Late July, and thoughts turn to roving bands of the costumed damned.

Yeah, it’s another cheap shot at Comic-Con, but it’s still funny how the show syncs up with the October solicitations. There’s not that much in this set of solicits, since the big news is waiting to be broken out west. Still, we’ll soldier on here.

FINAL CRISIS

If I wrote the DC solicitations, they’d go something like this:

Grant Morrison! Black Lightning! The Tattooed Man! Which of these names will, by itself, sell Final Crisis: Submit?

Although it too might seem to be a random combination of characters and creators, the Resist special does sound pretty appealing. I really, really liked Checkmate under Greg Rucka and Eric Trautmann; I always like Ryan Sook’s work; and here they’re continuing (from that Four Horsemen miniseries) the saga of Snapper Carr, Secret Agent. Would that Rucka et al. could have stayed on Checkmate long enough to integrate Snapper into that title.

It’s not part of these solicits — and that’s the point — but is Superman Beyond a two-parter or a one-shot? Issue #2, if there is one, hasn’t been solicited for the past couple of months. The DC website is no help either. The description of #1 doesn’t talk about a second issue, but the header does.

Not sure why Rage of the Red Lanterns is a Final Crisis tie-in, since it’s advertised as part of next year’s “Blackest Night,” and leads into this month’s issue of Green Lantern.

TITANS

Really not that excited about Terror Titans. It’s a nice idea, and their introductory arc started well, but it eventually fizzled out. I’m not so attached either to Ravager or any of the creative team that I’ll follow ‘em into a spinoff.

Regarding the Cyborg miniseries: I don’t see how “The Venture Bros.” lets DC get away with characters called “Phantom Limbs.” Is a comics publisher really that far above [adult swim] on the Time-Warner totem pole?

Titans #6: “[A]n old member resurfaces and brings along an unexpected threat that no one could’ve seen coming!” Oh, DC. It’s redundant — why am I so sure it’s also false?

SUPERMAN

I have no idea if Superman And Batman Vs. Vampires And Werewolves will be any good. (With Tom Mandrake drawing, it should at least be OK.) I just like the straightforwardness of the title. I will say that those must be some kinda vampires and werewolves to warrant six issues. (Although, that’s also the same length as the alternate-history invasion of Japan….)

The Big Event of 2009 is “New Krypton,” which is apparently the post-Crisis version of the restoration of Kandor. It should surprise few of you that the Earth-1 Superman restored Kandor to normal size on the planet Rokyn in Superman #338 (August 1979). That story didn’t have the hardcover-friendly title of “New Krypton,” though. Instead, it was …

(… wait for it…)

…“Let My People Grow!”

Bless you, Len Wein.

(In other hey-that’s-familiar news, Birds Of Prey has been setting up a Barbara Vs. The Joker story. This would be a little easier to take had Chuck Dixon and Butch Guice not already done something similar ‘way back in issue #16. I guess a hundred-issue gap is big enough.)

Am I right in thinking that, prior to October’s Jimmy Olsen Special, “Codename: Assassin” was a one-and-done character from First Issue Special #11, last heard from as a throwaway reference in James Robinson’s Starman? Also, since Jimmy takes a road trip to the Midwest, how many people will scour this Robinson-written issue for clues about the status of Jack Knight? Otherwise, I sure didn’t think a Jimmy Olsen book would warrant a variant cover….

And speaking of First Issue Special, Codename: Assassin is the third concept from that series to make it into a James Robinson-written comic book. Robinson has already used Jack Kirby’s Atlas (issue #1) and Mikaal “Starman” Tomas (issue #12). It makes me wonder how long we’ll have to wait until the big First Issue Special paperback collects all thirteen issues.

I remain curious about the umpteenth Supergirl course correction, mostly because it involves the art team of Jamal Igle and Keith Champagne. However, I also think it’s worth it for DC to connect the Girl of Steel a little more strongly to the other Superman titles. Still don’t have a feel for what kind of writer Sterling Gates will be, but if he’s getting input from Geoff Johns and James Robinson, at least he’ll be tying into decent storylines.

By the way, since there’ll be a Superman-family title for each of October’s five weeks, here’s the month’s reading order: Supergirl #34, Action #870, the Jimmy Olsen Special, the New Krypton Special, and Superman #681. Good thing the triangle numbers are coming back.

BATMAN

Batman returns (sorry) after skipping September, just in time for the end of “Batman R.I.P.” In contrast to the Titans solicit, when this one says “an ending you’ll never see coming,” I kinda believe it. Plus, 8 extra pages’ worth of Morrisonian goodness.

Killer Croc, the Penguin, Mister Freeze, Poison Ivy, Two-Face and the Joker all in Nightwing #149? I call dream-sequence shenanigans. However, it would be a good warmup if Dick returns to the Batsuit for a while; and issue #150 would be a nice round number upon which to end, or at least suspend, a series.

LIVING ON BORROWED TIME

I thought Batman and the Outsiders #12 and Simon Dark #13 might have been the last issues of each, but there are no “FINAL ISSUE” tags on their solicits. I still get the feeling that Simon Dark doesn’t have long. In fact, there are only two books cancelled in all of these solicits: Checkmate and The Batman Strikes. Still, the DCU line will be down to 31 ongoing titles (it started the year at 36), and that includes All Star Batman.

Also, maybe I’m just pessimistic, but after he closed out The Atom, I don’t have high hopes for Rick Remender on Booster Gold.

More pessimism: there’s nothing about the West twins in the solicit for Flash #245, and they’re not on the cover either.

THEY’RE GONNA PUT ME IN THE MOVIES

WildStorm is expanding its Hollywood stable beyond the current Chuck and Fringe miniseries, what with Joel Silver lending his prestige to the Marc Andreyko-written The Ferryman. Honestly, Andreyko would have been enough for me. Joel Silver’s name makes me a little uneasy.

POTPOURRI

Diversity watch: the El Diablo miniseries is joined by a 5-issue Vixen mini. The Vixen solicitation throws in some stuff about the Justice League and Intergang, but still. I wasn’t expecting to see the character in her own miniseries, and it’s got me intrigued.

Hey, there’s Doctor Fate on the cover of Reign In Hell #4! I had thought DC would let the character rest a little longer after Steve Gerber’s death. It does make sense for him to be in this miniseries, though.

The Brave and the Bold #18’s team of Supergirl and Raven seems to be the first time a particular pairing has appeared on consecutive covers. Since I am obsessed with format, this book is now dead to me. Dead, I say!

A 4-part story arc to open Mike Kunkel’s Shazam! series? Yes, because we need to train the youngsters early to haunt a comics shop every month. Don’t be suckers, kids — wait for the digest!

So, Ice proposes to Guy Gardner in Green Lantern Corps #29. Good thing she waited 20 years — that bachelor party’s bound to be a lot more sedate nowadays….

After a few issues involving cruise ships, Egypt, Hollywood, etc., I’m getting tired of these “The Spirit is going to Delaware!” stories. (In the solicited #22 he goes to a dude ranch.) At least this week’s issue (#19) kept him fairly close to home.

Actually, while the Spirit Archives have been on my “buy with lottery winnings” list for a long time, this last volume might get a serious look. I’m curious to see what it reprints, and I’m thinking the material is hard to find.

Top Ten returns in “Season Two,” almost three years after the end of the Beyond The Farthest Precinct miniseries. Now I have time to catch up.

I wonder — if the new Vertigo version of the Unknown Soldier is related to the original DC version, how come it’s not a DC title? Is there an in-story reason, or is it a sales-expectations thing? Does this mean no Unknown Soldier in The Brave and the Bold?

Finally, I didn’t need to know that the new Catwoman bust had a “real working zipper.” Thanks, DC.

NUMBERS WATCH

As of the October solicitations, the amount of DCU miniseries has passed 2007’s number (193 issues in 2008, as opposed to 191 for all of last year) and is on pace to reach some 230 by the end of the year. With 329 issues’ worth of ongoing series solicited through October, and accounting for one-shots and other specials, that’s 35% of the total DCU output devoted to miniseries, and 60% to ongoing series.

I keep tracking these numbers partly because the ongoing series are easier to keep up with month-to-month. If I drop one ongoing title, I can tell more quickly whether I’ll be able to afford a new one. The variables associated with miniseries make them harder to plug into a budget.

However, the other part of my new-found fascination with the “miniseries proportion” is the notion that the more miniseries the DCU line produces, the more fluid it becomes. There’s good and bad in that fluidity — for example, it encourages DC to tell only the stories which are worth telling, and not simply the ones which will fit into that month’s allocation of 22 pages. Even so, DC itself can’t be entirely happy whenever its ongoing-series lineup shrinks, because every ongoing represents a certain amount of readers just coasting along on inertia. DC doesn’t care why we read a particular book, just that we keep buying it. In this respect, the year-long weekly series are an excellent compromise: they have an end point, but it’s far enough away that they represent significant commitments from readers.

Regardless, weekly series and Big Events aren’t enough to account for the continued expansion of DCU miniseries over the past six years. While I’m always glad to see the publisher trying new things (in whatever format), too many miniseries and readers might not get attached to enough ongoing series to sustain the line. Obviously that’s an extreme scenario, and I don’t think the miniseries numbers are getting too far out of proportion. Still, it’s something I’ll be watching, and probably exploring in more depth.

Anyway, that’s what caught my eye this month. What looks good to you?

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