Albert may have gone through 10 Things Learned from DC’s July Solicits on the main site, but something that’s worth noting: That’s the second month in a row where there are less than 52 books in the New 52 line. Last month could have been a blip – like February – before new launches brought the line back up to 52 series, but two months in a row…? Is it possible that DC has decided to drop the “rule of 52″ after nearly two years – and if so, could we be looking at a far smaller line at some point in the future?

Last week’s news that Vertigo will be publishing both Tom Strong and Astro City is another reminder that things are very different for the DC imprint in its post-Karen Berger era. Both books are good, sure, but both are also all-ages superhero titles – far outside the previous Vertigo remits of horror/supernatural genre work and Suggested for Mature Readers titles. Of course, those two things are now being published under the DC Comics imprint – Swamp Thing, Constantine and Animal Man for the former, and Before Watchmen for the latter.

That both Tom Strong and Astro City are former Wildstorm titles is doubtlessly worth noting – Vertigo now falls under the control of Hank Kanalz, SVP of Integrated Publishing at DC Entertainment and former Wildstorm GM. But what I find myself wondering is whether or not we’re seeing Vertigo slowly shift to an imprint for DC’s creator-owned or creator-controlled works (What is the status of the ABC books, anyway?).

The relative failures of books like Lot 13 and Insurgent have to have clearly demonstrated to DCE and DC Comics that pushing out non-DCU books under the DC Comics brand is likely to result in a lack of audience awareness and media coverage – Really, who was talking about Insurgent before it got cancelled early? – and, meanwhile, there was Vertigo lying around, its line shrinking and doing nothing much apart from waiting for Sandman Zero and some new Fables titles. What could go wrong?

I could be wrong, of course; these may be the only two off-topic additions to Vertigo that we’ll see, and other creator-owned/controlled books from what would’ve been Wildstorm will appear in future without the Vertigo banner. But somehow, I suspect that we’re watching the Vertigo imprint and brand be rebuilt as something else right in front of our eyes…

After a year’s worth of speculation, now the first details of DC Comics’ Trinity War are beginning to emerge and the most immediate thing that springs to mind is… that wasn’t what I expected. It’s not just that the trinity in question are three Justice League teams as opposed to the more traditional DCU trinity (Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman) or the Trinity of Sin of Pandora, the Question and the Phantom Stranger, but that the whole thing turns out to be a six issue crossover between the three Justice League books instead of a multi-issue, multi-title massive event.

In many ways, it’s a smart move; it’s counter-intuitive, which is almost always a good idea in terms of getting people to talk about the storyline. It also means that DC’s first big event book since the New 52 won’t be competing against either Infinity or Age of Ultron aftermath from Marvel, and leaves the all-important post-New 52 event book premiere slot open to keep that speculation going (Who doesn’t think that Trinity War will lead into something bigger, especially now that Trinity of Sin has been launched as a thing for DC?).

However… There’s a certain sense of anti-climax to this, at the same time. Not only isn’t Trinity War a massive event, it turns out to be a crossover that’s actually smaller in scale than other, earlier New 52 line-wide crossovers. Even outside of the Batman events, there have been a couple of Green Lantern events that were bigger, and the recent “Hel on Earth” crossover in the Superman titles also spanned more than six issues. Didn’t Trinity War just… feel like it was going to be a bigger deal than this?

As to the story itself… Well, we’ll have to wait another few months before we know how that’s going to play out. But at least the whole thing will be over within a couple of months, no matter how good or bad it turns out to be.

Marc Toberoff is not the monster that Warner Bros. and DC Comics have claimed him to be.

That seems to be the message from Judge Otis Wright, who has ruled against DC and its parent company in their attempts to go after the attorney for both the Siegel and Shuster families for his behavior regarding the Superman rights lawsuits. Wright released Toberoff from paying DC/Warners $500,000 in legal fees, writing in his official ruling that “Punishing Toberoff and [Toberoff's movie production company] Pacific Pictures with a $500,000 attorneys’-fees award would send a clear message to copyright defendants that litigating a claim with good-faith supported defenses is wrong. That is undoubtedly not a message this Court wants to send to Toberoff or others.”

At the same time, Wright also dismissed two separate claims of interference in the legal battles between the heirs of the Superman creators and DC/Warners. This is the second such interference dismissal for interference claims filed by DC/Warners in the last month; on March 8, Wright wrote that, while “the Court is admittedly deeply troubled by Toberoff’s repeated failure to update his privilege logs,” he didn’t believe that there was a conscious effort to mislead the Court as “as the letters at issue here actually serve more to discredit DC’s cries of intentional interference than they do to bolster them.”

These rulings don’t change the earlier decisions that left DC and Warners in control of the rights to the Superman character, nor does it end DC/Warners’ attempts to go after Toberoff for perceived abuse of the legal system; the companies still have an outstanding claim against him that Wright didn’t rule on with this latest response from the court. Never-ending battle indeed…

Today’s Stormwatch issue from DC is an eye-opener in many ways, not least of which its seeming refusal to engage in anything that’s happened before in the title. Reading it brought to mind the fact that a lot of DC books are starting over right now with what are essentially reboots for the series, whether in small ways – Morrison and Snyder leaving Action and Swamp Thing, say – or big (Stormwatch, Jeff Lemire’s literal “blowing everything up” revision for Green Arrow). We’re only eighteen months into the New 52, and we’ve already reached the point where things are being revised, ignored or outright contradicted instead of being worked with and massaged, and (unless there’s more to what happens in Stormwatch than meets the eye), we’re less than two years into the New 52 and we’re already reaching the point of massive, intentional, continuity problems between books in the name of rebooting and revising.

I find myself somewhat torn about this. On the one hand, I guess we should be applauding DC being willing to make massive changes to their books if it’s deemed necessary, but on the other… Well, on the other, there’s the scale of the changes and whether or not they actually are necessary, really. Green Arrow definitely has more immediacy and intensity since Lemire came on board, sure, but Stormwatch‘s changes hardly seem like the kind of thing that are likely to rocket the title back up the charts, to be blunt, leaving #19 to seem like an issue that needlessly trashing the goodwill of those who had stayed with the book until now in favor of something that feels to me even more dated and unnecessary (Two words: “Jenny Soul.” Yes, this is definitely a Jim Starlin comic).

As becomes more clear by the week, DC is at a crossroads creatively, and seeming less and less like there’s a real plan behind the scenes when it comes to the New 52 as a coherent line. This isn’t to say that it’s definitively a disaster, but it is to say that it’s becoming more and more obvious that something needs to happen over there to reassure the faithful and show the rest of us that things aren’t, in fact, trending towards oblivion.

DC’s 2013 WonderCon slate starts Friday afternoon in Anaheim with an “All Access” panel, featuring Ann Nocenti, Scott Snyder, James Robinson, Matt Kindt and DC digital’s Jim Chadwick.

Things start with Scott Snyder, talking about his upcoming “Zero Year” arc on Batman. “When the New 52 started, we tried to keep a lot of Batman’s history intact,” the writer says. “A lot of it is intact, but we realized a lot of the things from Year One couldn’t stand,” due to issues like Selina Kyle’s origin being different.

Synder says “Zero Year” is “nothing like Year One, since trying to do a better version of that story would be impossible. Snyder says he thinks it’s the best thing the current team has done on Batman, and that readers haven’t seen the character’s origin done like this before.

As for Superman Unchained, Snyder says that he’s, “Excited to see what you guys think. It’s meant to be a classic Superman story, but done in a new way.

The four-page poster fold-out in the first issue by series artist (and DC co-publisher Jim Lee) is “one of my favorite compositions I’ve ever seen,” Snyder says, showing Superman from different angles where he’s heroic in appearing both powerful and vulnerable. “It speaks to what our book is about, in a lot of ways.”

For his Vertigo slate, Snyder says the upcoming The Wake with Sean Murphy is very different from anything he’s done before, and thanks the fans for continuing to stay enthused about American Vampire during its hiatus.

(more…)

There is a Wonder Woman car (Via the always wonderful DC Women Kicking Ass):

The red and blue exterior color scheme, accented with stars, was derived directly from Wonder Woman’s outfit, while the gold trim wrapped around the vehicle represents the heroine’s weapon of choice, “The Lasso of Truth.”  Up front, Wonder Woman’s eagle chest-plate emblem was creatively integrated into the production grille and is flanked by blue headlight beams, which reflect her piercing blue eyes.  The Sportage’s windshield features a banner portraying Wonder Woman’s tiara, and the chrome side panels on the vehicle are graphical interpretations of her invisible jet.  Beneath, the 5-spoke wheel design was chosen to match the stars on the exterior of the vehicle.

Once again, there is a Wonder Woman car. But this character can’t get her own movie off the ground (Well, aside from the porno version). Some days, I despair.

Turns out, when I said that the Lynda Carter live-action TV show from the 1970s was the original live-action version of Wonder Woman, I was wrong…

This is the original pilot for a 1967 live-action Wonder Woman television series, starring Ellie Wood Walker as the title character and Maudie Prickett as her mother. But not the Hippolyta that comic fans are familiar with; this mom would rather her daughter stayed out of the rain and ate her soup instead of saving the day. “The nation needs Wonder Woman! And what about Wonder Woman, does the nation care what she needs?” she asks, surreally.

It’s the work of writer Stanley Ralph Ross and producer William Dozier, both of whom were responsible for the 1960s Batman series, as if you couldn’t tell, and it’s… well, it’s something else altogether. For all that fans may complain about the campness of the ’60s Batman “harming” the character, I can’t even imagine what this show would’ve done to Wonder Woman had it ended up being made into a series…

Ray Fawkes, co-writer of Justice League Dark and Constantine at DC (and upcoming writer for Trinity of Sin: Pandora), did an Ask Me Anything at Reddit yesterday. Someone asked him about the “sheer chaos that seems to have enveloped the entire DC editorial process” (See: Andy Diggle and Josh Fialkov leaving last week, Gail Simone’s firing and rehiring, last minute creative changes on Supergirl, etc.), and this was his response:

I’m not sure I would characterize it as “sheer chaos”.The business of mainstream entertainment is, as far as I can tell, a struggle to balance the forces of creative, editorial, marketing, legal, and scheduling. Some people are less willing to bend and flex in that environment. Some people get hit harder than others. Some find themselves clashing frequently with management, and some don’t. Some people seem to dodge one bullet and then take another. Some just discover that the place they wanted to be isn’t exactly what they thought it was.

I’ve only been in the game for a short time, so it’s impossible for me to claim that any measure of self-possession or luck or charm or whatever has enabled my survival. This seems more like a question that someone should ask me during a career retrospective, thirty years down the line.

Firstly, the DC creative process sounds dangerous: Hitting, clashing and bullets?

Secondly, that was a smart, political response to a loaded question; I wonder what one of the creators who’d left the publisher would’ve said in similar circumstances. Go check out the rest of the AMA; Fawkes has a lot of good things to say, and those concerned about Constantine may be interested in his comments in particular.

We live in a world where the porn version of Wonder Woman exists before any “official” live-action version of the character (Well, outside of the 1970s Lynda Carter version, of course), as well as a world where, let’s be honest: This actually looks more “Wonder Woman”-y than David E. Kelley’s NBC pilot from a couple years ago.

In the email accompanying this pic of Kimberly Kane that went to Ain’t It Cool News, Wonder Woman XXX: An Axel Braun Parody director Braun reportedly wrote “David E Kelley can Kiss My Ass ” Maybe the CW should ask Braun to help out on their in-development Wonder Woman pilot…

J. Caleb Mozzocco has a fun fact in the wake of last week’s DC Implosion:

The six-page house ad for Andy Diggle and Tony S. Daniel’s upcoming “era” of Action Comics that ran in many of DC’s books this week is three-tenths the length of Diggle’s one-issue run on the book, and one-tenth the length of Daniel’s three-issue run on it.

Because of publishing schedules being what they are, that house ad appears again at the end of this week’s DC comics as well. There’s something very bizarre about seeing “A New Era” being promised that you know – not even with hindsight, as such, as it’s still upcoming – will last exactly one issue. If only they’d had a chance to change the verbiage to “A New Blip in That Whole Era Thing.”

Again, I wonder aloud: Who will replace Diggle as Action Comics writer? And, again, I ask the following question: Isn’t Peter Tomasi short a book now that he’s stepped down from Green Lantern Corps?

Axel Alonso works in a DC-directed zinger in his latest Axel In Charge column over at CBR:

Each Marvel NOW! title starts with a writer who has a long-term vision for their series, and an artist — or complementary rotation of artists — who brings that vision into focus and then some. In certain cases — like John Romita Jr. on “Captain America” or Mark Bagley on “Fantastic Four” — we’ve been able to concoct a system that allows for one artist to do virtually all the issues. In others — like “All-New X-Men” — we’ve managed to put together a solid core rotation, with Stuart Immonen and David Marquez. But there are times when the unforeseen happens: When ["Deadpool" artist] Tony Moore decided he wanted to take a break from the daily grind of sequential art, we had to adjust our plans.

That said, I want to remind readers of this column that all the Marvel NOW! launches are going strong — none have been cancelled or RE-relaunched in a whole new direction after 3 or 4 issues — which is a testament to the talent and coordinated effort of our writers, artists and editors.

That’s true; it took six issues for Savage Wolverine to be relaunched with a whole new direction and creative team. Much better.

Well, this is potentially interesting. On Twitter this afternoon, incoming Green Lantern Corps co-writer Robert Venditti responded to the rumors – officially unconfirmed by anyone at DC, but coming from multiple anonymous sources to both Bleeding Cool and CBR – that the publisher was planning to kill off John Stewart:

Now, it’s worth pointing out that Venditti and co-writer Van Jensen replaced Joshua Hale Fialkov, who reportedly quit the book over editorial plans to kill Stewart, meaning that it’s possible that DC editorial did want to kill Stewart, then let Fialkov walk off the book over the issue, then changed their collective minds all before Venditti and Jensen came on-board – And, to be perfectly cynical, given some of the about-faces and change-abouts we’ve seen from DC in recent months, that’s far from unusual behavior from the publisher, never mind impossible behavior – but, it’s also possible that the rumors of Stewart’s offing were just that – rumors – and that Fialkov’s resignation was over a different matter altogether (Potentially just general editorial direction for the title, as he said, instead of one particular plot development).

So, who’s doing Action Comics now that Andy Diggle has left the title? All those who said “Tony Daniel, right…?” the answer is, not really:

Yes, many have heard, Andy Diggle left Action Comics after the first issue. I can only say I feel bad he made that decision. I think it was the wrong one, but that was his choice to make. For the remainder of the arc I’ll be working off his plots to finish out this first arc. So essentially, I become ‘scripter’ in the credits w/ Andy as ‘plotter.’ As for myself, I end my short run after I complete this first arc, which ends with issue 21. This was preplanned since last fall as there is another project I’ll be taking on, and assisting with, a massive project with DC. I still think people will like this arc and I’m staying as true as I can be to Andy’s plans for this story. In the end I hope he’ll find it somewhat recognizable as something he took part in.

So, Daniel’s off the book after three issues. That means, come #22 – that’s the July issue, or the issue in the very next round of solicitations – we’ll get an all-new Action team. But who?

So, what next for DC?

Following yesterday’s events that saw both Andy Diggle and Joshua Hale Fialkov confirming their quick (ie, before their first issues are even released) exit the Superman and Green Lantern franchises, respectively, apparently due to editorial oversight that went beyond the traditional definition of oversight, things are looking particularly bad for the publisher in terms of creator relations – This is hardly new territory for them, either; Rob Liefeld quit for similar reasons, and there was the whole “Gail Simone was fired and then rehired” thing.

Add to this, Before Watchmen – A project that convinced many to quit reading DC for the lack of respect offered Alan Moore over the project, and something seen as proof that the publisher had chosen profit uber alles under the new DCE regime.

Right now, DC’s reputation is becoming (has become?) the same as Marvel’s in the mid-to-late 1990s: Editorially driven output with creators seen as interchangable, and easily replaced, cogs in a machine, with the kind of individual voices that once made up its core output now available in very rare cases – Scott Snyder, Geoff Johns and China Meiville, it seems.

Something, surely, needs to be done to address this before even more creators leave. But what?

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?

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?

How do you make familiar films like Harry Potter, 2001 and The Empire Strikes Back better? Put Batman in them.

(Via)

CBR hosts a roundtable of DC’s Superman writers, simultaneously reminding you that we’re soon going to see double the amount of Superman books on the stands and that there’s a really interesting line-up of creators on those books. Greg Pak, in particular, shines in this first installment of the roundtable:

What makes it compelling as a story and a character is his tremendous backstory, which sets up the character as someone who is different than everybody, but striving to help. That sense of somebody that is an ‘other,’ someone who doesn’t belong but is doing his best to do the right thing all of the time. That’s incredibly compelling and universal. All of us, no matter how much we feel complete, sometimes feel like we’re on the outside, feel like we’re alone, feel like we’re strange and different. That’s why the Harry Potter books and movies are so popular. That’s why the X-Men are so popular. That’s why just about every pop culture phenomenon you can think of is so popular.

It’s amazing how many of the stories we love to cherish explore that sense of being different. That’s a universal human condition. And the reason Superman, in particular, is so compelling is because he’s on the outside, yet he’s doing his best to help everybody. That moral core of the character is something that we all, deep down, want to aspire towards. It’s that struggle to do the right thing that is really compelling.

Comics Alliance editor – and former DC Comics editor – Joe Hughes considers the case of Jerry Ordway in a great piece:

Ordway still has much to offer. He is a gifted artist and an expert draftsman, and if you look at all 52 of DC’s current monthly titles, it’s certainly not the case that each book is staffed with artists whose work is superior to his. The man understands how to tell a story, yet finds himself on the outside looking in with respect to the characters he loves and, in some respects, helped redefine.

Is this ageism? Not in the strictest definition of the term. If a 25-year-old artist who emulated Ordway showed a portfolio with work similar to his, I get the feeling he’d have the same difficulty getting work at DC as Ordway is right now. I think it’s more a matter of changing tastes from publishers and, presumably, fans. If Howard Hawks were still alive and pitched a screwball comedy today to a big budget movie studio, that mirrored the style of His Girl Friday or Twentieth Century, he’d likely be dismissed out of hand. That wouldn’t make his idea any less brilliant.

I still struggle with the issue of what DC “should” do with Ordway (Although, you know, the idea that there is a “should” in there should probably be considered a warning of some kind or another), but I think Hughes is onto something – Ordway not getting regular work is less the result of ageism than it is one of taste, especially when you consider other creators who do get regular work from DC. This isn’t a good thing as such, but it doesn’t mean it’s any less true, sadly.

There’s much more in Joe’s piece. Check it out.