New Comics Day

New DCU, Week Three.

• Warlord of Mars #9
• Gladstone's School for World Conquerors #5
• Herc #7
• Suicide Squad #1
• Batman and Robin #1
• Red Lanterns #1
• Batwoman #1 - Actually decent. Might add it.
• OMAC #1 - picked this up late after hearing good things.
• Green Lantern #1 - Not bad.
• Legion Lost #1 - Well, it's pretty.
• Demon Knights #1 - This and Action are my two favorites of the relaunch so far.
• Resurrection Man #1 - With this at #3, followed by JLI.

That's all.

New Comics Day

Week 2 of the new DCU. I had three reserved titles of the thirteen released. I picked up 4 additional #1's to peek at them on a non-ongoing basis.

• Irredeemable #29
• Mega Mann #5
• Warlord of Mars : Dejah Thoris #6
• Atomic Robo : Ghost of Station X #1
• Justice Society of America #54
• Green Arrow #1 - It's the least dull Green Arrow's ever been for me, which isn't saying much.
• Detective Comics #1 - Well, it certainly has an ending.
• Animal Man #1 - Quirky, interesting. Art's not to my taste, but maaaaybe..
• Batgirl #1 - Eh.
• Action Comics #1 - This is actually good.
• Stormwatch #1 - Lots of potential, but doesn't really zip. The artist is not great.
• Justice League International #1 - I like it. But It does suggest the old JLI is out of continuity totally.

New Comics Day

Well, the new DCU launched yesterday.

• Invincible #82
• War Goddess #1
• Butcher Baker #6
• Herc #6.1 - This has been cancelled now - apparently, it's Marvel's second lowest seller. A shame.
• Dungeons and Dragons #7-#10 - Recently read the first TPB of the new series and loved it.
• Teen Titans #100
• Flashpoint #5 - Meh.
• Justice League #1 - And double-meh. Not bad, not great.

Oh well.

Heroes Rebored : Ray of Hope?

Or something akin to it.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/08/01/dc-relaunch-nicola-scott-and-james-robinsons-jsa-1/

Rumors of James Robinson and Nicola Scott on a relaunched JSA title. Given the continuity issues that DC has laid out - namely, Superman as the first super-hero - my money is that the JSA will be back on Earth 2. Assuming this pans out.

Heroes Rebored, Judgment Day

More Origins summary soon, but this is the week I have to turn in my Previews order form, which means I had to make my final calls on which of DC's new titles, if any, I wanted on my pull list. There were a couple of close calls that I ultimately decided against, because I just don't have any investment in the new continuity - this includes Blue Beetle, the Green Lantern titles, and many of the Batman family of titles. I may flip through them at the comic store and consider adding them later.

So, when I last discussed the future of my pull-list, I was waffling between a cautious and an optimistic approach - between about 9 titles and 25 titles. I ended up between those two numbers, leaning towards the cautious side, at 15. So DC's reboot means they're getting half as much money from me.

Here's what I decided to pick up and why :

Justice League - This is the tentpole book of any DC Universe, and I haven't missed a Justice League issue since Grant Morrison relaunched the title in the 90's. More than anything else, this will be a barometer of the suck / doesn't suck quotient of the new DCU.

Justice League International - Honestly, I waffled on this one - without the continuity connections behind it, I don't know if I'll enjoy it, but I'm willing to pick up the first three issues on name alone.

Wonder Woman - Mainly buying it for the art. May not stick around, despite my love for Cliff Chiang's work.

The Flash - This was a last minute 'why not' addition to my pull list. The first two months' solicits seem interesting, at least.

The Savage Hawkman - I just really want to see how they try to lay a new foundation for one of DC's most continuity-plagued characters.

Action Comics - This is probably the other tentpole book of the DCU, especially with Grant Morrison and Rags Morales on it. The solicits have not been encouraging, though.

Superman - Just for the snapshot of Superman's status quo in the new DCU.

Justice League Dark - I really like the premise.

I, Vampire - I really like Andrew Bennett.

Resurrection Man - I have a complete run of the original series of Resurrection Man, so.. yeah.

Demon Knights - The information that has come out about this series since my last assessment cemented it into my 'must buy' category.

Stormwatch - This, too, looks like it could be really, really good.

Voodoo - This is an art buy. I love Sami Basri's stuff.

Legion of Super-Heroes - I will always buy whatever main Legion title is being published.

Legion Lost - This, on the other hand, is on a short leash.

Of the fifteen, I'd say most are on the bubble - if they don't entertain me in the first 3-4 issues, they'll get dropped. The exceptions (which will be given a little more leeway) would be Justice League, Action, Legion of Super-Heroes, Stormwatch, Resurrection Man, and Demon Knights - all of which are either important enough or intriguing enough for me to stick with them a while.

Heroes Rebored, A Trend

Item! DC Comics Creative Honchos Dan Didio, Jim Lee, and Geoff Johns have responded to the fans clamoring for the return of the Justice Society, with a just announced 53rd title for launch this September!

"We didn't realize the depth of the following that these characters had," said Didio. "So we just had to find a way to make room. Of course, we had to adjust things to fit with the new creative direction."

Justice League Old #1
Written and Drawn by Marc Silvestri (Witchblade, Cyberforce)
On sale SEPTEMBER 28 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T

Things at the Shady Pines rest home have gotten a little TOO shady - now it's up to the DC Universe's oldest heroes - and Shady Pines' newest residents - to solve the sinister secret of the nursing home, before their afternoon nap.

No word on Justice League Special Dark (Yummy), Justice League After Dark (Mature Readers), Justice League Grimdark (by Warren Ellis), or Justice League Lite (50% less fat).

Heroes Rebored, Aftermath : A Little More

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/06/21/dc-roadshow-hits-dallas-million-dollar-ad-spend-justice-league-beyond-and-black-people/

Nothing there that really grabs me. I wonder though - a little while back, DC announced there would be a new edition of Who's Who. Is it still coming, and if so - will it cover the classic DCU, or this new lameass knock-0ff?

Heroes Rebored, Aftermath : At Last, Clarity

The news had slowed quite a bit, but today, there was this :

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/06/19/more-from-the-dc-retailer-roadshow/

"Action Comics and Justice League are set in the past, the Green Lantern, Batman and LSH books are all continuing without a reboot. DCU Presents, Green Arrow and Hawkman are picking up where Brightest Day left off. But for everything else, yes, it will be more of a reboot/restart. They are basically keeping the books going that were financially successful for them and restarting everything else."

So, the top brass at DC, when saying "It's not a reboot", were lying. I have zero trust in them at this point. So that raises the question - what will I be buying come September? I think I have four basic approaches available to me.

1.) Screw'Em. I've read DC Comics for 30 years, since age 3, and there's never been a better time to jump off than now. I'd save a crapload of money - I'm reading about 30 core DC titles right now, including the recently cancelled Doom Patrol, REBELS, and Freedom Fighters. That's going to be $90-$100 a month.

2.) The Cautious Approach. Read only those titles I think are most important or interesting. That'd be the three Justice League titles, Action, I Vampire, Resurrection Man, Stormwatch, and the two Legion titles. So, 9 titles.

3.) The Optimist. Add to the above at least short term commitments on books that I otherwise consider marginal. Blue Beetle, Suicide Squad, Voodoo, Demon Knights, the four GL titles, Batwoman and three Batman titles, Superman, Hawkman, Flash, and Wonder Woman would probably make the cut. That'd bring us to 25 - potentially a handful more like Aquaman or Nightwing could sneak in. Then I'd be spending roughly as much as I do now.

4.) The Sucker. Buy them all, at least for a few issues. Hahahaha, no. I have absolutely zero interest in Captain Atom, Mr. Terrific, Batwing, Batman : The Dark Knight, Birds of Prey, Grifter, Deathstroke, OMAC, Blackhawks, Men of War, Hawk and Dove, or Static Shock. Please note that two of those are current ongoings that I actually read right now - the reboot version of Birds of Prey is uninteresting, and Dark Knight basically sucks and I'm glad to have an excuse to drop it.

DC would have been a lot better off with a lower-key relaunch with no adjustment of continuity, but with some of the additional titles. Then they'd assuredly be making more money off of me. As for what I will do, I'm waffling between #2 and #3, primarily.

While I was writing this, more news emerged :

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/06/20/talking-about-the-dc-relaunch-at-calgary-and-philadelphia/

Apparently, Wally's still around. Thank heaven for small favors?

Heroes Rebored, Aftermath : Day Two

And the last batch of solicits :

Justice League solicits

The mystery character on the JLI cover is gone. Weird.

My thoughts on this reboot so far is that there are two bad things for every good thing, and that's not good. If I have time today, I need to do the tally of how many books I'm currently buying from DC, then do breakdowns of what I'm likely to get come September.

Hey, Shannon of the forgotten mini-series Crimson Plague, what do you think of DC's rumored pants policy for superheroines?

(Image originally blogged on the defunct Dave's Longbox)

Heroes Rebored, Aftermath : Day One, Part Two

JSA Confirmed gone. Additional info.

Screw you, Dan Didio.

'The Dark' solicits.
Batman solicits.
Green Lantern solicits.

Heroes Rebored, Aftermath : Day One

So some clarification has been forthcoming. Action Comics #1 and JLA #1 both take place in the "past" of this new DCU, so the solicits may be somewhat misleading. Flashback arcs to kick off your new reader-friendly universe. Oy. Also, Tim Drake's position as a former sidekick to Batman has been confirmed in the revised actual solicit for the Titans book. (What we had before was apparently teaser-text, but now the actual solicits are going up..)

Superman Solicits
'The Edge' Solicits
Young Justice Solicits

More to come, I'm sure.

Heroes Rebored : Day Seven

Took them long enough. To post these, I mean. I did not mean to imply that any of the changes herein were overdue.

http://dcu.blog.dccomics.com/2011/06/10/history-happens-now/

#49 - Action Comics, by Grant Morrison and Rags Morales - Hey, it's the Super-Hobo. I love the creative team, but I'm still dubious.

#50 - Superman, by George Perez and Jesus Merino - George Perez.. writing. Hm. And is it me, or does Superman look astonishingly like Superboy Prime?

#51 - Supergirl, by Michael Green, Mike Johnson, and Mahmud Asrar - And Supergirl gets to show some thigh. Good for her.

#52 - Superboy, by Scott Lobdell, R.B. Silva, and Rob Lean - Did.. did they make Connor a cyborg or something? Wha?

Okay, so, characters we haven't seen :

• Any of the Wolfman or original Teen Titans except Starfire, Arsenal, Cyborg and Dick. No Raven, Wally, Beast Boy, Donna, Aqualad, et cetera.
• Any of James Robinson's Justice League except Dick and Supergirl. Again - Donna, Jade, Jesse Quick, Starman, Congorilla.
• Any of the JSA except Hawkman and Mr. Terrific. This disturbs me most of all, especially with the Action Comics blurb calling Superman the first superhero. I think the JSA just went poof. Or maybe they'll be on Earth 2..
  
• Any of the Outsiders, save Katana - but no one really cares.
• Plastic Man, Steel, Huntress, Stephanie Brown, Cassandra Cain, Lady Blackhawk, the Question, the Doom Patrol...

So when Bob Wayne asserted this isn't a reboot - assuming he's not a liar or an idiot, I think the only conclusion remaining is that this is a heretofore unseen DCU, and not the one we're used to. Otherwise, if ANYTHING ever was a reboot, this also qualifies. The continuity changes in this are bigger than Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Heroes Rebored : Day Seven, Prelude

Still no official announcement from DC on the final four, but three of them leaked - Superman, Superboy, and Supergirl; with the last presumably being Action. Supergirl apparently also has an exemption from DC's pants-or-shorts policy.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/06/10/those-52-dc-comics-issue-ones-and-what-and-who-is-missing/

BleedingCool did the missing creators thing already, but at first glance, I didn't see Paul Dini, Stephane Roux, or Dustin Nguyen on their biiiiiig list of people who had been working for DC but are nowhere to be found in these announcements.

No JSA makes me an unhappy camper.

DC is apparently going to do a push of honest-to-God TV advertising to promote this relaunch, though, so.. yay?

Heroes Rebored : Day Six, Part Two

Things are looking bleak for JSA. I will be supremely pissed if there's no JSA title. Why bleak? Because we're down to four unknowns now, and with four rumored Super-titles, I just don't see the room.

http://dcu.blog.dccomics.com/2011/06/09/suicide-squad-1/
http://dcu.blog.dccomics.com/2011/06/09/blue-beetle-1/

#47 - Suicide Squad, by Adam Glass and Marco Rudy - I was honestly surprised not to see this one before now, I thought it would be a natural for DC's feeble attempts at 'edginess'.

#48 - Blue Beetle, by Tony Bedard, Ig Guara, and Ruy Jose - and given the diversity push, Jaime was conspicuously absent thus far.

Tomorrow I think we'll see the last reveals, and then I can do a breakdown of missing creators (Paul Dini, where are you?), missing characters, and an estimate of how much I am spending with DC now, and how much I'll be spending after the reboot.

Heroes Rebored : Extra Two

Over at Newsarama, incoming Batman writer Scott Snyder indicates that Bat-continuity is unchanged. I'm finding that pretty difficult to reconcile with the solicits we've seen, but..

Heroes Rebored : Extra

The image on DC's blog for Teen Titans is not the cover, apparently. This article has the final image - be warned, it's loading slowly and occasionally failing to load, possibly due to high server activity.

The costumes are still awful, and Kid Flash's is even worse than I thought, and that looks like it's going to be Wally, dammit. On the upside, we can now see all seven of the team's supposed roster. No Jaime, though.

Heroes Rebored : Day Six

Mostly Non-Superheroic reveals today, with one exception.

http://dcu.blog.dccomics.com/2011/06/09/welcome-to-the-edge/

#40 - Stormwatch, by Paul Cornell and Miguel Sepulveda - Oh, THERE'S J'onn. And you know what? His costume's not bad. My only quibble with this series is that we already have three Justice Leagues, a Titans team, two Legions, the Outlaws, the Birds of Prey, the Green Lantern Corps, the New Guardians, and a Partridge in a Pear Tree. What's their niche?

#41 - Blackhawks, by Mike Costa and Ken Lashley - And here I thought Dynamite or IDW had the GI Joe license. It's nice that DC is doing something in this genre, I suppose.

#42 - Sgt. Rock and the Men of War, by Ivan Brandon and Tom Derenick - Two somethings in this genre, then.

#43 - All-Star Western, by Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, and Moritat - A Western anthology title, headlined by Jonah Hex? Yeah, this one's probably overdue.

#44 - Deathstroke, by Kyle Higgins, Joe Bennett, and Art Thibert - Oh, look, Slade picked up a few things at Jean-Paul Valley's estate sale. DC : Deathstroke is not interesting. Please stop pretending he is.

#45 - Grifter, by Nathan Edmondson with art by CAFU and BIT - You know, with a reboot, they could've changed his name to something other than 'Cole Cash'. I'm just sayin'.

#46 - OMAC, by Dan Didio and Keith Giffen - Despite Giffen's impressive ability to channel Kirby - No.

Six announcements left. We have already been told about Superman and JSA; Presumably there will be Action as well, and I'd hope there's a Supergirl. So two real question-marks. Probably all revealed tomorrow.

Heroes Rebored : Day Five

Subtitle : "What the Hell, DC?"

http://dcu.blog.dccomics.com/2011/06/08/the-next-generation-of-justice/

I guess this is nominally their 'Teen' block of releases, but some of them are questionable inclusions in that category, and some of them are just questionable, period.

#35 - Legion Lost, by Fabian Nicieza and Pete Woods - I like the writer. My only issue with this is that this exact premise has been done. A lot. Including once very recently.

#36 - Legion of Superheroes, by Paul Levitz and Francis Portela - The Legion is still getting two books, so that's a good thing.

#37 - Teen Titans, by Scott Lobdell, Brett Booth, and Norm Rapmund - Sweet zombie Jesus, my eyes. That is, collectively, the worst set of costumes ever. Compared to the new Titans, the WildCATs looked fashionable. This looks like a total reboot - they have the right four central characters, but the shared past that makes them work (namely, Young Justice) is gone. And it doesn't even look like Tim's got a connection to Batman.

#38 - Static Shock, by John Rozum, Scott McDaniel, and Jonathan Glapion - Okay.

#39 - Hawk and Dove, by Sterling Gates and.. God help me.. Rob Liefeld - What. The. Hell.

After a mostly positive set of announcements yesterday, things were looking up, but they've just destroyed the Titans. That and Liefeld make today's batch the most concentrated batch of suck that we've seen yet.

Heroes Rebored : Day Four

A new day, a new set of reveals.

http://dcu.blog.dccomics.com/2011/06/07/dc-embraces-its-dark-side/

#27 - Swamp Thing, by Scott Snyder and Yannick Paquette - To be expected, after the Brightest Day push.

#28 - Justice League Dark, by Peter Milligan and Mikel Janin - That is the worst title for a comic, ever. The premise and cast look interesting, though. And is that a redesigned Zatanna I see? And it's nice to see that DC's newfound puritanism about the female leg doesn't extend to boob windows. Thanks, Madame Xanadu.

#29 - Animal Man, by Jeff Lemire, Travel Foreman, and Dan Green - I hate that cover, but I like the idea of Buddy Baker having his own book again.

#30 - Demon Knights, by Paul Cornell, Diogenes Neves, and Oclair Albert - I love Paul Cornell's work. The Demon has a horrible track record as far as series go, but I'm cautiously optimistic.

#31 - Frankenstein, Agent of SHADE, by Jeff Lemire and Alberto Ponticelli - Eh. Could be good.

#32 - Resurrection Man, by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, and Fernando Dagnino - Holy f%#ing crap. This is the first bit of unequivocally great news to come out of this reboot.

#33 - I, Vampire, by Josh Fialkov and Andrea Sorrentino - And this is the other. I have a bizarre fascination with some of DC's obscure characters, and Andrew Bennett, the titular self-identifying vampire, is one of them. But hey, that vampire lady has no pants! What gives?

#34 - Voodoo, by Ron Marz and Sami Basri - The Wildstorm Voodoo, I guess? Sounds sorta like her. After Resurrection Man and I, Vampire, anything else would seem like a letdown.

So based on today's news, my reaction is edging up from 'Bah', towards 'Eh', and possibly even nearing 'Huh'.

Heroes Rebored : Day Three, Part Three

Confirmation on the Red Hood. (#25) And notice that Batman Inc returns in 2012 with a new number 1, so Grant gets to finish the storyline there, but it's not part of their September launch.

This, on the other hand, is :

http://dcu.blog.dccomics.com/2011/06/06/batwing-1-the-batman-of-africa-deals-justice-in-his-own-series/

Batwing, by Judd Winick and Ben Oliver - Now we have official covers, titles, and creative teams, along with initial solicitations, for half of DC's relaunch. (#26)