until I find, buy and read the first two issues before I read this one.

So this "review" is not a review. Just a reminder to thoroughly read the covers of all comics you impulse buy, I guess!

SpongeBob Cmics #58 (United Plankton Pictures) The main story here is an extended riff on castaway stories, but my favorite bit was probably the Maris Wicks' edutainment feature, "Flotsam and Jetsam," which may be the best installment of it to date. That it is about fish beards–well, barbels–likely has a lot to do with it (Why does the Black Drum look so much more unhappy than the Channel Catfish, Yellow Goatfish and Nurse Shark though...?).

The other high-points are probably John Trabbic's incredibly over-acted three-pager which features some really wild cartooning and, just as an unexpected surprise, Vanessa Davis' back cover.

Wonder Woman #2 (DC) Given the ever-changing origins of Wonder Woman, an official "Year One" origin story has probably been long overdue. In fact, when 2006's Infinite Crisis re-set her origin so that it was "about ten years ago, around the time Batman, Superman and the Justice League were getting started" rather than "like, a year or two ago," as George Perez made it in the then-new post-Crisis On Infinite Earths composite DC Universe, DC could have used a nice, definitive Wonder Woman origin story.

It has of course changed at least one more time, during the Brian Azzarello-written New 52 run, although the first issues of Greg Rucka's second run on the character has started out intimating that maybe it hasn't changed after all.

So what is the deal with Wonder Woman's origin? That seems to be the question Rucka and artist Nicola Scott will be answering in "Year One," the storyline that will be playing out in every other issue of the now bi-weekly Wonder Woman (with chapters of a modern day story drawn by Liam Sharp occurring between each installment).

As I've noted before, however, this seems like a pretty terrible time to do a new Wonder Woman origin story, since Renae De Liz is just in the process of wrapping up her version in the first arc of Legend of Wonder Woman, Grant Morrison and Yanick Paquette just published their version in their Earth One book and Marguerite Bennett and company did their version last year in the pages of DC Comics Bombshells.

Sure, none of those are DCU "canon," but they all tell different versions of the same story, and, more importantly, they are all really good and, based on this single chapter anyway, better than Rucka's version, which doesn't do anything new or different to distinguish itself from those others (It reads a lot like a less elaborate, less distinctively illustrated version of the one from Legend of... actually, only Steve Trevor comes crashing down onto the island in modern day rather than in the 1940s, and he comes with planeful of dudes, all of whom seem to die in the crash).

If anything, the big difference is the amount of time spent on Steve Trevor, as we see snippets of both his life and Diana's life, structured around parallels and coincidences between them, before the fateful crash, which occurs at the climax of this issue.

Young Diana wears a toga on an island of toga-wearing women, she dreams of the outside world in a way that her queen mother and her fellow Amazons do not, she seems to have a strange destiny before her, plane crash, the end.

Scott's art is, of course, great, and probably her best to date. It's nice to see DC giving her such a high-profile book at this point, after having essentially squandered her talent earlier on the doomed Earth 2 book. I'm not quite sure what to make of the use of white space in the book, however, as sometimes it seems to be...wrong, like a mistake rather than a deliberate artistic choice. Like this spread, for example:

This spread, by the way, has a semi-cryptic panel I didn't understand, which I think might have been meant to imply that either Diana had lots of lovers among the island's women, or that many of the island's women had crushes on her. A couple of Amazons are lounging naked by a pool, while Diana's in the background in the water, also naked.

"She merges like Aphrodite. Gods, she's killing me," one of them says. Another responds "I thought she and Kasia...?" To which the original speaker says "...And Meghara and Eurayle. I don't even know..."

What...?

If that is meant to say something about Diana having female lovers, then I prefer Morrison's tactic of her basically saying "Mala is my lover" and Etta referring to Themyscira as a sci-fi island of lesbians. If not, I don't know what they might be talking about.

There's also a bit where a woman talks about how she was murdered before coming to Paradise Island, which calls to mind Perez's weird Amazon creation story  involving the souls of murdered women, but other than that, Rucka doesn't get into the who, where, when, what and why of Paradise Island/Themyscira, and where exactly Wonder Woman came from (i.e. was she born in the traditional fashion or molded from clay, was she Zeus' daughter or not?)

It's strange to say, but if DC had published this exact same comic in 2011, 2012, 2013 or 2014, it would have seemed like a pretty good, and long overdue story. In 2016 though, DC has already published a handful of better tellings of the same story.

Review: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Annual 2014

Well this is one strange comic book.

The slim, 48-page special came with a spine and was drawn in its entirety by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator Kevin Eastman, who has been co-plotting and providing covers for IDW's volume of TMNT comics. It's not often that Eastman provides interior art for these comics, but it's always an extra incentive to read them when he does so.

Sure, his presence always bestows a imprimatur of legitimacy on the proceedings, and the more involved he is the stronger the imprimatur, but I just generally really enjoy his inky, gritty artwork, and it's always a pleasure to see him draw pretty much anything, but his Ninja Turtles always look realer than anyone else's (with the exception of the ones Eastman drew with Peter Laird, of course).

It always amuses me when he does draw IDW's Turtles and associated characters, though, because he basically just draws his original versions, with no real concessions to the redesigns they've all gone through. His Splinter is always a Batman-eyed werewolf, his Casey Jones is always an adult with 1980s hair, and so on.

None of that has anything to do with how strange this particular comic book is, however.

What makes it strange is that it essentially offered a bizarre continuity patch to a then almost 30-year-old comic book story that was no longer part of the IDW iteration of the TMNT's continuity.

In this story, Eastman and co-plotter Tom Waltz–Eastman scripts the book himself himself–introduces Renet and a barbarian parody of the old Marvel Comics version of Conan into this particular TMNT narrative. That Conan parody is apparently meant to be a stand-in for Dave Sim's Cerebus The Aardvark, who of course appeared in 1986's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #8 by Eastman, Laird, Sim and Gerhard.

That was the comic that first introduced Renet, Savanti Romero and Lord Simultaneous, and while they've all appeared elsewhere through various TMNT comics and cartoons, Cerebus has not because, well, he's Cerebus, and not really a TMNT character (Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo, who similarly shared story-space with the Turtles back in their pre-cartoon fame days, did appear in toy form and in two different iterations of the cartoons, though).

But here's the really strange thing. While there's a new, non-aardvark Conan parody in this comic book, it is not a retelling or new version of TMNT #8. It's an entirely different story, with only a few surface similarities, like the presence of Renet, Simultaneous and the Turtles.

I can't really figure out what's going on here, or, more precisely, what was going on in Eastman's head when he made this book. It's the presence of Baltizar, the Conan/Cerebus stand-in, that really confuses me, as he evokes TMNT #8, and serves as a constant reminder of that comic.

So the story is this. A heavily redesigned version of Renet–that's her on the cover, at the top of the post–appears in the Turtles' current church lair, and she recruits them into a vague mission that involves their fighting for her. She knows them, and on account of being both scatter-brained and a time traveller, isn't sure if they know her or not.

"Either we've already met and you know who I am and what I'm talking about," she hurriedly explains, "Or I've come back before our last adventure and you have no idea what I'm talking about and think I'm some kinda crazy loon!"

I kinda like this set-up, where it doesn't matter overmuch if this is their first meeting or not, because, obviously, it's not, and this has happened before...repeatedly, even. Renet, like readers, knows that, and the best way to approach this story (and this comic in general) is probably not to fuss overmuch with what happened when and which stories "count" and which ones do not.

Then things get weirder still, as she transports them to some big, floating inter-dimensional city...at which point colorist Ronda Pattison stops with the full-color, and the narrative becomes black and white for most of the rest of the comic. It's a reverse Wizard of Oz, but rather than the black and white of the Mirage comics, it's a heavily shaded and toned black and white; black and various shades of gray, really.

The Turtles are promptly thrown in a cage where they meet Baltizar, who is as big a rambling, motor-mouthed fool as Renet, only more so, really. Contrary to the image on the cover, interior Baltizar has a little lame goatee to further distinguish him from Conan and, when color resumes during the framing sequence, he is shown to be blonde (see the image at the bottom of the post).

Baltizar and the Turtles are among the many warriors forced to fight in deadly gladiatorial combat at the behest of "The Dimensional Council" for the entertainment of a stadium full of people. Apparently Renet, the apprentice of exiled council-member Simultaneous is to...ummmm....Well, there's going to be a few days of her squad fighting, and then they will eventually convince all the other combatants to turn on the Council, most of whom don't really like these fights and just go along with it because the most evil of their number is a big, mean jerk, I guess...?

I don't know. It doesn't really make much sense.

But we do get to see lots of Eastman drawings of Conan and the Turtles fighting various alien warriors, including, at the climax, a Triceraton named Zog.

And then, with the games abolished and the idea of replacing them with a more humane "Battle Nexus" floated, Renet zaps the Turtles back home (and into color) and she and her boyfriend Baltizar hang out in dinosaur times for a while.

Maybe the weirdest part of all, however, is that Splinter spends most of his panel time on the toilet, which is really something I didn't need to see. I mean, I've gone about 30 years of my life never once imagining the Turtles or Splinter going to the bathroom, and now here their creator is, drawing Splinter, reading a newspaper on the toilet.

And what's that "Holy s..ah...smokes!" bit all about Eastman? The other word may start with the same letter, but it's a different phoneme!

As a story, this was a pretty mediocre one, although I did enjoy the artwork. I was a little frustrated that it had absolutely nothing to do with the mini-series Turtles In Time however, where Renet appears repeatedly, and is the apparent source of the Turtles' being lost in time and traveling through various eras in each issue. That story had its moments (i.e. the entire first issue, drawn by Sophie Campbell), but it seemed to be missing something, and I assumed that it seemed that way because I read the collection of that miniseries before reading this annual, in which Renet is introduced.

But nope. Neither comic has anything to do with the other, to the detriment of Turtles In Time. As a story. As a collection that includes 20 pages of Sophie Campbell drawing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fighting dinosaurs, Turtles In Time remains a masterpiece.

Like most of the IDW TMNT comics I've read then, this one left me disappointed. That is one comic book series that I really, really want to like–hell, I want to love it–but it rarely if ever rises above mediocre, and certainly never seems to get the best out of the source material.

I don't know what to make of Tom King's Batman just yet.

I loved the above few panels from Batman #2, which is written by Tom King, pencilled by David Finch and inked by Matt Banning and Danny Miki. Bruce Wayne excuses himself from a fundraising event in The Morrison Room of the mansion and walks to the secret entrance to the Batcave with partners Alfred Pennyworth and Duke Thomas a few steps behind him. When Wayne tells them that he's going to bring new Gotham-based superheroes Gotham and Gotham Girl with him to answer Commissioner James Gordon's Bat-signal summons, Thomas asks, "Do you trust them?"

Above you see Wayne's answer, and Alfred's response. It's a nice, sharply-scripted exchange showing essential elements of both Batman Bruce Wayne and Alfred's personalities, as well as their unique relationship, which is at once a father-son and boss-employee thing. They're technically partners, but their balance of power is like a see-saw, and obviously as the older one, Alfred was in charge for a long time, and now just seems resigned to Batman's child-like qualities.

He's also joking, of course, which is one of the cool things about a well-written Alfred; he's ability to constantly needle and deflate Batman in a way no other characters can. At least, not effectively.

So that scene was great. The rest of the book, I'm still not so sure about. I wrote about the first issue previously. The main plot, based on the attention given to them in the first two issues, revolve around the sudden appearance of two new super-powered superheroes with unimaginative names, characters who are essentially just one more analogue to Superman...and Supergirl. (The inclusion of Gotham Girl at least makes this slightly different than all those other comics where Superman-in-all-but-name show up.)

Gotham, the hero, wears a cape, he's super-strong, he flies and he has all sorts of vision powers. His female companion is a blond woman in a skirt, with all the same powers. They arrive at the same time that Batman begins contemplating his mortality and his legacy, and that a few, high-profile crimes are committed by a mysterious, behind-the-scenes player who will be familiar to fans of Batman comics, cartoons and even video games.

It all seems a little disconnected from what I've been reading in the other Batman books prior to the "Rebirth" brahnding of the DC Universe, although I did miss the last few issues of the previous volume of Batman, so it's quite possible these things were addressed satisfactorily and I just didn't catch them.

For example, while Batman: Rebirth #1 went to some lengths to explain how Bruce Wayne got his entire fortune back, how he reclaimed Wayne Manor and even that he had a new costume, I was and remain surprised to see Gordon is police commissioner again after the events of Batman Eternal and the "Superheavy" story arc of Batman. It's also weird to hear him cracking a joke about the new heroes' costumes.

"Is it really easier to fight crime with a mask on?" he asks, lighting his pipe. "I'd think it would itch." Well, having fought crime with a mask on as Batman, Gordon should know, shouldn't he? I suppose he's trying to keep that fact secret from Gotham and Gotham Girl, but it's a weird crack for a guy who spent so much time this past year being Batman. (Also, I was caught off guard with the pipe smoking. I thought New 52 Gordon smoked, then quite to be Batman, resorting on patches and stolen cigarettes. Odd to see him going back to a pipe now. Hell, he's only supposed to be like 40 or something now, right? Maybe he should be vaping.)

There's a weird scene previous to either of those in which Bruce Wayne, still wearing his costume, is standing in the Batcave, contemplating his mortality as Alfred comes down to urge him to get up to the fundraiser.

Says Batman:

I was dead. I knew the options. I knew there weren't any options. There's going to be others, Alfred. Other planes. Asteroids. Aliens.

I won't be able to stop them. I'll die. Then Dick will take my place.

Then he'll die.

I can't... There's nothing I can do.

This is a weird line of thinking coming from Batman. He explicitly mentions his protegee Dick Grayson, who filled in as him for Batman the time he died before the last time he died, but he's also trained or is currently training such partners and successors as Red Hood Jason Todd, Red Robin Tim Drake, Robin Damian Wayne, Batgirl Barbara Gordon, Bluebird Harper Row, Spoiler Stephanie Brown, Orphan Cassandra Cain and now Duke Thomas. That's a lot of young people able to defend the city from crashing airplanes and aliens in the future. And hell, the last time Batman died, none of them took over, but a completely different person without his sanction stood up and did a pretty good job of being Batman (That would be Gordon, as mentioned above).

And please correct me if I'm wrong, as things got a little wonky at the end there and, like I said, I missed a few pages, but I thought a large part of Scott Snyder's "Endgame" and "Superheavy" story arcs revolved around Bruce Wayne's attempts to build an immortal Batman, which involved backing-up his own brain and mind and storing it outside of his body and, I don't know, cloned bodies...?

I'm not sure where Taylor is going with this scene just yet, and how exactly Gotham and Gotham Girl will fit into it–presumably their being supermen is an attractive quality that Batman would like in a successor–but it feels like its coming a little too close on the heels of Snyder's last arcs that dealt so much with the idea of Batman as a legacy and an immortal idea that can exist outside of Bruce Wayne.

Finally, there's the reveal of the villain on the last page. I'm relieved it wasn't Rorschach or Ozymandius, as I initially feared, but I was surprised to see that particular villain, in that particular company, and involved in such particular acts, given the last time I saw him he was in Gotham Academy, where minor Batman villains fill-out the ranks of the school's faculty.

Hal Jordan isn't a very good superhero in any universe, apparently.

In this week's Injustice: Gods Among Us: Year Five #13, it's Batman vs. the entire Justice League–Er, "The Regime," I guess they're calling themselves now. If you're unfamiliar with the comic book series, it is a prequel to the fighting video game Injustice: Gods Among Us, and it has somehow been going on for five years now.

The premise is that Superman and many of his fellow supereheroes are insane fascist monsters, and only Batman and some like-minded heroes can stand against them. Think Kingdom Come, if Kingdom Come went on forever, wasn't really about anything and instead of being painted it was drawn by the first two-to-four artist who responded to DC's emails and who didn't have anything better going on at the moment.

So here Nightwing Damian Wayne, a longtime ally of The Regime, confronts his father Batman over whether or not it's cool to kill serial killer Mr. Zsasz, who has apparently recently killed Alfred Pennyworth (Few supporting characters live long or die peacefully in this series). Batman came down on the "definitely not cool" side. When Batman's archenemy Superman arrives, he downs a green pill that gives normal people the ability to trade punches with Superman, and then Batman goes to work on Superman, Nightwing and their allies.

I was most intrigued by the part in which he fights Hal Jordan, who has traded his Green Lantern ring in for a Sinestro Corps ring (that's why he's yellow). Check out the Injustice-iverse's Batman vs. Hal Jordan fight:

Okay, first, Batman was able to take out a guy wearing what I assume is the second most powerful weapon in the universe, a literal magic wishing ring, by throwing a dumpster over him. And secondly, it took Hal forever to figure out a way to get out of that dumpster.

Yes, Jordan is the one who eventually knocks out Batman, but as you can see in the panels above, he does so only by shooting him in the back after Wonder Woman uppercuts him a foot into the air. After he figured out  a way to get out of an overturned dumpster.

So, in conclusion, Hal Jordan is the worst...in every universe!

(The above panels, like the rest of the issue, were written by Brian Buccellato, drawn by Mike S. Miller and colored by J. Nanjan, by the way.)

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

Justice League: Rebirth #1 by Bryan Hitch, Daniel Henriques, Scott Hanna and Alex Sinclair

Artist-turned-writer/artist Bryan Hitch has been struggling* with the Justice League B-title, the oft-delayed Justice League of America**, for a year now, but apparently DC either liked what he was doing and what he had planned for the future, or they had no one else of equal or greater fame ready or able to inherit their flagship title after Geoff Johns' departure, so Hitch got the gig.

Here he is both writing and penciling–with Daniel Henriques and Scott Hanna inking–but when Justice League #1 ships in a few weeks, Hitch will just be writing.

As far as the writing goes, this is a very good, if somewhat generic, introduction to the current version of the Justice League, who's serving on it and what they're powers are. If you're looking for original ideas or incisive (or even mildly clever) characterization, you won't find it here, but then, the mandate of these Rebirth one-shots seem to be to offer a sort of pre-series example more than actual stories. Think of the specials as auditions by the books to you, the reader.

Set sometime after all of the individual characters' Rebirth specials (save for Cyborg's, which won't be along for a while yet), when they've all got their new costumes as status quos, it opens with a titanic, scary, Lovecraftian bug monster crawling through a city spitting out little tentacle bug things that hug people's faces and take over their minds in a somewhat Starro-like fashion (which is perhaps why Hitch mentions Starro among the threats the Justice League has faced and overcome, along with Darkseid and Rao, the latter from his own, and still not complete, first arc of JLoA).

The League of Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Cyborg and Aquaman confront the creature, which is called "a Reaper" and is big enough to be seen from space; it's design is probably the most interesting aspect of the issue. There's no mention of Captain Marvel Shazam or Lex Luthor (the latter of whom has declared himself the new Superman in the last issue of the last volume of Justice League, and is currently starring in Action Comics). They are eventually joined by Green Lanterns Simon Baz and Jessica Cruz and Superman.

Perhaps highlighting the wonkiness of DC's "Rebirth" Superman, much of this issue's focus is on this new Superman, and whether he should join the Justice League. If you've been following DC Comics the last few months, or even just reading all my blog posts, then you know that The New 52 Superman, the "real" post-Flashpoint Superman, has died, and the other Superman, the pre-Flashpoint one aged by six or seven years, has been living in hiding in this universe with his wife Lois Lane and son Jonathan, and has just recently decided to take up the mantle of the dead Superman. Got all that? It sure makes any and all interactions between Superman and any other character outside of Lois and Jonathan annoying!

While the League contends with the Reaper, Old Man Clark and Lois "White" discuss whether or not he should join the League in their kitchen, and, as you can tell from the cover, he eventually decides to suit up, fly off and save the day (Another flashback shows the Leaguers discussing what they should do about Superman II, and Batman decides they should offer him membership in order to keep him close).

The story has a kind of weird double-ending, in which the League poses and declares themselves/are declared Earth's champions and defenders twice, first organically within the story, and then in a last page splash.

Artistically, Hitch is a good "get" for a Justice League book, just as he was last year and in 2000, but in both cases he proved unable to meet a monthly deadline. That's why he will only be writing the upcoming Justice League, which makes his presence as pencil artist here maybe unfortunate. He does a fine job on most of the book, and it gives the one-shot an aura of special-ness, but if the idea was to get readers excited for the ongoing book that launches in two weeks, perhaps having artist Tony S. Daniel (ugh) draw it would have been best.

I'll certainly give the first issue a try, but based on what I know so far–decent but not extraordinary writer, artist I'm not fond of, the always bumpy and getting bumpier DC continuity–I'm not too terribly excited about the book personally. But given the popularity of Daniel, it's not hard to imagine Justice League remaining one of DC's more popular titles, even if it doesn't end up moving as many copies each month as it did when Johns was at the helm.



*And by "struggling" I mean DC has only published eight issues of the monthly book since its debut in June of last year...and one of those issues was an unannounced fill-in issue by an entirely different creative team starring Martian Manhunter, who had and has nothing to dow with this iteration of the team.

**So DC's brand-management might be a little shaky with the League these days. Since 2011, they've published books called Justice League, Justice League Dark, Justice League International, Justice League of America, Justice League 3000/Justice League 3001 another volume of a re-launched Justice League of America and are now relaunching Justice League. I like to think I follow this stuff kind of closely, but I honestly thought the name of the Hitch-written and drawn book was JLA, as that's what the logo features so prominently.

But when I was unable to find it on comics.org I realized that it was actually Justice League of America, a name the New 52 Justice League never actually used, but the ARGUS-sanctioned rival team did.


********************************

Okay not to go all Frederic Wertham or anything, but maybe not the best arrangement of Wonder Woman's fist, her sword and Superman on Joe Madureira's variant cover for this issue...

In the best of all possible worlds, this would already be in production.

I could not find any images of Anna Kendrick wearing fake squirrel ears on the Internet, but here she is wearing fake cat ears, in a still from Mr. Right.

Hey, did you guys hear about this over the weekend?

If not, apparently Anna Kendrick was asked what superhero she could see herself playing, and the woman who previously played comic book character Stacey Pilgrim answered that she could see herself playing Squirrel Girl, based on the fact that her brother thinks she should play Squirrel Girl. Someone on Twitter even went and made some Anna Kendrick-as-Squirrel Girl art, which you can see at the link.

I found this news, if one can call it "news," tremendously exciting, because if there is one thing I love it is Ryan North and Erica Henderson's Unbeatable Squirrel Girl comic book, and if there are two things I love they are Ryan North and Erica Henderson's Unbeatable Squirrel Girl comic book and Anna Kendrick.

This marks the second time in my life that I have thought at all about a Squirrel Girl movie, the first being Elle Collins' November 2015 "Cast Party" column at Comics Alliance, in which she offered her fantasy cast for a Squirrel Girl movie.

Her choice for the star was actually pretty perfect, the rounder-faced, more Erica Henderson drawing-esque Mae Whitman. Kendrick, by contrast, looks more like creator Steve Ditko's version of the character, and the one that appeared in various Avengers comics up until the North/Henderson title launched, and were she to play the character, I'm afraid she would need a haircut, and I can't imagine what Anna Kendrick would look like with a pixie cut. Other than super-hot, that is.

Kendrick, unlike Whitman, is probably a big enough star now that she could actually get a Squirrel Girl movie made, although, like Guardians of The Galaxy, if Marvel did ever make a Squirrel Girl movie, it wouldn't be the character or the actress who would ultimately be the selling point–it would be the studio and "cinematic universe."

Similarly, I could not find any photos of Kendrick holding squirrels online, but here she is holding kittens in a magazine photo shoot. Kittens are kind of like squirrels, in that they are small and furry.

Now, I know that lots of people on the Internet have expressed varying degrees of anger and bewilderment as to why on Earth Marvel hasn't made any movies starring female superheroes before, and while I've discussed this a bit in on the past (and a lot with one of my friends and current writing partner on a particular project at Comics Alliance), it's been a while since I've talked to you guys about it.

The simple fact of the matter is that Marvel just doesn't have any great candidates to star in such a movie (Aside from the obvious one, Black Widow, although "a super-spy with no costume and no super-powers" doesn't really lend itself toward a superhero film; at this point, I think it wouldn't be hard to do a Black Widow film, but the thought of one sounded awfully boring to me a few years ago. I think if they gave her Taskmaster or M.O.D.O.K. or A.I.M. another Marvel villain or organization to fight, and used some Avengers as background characters or in cameos, it would work just fine, but I had a hard time imagining the point of a Black Widow movie on the heels of, say, Iron Man 2 or Thor).

The problem with Marvel's superheroines is that, when you eliminate all of the X-Men (and the fact that Marvel Studios can't use any of the mutant characters pretty much means you have to), what you end up with characters that fall into one of two camps. There are female versions of male heroes, like Spider-Woman, She-Hulk and Ms. Marvel/Captain America, or minor characters that it is (was) hard to imagine being the source of a film, as opposed to being a character in an Avengers or Defenders movie, like The Wasp, Scarlet Witch, Tigra, Valkyrie and Hellcat.

I should note that this line of thinking pre-dated the release of Guardians of the Galaxy, which demonstrated that Marvel didn't have to make movies featuring their B-list characters like Iron Man, The Hulk and Thor (The A-listers they already licensed to other studios). They could, conceivably, use any characters, like a team featuring Groot and Rocket Raccoon. Hell, they could make an Ant-Man movie. Not a Yellow Jacket or a Giant-Man movie, no; Ant-Man.

So hell, maybe they can and will make an Elsa Bloodstone or Satnanna movie some day; certainly a Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan now, obviously) seems a fairly safe bet. Hell, Deadpool made so much money that a Gwenpool movie is within the realm of possibility now.

But Squirrel Girl, guys!

She is not a female version of a male character!

She is not primarily known as part of a team (at least, not anymore), nor as the partner to a male character!

And she's not one of the X-Men, so unlike Storm, Dazzler, Kitty Pryde or Psylocke, Marvel Studios can use her!

Squirrel Girl is perfect, and Guardians of The Galaxy and Ant-Man have proven that Marvel Studios can stray from the most obvious path into the quirkier corners of the Marvel Universe and still produce superhero films that are both pretty good and, more importantly for the studios, financially successful.

So yeah, I could actually see Marvel making a Squirrel Girl movie now. I wouldn't have imagined it prior to GotG and Ant-Man, of course, that was before Marvel was publishing North and Henderson's Unbeatable Squirrel Girl which is, no lie, maybe the publisher's best book at the moment...it's certainly my favorite.

I'd certainly prefer a Squirrel Girl movie following their basic vision of the character to a movie starring boring old Captain Marvel Carol Danvers, which I guess is the female character who is scheduled to be the star of Marvel Studios' first female-lead movie (which is too bad, because Carol Danvers is the worst). (Actually, I know I've already mentioned Black Widow; the other obvious female-lead superhero Marvel Studios really seems like it has to make at some point is one starring Hayley Atwell's Peggy Cater, focusing on the founding of SHIELD and maybe Peggy's first team of proto-Avengers).

One immediate problem with a Squirrel Girl movie? Her archenemy, Doctor Doom, is bundled with the other Fantastic Four characters, and thus would belong to Fox for the purposes of live-action movies...unless they cut some kind of deal with Marvel Studios, like Sony did with Spider-Man, or just relinquished the Fantastic Four characters, as they pretty obviously don't know what the fuck to do with them (For example see the last Fantastic Four film...actually, don't see it. It's not worth that. Nothing is worth that.)

In fact, looking at the first three volumes of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, she seems to frequently deal with villains Marvel Studios can't use at the moment: Kraven The Hunter (Spider-Man villain; Sony), Galactus (Fantastic Four; Fox), Doctor Doom again, Kraven The Hunter again. Also, Deadpool's off-limits too, although he only appears in trading card form in Unbeatable Squirrel Girl.

Good news? Marvel Studios does have the rights to  frequent Squirrel Girl foil Iron Man  (who starred in the comic she first appeared in, and who S.G. is online friends with in her own comic) and Thor and Loki, who are featured prominently in Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 2: Squirrel You Know It's True.

So, in conclusion, Marvel should totally cast Anna Kendrick as the lead in a Squirrel Girl movie featuring cameos by Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark and Chris Hemsworth's Thor and Tom Hiddleston's Loki and they should start working on it right this second and forget making Captain Marvel, because Marvel's Captain Marvel sounds dumb and she's not even the real Captain Marvel anyway

Imagine this on a big-screen:

I could try and explain Cat Thor, but I really think you should read Unbeatable Squirrel Girl and enjoy that discovery for yourself. 

Tell me you wouldn't rather see that then Captain Marvel flying around space shooting energy beams or whatever her power currently is and talking about Kree bullshit.

Just how popular is Dick Grayson's butt?

Dick Grayson's butt is popular, but just how popular is his butt? Is it more popular than John Constantine? Is it more popular than the new, New 52 iteration of Azrael? Is it more popular than the second most recent new Green Lantern of Earth, Simon Baz? It can't possibly be more popular than Harley Quinn, can it?

These questions likely sound pretty absurd, and you're probably thinking "No, of course not...Well, maybe in the case of Azrael, but not those other guys..."

After all, Constantine has his own comic book. Baz is co-starring in a comic book with another Green Lantern. Harley has at least one book a month on the stands. But Dick Grayson's butt never has, and likely never will, have a title of its own. At best, it co-stars in whatever books Dick Grayson is appearing in. Most recently, that means the pages of the just-canceled Grayson, and soon it will be appearing alongside–well, right behind, anyway–Dick in a new volume of Nightwing.

But if that is the case, I can't help wondering why the cover of Grayson Annual #3 features a pretty generic image of Dick Grayson in front of a pink spiral–the same basic image that graced Grayson #1 and was used as the cover of the series' first collection, Grayson Vol. 1: Agents of Spyral–with his butt prominently displayed (That is, in fact, the only difference other than the artist between this image and that of the cover of Grayson #1; the posing).

The story inside features a handful of guest-stars, including Azrael, Green Lantern Simon Baz, John Constantine and Harley Quinn...oh, and Gotham City Police Detective and occasional Wrath of God, Jim Corrigan. But rather than a cover featuring any or all of those characters, DC went with the shot of Dick's butt. One might think that at least throwing Harley Quinn on the cover, which was actually a marketing plan for two month's of DC Comics, would increase the sales of this lame duck annual, but no. Dick's butt.

Based on the evidence provided then, I can only conclude that this mean's Dick Grayson's butt isn't just more popular than any of those characters, but that it is more popular than all of them put together.

Well, now that I've typed the word "butt" more often in one sitting than at any previous point in my life, how is Grayson Annual #3 beneath its cover? Not bad!

Entitled "Who Is Agent 37?", Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly's story features four individual team-ups between Dick Grayson and characters seemingly picked at random: Constantine, Azrael, Simon Baz and Harley Quinn. The four of them are summoned by mysterious invitations to a hotel room in Gotham City by Jim Corrigan to tell the stories of their team-ups as a way of answering the question in the title.

Artist Roge Antonio handles the art in this framing sequence, while each team-up features an artist. Natasha Alterici draws a story in which Constantine crosses paths with a mostly naked Grayson as he shuts down a coven of vampires (and this script sure works over time to remind us that a) Dick is very sexy and b) Constantine is very bi-sexual).

Christian Duce draws a story in which Grayson finds himself in a battle between Azrael and...The Order of St. Dumas, I think...? (I couldn't make heads or tales of this one, despite having read Batman & Robin Eternal, which re-reintroduced a New 52 Azrael; the first panel editorial box that tries to explain when this story is set and ultimately shrugs with a "You know what? Doesn't matter! Last issue! Just have fun!").

One-named artist Flaviano draws a chapter in which the undercover Grayson and the undercover Harley team-up to steal something Joker-related from a rich supervillain memorabilia collector (Pity all of the stuff in the cases was generic; would have been a good opportunity for Easter eggs).

And, finally, Javier Fernandez draws a chapter in which Green Lantern Simon Baz, portrayed here with a Guy Gardner-level of hotheadedness, is trying to exterminate Parademons, and Grayson lends a hand.

By the last pages, the gathered super-people are all able to figure out who exactly Agent 37 was nearly simultaneously, thanks to a push from Corrigan, and Grayson himself makes an unexpected appearance.

That made me laugh. In his defense, I think Baz was in space with B'dg when Forever Evil happened, and Grayson probably isn't a celebrity outside of Gotham City. 

I liked the art in each of the five different sequences okay, although that in the Green Lantern sequence was probably the weakest. The coloring and the scripting likely didn't help, but Baz's quirk of carrying a sidearm at all times (because he doesn't quite trust his ring and wants the back-up of a gun, because The New 52), is pretty confusing here because while Grayson calls him on the use of the gun, most of the time we see Baz using it it is a glowing green gun. It's unclear if that's his real gun, or a ring-generated construct of a gun. Either way it's weird, and either I massively misremember Geoff Johns' story arc regarding Baz in the pages of Green Lantern, or he's been written really weird and really wrong lately, as he is essentially being portrayed here (and in Green Lanterns) as the guy he was upon his first appearance during Johns' Green Lantern run, and not who he was by the end of the run.

I'd be lying if I said I understood the whole business with Grayson's secrt identity and his facelessness and the hypnos, but then, I've never understood that aspect of Grayson.

Over all though, this book featured a clever premise, a decent snapshot of various DCU characters at a particular point of time, as the "DCYou" era ends and the "Rebirth" era begins and stronger art than your average publication from the publisher.

The last two panels also provide about as perfect an ending for the Grayson series as one could hope; sure, Dick and Helena Bertinelli parted more formally and finally in the actual last issue of the series, but in this story set sometime before then, they get a nice little ride-off-into-the-sunset moment. Or jump-off-into-the-moonlight moment, I suppose.


Oh, and by the way...

Good on Dick Grayson, protegee of Batman, for calling out Green Lantern Simon Baz on killing Parademons. And good one Baz for sighting Superman's terrible example. But I call bullshit on Grayson's justification for the proto-Justice League killing so many of their foes in Justice League #1-6 (Which is what I assume Baz is referring too, unless I missed another story in which Superman mowed down Parademons).

Superman using his vastly superior powers to kill his opponents in any circumstance is about as un-Superman-like as you can get, and I found it really weird and wrong in the context of Geoff Johns and Jim Lee's Justice League arc. "Aliens invade Metropolis" is kind of a weird definition for "war zone," and Superman and company's use of lethal force only got more bizarre as the story went on, as not only did Johns not write the pre-requisite "I can't detect any life-signs at all, whatever these monsters are, they aren't alive, so don't hold back!" line, but he then revealed that they were innocent civilians being turned into Darkseid's soldiers right before Superman's eyes. Gah.

Anyway, Grayson Annual #3 is a lot better than Justice League #1-#6, although I bet it won't sell 1/25th as well.