Watching the Walmart Giants 1 "August 2019"

I guess it was time to make it official.  Nobody really seems to be putting an emphasis on these things, so at a time when they're finally going to be available outside Walmart, the stuff I've been reading from Walmart since June 2018...I'm just going to make as regular a feature here as I've been blogging these days.   Hopefully once a month, right?

The Walmart DC Giants began fourteen months ago.  There was a revision of the lineup earlier this year, and there'll be another one next month.  I haven't been getting all the titles every month, but I tend to get the first issue of each new title (so, certainly check back in next month for an expanded edition).

Anyway, without further ado:

Batman Giant #14
The final issue of this particular volume also features the final installment of what's being officially reprinted as Batman: Universe from Brian Michael Bendis and Nick Derington.  Picking up the story from last month, Vandal Savage has erased Batman from existence!  But not Bruce Wayne!  The funny thing about the whole arc, and certainly this final installment, is how the famous master of decompression, Brian Bendis, has actually delivered compressed storytelling, and quite capably, thank you very much.  We join Bruce as he's already hunting Savage all over again.  Alfred, on his coms link as always, observes, "I wish I understood this compulsion, Master Wayne."  To which Bruce responds, naturally, "Me, too, Alfred."  And he finds Savage, and the white ring that in this tale is the first Green Lantern ring (Volthoom begs to differ! but who really cares?), and of course Batman wins.  The whole thing has been a fun little wild ride, and a terrific spotlight for...Nick Derington, actually.  Derington was previously best known for his Young Animal Doom Patrol, but I suspect his profile is going to rise considerably after this.

The issue also features reprints of Paul Dini's Detective Comics #834, which reconciles Batman with Zatanna post-Identity Crisis; Nightwing #14 (circa the New 52), and Batgirl #0, which is Gail Simone's origin story, which ironically for Simone ends with a nod to Batman: The Killing Joke.

Flash Giant #7
I've never been a big fan of Simone.  I should've been interested in reading Flash Giant regularly, but Simone was writing the lead new material.  This is the conclusion to her tale, too.  Long story short, it did not leave me wondering if I missed anything good.  Weird twist: Simone has one of the Rogues working alongside Flash, but it's not Captain Cold (or even Piper), but rather Weather Wizard, for whatever reason.  It at least further suggests that it might be time to revisit the Rogues as potential allies rather than foes. 

The issue also includes Adam Strange: Planet Heist #7 & 8 (to finish the story in this final issue) and Justice League #21 (circa the New 52), which was the final installment of what had until this issue been a back-up Shazam feature, an update for the character that later directly informed this year's Shazam movie (which is actually pretty good; Darla rocks!).  The movie deleted Black Adam and substituted Sivana in an expanded role in his place, but otherwise the ending remains much the same.  I figure Black Adam is being saved for another film appearance, assuming Dwayne Johnson ever actually plays him.  Guaranteed to have more audience appeal for a sequel if he's in that...

Superman Giant #14
No, Tom King is not in this one.  Apparently to accommodate whatever unexplained reasons for repeated delays his story has met in these pages, this is the only title that will not be rebooted next month.  That's all I know for now.  Anyway, replacing Superman: Up in the Sky this month is once again a one-off from Steve Orlando, which is not as interesting as his previous one. 

Also featured are reprints of a story from Green Lantern Secret Files and Origins 2005 featuring Darwyn Cooke illustrating Geoff Johns; Superman/Batman #19, which again features the new Supergirl from that era, which in the credits confusingly uses Steel's logo in a bad printing job for "Girl of Steel;" and The Terrifics #14, from earlier this year, the last issue written by Jeff Lemire.

Titans #7
With all due respect to Dan Jurgens, but I've barely been interested in his Teen Titans stories from these things (which is odd, because I loved his Teen Titans comics from the '90s), and didn't read this installment. 

Also featured: Teen Titans #14 (Geoff Johns era); Superman #38, which features the Super Sons, Damian Wayne and Jon Kent, whose Super Sons series was regularly included in the title, with this issue part of a crossover arc; and Sideways #13, the final issue of the series, which like the series itself far better than lack of fan interest suggested.  In fact, that's the only reason I bought this Giant, so I could catch the final issue.

But it came with a bonus!  A complete listing of the new line-up:

• Batman Giant
• Flash Giant
• Swamp Thing Giant
• Wonder Woman Giant
• Aquaman Giant
• DC Ghosts Giant
• DC Villains Giant
• Teen Titans Go! Giant
• DC Super Hero Girls Giant

And of course, Superman Giant, regardless of whenever, if ever, it gets renumbered.  As my mom used to say, your guess is as good as mine.

Reading Comics 225 "Grass of Parnassus, Superman 100 Page Giant #7"

Grass of Parnassus

This is a new webcomic that made me use Instagram for one of the first times ever.  The hook, for me, is Stuart Immonen, working once again alongside wife Kathryn Immonen (realized when I was composing this and adding labels that she didn't have one yet).  Stuart's one of my all-time favorite comics creators, so it's always fun to see what he's up to. 

Grass appears to be an attempt at a kind of slice-of-life-in-the-future.  Readers seem a little baffled as to what exactly is going on, but it seems pretty straightforward to me. The Immonens have an excellent track record (I haven't read all of their work, but Russian Olive to Red King and Moving Pictures are fantastic).  Here's a compilation of Stuart's best-regarded work.  As much as I love Stuart's art, and his collaborations with Kathryn as writer, I really wish he got back into writing; his Superman comics, as artist and writer, have yet to be rediscovered, but they should be.

Superman Giant #7

I'd be remiss if I didn't chime in on this one.  Apparently these Walmart 100-page giants finally made the news for something other than merely existing.  This was last month's edition (I just scooped up this month's full slate, which included the first revamp and expansion of the line, but haven't had a chance to read it yet).  When I read it I thought it was just another typically intricate narrative from Tom King (my favorite among all active writers in the medium, easily), but...

So the story is this: Superman, on a desperate quest to rescue a young girl kidnapped by aliens, places an extreme-long-distance call, deep in space, to Lois back on Earth.  The whole process is tedious and slow, and on top of that Lois seems to take forever to answer.  Superman spends the time imagining all kinds of worst case scenarios, Lois dying horrible deaths from any of the many emergencies Superman's usually there to prevent.

Sounds fairly normal, doesn't it?  I mean, Superman's been saving Lois Lane from certain death since the very beginning.  It's one of the most recognizable tropes in all of superhero storytelling.  Lois actively puts herself in danger all the time as an intrepid reporter.  You'd think no one could possibly object to a story that just sort of points all that out.

But...

Well, people are always kind of outraged about one thing or another.  It only seems that outrage dominates public discourse more than ever before.  Right?  Anyway.  The outrage this time is that this was a comic that featured Lois dying.  Repeatedly.

This was a reported case of a mother being shocked at what her kid was being exposed to.  Big surprise, right?  Story of comic books right there.  Mom buys these Walmart comics every month, never imagining that there was anything to object to, until she takes a gander and...

So you can't really help that sort of thing.  King is no stranger to provoking readers, of course.  He's been doing that since seemingly killing off Kyle Rayner in the Omega Men preview, and he's made an ongoing spectacle of Batman with regular intervals of similar acts, shocking readers who should have possibly seen it all before.  He did it again with Heroes in Crisis (if I get around to it, I'd love to talk more about that one, especially how #5 lets the cat out of the bag, assuming readers were aware that there was a cat, and a bag, and that you could've anticipated that from the very beginning, without really harming the story, because it's all about how masterfully King commands the page, as always).

What I love about all this is that it does put the focus on the content rather than the existence of these giants, and hopefully will get more readers checking them out. 

Reading Comics 223 "The DC Walmart 100-Page Giants, Month 5"

So I've continued buying DC's Walmart-exclusive (although someone...smuggled? them in, as I guess you should expect, to one of the comic cons I went to this fall) 100-page giants.  I've caught every issue of the Superman giants, most of the Batman, and started buying the Teen Titans giants again.  Haven't really gotten back into Justice League after the first issue.

World's Greatest Super-Heroes Holiday Special
The second holiday special, after the Halloween one, is Christmas-centric.  The lead, original story is from Scott Lobdell and features the Flash and his Rogues.  The real highlight of this particular giant is, however, is a reprint from two years ago, "Good Boy," a Batman Annual #1 reprint written by Tom King, his origin of Ace the Bathound, who starts out as a dog used by the Joker.  Batman brings him home, not knowing what else to do, and Alfred spends the next four months taming him, exhibiting his infinite Pennyworth patience.  The sequence, of course, ends on Christmas, with Batman noting wryly that Alfred didn't get him anything this year.  One of King's great characterizations has been Alfred; it'd be great for an extended look at some point, although if this is the closest we get it'll still rank among the highlights of the run.

The other highlight is from Superman #64, originally published in 1991, as you can tell a little less than a year before "Doomsday."  The writer is Dan Jurgens, but the artist is Butch Guice (as he was later known; here he's still known as Jackson Guice), who was later one of the key "triangle era" artists, best known for his Action Comics Eradicator "Reign of the Supermen" arc.  The Guice in this issue is wonderfully moody (even if the inking could be updated to freshen it up), full of shadows, a marked contrast to his later work and not the kind of art you typically associate with Superman.

There's also a Supergirl tale that's similar to Jurgens' tale about answering mail and humanity; a Harley Quinn; and a Green Lanterns, Rebirth era tale featuring Simon Baz and Jessica Cruz.  Honestly, when that run began I was hugely excited for Baz and Cruz to step into the spotlight, but over time I've grown tired of the storytelling that leaned so heavily on their core insecurities, which of course this tale does, too. 

Batman 100-Page Comic Giant #5
The lead is the third installment of Brian Michael Bendis and Nick Derington's all-new tale, which this issue finally reveals as featuring Vandal Savage as the big bad, after spotlighting an atypically muddled Riddler as Batman and eventually Green Arrow, too, trying to figure out his latest scheme.  Bendis is clearly having a ball (a lot of DC fans expected him to jump into writing Batman, not Superman, when his jump from Marvel was first announced), while Derington has helped keep things lively, too.  I was trying to remember where I knew Derington from, and figured out it was the Young Animal Doom Patrol, famously much-delayed in recent issues.  Hopefully his collaborating with Bendis means Derington is gaining DC's confidence as one of its elite artists.

As has appeared in previous issues, the three reprint comics that round out the Batman giants are the "Hush" arc, plus the New 52 Nightwing and Harley Quinn.  I was initially a fan of Kyle Higgins' Nightwing, but I find myself glossing over the material in the giants, and I have no real interest in Harley Quinn.  "Hush" remains brilliant, although in hindsight it certainly seems obvious that Jeph Loeb's fixation on the previously-nonexistent childhood pal of Bruce Wayne, Tommy Elliot, is a dead giveaway that he was the mystery villain all along.  The Jim Lee art equally remains spectacular.  Honestly I think Lee's DC work will become his lasting legacy.

Superman 100-Page Comic Giant #5
But I'm really here to once again gush over Tom King.  Like Bendis, he's now on the third installment of his giants tale, which features Superman's search for a little girl, and the increasingly desperate lengths he will go to in order to find her.

This issue features his most desperate moment so far in the tale.  It's a kind of update on the classic Superman/Muhammad Ali boxing match from the '70s, only this time it's not Ali he's fighting, but an alien named Mighto.  That cover image is from artist Andy Kubert, who unlike his brother Adam has stuck with DC since they jumped, like Bendis, unexpectedly from Marvel, ten years back.  Until now Andy had mostly been associated with Batman material, but he's proving equally adept, and perhaps, ideally suited, to Superman, and this issue, as it for King's tale, might be the highlight of his DC work to date.  It's really something you ought to go out of your way to track down and read for yourself.

As really only the classic "Doomsday" arc had done previously, the story is all about Superman's incredible endurance, his ability to absorb punishment.  This is superhero comics storytelling usually reserved for Spider-Man (which always seemed fairly beside the point to me, other than Marvel's penchant for tortured characters), and seems counterintuitive for someone like Superman, who's usually thought of as overpowered to the point where an artificial weakness (kryptonite) had to be invented along the way.  But Superman is best understood not by his powers but by his force of will, his humanity, and as such, King has rightly illustrated what putting him in a fight ought to look like.  He takes an incredible pounding, apparently past his ability to endure, and yet he refuses to stay down. 

When you think of DC going out on a limb with something like these Walmart giants, you don't really expect them to throw away exceptional material like this, much less have talent the caliber and prestige of Tom King, Brian Bendis or Andy Kubert.  And yet these are bold decisions that are truly paying off, as these guys are massively delivering, and this installment proves beyond any doubt that truly great material is making its way into the giants. 

Reprints include Green Lantern (the original Geoff Johns series), Superman/Batman (someone at DC no doubt finds it deliciously amusing to look back at President Luthor in the Trump era), and The Terrifics, which continues to prove, well, terrific.  I hope Jeff Lemire can keep it going for a long time.  It's at long last, perhaps, his DC breakthrough, and quite possibly Mister Terrific himself in his breakthrough moment.

Teen Titans 100-Page Comic Giant #5
Dan Jurgens, at his most generic, is about the level of what you'd expect from the idea of Walmart-exclusive storytelling.  This is not to say that Jurgens can't rise well above that perception, but he seems uninterested in what I've read, and why I haven't read all of the Teen Titans giants.

But the reprint material is well worth the price of admission.  Johns' Teen Titans is being serialized (last issue included the classic moment where Bart Allen officially reinvented himself as Kid Flash).  I'd never really read it before; this introductory arc is kind of funny in hindsight, as Johns is clearly presenting a version of his later Reverse-Flash as a villain merely attempting to make the hero better, an idea that reached its zenith in Flashpoint.  There's also Super Sons, which I likewise haven't previously had a lot of experience actually reading. I think Pete Tomasi is better suited to writing this than he was Superman.  And then there's Sideways, which on a superficial level was always interpreted as the New Age of Heroes DC version of Spider-Man, but honestly, like the New 52 Doctor Fate before it is kind of more the DC version of the Kamala Khan Ms. Marvel.  And in two more issues I'll finally get to read the first appearance of the Seven Soldiers of Victory in the series.  But I'll probably have to track down the annual separately to enjoy Morrison playing in that sandbox again...

Reading Comics 219 "DC's 100-Page Comic Giants"

Teen Titans 100-Page Comic Giant #1

News dropped suddenly that DC was publishing four titles of these things, exclusive to Walmart, replacing the three-packs they were putting together for a few years, and I couldn't have been happier.  Besides Teen Titans there's also Justice League of America and Batman, plus Superman, which I have also checked out, below.  These are mostly reprint editions, featuring material from the early millennium, New 52, and Rebirth eras, at least so far, plus lead stories of new material which in later months will feature work from Brian Michael Bendis and Tom King, so DC is definitely taking this project seriously.

The Titans are a team I've followed somewhat loosely throughout my comics experience.  My first one was a battered copy of The New Teen Titans #39, where Dick Grayson and Wally West walk away from the team (in Dick's case in advance of adopting his new Nightwing persona during "The Judas Contract").  I read Dan Jurgens' complete run from the '90s.

That turns out to be relevant for the new story in this issue, because Jurgens is once again the writer.  The lineup is more or less the classic one, insofar as there's Robin, Beast Boy, Starfire and Raven.  No clear indication which Robin, but the costume is classic Tim Drake.  I'm still baffled that there hasn't been a push for a live action Titans movie, but there's a TV version coming up, plus a movie version of the spastic cartoon coming up. 

The first reprint in the issue is Teen Titans #1 from 2003 via Geoff Johns, in which he finally gets to explore a concept he first breached in a famous letter that got published in the waning days of the '90s Superboy comic.  He uses the book as a way to reorient all the characters, streamlining them.  The core of the team had already teamed up in Young Justice, but the approach is totally different.  Peter David's comic was basically a DC version of the teen comics other companies were doing in the '90s, rather than the version DC itself did throughout the decade.  Johns used his Titans as a pilot program for his wider efforts later, expanding on things he was doing with the Justice Society.  Wonder Girl arguably got the biggest push.  Previous to Johns she was almost more of a cosplay superhero, even wearing a wig, for whatever reason, to achieve her blonde look; Johns keeps that hair full-time. 

Next up is a reprint of Super Sons #1, which is the first time I've had a look at it.  Peter Tomasi continues his Damian Wayne experience, this time with added Jon Kent, with Jorge Jimenez on art.  I don't think it works as well, outside of Superman, the adventures of the all-new and all-different Robin and Superboy, but these are fun characters, defining new ones of the modern era, so it's always worth having them in the spotlight.

Finally there's a reprint of Sideways #1, part of the recent Age of Heroes artist-first push, most of which are versions of Marvel characters.  Sideways is a kind of Spider-Man, visually and as far as his being a high school student trying to fit in.  I've been a fan of Kenneth Rocafort since Red Hood and the Outlaws, so I'm glad to see his work get a spotlight like this.  At least as this issue goes, Sideways actually spends more time as plain old Derek James, and Rocafort absolutely sells him that way.  His work looks better that way!  I hope DC recognizes this and finds, I don't know, a Vertigo project for him in the future.

Superman 100-Page Comic Giant #1

The lead new material from Jimmy Palmiotti (who seems to have been contracted to do a lot of the new material in these things) begs the suggestion: if the DCEU wanted a solid new direction for Henry Cavill's Superman, foregoing supervillains and merely having him confront one of those classic apocalyptic weather scenarios would probably sell him really well.  Here he confronts a slew of tornados in middle America.

The next segment is a reprint of Jeph Loeb's classic Superman/Batman #1, an update of the old World's Finest comics with the stars directly in the title, which DC has revisited a few times since, sometimes with Wonder Woman substituting (which was a nice development).  President Luthor!  Bet both DC and Marvel are kicking themselves that they already did their stories like that before Trump.

Then Green Lantern #1 from 2003, the series that followed Green Lantern: Rebirth, in which Geoff Johns works to redeem Hal Jordan.  Ironically few fans seem to realize how common it is for Jordan to need redemption, which works well for his cinematic future, should DCEU ever consider going in that direction.  It's still shocking to think how far Johns truly got to push Jordan.  If it had played out just a few years later, maybe the movie would've had more momentum behind it.  Or maybe just accelerate the Sinestro arc into that first movie.  Would've made a more obvious parallel plot.

Finally, The Terrifics #1, another Age of Heroes launch, this one a Fantastic Four pastiche, featuring a stretchy dude, a smart dude, a weird-looking dude, and a lady who can become transparent.  Some variations there, but pretty clear prototypes being followed.  Jeff Lemire has been one of the most fascinating writers of the modern era, and this is an excellent new showcase for him, hopefully one that will garner him wider acclaim.  Also another chance for Mister Terrific to shine, plus welcome new opportunities for Metamorpho and Plastic Man, plus the new Phantom Girl.

I certainly look forward to more!