Every Day Is Like Wednesday

A CYNICAL BILLY BATSON RELUCTANTLY SAYS "SHAZAM" AT THE WIZARD'S INSISTENCE:



BLACK ADAM RETURNS TO THE PRESENT, MEETS SIVANA AND HOLDS HIM ALOFT BY HIS COLLAR:



BLACK ADAM FLIES SIVANA TO THE TOP OF A HIGH STRUCTURE SO THEY CAN DISCUSS THEIR ALLIANCE:



In 1987, DC Comics had writer Roy Thomas reintroduce C.C. Beck and Bill Parker's Golden Age superhero Captain Marvel to their DC Universe shared setting. This followed the 1986-1987 Crisis On Infinite Earths limited series, in which that shared setting was refreshed and recreated, with older characters being reinvented for more modern times. Thomas and co-writer Dann Thomas wrote the four-issue Shazam: The New Beginning, which was penciled and inked by Tom Mandrake and colored by Joe Orlando. In 2017 it was collected along with another Thomas-written story from the era and re-released in a hardcover format as Shazam: The New Beginning 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition.

In 2012, DC Comics had writer Geoff Johns reintroduce Captain Marvel, now re-named "Shazam," to their DC Universe shared setting. This followed the 2011 Flashpoint miniseries, in which that shared setting was rebooted and recreated, with classic characters being reinvented for more modern times and introduced to readers as if for the very first time. Johns wrote a "Shazam" strip as a back-up in his Justice League ongoing series. It was penciled and inked by Gary Frank and colored by Brad Anderson. It was later collected into a trade paperback under the title Shazam Vol. 1 and, later, republished as Shazam: Origins. It was the basis of the 2019 film.

Interestingly, in rather broad strokes, the two miniseries, which had identical mandates, resembled one another in terms of their plots. In both, scientist Dr. Sivana frees the Wizard Shazam's first champion, Black Adam, from his centuries-old imprisonment and the two villains become allies. Meanwhile, orphan Billy Batson is given a magical word by the wizard in order to transform himself into a superhero. Both stories even end with the teasing introduction of another of Captain Marvel's most colorful villains, Mr. Mind.

Despite the similarities of the broad shape of the two Captain Marvel reintroductions, they differ quite a bit in the details (Thomas' story posited Sivana as Billy's uncle, and included versions of the pre-existent characters Uncle Dudley, Magnificus and Beautia and even Hoppy, The Marvel Bunny; Johns', meanwhile, included versions of Mary Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr., Mr. Tawky Tawny and Ibac...plus three new "lieutenant" Marvels).

Still, I was struck by the degree to which certain scenes in the Johns/Frank comic so strongly echoed scenes from the Thomas/Mandrake take. Obviously, Johns and Frank drew inspiration from their predecessors, even as their Captain Marvel/Shazam story was quite different in tone, emphasis and in so many of the particulars.

The above image is a very good drawing of someone (here, a vampire) tearing someone's face off. It's drawn by Rafael Albuquerque, and it's from an issue of American Vampire (although I first encountered it in the American Vampire Vol. 1 collection which, you may recall, I rather liked).

Albuquerque is a great artist, so it's no surprise that the above panel is very well-drawn. The point-of-view chosen is the scariest, as the reader (or, in this case, the viewer) sees the vampire from the perspective of the victim—if that vampire were jumping at you and ripping off your face, that's the angle you'd see her from. Also, you might see that red thing flapping in her hand and, after a second or two, realize that the holes in it correspond to where one's eyes, nose and mouth would be and that Oh my God she just ripped off my face!

That's one of the great things about the panel, really. It depicts what has to be one of the least subtle subjects for one of the respresentational arts—someone getting their face ripped off—in a rather subtle fashion.

Oddly enough, the reason I lingered on the panel for so long when initially reading it, beyond the extra few split-seconds it took me to realize the shape of that bit of red flesh and what the shape signified, was that I had previously seen a pretty poorly-produced drawing of someone ripping someone else's face off in a comic book by this very same publisher: It's from one of the issues of DC Comics' 2007 miniseries World War III, and I'm reasonably certain it was penciled by Patrick Oliffe (the series had several pencillers and inkers).

As you can probably see, it's nowhere near as strong an image. The blob of red flesh in Black Adam's hand isn't recognizable as a face and is, in fact, probably too big to even be a face, given that it's bigger than the victim's whole head. The act itself isn't clear from the image alone either, and without the dialogue alluding to the fact that that the victim was "losing face," the drawing could just as easily be interpreted as Black Adam slapping his victim across the face with a rack of ribs smothered in a great deal of barbecue sauce.

But in order to really appreciate that first image of someone ripping someone else's face off as an exceptionally strong drawing of someone ripping someone else's face off, I needed to see a relatively poor image of someone ripping someone else's face off, establishing a point of reference for comparison's sake.

I think that says something about the necessity of—or at least the usefulness—of bad comics.

...

Um, I'm not sure what it says exactly, but I'm fairly certain it says something.

This week's Las Vegas Weekly comics column features reviews of




and



I am exceedingly proud of the headline this week.

In other "news"...




1.) Dear Entire English-speaking World,

New rule: Nobody’s allowed to use the word “pornographic” unless they understand they clearly understand the definition of that word. And none of that “I’ll know it when I see it" crap; it’s in the goddam dictionary.

Thanks,
Caleb

p.s. Click for context.




2.) I kinda hate to link to the same guy twice in one week, but damn it, Steven Grant has something else smart and relevant to say. If you spend as much time on the Internet reading about comics as I do (i.e. way too much), you’ve no doubt encountered the discussion about Wildstorm miniseries Highwaymen, which its creators feel isn’t doing as well as it should.

My original take on the matter was negative and counter-productive—a few sentences posted on someone else’s blog—because the handwringing over a lack of instant super-success seemed kind of silly to me.

Grant takes the question quite seriously, and offers up the most well-thought out analysis about the comics market and why Highwaymen isn’t doing gangbusters.

I know a lot less than Grant, Marc Bernardin, and everyone else involved with Highwaymen about the market, but it seems to me that it actually is a pretty successful book. It’s not all that far behind, say, Blue Beetle, and in the same neighborhood as DC and Marvel’s kids books starring household names and Wildstorm’s miniseries featuring the New Line horror characters like Jason and Freddy, themselves household names.

I think being a Wildstorm miniseries right now is probably more a detriment than a help; I imagine the book would have done much better at Dark Horse or as an Image Shadowline series. Wildstorm’s identity has always been kind of confused, a mixture of Wildstorm Universe stuff and Alan Moore’s ABC line and sundry other conflicting things, but faith in the brand is probably at an all-time low at this point.

Moore is gone, the “soft-reboot” of the “universe” books destroyed the line. I got one issue of Gen 13, one of the worst books I’ve read this year, a few issues of Midnighter, which was announced as a Garth Ennis ongoing and quickly became a hit-or-miss anthology series, and the first issues of the Grant Morrison master-minded Authority and WildCATs, which never went much farther. While I’ve heard good things about some of the other books, from here it looks like the universal reboot was, in essence, as if the company blew up its universe, and never got around to rebuilding it. It would be as if DC released Infinite Crisis #6, and never got around to #7, let alone 52 and “One Year Later.”

The WSU is further degraded by becoming a sort of ghetto of the DCU Multiverse, a place Captain Atom, Jason Todd and Donna Troy have to stop by every once in a while, instead of an exciting, distinct locale like, say, The Marvel Universe (Compare to JLA/WildCATS to Countdown Presents: The Search For Ray Palmer: Wildstorm: The Longer the Title the Better the Comic, Right?: Right? Because Otherwise Why Are We Giving It Such a Ridiculously Long Title?*).

DC has also perplexingly dumped Klaw the Unconquered on WildStorm, and acquired the New Line horror properties to publish under the brand.

There’s a stink about the brand now, and for all the reasons Grant mentions that Highwaymen wouldn’t grab a huge chunk of the Direct Market, there’s also the fact that the “WS” logo it bears is something of a stigma and a sales albatross.

Personally, I never read a single issue. If I got a review copy, I would have been happy to read and reviewed it for “Best Shots”whether I loved or hated it ,or, if the book proved to be a good one, for LVW.

But as a go-to-my-shop-every-Wednesday comics consumer, nothing about the book said “Buy Me” to me, and so I never did.

The Stelfreeze cover is nice, but so are all Stelfreeze covers (It also made it look a bit like Matador, another cop-looking Wildstorm book that Stelfreeze did the cover for, which I made it 4/6ths through and gave up on, as it seemed more TV cop drama than comic book to me).

I didn’t recognize any of the creators’ names.

Creators and covers seem to be the way comics are sold. I realize the creators did a charm offensive on the Internet, including Newsarama, which I go to reapeatedly each day, but since I didn’t know the creators or find the covers or title at all interesting, I didn’t read the interviews, so they obviously didn’t do anything to make me want to try the book.

Anyway, there’s a case study for the “Why isn’t Highwaymen super-succesful?” files.

You know what would have got me to buy this first issue automatically? If there was a picture of Clinton on the front, and the title alluded to him in some way, like Clinton’s Angels, and maybe above the log were the words “From The Guy Who Writes About Comics For Enertainment Weekly.”

Or if the questions being asked this week were somehow made part of the original pitch, so that instead of Highwaymen it might havec been called Buy This Book or You’re Racist or something like that.

Okay, maybe I wouldn’t recommend either course of action, but I seriously would buy any comic with that title, a picture of Clinton by Brian Stelfreeze on the cover, or a self-effacing mention of one of the creators’ day jobs.




3.) Speaking of comics that are doomed to not being super-successful, check this out:



You know what that is? That, my friends, is my “studio,” and laying all over the floor are all 24 completely penciled and completely inked pages of Caleb’s Unfinished Eventual Self-Published Project #1. It’s still unfinished, of course, I need to letter it yet, but after six years (six years!) of penciling and inking, the art is finally finished.

Now, don’t get too excited about the amount of time it took me to get this thing 3/4ths finished. It’s not like I labored six years straight on the thing (Although if I did spend an average of three months on each page, I bet it would look a lot nicer). I wrote the story in a day or two, and spent most of that time doing a page, getting distracted for three months, doing another page, and so on. If you’re familiar with the site, then you’re familiar with the level of quality that the writing and art are going to have.

Basically, it will be exactly like one of the strips I’ve done for EDILW. Only I’ll ask you to pay for it. You’re all extremely excited about this, I’m sure.

Expect to hear more about this in March.




4.) I’ve been cautiously pumped about Mike Kunkel’s upcoming Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam series since it was announced, and today Columbus’ own Vaneta Rogers has an interview with Kunkel up at Newsarama.com. There’s nothing particularly revelatory in the interview itself, which is kind of par for the course for these “Sell us on your new book you’d like us to all buy” type of interviews (which I’ve done a few of myself, so I hope that didn’t sound like a knock).

But what is interesting is the art included, which shows Kunkel’s versions of not only Billy and Cap, but also Mary and Mary Marvel, Dr. Sivana (it’s Thaddeus B. Sivana, Kunkel!), and Black Adam.

Now that I was surprised to see.

Kunkel’s take on Black Adam seems on conceptually weaker ground than the original, in that Adam is now an older kid who turns into a super-adult, instead of an adult who turns into a super-adult, which takes away from the little kid vs. a bunch of grown-ups dynamic that's always existed between Cap and his bad guys.

While that is kind of surprising, it’s nowhere near as surprising as the fact that Kunkel’s using Black Adam in the series at all. Remember, this is an “all-ages” interpretation, which editor Jann Jones announced as part of her kid-friendly line, kid-friendlier than Justice League Unlimited and Teen Titans Go!, which she said were a little too violent and questionable to give to her sister's kids.

Now, DC has of late rather rigorously (at least rhetorically) policed the porous borders between the Vertigo line and the DCU line, which share quite a few characters (actually, pretty much all of ‘em, if you go back far enough and look hard enough). The line of thinking is that they don’t want kids seeing John Constantine or Swamp Thing in a DCU book, as it might lead them to Vertigo books starring the characters, in which they’ll encounter things like gay sex, f-words, naked breasts, drug usage and the like. You know, grown-up stuff.

I can see that rationale, and, in general support the idea, but only selfishly. I like the hard line drawn between the imprints more so I don’t have to see Geoff Johns writing Neil Gaiman’s Endless into Infinite Crisis, or see Swamp Thing show up in an issue of Countdown or whatever than because I think it makes publishing sense (As an aside, did I see the Vertigo version of Black Orchid in this week's Birds Of Prey?).

The hardline between characters crossing between imprints makes even less sence if you look hard at the differences between the DCU as of right now and the Vertigo books with former DCU characters in them that are on the stands (I think only in graphic novel format at this point; save Hellblazer, featuring a character created for a book that would give birth to the Vertigo imprint, are any DCU characters currently starring in Vertigo ongoings?).

In the DCU, you’ll see naked ladies, but their nipples will be in shadow. You’ll have Black Canary calling Green Arrow a “piece of %@!$&” instead of a “piece of shit” (a kind of fig-leaf option to communicating swearing that has the effect of saying “shit” anyway; does anyone read that line and hear anything other than the word “shit” in their mind?). You’ll have sex talked about and implied and occasionally shown, but you won’t see any genitals. And you’ll have an awful lot of violence, more than you’ll find in any Vertigo book featuring former DCU characters I can think of off the top of my head.

The distance between the “maturity” of the DCU line and that of the Vertigo line is currently extremely narrow, and I’d argue that the DCU line handles mature things like sex and violence worse and in a way that is potentially much more offensive than the Vertigo line, as it adheres to a weird Hollywood double standard where extreme violence is much less offensive than mild sexuality or “bad” words.

Once you have Dr. Light raping Sue Dibny on the Justice League meeting table, while Superman cries about it on the cover of the book, or Flash’s silly villains doing lines of coke in a room full of whores, or whole comics constructed around down-blouse and upskirt shots of teenage girls, well, nothing Vertigo publishes seems all that risque anymore. If we looked at the comics the two publishing lines release as Hollywood films, Vertigo would probably be full of R-rated or unrated art-house films, whereas the DCU would be full of films that originally received R-ratings from the MPAA, and then were re-cut by the studio until they hit the PG-13 rating.

As for the violence in the DCU, some of the most spectacular examples of it have been perpetrated by Black Adam. Remember him pushing his hand through Psycho-Pirate’s face in Infinite Crisis, dryly making a Freddy Krueger-like joke? Or killing every man, woman and child in a fictional country in 52? Or ripping off one guy's face, and putting his fist through a girl’s heart in World War III? And in the recently launched Black Adam, writer Peter Tomasi ramped it up to Grand Guignol levels, having Black Adam eat a follower, and, in the latest issue, bungee jump down the side of a mountain using an enemies intestines.

Okay, they were yeti intestines, but still. Tomasi seemed to somewhat testily respond to complaints about the ultra-violence in his series, but the characters used in these sorts of stories do matter. Killing Joke worked with Batman, but wouldn’t have with Superman. Longbow Hunters worked with Green Arrow, but wouldn’t have with The Flash. The first wave of DCU inductees into Vertigo were able to be pushed in more mature direction—"mature" here meaning more sophisticated storytelling as well as more violent and sexually-charged stories—either because the characters themselves were inherently darker than others in the DC stable, or because they were unpopular enough that they could be pushed into new territory without worrying about a new Sandman Saturday morning cartoon or Shade, The Changing Man movie coming out any time soon.

And while the relative unpopularity of Captain Marvel has allowed Geoff Johns to turn Black Adam into a sort of Namor-meets-Dr. Doom anti-hero, Judd Winick to do whatever the hell he wants with Dr. Sivana and the 52 guys to make Mr. Mind into a real monster, that commits the Marvel brand and franchise to a certain direction.

Kunkel’s new series is going in the exact opposite direction. It would have been weird enough to have his series on the shelves at the same time as Trials of Shazam and Countdown (imagine mothers going into comic shops and asking if they have any books with Mary Marvel in them, for example), but to have Black Adam in both this series and his incredibly violent and gory limited series simultaneously? It really just seems like DC’s asking for trouble.

Certianly more so than they would be if Swamp Thing showed up in a Batman comic, anyway.




5.) Okay, I lied, there is something interesting in that Rogers/Kunkel talk aside from the art. Kunkel reveals the fact that he bought the out-of-print (and now quite expensive) collection of the original “Monster Society of Evil” epic off eBay. Come on DC, the guys you hire to make your comics want that thing in trade! Snap to it! And none of that Archive or Absolute crap, just a nice, plain, old-fashioned trade collection, huh?






*I think that’s what it was called anyway. I didn’t double-check and am just working from memory, here.

Ready for the second round of the Official EDILW 52 Post-Game Armchair Editing? You know I am!

In this installment, we're going to take a look at how DC could best capitalize on the success of 52, both creatively and commercially. So we'll be breaking spin-offs into three categories: The comics that DC has already announced, the ones they should announce, and the ones they shouldn't announce.

Each series, be it imminent or hypothetical, will be followed by two scores, with the first number designating the project's creative potential on a scale of one to ten (with one being World War III and ten being All-Star Superman), and the second number designating the project's commercial potential (with a one being Manhunter and a 10 being Justice).



Comics That DC Has Already Announced:







BLACK ADAM

There's no question that 52 (and Geoff Johns' JSA run before it) made a star out of Captain Marvel's evil double, so finally giving him a book of his own to star in was a no-brainer. It's somewhat odd to see it coming so soon after the end of 52 though, since he was given a rather elegant send-off into limbo (not the bit with the boots, but the end of #50, where he's left wandering the world guessing his new magic word).

Re-powering him in the near future should probve problematic (dude is up there with Hitler in terms of bodycount now, right?), although his series could very well focus on his past, or, even more interestingly, as his presnet stuck in Teth-Adam form. Can DC resist temptation and keep him a powerless human being throughout an entire series? It will be interesting to see. Writer Peter Tomasi's Light Brigade was a very good series, penciller Dough Mahnke is an incredible talent, able to handle quiet emotion even better than big supehero brawls (which he does quite well, as his run on JLA proved), and inker Christian Alamy rules the school, on both pencils and inks. 7/10









BOOSTER GOLD

Now this is something of a surprise, even though I didn't really believe that Booster had died way back in Week 15, and he was long my prime suspect for Supernova. But on the list entitled DC Characters That Are Capable of Carrying Their Own Monthly In Today's Market, I'd suspect Booster Gold to be somewhere between Martian Manhunter and Space Cabby (Fercrisakes, I can barely take his name as the name of a superhero seriously, let alone as a title of a good comic book, and I love the lug). Nevertheless, the very last issue of 52 seems to have given his book a neat premise, even neater than the time-travel focus that was mentioned when it was first announced (which would have made it like the ill-fated but excellent series Chronos), since it now seems he'll be exploring the new, economy sized multiverse (which would make it more like Exiles, I guess).

Plus, he's got a cast including Supernova, Rip Hunter and Skeets, so that's something (now just add a Ted Kord to the mix—shouldn't be too hard to save him from death using time travel a la Marvel's Captain Marvel and a few dozen other super-characters I can think of—and we're really cooking). Based on the cover, the first storyline will involve Booster journeying to an earth where pre-invasion Iraq was run by a Baathist regime consisting of characters throughout the old DC multiverse, and he's hunting them down for the U.S. marines.

The announced creators are, at the outset, Johns and Jeff Katz. As an architect of the new multiverse, Johns is obviously a perfect choice. I'm less sure about this Katz character, mainly because DC hasn't had much luck (creatively or commercially) with recruiting professional writers from other media to handle their characters of late (Think those knuckleheads who wrote Flash: The Fastest Man Alive, Jodi Picoult, Tad Williams, John Rogers and Richard Donner*).

Art comes courtesy of penciller Dan Jurgens. I really like seeing an artist of his caliber drawing characters primarily known by other talents (on that cover above, for example, we get to see a Jurgens version of Frank MIller character and a C.C. Beck character). The cheif (okay, only) pleasure of that ill-considered ten-part "History of The DCU" that ran in the back of the first ten issues of 52 was seeing Jurgens "covering" other artists throughout this series. 8/10







52 AFTERMATH: THE FOUR HORSEMEN

Now this is weird, on just about every level. The Four Horsemen? They only appeared in a few issues of 52, and were all killed in thier last appearances (one is even currently a pair of boots, which should be showing up in Black Adam at some point). Weirder still is that DC is calling this book 52 Aftermath—it weakens what is currently a pretty strong brand (in the same way that putting "from the pages of 52" atop the World War III books did), and how is it that those five words are somehow deemed more likely to move books off the shelves than the names of DC's top three icons?

I've got next to nothing to go on here, but I suppose it's nice to see DC's "Trinity" actually doing something together. I've said before that I think the concept is more than a little forced (Sure, Wonder Woman is the third most well-known DC character, but there's as big a gap between her overall Q-rating and that of Superman and Batman's, and a much, much smaller gap between hers and, say, Robin, Aquaman, Supergirl or even the Flash). Superman and Batman seem to team up a couple times a week—they even share an ongoing title devoted to their team-ups—but how often does Wonder Woman get included in their adventures unless there's a whole Justice League involved? Rarely, to the point of hardly ever.

On the positive side, it's written by Keith Giffen, who should reeaallly be doing some more writing at DC these days, and drawn by 52 pencil army veteran Patrick Olliffe, whose art I look forward to seeing in a less deadline pressurized book. 5/5




INFINITY INC.

No cover image of this book yet, nor has an artist been announced (or, if there has, I totally forgot who it was), but this was actually one of the earliest 52 spin-offs announced. It's also one that perplexes me. I really dig Steel; I have since "Reign of the Superman." Morrison and Waid used him quite brilliantly in JLA (though I was more than a little irritated that Waid dumped him from the line-up when he inherited the title), his own monthly had some ups and downs (with the Preist/Cowan run that ended it consisting of the most consistent up**), and I've often found myself unreasonably concerned about his well-being (Our Worlds At War) and character design (I don't know who designed that bug helmet, but it sucks).

Now, what Steel has to do with Infinity Inc., other than the fact that Natasha/Steel II (Or Steel III, if we count Commander Steel's grandson as Steel I?) joined the a team which co-opted that name, and that he himself kicked a few of their asses, I don't know. The pitch for this book is that John Henry and Natasha would be leading a new team of Infinitors, forging the loser leftovers from the Everyman Project into real heroes.

All of which strikes me as a pretty shrug-inducing idea for a monthly, particularly from writer Peter Milligan, who already wrote the hell out of the concept of shallow, fame-hungry heroes-as-celebrities once with X-Force/X-Statix. I'd much prefer a more flexible Steel solo title (even if it begins by dealing with Everyman Project/52 fall-out) and/or Steel back in the League (even if mainly/only in a building-stuff for the knuckleheads on the team capacity—outside the Trinity, it's not exactly a group that has any rocket scientists, and steel is both a literal and metaphorical rocket scientist).

Finally, this book uses the tried-and-false tactic of taking a DC brand name of next-to-no-value (Blue Beetle, Atom, Firestorm, Aquaman, Manhunter) and giving it to different characters, thus successfully alienating the only people who actually are attracted to that brand name. 4/2




Comics DC Should Announce:



DOC MAGNUS AND THE METAL MEN

I've mentioned this one before, but I'll mention it again because, goddamit, this would be awesome. Seriously, close your eyes and think about what the best part of 52 was—why yes, that's right, the Oolong Island bits. And who was the star of those? Doc Magnus. Paired with Waid's mission statement for the team, setting Magnus and his inventions up against the very mad-scientists he co-starred with in 52 seems like an easy continuation of the series (as well as a natural and organic one).

When one considers that Metal Men film is apparently currently in development, this really, really has to happen.

Unfortunatley, DC has screwed this pooch almost immediately, with the Metal Men's post-52 appearances consisting of cameos in "The Tornado's Path" and a horribly drawn, completely nonsensical story in Superman/Batman. While Waid and Morrison would be perfect (as would Darwyn Cooke or Michael Allred or Evan Dorkin or Kyle Baker, none of whom seem terribly likely), so too would Tom Peyer, Scott Beatty, Ty Templeton, Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis and...that's all I got off the top of my head, actually. After reading the first issue of Mark Verheiden and "Pat Lee"'s story in Superman/Batman, I'm tempted to say anyone but them, but I'm sure there are actually all sorts of people who could fuck a series like this up. 10/10




GHOST DETECTIVES

And speaking of things that just have to happen, there's the incredibly happy ending that the Four Horseman of 52 managed to give the Dibneys in #52. On one hand, this seems like a nice set-up for future Dibny stories, but on the other, it seems like a perfect place to end their story, doesn't it? It is, after all, Ralph's version of heaven, and why muck it up by having us watch them? I say put this book off until Mark Waid has the time and inclination to write it. (In the meantime, we can always see the Dibnys and Sat. Era or JLI Era stories in JLA: Classified, or a Croaton Society mini set in the past). 7/7



CAPTAIN MARVEL

This is another one I'm repeating myself on, but if there's one thing we pride ourselves on here at EDILW, it's consistency (Which is a nicer way to say redundancy). Now that the villain behind Skeets (or, in this case, inside him) has been revealed, it's clear that on one level, 52 boils down to a story of Captain Marvel villains Black Adam, Dr. Sivana and Mr. Mind fighting one another and much of the DC Universe.

It was unqeustionably DC's biggest hit of the year, and the largest swathes of it's stars came from Captain Marvel's cast...and not even any of the heroes, just some of his villains. Surely if Black Adam and company can carry a friggin' weekly, they could (help) carry a monthly, no?

Of course, one could argue that the success of the Marvel character in 52 owed more to the people writing them than the characters themselves, and one could point to the cancelled Power of Shazam! series as evidence of this. It's true that Cap isn't an easy character to "get," as Judd Winick's body of work so readily shows. Those that seem to get him the best—Morrison, Waid, Johns, Alex Ross, Jim Krueger, Kurt Busiek, Jeff Smith—are all pretty busy dudes, with a lot on their plates (and the stature to work on pretty much whatever they want). And I'd personally prefer no Captain Marvel DCU comic to a wretched Captain Marvel DCU comic (a la Trials of Shazam). So maybe the time isn't right for a new Shazam! monthly, but don't sleep on it too long DC—if that Shazam movie ever gets made, you're gonna want to have a comic book on the stands by then. 10/8



MISCELLANEOUS MISSING YEAR MADNESS

Again, these are all series I've mentioned before, but here goes anyway: Batman, Robin and Nightwing sailing around the world traning, something that I'm actually surprised we haven't seen more flashbacks to yet; it's certainly a thousand times more interesting than Royal McGraw's weird continuations of '70s storylines, John Ostrander's inventorty-tastic tale of Grotesk and Johnny Karaoeke and whatever the hell's been going on in Robin and Nightwing OYL); what went down in Gotham City (they could even reuse the name Gotham Nights, from those early '90s miniseries about Gotham citizens who weren't sueprheroes or supervillains); the Teen Titans' nutty year (we saw some of it alluded to in "Titans Around the World," 52 and we got to see Terra II's heart get punched out for no reason in World War III, but I'd kinda like to see those 50 teens coming and going through the tower, as well as see how Wendy and Marvin hooked up with the gang and...hey, where the hell did they disappear to in the last story arc, anyway?); and the further adventures of Firestorm II's shortlived JLA (C'mon DC, the world needs more Ambush Bug and Super Cheif team-ups, and you're not really using JLA: Classified for anything right now anyway!) 10/10




Comics DC Shouldn't Announce:



ANIMAL MAN

I like Animal Man, and always have. He was pretty cool before Grant Morrison got his hands on him, and, obviously, he was much cooler afterwards (I have a soft-spot for vegan activists superheroes). I even dug a lot of the post-Morrison Vertigo stories, particularly those written by Jamie Delano, many of which would have fit into the DCU just as easily as the VU (with a few minor alterations).

In his just-ended weekly debriefs with Matt Brady at Newsarama.com, Michael Siglain asked Newsaramites whether or not they'd want an Animal Man mini or ongoing. Some apparently did.

Well, they're wrong.

We don't need or want an Animal Man mini or ongoing, at least not at this point. Now, I always enjoy seeing Buddy Baker whenever he shows up, even if the stories aren't all that great, and am certainly in favor of him showing up in DC books a lot (even on a regular basis, in, say, JLoA or, possibly, a Forgotten Heroes book; though the former already has an animal-powered hero and the latter doesn't seem like a good publishing move at this point), but I don't think we need him in his own book.

It basically boils down to the fact that Morrison handled his last solo, ongoing DCU adventures so consumately in Animal Man that there doesn't seem to be a whole lot in the way of new story to tell...at least not new story capable of living up to what Morrison and several of his followers managed. A new Animal Man series seems predestined to suffer in comparison (A similarly effected character is Swamp Thing; I know there have been good Swampy stories since Alan Moore's run ended but, at the same time, most of seemed perfectly superfluous).

Sure, he worked fairly well here in 52, but then, he was part of an ensemble through most of it, and was partially written by Morrison throughout. as well A new Animal Man series would have to be able to be at least as good as (or at least not too much worse than) Morrison's Animal Man, and there are precious few writers capable of following Morrison in any successful fashion. Waid and Millar (sometimes), Tom Peyer and Jamie Delano have all done it successfully, but I have trouble thinking of any others.

So I vote no on Animal Man in his own new comic, but yes on more Animal Man in any (and everybody) else's comic. 3/7



THE QUESTION

I like Renee Montoya. I like The Question. But I don't like Montoya as The Question II. (Just like I like Aquaman and like Batman, but wouldn't like Aquaman as Batman...at least not permanently***). Granted, Montoya-as-Question would probably be a lot less grating in a title of her own than as part of a huge story involving an ensemble cast (As I've complained about somewhere in then neighborhood of 50 times previously, Montoya's scenes were the only first-person narrated ones in 52), but her storyline was one of the least popular in 52 (along with Steel's) and thus she doesn't seem to be a great character to be given her own title. Also, the forced-legacy rule is in full effect here. Fans of the the Question are the only people who are going to be attracted to the name "The Question" on a comic book, but they're going to be more interested in one starring the Question, not a different character with the Question's name (This one strikes me as particularly tragic since Vic Sage is such an incredibly unique character, and that JLU recently raised his profile in mainstream consciousness more than it's ever been, and because Sage more closely resembles the Watchmen character he inspired than Montoya). I suppose one of the other 51 Sages could enter into the DCU at any moment now and resume Question-ing, so it's not as tragic as it was a few week's ago. 3/1


BATWOMAN

This is an ongoing title that has been rumored for a long time—even the swell-looking logo design has been leaked onto the Internet—although it hasn't been announced. I couldn't possibly be less interested. Kate Kane is a terribly uninteresting character, whose defining characteristics seems to be that she's a lesbian (albeit a man's fantasy of a lesbian, a "buxom lipstick lesbian" as the New York Times put it), is Jewish, and used to sleep with the new Question. Strike two is that her costume draws attention to her long flowing, easy-to-pull-in-a-fight hair and her lips.

The female version of Batman she'd be replacing in DC's publishing line if she does get her own ongoing is Cassandra "Batgirl" Cain, who was a much more complex and unique character (just grabbing randomly at elements of her character, she was illiterate, shy, quiet and thus far pretty much completely uninterested in the opposite sex), and had a much less male-fantasy gratifying costume (No matter what Johanna Draper Carlson says).

On the plus side, it would be cool to have a female super-person with the word "woman" instead of "girl" have her own comic book (Is Wonder Woman the only DC superhero with the word Woman in her name that hasn't been killed or erased from the timeline somehow at the moment?), but that could have been accomplished just as easily by changing Cassandra Cain's name, now that it's "One Year Later" and I think she's 18 now.

Personally, I'd likely pass on this book, unless they assemble a dynamite creative team. The one storyline that would interest me would be the one dealing with her origin, or the missing year in Gotham, during which a lot of pretty exciting things happened that we haven't seen (Harvey Dent, Kite-Man, Nightwing flirting, Commissioner Gordon returning, Apokalyptian firepit-making). Oh, and I suppose a meeting with Cassandra Cain and/or Oracle would get me to pick an issue up. 5/7


*I don't mean they're all creative failures; I really dug Williams' Helmet of Fate and first issue of Aquaman (his run already seems to be falling apart as of his second issue, however), I haven't read much of Rogers, and I haven't read enough from Donner to sum up his run. But none of them have been able to tell good stories and sell as well, say, Johns, David Goyer, Greg Rucka, Kevin Smith and Brad Meltzer.


**Hey, 52 fans! Check out Steel #38 , which features a Steel/Question team-up!


***EDILW readers who have been taking their ginseng will remember I made a similar comment before; however, since I forgot when and where, I assume you all have too, so there, I've used it again.