Faced: The Joker Returns In Batman #13

With San Diego Comic-Con literally right around the corner (we fly out a week from today, and I have my first airline system nicotine fit one week and three hours from today), I’d been expecting a dearth of actual comic news until then, since the big stuff usually gets held until the appropriate convention panels, giving fans good reason to attend and creators a wide sampling of attractive people in superhero costumes upon whom they can hit. Protip, creators: steer clear of anyone in a Batgirl suit. There may be… ulterior motives.

So here I was, thinking I’d have a week to recharge my batteries and prepare for the sensory overload that is SDCC by doing some quickie reviews and getting my drink on at a reasonable hour for a change, when DC Comics went ahead and announced yesterday a tiny little news item. Y’know, nothing anyone would be interested in. Just the course of the Batman main title (at least) immediately following the Night of The Owls event and opening up the New 52’s second year.

Starring The Joker.

Twi-Nite: Nite Owl #1 Review

The problem we’ve run into a few times in the Before Watchmen books, and which I think we’re destined to keep running into and being annoyed by, are changes in character and established plot from the original Watchmen story. It’s been popping up since the first issue of Darwyn Cooke’s Minutemen, where we saw professional wrestler and noose enthusiast Hooded Justice suddenly able to disappear into shadows like the ghost of Bruce Lee. The worst offender (so far) has been Brian Azzarello’s Comedian, where Azzarello apparently decided that when Alan Moore wrote that Eddie Blake was working with Nixon in Dallas during the Kennedy assassination, what he really meant was that Blake was off somewhere fighting Moloch and whimpering over the shooting like a woman or some common hippie.

J. Michael Straczynski’s Nite Owl isn’t the worst offender in this vein – frankly, it would probably take seeing Rorschach gathering intel to take down Big Figure by going undercover at a glory hole outside a Chippendale’s to beat seeing The Comedian get all weepy over a millionaire Boston liberal – but JMS makes a fundamental mistake in Rorschach’s characterization that conflicted completely with Moore’s original work, and which popped me right out of the story. But we’ll get to that in a minute. Because despite that fundamental flaw that will be glaring to any hardcore fan of Moore’s original, there’s actually a lot to like about this comic book.

Laughable: The Comedian #1 Review

What I am about to write is not going to be objective, because The Comedian from Watchmen is just about my favorite comic character.

How much my favorite? Well, I not only have the movie action figure, but I also have the Comedian badge pin – you know, one of the ones that DC sold for a buck a whack in 1987 or so and which made Alan Moore lose his shit and then tell then-publisher Jeanette Kahn that he thought “DC” stood for “dook corporation.”

But that’s not all…

…I also rock the man’s badge on the front bumper of my car. And I can already hear you: “But Rob,” you’re saying, “The bloodstain is on the wrong side!” To which I can only say: not if you see me in your rearview mirror when I’m rumbling up behind you, motherfucker.

My point is that The Comedian and me? We’re close. We’ve been close since I was sixteen years old. I know The Comedian, Mr. Azzarello. And this?

This is not The Comedian.

“Am I Being A Jerk Right Now?” – Review Of Batgirl #10

Barbara Gordon finds herself questioning her approach to crime fighting as issue #10 of Batgirl opens. While punching out one of a handful of local thugs attempting to boost expensive cars at a fundraiser being held in the low rent Cherry Hill neighborhood, she asks herself, “Am I being a jerk right now?” Rich folks show up with their pricey vehicles in an area of town where the people have nothing, as if purposefully tempting those on the down and out to do wrong, and Babs helps them out with a punch to the face. Is she part of the problem?

Of course, that’s a giant oversimplification of the economic, cultural, and legal forces at work in poverty stricken urban environments, but writer Gail Simone is willing to at least posit the question as to how poor neighborhoods could improve their quality of life and decrease their crime rates. Sure, her question includes the potential of assistance from masked vigilantes, but it also begins to broach the larger issues of community involvement versus gentrification. As someone who moved into a neighborhood that is undergoing a slow process of gentrification, I must admit that Simone has my attention with this topic. As more folks like me move into this neighborhood, I worry that the quirky little things that drew me to it to begin with will begin to vanilla out: the ethnic grocery stores, the mom and pop hair cutting businesses, the porn stores. Yes. In the age of the internet, I somehow live in a neighborhood with two “adult entertainment” stores.

But, with the nifty local amenities, there is still a sketchy element to the area. The first time Rob and I had guests out to out place for New Year’s Eve, they were greeted by the sight of a wino pissing on one of our neighbor’s front steps. I’ve had my car side swiped while its been parked on the street and was unlucky in trying to find witnesses due to language barriers. Oh, and did I mention the porn stores?

As satisfying as it might be to dress up as a giant bat to terrify the local drunks coming out of the Salvation Army across the street in hope that they remember that the nearby stoops are not for pooping, I suspect that I’d eventually run afoul of the law. So, I must wait for gentrification to continues its slow process of squeezing folks out renewal. Since Gotham seems to take a broader view to the whole masked justice thing, what answers to the problem of decay in urban neighborhoods does Gail Simone uncover?

Barbara Gordon does a little soul searching and considers ways to “monetize asskicking”…along with spoilers…after the jump.

Attention Fanboys/girls: This Goes To 11 – Fantastic Fan Trailer Of Justice League Movie

Are you just now coming off the awesome high that was seeing The Avengers movie three times straight, possibly in back to back viewings? Do you perhaps find yourself approaching the debut of The Amazing Spider-Man with cautious enthusiasm, nay, excitement? Have you already staked out sidewalk space in front of your local megaplex in anticipation of scoring the first midnight screening tickets to The Dark Knight Rises? Well then, friends, this fan made trailer for Justice League is for you.

This trailer was created by YouTube user SouperboyX, in advance of Warner Brothers finally beginning to make mumble noises of “Oh, perhaps we could make a team movie after all. What’s that super group we have called? Superfriends? Ask Rick’s boy in accounting. He knows that nerd shit.” He describes it:

Here we basically have a ‘Suicide Squad/VRA/Brainiac Invasion’ type thing going on here. Probably what would be the three main acts of a film. Since everything has to be pretty big. I can’t really show you guys how I would mesh together those storylines in a two and a half minute trailer, but you guys can leave that to your imagination I suppose!

Which is about right, if you think about it. The suits at the studio would probably throw in notes to the writers demanding that more villains be shoe horned into the movie, distracting from the plot. Spider-Man 3, I’m looking in your direction.

SouperboyX seems to have sourced his trailer from a variety of footage, including Smallville, the Wonder Woman pilot, Green Lantern, and The Dark Knight Rises. I have to admit I got a kick out of seeing Justin Hartley back as Green Arrow. I’m still bummed he’s not going to be in the new Green Arrow series.

Check out the trailer (and a HELL of a trailer it is, too!), after the jump.

Like Mother, Like Daughter: Silk Spectre #1 Review

I will say this about Silk Spectre #1, written by Darwyn Cooke with art by Amanda Conner: these are two artists who are bringing their A Game to the very possibly losing proposition of Before Watchmen.

This is a book that, at least generally, looks like Watchmen, reads more like Watchmen than Cooke’s Minutemen (which reads more like a standard DC superhero comic, only with Hooded Justice as Batman and Nite Owl as Batman and Captain Metropolis as Batman), and embraces the character-over-action ethos of Watchmen, and what action is here is visceral and real-feeling, as it generally did in its parent book.

The book features a relatable and believable sixteen year old female protagonist, and a believable character in her mother, provided you believe that any WASPy community middle-1960s suburban community would accept a Polish former softcore porn star and her Jewish husband… but it also portrays that community being intolerant of the “family” in a way that feels realistic… for 1966. If it took place anytime after 1988, Sally Jupiter’s house would be surrounded by teenaged boys with copies of She Devils In Silk whimpering for an autograph and praying she understood that “autograph” was shorthand for “handjob.” But I digress.

My point is that, God help me, Silk Spectre #1 is a good comic book. However, it is a good comic book that takes place in the Watchmen universe, and I’m not sure my prejudices in favor of the original will ever allow me to rank one of these Before Watchmen books as great.

Getting It Coming And Going – DC Announces Final New 52 Cancellations, New #0 Issues

As Rob pointed out this past Saturday, DC was in the process of cancelling four titles to make way for new series Talon, Team Seven, The Phantom Stranger, and Sword Of Sorcery. While only Justice League International had been confirmed at the time, DC has now also announced the cancellations of Voodoo, Resurrection Man, and Captain Atom. All four titles will have their own #0 issues in September and then get put to bed. I guess the good news is that Red Hood And The Outlaws and Deathstroke: My Secret Space Romance With Lobo will still continue to be published. I supposed illiterate people need stuff to look at and line hamster cages with, too.

But…but…what do we get in return for this great *cough* sacrifice *cough*?

52 Problems But A Bwah-Hah-Hah Ain’t One: DC’s Third Wave

We’re coming up on a year since DC Comics rebooted their universe with the New 52, and by the time that year ticks over, we’ll already be down to 42… which, knowing comics, will still not be the Ultimate Answer.

On top of the cancellations of original New 52 titles Men of War, Mister Terrific, O.M.A.C., Static Shock, Blackhawks, and Pile of Steaming Shit (Whoops! I meant Hawk And Dove! Damn those typos!) back in January, DC recently announced that they were cancelling Justice League International, rebooted from the 80s classic Giffen / Dematteis / Maguire title by creative team Dan Jurgens and Aaron Lopresti, at the one year mark. At that time, DC kicked off six new books to keep the number of monthlies at 52, merely for the purposes of marketing and not because Dan DiDio can only remember two double-digit numbers at once and can’t (or won’t) forget “69”, as has been rumored by sources I just made up.

Well, it is now June, and DC has just announced that they will be launching four new monthly comics come July, which means that barring additional cancellations, DC would be carrying 55 books, a number which Dan can’t remember, nor drive, nor use to easily keep track of the age of consent (We kid, Dan! Bring back your Sunday “We Love Comics!” panel at SDCC this year!).

However, let’s start with the new books launching in September:

Watchmen Strikes Again: Minutemen #1 Review

Minutemen, the first issue of the first book of Before Watchmen, by Darwyn Cooke, will, if it’s done even remotely correctly, be impossible to review objectively and completely until all six issues have been released. I say this, because after having read it four times back to back now, I went back and read just the first issue of Alan Moore’s and David Gibbons’s original Watchmen, and I realized that it is impossible for me to read that issue objectively because all I know is the complete work.

Here’s just a quick example of what I’m talking about: in the first issue of Watchmen, there’s a panel right after Rorschach leaves Dr. Manhattan and Laurie, where Laurie is on the phone with Dan Dreiberg, and in the foreground, Dr. Manhattan is smiling. Having read the whole series, I understand that Manhattan, who can see through time like Dr. Who or a common mescaline head, is smiling because he knows that Laurie will wind up with Dan and find happiness. There is no way I could know that having read just the first issue.

So when I see things in Minutemen #1 like Hooded Justice somehow disappearing a goon on one side of a block-wide warehouse, and then somehow within instants moving unseen to the other side of the block-wide warehouse and stalking across a catwalk up to the remaining goon, making the goon piss himself in abject terror as if Hooded Justice were Angry Jesus as opposed to a stocky BDSM freak in a homemade lucha libre outfit just fucking walking toward him, I need to calm my standard, “This is a Thing That Should Not Be” rage and remind myself that Cooke might have a goal for this story that is not currently apparent. And hopefully that goal is something beyond, “I like lots of money.”

Jim Lee – Stepping Down From Justice League Already?

It’s not even a year yet, but Bleeding Cool is running an article that reports DC is “making a number of approaches to what could only be described as the A-List of modern comics to sign up for a twelve issue run on Justice League, to replace Jim Lee.” While Geoff Johns will remain on the book as the writer, apparently DC is looking to lock down art talent for the next few years – including as yet unnamed individuals who are currently working for Marvel. Oooo! The plot thickens!

Just who could or would step into Jim Lee’s shoes? Could it be frequent Johns’s collaborator, Ivan Reis? Would DC steal Marc Silvestri back from whatever projects he’s engaged in, assuming he’s done icing his shoulder after penciling those couple Incredible Hulk books last fall and that variant cover of The Walking Dead #100 for Robert Kirkman over at Image? Would DC lure Greg Land away from Marvel’s Uncanny X-Men to turn his pornbox light on for Wonder Woman?