I’m getting in a look at DC’s February superhero solicits (mostly) before getting out the door for Thanksgiving.

COUNTDOWN

Dare I imagine a world without Countdown? It seems so ubiquitous now that it’s hard to imagine it has an end. Nevertheless, that end is near, or so I’ve heard; and on February 27 the numbering cracks the single-digit barrier.

In the meantime, there’s more carnage and death — including, apparently, the destruction of Darkseid’s Franklin Mint chess set. Those things are $17.95 apiece, and they only come out once a month! Just when the Ray Palmer figure arrived in the mail, too….

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I had planned to write this week’s column just on Gail Simone’s first issue of Wonder Woman, but then a couple of other debuts caught my eye.

[SPOILERS FOLLOW for Wonder Woman #14, Batman and the Outsiders #1, and the Titans East Special.]

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This past spring I started poking around in what I called “Could, Would, Does” — as in, “this is how [Concept X] ‘could’ work, ‘would’ work, or ‘does’ work.” The differences between the categories depend on the amount of reality involved. Basically, the Coulds and the Woulds address flaws, often offering patches or retcons. Batman “could” work if he wore body armor and tried to keep the cape from getting snagged. Peter Parker “would” make a skillion dollars off his web-fluid formula. “The Anatomy Lesson” and the Silver Age Multiverse are Could explanations. Watchmen, Supreme Power, and the anti-Marvels miniseries Ruins are all Would stories.

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Today’s my birthday, but don’t worry — I’ll try not to be too self-indulgent. Besides, the quirks of the calendar make this the last birthday-themed post for a few years.

Part of me always wanted to be born on October 31. Halloween has huge nerd appeal, of course, but the 31st boasts a number of noteworthy events, including Martin Luther’s 95 theses (1517), Houdini’s death (1926), and the release of “Bohemian Rhapsody” (1975). It’s also the birthday of such folks as John Keats (1795), Dan Rather (1931), John Candy (1950), and Peter Jackson (1961).

Instead, I got November 1 … the day after.  The setting of Halloween II, if you will. 

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Here’s fair warning:  this post may make even less sense than usual.

Back when we were both teenagers, my sister and I got stuck babysitting, and our charge wanted to watch Back to the Future on tape.  He had seen it already, and I had too, but my sister hadn’t (this was back in 1986 or so, when BTTF was new to VHS*).  He drove both of us nuts pointing out all the things which (he and I knew) would change due to Marty’s trip.  For most of the movie’s first act, we heard “Watch for that truck!  Look at that tree!”, etc. 

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January is often the darkest, longest month of the year. It’ll seem endless, and not the good kind of Endless either. Still, the first month of 2008 will have five Wednesdays’ worth of comics, so here are some bright spots of DC’s January solicitations.

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[Not really, but I couldn't resist.]

Serial storytelling, like any medium, has its own rules and rhythms. When I watched daytime soap operas back in college, I got used to the B-stories being on Tuesdays and Thursdays, because the big movements in the A-stories happened in Friday cliffhangers and Monday resolutions. I stopped watching “Lost” because I felt like I only needed to see the last five minutes of the latest episode. Sweeps periods affect storytelling by heightening expectations. There’s also the notion that a story can’t end before it’s supposed to end. That creepy guy who’s just been accused might well be the killer, but if your watch says there’s too much time left, it’s probably right.

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How old should Jimmy Olsen be?

The short answer might be, who cares? For Countdown‘s purposes, he’s a goofball of indeterminate youth. Even so, Countdown is meant to invest readers emotionally in DC’s shared universe, and Jimmy is a key gateway character. DC clearly wants Countdown readers to connect Jimmy’s current troubles with past wackiness. Thus, Jimmy needs a history with said wackiness; and that means he must be old enough to have said history.

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Before we get started, a disclaimer: I always feel a little uncertain writing about “Smallville” (Season 7 starts tonight, like you didn’t know). Most of this has to do with me not really watching the show. I do read the Television Without Pity recaps faithfully, and I will watch the occasional big-mythology episode, but I have not been there week in and week out. See, subconsciously I watch “Smallville” expecting to see Superman, which is kind of like watching “Gilligan’s Island” expecting a rescue.

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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….

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I have this theory — maybe you’ve heard it — that DC Comics is slowly, steadily, perhaps unconsciously working towards a Platonic ideal of its entire superhero line, in hopes that a certain combination of creative personnel and/or character interactions will allow it to produce accessible, reliably marketable comics, week in and week out. It’s a variation on the perpetual-motion machine, and therefore it’ll never happen, but it’s fun to see how close DC can get.

This week confirmed a couple of ostensible developments toward that ideal: Jim Shooter returning to Legion of Super-Heroes, and an Old New Teen Titans title featuring the six constant members of the Wolfman/Perez era.*  It’s a peculiar juxtaposition of comebacks:  the writer who made his mark as a teenager, and a set of onetime teens now challenged by adult uncertainties.

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(Out of pocket this week, so if the Direct Market burns to the ground, I won’t be able to talk about it until Sunday.)I don’t envy Brian Cronin’s task of compiling a list of 100 favorite DC and Marvel characters. When I coordinated a list of 52 DC characters last year, it was a lot of work. Still, it was fun to see who people liked. Writing up the final list also let me figure out my feelings for the characters.

In that spirit, here are my lists of favorite Marvel and DC characters. There’s 20 of each, and they’re not ranked, in order to obscure my real selections and avoid influencing Brian’s poll too much.

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First off, this is not meant as an exhaustive list. Much of the comics blogosphere has been discussing what ails DC institutionally, and how those problems could be turned around. I can’t offer too much more than what’s been said already. Instead, these are shorter-term goals which I think DC could reasonably and realistically accomplish.

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Not much leapt out at me from November’s DC solicitations. Many of the titles have already been announced, whether in previous solicits or at the summer conventions.

Anyway, November 1 is my birthday — let’s see what DC’s getting me.

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Well, it’s ten days late, but I am a slow reader. (Disclaimer: while I am an attorney licensed in Kentucky and Virginia, none of the following is intended or should be taken as legal advice. I don’t represent the Siegels, DC Comics, Warner Bros., or anyone connected with any of them.)

Now then….

A federal judge wants to know whether Superboy (as originally conceived by the late Jerry Siegel) is sufficiently original, compared to Superman, and he wants the parties competing over Superboy to tell him their positions by the end of this month.

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Sometimes the 52/One Year Later/Countdown timeline plays tricks on my ol’ noggin. Has it really been almost three years since Judd Winick and Doug Mahnke introduced the mysterious new Red Hood?  It’s been over two years since Superboy punched Jay back to life in Batman Annual #25.  (I have to say:  what a bizarre, and almost certainly unintentional, inversion of the Tim Drake/Kon-El relationship.) Since then, the “middle child” of the Robins has been keeping a relatively low profile. Fans looking for him in 52 saw him, however briefly, in World War III. He appeared in Nightwing’s first One Year Later storyline. Now he’s in Countdown, running around DC’s fringes with fellow ex-dead-Titan Donna “Pick A Codename” Troy.

Naturally, his resuscitation does raise some issues.

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I had forgotten how sharply a convention panel brings into focus the relationship between a corporate-comics publisher and its fans. Both sides imagine they have the characters’ best interests in mind, but the fans want that reassurance and the company wants to reassure them.

Accordingly, during one of the DC panels (I think it was “Groups”; everything’s blurred together now), Dan DiDio was asked how far back Final Crisis had been planned. Did it go back to Infinite Crisis, Identity Crisis, or what?

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Because it symbolizes the influence of her dark side, Mary Marvel’s black costume has been one of the more controversial aspects of the Countdown miniseries. For Gwen Dreyer of Los Angeles, though, it’s a chance to let her inner fan out.  It also got her a spot on the platform during Saturday’s “Brave New Worlds” panel.  After the panel, I talked to Ms. Dreyer about what led her to dress as Black Mary for the weekend.

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Friday was a lot less hectic than Thursday. I finished Deathly Hallows just after breakfast and decided to skip the big movie-news panels.

In fact, I spent a lot more time on the convention floor on Friday. The floor is organized with the TV/movie exhibitors on one end and the comics companies and retailers on the other. I did have some back-issue needs (got 80% of Jack Kirby’s 2001!) and wanted to get some toys, so I used the quiet time before the big crush of people to scout around and come up with some strategery.

But you don’t want to hear about that. I left the floor at about 11:15 to head upstairs for the “Grim Adventures Of Billy & Mandy”/”Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends” panel at 11:30. I’m only a casual Billy & Mandy fan, but my wife and I love Foster’s.

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“… And that was the last we heard from Tom — until now….”

Man, yesterday was a marathon. 

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