Superhero Comics!

[TheLaughingOne]

I loved how in Grayson (aka The Only Good Thing That Happened During Nu52) Dick's bum was a frequent subject...

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Dhi]

Darkhold: Iron Man is a beautiful work of darkness. It's exactly what I hoped this Darkhold event would be, and I'm honestly impressed with how far Marvel was willing to push the idea. This is genuinely horrifying.



While I didn't feel like Steve Orlando really got the tone of Darkhold, Ryan North absolutely does, and after this issue I feel great about the event.



Here's hoping the rest of the series is even half as good.



There's a lot of journalism right now about Jon Kent, Superman's son, kissing the pink-haired boy Jay he's been hanging around with and reputedly coming out as bisexual a couple of issues from now. I'll link to the covers, since IIRC Jon is 17.

https://i.imgur.com/dLM1Nvi.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/4BVqq58.jpg

Superman: Son of Kal-El is something I've been following because Tom Taylor is one of my favorite writers at DC. Issues have been selling out and going for $20+ a piece on the secondary market. While DC is certainly publicizing this decision, I really don't think it's a ploy to sell books. Rather, Jon Kent represents a generational difference between the social responsibilities and the idea of heroism between then and now. Already the book has been political, insofar as the idealistic, compassionate thing to do has become politicized. It's no stretch that Jon Kent would also open his heart beyond binary definitions of love, and I trust Tom Taylor to handle it well.

Also quite politically relevant is the finale to Grant Morrison's Superman and the Authority, which further teases the New Gods thread I hypothesized a few weeks ago. It's weird that this book was clearly an Elseworlds tale, but in the end it definitively ties into main continuity. Grant also writes a very compelling Natasha Irons, and I'm hoping whoever writes Authority next picks up on that.



Picked up Hardware #2 after being put off by the first issue, and I'm glad I did. The story becomes much more cohesive and Curtis comes across as a more sympathetic character on multiple levels- some a little bit forced, but others excellent character development.

Rise of the Djinn #1 from Zenescope also released this week, and that one was a hit for me too. I'm glad I checked it out. A lot of things happen, but then this is only a 3 issue series so a brisk pace is wise. Tamara crosses paths with an occult killer and loses her husband, is diagnosed with cancer, dies and miraculously returns to life, all the while getting glimpses of people-who-are-actually-djinn and channeling something arcane she doesn't fully control nor comprehend. Not an especially profound footing in Arabian myth, but otherwise, I like it, and I hope they do more with the character after this series.

Also wanted to mention X-Men #4 which is a one and done story with the team facing Nightmare in their dreams. The book continues to distance itself from Krakoa, so if you're looking for fun mutant stories with none of the Hickman attachment, this is the title for you.

Overall, very pleased with everything I picked up. It was a great week.

[Dhi]

Exciting news from my perspective, Legion of Super-Heroes returns early next year.

Eisner winning writer Brian Michael Bendis (SUPERMAN, POWERS) returns to the Legion of Super-Heroes in the monumental six-issue event miniseries “Justice League vs. The Legion of Super-Heroes”.

One thousand years in the future, a Legion of Super-Heroes comes together to dedicate their lives to recapturing the great age of heroes of the 21st century. When the heroes discover that reality is falling to a great darkness in both times simultaneously, the Justice League and the Legion of Super-Heroes must team up to stop it all. But what is the connection between the secrets of the new Gold Lanterns and the coming of the Great Darkness?

Number one of six goes on sale 1/11/22, with art by Scott Godlewski (SUPERMAN).

JUSTICE LEAGUE VS. THE LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #1
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art and cover by Scott Godlewski
Variant cover by Travis Moore
$3.99 US | 32 pages | 1 of 6 | Variant $4.99 US (Card stock)
ON SALE 1/11/22

Great stuff! I'm finding joy in comic books and I hope you are too.

[TheLaughingOne]

So i got a hold of the Last issue of "Immortal Hulk" And it ends... Odd.

Flashbacks into the past of roughly Victorian era showing 2 men that look like human versions of the Hulk and leader, one a dour wrathful but otherwise cold priest, the other a distracted but driven scientist who just started experimenting with "Gamma Radiation".

Its a weird one, going back and forth in explaining things, and im gonna give a couple rereads in hopes of really understanding, but made for a rather interesting finish to the comics that wasnt just hulk punching things.

Now it seems that Banner "whole" with a Cosmic Radiation powered Joe Fixit, and the Regular Hulk, and able to get his life in order... or something. You know how comic books go..

Im not sure how i fully feel on this. It wasnt bad, but it was deffinately a complex one.

[Oniya]

So, this is kind of meta, but seeing the panels that people have put up really drives home how much of an impact font can have.  The bit that Dhi put up from the Darkhold Iron Man issue - your eye is drawn to 'accelerating', 'brain', 'skull', and 'meat', which give the whole textual content an added spike of the visceral.

[Dhi]

Meta but cool. So much artistry goes into the truly outstanding books. I became aware of the art of lettering myself after these panels from I Breathed A Body.




It's easier on the computer where we can zoom in, but on paper I struggled to read just as the protagonist is struggling to overhear through the driving rain. Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou uses lettering in a number of inspired and unsettling ways throughout the book. I would love to learn more about the arts of lettering and coloring, after a year of enjoying the fruits of these labors without due cognizance. Hopefully I'll get a chance at the upcoming comic con!

[TheLaughingOne]

aaahhhh... thats right! Emerald city comic con is in december as well!!!

Crap! new job means i could go...

cept my days off are now outta sync, id only be able to make it to thursday... Heeeeelllllllllll!!!!

[Dhi]

DC Fandome is live at noon CST, about an hour and a half from now, if you care to watch with me.

https://www.dcfandome.com/

Looking at what's coming in 2022 so far, here are the books I plan to follow.

Marvel
Black Cat
Daredevil
Marauders
Silver Surfer Rebirth

DC
Batgirls
Catwoman (Tini Howard is writing)
Dark Knights of Steel
Green Lantern
Justice League/Legion
Nightwing
Superman: Son of Kal-El

Indies
Harbinger
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Under the maybes, Wonder Girl and White Widow release too sporadically to count them every month.

[LunarSage]

aaahhhh... thats right! Emerald city comic con is in december as well!!!

Crap! new job means i could go...

cept my days off are now outta sync, id only be able to make it to thursday... Heeeeelllllllllll!!!!

I miss the PNW. 

I went to the ECCC in 2010 and met Stan Lee.  I wish I could go again.

[TheLaughingOne]

From the new Batman/Fables crossover.

Batman chained Bigby up in the batcave. Bigby didnt like that.

That... Is satisfying. More along the lines of Bat-Dick getting some comeuppance on being an absolute prick.

Also shows robin, one of them, not sure which, training couple dozen kids to fight while screaming at them about how worthless they are, in a very "Goddamn Batman"-esque style. cuz evidently batman now has an army of robins now...

This one gives bigby more of a leg up in the series, but seems to keep its lips planted firmly on batmans ass. I'll keep following for fables for now.. but wont take much to dislodge me if bat-dickery continues.

[Dhi]

I read some Batman too, in the Fear State event we had Nightwing #85, Catwoman #36, and Batman #115. Trying to find Secret Files: Peacekeeper-01.

In the pages of Nightwing, it's beyond clear that Dick Grayson and Barbara Gordon have a wedding or a pregnancy in the near future. The closeness of these characters has driven Tom Taylor's run since the beginning, and early next year we're seeing this cover:



Pretty much all of the books tied up in Fear State have fill-in artists. It's interesting for me that Nightwing's fill-in is Robbi Rodriguez, who will be attached to Harbinger shortly.

Assigning Laura Braga to do an action sequence in Catwoman is something I don't agree with. Even with no backgrounds, this is surely not her forte.



Batman 115 is a little bit of Jorge Jimenez, but mostly an artist going by Bengal who does a playful Miracle Molly I quite like. I want to like Miracle Molly; her recent one-shot was decent. Unfortunately the event where she debuts was poorly received, her creator is leaving the company, and DC has chosen now to shuffle creative teams, mid-event.



Batman 115 also offers the first Batgirls backup, and it's exactly what I was hoping for. Steph and Cass have a great teen sleuth vibe going, and it will be interesting to see where Babs ends up after her Oracle apparatus is demolished in Fear State. Suited up, I hope, but maybe not immediately. She's got to play big sister first.




Superman: Son of Kal-El #4 is by another fill-in artist, Daniele Di Nicuolo. I was very interested in this one because, following the reveal of Bendix as Jon's big villain, I went back and read 2017's The Storm Watch because I felt like I recognized some hallmarks of the Wildstorm universe in the current arc.

And the current Jon Kent arc is, in fact, very similar to the final issues of The Storm Watch. In 2019 that series was meant to culminate with a relaunch of WildCATS and probably Gen 13. Whether due to DC's restructuring or Warren Ellis becoming persona non grata in the industry, we never got to see a current gen return of those characters. Now seeing what Bendix is up to, experimenting on people to create super-soldiers for his regime, it seems likely we'll see Gen 13 in the pages of Son of Kal-El soon.

This week's Green Lantern clarifies some things I myself misconstrued. The Lonar reveal from last issue was not intended to be in disguise as Beelu Kenz, as the panels I posted implied. Lonar and Beelu are distinct people, and that makes a whole lot more sense.

It's also explained how Lonar just pops up arbitrarily. He is the New God of journeys, we're told, and so journeying to different places and times falls within his purview. I know there are some outspoken Green Lantern fans who really took issue with this.

But, what fans are really tired of is the mystery itself. With all of the backups, it's going to drag on for a year, and I'm sympathetic. What has me engaged is the story potential on the other side of this mystery, so let's get on with it.

We do see, via journey through time, the Oans fighting the New Gods billions of years ago. We see the Oans creating A'tmatentrym to bring order to the cosmos, and why the sorcerers back in issue 1 sought to free it. John also undergoes some kind of transformation and seems to hold Green Lantern power within himself, without need for the battery (which is currently exploded).



This means all three of the arc's main characters- John, Jo, and Keli- are able to wield Green Lantern powers without the battery. Three minority characters, each with complicated histories with authority and justice, have become the de facto powerful figures in a system of law and order which is otherwise stripped of authority, territory, and power.

That's cool, that's something new worth exploring. Let's get on with it.

[TheLaughingOne]

After a bit of reading a new comic, "Refrigerator Full of Heads" i went back to read "Basketful of heads". Forgot how good Basket is. good solid October spooky.

Follows a girl as she comes out to beach town to visit her boyfriend come the end of summer as he finishes working as a temp summer cop. They are invited out to the Chiefs house to celebrate end of summer when a massive storm blows into town, and just as several members of a chaingang get loose.

While the rest of the family is out, someone breaks into the house an dstarts searching for the couple who were left there to relax... After hiding in a laundry bin the girl is attacked by one of the criminals, and grabs an old ax from the police chiefs collection of old viking weapons, and in the struggle manages to cut the mans head off.

... Then he starts freaking out about how he cant feel his legs... And she starts trying to find her missing boyfriend, and unravel just what is going on in this mess of a town..

And just why the fuck does everybody she cuts the head off of keep on talking...?

solid read if you can find. gets my full suggestion

[Dhi]

I did read Basketful of Heads, about a year ago now, and I agree it's fantastic. It's got kind of an early slasher movie feel, but with an engaging story and the advantage of allowing horrific situations to settle.

Refrigerator Full of Heads is in the same vein so far, and there's a setup for a grotesque Chekhov's gun I don't want to spoil. You know it's going to see use. I love it.

Novel premise, great execution, not too long at 6 issues. I'd recommend them too.

[Dhi]

For Halloween, I ventured into yet even more horror books in search of what's good.

Darkhold: Blade is unfortunately a miss, it doesn't measure up to Darkhold: Iron Man at all and I would never expect it to. This story is a tepid What If that follows a boy in a world sort of, but not really overrun by vampires. There are slightly more vampires than normal, and Blade is okay with killing humans; these are the only elements that differ from the Blade status quo.



House of Slaughter is by James Tynion IV and seems to go into background on the critically praised Something Is Killing the Children. A young man has a flashback to monster hunting academy and his gay crush, and in the present he's resolved to kill that crush. To be continued! There's nothing really here, it's not going to be interesting at all unless you're super invested in the Something Is Killing universe, and I am not.

Swamp Dogs is an indie book billing itself as grindhouse blaxploitation horror. I think someone recommended it to me this summer, and the protagonists are queer, so why not? So far it delivers its premise very well, with Confederate zombies rising from the Louisiana swamp to terrorize a Halloween party. The only thing I don't like is that we have to wait three months for the next issue.



DC vs. Vampires is the strongest of the bunch by a fair deal. There's a twist in the first issue that's being posted all over which you've probably seen by now. It's super gross and delivers on the premise of vampire schemes overcoming a superhero universe far better than Darkhold: Blade can. These vampires are in the Masquerade style of Machiavellian clans engaged in power struggles between cunning immortal players, and I love it.



It's a week old at this point, but I really enjoyed The Death of Doctor Strange #2 which introduces the Three Mothers. From the previews, I was getting a very Midnight Sons, 90s Marvel black-splattered horror vibe, and that's exactly what they are. It's surely difficult to introduce a new credible threat to the Avengers, but taking influence from the horrors of antiquity menace of something like Midnight Sons' Lilin is a great way to do it.




That's why I'm excited that Ghost Rider is announced for a 2022 return with a strong horror focus under Benjamin Percy. That this comes during a revival of Darkhold and while DC is enjoying enormous success in its horror books doesn't feel like a coincidence. I think Marvel would like to tap into that market as well.

[Skynet]

I'm likely going to date myself heavily in comparison to Dhi’s regular coverage of hot new issues, but I've been reading some old comics this week. Namely Injustice: Gods Among Us and X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills.

Injustice

Injustice is a prequel to the events of the video game, covering a five-year timespan of Superman's moral degradation into a global dictator. While I haven't played the game, it does a good job of setting up various events. Such as Flash's crisis of conscience that only grows when working for the Regime, or how Batman's resistance fighters got ahold of the Kryptonian pills that grant super-strength and endurance to otherwise "normal" humans.



However, while I understand that superhero comics are meant to be fast-moving, I did feel that Superman's character not only "falls" too quickly, there are several incidents of him carrying the Idiot Ball that are very out of character. For instance, he's way too quick to befriend Lex Luthor as a necessary evil, and it happens pretty much in the first of five volumes. Earlier in the comic you had Catwoman foreshadowing this warning on how in spite of the good he's been doing, Superman still has a blind spot for more white collar crimes and "legal but immoral" actions. Which Lex is pretty much the epitome of.



Wonder Woman suffers from radical recharacterization especially, pretty much becoming a bloodthirsty right-hand woman of Superman to the point that she ends up inadvertently snapping Huntress' neck with the Lasso of Truth. I can get that becoming hardened to killing makes it easier to do so, but this is more a case where it makes the superheroes appear less precise and begs the question of why this hasn't happened often before. Maybe it has, I haven't read that many Wonder Woman comics.

God Loves, Man Kills

I got the 2020 Extended Cut of God Loves, Man Kills. The bonus content isn’t particularly long, including a story about an older Kitty Pryde having a chat with a small-town resident who ends up covering for her when mutant-hunting feds come around. There’s also some artwork and articles about the original 80s story. The plot is an element that is now quite common in X-Men: William Stryker, an extremely popular hatemonger, manages to gather a huge following by using the justification of God for his anti-mutant agenda. A group of terrorists working for Stryker use anti-psychic technology to kidnap Charles Xavier in order to weaponize his telepathy into killing mutants via a deadlier version of Cerebro.

One particular aspect that I like about the comic is that it shows some weakness on Professor Xavier’s part. Not necessarily in that he gets captured by William Stryker, but more on his methodology and the shortcomings of his idealism.

One particular moment is where Xavier, in true debatebro fashion, thinks he can defeat Stryker in a televised debate with facts and logic. But Stryker walks circles around him by appealing to emotion which resonates with the crowd better, and also because Xavier comes off as an Ivory Tower elitist.



Another point I liked was that Xavier at one point ends up so demoralized from seeing so many people back Stryker that he almost considers joining Magneto's cause, but Cyclops gives a rousing speech to keep the dream alive. It may sound strange, but it shows that even Xavier has some moments of weakness and doubt. His worldview has to be tested and proven, rather than just blindly accepted as a natural consequence of humanity’s course.



There are some weak points: there's a part where Kitty Pryde says the n word in anger to make a point about mutant oppression which even at the time got a lot of flak, and the black character in the very same scene more or less agrees with her. There's also the fact that near the comic's climax Stryker suffers a bit of an Idiot Ball moment at the end where he portrays himself as a madman in front of nationwide TV, effectively confirming all the bad things said about him.

Personally I'm fine with that as a potential comeuppance. But Stryker was built up as a genius manipulator and even managed to keep his cool like when Magneto threatened his life to his face. It would make more sense for it to be the logical result of repeatedly being thwarted from the X-Men stopping previous plans, where stress and doubt pile up to the point he ends up losing his cool and that brief slippage of the mask shows who he really is in front of a nationwide audience. But due to the brevity of the issue his characterization has remained consistent throughout, and he is totally cool with murdering one of his own in front of everyone without so much as a care. There’s also the fact that in the final scene the cops go out of their way to protect the mutants, including Magneto, which...isn’t how things historically play out when using mutants as an analogy for the oppressed.



Overall, I’m glad that I read God Loves, Man Kills. But in my opinion it’s not one of the best X-Men stories I’ve read. I don't doubt that it was great for its time, although the above makes it hard to view as a masterpiece.

Edit: I also recently began a run on Immortal Hulk and finished reading Beastboy Loves Raven earlier this month. But this post is long enough already.

[TheLaughingOne]

Injustice is.... ... ill just keep my thoughts quiet on that as its largely just cursing and screaming.

that said, i did read through a good bit and got some extra info talking with other fans, which could be spoilers so they are under here.

A big part of why injustice is happening is this superman isnt the Proper superman, this ones more fearful, and its related with a story of how when superman was a kid, not like toddler, he lost his blanket and threw a fit smashing up cars and all this stuff, that he tends to react more violently and lash out at such. I thought this kinda ruined the story as just how the joker set him off (blowing jimmies head off, tricking him into killing lois who is pregnant with his child, and getting half the justice league killed when the nuke he had planted, tied to lois heart beat, in metropolis wiping out the city and everybody in it. Just piling it like that made it kind of beleivable that the Legit superman might break, but then they copped out by claiming "no. this is a what if superman whos a bit of a bitch." It also plays up why most the other justice league just seems to play along with it. It just kind of fucks around with characters to make it work in this "perfect storm of Shit" Most of these characters dont carry the "Idiot Ball" they collect all they can, attach them to a chain, and shove them right up their ass like a string of idiot anal beads. Using their own heads to push them in.

I warned you it would get weird.

At the same time its not that just because Lex survived that they are friends, they dont really explain it in the comic, but in obscure crap, that lex and superman dont have the antagonistic relationship in this universe, luthor was less agro to superman and more of a friend, not a direct one, but in his corner and helped him on occasion, and would play "devils advocate" in helping him figure things out.

Wonderwoman also got it pretty bad to where she has pretty much lost any ability for compassion, and has been replaced with wanting superman to become an absolute authoritarian dictator who lords over everybody. Who also wants superman to rail her hard, at least in some subtext. Im.. Not entirely sure as i cant find the comic but isnt there a scene of her spotting a sign of where the joker is after Superman puts out the word to find him and lois, and ignores it? Again,not entirely sure but they pretty much made wonderwoman as anti-wonderwoman as possible for this. I hate injustice, but at least it has a couple decent parts.

Behold! Spoilers inside a spoiler!!!

Like Hal Jordan haunted by the imaginary ghost of guy gardener after sinestro convinced him that guy killed john stewart. The return of plastic man in calling out superman and everybody elses bullshit, and all of the twats ready to drop trouser bricks if Plas decides to fight them. And Lobo with a green lantern ring. Those are glorious.. but sadly cannot save that flaming septic tank of a comic series...

[Skynet]

I definitely agree with a lot of your points. The poor characterization combined with the story's length made it much less tolerable.

Given that I didn't like the comic, I get the feeling I won't be into the game (storywise) or the movie.

[TheLaughingOne]

Yeah, it kind of makes me sad, as it had potential and possibility, but then they crapped it all up. Made even worse by some of the excellent parts it has on rare occasion.

and then the weird random ass crossover to "end" the series

where they bring in he-man to fight superman (who i think went all brainiac) thats evidently the big ending. Im not crapping on he-man. But thats... yeah.

[Oniya]

Considering that the DC universe canonically has Santa Claus delivering coal personally to Darkseid - that crossover doesn't surprise me as much as it should.

[TheLaughingOne]

very true! Its not like marvel hasnt had ones that are just as weird as well.

[LunarSage]

very true! Its not like marvel hasnt had ones that are just as weird as well.

Like when Jesus literally chases off Mephisto?

[Skynet]

I recently ordered a collection of Tangent Comics from Amazon Kindle, getting the entire 90s set for a bargain price. For those who don’t know, Tangent Comics is an alternate Earth/What If? series for the DC universe that took a radically different spin on the origin stories of various characters while also tying them together. Barring a few exceptions, each comic is a self-contained Issue #1 for various characters. For instance, the Doom Patrol is a group of superheroes from the future that go back in time to try and prevent Earth's destruction, the Atom is a nuclear-powered superhero whose actions in preventing nuclear Armageddon during the Cuban Missile Crisis makes him the most celebrated figure in America, and the Green Lantern uses a magical light to bring the dead to life in order to help them perform actions they couldn't do while living to ensure a more peaceful rest.

All pictures are shrunk: click to enlarge.



There are some strings linking things together, which I like. Such as a secret conspiracy that is directing world affairs, including keeping the true origin of the Atom from becoming public knowledge. Or how a nuclear exchange between Florida and Cuba caused the city of New Atlantis to be built among the ruins of Atlanta, GA. The comics I read so far vary wildly in tone but have enough aspects that make it believable as a shared world. For instance, the Flash is a ditzy valley girl who can move at the speed of light and bend light rays to form solid images. She was a secret government experiment, and her Machiavellian father concocts harebrained schemes to capture and thus brainwash her into becoming America's perfect weapon, but her mother sabotages this by thrusting herself and her daughter into the public eye as glitzy Hollywood stars. Whereas Green Lantern's comics are more morbid tales of death and revenge. And as for Batman, he’s literally the soul of a Dark Knight inhabiting a suit of armor, which he uses to move beyond the British castle in which he’s confined.



The Tangent Comics suffer in that having virtually every issue be an Issue #1, we don't really get much opportunity to further flesh out characters beyond 40 pages. It's less about any particular superhero and more a world-building exercise to see a hypothetical DC Universe that can still be recognizable but very, very different. And that concept alone is still interesting enough for me to keep on reading, but if you're a big fan of particular superheroes rather than the whole mythos you may be disappointed.

Overall I liked it, but it is best approached from a world-builder's perspective: seeing how various heroes and villains who, while at times independent and dissociated, help tie into a larger overarching story of a superpowered world where the Cold War turned Red Hot.



I also got some Superman comics as part of the buy, too. One of them I particularly enjoyed: Luthor (DC Black Label). Luthor was rather fascinating in that it told things from his point of view rather than Superman’s or a more heroic character. But rather than going for a villainous Justice Lord/Injustice Superman, Luthor is still the villain of the story and it's clear that he's an unreliable narrator. In some ways he's his own worst enemy, where in his attempts to prove how deadly Superman is to human achievement, he only reinforces the world's need for the Kryptonian. But there was still a bit of EDGE in that they made Toyman a pedophile.

There’s one particular page from Luthor which I like. It really shows the more modern interpretation’s hate for Superman and how he views the DC universe's greatest hero.



Casting Superman as this dark, unapproachable figure via the art style and lighting is very much intentional. There’s also the fact that while various characters do have their own dialogue, you never see Superman speak, only act. In the comic he doesn't really do anything close to villainous

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide

besides one scene where he attacks Batman who got his hands on Kryptonite. But only to destroy it and not Batman.

So it's still clear that Luthor's subjective narration is also molding how we see the story, but not so much that you can't see through the bullshit.

[Dhi]

I've never heard of Tangent, it sounds perfect for me! At the summer con I picked up a pile of the 90s Amalgam series, which are not available through Marvel Unlimited or DC Universe Infinite. Green Lantern sounds especially cool. Maybe I'll get lucky and find some of those at next week's con.

I picked up the America Chavez: Made in the USA trade this week, which is a relative oldie from February of this year. Since I missed the first few issues of the series, I waited for the trade to start reading America Chavez, and this was my first real introduction to the character. I knew she was gay and gorgeous, and makes star-shaped portals, and that's about all.



The trade seems to retell, even retcon America's origin a little bit. At the time this was being published, I had high praise for DC's Naomi both as a portrayal of adopted child fantasies, and a bridge character with a lot of potential. Unfortunately, none of that potential has been realized, and Bendis is just spinning his wheels. Nobody is even reading Justice League except to flip to the back for JL Dark; this is the truth. But America Chavez explores those same adopted child fantasies in a more robust way, with additional perspectives like America's biological sister Catalina, who was not so fortunate in life.

This is a case, like Black Cat/Catwoman, where I feel like Marvel is doing it better. I do wish better care was taken with the Spanish, which is pretty disingenuous.

Batman/Superman Authority Special is perfectly pointless. It only exists to blur the Elseworlds nature of Morrison's Superman and the Authority and bring it into current continuity. It's poorly written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson, with the only notable characterization being Batman and Midnighter bickering about who is tougher. Phillip Kennedy Johnson is set to write the upcoming Superman event War World, so that's a pass for me.

But DC had some hits this week with Human Target by Tom King and Dark Knights of Steel by Tom Taylor.

Human Target is a pulpy crime noir with fantastic attention to detail and translation of noir cinematography to the page. I cannot wait to see Elsa Charretier's take on the layouts, but in the meantime it's a must read for me all on its own merits, before even factoring in the JLI.



Dark Knights of Steel is a high fantasy reimagining of the DC universe, with quite a few familiar faces in fitting roles. So far we're introduced to the Kal-El clan and Bruce, and the time spent with them is so well done that the ending has everyone excited for the possibilities of this new universe. Tom Taylor is consistently great, and Yasmine Putri on the art is a perfect fit.




Last week Wonder Girl #4 pushed the story of Yara Flor forward by bounds, and it was even (mostly) on time. A brisk pace to make up for delays is a little jarring, but necessary and has me back on board for the book. We're introduced to Potira, the Amazon that Yara went into the Underworld to rescue in Future State, and here Yara gets flustered touching hands. Does this mean there's going to be chemistry between them? In my head no, but in my heart yes. It's hard to tell, because her bond with bus driver beefcake Joao feels so out of nowhere.



The new Harbinger from Valiant Comics also arrived last week, and the start is strong, laying out the premise of Harbinger for new readers and introducing the antagonists in the form of a formidable team. It seems like continuity is unaltered, but Peter has lost his memory. That memory loss seems intended to distance the character from past wrongs and develop fresh without strictly losing that history. After reading, I do want to get into some of these Valiant properties. I think I'll start with 2018's Harbinger Wars 2 miniseries, and see what comes up in 2022.

[TheLaughingOne]

... anybody read this dark knights of steel comic..?

[Dhi]

One of the top two of the week I think. I just picked up the character sheet variant cover this morning. Fans are really responding to it. What did you like about it?

Did you see Eat, Bang, Kill #4 is available? I couldn't find any info on this woman Elle who's with Vixen, I'm thinking she is an original creation for the animated universe.



To my knowledge Vixen isn't canonically bisexual in main continuity, but she definitely was in Bombshells, which I loooove.



Bombshells gave space to a number of queer couples like Harley/Ivy and Batwoman/Montoya. Both of those are now canon, and if developments with Authority tell me anything it's that DC is in a mood to wave in Elseworlds material as canon where it suits.

Harley author Stephanie Phillips has an AMA on the 19th. I'm going to be at work, or I would like to ask her impression of EBK as a competing Harley book, and what if anything she might take from its success. And I'm not going to say this, but, everyone loves the Harley Quinn animated series- I actively disliked Harley until the series won me over. What more signal does DC need to put Harley and Ivy together?

I can't possibly expect any answer but "stay tuned!" but I would like to state a case intelligently.