Geoff Johns Flashes Us…

…a look at the new Flash costume!

First look at #TheFlash!!! @GBerlanti @AJKreisberg @grantgust @CW_network http://t.co/9mMZHGqMw4 pic.twitter.com/pr8yzzB5Jy

— Geoff Johns (@geoffjohns) February 28, 2014

— Geoff Johns (@geoffjohns) February 28, 2014
 

That’s Grant Gustin in costume as The Flash. The actor has already debuted on CW’s Arrow this season as Barry Allen, but here he is in underwear pervert mode.

Time to save the world, Barry! Hope that fabric is breathable.

Some other thoughts after the jump.

Comin’ At Ya… Again: DC To Use 3D Covers In September

Septembers have been a big deal for DC Comics ever since they staged the New 52 reboot in September, 2011. In 2012, DC released issues numbered zero for each of their titles. Last year, they published a lot of 23 and 24 “point” issues, focused on the main villains of each title… including a few that they just made up. I mean, seriously: Relic? That guy just got beat down like six months ago and I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup of old Charlton Comics villains or creepy circus clowns.

But last year, not only did we get a ton of villain comics, but we got a bunch of actually pretty sweet 3D lenticular covers for those books. Or at least some of us did. When word started going around that the available stock of 3D covers might not cover the orders, we told the owner of our local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to stop offering to show the paying customers if they want to check out 1D, that we were willing to accept copies with standard 2D covers if he ran short. He initially said that he didn’t think it would be an issue. And then we got about three of the 3D covers, and his heartfelt thanks for being willing to compromise.

So what does DC have in store for this coming September, the third anniversary of the big reboot?

Yeah, more 3D covers.

New Teasers And Clips From Upcoming DC Justice League And Batman Projects

For those of you bummed about the decision to delay the upcoming Superman/Batman sequel until 2016, Warner Brothers has released a new clip today from the upcoming Justice League: War animated film. Bonus – this film has a fully fleshed out Wonder Woman with no weird, forced Kryptonian origins, so that’s nice. Take a moment a be grateful that Zach Snyder and company may be taking this opportunity to actually get their shit together, and enjoy this animated clip.

Via io9.

Faster Than A Speeding Coma: Batman Vs. Superman Delayed Until 2016

Warner Bros. has been pinning a lot of hopes on the upcoming Batman Vs. Superman movie (which won’t be it’s real name. They’re still working on the actual title. If I had to guess? Given how director Zack Snyder used a Frank Miller quote to announce the movie at last year’s San Diego Comic-Con, I’m putting my money on: “Man of Steel: The Dark Knight Returns.” Jesus, I’ve already lost the plot here) being a big enough event movie to take a dent of of Marvel Studios and its billion or so dollar stranglehold on superhero movies. And with the announcement that not only has Snyder cast Batman, but a Wonder Woman (with maybe another one or two heroes to be thrown in for good measure), people were getting pretty excited for the movie’s July 17, 2015 release date.

Yeah, except it’s not coming out on that day. It’s been mildly delayed.

For about a year.

Where’s Waldo: Wally West Returns In Flash Annual #3

I have been to two San Diego Comic-Cons and one Boston Comic Con since DC kicked off their New 52 reboot (and one just before, when most of DC’s plans for the characters after the reboot had become public), and there has been one question asked almost more than any other: “Excuse me, sir? You, the middle aged guy with the ponytail? Where the hell are your pants?”

But that is not the most asked question. It is vastly surpassed by, “If you see a woman in a Batgirl costume, can you give me a quick heads-up? And also pretend to be me, Dan DiDio?”

But even more asked than those everyday questions is: “What happened to Wally West, and are when we going to see him again?” It seems like you can’t swing a dead cat at SDCC without hitting a pissed-off Wally West fan, or being screamed at by outraged furries.

And the answer has always been something along the lines of, “Barry Allen is The Flash now, and that’s that.”  Despite the fact that Wally West was The Flash for just about as long as Barry Allen ever was, and that there were two generations of comic book fans who only knew Barry as Flash if they’d read Crisis On Infinite Earths, it has seemed for about two and a half years that Wally West had been consigned to the quarter bin of history.

Except, yeah: apparently he’s coming back in The Flash Annual #3.

Working With Vertigo: All-Star Western #26 Review

Editor’s Note: None a’ this is real. It is a twisted spoiler.

I have always had a soft spot for westerns, which is why I’ve always read Jimmy Palmiotti’s and Justin Gray’s Jonah Hex stories. Back in the pre New 52 days, Jonah Hex was a solid, straight-ahead western in the Sergio Leone vein, with real scumbag villains out on the frontier and plenty of gunfire to keep things interesting. There were no supervillains, monsters or alien invaders, and dammit, I liked it that way.

Because I always thought that the worst thing that ever happened to the character was when, back in the 80s, they took away Hex’s Colt, replaced it with a laser pistol, and had him fight space aliens or some Goddamned thing. As a guy who likes westerns, it was an abominable idea on its face, like dropping The Man With No Name onto the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise. It might sound like a good idea, but it’s all fun and games until poor Mr. Sulu is left confusedly looking back and forth from his fencing foil to the giant hole in his chest.

So I should be going apeshit nuts over the recent direction of All-Star Western, which has dropped Hex into the modern DC Universe. And I should be going particularly apeshit over All-Star Western #26, which gives us Jonah Hex, relentless bounty hunter and former Confederate soldier, interacting with Swamp Thing, alien plant life, The House of Mystery and a superhero just to round out the trifecta (Quadrifecta? I don’t know a lot about horse racing. I’m not allowed back at the racetrack since I asked the nice lady at the betting window for a quart of fresh glue).

I should be going apeshit. But Goddamn if this issue isn’t one hell of a lot of fun.

The Book Was Better: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Neil Gaiman To Produce Sandman Movie

I love comic book movies, but it is a love like John Hinckley Jr.’s for Jodie Foster: just because a feeling borders on obsession doesn’t mean that the object of that affection will ever love you back.

It is a hard-fought love, as I am 42 years old, and therefore lived in a dark time when genre fans hoping for a movie to their tastes would have to bite the bullet and pretend to be excited about things like Harley Davidson And The Marlboro Man and then find a way to convince ourselves that we were worthy of sucking breath in the morning. And if you wanted a comic book movie? Well, there was the first Batman movie that opened just after my 18th birthday, sure, but before that? Well, in the five years before Batman, the only comic book flicks that were released were The Return of The Swamp Thing, Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, Supergirl, and Howard The fucking Duck. That’s a real murderer’s row of movies. In the sense that I want to line them up and shoot them.

So we comic book fans truly live in an amazing time, in the sense that there are many movies based on comic books, and most of them are pretty damn good. Sure, there’s the odd X-Men 3 and Spider-Man 3 out there, but there are very few real stinkers. Sure, there are still arguments about Watchmen (which I rewatched recently and still like a lot), but that comic was so dense that it would have been well-nigh impossible to do a really killer adaptation of the thing. So while I like it, I can understand the argument that everyone involved should have left well enough alone. After all: some comics should just stay comics.

Which is one hell of a long way to go to report that Joseph Gordon-Levitt has announced via Twitter that he has signed on to produce a movie adaptation of Sandman with Neil Gaiman and David Goyer.

Parents And Children: Justice League #25, Justice League of America #10 and Cataclysm: Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #2 Quick Hit Reviews

Editor’s Note: It’s The End Of The World As We Know It, And I Feel Spoiled.

So between spending the week helping the new cat get used to a life where the searing agony of a shot to the nuts happens to stupid humans, and dealing with the first ice and snow falls of the winter (Three times in eight days! I love New England! And I am apparently alone in this affection, since clearly God has forsaken us!), so I am well behind in reading this week’s comics. You’d be surprised how hard it is to concentrate on a simple piece of graphic literature when the cat is yowling and my co-Editor Amanda is asking if I think it would help if she plunked his sack in a snowbank.

It’s hard being a parent, even to a lower beast who shits in a box, loves the taste of network cable, and thinks a laser pointer is the best thing ever despite not being a seven-year-old boy in 1977. So I found it interesting that the first three books I peeled off my stack this evening – Justice League #25, Justice League of America #10 and Cataclysm: Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #2 – all were about, on some level, the relationships between heroes (or anti-heroes) and their parents.

And all three books range from pretty good to excellent, but while I would normally review each of them in depth, well, it is Monday, and to compose my usual type of review for each comic would take me three hours and about 1,200 words to review, meaning there is no way in hell I could get them done before the new comics drop on Wednesday. So for a change, I’ll just write a couple of paragraphs about each, in ascending order of my opinion of them.

Assuming, of course, that this cat doesn’t decide to use my leg to sharpen his claws to remind me that I should be spending my money on scratching posts rather than silly things like neutering. Or comic books.

And Another One Down, And Another One Down: Animal Man, Batman: The Dark Knight Coming To A Close

It’s been a little more than two years since DC launched their New 52 reboot, and while DC still puts a big, “The New 52!” bullet on almost every cover of every book each month, there sure as hell aren’t 52 of those original release titles from September, 2011 still kicking around.

And now there will be two fewer. DC and book creators Jeff Lemire and Gregg Hurwitz have announced the cancellation of two original New 52 books, one surprising, one not (and yet still disappointing).

To wit: Animal Man and Batman: The Dark Knight will be concluding their runs in a few months, each with issue #29.

Forward Into The Past: Justice League 3000 #1 Review

People who know me know that I loves me some 80s-era Justice League International. In a lot of ways, it was the true breakout revelation coming out of Crisis On Infinite Earths: the premier super team of the DC Universe packed with 90 percent B-listers who often didn’t like each other, spent as much time bantering as they did fighting crime, and who seemed to spend about half their time wondering what they hell they were doing there (when they weren’t wondering how to turn a buck from being on the team).

It was groundbreaking, even though it shouldn’t have been – Keith Giffen’s, J. M. DeMatteis’s and Kevin Maguire’s Justice League came right after the horror and debacle of Justice League Detroit, which was also packed with B-listers, wanna-bes and spastics , but was missing little things like entertainment value, or characters you might give a shit about. Seriously: the only person who remotely cares about Vibe is Geoff Johns, and I am still reasonably convinced that he only brought the character back to settle a bar bet with Dan DiDio.

But eventually, all good things must pass. By the mid to late 90s, people began to tire of the humor of the Justice League International books (and to be honest, the balance between humor and action did seem to tilt firmly toward the Bwah-hah-ha-ha side of the scale), and DC rebooted the Justice League with JLA and Grant Morrison’s and Howard Porter’s vision of DC’s Big Five (plus Aquaman, who is only considered a DC A-lister when DiDio asks Johns, “Double or nothing?”).

And it has been with the Big Boys we have stayed for lo, these more than fifteen years. After all, DC launched their New 52 with a Justice League lineup that could have come straight from 1965 but for the inclusion of Cyborg and about 10,000 Jim Lee seams and fine detail lines. And a lineup like that leaves little room for Giffen’s and DeMatteis’s humor and infighting; after all, having Earth’s (Original) Mightiest Heroes sniping at each other as pussies and jackasses would be unseemly to those legendary character and to their owner’s parent company, who is struggling desperately to get a Justice League movie off the ground.

However, you should never count Giffen and DeMatteis out. Because with Justice League 3000, they have found a way to get some conflict and humor out of the Big Five by cloning them, dumping them 987 years into the future, and ripping all the history you think you know about the characters away… kinda like right after Crisis On Infinite Earths.

So the question is: can these guys catch lightning in a bottle twice? Particularly considering they’ve got Howard Porter, who helped revitalized the JLA after they left Justice League International, doing the art?

Well, kinda.