Superhero Comics!

[Skynet]

The best introduction to Legion is probably Action Comics 858-863 by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank.
https://www.dcuniverseinfinite.com/comics/book/action-comics-1938-858/a584d2f7-2ea6-4a6b-af70-a67531b98b54
It might help to redeem the plot point you've spoilered. If it doesn't, if those seven issues don't do anything for you, it's possible the Legion flavor is not right for you.

So I read these issues as of today, and they are very much my thing. I may try 2001 and 1993 Legionnaires as you suggested.

DC was at ComicsPRO this week affirming their plan to continue print books. That's great!

Some upcoming titles were also announced, including a dark ages DC setting. I like the sound of that, although I have to assume it's something like Batman as the Robin Hood of Gotham Forest, Superman as Lancelot, and Wonder Woman as pretty well unchanged in the last 2500 years.

It might be something worth exploring here on E.

No news on Legion that I could find, but so much Batman.

This is kind of a given at this point in time, lol.

[Dhi]

DC's Future State event is over, and today Infinite Frontier #0 debut. Mostly I was looking forward to that for the Yara Flor story, but she's only in it for two pages and most of that is the panel I linked previously. While that was disappointing, the framing story of Infinite Frontier does a great job of bringing together the aftermath of this Batman Who Laughs stuff and pointing DC in an optimistic new direction.

It would be disingenuous to call this anything but another reboot.

But Wonder Woman speaks to the need for this reboot as she's considering an offer by DC's cosmic host to join them as an omniscient being.

SPECTRE: Are you also ready? How do you judge what you have seen?

WONDER WOMAN: For years, our lives were infected with despair. An omnipotent force from another world manipulated us as part of some grand experiment.

WONDER WOMAN: It stole away so much of our sense of legacy, our connections and faith in ourselves.

WONDER WOMAN: We believed its lies for too long. It let worse aspects of the multiverse hurt us.

WONDER WOMAN: But it's easy to see that among my allies its influence is gone.

WONDER WOMAN: We're free to embrace the best parts of ourselves. More than the multiverse has changed. We have, too. Our lives have.

WONDER WOMAN: We can move forward in exciting new ways. Start new chapters.

It goes on for a bit more, but this part, this page, is clearly meta commentary on the departure of Dan DiDio as Publisher at DC.

DiDio receives a lot of blame for the mishandling of DC over the last decade and a half. If he isn't the most hated man in comic books, he certainly seemed to be the most hated at DC. Whether that blame is justified is not for me to say. The DiDio era happened at a time where I was paying zero attention to comic books. But even so, from a considerable distance away, hearing only echoes of the hidden world, I was aware that DC was being mismanaged.

Either way, I'm enjoying what I'm seeing so far and plan to continue reading. Maybe I'll share some thoughts here? There's a lot of new story potential being floated in Infinite Frontier across a dozen characters, and I don't know how much of it I'll actually follow, but it feels like the perfect time to start reading.

[Dhi]

Marvel has an event in May called Heroes Reborn (2021) which was proposed early on as exploring some alternate timeline possibilities. Very generic, and they seemed to be doing beat for beat what DC was doing. I've been keeping an eye on it as a way to jump into more Marvel stories, the way I was able to jump into DC with Future State.

So here's the solicitation for the event:

Welcome to a world where Tony Stark never built an Iron Man armor. Where Thor is a hard-drinking atheist who despises hammers. Where Wakanda is dismissed as a myth. And where Captain America was never found in the ice, because there were no Avengers to find him.

I was disappointed because the way that's pitched, it sounds completely uninteresting to me. What if Thor is drunk and angry again, what if Iron Man didn't Iron Man.

But then I glimpsed a few of the covers, and...

   

Are you seeing this?

   

May 2021, it turns out, is the 25th anniversary of Marvel vs DC.



I'm excited for this idea! Put me down for every issue.

[Dhi]

There's a company currently unloading DC graphic novels in a mystery box for something like 90% off.

https://us.zavvi.com/books/dc-comics-mystery-graphic-novel-10-pack/12692208.html

A YouTuber I've been drawn to posted a video this morning showing what's in the mystery boxes, and they are all from a series called Eaglemoss. It seems like a range of 180 possible books, any of which I would be happy to get. I've picked up two.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC_Comics_Graphic_Novel_Collection

And at the risk of being tacky, that YouTuber (BJ Kicks) has an affiliate link BRANDON-R18B which I hope you'll consider using if you decide to take advantage of the deal. It's supposed to give you 10% off, and I did not notice that happening, but I put it in anyway because it cost me nothing extra to be kind.

There's another deal with that bundle plus a Batman shirt for $30. I don't particularly want a Batman shirt, but if you do, that seems pretty good.

[Dhi]

DC continues to debut stories in the new post-DiDio direction.

Justice League 59 picks up directly after Infinite Frontier. Green Arrow and Black Canary just kind of show up at the Hall of Justice; I was hoping for some development after Infinite Frontier established that they were absorbing the memories of their other selves from the Multiverse era.

This was probably explained in Death Metal, but I'm reading that on DCU and that's on a 6 month delay.

What I want to know is whether Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy have also absorbed memories from alternate realities. It has to be acknowledged that Harley and Ivy are banging in literally every noncanon universe, right?

This page from next week's Harley Quinn #1 suggests to me Harley is aware of her other selves, but I may be misinterpreting. Riley Rossmo's art is not my usual.



But back to Justice League, I really adore the dynamic between Superman and Black Adam. Flash has remarked that Superman sees the best in everyone, and this coincides with Black Adam's rise as protector of the nation of Kahndaq. It's very well done and sets up conflict within the team with what's certain to be a contentious recruit, I want to read more of this.

Naomi has a lot of potential as a character as well. It's not just because she's black and cute and her powers look absolutey rad in the new coloring style. When I picked up Naomi's miniseries, I didn't have any idea she would turn out to be a heroine- she seemed to be a very relatable girl with adopted child fantasies I found compelling and earnest, and the way the story's misdirects revealed everyone except her as special was great.

By the end it was clear Naomi had unique potential to explore DC's fringe sci-fi elements, namely the worlds of Rinn and Thanagar, which certainly have their own following and strong elements but have never really been on the mainstream radar. I'd like to see a lot more of Naomi. The new Justice League looks great. I'm excited.

[Skynet]

Apologies if I haven't been that active on a thread that I started. My Kindle issues are taking longer for me to get through.

But back to Justice League, I really adore the dynamic between Superman and Black Adam. Flash has remarked that Superman sees the best in everyone, and this coincides with Black Adam's rise as protector of the nation of Kahndaq. It's very well done and sets up conflict within the team with what's certain to be a contentious recruit, I want to read more of this.

Black Adam joining sounds interesting. What issue/volume is this?

[Dhi]

Volume 4, Justice League 59 is where the new story starts. It's new this week.

There's also a Justice League Dark backup with Zatanna and Constantine getting the team back together, starting with Etrigan. Justice League Dark is much more to my tastes, so I'm excited about that too, but it was only 8 or so pages so far.

[Dhi]

Did you know that IDW's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is very good? I had no idea.

A TMNT miniseries called Last Ronin, which reunites creators Eastman and Laird, has been on everyone's radar going into 2021. I liked the sound of that one, but decided I'm not ready to jump into a story like that without checking out the main series first.

So I did, and working back through the last few issues, Sophie Campbell's art immediately leaves a strong impression. But the writing, which she's been leading for the last year and a half, is staying with me.



There are a lot of elements to this series I recognize from being extant in the 90s. The creative team, with Eastman consulting on story, seems to incorporate ideas from such disparate sources as the Mirage, Archie, and Image runs, the Palladium RPG, and movies into terrific character-driven stories. Every volume of the trades strikes me as such a brilliant way to explore these weird concepts, and gosh do I love Bebop and Rocksteady. Just look at how much fun they have being cruel.

What excites me about the writing is how every strange character has a distinct voice, and so much consideration is given to motive and personality that no space seems to be wasted. Not only are the Turtles easily distinguished from one another when the masks are off, it's clear which characters are women even when they are mutant animals with no human sexual characteristics. It didn't surprise me very much to learn that Sophie Campbell is a trans woman.

Give me some time to digest more of this body of work, but I think I've just become a TMNT reader.

[Dhi]

Harley Quinn #1 is new this week. The story, with controversial art by Riley Rossmo, tries to paint Harley in a sympathetic light post-Joker War by showing her in a vulnerable place, bullied, spit upon. I'm not sure how these villain-to-hero stories are ordinarily done in comic books, but to me this seems particularly uninspired.

We're shown a wall where Harley makes plans to seek forgiveness from the various people she's wronged. One of these is an envelope for "Pam," which must be Poison Ivy. Harley says that she's not ready for that one yet, which means that we're not looking at a real canon Harley/Ivy relationship even now.

Since that's the case, I have no intention of buying any more. No thanks. At least DC is up front about it, instead of making it a cliffhanger that drags on for 20 issues.

Nightwing #78 brings back Dick Grayson for a fun return to form. There's a bit of meta commentary that Nightwing has not been himself, but we get an affirmation of the character's core through a flashback of he and Barbara Gordon as kids. It's well done, and Nightwing has rescued a puppy, which DC are calling on fans to name something other than Boaty McBoatface.

I'm not a Nightwing reader, but this feels like the ideal place to jump back in for anyone who is.

Speaking of Barbara, I like her new look as Oracle.



A return to New 52 style Batgirl stories seems especially unlikely now. I think the upcoming Batgirls series being teased is going to be another pass for me, as what's left? Murder prodigy Cassandra Cain? Spoiler? I'm not really interested in those.

[Dhi]

Can anyone recommend good Flash stories, that aren't Flashpoint? I've never read the character, and Future State hasn't provided a good place to jump in.

[Dhi]

Something else I've wanted to talk about is Shade, the Changing Man/Girl/Woman.

"This isn't my real body, see. I'm just using it. It belongs to a woman who's dead."

Rac Shade (who is distinct from the Flash villain The Shade) was created in the late 70s by Steve Ditko, who was also responsible for such characters as Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, and The Question, and whose politics directly inspired the character Rorschach.



Steve Ditko's 1970s version of Shade is quite different from the Shade which exists today, but even in this early form Shade was comparable to the dazzlingly creative and surreal mysticism of Doctor Strange, with dystopian sci-fi elements and a focus on madness both as a form of magic and as an invisible force of change in culture.

70s Shade was well before my time and I've only read a bit of that. My introduction to the character came in the 90s with Peter Milligan's run on the character under the mature audiences Vertigo line. Vertigo was for cool goth girls. Sometimes there was a bare butt, or someone would say fuck, and all of the time characters sat at a table having frank conversations about sex, drugs, death, and the capitalist patriarchy- this was as true in Shade as it was was in Neil Gaiman's Sandman or Garth Ennis' Preacher.

I began reading at issue 26, the Shades of Lenny story which is from the perspective of Shade's lesbian friend Lenny. Lenny is a sassy cool goth girl typified in so many Vertigo books, and was remarkably chill with Shade's surreal antics right up until it began to affect her daughter, and then she was very much not cool with it at all.



Shortly after Shades of Lenny, Shade becomes a woman for a while. I wouldn't say the writing there was especially true to Shade's female readership, but I do love Lenny's reaction to everything.



Early on the focus of Shade is collective neuroses of Americana. Often this comes in the form of unraveling a murder mystery by manifesting psychoses in a mystical form of dream interpretation. Shade, you see, is able to perceive, manifest, and shape madness through the power of the ubiquitous M-Vest dreamed up by Steve Ditko. Shade is powerless without madness, and yet is compelled to cure it. Shade hails originally from an authoritarian world scoured of imagination or creativity, and approaches the strange world of American life with the soul of a poet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqTrdptLRrs

As an example of this surrealism, an enduring villain from Shade's earliest issues is The American Scream, a skeletonized Uncle Sam who arises as a collective cognitive dissonance of a festering ugliness in American culture together with idealized romanticizing of the American Dream.



I didn't get to finish Peter Milligan's Shade, as my inlet to comic books at the time was through a girlfriend and our interests eventually changed with college and careers. But recently I was able to pick up the full run at auction, and I'm looking forward to reading what I missed.

More recently, in 2016 Cecil Castellucci brought back Shade with Shade the Changing Girl/Woman, starring a new bearer of the M-Vest, Loma Shade, who is female from the beginning.



This character, Loma Shade, follows a similar vein of triage to American madness through the refreshing eyes of a young lady leaving high school behind to become a woman. The body this Shade inhabits was a terrible bully, and while Shade at first tries to erase that part of herself, she finds that she must have madness, she must embrace her capacity for ugliness, to protect the people she cares about.

And also to hang out with Wonder Woman, whom Loma Shade clearly has a thing for.



Cecil Castellucci caught some backlash for using DC's New Gods trappings to tell a story of inequality and sexual harassment in Female Furies. I like her work and distinctive voice, which was a terrific fit for a female Shade dealing with the madness of depression, dissociation, body ownership, and the paralysis of outgrowing those who inspired us. Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance, Doom Patrol, and Umbrella Academy said of DC's Young Animal imprint "Shade is my favorite," and I agree.

I'm looking forward to the new mystical offerings at DC with hopes of seeing Loma Shade, or heck, even both Shades in ongoing stories. If you've read this far, or even just found the pictures cool, I hope you'll give Shade a read too.

[Dhi]

A couple of weeks ago I asked about Flash stories. Don't really know anything about the character. So I got my hands on Flash #768, which despite the numbering is the post-Future State relaunch where new readers are meant to jump on.

Wally West, who was previously Kid Flash, is touted to take over as Flash. Instead in this issue he's debating retiring from superhero life and asks Barry Allen, the previous Flash, to help him shed his superspeed powers.

Members of the Justice League talk about the death of a character named Roy being the catalyst for this crisis of faith, and I had to do an internet search to find they're talking about Roy Harper, Green Arrow's sidekick. Other than that, this was a great introduction.

The Flashes discuss concepts like Speed Force, which is helpful for me as a new reader. But something goes wrong, trying to remove Wally's powers, and instead Wally is sent careening through time. The other Flashes throughout history lose their powers instead, making Wally the only Flash.

Normally, anyone with Flash powers can potentially travel through time, so all Flashes essentially exist at the same time. Now it's just Wally. Got it. Either you buy the premise, or you don't- there isn't a lot of pseudoscience exposition to trick you into finding it plausible. I appreciate that too.

The worlds of Rann and Thanagar are mentioned at the end, which supports my suspicion we're going to see that weird shit worked into Justice League through Naomi. A Dominator from Legion of Super-Heroes also shows up, so maybe we'll see a few Legionnaires in this race through time. That would be neat.

As long as this story is actually going somewhere, I'll give it a read. I have concerns about the time travel aspect.

Also this week, check out the art in Batman #107.



I jumped into Batman with #106 for the cyberpunk Gotham stuff. It makes zero attempt to welcome new readers, and if you have not been reading both Batman and the Future State stuff, I think you're bound to be left as I am not understanding the significance of some of these characters and events. Things pick up from Harley Quinn #1 and the Batgirls backups. Even so armed with most of that, fully 3/20 pages I did not know how to interpret.

Is anyone reading Marvel?

[Skynet]

I've been meaning to check out the Flash as well, but right now I'm taking a bit of a break from superhero comics surprisingly enough.

I have been reading Marvel comics here and there, but nothing truly "current." I am following Saladin Ahmed's Miles Morales Spider-Man, which IMO is holding up well. I'm currently focusing on the DC Comics I've yet to read, although considering picking up X-Force given that it ties into the House of X/Powers of X stories which I enjoyed.

Your posts are very good and detailed Dhi. Apologies if I haven't been responding, I just don't have much to say given I haven't read them yet. :P

[Dhi]

Are these the right series?

https://www.marvel.com/comics/issue/71322/miles_morales_spider-man_2018_1

https://www.marvel.com/comics/issue/76789/x-force_2019_1

Thanks for the kind words. It seems like there's a lot of interest in these characters on E, but at least for me it was intimidating figuring out how and where to get into it. This feels like a perfect time to do that with DC, so I'm trying a lot of different things and feel inspired to share my positive experiences.

We also picked up the new Green Lantern, Suicide Squad, Swamp Thing, and Crime Syndicate, to be read in the coming week. If I have the time, I'll start X-Force too. New Mutants is on my reading list. Do I need to read the House of X/Powers of X stuff first? I gave X of Swords a try but didn't like it at all.

[Skynet]

Those are the ones!

I don't know how necessary House/Powers are for X-Force. House/Powers takes a sort of long-term look with proposed alternate timelines on Krakoa's fate, while X-Force looks to be dealing with Krakoa "in the now" so to speak. The former books give a sort of "origin story" on how the new mutant nation came to be, along with Professor X and Magneto's unlikely alliance as a result of this. I haven't read X of Swords yet so I can't say how similar it is to the rest of the 2019- Krakoa series.

Regarding 2019's New Mutants, from reading a brief description it sounds like it takes place in outer space (or begins that way) so by my guess it doesn't require a deep lore into how Krakoa proper came to be.

[Dhi]

The new Green Lantern #1 focuses on the three current people of color wielding Lantern powers: John Stewart, Keli Quintela ("Teen Lantern"), and Jo Mullein from the deep space Far Sector series. I've heard this one called uninteresting, probably due to the Lanterns playing security to a big galactic senate meeting. But, we're facing questions of whether the Lanterns should surrender power as a galactic peace force, and exploring this from the perspective of three very different black characters each with different experiences within the Green Lantern Corps.



I didn't actually go into this one fresh. I've read a lot of Green Lantern over the years, enough to recognize what elements were new and to recognize that John Stewart is sort of being shoehorned into a mentor role here. Even so, it was the right move not to put Hal Jordan in this role.

There are also a ton of references to Legion of Super-Heroes, from the United Planets to named aliens of species central to the Legion era, and one instance of 30th Century slang...which is, um, weird. All of these designs hew to the new Bendis Legion and seem to suggest that even if there isn't a current Legion book, there are Legion-related things happening in universe which might be building toward something.

At this point I'm just talking about Legion, but, an upcoming anthology DC Pride is going to introduce a new LGBT character Dreamer, who is an ancestor of Legion's Dream Girl. Neat!

I already liked Green Lantern, and setting this up as a precursor to Legion makes it that much better. I love this book already, and with no backup story, it's a significant, satisfying read.

The new Swamp Thing is also very good. I picked up #1 last month and didn't have a lot to say about it. It very nearly lost me, as it introduces a new Swamp Thing and it's unclear who is who or where much of the time. I found it a mess. But #2 redeemed the story for me by neatly organizing those narrative threads into a pretty spectacular payoff. It's a slow burn, but Swamp Thing is usually worth it, so I'm on board for all 10 issues of the limited series.

Next month's preview suggests the new Swamp Thing will encounter Holland and Poison Ivy. This characterization of Ivy should be interesting because in the same month the trade paperback Poison Ivy: Thorns is going to dive deep into Ivy's past as a shy and apparently gay young woman. She will also be starring in the LGBT anthology DC Pride, and featured on the gorgeous Jen Bartel variant cover with Harley.



(Harley/Ivy still isn't canon though)

[Dhi]

BJ Kicks posted a video yesterday, "Why I LOVE DC Comics," which I think articulates a lot of what I've been feeling about the universe myself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LcVbTs59dw

Like BJ, I don't think appreciating DC means disliking Marvel. Not at all. In fact, my partner prefers indie comics, but somehow we make it work. Let me tell you, it isn't easy. I'd like to talk about some of the indie comics we've been reading, but I expect there are way more Marvel fans on E than there are folks looking to branch out into experimental garage books.

I don't know what my fellow Elliquiyans are reading from Marvel. Elsewhere I'm hearing a lot of Thor, and Spider-Man: Life Story.

Skynet, I took your suggestion and read some X-Force (2019) #1-6. At the same time, I read New Mutants (2019) #1-6 to compare the two.

X-Force is quite a dark book. Some characters I care about are really raked through the muck in this one and, I'm afraid, tarnished. Does this make for good story? I'm not sure it can, with Krakoa rendering death irrelevant and making all mutants billionaires. Do mutants represent the marginalized any longer? What do they represent? I don't understand this run, apart from it's fun to see obscure old mutants pop up at random on the island.

New Mutants is at least a fun book.



So far it's largely removed from the politics and plot conceits of Krakoa. In the first 6 issues there are two stories, half the team going into space with the Starjammers and ending up escorting the exiled Shi'ar queen Deathbird, and the other half of the team running into trouble in Nebraska where they must be rescued by a very drunk Boom-Boom.

The theme behind these disparate threads is venturing out from Krakoa to check in on mutants who have fallen through the cracks. Wayward mutants. I like that concept and plan to read it on the Marvel app, but probably won't buy physical issues.

Marauders also seems like it could be fun, with a band of mutant pirates led by Kitty Pryde. But, she's apparently on the Krakoa council, so I can't get too invested.

Something brand new from Marvel was Beta Ray Bill #1. I keep hearing about the dynamic art by Daniel Warren Johnson, surely a rising star in comics.





The issue also served as a good introduction to the character, which is great because I had no clue apart from he's Horse Thor. The writing, while not nearly as noteworthy as the art, communicates very well who this character is and leaves me wanting to find out what happens next.

[Skynet]

Skynet, I took your suggestion and read some X-Force (2019) #1-6. At the same time, I read New Mutants (2019) #1-6 to compare the two.

X-Force is quite a dark book. Some characters I care about are really raked through the muck in this one and, I'm afraid, tarnished. Does this make for good story? I'm not sure it can, with Krakoa rendering death irrelevant and making all mutants billionaires. Do mutants represent the marginalized any longer? What do they represent? I don't understand this run, apart from it's fun to see obscure old mutants pop up at random on the island.

New Mutants is at least a fun book.

I got some vibes that Krakoa isn't as great a society for mutants as it's made out to be in places, but your points are still valid. Sorry for leading you astray on that count. I feel that the series was trying to jump-start the "mutants will overtake humanity" by getting together to accomplish things they couldn't when divided against each other, but it kind of glosses over the problems that'll arise in their exclusive society. I do understand that weighty sociology isn’t the forte of comics, but House of X/Powers could’ve done better in showing how life is day-to-day in Krakoa.

one example in House of X

In doing away with prisons they ended up replacing the system with something far worse. Sabertooth was forcefully buried in Krakoa’s root system where he’d be conscious and self-aware, but effectively paralyzed and deprived of any form of contact without being able to die.

That sounds far worse than prison. Heck, I’d even take the death penalty over an eternal green hell.

[Dhi]

Do you know what's happening currently with Psylocke?

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide

How do both versions of her exist now?
Did Betsy die in X of Swords?
Who is Kwannon's daughter supposed to be, when did that happen?
Which Psylocke was in a relationship with Cluster?
Please help.

[Dhi]

One of the other X-Men titles, Marauders, has captured my heart. I got so into it on the Marvel app that I went out and bought the issues to date.



The short of it is that Kitty Pryde can't pass through Krakoa's gates, and stumbles into sailing a ship smuggling goods and mutants for Hellfire Trading Company. It has pirates, strong female characters, it's funny, it's never bogged down in boring politics. The friendships between Kitty and Emma Frost, and between Storm and Callisto, are engaging.

While I like Kitty's new look, there's a weird disconnect here in order to promote her as a representative character. On the left is Kitty in 2013, on the right is Kitty now.



But Kitty is also bisexual now and the representation on that front is no less obvious- in issue 12 Kitty kisses a girl for the first time in some 40 years of print, and while that character is just an unnamed rando, we're simultaneously introduced to her queer love interests Rachel Summers and Illyana Rasputina. It's probably pandering, but, I love it. I love everything about Marauders.

[Dhi]

My partner enjoys indie comic books, particularly gritty crime stories. That's not my thing, but as we branch out into indie titles I am finding some things I really enjoy.

I've already mentioned IDW's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles run by Sophie Campbell is very good. Since then I've gone back and read quite a few trades prior to her stint as head writer, and those fluctuate a lot in quality. Bebop and Rocksteady Destroy Everything is terrific but some of the other stories, particularly the ones involving Baxter Stockman and the Earth Protection Force, are boring.

Dark Horse's Beasts of Burden is about the secret world of pets who investigate paranormal incidents in the neighborhood. They behave and discuss as you'd expect animals to, and the stories are in digestible short format. Unfortunately it's not for kids as stories involve such things as zombie dogs and werewolves, but I found the stories endearing and I'm enjoying the current series, Occupied Territory.



Also from Dark Horse, Norse Mythology adapts Neil Gaiman's novel of the same name in authentic Norse stories curated for modern readers and brought to life with bright art. The name Gaiman got my attention on the shelf, and I was awful into the mythos as a young lady through just last year when I was running a D&D campaign centered around Yggdrasil and the Hávamál. The first 6-issue volume was a treat for me, and a new volume 2 is due to arrive June 16th.



Image's Nocterra is the new project by DC's Scott Snyder. It's about a post-apocalyptic world where the sky has gone dark, which may be the fault of a physics experiment to observe dark matter. Living things diminish in that darkness and become terrible shades, forcing humanity to subsist in brightly lit hubs. We follow a girl named Sundog as she fights to save her brother from the transformation and chases the myth of a sunlit sanctuary in a semi truck armed with powerful lights. With issue 3 coming May 5th, this one has a strong start, but I'm hesitant- too many mysteries are being presented too quickly and it feels a bit like an Abrams.



AfterShock's I Breathed a Body is truly disturbing horror touching on the values of our society and the value of a human life within it. A handsome young content creator commits suicide live on stream, and the corporate empire his fame begat capitalizes by streaming his autopsy and devouring by wild animals. A suicide cult of misguided, unsupervised teens grows in his shadow, and there's something supernatural looming just beneath the skin. This one came recommended as body horror, and for me it isn't that, but it is horrifying in a way that sticks with you, and there are exceedingly few pages I can safely post...



Black Mask Studios' Alice in Leatherland follows a goodie two shoes girl reeling from a bad breakup with her girlfriend on a magical journey into the sex-positive world of fetish. This one was delayed a bit so I haven't received my copy yet. What I can say is it looks delightful, and the label is one I trust to handle the subject with clarity, authenticity, and human empathy. But I can't even show you the full cover, which is a cityscape of sex toys.



Absolute Comics Group's White Widow is a guilty pleasure. Check out these callipygian covers.



There were a number of titillating Bad Girl titles like this in the 90s which I remember grabbing the coattails of for some kind of, I don't know, sexual liberation. The stories were never any good. This one hews litigiously close to Spider-Man with a breezy and practical story starring a character I prefer to someone like Peter Parker. Spider-Woman previously was that character for me, but Marvel just will not let up from destroying her, so maybe it's time for me to move on. I think this might be my flavor of webslinger.

I'm finding joy in comic books and I hope, as we all get vaccinated and start peeking into the local shops that survived 2020, my fellow Elliquiyans will too.

But if what's happening now doesn't interest anybody, maybe we can talk about 90s comic books instead. Favorite stories, characters, what got you into this?

[Dhi]

My copy of Alice in Leatherland came in. While I will probably continue to get the whole series for myself, I'm not going to recommend it. The setting of San Francisco's fetish scene is unfortunately jammed in there as an afterthought and what little is there smacks of wacky stereotypes. This is not what I expected from a studio that does deep dives into systemic racism and civil unrest.

As an LGBT romance book I suppose it's fine. Those are surely the romcoms of the indie comics world. I expected more.

But I'm not going to love every single thing that crosses my lap.

We did buy a lot of books this month. Nightwing #79 continues to be good and I guess I am now a Nightwing reader. That issue I recommended starting with, 78, is apparently going for a lot now and headed for a second printing on April 28th.

There's a new one I just started, The Many Deaths of Laila Starr, which follows the Hindu goddess of death on a perilous mortal incarnation in modern Mumbai. She has been fired, you see, since a boy has been born who will make everyone immortal. The art by Filipe Andrade is joyous and frantic and the story by Ram V has me hooked on the goddess' journey as she takes life's lumps and debates how to handle this infant messiah. Love it, it's only going to be 5 issues total, I'm sold.

Hearing good things about the new Marvel book, Way of X. Has anybody read that?

[Dhi]

Swamp Thing this month features Poison Ivy in a very different role as almost a fairy queen within the Green, which is sort of an astral plane for plants. There are two aspects of Ivy here, one a great and terrible queen representing Ivy's responsibility to the Green, the other an innocent representing Ivy's humanity. Ram V seems to understand the character on more than just a surface level, and is doing a terrific job with Swamp Thing, widely considered one of DC's strongest books at the moment.



So when I discovered Ram V is also working on Catwoman, I picked up the last several issues of that arc to see how it compares.

Catwoman is a very boring character to me. All of her stories are essentially the same: Time for another crime. I've found something I don't understand, and need the help of a sleazy contact. Oh no, sleazy contact betrayed me. Someone forces me to do a bad thing. Sometimes we're at a fancy party. I pretend I did the bad thing, but syke, I did the good thing instead. Cue the police. CATWOMAN.

Ram V's Catwoman story is currently in its Fancy Party stage, so I regret buying into that- thankfully it only came to $12. Aren't Batman and Catwoman supposed to be married now in canon? But she's living in a slum, weighing other romantic options, and referring to a year-long break. Sorry, what? This clearly does not work if we're right back to where we were.

At the same time, I'm also picking up Black Cat, Marvel's version of the same concept. This month is a Marvel-heavy month for me, between the Heroes Reborn event and spinoffs, and getting caught up on books due for Pride Month covers in June.

Black Cat #7 is one of those Pride Month covers. I remember hearing that Black Cat is bisexual, but have never seen her take any interest beyond shallow flirtation. I didn't expect much from an analogue to a DC character I don't like, and mostly wanted some context for why they chose to feature this character for Pride Month. Is there anything sapphic happening in the pages of Black Cat?

Surprisingly, yes!

Black Cat's relationship with a fellow thief named Tamara Blake has been retconned in issues 3 and 5. As representation goes, retconning a gay relationship somewhere in a character's ancient history is pitifully weak. But sandwiched in between is issue 4, which is all about wannabe heroine Queen Cat's obsession with Black Cat. The culmination is a rooftop battle with Felicia teasing her rival, and Queen Cat is left smiling. I am into this.

Black Cat is also a good mix of inventive fun and touching character moments, so in this case I think Marvel is definitely doing it better. But if Catwoman is Ocean's Eleven, then Black Cat is more National Treasure.



I wouldn't recommend the first two issues, which are neck deep in King in Black plop and she has a ghost dog that talks to her for some reason- I do not follow or care to research. Issue 2 is also going for a premium due to speculation over a costume change. There are two costume changes in the same issue. Like, you already have my gay heart with this one Marvel, you do not have to go quite so hard.

This one went long, and I haven't mentioned Heroes Reborn, Valkyries, Marauders, Green Lantern, Batman, Beasts of Burden, White Widow, Nocterra- maybe in the coming week.

[TheGrandAdmiral]

Ooh, how did I miss this thread!?  :o

I am mostly a DC fan, but finally was able to catch up to current Marvel titles.

Am now trying to get into the Judge Dredd universe.

Also any fans of the Zenescope universe?

As for DC I really started to like the current cyberpunk Batman.

[Dhi]

The current Batman arc feels like something special. We got to see more of Miracle Molly this week, and I was pleasantly surprised. The art is brilliant, I keep posting it here, but the story also has a finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist of our age. We see that Miracle Molly is not some cackling lunatic, some cardboard cut-out to be knocked down. This is an intelligent, sympathetic villain asking Batman to consider questions that we all want answers to.

This is the story that made me want to read Batman for the first time, and one of the main reasons I got into comic books this year.

There was a preview of Future State: Gotham today.

https://www.herodope.com/2021/05/08/dc-future-state-gotham-1-preview/

Which seems manga-inspired and not at all what I was looking for, not even a little bit.

Judge Dredd I've heard of. Zenescope I'm totally unfamiliar. Tell me about them! What makes them cool?