DC Comics Ongoing Discussion

[Shamrock Holmes]

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.

Manchester Black, not Maxwell. And only vaguely based on Jenny in the sense of being a powerful British "hero".

Manchester was a regular meta-human with telepathy and telekinesis. Jenny -- at least in her Colonel Sparks identity -- was a pseudo-immortal electrokinetic, teleporter and regenerator.

 

[theenglish]

I had no clue Manchester Black and Henry Bendix were Wildstorm characters. This is the same Bendix that Jonathan Kent has been dealing with I presume. Thanks for the insight.

 

[Kai "the spy"]

Manchester Black, not Maxwell. And only vaguely based on Jenny in the sense of being a powerful British "hero".

Manchester was a regular meta-human with telepathy and telekinesis. Jenny -- at least in her Colonel Sparks identity -- was a pseudo-immortal electrokinetic, teleporter and regenerator.

Yeah, sorry. Brainfart. Anyway, he was a pastiche of Jenny Sparks in that he was the Union Jack-shirt wearing, chainsmoking Brit with the cynical jokes leading the team.

I had no clue Manchester Black and Henry Bendix were Wildstorm characters. This is the same Bendix that Jonathan Kent has been dealing with I presume. Thanks for the insight.

Bendix is a Wildstorm character, but Manchester Black's only the pastiche of one. But yes, it was Henry Benix who became Jon Kent's nemesis for a bit there.

 

[JD]

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.

Sounds kinda interesting, I might have to check those out eventually.

Where's the best place to read Batman: Eternal while I'm working my way through the Snyder/Capullo run?

 

[JoeZhang]

All the main WildStorm is on DC Universe - something to note that in various places they do things that completely change the status quo in ways you could not in the main DCU - which makes it all interesting.

Warren Ellis did a revamp about 5 years ago called "The Wildstorm" which is a single series that integrates all the characters (It also has a single spin-off featuring serial killer/monster versions of the JLA).

Now here's an old question - was it ever revealed where Terry Sloan was actually from in the Earth-2 series? I didn't see an answer when I re-read the series over last couple of days.

 

[Kai "the spy"]

Warren Ellis did a revamp about 5 years ago called "The Wildstorm" which is a single series that integrates all the characters (It also has a single spin-off featuring serial killer/monster versions of the JLA).

Was cancelled before its planned conclusion, though, due to low sales. It was very good, but unfortunately incomplete, so that should be considered before engaging with that series.

 

[Shamrock Holmes]

Yeah, sorry. Brainfart. Anyway, he was a pastiche of Jenny Sparks in that he was the Union Jack-shirt wearing, chainsmoking Brit with the cynical jokes leading the team.

In that sense, yes.

 

[JoeZhang]

Was cancelled before its planned conclusion, though, due to low sales. It was very good, but unfortunately incomplete, so that should be considered before engaging with that series.

I reread it recently - it has a solid conclusion regardless of what storyline could have gone further.

 

[YLu]

Yeah, it wasn't so much cancelled prematurely as the sequel series never materialized. It was a whole weird situation where issues of the WildCATs spin-off/sequel even got solicited but then just... vanished into the ether because the artist wasn't turning in the pages or something? I'm not sure it was ever revealed what happened behind the scenes there.

Where it ended, it definitely does leave a couple of unresolved mysteries though, so if that sort of thing bothers you...

 

[theenglish]

WildCATs is starting up again though, right?

Similar things happened with the Doomsday Clock series that it was originally supposed to be the end of the New 52, but by the time it came out much of what it was supposed to set up had already been contradicted by other events such as Death Metal or Bendis' Legion.

 

[Kai "the spy"]

WildCATs is starting up again though, right?

Yeah, but a new version. Or rather, an Earth-Prime version, with some of the characters having been introduced in a backdoor-pilot kind of way in the Bat-books of the past few years.

 

[TheSeeker]

I just got caught up on the latest issue of Action Comics. I knew it would probably happen eventually, but

Spoiler: Superman Spoiler

they finally gave him his secret identity again. I'm kind of sorry to see it come back. I was enjoying his identity being common knowledge.

 

[Kai "the spy"]

April solicits are out.

- Dawn of DC FCBD release, propably a good idea to pick one of those up. I mean, they are free.
- Green Arrow by Joshua Williamson. On the one hand, it's a 6-issue mini and the synopsis sounds as if it'd be best to trade-wait, but then there's that line about it setting the stage for major stories in 2023. Not sure if genuine or just promo-speech. Fuck this, I'll just trade-wait, I'll learn of important stuff when it comes.
- Superboy: The Man of Tomorrow, also a 6-issue mini, and apparently the winner of the last Round Robin contest. Huh. Well, I'd be up for some Conner Kent, but the synopsis says he feels he doesn't fit in anywhere and heads to the stars to find his place. WTF?! Haven't they done this feeling-out-of-place thing for years now? And didn't he just recently come back from space (well, Gemworld, but still, not Earth)? If they want to put him someplace his own, how about moving him back to Hawaii? He hasn't been there for decades now, and it's not like the islands are overcrowded with superheroes, so why not make that his turf again? Urgh, I was looking forward to picking this up, but now ...
- Hang on, Superman #3 is $4.99 with only 32 pages?! What's up with that? I get Action is $4.99, that's got more pages. I hope that's a typo. Not that I'd stop buying over a price-hike, but it would still suck, especially with all those other 32 page-books at $3.99.
- Who the hell is Gustavo Duarte? Is he worth picking up that Speechless one-shot?
- Nice Neal Adams hommage on that Icon vs. Hardware #3.
- Really tempted by that History of the DCU hardcover.
- The Stargirl mini concludes with #6.
- Two issues of The Flash in April.
- Steel anniversary hardcover. Well, maybe, if I got cash to burn.
- Tom Strong Compendium. Sixty bucks. Well, looks like I won't be getting that Steel hardcover when it comes out.

 

[The Realist]

I'll be purchasing Steel: A Celebration of 30 Years with extreme prejudice. I've got all the Superman-related books in the anniversary "Celebration" line (Supes, Lois, Lex, Superboy), and they're all great historical overviews for the characters.

 

[kirk55555]

- Superboy: The Man of Tomorrow, also a 6-issue mini, and apparently the winner of the last Round Robin contest. Huh. Well, I'd be up for some Conner Kent, but the synopsis says he feels he doesn't fit in anywhere and heads to the stars to find his place. WTF?! Haven't they done this feeling-out-of-place thing for years now? And didn't he just recently come back from space (well, Gemworld, but still, not Earth)? If they want to put him someplace his own, how about moving him back to Hawaii? He hasn't been there for decades now, and it's not like the islands are overcrowded with superheroes, so why not make that his turf again? Urgh, I was looking forward to picking this up, but now ...

Didn't both Superman and Supergirl recently come back from space/have adventures that took place almost completely in space recently? Are the various writers just taking turns temporarily exiling various Earth based Kryptonians to space?

 

[JoeZhang]

Yeah, but a new version. Or rather, an Earth-Prime version, with some of the characters having been introduced in a backdoor-pilot kind of way in the Bat-books of the past few years.

What's weird about the new WILDCats is that all of the characters are slightly tweaked versions of the original characters except for Majestic who if we take dialogue at face value is:

Spoiler

A twelve year earth boy called Jimmy. Previous when trapped in the DCU he used the alias - Jim McArest so that might the character's actual name now

.

 

[The Realist]

A beautiful variant cover by Joe Quesada for the first issue of Christopher Priest's upcoming Superman: Lost limited series (click to embiggen):

 

[Kai "the spy"]

May solicits are out.

- Titans is a likely pick-up.

- So is SHAZAM! by Mark Waid & Dan Mora.

- The previously announced two seperate GL books for Hal Jordan and John Stewart, respectively, have been combined, with John Stewart now only a back-up feature. Not happy about that, so I may skip this and pick up the John Stewart portion when it is collected in the future.

- Batman: The Brave & the Bold ... argh, it's so tempting. The main Batman feature is set in the past, there's a Batman Black & White story by Dan Mora, the Stormwatch feature kinda sounds interesting, and there's a Superman feature. God-dammit, I think I gotta cough up those eight bucks per month.

- Cyborg is an easy pass.

- Spirit World... I mean, if I had more time to read, and an unlimited comic budget, maybe, but as it stands, just not interested enough.

- The Vigil, apparently a new covert superhero team. Could be interesting, especially written by RamV. I'll wait and see, if I hear good things, I might buy the tpb.

- City Boy, yeah, same as with Spirit World.

- Batman #135 is actually #900. But it appears not to be the now common anthology issue, but the more traditional over-sized part of the ongoing series with maybe a bigger event than usual. SInce I'm not following the current Bat-books, no thanks.

- Power Girl Special, one-shot. Not sure if it's a collected edition of the PG feature from Action Comics, or the outsourcing of the same. Probably the latter, as PG isn't featured in Action anymore. I liked what I read in Action #1051, and it's a one-shot, so I'll probably get it.

- Milestone-centric New Talent Showcase. Wouldn't usually consider it, what with them usually being around the ten bucks price point, but it says it's $3.99 with 112 pages?! Yeah, I'll give new people a try at that price.

- New Peacemaker mini-series. Sounds like they're trying to get closer to the Michael Cena-version in tone, rather than what we last saw in the Garth Ennis one-shot. Alright, might give this a try when the tpb comes around.

- New mini-series in the White Knight universe and a prequel to the new Suicide Squad game. Not interested.

- Batman #181 facsimile, 1st appearance of Poison Ivy. Tempting.

 

[JoeZhang]

When did Hal's costume go back to the more original look of not being green on the shoulders? In this new series or before then?

 

[Nerys Myk]

- New Peacemaker mini-series. Sounds like they're trying to get closer to the Michael Cena-version

That would be something.