As we all know by now, if you wait long enough, everything will come back into fashion and be revived in some way or another. Take the Justice League Detroit, for example; long the butt of many jokes and the subject of much scorn amongst DC Comics fans, the mid-1980s reboot of the JLA is currently undergoing a renaissance of sorts across a number of New 52 books.

The most obvious is, of course, Justice League of America, the high-profile new series by Geoff Johns and David Finch that has added Vibe to its roster – but the Vibe solo title has fellow JLDetroit members Dale Gunn and Gypsy in it, as well (The latter potentially playing a very important role in the DCU if the tease in #2 is anything to go by). Meanwhile, Vixen – the one Detroit Leaguer who remained in the big time after the team imploded, thanks to a role in the Suicide Squad and later return to the League during the Dwayne McDuffie era – shows up in this week’s Justice League in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo, and even Steel has been mentioned as existing over in James Robinson’s Earth 2 (as “Captain Steel”).

Everything old is new again, it seems – But if the Detroit League can make a comeback, who’s next? Should we start combing the Marvel NOW titles for signs of a Team America guest shot?

Mike Molcher is the PR guy for 2000AD, and an unsung hero of the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic – Well, partially unsung, as Steve Morris interviews him for The Beat and gets a little singing in:

Building word of mouth isn’t much use when it’s for a single weekly issue because by the time people have heard about it it’s already time for the next issue, but when you have an exciting ongoing storyline then you can really help spread the word. We do weekly press previews to bloggers and journalists; getting those all-important reviews means getting copies in the right people’s hands, something that I think we’re much better at doing now than we ever have been.

It’s worth repeating that 2000AD has been on a massive upswing in quality recently, something that I wouldn’t have known about had I not seen the PR about the title over the last year or so. Those who haven’t checked it out, the issue released this Wednesday digitally is a jumping-on point with all new stories.

Just a funny bit that’s making the rounds on facebook (hat tip to Walt Simonson and Phil Jimenez), here fan page Comic Book Movies takes a look at Superman’s costume from Man of Steel and gives a suggestion of what a good sponsored cleaning could do for it.

The image originally comes from Deviant Art user “thedreaded1″.

What do you think, does the costume need a scrubbing to go from A to B?

iFanboy’s Mike Romo struggles to terms with the fact that he’s started to think that comics used to be better back in the day:

I think that’s the hardest part with my comic book-based Rooneisa. I can’t figure out if I am just not clued in enough to understand what is going on in these books, or if they just literally aren’t making sense. I like challenging comics, sure, but I have to want to turn these pages. Like, I love Superman, but it’s been a very long time since I have read a Superman story that has been personally compelling and/or made any kind of logical sense whatsoever.

It comes to us all, eventually (Although I will defend Morrison’s Action Comics from such accusations; Having re-read the entire run the other day, I think it’s a surprisingly sharp story that may not be a traditional Superman story per se, but is definitely an enjoyable and worthwhile one).

The news that DC is giving Pandora – The one-time “Mysterious Lady in the Background of All Your New 52 First Issues” – her own series (titled Trinity of Sin: Pandora, tellingly) made me think about the Big Two and new characters. You could argue that the New 52 to date has featured three “new” characters/concepts getting their own ongoing title, to my count – Pandora, Talon and Threshold‘s Jediah Caul and the whole “The Hunted” concept in general. None of these are clear cut – All spin out of existing titles or storylines, after all – but at least center around characters created in the last couple of years at the longest, and are the first series at DC with these titles/basic ideas/casts.

Over at Marvel, there’s far less of that kind of thing going on with Marvel NOW. In fact, outside of Nova, there aren’t any new characters getting their own series* – and even then, Nova is as “new” as Simon Baz as Green Lantern – and the only arguably new concepts on offer for team books are Fearless Defenders and Uncanny Avengers, with that last one feeling more than a little shaky (It is, after all, a franchise team-up book along traditional Avengers “A bunch of good guys get together to save the day” lines at heart). Marvel, I’d suggest, is more at a stage of consolidating and strengthening its core brands than innovating and creating anything new just now (And has been for the last decade or so).

I’m not sure how I feel about this; comics, to me, should be filled with creativity and invention and new ideas, but there’s no denying that Marvel is very good at what it does, and the books are certainly entertaining – Young Avengers, Daredevil and Hawkeye are three of the best superhero comics available right now, as far as I’m concerned. DC, meanwhile, has seemed far less steady on its feet for some time now, and outside of its core titles, almost everything there has an air of… if not mortality, at least impermanence. Would it be better off pulling a Marvel and concentrating on what it knows works?

(* Yes, I know that Sif and Red She-Hulk have never had solo series before, but those characters have been around for years. Decades, in Sif’s case.)

Definitely not relating to any comic released today, at all, MTVGeek’s Valerie Gallaher finds herself asking Killing Kids in Comic Books: Acceptable or Tasteless?:

After observing the comics community for the last decade, it has been increasingly clear to me that as the level of violence — against children and otherwise — gets “amped up” in comics, many dedicated fans become deeply defensive about anyone criticizing it. Other fans do get upset over the violence in general, and wonder if comics “are for kids anymore” (answer: probably still in the true mainstream, but mostly not in superhero-land). It is a complicated issue, and I am not saying one side is right, or one side is wrong.

It’s an important, if somewhat uncomfortable, question, and one that raised other, similarly uncomfortable, questions (If killing kids isn’t the stuff of entertainment, then what is the right age where such deaths become acceptable?). It reminds me of my surprising-to-me squeamishness over the Punisher post-Newtown, something that I’m still unsure about: Am I being too sensitive to pop culture, or is there actually a problem with that character’s portrayal in the current social climate?

Good news from ComicsPRO, it seems:

At the ComicsPRO meeting this past weekend, Marvel SVP David Gabriel told retailers that we would be seeing the return of the What If? title to Marvel Comics.

I’m a big fan of the What If? series (and general concept; it’s not as if it’s something unique to Marvel, after all), and would love to see it return as an ongoing series for the publisher – One of the problems that I’ve had with its previous incarnation as a semi-annual mini-series format is that a lot of the really fun stories came from the less-obvious story suggestions, and not the “What If This Big Event Had Gone Slightly Differently?” ones. Bring it back as an ongoing anthology and let all manner of creators go wild with the concept. If nothing else, we’ll likely get an awesome trade out of the experience…

iFanboy’s Jim Mroczkowski considers the wonders and dangers of the digital comics store:

If you browse just some of what’s available out there now, poring through the infinite back issue bin of the Internet, it will only be a matter of minutes before you find yourself at the bottom of the world’s most expensive rabbit hole. That run of JLA by Chris Claremont and John Byrne is out there. Defenders issues from 1975 are out there. You could read the original run of New Mutants this afternoon and wash it down with Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, the Ultimate book that time forgot. I opened up comiXology and started poking around for examples half an hour ago, and now I owe them $11,000.

Speaking as someone who’s gone from “Oh, I remember those Green Lanterns by Len Wein and Dave Gibbons from when I was a kid!” to “Why did I just buy all of them, oh God” in seconds, I know exactly where Jim is coming from. There are certain series I very purposefully don’t even look up on ComiXology, purely because I know it would bankrupt me.

Padraig O Mealoid continues his History of Marvelman series, with an episode about the somewhat surreal genesis of the character:

Mick Anglo says that he went back to Gower Street and thought about it, and decided that what they needed to do was create a British copy of Captain Marvel to step into his shoes, and to carry on instead of him. The character Anglo suggested to take Captain Marvel’s place was virtually a carbon copy of him. The name Billy Batson was turned into Mickey Moran, with Moran becoming a young copy boy for the Daily Bugle newspaper, as opposed to Batson’s position as a reporter for Radio Whiz; the costume was changed from red to blue, and the cloak was done away with; the dark hair became blonde; the magic word SHAZAM!, given to Batson by the wizard Shazam, was replaced by the word KIMOTA! – a slightly altered back-spelling of the word ATOMIC – given to Moran by Astro-physicist Guntag Barghelt. All that was needed was a name.

Even more amusing is the way in which the character was introduced to readers, but I’ll leave that one for the article itself to tell you. Go, read.

Between Justice League of America and Justice League of America’s Vibe, today may seem like the day where Geoff Johns single-handledly – Well, Andrew Kreisberg does co-write Vibe, I guess – tries to wrangle New 52 continuity into some kind of order. I won’t spoil either book for those who haven’t read them yet (Which, considering the time on the West Coast, probably means “a lot of people”), but there are references to hanging plot threads from the first arc of Justice League – which connects to Earth 2, for those who’ve been paying attention - in Vibe, and the Justice League International Annual in Justice League of America, that are particularly welcome for those who’ve slowly been becoming convinced that multiple someones had quietly forgotten about things that seemed like quite a big deal at the time. Between this and the recent mention in the solicitations of Trinity War preludes (Again, down to Geoff Johns), it’s almost as if DC is getting its equilibrium back, at least in terms of continuity and cohesive universe-building.

The question is, perhaps, is this too little too late? We’re almost a year out from the first tease/announcement of Trinity War, and almost two years from Pandora’s first appearance. Unlike Marvel, which rushes through events far faster – unless they’re Age of Ultron, admittedly – the slow drip of DC’s uber-story, whatever that may be, feels glacial, almost unbelievably scattered and worryingly familiar (Brother I again? The trinity fighting again?), all of which could be reasons for readers to jump ship. Now that we’ve had almost two years of New 52 with its stuttering momentum and quick deaths for all manner of titles, creative runs and ideas, does the concept of One Grand Plan at the publisher still have any appeal left – or, for that matter, any real credibility?

And so, not only do we now know the new Green Lantern creative teams, we also know that there’ll be a fifth book joining the family as Keith Giffen and Scott Kolins’ Larfreeze strip graduates from Threshold into its own book – which raises the question, will Threshold get a new second strip, or become a $2.99, 20-page title instead?

That Larfreeze is graduating from back-up to solo title is important, in an odd way; I think it’s the first time that a back-up has done that since the launch of the New 52, and points to a new way for the publisher to try out new series/new characters without committing to an ongoing series off the bat. I’ve been surprised for awhile that we don’t see more of this kind of thing from DC; the second strip format is a great proof of concept for a series, and also potentially a more interesting use of the format than what has been done with it so far, especially in the anthology titles like GI Combat, Sword of Sorcery and Men of War.

Then again, I’m the guy who’s been quietly wishing that Green Lantern Corps would go to $3.99/two strips for some time, so we could get a return of the old Tales of The Green Lantern Corps back-up shorts, so what do I know…?

The State of The Industry is… surprisingly strong:

All together, we’d be looking at around $715 million for all North American comics and graphic novels: up about $35 million from 2011. And that growth is all in the comics shop market, which offset losses in the mass market. In 2011, the comics shop market was about 60% of the overall market for print sales; in 2012, it was closer to two thirds… For what I think may be the first time in years, the Direct Market’s graphic novel dollar orders exceeded the value of the Bookscan orders (but not the entire mass market). I attribute it at least in part to the huge traffic in Walking Dead trades: comics shops ordered at least 74,000 copies of the first volume in 2012, versus 38,000 copies through Bookscan’s retailers. That’s a big difference.

That’s John Jackson Miller, continuing to crunch numbers and make sense of the comic book industry in a way that few others manage. A lot of people are pointing to this data and calling it a return to 1990s levels of success, but Miller offers a strong counter-argument to that way of thinking:

The most frequently cited figure for sales in 1993, the market’s all-time peak, is $850 million. That amounts to an inflation-adjusted $1.35 million, nearly double the size of the current market. This should not surprise us, given the fact there were 12 distributors and nearly four times as many comics shops as exist today. But even the $1.35 billion is an imperfect analog, though, because comics have increased in price since the mid-1990s faster than the CPI rate. The average comic book retailers ordered in January 1995 cost $2.20; now it’s $3.58. That’s 20 cents higher than what the CPI calculator says it should be. So 1993′s comics-inflation-adjusted figure could be even higher!

The best way to take inflation completely out of the picture is to forget dollars and focus on units. We just don’t tend to do that when trade paperbacks and hardcovers are in the mix, because their pricing varies so much. We know that in 2012 we’re selling way fewer comics than in the early 1990s, and way more graphic novels (and, obviously, digital versions); the net being that we’re still quite a lot behind the early 1990s in adjusted dollars.

Even so: $715 million is better than the industry has been for a long time. Here’s hoping the upwards trend continues.

Having looked at the sales velocity of Marvel’s Marvel NOW! books, Todd Allen turns his attention to how well DC’s New 52 books are performing:

Looking past those two potential blockbusters, the failure of recent replacement books looms large. DC has shown the tendency to start cancelling titles as they fall under 18K in the Direct Market sales estimates. In February, they announced six cancellations in that sales area, including two titles from their previous wave of replacement titles. A third title from that replacement wave, Phantom Stranger, hovers just above the outer edges of the cancellation zone with 19.9K in estimated sales for January. It’s one thing to have titles fail after a year or two, but many of the replacement titles are crashing swiftly and end up being the ones replaced. There are “traditional” titles DC isn’t publishing right now that might fare better, like a solo title for Robin and a Superman/Batman team-up comic, but the Batman sub-line is pretty crowded as it is.

As of now, seventeen months into the New 52, only 33 titles from the original 52 launch books have not been announced as cancelled – And, as Allen notes, many of the replacement books have also come and gone. DC needs to work out how to make their bottom end work.

After wondering recently whether Age of Ultron was going to become Marvel’s version of Flashpoint, this month’s solicits seem to suggest… Well, yes:

AGE OF ULTRON #7 (of 10)
BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS (W)
BRANDON PETERSON & CARLOS PACHECO (A/C)
Cover by BRANDON PETERSON
Variant cover by LEINIL YU
Ultron Variant by ROCK-HE KIM
In an attempt to defeat Ultron two Marvel Heroes take it upon themselves to create an all-new Marvel Universe. But is the one they have created better or worse than the one they left behind? The event of the year just got INSANE!!
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99

AGE OF ULTRON #8 (OF 10)
BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS (W)
BRANDON PETERSON & CARLOS PACHECO (A/C)
Cover by BRANDON PETERSON
Variant cover by 7TH ORANGE
Ultron Variant by ROCK-HE KIM
With the Marvel Universe turned inside out, who will take responsibility for breaking the world? And is there any way to put it back? Wait until you see who is in charge of the new world order and how they got there…! A reality-spanning choice is made this issue that will affect the Marvel Universe for years and years to come.
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99

History is being re-written, it seems, and as always when these things happen, it’s unlikely that everything will be exactly the same as it was when things return to “normal” afterwards. As I said before, the idea that we’re sailing towards a New 52-esque total reboot is unlikely at best, considering the recent launch of new titles with seeming long-term directions with Marvel NOW! (Although, if that turns out to be a feint, what a wonderful feint it would be), so really this is more Age of Apocalypse or House of M than Flashpoint in the grand scheme of things… which raises the question, what does happen at the end of this to make it so much different from those previous Marvel events?

I admit, I’m at a loss by this point, because the solicits make it seem so similar. Presuming that there really will be some kind of jaw-dropping finale, I’m finding myself somewhat looking forward to Age of Ultron just to see how the series manages to move between the genericism (and spoileriness) of its solicits and the promise of its pre-release interviews and hype. Roll on, Ultron invasion…!

Todd Allen looks at the sales for the Marvel NOW! books so far from Marvel:

We’re still not seeing a Batman - level breakout hit or Justice League, for that matter.  Avengers looks to be retaining a some readers, but seems like it might be joining All-New X-Men in the 70K-80K range, longer term.  You can see the 50-60K sales band starting to form.

The best-selling non-relaunched title is Wolverine & The X-Men at 44.7K/43.9K.  Hawkeye is next at 37K.  Notice a big difference between the existing lineup and the relaunch? Wolverine & The X-Men was one of Marvel’s better sellers before the relaunch.  I don’t know if that’s normal attrition or some people switched their money to new #1s.  It’s something to keep an eye on.

That last point has been something I’ve noticed; has the launch of the Marvel NOW! books accidentally pushed previously best-selling titles to a second tier in terms of sales and reader interest? On the one hand, seeing Wolverine & The X-Men suddenly become a mid-list book for the publisher makes sense, considering it’s far past its launch and not included in the grand creative reshuffle, but on the other, it’s strange to see it apparently lose… “importance,” I guess, for want of a better word, within the line just because of that.

Steve Lieber argues for a return to apprenticeships in comics:

Suppose Sally is apprenticing with Zack, a working professional cartoonist with a couple of decades in the business. Twice a week, she works at a spare table in Zack’s studio. Zack takes a look at the offer, spotting red flags that tell him this isn’t a client that understands how comics are made. He suggests things to ask the client and proposes reasonable alternatives to any unreasonable requests the client is making. And after the client and Sally come to an agreement, Sally has the benefit of his experience in solving some of the tough storytelling problems in the script.

What’s in it for the Zack? Why should an established pro help train his eventual competition?

Apprenticeship is a trade. Sally assists with research, backgrounds, erasing pages, trimming boards, file prep, flatting, social media, and wrapping packages for eBay buyers. There’s always stuff Zack doesn’t have time to do. He offers guidance and answers Sally’s questions about art, craft, and professional practices.

Firstly, man, Zack is offloading a bunch of stuff onto Sally’s plate. Secondly, I can’t say “Yes, this” loudly enough to this idea; the idea of comic pros teaching comic pros to be comic pros is the kind of thing that pops up all throughout comics history, and then weirdly seems to disappear for the most part at some point. I’d love to see more of it happening.

Does thinking about comics in literary terms mean that we’re not giving enough credit to the artists? Eddie Campbell considers the argument:

A long time ago, when comics started getting complicated and written continuity was needed, a job opened up for people who could write the stuff. I’m talking as long ago as 1920 and The Gumps, when cartoonist Sydney Smith started using the story suggestions of a traveling jewelry salesman named Sol Hess. Writing comics is a special skill quite different from writing prose. But before you take it all apart, ask: can you take the pictures out of a sports cartoon, or reduce a clowns’ circus performance to its plot? Can everything about a musical performance be conveyed in a stave of notes, or can everything about a film be known from its shooting script? Sometimes, while everybody else was watching the clock, the clown, the actor, the singer, the cartoonist, the writer even, because writers never have as much freedom as we think they have, have slipped their own story in between the tick and the tock.

The 20th Century Danny Boy blog shares a little piece of comic history with the publication of Larry Marder’s testimony at the Neil Gaiman/Todd McFarlane trial over the rights to Angela and Miracleman:

Q: Did you ever speak with him in person since then?

A: Yes.

Q: When was that?

A: San Diego comic book convention, 1999.

Q: And just tell me as best you can recall about that conversation?

A: I was — I ran into Neil on the escalator in the mezzanine area on the way to a panel and I said hello to Neil and we stopped and we talked.

Q: Did you talk about issues relating to Mr. McFarlane?

A: Yes.

Q: Tell me as best you can recall the conversation that you had?

A: I was saying hello to Neil and he was very angry.

Q: And -

A: And he said that — he had a large group of people with him, none of whom I knew, and they sort of formed a circle around us.

Q: Who is “us”?

A: Neil and I.  And Neil was saying that this needs to be solved.

Q: Did he say what “this” was?

A: No.

Q: Did you know what this was?

A: I could figure it out, yes.

Robert Kirkman on Invincible #100′s death – and what it has to do with superhero comics as a whole. There are spoilers, so it’s under the jump: (more…)

If Rich Johnston is to be believed, it’s not just DC that’s looking to pull back on its line:

Dark Avengers is canceled as of May.

Looks like Captain Marvel will be gone, unless an upcoming Avengers Assemble mini-crossover can lift sales enough.

Winter Soldier is also for the chop by the summer.

None of these are especially surprising, considering the sales figures – and Winter Soldier‘s already having had a last-minute reprieve from the chopping block – but they are frustrating, if true. Here’s hoping for another change of heart/sales bump for the affected titles (Captain Marvel #9, in particular, should be picked up if you were interested in the book when it launched but unconvinced by the early issues. Perhaps it’s just me, but Felipe Andrade’s art is a far stronger fit for the book’s tone than Dexter Soy…).