In 2004’s Green Lantern: Rebirth, Geoff Johns had some pretty difficult challenges to wrestle with. Not only did he need to bring the late and outdated Hal Jordan character back to life—no easy feat given the nature of his death and afterlife at the time—and convince readers there was any point to doing so at all, he also had to come up with a solution to the contentious Green Lantern fan issue of which of the many characters to have the name should be the Green Lantern, and what to do with the rest of ‘em.

I thought Johns’ “Everyone wins!” solution was rather elegant. He simply made all the possible contenders Green Lanterns, and DC found books for all of them to appear in, even if the main Green Lantern monthly could only star one of ‘em. It was a solution facilitated by the fact that the Green Lantern concept has so long included an army of Green Lantern characters all over outer space—if there were going to be at least 3600 Green Lanterns, surely there was room for four or five Earth men among them, right?

Johns’ current Rebirth series, in which he’s again working with artist Ethan Van Sciver, faces similar problems, although they’re magnified.

Once again Johns has to convince readers that a late and outdated character needs to be brought back to life, but Barry Allen had been dead far, far longer than Jordan, and his replacement Wally West “took” better than Jordan’s replacement Kyle Rayner.

And once again, he has to figure out what to do with the other possible contenders for the name, if Barry Allen were to come back. Unlike Green Lantern, The Flash doesn’t have a built-in army/team component to the concept though, so pluralizing The Flash won’t come quite as naturally, if that is what Johns is intending.

The Flash: Rebirth is only five-sixths over at this point, but it seems as if the final status of all the Flashes was revealed in this week’s issue (additionally, several big DC storylines, most notably Blackest Night, are set after the conclusion of Flash: Rebirth, and have thus offered pretty strong hints). Also, we got a look at what they may be wearing from now on.

So after the jump, a badly-scanned image of a two-page Van Sciver-drawn spread, and some thoughts about the characters on it…and the clothes they’re wearing. (And, um, “spoilers,” obviously).

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“The Winter Men” is a patchwork quilt of observations and red herrings that takes the spy thriller to new heights of eccentric fun. It’s one of those stories that starts out about being one thing and ends up embracing everything. Meet Kris Kalenov, the main character in “The Winter Men,” he is your guide into the underworld and beyond. It’s a new world order since the collapse of the Soviet Union and Kalenov is no longer a star player in a Soviet secret weapons program. He has become a Moscow cop, usually full of vodka and, at the start of this tale, is keeled over drunk on a sidewalk covered in snow.

I did not discover “The Winter Men” when it was a comic book but, considering it’s production delays, including its switchover from Vertigo to Wildstorm, it’s understandable that it  somehow slipped by me. Luckily, I did not have to experience any long waits between issues and got to read this new collected trade in one sitting. This is a good read anytime and anywhere but I also see it as perfect inflight reading. Aren’t spy thrillers very popular in airport bookstores? I believe this to be so. It’s because you’re out of your element and open to adventure.

One big thing about “The Winter Men” is that it gets you way out of your element. It’s like “Goodfellas,” one of the best movies about gang life, all about wiseguys and getting whacked. “The Winter Men,” is all about Russia’s new Mafiya and its biznessmen and getting under the right roof. There’s also something akin to “Watchmen” going on in the background, a uber-man that was once the pride of Mother Russia, but it’s Kalenov and his rough and shady bunch, that will have you delight over this convoluted plot as you would in, say, an Elmore Leonard novel.

“The Winter Men” has a real attitude about it too. It promises the world, heroically keeps up with its ambition and, if it falters, shrugs like a good world-weary Russian. Kalenov, our drunk Moscow cop who once was so much more, would prefer to just live quietly and make do with his less than perfect marriage. But too much has happened in the past and it can’t be ignored. “We once filled the sky with heroes…but now they’ve fallen to earth…” That is an intriguing refrain that is looped throughout the book. Within the span of the first few pages: hints of the Soviet super-hero program, a woman is shot, a child is kidnapped and Kalenov is picked up from the snow and enlisted to solve the crime of the century, although he doesn’t know that yet.

All this reminds me of any number of very good television series that, from the narrative, the characters and the production value, are clearly a cut above. And these shows usually make big promises and it’s okay if they don’t deliver on all of them since it’s the world that the characters inhabit that’s most rewarding. I think of shows like, “Life on Mars,” at least the American version, or “Life” or “Dollhouse.” In fact, it’s interesting to consider if these shows would have done better in finding an audience if they were less about process and more about results but, then again, these shows are primarily about attitude. The promises they make, real or not, can be legitimate fuel for the story’s engine.

Another connection to “Watchmen,” I think, is the group of heroes that Kalenov originally belonged to. Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, the line-up is recalled by Kalenov in a regular loop throughout the book: Drost, the soldier; Nikki, the gangster; Nina, the bodyguard; Kalenov, the poet; for a total of four, or five, if you include The Siberian. There’s even a sepia toned photograph of the gang in much happier times: Nikki has just told a joke and it has The Siberian in stitches. Along with the irony, it’s those details, the atmosphere and texture that this book thrives on.

There are a couple of scenes that come to mind. And, like everything else here, the writer and artist team of Brett Lewis and John Paul Leon tackle it with gusto. One has Kalenov and Nikki creating a disturbance in a McDonald’s so that they can unbolt from the floor a plastic table and chairs console to take home. The employee desperately tries to convince an irate Kalenov that the mayonnaise does adhere to city regulations with “well above the forty percent fat requirement.” Another good one has Nikki in the middle of a full-on turf war with other soft drink vendors. Informing the mayhem and murder are quotes from a self-help best-seller like, “Lose Control to the Maximum.”

Perhaps your reading of “The Winter Men” will find it keeping to all its promises and even holding the answer to the meaning to life. God knows, it is certainly within its reach. If you find fault, some blame, maybe a good bit of it, can go to the fact the series was cut from a promised eight issues down to six. There are parts to the story that do appear truncated. And the ending does seem to come all too quickly. However, the fact remains that this comic is really about the quirk and it’s all there for you to enjoy.

“The Winter Men” collected trade releases on November 25.

Hope you enjoyed this installment of Comics Grinder and I welcome you back for more. You can always check in too at the Comics Grinder site.

If you consider yourself any kind of loyal fan of Aquaman, Rob Kelly is the most important person to know, next to Arthur Curry. And if you know what F.O.A.M. stands for, well, you’ve come to the right place. Rob is the host and caretaker of the Aquaman Shrine, the most endearingly exhaustive website devoted to the Sea King and founding father of the Justice League of America. Rob, like myself, hasn’t had a whole lot to look forward to on a monthly basis in terms of Aquaman material since his dubious passing in his own title (one I personally gave up on post-”Sub Diego” when the character arguably got the short shrift “One Year Later” following Infinite Crisis). And while Rob and I may not totally see eye to eye on the bigger story, I was personally enthused as to the use of Aquaman and his immediate supporting cast in Blackest Night#2.

My biggest hope is that someone on the creative side of DC has some exciting plans for the woefully underused Aquaman, and one thing that could help send a clear message to their editorial is an effort spearheaded by Mr. Kelly. As you may have seen this week in DC’s solicitations for February 2010, Brave and the Bold #32 will be starring none other than Aquaman and Etrigan the Demon!

Written by J. Michael Straczynski; Art and cover by Jesus Saiz
Terrors of the deep! A horrifying lost city has risen at the bottom of the ocean, and Aquaman must call on the supernatural might of Etrigan, the Demon to stand between humanity and the dark menace that lurks inside that forgotten realm! It’s an undersea chiller like no other!
32pg. Color $2.99 US; On Sale February 17, 2010

In the weeks and months between now and the release of this issue, Rob is going to give extensive coverage to this event, starting now as he’s already published an interview with series writer J. Michael Straczynski! If you or anyone you know supports Aquaman, now’s the time to be heard!

Ready to see an awesome vision of Terry McGinnis? Check out The Mighty artist Chris Samnee’s sketch of Batman Beyond:

That image, which Samnee posted on his blog earlier today, is just totally hard core. I would pay to see an ongoing or a mini with Samnee behind the wheel — maybe this’ll convince DC?

It was Joe McCulloch who really sold me on the idea of DC’s First Wave series. In his regular preview of the week’s releases, he wrote of Batman/Doc Savage Special #1:

[W]riter/mastermind Brian Azzarello seems to have a pretty great concept brewing: a matured, shared universe of pulp magazine fixtures, upset by the arrival of the gun-toting early Batman cast as the young hotshot in town, thus neatly linking the early notion of the superhero to the costumed magazine characters that certainly provided some of the concept’s lineage.

That does sound like a pretty great idea for a series, huh? Something in the tradition of past DC epics hinging on the change of publishing eras. Think The Golden Age, The New Frontier or Kingdom Come, applied to the dawning of superhero comics as the adventure pulps began to fade. And if someone could do a kick-ass version of such a series, it would almost have to be Brian Azzarello, who has more great crime comics on his resume than just about anyone, and showed a great aptitude for metafictional fun in his Dr. 13 story.

Unfortunately, McCulloch wasn’t speaking for Azzarello or DC Comics, and this first book of the First Wave series/event isn’t anywhere near as clever. Instead it’s a 38-page, $4.99 comic book in which the two leads have a misunderstanding, get in a fight, realize their conflict is premised on a mistake, and decide to team up (Or as Graeme McMillian succintly put it in his Savage Critics review,  it’s “a standard Marvel Team-Up plot without much flair”). It even lacks what little punch that old superhero team-up formula has left, as it’s stretched out past the 22-page mark, but never actually gets around to the teaming-up. That’s something that will presumably happen at a later date, most likely sometime next spring, based on the back matter.

That back matter consists of eight pages of sketch art and character designs by Rags Morales, with a few paragraphs about a variety of characters playing a part in the First Wave to come by Azzarello. The characters are a pretty eclectic mix, so eclectic that it’s hard to find a pattern. There are a few standard DCU characters—new versions of Batman, Black Canary and the Blackhawks. There’s Will Eisner’s Spirit character, who also seems to be a distinctly new take (His Ebony White, for example, is a “brash girl.” Not even Frank Miller thought of doing that!). There’s Justice Inc, an old pulp franchise which became a DC comic briefly in the ’70s. Also from the pulps is Doc Savage, who also did time as a DC Comics-published character. And then there’s Rima, the mysterious jungle girl character from William  Henry Hudson’s 1904 romance Green Mansions, who also did time in the ’70s as a DC character, albeit in a jungle adventure mode.

Is there a logic to the character’s chosen? It’s difficult to say. It seems like they are among the less fantastic characters DC own or has the right to publish comics featuring—none are as hard to imagine existing in the real world as, say, Superman or Space Ghost—but there’s still a sense of the random about them, like they were chosen out of a hat and handed as an assignement to Azzarello, along with the instructions to “Try and make something out of all these guys, huh? We’ll let you know if we can get The Shadow or decide to throw in The Sandman or Crimson Avenger.”

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Do you want to see Superman Returns, just as Bryan Singer intended it?

If so, Latino Review has a post that might interest you — a petition for Warner Bros. to release Superman Returns: The Bryan Singer Cut. For those who think it could never be done, there is precedent: in 2006, Warner Bros. released Superman 2: The Richard Donner Cut.

The petitioners have put up a trailer, as well, which has some stills of Superman Brandon Routh in a black Kryptonian suit:

What’s most interesting about all this is the fact that, despite the talent involved, Superman Returns underperformed by a huge margin, leading DC Entertainment to waver on whether or not they even plan to take another live-action crack at the character anytime soon. Could this director’s cut have the magic that was missing in the full film? What do you think, Rama readers?

For all our New York readers out there — looking for a cool comics-related scene?

Then look no further — DC Comics, in honor of its 75th anniversary, has teamed up with Bloomingdales on 59th Street and 3rd Avenue to have a storefront display!

The windows are set to stay up through around Thanksgiving. Check it out if you get a chance!

Is it that time of the month again already? Last week, Paul O’Brien and Marc-Oliver Frisch posted their monthly analysis of Marvel Comics and DC Comics sales figures, assembled from ICv2.com’s numbers, at Publisher Weekly’s The Beat.

And then I read the results. And had some thoughts while reading those results. And I wrote them down. And now I’m going to post them on the Internet. And then you can read them and we can all talk about these figures, and what they mean.

But not here, in public like this. Let’s meet after the jump and do it there, okay?

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When it comes to the Justice Society, Smallville fans will be getting two for the price of one!

Michael Ausiello reports that the Geoff Johns-penned episodes — initially scheduled to air apart as “Society” and “Legends” — are now being packaged together as a two-hour bonanza.

The CW special — which will have Hawkman, Stargirl, Dr. Fate, and Amanda Waller — will be hitting the CW on January 29. Stay tuned to Blog@ for more Smallville news to come!

UPDATE: Ausiello has some additional Smallville spoilers up, noting that there will be an episode entirely at Comic Con. Also, starting at around 3:01 in this video, there’s a spoilerific scene of Clark and Lois that will definitely be a talker…

Power of — Smallville! Shape of — awesome hair!

Operation Save Clark Kent has more images of the Wonder Twins’ debut on Smallville, for the upcoming episode “Idol.”

Be warned — there’s also a picture of Clark and Lois in a church that, for some strange reason, made me feel they were reenacting a performance of the Laramie Project rather than a Superman-related show.

[via io9]

“It’s everything, Evey. The perfect entrance, the grand illusion. It’s everything. And I’m going to bring the house down.” ~ V

Just over twenty years ago, one of Alan Moore’s seminal works finally concluded, starting off in relative obscurity and — aided by the runaway success of Watchmen, completed three years earlier in 1986 — made Moore into a legend. It was subversive. It was brutal. It was a love letter to truth, justice, and the Anarchist way — it was violent and vicarious, volatile and visionary.

It was V. V for Vendetta.

And as his masked terrorist hero proclaimed — “Remember, remember, the 5th of November” — we’re going to Dial V for History and look back on this groundbreaking work, and its effects on Moore and the comic book industry as a whole.

Rewind to 1981. Alan Moore has yet to strike paydirt with Watchmen, which would go on to be one of the most celebrated and well-known graphic novels of all time. Instead, take a look back to the creation of a black-and-white British anthology that would go on to make history: Warrior. With editor Dez Skinn, Warrior housed many of Moore’s great works, including the subversive superhero epic Marvelman.

But the very first issue of Warrior — headlined by Axel Pressbutton, the Psychotic Cyborg — had a cloaked man with a Guy Fawkes mask along its spine. “V for Vendetta.” It was a short first chapter, but it was effective: Evey, a munitions worker so desperate she’s decided to sell her body on the streets. Unfortunately, her first solicitation happens to be a Fingerman, one of the corrupt policemen in a totalitarian England. She is only rescued from rape and worse by the intervention of V, a masked terrorist whose dispatch of the men is as brutal as it is inventive.

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DC Comics, via the Source, has announced that Milestone Comics will get their day in the sun next year with MILESTONE FOREVER, which will be written by company founder Dwayne McDuffie.

This series, which will bring together Static, Hardware, Icon, Shadow Cabinet, and Blood Syndicate together with original Milestone artists John Paul Leon, Mark Bright, Chris Cross and Denys Cowan, will be a bittersweet tale that “chronicles the literal end of a universe, and the birth of something new, with major consequences for the future of the DC Universe.”

“16 years ago this month, industry giant DC Comics and upstart Milestone Media entered into an unprecedented creative partnership, producing 14 interlocking, creator-owned titles including Hardware, Icon, and the multimedia hit that would best be known as Static Shock,” wrote McDuffie. ” The story Milestone chose to tell was an audacious one, larger than life on its surface, character and story-driven at its base, Humanist and multicultural at its heart. For over 250 issues, fans explored a superhero universe like no other.”

DC announced that they would be bringing Milestone into the DCU proper in 2008, where Icon, Hardware, and the Shadow Cabinet guest-starred with the Justice League. Since then, Static has — perhaps not surprisingly — gotten the most time in the mainstream DCU, having joined the Teen Titans.

Interested in process pieces? If you have the one of the most celebrated graphic novels of all time, what happens when you have to remaster it?

Corey Breen, senior pre-press artist at DC Comics and all-round nice guy, has written a blog post over at Master Digital Coloring detailing the whole experience of working on Absolute Watchmen. With 1980s artwork having to be reworked for an oversized format, it proved to be a tough process — here’s a highlight:

Since we no longer have the original art to older comics such as this, what we have are the pages in the film library.  Back in the day, all our books were shot using film on acetate.  Our film library has extensive books all on film, and when we need to reprint them, it is shot from that film, and made digital for us to use.  But this poses a lot of problems.  Since the film is well, film, and it is old, when you make a digital file from film, it can be dirty, have scratches, and have sections missing, depending on how well the film was originally made.  This was the case with the Watchmen ‘film’ we wound up having to use.

Breen goes on to discuss the main theme of remastering Watchmen — not noir, but moire, an unsightly and jagged form of lines that unfortunately crops up with high-res images of old half-toned art. It’s a cool process piece, especially for anyone interested in the production side of comics. Give it a read!

There’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while now, that yesterday’s issue of Blackest Night reminded me of, and intensified my curiosity about.

If you’ve been reading DC’s superhero line for long, you know that the company has been actively promoting their Blackest Night miniseries and the surrounding story event for well over a year now.

If you’ve been reading Geoff Johns’ Green Lantern work, you know that he’s been writing his way toward this story for a very long time, perhaps as long as he’s been writing Hal Jordan stories.

As the event grew closer, it became apparent that some of the high profile characters the company was killing off were being killed off precisely so that they could return as undead Black Lantern.

Certainly Martian Manhunter and Aquaman were killed for this purpose, but how far back has DC been killing their characters with the expectation that they’d come back as zombie Lanterns in Blackest Night and then, perhaps, stay back once Hal Jordan is able to harness “white light of creation”…?

But what about The Question and Ralph Dibny, killed during the course of 52? Or the Freedom Fighters, Pantha and all the Infinite Crisis casualties? Or Max Lord, Sue Dibny and Blue Beetle II?

There are two relatively minor characters, both villains, that I was kinda shocked DC actually killed off, and I’ve been wondering and worrying about ever since Blackest Night started returning the dead.

That would be Monsieur Mallah, the intelligent gorilla who wears a beret and bandoliers and speaks with a French accent, and The Brain, who is just an evil brain that lives in an evil-looking gumball machine-esque support system.

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Comics Alliance has a particularly fascinating post up, going back to the days of yore — 1990, that is.

In those glory days of million-selling comics, House of Ideas architect Stan Lee also did some video interviews with “Comic Book Greats” — and in this case, the interview is with Rob Liefeld.

What’s so fascinating for me is to see Liefeld really at the beginning of his career. For frame of reference, in this video, Rob Liefeld is 23 — which is both cool and a bit intimidating, as that’s exactly how old I am right now. Listening to him discuss how he broke into the industry — at age 19, no less — is a good story, even as breaking into the industry is tougher than ever.

If you click the Youtube link up above, there are additional parts to this interview — watching Rob draw “Cross” — one of the early names for Cable, if I recall correctly — is additionally cool. Do you think Rob knew how popular that character would become? And listening to him talk about style, about working with editors, well, it’s definitely something you should see. Check it out, let us know what you think!

So early next year, when Smallville gets their second half of Season 9 under way, there’s the little matter of an episode written by Geoff Johns and featuring key members of the Justice Society (with the one-word title of “Society”). Well, the show’s producers, in their ultimate wisdom, decided that it was too good to confine to one episode, and it’s getting a second part entitled “Legends.”

And with this two-parter, the ever-reliable Michael Ausiello of Entertainment Weekly reports that a veteran Justice LEAGUER will be in on the action: J’onn J’onzz, the Martian Manhunter! Self-professed comic book geek Phil Morris will be reprising his role as the Metropolis police detective for the first time this season.

So between Superman (Clark Kent), Green Arrow (Oliver Queen) and Det. John Jones, and Hawkman (Carter Hall), Dr. Fate (Kent Nelson) and Stargirl (Courtney Whitmore), we’re looking at the first live-action crossover between the JLA and JSA!

Hot off the heels of this weekend’s Wonder Woman Day, we at Blog@ found an interesting article from Sci Fi TV Zone, with Deborah Joy Levine. Levine, who created the Lois and Clark television show, apparently was also contacted to create a similar Wonder Woman series.

Here is a highlight from an unearthed interview from way back when:

I guess my new take is that she is a Greek history professor, a young and very bright woman having a hard time juggling her personal life with her work. In this case, of course, her real work is being an Amazon warrior. It’s, like, “I’ll save the world, come home, pop a Lean Cuisine in the oven and watch the soap I taped this afternoon.”

Obviously, the show didn’t take off — and while I dug Lois and Clark (I was seven, give me a break), part of me doesn’t feel bad about this dropped Wondy show at all. As I’ve said to my colleagues before, Wonder Woman is — repeat, is — a good enough property to tell straight, without Sex and the City trappings. And if she was going to riff on another show, wouldn’t Diana merit the West Wing meets superheroics, instead? What do you think, Rama Readers?

Despite being a proud Massachusettsian, I was busy working for the weekend and wasn’t able to hit the Boston Comic-Con this weekend, which featured comics creators ranging from Scott Wegener, Cliff Chiang, Walt Simonson, and many, many more.

But to make things a little bit better for those who weren’t able to go, Chiang has posted up some images of sketches he drew during this weekend’s Boston Con, ranging from Daredevil to Black Cat to Doctor Strange. But this one is my favorite:

Lois Lane, everybody. Talk about a beautiful image. Surprisingly, a look at the Comic Book Database shows that Chiang has never tackled the Man of Steel in an official capacity before — it’s too bad, because if this image is any indication, he’d hit that series more powerful than a locomotive.

[Hat tip to Kevin Church]

For all you cats in the Portland, OR and Flemington, NJ areas, this is a great event for you to be checking out — Wonder Woman Day!

The event — which takes place on Sunday — will go to benefiting domestic violence centers (as this month is indeed National Domestic Abuse Month). Over the past three years, the event has raised over $69,000.

In Portland, Excalibur Comics will be hosting an event from noon to 6pm, with a silent art auction — with art from Adam Hughes, Alex Ross, Gary Frank, Nicola Scott, and Jamal Igle — as well as creators including Gail Simone, the Hernandez Brothers, Paul Gulacy, and Aaron Lopresti signing books. Proceeds for this event will benefit Raphael House of Portland, Bradley Angle and Portland Women’s Crisis Line.

“For over sixty years, Wonder Woman has been an iconic female symbol of peace, strength, equality, and honesty,” said Andy Mangels, curator of the online Wonder Woman Museum. “Her story has been told in the pages of comic books and books, and on television shows, and her visuals and ideals are known worldwide. For the Wonder Woman Day events, fans and the general public have an opportunity to celebrate the character and the people who create her adventures, and they have the opportunity to be heroic themselves!”

Meanwhile, in Flemington, Comic Fusion will be hosting an event from noon to 5pm. They too will have a silent auction, with sketches from Adam Hughes, Khoi Pham, Billy Tan, and Whilce Portacio, and guests in attendence include Joe Sinnott, Chris Muller, Ken Haeser, Rob Kramer, and Buz Husson. This event will go towards Safe in Hunterdon.

I can’t imagine the term “Blackest Night” can possibly be used to describe the mood around the DC offices these days.

Earlier this week, industry website ICv2.com released their initial data and analysis for comics sales in the direct market during the month of September, and it was apparently a very good month for the market’s perennial second banana, DC Comics.

According to their numbers, the best-selling book of the month was Blackest Night #3, with four other tie-ins to the “Blackest Night” event/story placing in the top-ten—Green Lantern, Blackest Night: Batman, Green Lantern Corps and Blackest Night: Superman. (It’s also noted that there doesn’t seem to be very dramatic drop-offs between issues of the “Blackest Night” books, which is also good news for the publisher.)

Of the top ten, there’s one more DC book—Grant Morrison and Philip Tan’s Batman and Robin—with Marvel claiming the other four spots, with event title Captain America: Reborn, two “Dark Reign” branded tie-ins, and Wolverine Giant-Size Old Man Logan.

That’s a pretty extraordinary showing for DC, and obviously they’re going to want to do whatever they can to try and replicate that success in the future. I’m sure they’re asking themselves, and have been doing so for a while, just what it is about Blackest Night that seems to be hitting with their audience, and what they can do to generate more Blackest Nights in the future.

I’ve got a couple of ideas.

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