Grumpy Old Fan pops twice this week, first with a look at DC’s July solicitations and then on Thursday with World War III coverage.  

Onward!

WON’T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?     

Countdown’s Teen Titans cover confuses me. A Titan dies in World War III. Another dies in Amazons Attack. Now one’s dead in Countdown too? All this carnage, and still no calls for legislation. I suppose that’s what you get when your universe’s leading billionaire superhero isn’t a clear-eyed futurist, but someone with a history of facilitating teenaged vigilantism. DC starts ‘em younger, too, as the new Black Canary miniseries indicates.

WHADDAYA WANT?  IT’S NOT CALLED FORWARD MOTION COMICS

Since “Last Son” is now set to conclude in Action Comics Annual #11, might I suggest DC schedule it as a fifth-week exacta with Part 5 of “Who Is Wonder Woman?” 

BETTER RED THAN DEAD

The Action shenanigans do allow for more of Kurt Busiek’s Countdown-connected take on Jimmy Olsen, which I expect will be highly enjoyable and probably more than a little reminiscent of Astro City.  I don’t think Jimmy has an AC analogue, which would seem to work in Busiek’s favor.

BATMAN

Should be a good month for the Bat-titles, with the second parts of both Batman’s Club of Heroes story and the Zatanna story in Detective.  If All-Star Batman & Robin #6 actually comes out in July (I’m still just cautiously optimistic about #5), that would complete the trifecta. 

Batman guest-shots are common enough to be unremarkable, but given his history behind the scenes of the two books, I’m looking forward to the conclusion of “Checkout” in Outsiders #49.  I’m also extremely curious about his apparent meeting with the W/KRP Legion of Super-Heroes in The Brave and the Bold.

Looks like I may sit out the next Batman Confidential arc.  I like Denys Cowan and I like “Heroes,” but another Joker origin story just doesn’t do it for me anymore.

I shouldn’t be surprised that Marv Wolfman is going over some old New Teen Titans ground by tying Nightwing to the creation of yet another new Vigilante. The “loved the same woman” aspect is new, but the “mentor” bit is a clear echo of Dick’s early relationship to Adrian Chase.

WONDER WOMAN

Last month’s solicits announced the reprint of the Michael Fleisher Wonder Woman Encyclopedia, and July looks like a busy month for the character as well.  Amazons Attack continues, the new action figures look very nice, and both a Showcase volume (beginning the odd Bob Kanigher era) and an Archives volume (continuing the classic Marston/Peter stories) are solicited.  Even the main book looks to be back on a regular schedule.  However, not everything is running smoothly:  last week DC announced that J. Torres would write issue #s 11 and 12, and now the solicitations say it’s Will Pfeifer.  I’m inclined to believe it’s still Torres, but the last thing this book needs is more logistical difficulty.

ODDS AND ENDS

The bell tolls for Hawkgirl.

I don’t know if anything new can be wrung out of the Green Arrow origin miniseries, especially since you know it will at least foreshadow Ollie’s eventual financial collapse.  I’ll still give Andy Diggle and Jock a chance.

Zombie Communist super-soldiers make The Programme look like a Hellboy arc.  I’m not saying that’s a bad thing.

You know, it occurs to me that Sword of the Atom was that character’s Sword of Atlantis – reinventing a B-list hero by putting him in a barbarian setting. Clearly it’s remembered with some fondness, as Atom #13 shows, but I wonder whether it predicts a similar footnote-y fate for the Sword of Atlantis setting.

Paperback collections of note in these solicits include a Showcase volume for Adam Strange, and the first round of Tangent Comics. Tangent’s appeal seems to be as an inverted Astro City, taking regular DC references out of their usual contexts. Other than that, it’s another vaguely familiar superhero universe, and a mixed bag to boot. The Adam Strange stories were a highlight of DC’s 1960s sci-fi titles.  Therefore, if you must buy only one, I’d say go for the Adam Strange book.

The Flash Greatest Stories volume looks heavy on the Barry Allen stuff, with only two Jay Garrick stories and one Wally West — and the Wally story isn’t the one where he saves the flight attendant, so that hurts the book’s credibility right there.  The previous Greatest Stories book was similarly Barry-centric, but that was understandable since it came out in 1991, right around the time of the “Flash” TV series.  “Flash of Two Worlds” is reprinted, along with the Earth-Prime story “Flash — Fact or Fiction?”, I guess to get us used to the multiverse again.  This book also reprints one of my favorite Flash stories, the 80-page “Flash Spectacular” issue of DC Special Series, so there’s that.

KNICK-KNACKS

I’m not sure which is more preposterous – the $400 Superman neon sign, or yet another disturbing Supergirl statue. The new Catwoman statue wouldn’t be so bad, maybe even with her on all fours, if it didn’t display her dinners so prominently. The Iron Giant bust costs a little more than Supergirl plus Catwoman, but it’s a bit classier.

By the way, how does Doctor Fate rate a New Frontier figure, ahead of (oh, I don’t know) John Henry, or someone else who actually contributed to the plot?

Again, I do like the Wonder Woman figures. The Circe figure is probably a good value, because it looks like we’ll be stuck with her as a villain for a good long while.

NOTHING WILL EVER BE THE SAME, AGAIN

DC appears to be getting back into the Big Event business.  The Sinestro Corps arc begins in earnest; Amazons Attack supplies a cover that is elegant, simple, and enticing; more changes are promised in Flash; and the Death of Superman gets a nice hardcover.

So help me, for someone who was so burned out on big events in the not-too-distant past, I’m actually excited about the Sinestro Corps arc. I think it’s all the callbacks to the Alan Moore “Tales of the Green Lantern Corps” stories from (yes) the mid-1980s. Those described the Corps’ Ragnarok in the form of a marauding Empire of Tears powerful enough to take out the baddest Green Lanterns. Even without Moore, this may be the rare example of a Big Event whose buildup actually matches its execution. Naturally, we don’t expect the GLC to suffer the fate Moore prophesied, although if Geoff Johns is involved, lots of gore and carnage are safe bets. I don’t think it will stop at that, though.  To me, Green Lantern is Johns’ best book at the moment, and I’ve consistently enjoyed Dave Gibbons’ writing on the Corps title. The only thing that could spoil this for me would be a revelation that it’s just a prelude to DC’s version of Annihilation.

The Flash solicitation is pure cotton-candy hype promising unspecified major changes.  It all but dares retailers not to be chumps, and might as well say ”Remember Cap #25 and Buffy #1? This will be bigger than both combined.” To coin a phrase, don’t ask – just buy it! I don’t think it will involve Wally West, but at this point, who knows?  With all the other Kingdom Come references flying around, I’m thinking Bart will somehow merge with the Speed Force more completely and become that omni-Flash who wears only Jay’s helmet.

And yes, if no one minds, I will be getting the Death and Return of Superman hardcover. I have all the issues and all the paperbacks, and I’m well aware that it’s an emblem of ‘90s speculator-boom excesses. Stripped away from that, though, it’s an epic that builds on years worth of prior stories and sets a high bar for big events to come. It has a good sense of how ridiculous it must sound, but at the same time it takes itself seriously enough that I think it still holds up.

Off to rest up for World War III.  What looks good to you?

 

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