Justice League #2

Comics | John Jackson Miller slices and dices the October numbers for the direct market, noting that overall dollar orders for comic books, trade paperbacks, and magazines topped $40 million for the first time since September 2009. Orders rose 6.9 percent over September, the first month of DC’s relaunch. “While that may sound counter-intuitive, it isn’t when you consider that all those first issues continued to have reorders selling through October,” Miller writes. “Retailers with an eye on the aftermarket may also have some sense that second issues are historically under-ordered — something which goes at least back to the experience of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero #2 in the 1980s, which wound up being much more valuable than its first issue.” [The Comichron]

Passings | Tom Spurgeon reports that author Les Daniels has passed away. Daniels wrote horror fiction and nonfiction books on the comic industry, which include Comix: A History of the Comic Book in America, Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics and DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World’s Favorite Comic Book Heroes. [The Comics Reporter]

Action Comics #2

Creators | Grant Morrison talks about coming back to Superman after his work on the character in All-Star Superman: “After I‘d done that story, it was kind of the end of Superman’s life, and I was interested in going back to the roots of the character, and his social and political roots, and maybe doing a take that dealt with him as a young man, but I didn’t really have any plans for that until Dan [DiDio] came over and then when he gave me the opportunity, and he said that they were willing to even change the continuity, and to let some new ideas and energy into it, it seemed perfect for that.” [CNN Geek Out]

Creators | Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang discuss their work on the relaunched Wonder Woman and her recently revealed new daddy.”If you went to the average person on the street and showed them a picture of Wonder Woman they would recognize her immediately,” Chiang said. “Ask those people her origin story and some of them might know the clay story but many, many others would not know that at all. That’s not a problem you have with Superman or Batman; everyone knows their origin. By making her the daughter of Zeus, we’ve gotten a big driving force behind our story. It gives her a motivation and it’s a key to character that we now feel is very important. She’s a child of the gods who defends us from them, in the same way that Superman is from another planet trying to save humanity and Batman is the orphan who is protecting us from the criminals who killed his parents.” [Hero Complex]

Creators | The student-run Observer reports on a lecture given by Notre Dame alum and Marvel editor Bill Rosemann: “The comic books industry is many fields coming together at once. It’s never been just about art. Instead, it’s this glorious American collision of art, commerce and history.” [Observer]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 9 #3

Creators | Andrew Chambliss discusses his work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 9 and Dollhouse. [TFAW]

Creators | Ian Flynn talks about his approach to writing the New Crusaders, the Red Circle reboot due from Archie Comics due next year: “The Red Circle characters are brimming with untapped potential. We’ve seen how other super hero properties have grown and matured from their silly, sometimes zany origins into the blockbusters they are today. The Red Circle heroes are no different. They have powers, desires and stories that can be fascinating when run through today’s filter of modern sensibilities. Everything is so wild and free, it’ll be a lot of fun to make it all work in one coherent world.” [ComicsAlliance]

Conventions | Dave Roman reports in from Quai des Bulles, the second-largest comics convention in France. [The Beat]

Manga | Deb Aoki talks to Hikaru Sasahara, the CEO of Digital Manga Publishing, about his company’s acquisition of Yaoi-Con and the progress of the Digital Manga Guild, their experiment in online publication using amateur translators and editors. [About.com]

Review | Jocelyne Allen reviews Adam Hines’s Duncan the Wonder Dog: Show One, which won the Lynd Ward graphic novel prize earlier this year. [Brain Vs Book]

Awards | Irish Comics News appears to have only been around for a few months, but they have already given their first awards, which were based on a popular vote. And here’s a nice touch: The award for Best Mainstream Published Irish Writer went to Garth Ennis, who won by a single vote—and that vote was cast by another nominee, Nick Roche. [Irish Comics News]

Youngblood

Creators | With the announcement that Rob Liefeld’s Extreme Studios is back in business, former Extreme Studios employee and current Image Comics publisher Eric Stephenson reflects on his time with the studio. “From 1992-1998, Extreme Studios was more or less my life. Youngblood, Supreme, Brigade, Bloodstrike, Team Youngblood, New Men, Prophet, Youngblood: Strikefile, Bloodpool, Glory… We put out a lot of comics, and for the most part everyone involved was incredibly young. Rob and I were amongst the oldest at 25. So many of the artists involved in various aspects of production were just out of their teens, and that made the work as frustrating as it was fun. But looking back, the main thing I remember about that time is Rob wanted to share his success with people who loved comics and wanted to make a living in the business as much as he had.” [It Sparkles!]

Webcomics | A Distant Soil creator Colleen Doran, who began serializing the comic online in 2009, notes “my bottom line is up significantly, and my online audience is ten times higher than when I started the five day a week online serialization of A Distant Soil 2.5 years ago.” She also shares advice she received when she started the endeavor that hasn’t worked for her. [A Distant Soil]

Tom Morello

Creators | Orchid writer and musician Tom Morello shares his thoughts on his new book, politics and social issues in comics, and the story in Action Comics #900 that featured Superman renouncing his citizenship, among other topics. [Vulture]

Creators | Speaking of politics in comics, Marzena Sowa talks to Hero Complex about her upcoming Vertigo graphic novel Marzi: “When I started to write Marzi, the first stories concerned my daily life in Poland: I wrote about my family, my neighbors. Then, progressively, political questions started to appear and I realized that the politics had so much space in my childhood life I hadn’t even imagined. Marzi is getting bigger, and her curiosity and will to understand the world is getting bigger too. She feels concerned by the world and she tries to understand it — understand why it doesn’t work correctly. At a certain point she starts to speak, she is not only a mute witness of what is happening in her country. She starts also to claim her own freedom; but for instance she is maybe too small to be heard by her parents, but she won’t give it up.” [Hero Complex]

Creators | The New York Times profiles the husband-and-wife cartooning duo Raina Telgemeier and Dave Roman. [The New York Times]

Creators | Phil Hester and Jonathan Lau discuss their work on Dynamite’s Bionic Man comic book. [TFAW]

Creators | Mark Waid talks about his work on Marvel’s recent revival of the CrossGen title Ruse. [Mulholland Books]

The Death-Ray

Creators | Daniel Clowes talks about re-release of “The Death Ray” and his “drift toward more sympathetic figures” in his work: “I decided at a certain point that one of my goals is to find a way to connect with the characters no matter how awful they may seem or how hard they are to be around, to try to look at their humanity and find a way to love them by the end.” [Montreal Gazette]

Creators | Jonathan Liu catches up with Anya’s Ghost creator Vera Brosgol after sitting on a panel with her at Portland, Oregon’s Wordstock. [Wired]

Creators | Underground comics legend Robert Crumb shares his other “passion” — early 20th-century popular music. [BlogCritics]

Creators | Robin Furth discusses adapting Stephen King’s The Dark Tower to the comics medium, collaborating with Peter David, and Stephen King’s thoughts and involvement. [Biff Bam Pop! - part 1, part 2]

Comics | Saladin Ahmed looks at four of comics legend Jack Kirby’s “most ethnically adventurous creations” — The Thing, the Howling Commandos, Black Panther and The Black Racer. [tor.com]

Black Hood

Comics | The Beast Must Die at the Mindless Ones blog looks back at Mark Wheatley and Rick Burchett’s covers for Black Hood, from DC’s early 1990s !mpact line [Mindless Ones]

Commentary | Robot 6′s own Sean T. Collins reviews Brian Ralph’s Daybreak. [The Comics Journal]

Fandom | Looking for a Halloween costume? Found Item Clothing details 34 pop culture costumes you can make on your own, including Wonder Woman and Charlie Brown. [Found Item Clothing]

Robots | The Calgary Sun spotlights Phil Allen, who created a giant robot he hopes to sell to help pay for his wife’s liberation treatment for multiple sclerosis. “Science fiction has been talking about robots for 70 years and now I know why there aren’t any … It’s a huge undertaking when you decide to build one.” [Calgary Sun]

Green Arrow

The New York Comic Con officially opened its doors this afternoon, but comics publishers and distributors have been releasing announcements leading up to it all this week. Here’s a round-up of news from today, as well as some that hit earlier this week.

• DC Comics, who were having a pretty good week already, announced two creative team changes for the New 52. Ann Nocenti of Daredevil and Longshot fame will write Green Arrow starting with issue #7. She spoke to Comic Book Resources about her approach to the series: “I have a particular way of writing a comic. Comics are short. They are only twenty pages, so you can take a year of comics and that can be your opera, and the opera can have a lot of different passages in it. I kind of believe every issue should be a single story, just a complete story. But there is a momentum that forms like triptychs over it, and then it forms your big overtures, and then the whole thing ends up kind of operatic. I also want a beginning, middle and end, a classic short story approach to every single comic. What I do is I try to figure out, what is the kick in this comic, what is the main feeling I want to get, and everything in the comic has to serve that.”

• And Marc Bernardin (Monster Attack Network, The Highwaymen, The Authority) will take over the writing duties on Static Shock beginning with issue #7. “As a fan and as a writer, one of the great things about Static isn’t just that he’s a new hero, it’s also that he’s a young hero,” Bernardin told CBR. “He will make the mistakes of youth and, even though the New 52 is resetting a lot of heroes to their early days as do-gooders, there’s nothing quite like the fumblings of a teenager.”

• General Mills cereals will include free custom editions of Justice League comics in October and November.

• And in case you missed them earlier this week, they also announced a change to Wonder Woman’s origin, as well as two Vertigo projects — Dominique Laveau: Voodoo Child and adaptations of Stieg Larsson’s bestselling Millennium trilogy.

• Dark Horse today announced five new Star Wars projects — Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic—War!, Dawn of the Jedi, Knight Errant – Escape, Blood Ties – Boba Fett is Dead and Darth Vader and the Ghost Prison.

Infestation 2

• IDW has made several announcements leading up to the show. Coming up this January is Infestation 2, the sequel to this year’s crossover event Infestation. It will feature everyone from the Transformers to G.I. Joe to to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Bat Boy and fighting Lovecraftian Old Ones. “We learned how to do this, how to tell a story that is connected to all these different properties but not necessarily involving them all in the same book,” IDW CCO and EiC Chris Ryall told CBR. “And all the usual trial and error when you’re doing a big event that you’ve never done before. The other good thing about that, having never done it before, some of the licensors weren’t entirely sure what we had in mind so we had to keep all the characters separate. Now that we can show them what we did and show them how it succeeded before, now we’re able to cross over some of the characters and have the properties meet up.”

Ryall confirmed that Danger Girl is not only part of the crossover, but also will get a new series next spring.

• IDW also announced Road Rage, a comic adaptation of “Throttle,” a short story co-written by Locke & Key writer Joe Hill and his father, horror novelist Stephen King, as well as “Duel,” the Richard Matheson short story that inspired it. Ryall and artist Nelson Daniel will adapt the stories, with covers by Phil Noto and Tony Harris.

And what else do Road Rage and Infestation 2 have in common? Temporary tattoos!

• Mike Costa (GI Joe: Cobra, Blackhawks), Ryan Browne (God Hates Astronauts, Blast Furnace) and Disney Imagineer/sleight-of-hand artist Jon Armstrong are teaming up for a new miniseries from IDW called Smoke and Mirrors.

Incorruptible #25

• Mark Waid’s hero-turned-villain, the Plutonian, will take on his nemesis-turned-hero, Max Damage, in an Irredeemable/Incorruptible crossover that will appear in Irredeemable #32-33 and Incorruptible #25-26.

• Archie’s Red Circle characters will return next year as part of a digital comics subscription service.

• Graphicly announced this week that The Walking Dead, Invincible and Irredeemable are now available on Newsstand, a new feature of the newly released iOS 5 for the various Apple devices. Newsstand allows you to subscribe to serial publications like magazines and, obviously, comics, then automatically updates them in the background when new issues become available.

• ComiXology had two announcements this week — they’ve added IDW to their iOS application, and they’ve released a Marvel app for the Android.

• A second Free Comic Book Day, tied to Halloween 2012, is being planned by Diamond Comics Distributors.

• Before hitting the New York Comic Con, Orchid writer and musician Tom Morello went to Zuccotti Park where the Occupy Wall Street protests are occurring to perform.

New Crusaders

Fans wondering about the fates of the Red Circle characters DC Comics once licensed from Archie Comics can wonder no more — in advance of this week’s New York Comic Con, Archie has announced plans to bring them back next spring.

The New Crusaders by writer Ian Flynn and artist Ben Bates, will be part of a Netflix-like online subscription service offered by Archie and iVerse Media, according to an article in the New York Times. The service will offer an original six-page story and access to an archive of past adventures. “It will be a nominal monthly charge with access to new comics and thousands and thousands of pages from the archive,” Jon Goldwater, the co-chief executive of Archie Comics Publications, told the Times.

The new stories will feature old enemies tracking down the now-retired heroes (who live in the aptly named suburb of Red Circle), leading The Shield to head up “the next generation” of the team. Archie last published adventures of the Red Circle characters in the mid-1980s; DC Comics licensed them from Archie for its short-lived Impact line in the 1990s, then tried to integrate them into the DC Universe a couple of years ago. And again, the titles were short-lived. DC co-publisher Dan Didio confirmed this summer that DC no longer had the license to publish stories about the characters.

Dan DiDio

Warming up for a grueling Comic-Con International schedule, DC Comics Co-Publisher Dan DiDio held a virtual convention panel last night on Facebook for fans who can’t make it to San Diego. Highlights from the Q&A include:

• DC no longer has the rights to Archie’s Red Circle superheroes.

• Stephanie Brown will remain part of the DC Universe following the September relaunch. However, DiDio won’t reveal where she is just yet. “Sorry, but we are keeping some secrets,” he wrote, “and one of them involves Stephanie.”

• He’s sticking by his earlier remarks about the status of the Justice Society, saying “the official answer on JSA is that ‘They’re resting’.”

• When can we expect the release of Dark Knight: Boy Wonder, the planned six-issue conclusion of Frank Miller and Jim Lee’s All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder? “Probably when he is The Teen Wonder.”

• Asked whether we’ll ever see the new version of Who’s Who in the DC Universe announced in December 2009, DiDio replied, “the question is not who’s who but when’s when.”

DiDio’s first actual Comic-Con panel, “DC Comics — The New 52,” kicks off at 2 p.m. Thursday in San Diego.

Brightest Day: The Atom

DC’s July solicitations include such high-profile titles as Brightest Day, Justice League: Generation Lost, three Grant Morrison Bat-books, Neal Adams’ Odyssey, and the 50th issues of Ex Machina and Green Lantern Corps. We’ll touch on some of those in this modest survey.

However, as usual, it was an eclectic group of books which caught my eye … starting with a feature I wasn’t expecting to see.

NIGHT AND DAY

I hate to dismiss a series which I’d like to read before it’s even seen the inside of a comics shop, but I think the Atom Special and its subsequent co-feature may do better in collected form than in single issues. I base this on the quite-possibly-irrational notion that a significant amount of DC readers want to read about the Atom, but don’t especially want to follow the Legion of Super-Heroes.

Like I said, possibly irrational — but consider: the Legion now has its own book in addition to its regular feature in Adventure Comics. Therefore, at some point readers of Adventure will probably need to read Legion in order to be fully in the know. This makes reading Adventure just for the Atom even less attractive, since it likely entails an extra $2.99 commitment on top of the $3.99 for Adventure. The alternative, of course, is to wait for the Atom Special and the first co-feature storyline to be collected — because, inevitably, it will — and hope that enough people buy it, and keep buying Adventure to warrant further collections.

All that said, I will probably get both the Atom Special and Adventure. I like the Legion well enough, but strange as it may seem, the “updated Earth-1″ crew hasn’t turned out to be my favorite. However — and here is the truly weird thing — I suddenly like Adventure more with its original numbering. That one change makes a world of difference for me, and I think I would feel the same if I hadn’t grown up with the original series. It bridges the gap, you know? Now its roots go deeper than Geoff Johns’ Superman work. Now they go back not just through the Legion but through Aquaman, the Spectre, and a vast range of characters and approaches. I look at Adventure Comics vol. 2 #10 and think maybe someday this’ll last as long as its predecessor. Well, with July’s issue #516, it’s all of a piece.

And this is a horrible segue, but as much as I liked the Star City reveal in Brightest Day #0, the new Green Arrow series barely registers on my radar. It sounds hokey, but having the Atom resolve his issues fairly quickly in Blackest Night got me a lot more ready for his new feature than all the sound and fury surrounding Team Arrow.  Yes, it can be exciting to watch one’s heroes struggle through horrible adversity, but haven’t the past six years of struggling been enough?  Accentuate the positive, DC!

And one last bit of Blackest Night bidness:  Lex Luthor didn’t have much to do as an Orange Lantern, but the more I think about it, the more I want Action Comics’ Paul Cornell and Pete Woods to have him design his own power ring. Clearly he won’t be able to duplicate one — it wouldn’t be a ring anyway, it’d probably be the size of a tank — but boy I want to see him try.

GOINGS AND COMINGS

Welcome back, Welcome To Tranquility; and welcome to busy new Azrael writer David Hine.

Ex Machina finishes on time, but The Great Ten wraps up early.  Seems like just last month the G10 miniseries was in fact set for (appropriately enough) ten issues. I’ve liked it pretty well so far, and I know it’s selling pretty poorly — but I didn’t think it was selling badly enough to be cancelled an issue early. Should make the collection that much cheaper, though.

I’ll miss The Warlord, cancelled with July’s #16. I bought it originally to support DC’s attempts at branching into non-superhero genres, and I’m glad it lasted past its first anniversary; but before too long, with every month’s solicits I expected to see that “FINAL ISSUE” notation. Speaking as someone with only a nominal amount of Warlord knowledge (before reading the Showcase Presents volume, that is), I thought it was pretty accessible. It looked pretty good too, especially when Mike Grell illustrated his own scripts. There wasn’t much innovation to it, and it did feature a character unironically named “McBane” — I will never let that go — but it was a reliably diverting fantasy every month.

POTPOURRI

Last month we learned that DC’s readership wasn’t willing to support two Red Circle titles. This month — a month, I might add, which saw the aforementioned early end of another government-sponsored super-team title — DC has decided to put all its red-circled eggs into the Mighty Crusaders basket. As I understand it, the Crusaders are the Red Circle’s Justice League/Justice Society analogue, and that’s too bad for them. Whether they’re the Justice Society, the Crusaders, or the Shadow Cabinet, these all-star teams tend to be compared to the League, because it is DC-Earth’s preeminent superhero team. When these kinds of teams have their own Earths to police, naturally they’re at the top of the organizational chart. Presently, however, they’re all competing for second place; because by definition the JLA is No. 1. Thus, it doesn’t surprise me that the Crusaders have gone the “government-sponsored” route, because they have to distinguish themselves somehow. It probably also means that DC isn’t anywhere near integrating the THUNDER Agents into its regular superhero community, because their acronymic name pretty much requires being sponsored by the United Nations.

I thought Madame Xanadu was getting pretty close to “Mad Men” territory with the tormented Betty Draper-esque housewife in its current storyline, so I’m definitely interested in what issue #25 does with its tormented ‘60s ad exec.

Time Masters: Vanishing Point takes a pretty logical approach to searching through time for Bruce Wayne — namely, going to Booster Gold and his time-traveling associates. I have no illusions that Booster, Superman, and Green Lantern will actually find Bruce in the course of this miniseries, because it seems pretty obvious that Bruce’s story will be resolved in the Return Of Bruce Wayne miniseries, set to wrap up a full three months before this one does. Then again, you’d think Batman would have died at the end of a story called “Batman R.I.P….”

Speaking of ROBW, I’m glad to have Grant Morrison writing the regular Batman book again, alongside his normal Bat-gigs — but with Neal Adams’ Batman: Odyssey miniseries debuting in July, and with Morrison citing Adams’ “hairy-chested love god” as one of his Bat-inspirations, I kinda hope the two find a way to work together.

Yeah, I’m getting the X-Files/30 Days Of Night crossover. The ultimate “X-Files” vampire story will always be the fifth season’s “Bad Blood,” but this should be scary enough.

I am hardly the first to say it, but … J. Michael Straczynski’s all-new Wonder Woman era starts with the destruction of Paradise Island? I trust this will be different from the time Darkseid decimated the Amazons at the start of John Byrne’s mid-‘90s run, or the hiatus the Amazons took at the end of Greg Rucka’s tenure. I did like Don Kramer and Michael Babinski’s work on the JSA Vs. Kobra miniseries, though; so WW #601 has that going for it.

KEEP IT SIMPLE

The solicit for Teen Titans #85 intrigues me, because it seems like a pretty standard superhero story. I haven’t read the book since the Wonderdog issue, so I have no idea why they might be after Raven, or how they got to “the Wyld country.” Still, it’s superheroes fighting dinosaurs and affiliated monsters, which sounds like an attempt to distance the title from its reputation as a regular source of bloody death.

Similarly, I’m getting more interested in Paul Levitz and Jerry Ordway’s literal-hero-worship story in Superman/Batman. Not that S/B has the same ghoulish reputation, mind you — it just seems like a nice, straightforward, World’s Finest-style story.

COLLECTIONS

The concluding volume of The Mighty is on the schedule for August. I never read the series, because it seemed pretty familiar, at least at first. However, I heard good things here and there, and I like Chris Samnee’s work, so I may have to give it another shot.

I’m definitely looking forward to the second Showcase Presents The Doom Patrol volume, primarily to see just how bizarre Arnold Drake and Bruno Premiani got with their signature creations. Doom Patrol #121 is one of the most famous — or infamous, perhaps — final issues in all of superhero comics, so I hope it lives up to the hype.

DC might have done it previously, but this is the first time I’ve seen collections solicited alongside their final issues. American Vampire #5 comes out July 21, but latecomers need only wait about two more months for the hardcover on September 29. The wait’s even shorter for Batman: The Widening Gyre Vol. 1 (issue #6 is set for July 28, and the hardcover drops on July 1).

* * *

Well, that’s what stood out to me this month. What looks good to you?

The Comet, designed by Duncan Rouleau

Starting next month in The Shield #5, DC Comics will begin introducing several more newly revamped characters from the Red Circle comics line into the DCU. Editor Rachel Gluckstern gave more details today over on DC’s The Source blog.

The Red Circle characters, for those not familiar with them, are superhero characters once published by Archie Comics back in the day. DC published stories about the characters as a separate line back in the early 1990s, the short-lived Impact line. Earlier this year, they began introducing them into the DCU, giving The Shield and The Web their own titles, which include back-up features starring Inferno and the Hangman.

So who’s joining these former Mighty Crusaders in January? Here’s a rundown on who to expect to see …

• The main story in The Shield #5 will see the introduction of the Jaguar to the DCU.
• In the back-up feature in that same issue, the Inferno meets the Comet (seen above).
• The Web #5 sees the Black Hood showing up in the main feature.
• And in the Hangman back-up feature in that same issue, Mr. Justice shows up. Eventually Mr. Justice will get his own co-feature in one of the books, written by Michael and David Uslan, and drawn by Justiniano.

They also announced in March that the Inferno back-up story in The Shield would go on hiatus, and would be replaced by The Fox, by writer Brandon Jerwa and artist Michael Avon Oeming.

Click on over to the Source to see what all the newly designed characters will look like.

Grumpy Old Fan

The September solicitations are here, bringing with them another month’s worth of teases and puffery.  There are ongoing series for the Red Circle characters, a new edition of Red Son, and a paperback featuring a Communist Lady Blackhawk.  As if that weren’t enough, this batch includes the start of a long-awaited Superman miniseries, the highly-anticipated conclusion of Flash:  Rebirth, and a couple of minor characters in desperate need of some salesmanship.  I’m also fairly sure that DC has made some kind of history in its writing corps.

Before we get to that, though, a non-solicitation item.  I’m pretty happy that DC will be putting at least part of Wednesday Comics in a newspaper, even if it’s just the first installment of the Superman strip in one issue of USA Today. You may remember a couple of months ago that I went off on a little tirade about DC not supporting Wednesday Comics sufficiently, and while this isn’t quite what I had in mind, it may be pretty effective.

Now then…

BLACKEST NIGHT

Let’s begin with a rundown of September’s Blackest Night books, mostly so I can observe that for the second straight month, it takes a break for the first week:

9/3:  (open date)
9/9: GL Corps #40, BN: Batman #2
9/16: BN #3
9/23: BN: Superman #2
9/30: Green Lantern #46, BN: Titans #2

Six issues in four weeks (most of them $2.99) doesn’t seem unreasonable, especially since you could cut out the character-specific miniseries and reduce your spending by about half.

The solicit for BN #3 asks why the dead are rising, so I really hope we find out in that issue. I know Blackest Night won’t be over until March (!), and it’s gotta pace itself, but after 120 pages you’d think some mysteries would be revealed.

With regard to one of those minor mysteries, I’m guessing that “Superman’s dead bride [who] returns as a Black Lantern” is the Earth-2 Lois Lane. Seems like Earth-2 Lois is one of the few characters who’s crossed the proverbial river in the past five years as a result of natural causes, not grisly murder. As such, the cynic in me wonders if Blackest Night won’t try to justify all those other deaths by saying they were just setting up the characters’ particular roles in this event. Probably not — I expect most of them will be throwaway references, and someone like Pantha (famously decapitated in Infinite Crisis) may now be able to use her noodle as a projectile. Reunions with deceased loved ones, like Donna Troy’s on that creepy Titans cover, will no doubt balance out any such darkly-comic bits.

(See what sort of ill-informed speculation comes from having three months’ worth of solicits to chew over before the first issue ever appears…?)

WORLD’S FINEST SOLICITS

Not much to say about September’s Superman titles, except to note the arrival of Secret Origin. I have a feeling that, since it will end the same month as World Of New Krypton, it will set up the next big Superman arc; but obviously I’d like to think it will work well as a standalone story. If so, it would stand alone in another respect. John Byrne’s Man Of Steel never seemed like a coherent narrative to me, because it was more concerned with establishing all the new wrinkles. Therefore, I liked Mark Waid and Leinil Yu’s Birthright a lot more, because it did stand alone — but then nobody in the regular Superman books wanted to do anything with it. In any event, Secret Origin should be good.

Likewise, not much to say about the Batman books in September.  I enjoyed the “Manhunter” feature in Streets Of Gotham #1 more than I did the lead (and I liked the lead fine, although it was a little disjointed). I get the feeling that SOG and Gotham City Sirens will be Paul Dini’s biweekly piece of the Bat-pie, with storylines and characters crossing back and forth between the two.

Also, I suppose the solicit for Batgirl #2 eliminates Barbara Gordon, Cassandra Cain, and Helena Bertinelli from contention, since it refers to “a new person wearing the cape and cowl.” It might also cut out dark-horses like Spoiler and the Squire, since I imagine they’d be welcome in the costume. Maybe she’s a Dick Grayson groupie from ‘way back…?

The “JMS Era” of The Brave and the Bold starts in September, as (I presume) the original Batman meets Robby “Dial ‘H’ For Hero” Reed. Regular readers of this space know I am not the world’s biggest J. Michael Straczynski fan, but I like the idea of B&B enough to work past that. In other team-up news, the current Batman guest-stars in September’s issue of Vigilante, which should be interesting considering that Marv Wolfman introduced the current Vigilante when he was writing Dick Grayson’s adventures in Nightwing.

Finally, I’m very glad to see that the Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures In The Eighth Grade team of Landry Walker and Eric Jones will be producing the Batman: The Brave and the Bold comic.  Now, if we could just get more Supergirl out of them….

HERE’S YOUR (WINGED) HAT — WHAT’S YOUR HURRY?

The Flash: Rebirth ends in September, but I have no predictions about who will be doing what (or in what costume) when all is said and done. Honestly, I don’t think either Barry or Wally will be all that different, since getting Barry back to normal is the point of this miniseries, and Johns has made it clear he’s a big Wally fan. Therefore, I look forward to talking about the newest Flash #1 in next month’s solicits.

D’OH! A DEER

I’m not sure what to think about Sweet Tooth. Since I’m unfamiliar with Jeff Lemire’s work, at first glance it reminds me of a weird mash-up of Kamandi and Y: The Last Man. None of this has any bearing on its overall quality, of course — these are just first impressions. However, the concepts certainly seem more complex than the Harry Potter riffs in The Unwritten, the bifurcated House Of Mystery format, or Unknown Soldier‘s grim realism. That may make Sweet Tooth a tougher sell (at least to me), and as with Air, that might give it too much of a learning curve for me to make the monthly commitment.

THE CIRCLE IS NOW COMPLETE

I really was not going to get any of the Red Circle books, because the characters just didn’t interest me. However, as with the JSA Vs. Kobra miniseries, the presence of writer Eric Trautmann on The Shield is probably enough to sell me at least on that series’ first issue.

Speaking of the Red Circle, David Brothers and JK have already noted that these solicits feature two books (one Red Circle, one not) written by African-American women — The Web #1, written by Angela Robinson; and Teen Titans #75, written by Felicia D. Henderson.  Good for DC for hiring them, because I sure can’t remember the last time — or any time before this — that an African-American woman had written one of DC’s superhero books.

However, it’s also worth noting that this time around I see only one other female writer in the DCU line — namely, Gail Simone on Wonder Woman and Secret Six. (As for the other imprints, Louise Simonson co-writes WildStorm’s World Of Warcraft #23 and G. Willow Wilson writes Vertigo’s Air #13.) Accordingly, DC shouldn’t have any illusions of complete diversity among its professionals. Still, I’m eager to see what a writer for The L Word brings to a relatively ordinary superhero setup, and I’m especially looking forward to Ms. Henderson’s work on Teen Titans. Here’s hoping they each have productive comics careers which continue to open doors.

BECAUSE NO ONE SEEMS TO HAVE DEMANDED IT…

Considering that Magog (the character) was created as a parody of the 1990s’ “Liefeldization” of superheroes, it’d be fun to think that Keith Giffen would position Magog (the book) similarly as a superhero parody. That would get me to read it, since I can’t say I have much interest in Magog otherwise.

It can’t be a good sign that the new Red Tornado miniseries seems to have inspired in the superhero-comics blogosphere a general sense of bewilderment.  Why would anyone want to read about a character who comes across like an even more whiny version of the Vision? Furthermore, the most recent Reddy storylines have threatened to grind Justice League of America to a halt, so I can’t say that the thought of a new Red Tornado story makes me particularly giddy. Still, the miniseries could build on a couple of plot points which never seemed to go anywhere, including his recent dealings with Amazo and Solomon Grundy (whose miniseries ends in September) and the map of the Multiverse which may still be stored in his brain. In fact, because Reddy is one of those characters who gets screwed with every few years — because no one seems to know what to do with him — a story like this always has the potential to make some sense out of all those twists and turns. Naturally, it also has the potential to ignore all of that in favor of something much more bland, but I did want to point out that “Red Tornado” doesn’t automatically equal “fail.”

COLLECTIONS

You know, I was just thinking that Howard Chaykin’s 1988 Blackhawk miniseries should be collected, and here it is. In a way, Blood and Iron was Chaykin’s follow-up to his 1986 Shadow miniseries (also for DC). Where the latter brought the Shadow into the (mid-) 1980s, though, B&I was a period piece; and it took special care to rehabilitate the Blackhawk formerly known as “Chop Chop.” This miniseries was followed by a feature in Action Comics Weekly, which in turn led to a short-lived ongoing series (all from writer Martin Pasko and artist Rick Burchett). I wouldn’t mind if those were collected as well — they were fine comics.

The Red Son hardcover gains eight pages on its paperback predecessor, so maybe that means more “special features.” Also, while typing this up I had the happy thought that this miniseries hasn’t been irrevocably tainted by the use of its characters in Countdown.

The Flamebird and Nightwing paperback intrigues me for a couple of reasons. First, what’s with the reversed names? Flamebird was traditionally the sidekick — did his agent twist some arms? Second, I don’t remember too many other collections taken from the mid-1970s Superman Family title (which, you’ll remember, picked up Jimmy Olsen‘s numbering with #168). Most of these stories were penciled by Ken Landgraf (who also drew DC horror comics at the time) and inked by Romeo Tanghal, and I remember them being decent enough. Naturally, Nightwing and Flamebird didn’t have super-powers in Kandor, so they were pretty much Batman and Robin with jet-belts and similar technology. (In fact, Superman originally created the Nightwing and Flamebird identities because there were no bats or robins in Kandor.) Also, I don’t think the Kandorian Flamebird was a teenager, because he was married to (the original version of) Thara, Nightwing’s niece.  Probably more than you needed to know, but I’m looking forward to this.

With Trinity Volume 3 coming out in October, I’ll be interested to see what those of you waiting for the trades think about it.

However, the big news in collections this month looks like the simultaneous release of “Rise of the Olympian” in both hardcover and paperback (on November 4). I tend not to buy these books when I already own the individual issues, so the whole hardcover-vs.-softcover dilemma is mostly lost on me. I suppose this could be testing whether the hardcover Wonder Woman collections will continue; and if they don’t, whether that means some loss of prestige. Either way, $14.99 for an eight-issue paperback collection is pretty attractive, and “ROTO” has been a heck of a storyline so far.  Worth a look, at least, if you haven’t been reading it.

SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL AMAZON

And while we’re on the subject of Wonder Woman, I see that the solicit for WW #36 answers one of my lingering questions about “ROTO”: what about Achilles, the titular Olympian? Apparently we’ll have to wait three months to see him throw down against Diana, after a two-issue team-up with Black Canary which starts in July.

By the way, one last thing about Wonder Woman: given the recent unpleasantness, I think it’d be great if WW #36 happened to outsell September’s new Spider-Woman #1. Nothing like voting with one’s wallet….

* * *

Anyway, what looks good to you?

The Web #1

THE WEB #1
Written by Angela Robinson; co-feature written by John Rozum
Art by Roger Robinson & Hilary Barta;co-feature art by Tom Derenick & Bill Sienkiewicz
Cover by Stanley “Artgerm” Lau
Variant sketch cover by JG Jones
Spinning out of August’s “Red Circle” event from superstar writer J. Michael Straczynski comes the new ongoing adventures of the selfish rich-boy hero the Web, and the mysterious-undying Hangman. Writer/director Angela Robinson (D.E.B.S.) and artist Roger Robinson (BATMAN: GOTHAM KNIGHTS) spin the tales of The Web, a man who has only recently come to understand the burden of true heroism. He’s fighting crime on his own terms, and for his first mission he’s hunting down the men responsible for killing his brother!
Plus, the Hangman stars in his own co-feature with a touch of urban noir from writer John Rozum (DETECTIVE COMICS) and artists Tom Derenick and Bill Sienkiewicz, the team behind REIGN IN HELL! The Hangman haunts the streets of San Francisco and touches lives as he works to discover whether his powers are a blessing or a curse.
Retailers please note: This issue will ship with two covers. For every 10 copies of the Standard Edition (with a cover by Stanley “Artgerm” Lau), retailers may order one copy of the Variant Edition (with a sketch cover by JG Jones). See the Previews Order Form for more info.
On sale September 23 • 40 pg, FC, $3.99 US

Teen Titans #75

TEEN TITANS #75
Written by Felicia D. Henderson;
co-feature written by Sean McKeever
Art by Joe Bennett & Jack Jadson;
co-feature art by Yildiray Cinar & Júlio Ferreira
Cover by Joe Bennett & Jack Jadson Variant cover by Andy Clarke
Come celebrate our gala 75th issue with an all-star cast of Titans past and present! Joining this issue for the extravaganza is new ongoing writer Felicia D. Henderson, a co-executive producer on TV’s hit show Fringe! Don’t miss this start to a fresh new take on DC’s premier teen team! And in the Ravager co-feature, Rose lies nearly dead in the Arctic when a horrific discovery chills her even more! Retailers please note: This issue will ship with two covers. For every 25 copies of the Standard Edition (with a cover by Joe Bennett & Jack Jadson), retailers may order one copy of the Variant Edition (with a cover by Andy Clarke). Please see the Previews Order Form for more information.
On sale September 30 • 40 pg, FC, $3.99 US

So what do these two comics have in common? David Brothers points out that both of them are written by Black women.

“Felicia D Henderson and Angela Robinson are both black women. Felicia Henderson, in particular, gets a whole gang of goodwill from me just because she wrote for Fresh Prince, Family Matters, and, to a lesser extent, Moesha,” Brothers wrote. “My question is– is this the first time Marvel or DC have employed two black female writers? Is it the first time they’ve employed one? Comics historians, do your duty.”

To give you a little background, in addition to the shows Brothers listed, Henderson also worked on Sister, Sister and the Soul Food television series. Currently she is co-executive producer of Fringe and teaches writing at UCLA. You can find more details on her career, along with a Q&A, here.

Robinson, meanwhile, directed the Disney movie Herbie Fully Loaded, and has written and directed episodes of The “L” Word. Here’s her Wikipedia entry.

Hangman

DC Comics has revealed details about the Archie Heroes/Red Circle one-shots they’ll release in August. We already know J. Michael Straczynski is writing them, but today they shared the art teams, as well as some new preview artwork from the books.

“Each book slides off the next, showing the interconnectedness of the world, how fate can launch a bank shot from one person to the next,” JMS said.

So here’s the rundown on the art teams:

• The Hangman: Tom Derenick and Bill Sienkiewicz, whose work you can see to the right. Editor Joey Cavalieri says it’s about “…a doctor who’s been spared the executioner’s noose (a circle of rope, get it?) only to be confronted with a choice that condemns him to roam around Earth forever, aiding everyone in his orbit.”
• Inferno: Greg Scott, who worked on Marvel’s newuniversal:1959 and BOOM!’s Galveston mini-series. It’s about an amnesiac who can set things on fire.
• The Shield: Scott McDaniel and Andy Owens. “The Shield is the spearhead of a program meant to encompass America’s borders, but quickly becomes a link in a bigger chain,” Cavalieri said.
• The Web: Roger Robinson and Hilary Barta; Robinson did the art for the Blue Beetle/Hardware team-up in DC’s Brave and the Bold title. He also did these really cool game menu screens for a canceled Flash video game.

As previously reported, the one-shots will introduce these heroes to the regular DC Universe.

The Web

All this week DC’s The Source blog has been posting images of some of the “Red Circle” characters, a.k.a. The Mighty Crusaders, a.k.a. the Archie superhero characters DC is reviving this summer. J.G. Jones has redesigned them, (with the exception of the Shield, who is wearing his original costume) and did a nice job of updating them to make’em look a bit more modern. Up top is The Web, and you can also check out Hangman and Inferno.

So who are these guys? I only vaguely recollect DC’s first attempt to revive them as their own universe, under the name Impact Comics. And I have no recollection of Archie’s run at publishing them. Siskoid, however, has a pretty good rundown of the major and not-so-major players over on his blog.

The characters will debut in the DC Universe in August.

(Last link via Kiel Phegley).