As the year lurches toward its finish, and the days get steadily colder and shorter (at least here in the Northern Hemisphere), here’s a look at how DC plans to keep you comfy….

YOU CAN’T STOP IT; YOU CAN ONLY HOPE TO CONTAIN IT

So, Amazing Spider-Man will be coming out three times a month, eh? Well, chew on this, Marvel zombies: December will see three Countdown titles every week! Uh … so there!

The main book is weekly, of course, but so is the four-part Countdown: Arena. Rounding out the schedule, December 5 adds a Ray Palmer issue, December 12 a Salvation Run, December 19 another Ray Palmer and a C. To Mystery, and December 26 a C. To Adventure and a Lord Havok. You don’t have to get ‘em all, obviously, but they’ll sure be a unified-trade-dressed presence on the shelves.

As for the stories themselves, I admit I’m eager to see Ray Palmer (based on the SFRP schedule, I’d say on Dec. 26) and the original OMAC again. However, if “one of the Rogues becomes a real drag” means cross-dressing, my eyes are rolling already. Nothing against such a venerable literary tradition, but so far I haven’t seen much to indicate that Countdown can bring the wacky.

THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING

The Tangent Universe visits the JLA in Justice League #16. I hope this is more of an old-school inter-universe crossover than an explicit Countdown tie-in. It’s not being advertised as such, which is good. However, it could be a backdoor tie-in to Dan Jurgens’ upcoming Tangent: Global Decree, which would be rather shameless. Likewise, I’m not sure how to take the Salvation Run reference in Batman and the Outsiders #3. Is it yet another crossover or tie-in, or will it be a more organic, standalone story?

Teen Titans #54 also continues its own alternate-counterpart story. Countdown is making me paranoid: I was ready to laud the book for doing a Countdown-esque story that doesn’t appear to be an actual tie-in, but then again, these days you never know.

So … does that Death of the New Gods cover mean we should call him Mister Mar-Vell now? Looks like cosmic awareness to me….

December’s Atom-themed Countdown Specials involve Jean Loring’s first (big, official) nervous breakdown. These were pretty exciting back in the day, mostly because they guest-starred (at various points) the Flash, Supergirl, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Aquaman, Captain Comet, and Wonder Woman. Writer Gerry Conway would soon start a long stint on Justice League (including the Loring/Palmer wedding issue), so he had a good grasp of how the characters worked together. You could even call it “The Search For Jean Loring.” (Maybe they did; I can’t remember.) What’s more, because each Super-Team Family issue was giant-sized (30-34 pages of story), each of these “80-Page” issues should contain 64 pages of story. Not bad for $4.99 each.

ODDS AND ENDS

December debuts include Bat Lash #1 (12/12), Sean McKeever on Birds of Prey (12/19), and Jim Shooter’s new Legion run (12/26).

While I like the new Booster Gold series a lot more than I expected to, I hope the solicitation for issue #5 isn’t indicative of the book’s direction. There’s no way DC will undo the events of The Killing Joke (after almost *gulp!* 20 years!) and I really don’t want the book turning into a superhero meditation on Why Bad Things Happen To Good People. Booster Gold should be a fun romp through DC history, not an apologia for its various tragedies.

Glad to see young Chris Kent is still around in Superman #671.

The Green Arrow/Black Canary #3 solicit seemed to give away the big secret of this week’s Wedding Special, but having read the latter, I’m still intrigued. I was halfway to getting this series based just on the Cliff Chiang art, but now I’m there, definitely.

Batman #672′s solicitation describes a breathless race against time involving a weird connection to Batman, and it all sounds very noir and thrilling — and then it finishes with “Guest-starring Bat-Mite!” I can’t decide whether that makes me love solicitations or Grant Morrison more.

The solicitation for Jonah Hex #26 — “a family that will defy the imagination and turn the stomach” — sounds like that one episode of The X Files. You know the one.

No Welcome To Tranquility on the December schedule, so I hope it’s just taking a break for the “Armageddon” event.

COLLECTIONS

Seems like there’s a lot of collections solicited this time around, and not just for the holidays either. The Archives come out of hibernation with Doom Patrol Vol. 4 (one more to go, if my math’s right). The Grant Morrison/Richard Case Doom Patrol actually does wrap up its run with its sixth volume. Including the Doom Force Special means the heartbreak of saying goodbye will go down a little easier. Hey DC, how about some Morrison/Case DP action figures?

The Tales of the New Gods paperback sounds like it’s reprinting backup stories from the more recent Jack Kirby’s Fourth World and Orion series, and not the main John Byrne or Walt Simonson tales. Therefore, it may not be to everyone’s taste. However, it also reprints the 1987 Mark Evanier/Steve Rude Mister Miracle special, and that “new” Mark Millar/Steve Ditko Darkseid story. Probably worth getting just for those.

Two JLA Classified arcs, “Kid Amazo” and “The Hypothetical Woman,” get paperbacked. “Kid Amazo” wasn’t bad, but if I had to buy one, it’d be Gail Simone and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez’s “Hypothetical.”

Speaking of the League, I’m curious to see how the huge cliffhanger which closes out the JLA Wedding Special will be incorporated into the Green Arrow/Black Canary Wedding hardcover. The GA/BC Wedding Special doesn’t really wrap it up. Also, you know, there’s the other thing about the Wedding Special. Maybe it’ll be abridged?

Finally, there’s an Infinite Crisis paperback! I won’t have to justify the hardcover just to see the finished pencils! Thanks, DC!

Also, finally a Pride Of Baghdad paperback! I’d probably still buy the hardcover if I have the chance, but again this makes the decision easier.

I’m curious to see what’s in the Showcase Presents Robin volume. Most of the stories should be from the Dick Grayson-at-college period of the early ‘70s (so not really the “Boy Wonder” anymore), and it’ll be fun to compare how writers thirty-odd years ago imagined the older Robin would behave. That reminds me — I will be getting the “College Robin” action figure, and the Terra one looks pretty decent too.

WINTER GAMES

This particular look at the DC solicits is a little skimpier than usual, but it’s not like there’s nothing exciting going on in the regular books. The Ra’s Al Ghul crossover wraps up, Wonder Woman fights Nazis, Action Comics continues the “Earth-1 Legion” storyline, the “Alpha Lantern” arc starts, etc. I’m looking forward to reading each of those books. However, that also means I can’t really comment on them now.

Instead, let’s go back to the nigh-eternal topic: I am trying to figure out the ideal Countdown experience. It is not the “newsweekly” vibe I got from 52. It is not a highlight reel either, at least not yet. Right now, my working hypothesis is that it is a monthly 80- or 102-page title, produced by Paul Dini, Keith Giffen, and a bullpen of writers and artists. In other words, it is a giant monthly done as a weekly. Having a “monthly mindset” allows it to sync up more easily with the regular monthly titles. I hope to have time to test this hypothesis before too long, but for now I’m content to think of Countdown in four- and five-issue units, tied as closely as possible to that month’s regular books.

I also get a sense that Countdown and its appendages, like the various Infinite Crisis feeder miniseries, are the superhero equivalent of playoffs or Olympic trials. I certainly get that feeling from Arena, Ray Palmer, Lord Havok, and any other miniseries designed to introduce new readers to the players of Final Crisis. They’re the network-produced biographies of the “hopefuls,” created to provide context and/or some rooting interest by the time the “finals” come around.

It’s therefore still convenient for me to think of these crossovers in terms of spectator sports. Mostly they are experienced in the now, this week, to be digested, compartmentalized, and integrated into a knowledge base which will inform next week’s books. Sports can also create the semblance of a narrative, albeit one which (for the most part) isn’t actively guided according to a discernable plan. Instead, the narrative of sports is a subjective one, based in large part on the spectator’s perspective. From my armchair (good for both coaching and psychology), we construct these crossover narratives in a similar fashion. True, it’s a lot easier to fit the individual issues into the larger story. However, as we are often told, the more issues we read, the more of the story we’ll know. The more Olympic profiles we watch, the better we can appreciate the athletes’ struggles.

I’m inclined to call this a hypertextual approach — I haven’t gotten too far into Reading Comics, unfortunately — but I think I might be misusing the term. Regardless, we super-mega-crossover readers get to pick and choose the portions of the story we want to follow. To a certain extent, that’s at odds with the notion that these books are the products of discrete creative collaborations, and if we value those collaborations, in theory we do them few favors by supporting the crossovers.

However, I actually think DC is getting better at referencing its tie-ins. This week’s Countdown To Mystery #1 did a good job recapping the recent histories of its principals, and this week’s Checkmate followed up on recent events in another DC book fairly seamlessly. The December solicitations (remember them?) even allay some of my fears that Ice would be just another cog in the Countdown machine. Here’s hoping that if she’s incorporated long-term into Green Lantern Corps, it’s done gracefully and appropriately. I appreciate that kind of subtlety in a shared universe.

So anyway, we were talking about the solicitations. What looks good to you…?

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 20th, 2007 at 12:00 pm and is filed under DC Comics, Grumpy Old Fan, Version 1.0 Blog@. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.