DC to Batgirl From SDCC: Sandwich – I Don’t Have One.

Image via Bleeding Cool. Also, I like pie.

This week, we’ve got thirteen new number ones, plus Justice League #1 from last week. I added it in because it seemed a little silly to give it its own post last week, so I saved it. On September 7, 2011, DC released 14 (really 13, plus 1 from the week before) brand new titles featuring 105 credited creators, 97 male and 8 female. So we’re nearly two percent less than the average amount. If you want to get into a whole percentage of percentage thing, this 7.6% is almost twenty percent below the average total of female creators.

So, holding all those “The New 52” panels hostage while constantly harping about how DC needs more women while you were at the microphone really seems to have worked out, huh, Kyrax2? Don’t you know you were supposed to do the decent thing and walk up to the microphone and say “Mr. Didio, you’re really awesome! How’d you get to be so awesome?”, while shallowly breathing through your mouth to avoid smelling the other sweaty, latex clad superfans gathered in the aisle waiting for their turn to fawn at the throne?

14 down, 38 to go. Maybe DC thinks hiding the Mysterious Woman Of Mystery in every single DCnU #1 is raising the total number of women in its books. Maybe we’ll find out she could be any one of a set of octuplets. Cosmic octuplets. Cosmic octuplets who follow Booster Gold through space and time, because he’s from the future and he knows that it’s important for the future of humanity to up the number of women involved in DC and –

Oh, fuck it. Just come back next year and try again. I have money riding on this.

Action Comics #1: Look At This Fucking Super Hipster

EDITOR’S NOTE: There might be spoilers here. I will try to keep them out, but I am writing this hung over, so I guarantee nothing.

Okay, I will never rule out the possibility that I am a complete moron, but I’ve read Action Comics #1 three times now, and to save my soul, I CANNOT figure out how Superman knew about the bomb on the platform. Oh wait… this book was written by Grant Morrison. That explains everything.

Morrison has a habit going back at least to his JLA run where he seems to like to jump right into a sequence without any explanation as to the events that let up to that sequence. Unlike any other writer I can think of, he seems willing to say, “Look: this is a comic book. Does it really matter how Superman found out about the bomb? Why spend time showing him investigating and wandering around asking questions or seeing clues or any other explanation? You just want to see him try to STOP the bomb, right? RIGHT… okay, maybe I just don’t feel like writing the explanation. Write it, don’t write it, the check cashes just as easy.”

13 Problems But A Foot Ain’t One

Things will be quiet for the remainder of the broadcast day for one reason.

Okay, for thirteen reasons.

DC’s Crazy Stalker Girlfriend

You promised me Dave Matthews tickets in this timeline! And cuddling!

Who the hell is this chick? DC wants us to play Where’s Waldo and spot the crazy lady in each of the 13 issues of the New 52 that have been released this week, with plans for her to make appearances in each remaining #1. They’re whoring her out more than Ke$ha at a recording industry retreat, “Can a sister drop some mad rhymes on a random kinda celeb’s mixtape? What? Ke$ha. K-E-dollar si- Please? I’m so lonely.”

No one knows who she is, but theories range from some sort of new Harbinger to a gender swapped Time Trapper Keeper. To paraphrase Bill Cosby quoting another guy, “She’s in your home state! She’s outside your front door! And she’s coming to get you!”.

Publicity generator or monster in my closet: you decide! Also, I am not a hoarder.

Oh no! She found me!

Time to start smearing Jell-o and lighting my couch on fire. BRB.

Jonah Hex In: A Good Jonah Hex Movie

One of my biggest fears when I heard about DC’s New 52 was that they’d use it as an opportunity to cancel some of their smaller books that never got the attention (or, honestly, the audience) that Batman and Green Lantern got, but that I really enjoyed, like Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray’s Jonah Hex.

I don’t remember why I was so worried… oh yeah – because DC fucking cancelled Jonah Hex.

But I should have known that Jonah Hex is IMPOSSIBLE to kill (If the Goddamned movie couldn’t do it…)! DC’s kept Gray and Palmiotti on to script All-Star Western, which will be starring ALL of DC’s star western characters, including Jonah Hex, and…

Yeah, pretty much Jonah Hex.

This past weekend, DC released a motion comics trailer for the book, which you can see after the jump:

Scalping Batgirl

Bleeding Cool’s reporting that Batgirl #1 – which doesn’t even go on sale until tomorrow – is selling on eBay for ten bucks… which is more than triple the cover price.

Now granted, the book’s already sold out at the distributor level, but it’s already gone into a second printing (Which, if Justice League #1 is any guide, should turn around back into comic stores in a week or two), and again: IT HASN’T EVEN GONE ON FUCKING SALE YET.

This, of course, is not a problem for me, because when I heard this news I promptly emailed my local comic store owner, who knows me by name and asks after my general welfare when he sees me, and asked him to set a copy aside for me. Which I GUESS you could try with your iPad. It might respond. If it does, well… I’d say seek help, but the people sitting next to you on the bus while you whimper at your computer that you “Really want to get your hands on Batgirl” will probably make sure you get some whether you want it or not.

No, if you want an honest-to-God first print copy of Batgirl #1, your iPad won’t help you. But that’s understandable; if I’d ever taken my local comic store owner into an airline lavatory and made him perch on my lap while I masturbated, he wouldn’t help ME, either. (via Bleeding Cool)

Writing Big

Now to me, here’s some good news: Tony Daniel, the writer and artist on the DC Rebooted Detective Comics #1, did an interview with USA Today talking about how he’s writing some honest-to-Christ Batman whodunit stories, as opposed to stories about The World’s Greatest Caveman No Pilgrim No Why Is Batman Time Traveling Curse You Morrison Your Weed Is Laced Arrrgh.

The article has a bunch of art from Detective Comics #1. Check it out and come back…

Not only is Daniel apparently committed to doing some old school detective comics, he’s the first creator on a major DC book I’ve heard really taking advantage of the reboot to come up with some new villains:

Brain Bleach – Argh, I Can’t Unsee What I Have Seen

Things I’ve learned wandering around the intertrons today:

• 

  That's right. Make it rain for Mommy!

  Voodoo, one of the DC new 52 relaunch titles, will follow the heart warming tale of a stripper who discovers she’s a monster. That’ll put a dent in those tips.

I’ll probably read this. I’m currently working through The Essential Dazzler. I have no moral high ground.

Plotpoint

The DC Source blog released some promotional hype for the New 52 Flash reboot that’s coming in on September 28 with art by Francis Manapul and co-written by Manapul and Brian Buccellato. Here’s a taste; you can see the whole nut here.

Flash’s editor, Brian Cunningham, chimed in on the new series:

But it also has something else. It’s something we let slip at Comic Con, but many of you might not have heard it, so brace yourself for this SPOILER WARNING:

The Flash is a single man. He’s a bachelor who has never been married.

I’ll give you all a few seconds to take that in and digest it.

Yes, folks — in the post-FLASHPOINT world, Barry Allen has not only never dated Iris West, but he’s dating someone else entirely in issue #1! And that someone is…his longtime coworker Patty Spivot!

If that upsets you, sorry about that. But I make no apologies for opening up a traditional storytelling avenue with our hero’s romantic life, something that’s been shut closed for a very long time now.

Look: I love The Flash. Mike Baron’s stuff right after the first Crisis reboot is amongst my favorite 12 issues of comics. William Messner-Loeb’s run on the book was fun back when I was in college (I even have a soft spot in my heart for Chunk, fer Chrissake), and what Mark Waid and Geoff Johns did with the character was damn entertaining.

That said…

Issues With Commitment

Heidi MacDonald of The Comics Beat did a pretty thorough interview with Jim Lee about the DC relaunch of Justice League #1 this past Wednesday.

A bunch of comic stores in New York City did midnight sales Tuesday night / Wednesday morning, and Jim talks about how he and Geoff Johns brought pizza to the comics fans waiting in line:

I’ve seen midnight openings for video games and movies, but I’ve not seen a store signing at midnight with creators before — certainly not at DC. Geoff and I wanted to go the extra step and be there in person for people who are so into a comic that they were willing to forgo sleep.

Oh, Jim… I know you’ve been to San Diego Comic-Con… how can you be surprised that a fan would be willing to forgo sleep when you know full well that many of us are perfectly willing to forgo bathing?

(via Salon)