Reading Comics 220 "Spotlight Nation...and a sort of Batwedding"

Picked up one of Marvel's Free Spotlight comics with Dan Slott's Fantastic Four on the cover, with four pages from this month's relaunch.  There's been a lot of talk that Marvel took the FF off the board as a bargaining chip (seems to have worked) to get the movie rights back, dating back to Jonathan Hickman's Secret Wars, where Reed Richards and Doctor Doom had their most epic showdown to date.  Since then Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm have appeared in various team books.  And of course it's Johnny and Ben who appear in these preview pages.

There's also Gerry Duggan offering a look at Infinity Wars, which apparently will feature an Infinity Watch of heroes and villains protecting the various Infinity Gems.  Clearly calculated as an event to follow on the heels of Avengers: Infinity War at the movies.  Then there's Extermination, another X-Men event; a page detailing various Miracleman collections, including a Neil Gaiman volume called The Golden Age perhaps in the hope more material will eventually follow; various other one-and-two-page ads, including for Charles Soule's Return of Wolverine featuring the infamous new flaming claws; four pages of Cullen Bunn's Asgardians of the Galaxy, which is another cue from the movies, borrowing elements from Thor: Ragnarok; and finally four from Kelly Thompson's West Coast Avengers, which features both Hawkeyes and land sharks that do not try and pretend to be delivering things.

DC Nation #0 (DC)

Besides looks at Brian Michael Bendis's Superman and Scott Snyder's Justice League, this quarter-priced special released just before Free Comic Book Day this year featured a wicked Joker story from Tom King in anticipation of the Batwedding, in which the Clown Prince breaks into someone's home and he waits there, along with the poor guy, for an invitation.  It's as perfect a representation of Joker's twisted logic and sense of humor as I've ever seen.  A lot of fans swear by Alan Moore's Killing Joke, but I think that one speaks more to Moore's proclivities than it does Joker's.  King's Joker had a great spotlight in "War of Jokes and Riddles," in which he tries to figure out why nothing seems funny to him anymore, before realizing that Batman gives him bold new context, a challenge that will never get old.  Here he's just free to terrorize the poor guy, using his singular logic.

Batman #50 (DC)

The main event, though, the issue that promised the actual Batwedding, angered a lot of fans because the wedding...doesn't happen.  Instead, it proves an elaborate setup to the events of "I Am Bane," the earlier arc where Batman prevented Bane from attaining his Psycho-Pirate happy ending.  Holly Robinson, who has proven so crucial to King's Catwoman, turns out to be a stooge of Bane, and whispers in Catwoman's ear doubt about what a happy ending would do to Batman.  So the issue is instead really another caption character study of Batman and Catwoman's perspectives.  No one has done that sort of thing as well as King since Jeph Loeb's early Superman/Batman. 

Eternity #2, 4 (Valiant)

I went back and read #3, which I'd caught earlier, too, and that turned out to be a good idea, because it reads better in context, obviously, and is just a pleasure to read again in general.  Eternity is the fourth volume of Matt Kindt's brilliant Divinity suite, in which Kindt reimagines the idea of the omnipotent hero previously featured in Moore's Watchmen under the guise of Dr. Manhattan, this time as a Russian cosmonaut and his colleagues, one of whom became his wife and the other a foe, while he inspired a fanatic who has proven far more troublesome than he could've possibly imagined.  Eternity was pitched as beyond imagination, so its ending is apropos, the true consequences of Abram Adams's transformation far more wild than anything he discovers from the world that changed him forever.  Hopefully there's a fifth volume of this stuff.  The ending of this one certainly suggests that the story continues, anyway...

The Flash #50 (DC)

Josh Williamson continues his Rebirth buildup of previous lore by concluding the "Flash War" fight between Barry Allen and Wally West amicably and bringing back the classic Bart Allen in his classic Impulse costume.  Howard Porter's career renaissance continues, and that's great to see from a reader who well-remembers his JLA heyday.