This is actually a few days old, but somehow I missed it. March solicits are out. - The new Jon Kent mini-series launches, so gonna pick that up. - Superman: Odyssey sounds really good, but it also sounds like it might be a better read as a collected edition, so I'm gonna hold off until then. - Lazarus Planet is still going on. And appears to have more ramifications on the wider DCU than I'd thought. Part of me is regretting not pre-ordering at least the main books, now, but then, I should have enough experience as a comics reader to navigate my way through the "*see Lazarus Planet so-and-so" captions until there's a collected edition. - New Doom Patrol series launches. Probably won't pick that up. Haven't even read the Grant Morrison run, yet. - There's another seasonal anthology one-shot in March? Do these sell so good that DC wants to put them out even without a holiday to tie it into? - Waller vs Wildstorm, after a few months delay, finally launches. If it doesn't get delayed again. - There's a new Superman Anniversary "best of" collection, but as much as I love Superman, it feels a bit like yesterday that I got the last one, even though it's been five years. Probably gonna skip it. - Facsimile of the first appearance of Jason Todd might be interesting. I know the pre-Crisis version was really a Dick Grayson knock-off, but I still haven't read the story, and I like the era. - So, Monkey Prince reaches #12 without a "final issue" marker. Wasn't this launched as a "limited series"? I guess at some point it turned ongoing. - A José Luis García-López Batman collection. Even at 50 bucks, that is really tempting. - And, damned, so is the Top 10 compendium.
I just got around to reading the Legion vs the Justice League. What a pile of s*** that was! Spoiler: Plot Spoilers WTF Does Bendis realize that he's writing a super hero comic and that Gold Lantern and Mon-El aren't the only ones with super powers? Six issues of talking, and not even a decent story or mystery. I feel like I missed an issue in there somewhere--at the end of #5 we learn that Vandal Savage is the Big Bad and then at the beginning of issue six they've already captured him and stopped the Great Darkness. It all happened offscreen??? Also, there is not explanation for how Savage accomplished his plot other than his repeating over and over again that he's immortal and travelled back and forth in time for many lifetimes in order to do it. Is that it? Did I miss something?
New costume design for Power Girl, presumably for Action Comics: I've always thought PG's traditional outfit was among the more hideous in superhero comics (and not because of the boob window, about which I'm agnostic). This is an upgrade, IMO. The red jacket helps to set off and break up all that white, which is one of my main complaints about her standard costume. And even without the jacket, this version works better than her usual design. Baring her arms and shoulders instead of her legs makes the leotard look more stylishly cut and less like a swimsuit, and the sleek elbow gloves are a big improvement on the weird flared pirate things that were the icing on the ugly cake of some of her costume variants.
That Power Girl costume is awful, but still better then the New 52 one with the stupid P symbol. I prefer the classic Pre-New 52 costume, although her original All Star Comics costume is also pretty good and I have a soft spot for her yellow Justice League Europe costume.
Bronze Age Legion was peak DC for me. If a young Superman is going to be rebooted in the movies, I'd love to see the Legion show up.
The Legion was my absolute favourite comic book from about 1978 to 1986. I really wanted to like Bendis' reboot and I think the character designs are great. There is a lot of potential the the re-imagining; but the stories themselves have been weak and uninspired. Other than Jo, Imra, Reep, and Luonu I don't feel we've gotten to know any of the characters as individuals.
Cavil was “young Superman”. We literally watched him get his Super suit in MOS. But yeah, I’d love for the Legion to show up. Not sure how though. 2nd or 3rd Supes movie? Dedicated Legion film with a later crossover like ‘Civil War’? Either way, I’m there. I was introduced to the Legion in the Grell years, and collected in the Giffen years. As much as I enjoyed the early ‘5 years later” era, it always felt like a long Elseworlds. Seems like a struggle to make the Legion even remotely as successful as it used to be. Three iterations (don’t know if there’s more) doesn’t help.
I’ve been going through the collections of LSH stories put out a little while ago covering the first issue of post-Superboy in the title through to that series’ end (4 volumes). Coincidentally, I stopped collecting at the last issue with Superboy (can’t recall the reason, just that it happened). Just happy I’ve been able to renew acquaintances with “my” LSH (I started collecting in the early Grell days). And Ditko art in LSH? Quite the surprise. Got the Bendis series because I was curious. Not overly impressed.
I started collecting Legion about 6-9 issues before the Great Darkness Saga. Dropped it during the “Five Years Later” era when they brought in the young clones and then started intimating that they were the “real” Legion. It just reeked of them getting cold feet and listening to old fans who didn’t like the current version.
Is there anything more baffling than DC's decision to bring back the pre-Crisis Legion only a few months after introducing a brand new rebooted version in 2004, thereby not only completely undermining the new version but creating a right mess where there's two incompatible versions of the team from two incompatible futures both interacting with the present? Seriously, what was even the though process there? Do one or the other, man.
That was an editorial mess up, but there were a lot of those at the time. Final Crisis ended up not being compatible with the year long series that was supposed to lead into it. To make matters worse for the threeboot Legion, the Lightning Saga was such a great story it made us miss the original Legion after we'd given up hope of ever seeing them again. I'm still angry with DC for allowing the Legion series to wallow in the new 52--it was obvious from the start that after a great return in Adventure Comincs, Levitz had run out of steam and/or interest in the comic. DC should have brought in a new Team in 2012. SWAMP THING by RAM V It's the holidays and I am getting caught up on my comics reading. This 16 issue series was so good. Ram V proved he "got" the character during his writing of Justice League Dark, and he turned this into the best version of Swamp Thing since Moore's run in the 80's. It is a shame that it only lasted 16 issues. It was planned as a ten issue series and then extended to 16 so I had hoped we might get more. Levi Kamei is a great character, and his story makes room for a whole new mythology around the character. The final six issues include an appearance by Hal Jordan and a supporting role for John Hawksmoor. UP NEXT I'm going to get caught up on Superman's return to Earth and then go back and read Dark Crisis from the beginning because I haven't read anything since August and forget most of what was happening.
Who's John Hawksmoor? I thought I had at least some familiarity with most of the major DC characters, but I've never heard of him.
He is a Wildstorm character who was integrated into the main universe back in 2011. He has the power to interact with the spirit of cities--supposedly his powers are technology from the future, but he comes across as more of a mage type character to me.
That solicit is the first time IIRC that he's been referred to as John Hawksmoor, normally he's known as Jack Hawksmoor, although they are largely interchangeable linguistically.
Yes, my bad--He's called Jack in the comics. Jack is a name for John. I don't know why I referred to him as that other than he always reminds me of Constantine. EDIT: I just checked online and his name is John Cooper Hawksmoor--although I don't really know where that comes from as I didn't follow the Wildstorm characters until they joined the main DCU.
OK, thanks. I don't know much about the Wildstorm characters, so that would explain why I never heard of him.
I didn't know much about them (and I still don't) until the New 52. There were a lot of complaints that they didn't fit in with the main DCU at the time, but I think you'd have to be familiar with the source material to think that. The originally universe was in Image comics, which was created or led by Jim Lee, seems to have been a more violent and darker one than Earth Prime. At some point, Lee sold the rights to DC. I didn't really see any of those criticisms. The characters were interesting to me, especially Midnighter and Apollo. At some point, I'd like to go back and pick up some collections of the nineties stories just to check them out. There is all kinds of stuff online, which is how I learned about it.
Jim Lee's sublabel was Wildstorm, which started during the founding days of Image, but which he eventually sold to DC. DC continued it as a sublabel for over a decade, as they had several sublabels in those days (like Vertigo, Helix, etc.). It was indeed darker, more violent, and tackled more political subject matter which the main DC titles wouldn't touch. That's mostly thanks to Warren Ellis' run on Stormwatch, the team back then being the official elite super-team of the United Nations, led by Henry Bendix. During this run, Ellis introduced Jack Hawksmoore, as well as Apollo & Midnighter (though they weren't part of Stormwatch) and Jenny Sparks. Ellis ended the series with several heroes, disillusioned with having to uphold the status quo and the existing political and economic power structures, having to fight Henry Bendix when he decided to rule over the world himself, instead of just being in charge of security. This led to Stormwatch being disbanded and Hawksmoore, Sparks, Apoll & Midnighter, as well as a few others, formed The Authority instead, outside of the control of the United Nations or any other governmental or private organisation. As for the Wildstorm characters in the DCU post-New52, I actually do think that they don't quite fit in. For one thing, Stormwatch and later The Authority were basically Wildstorm's Justice League, especially in scope. The space station with lots of uniformed technical personell as seen in Stormwatch actually was picked up on the Justice League Unlimited cartoon (for which Ellis, coincidentally, wrote a couple of episodes). DC had also introduced The Elite as a kind of critical pastiche on The Authority, with Maxwell Black being based on Jenny Sparks, while Apollo & Midnighter themselves are pastiches of Superman & Batman. So, putting all those characters in the same universe, and a lot of those had to be redefined. Stormwatch became this secretive Black Ops super-team, though that didn't seem to satisfy anybody, which is why that book was cancelled so quickly. Apollo & Midnighter are still pretty much the same, except they had to go low-key as opposed to the kind of adventures the World's Finest went on, mostly keeping off the radar of the other heroes, which heavily limited how they could be used. Now, WildCATs does seem to integrate relatively well, mostly because the characters and their concept were different enough from the Justice League (well, they are more inspired by Marvel's mutant teams of the 90s, anyway, with Grifter being an obvious pastiche of early days' Deadpool). But the Stormwatch/Authority characters and concepts kind of need their own universe outside of Earth-Prime, out of the shadow of the Justice League, to really shine.