Back Issue Bin 122 "The Batgirl of Burnside and other Throwbacks"

Batgirl #42 (DC)
(from September 2015)

The Batgirl of Burnside will be remembered as a turning point in DC lore, not only for permanently reviving Barbara Gordon's superhero career, but as part of the youth movement that also saw Marvel introduce Kamala Khan and a whole generation of young heroes, as well as inspiring the brief DCYou era.  I was already well into a more limited comics reading experience by the time Batgirl went to Burnside, but I appreciated the idea even if I didn't get a chance to read it myself.  (There's a silly notion that just because you haven't personally enjoyed something you somehow automatically count as uninterested; that's poor perception of economics.)  The Burnside revival began in Batgirl #35, and it was as much cosmetic as approach.  Babs suddenly looked youthful again, and she was given a bold new costume and art direction, the latter of which was another primary feature of DCYou.  This issue features a different redesigned member of the Batman family, namely Batman himself, or rather Commissioner Batman, James Gordon.  Y'know, Batgirl's dad.  Commissioner Batman was also a bold creative left turn, always meant to be temporary.  It was only fitting for Batman and Batgirl to team up during this era, so I'm glad it happened.

Batman #457 (DC)
(from December 1990)

Ah!  This was Tim Drake's costumed debut!  Tim Drake, otherwise known as the third Robin, after Dick Grayson and Jason Todd.  In the Rebirth era, continued efforts to distinguish Tim led to his "death" in Detective Comics, as part of the Oz arc that eventually revealed the mystery figure to be Superman's dad Jor-El.  Tim was originally designed to be a dynamic new Robin, a faithful partner of Batman in standing with tradition, but "Knightfall" and its aftermath actually shoved him into full-fledged independence.  He eventually assumed the mantle of Red Robin in an ode to Kingdom Come, even wearing the same costume Dick does in that comic.  In the New 52, even though he was the first Robin to have his own ongoing series, Tim had to make do with leading the Teen Titans while Dick starred in Nightwing and then Grayson, and Jason in Red Hood and the Outlaws while Batman's kid Damian Wayne costarred in Batman and Robin.  For a generation of Robin fans, Tim Drake is the Boy Wonder, so this is a landmark issue.  It's the first time the traditional costume gets a complete overhaul, too!

Captain America #698 (Marvel)
(from April 2018)

Okay, so this one's pretty recent, a victim of a cover tear and subsequent banishment to the cheap bin.  I love that stuff!  This is one of Mark Waid's early comics in the post-Secret Empire revival, Marvel's effort to redeem the character after spending roughly a year with him operating as a natural born agent of Hydra.  Waid kicks off an arc where Cap wakes up after having been frozen again, with America in the grip of tyranny.  Only Captain America can save the day!  Ironically!

Earth 2 #25 (DC)
(from September 2014)

After James Robinson set up the concept, Tom Taylor took over and got to use versions of Superman and Batman.  I loved the New 52 Earth 2.  The Society continuation wrapped up in the early days of the Rebirth era, but at that point really only the DC office cared, which was too bad.  The Earth 2 Batman was actually Thomas Wayne!  I don't know if this was inspired by the Flashpoint Batman, but it was fun to see DC revive the idea in some fashion.  Obviously Batman couldn't dominate the title, even if he makes the cover this issue, at least the Batman 75th Anniversary edition.  Because the issue also features Val-Zod, the Earth 2 Superman, finally decide to embrace being Superman, so he rates the standard cover.

And there he is!  Both the Earth 2 Batman and Earth 2 Superman had unique costume variants on the classic templates.  Thomas Wayne Batman had red where Bruce Wayne typically has white, and Val-Zod sports silver where Clark Kent has red, with a red substitute as the field behind the s-shield.  As events later developed, neither Thomas Wayne nor Val-Zod were adequate substitutes for the icons who died in the first issue, but Dick Grayson later assumes the mantle of Batman in Convergence and Earth 2: Society, marking a true progression in the lineage he only gets to temporarily fulfill in regular continuity.









The Flash #48 (DC)
(from March 1991)

With no offense to William Messner-Loebs (help him here!), Wally West didn't properly become the Flash until Mark Waid started writing him.  That may have something to do with the fact that I was introduced to Wally as Flash by Waid's comics.  So I like to look into Messner-Loebs' work when I get the chance.  Among the interesting guest-stars this issue include Elongated Man Ralph Dibney (as a Flash continuity nerd it's surprising that Waid never got around to that) and a severely aged Vandal Savage (really want to read that next issue now!).  Plus Wally learning new things about his mom.  Waid was definitely part of the mythology movement that came to dominate DC, whereas Messner-Loebs embodied the more grounded ideas of the receding era that came before it.  It's not surprising their takes on Wally were different. 

Gotham Academy #7 (DC)
(from August 2015)

Batman tends to dominate DC's publishing schedule, as he's been their most consistent seller for...fifty years?  That's about right.  So that gives him a lot of sway, and gives creators a lot of space to play in.  This concept takes place in Gotham but doesn't necessarily involve Batman, although I chose this particular issue because it features his kid, Damian Wayne.  At this point, really only Grant Morrison and Pete Tomasi had written Damian, so this was an opportunity for a fresh set of eyes.  The result is a much softer version, which stands to reason, as Gotham Academy was itself a much more kid-friendly Batman comic.

Grayson #11 (DC)
(from October 2015)

It's sometimes easy to assume Tom King ended up getting the Batman assignment because of DC's respect for his Omega Men, but it's really down to his work on Grayson, where he got to explore the Batman landscape with a writing partner (Tim Seeley, who later built on Grayson's legacy with his Nightwing Rebirth material).  And King even had Mikel Janin on art!  Janin later proved to be a signature collaborator in the pages of Batman, too, of course, which makes it all the more obvious how important Grayson was for both their careers.  This issue, with a typically fantastic cover from Janin, helps the title reach a culmination of the Spyral arc it continued from Grant Morrison's Batman Incorporated (first volume).  Really, even I sometimes underestimate the importance of this groundwork material for King.  Someday I hope to read the complete run, add it to my King collection.  I have pretty much everything else already.



The Adventures of Superman Annual #3 (DC)
(from 1991)

The Armageddon 2001 annuals arc was one of the early themed events DC did that helped set the precedent for what it would later make an annual tradition in the New 52.  In fact, this particular arc is not all that different from Futures End, a kind of fast-forward.  Waverider, a character who could really use a revival, peers into the future of every hero trying to determine who becomes the villainous Monarch.  DC lore has it that it was originally intended to be Captain Atom, who in fact does become a different Monarch years later in the pages of Extreme Justice, but in the meantime it was switched to Hawk of Hawk & Dove (soon to appear on television!).  At any rate, it was never going to be Superman, right?  This issue instead focuses on the then-recent introduction of Maxima as an alien who fancies Superman to be her ideal mate.  Ah...they're later in Dan Jurgens' Justice League together! 

Adventures of Superman #632 (DC)
(from November 2004)

There's a number of things Greg Rucka is known for in his first run with DC (Wonder Woman, Gotham Central chief among them, and eventually Batwoman), but writing Superman isn't one of them.  And yet here he is!  There are two things to know about the issue: one is that Lois has been shot and is possibly dying (hindsight says probably not), and that Ruin is trying to become the next great Superman villain (hindsight says probably not, possibly owing to the fact that he's basically Lex Luthor).  Please also note Paul Pelletier on art!

Marvel Knights: X-Men #5 (Marvel)
(from May 2014)

Industry observers hailed Marvel Knights, along with the Ultimate line, to be one of Marvel's creative saviors in the early millennium.  Somewhere along the way both of them petered out, the Ultimate comics with a bang, the Knights with a whimper.  This is one of those projects that just kind of happened.  It's an ambitious attempt by new creators to give the X-Men new creative relevance (which was the Knights mandate as a whole) without necessarily reinventing the wheel.  Maybe the results this time were a little too woolly to stick the landing, too caught up with the emerging indy aesthetic Marvel would come to try and embrace across its line.  So it didn't really stick out.  But for an X-Men comic it still looks unique.  I think the problem mostly was that it tried to introduce new characters but didn't trust them to guide the story.  The X-Men gained new life when new characters started guiding the story.  Maybe time to try that again?

Grayson #20 (DC)

I made a point not to read issues of Robin: Son of Batman that weren't created by Patrick Gleason.  Although I've gained a healthy respect for Ray Fawkes, I just didn't see the point.

Fortunately, I didn't make the same choice with the final issue of Grayson.

Tim Seeley and Tom King launched this series in the wake of Nightwing's cancellation, and a lot of angry fans thought it was a horrible mistake, including the decision to give them Nightwing's final issue to help launch Grayson.  I knew Seeley and King weren't writing Grayson's final issues, and so initially thought they were fully worth skipping, like the Fawkes issues of Robin: Son of Batman.  I mean, what would have been the point?  Some other jokers would be given the crucial conclusion to Dick Grayson's war against Otto Netz?  No thanks!

Well, now I can say otherwise.  The "jokers" in question are Jackson Lanzing and Colin Kelly, who have previously collaborated on Archaia!'s Hacktivist (which, seemingly improbably, sprung from the mind of actress Alyssa Milano).  These guys don't miss a beat.  They literally step right in where Seeley and King left off.  In terms of unlikelihood, this ranks up there with Landry Walker successfully concluding Charles Soule's Red Lanterns as a comic book miracle.

Dick's relationship with Helena Bertinelli is the other fruitful focus of this series, and its conclusion, as Netz unwittingly reboots the comic book hooey that made it possible to begin with: the world knowing Nightwing's secret identity.  It's a fun end, fits in with the character of its lead character (which is what you would expect from any good comic book), everything Seeley and King sought to accomplish, and also finishes a Grant Morrison plot left over from the first run of Batman Incorporated.

Not bad at all.

Countdown to QB50 2015: September

18 DAYS #3 (Graphic India)
In which I realize Grant Morrison will not actually be writing the series.  But turns out not to drastically affect its quality.

ATOMIC ROBO AND THE RING OF FIRE #1 (IDW)
New home, same great storytelling.  Very glad to see Clevinger and Wegener back in print.

BATMAN #44 (DC)
Snyder and Azzarello make for a potent combination.  Out of current continuity, this flashback tale made the news thanks to its commentary on the spate of police shootings making news.

ROBIN: SON OF BATMAN #4 (DC)
If Deathstroke (with all due apologies to Tony Daniel, etc.) were as awesome in his own comic as here is here, I'd read that, too.  Reminds me how awesome it was to see him in The Shade, too.

BLOODSHOT REBORN #6 (Valiant)
In which Bloodshot realizes there's a bad guy who's also attempting to absorb all the stray nanites...

CAPTAIN AMERICA: WHITE #1, 2 (Marvel)
Seven years in the making, Loeb and Sale finally return to this latest collaboration.  I'm ecstatic to see this happening.  Curiously, the first issue reprints the long-ago zero issue, but after the contents of the new material.

CIVIL WAR #4 (Marvel)
Black Panther turns out to be a Skrull.  And suddenly the follow-up to the original Civil War, Secret Invasion, seems less random.  Yet another thing this reprise gets more right than the original.  Thanks, Soule.  Again.

DAREDEVIL #18 (Marvel)
I assumed all along that Waid was headed to a quasi-rehash of the classic Daredevil narative, and in this finale that's exactly what he does.  The comic itself is not so bad, but then Waid writes in his going-away thoughts how this run has been his most creatively-rewarding to date.  How he forgotten writing Wally West?  Even if the style was more deliberate, I'd hold the best of that run to anything Waid has written in a regular superhero comic since...

DIRK GENTLEY'S HOLISTIC DETECTIVE AGENCY #4 (IDW)
I've settled in to really enjoying the random pleasures of this experience.  Viva Douglas Adams!  Who makes a cameo this issue!

DOCTOR WHO: FOUR DOCTORS #4, 5 (Titan)
Cornell concludes the crossover epic.  Eventually gets around to explaining why the Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) wasn't included.

DOOMED #4 (DC)
The only objection I have to this series, as it turns out, is the poor choice in style for the lead's narrative captions.  Otherwise, more solid material from Lobdell.

E FOR EXTINCTION #4 (Marvel)
The conclusion to this Secret Wars tie-in seems to be a comics version of X-Men: The Last Stand's final encounter between Wolverine and Jean Grey.  Nice save, Burnham.

EARTH 2: SOCIETY #4 (DC)
I love, love, love how this series has completely embraced the full potential of being its own continuity.

FIGHT CLUB 2 #5 (Dark Horse)
Finally had a look at this.  That's about all I've got to say about that.

THE FUSE #14 (Image)
I'm settling in as a regular reader.

GRAYSON #11, 12, Annual #2 (DC)
Yeah, I've finally decided to read this series more regularly.  It's just too darn good to continue overlooking.

GREEN LANTERN Annual #4 (DC)
Venditti promised, or someone promised, answers.  But there are frustratingly few.  Darn you, Venditti!

IMPERIUM #8 (Valiant)
Divinity, the guy from Divinity (no, seriously!) pops up in something other than Divinity.  Although this is kind of more or less a rephrasing of Divinity except in an Imperium context...

JUSTICE LEAGUE #44 (DC)
Don't tell anyone else that Darkseid dies in this installment of "Darkseid War"!

JUSTICE LEAGUE 3001 #3, 4 (DC)
Don't tell anyone that I snuck back into this series because I realized all over again, this is supposed to be Legion of Super-Heroes territory.  But Giffen/DeMatteis have managed to create yet another platform for their genius instead...

MAGNUS, ROBOT FIGHTER #12 (Dynamite)
I caught up with this release from earlier in the year because it concludes a story I finally got around to seeing in its inception from a first issue I read in my comiXology account (don't tell anyone I'm still working away at that!).  I don't think the muted impact (the first issue was better) is because I skipped, oh, ten issues.  But it's still fun seeing Van Lente in something I actually wanted to read again.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER #4 (DC)
Through no real fault on my own, I missed the previous issue.  But I still love this series.

MIRACLEMAN #1 (Marvel)
This new first issue marks the start of the reprints as they reach the Gaiman material, having concluded Alan Moore's The Original Writer's.  Turns out to be very similar to Sandman, somehow...

MS. MARVEL #18 (Marvel)
Kamala's mother knew!

NAMELESS #5 (Image)
Morrison's weird comic (his latest weird comic) finally saw another issue published.  Burnham shows restraint (for a change).  Reads a lot like the first issue.  Made me interested again.

THE NEW DEAL (Dark Horse)
See thoughts elsewhere.

PREZ #4 (DC)
The comics shop had a giant mix-up in its shipments that week.  So I panicked and got a digital edition.  I've had some fun digitally lately, but I'm not gonna tell you anything else.  Then the shop got the print edition.  And this becomes the latest comic where I have both, and don't mind.  Just two issues left, alas.

SANDMAN: OVERTURE #6 (Vertigo)
All along I've been reading how this whole story leads back to Sandman #1.  And that's exactly what happens.  This was probably my favorite issue of the series.  Sad to see it go.  Very, very gorgeous work, Williams (III).

STAR TREK/GREEN LANTERN #3 (DC)
Larfleeze on the cover...!

STAR WARS #9 (Marvel)
I thought they promised answers from Sana Solo this issue?

STAR WARS: SHATTERED EMPIRE #1 (Marvel)
Takes place concurrently with the Battle of Endor (at least during this issue).  Features Poe Dameron's parents.  No idea who Poe Dameron is?  Perhaps this prequel to The Force Awakens just isn't meant for you, son...

The, ah, misshipment issue prevented me from reading a new Star Wars: Lando...

STRINGERS #1 (Oni)
Guggenheim and Greenwood (Resurrection) started working on this years ago.  Guggenheim and Greenwood, meet Loeb and Sale...

SUPERMAN #44 (DC)
As far as I'm concerned, some of the best Superman storytelling...ever.

THIS DAMNED BAND #2 (Dark Horse)
Cornell's second issue was good enough to helped the series get a foothold in the QB50 running.

WE ARE ROBIN #3, 4 (DC)
In the fine tradition of the original Robin ongoing being the best thing about Jean-Paul Valley's stint as Batman, Bermejo has turned this one into the best thing about the Commissioner Batman era.  That second issue, which doesn't feature Duke, is the best one to date.

SUPERMAN/WONDER WOMAN #21 (DC)
My periodic sampling of this series continues.  Superman is a dick.  But he kind of has a reason to be.

Quick Hits 2

Here's some more quick hits.

In your face!  (Funnier if you had
had worked with me at Borders.)

Aquaman and the Others #11 (DC)

This is my first issue of the series.  And it's also the last issue of the series.  I can see why.  

Earth 2: World's End #22 (DC)
Based on the preview cards and the same material appearing in all of DC's releases last week for next month's Convergence, I'd say this particular weekly is leading directly into it.  That and the end of this very issue.






Grayson #8 (DC)
This was a great week for ending things, I guess.  Dick's boss in Spyral, Minos, plays his hand.  And totally gets played.  Not brilliant, but probably the best regular issue I've read from the series to date.

The New 52: Futures End #44 (DC)
At some point, Superman officially made his return.  I like that he's back to the t-shirt look.  This is easily the best issue I've read of the series to date.

Saga #26 (Image)
In which Marko becomes a hopeless drug addict?  I know Hamburger K. Vaughan prefers paper correspondence, but here're my answers to the reader survey, results featured this issue: 1) Carter, 2) male, 3) no, 4) Green Lantern, 5) never left the good ol' USofA, 6) absurd (probably), 7) middle-to-late in the pack, 8) Peter Ackroyd's English Music, but to make things less obscure, Dan's Brown's Angels & Demons, 9) I generally support Israel's right to exist, 10) lately it's been cookie dough bites, 11) yeah, 12) no, 13) addicted to comics?, 14) One.org, 15) actually, because I tend to imagine the worst anyone could call me, people don't tend to vocalize it themselves, 16) we'll say it's a many cartoons tie, 17) I had to look up the best novel I've read recently, 18) I don't remember the name of it, but that one I was obsessed with a decade ago, 19) actually, pretty much every day, 20) none, 21) not yet, 22) U2's Songs of Innocence, 23) none, 24) for expansion of your cultural awareness, 25) hopefully for being a good brother, son, and having written a decent story or two.

Supreme: Blue Rose #7 (Image)
The biggest end of the batch and the best by far, this one concludes Warren Ellis's whole statement on the continuing legacy of Supreme by literally writing into the narrative that the poor guy actually waits for reboots.  Classic.

Yes, the title flower is a maguffin.
But a good one.

Reading Comics 154 "Blasts II"

My local comics shop tricked me into buying more comics.  Yeah, tough gig.  They were holding a sale on the bins they've been filling with recent comics that needed to be removed from the shelves in order to make room for more comics.  These comics were already discounted.  They told me the discount increased, and so I took another deep dive.  The results:

Batman and Robin #23.1 (DC)
Part of the 2013 Villains Month, that year's version of the annual tradition DC has of celebrating each September as an anniversary of the New 52 launch from 2011.  This one was a tie-in with Forever Evil (surprisingly I had avoided such issues from the month previously), but I wanted to have a look because it was Pete Tomasi writing.  On the cover Two-Face is billed as the star, and what's significant about this is that at the time, Tomasi was gearing up for the Batman and Two-Face arc, "The Big Burn," a detour from the Damian arc that will, post-Convergence, fall to Patrick Gleason to continue solo in the pages of Robin, Son of Batman.  As a visual storyteller, I have full confidence in Gleason.  Hopefully he have as good a grasp with the narrative, because so much has been done in the past year.

Grayson #1 (DC)
Okay, so now I've finally read the first issue!  This was something that initially sold out at the shop, so by the time it was restocked I had a chance to start second-guessing how interested I was in the series.  In subsequent months I've come to various conclusions, but the truth is, Grayson is pretty good.  There's a whole underpinning arc to what Tim Seeley and Tom King are doing in the series, that level alone makes the proceedings intriguing.  It has the proven potential for great individual stories.  But history may be getting made in other ways, too.  More as things develop.  Also, the post-Convergence landscape has already proven one element of Grayson to have borne fruit: a new Midnighter series, after the WildStorm character served as a primary element in Seeley and King's early stories.

Star Trek New Visions: Annual 2013 "Strange New Worlds" (IDW)

John Byrne already has an assured place in comics history.  He's been working at one in Star Trek history as well.  His previous, hand-drawn work has been impressive enough (Assignment Earth, McCoy, and Romulans), but lately he's been working on comic book photo-novels.  This is the first time I've read one of these efforts myself.  (Although the original Star Trek photo-novels are some of what helped me become a fan in the first place.)  The results are impressive.  "Strange New Worlds" functions as a sequel to Captain Kirk's first adventure, "Where No Man Has Gone Before," the second pilot of the original series.  The fact of its place in canon, first Kirk but also featuring some characters who wouldn't appear in subsequent episodes such as Dr. Piper, is Byrne's effort at turning "Strange New Worlds" into a kind of "Menagerie," the two-part episode that repurposed the first pilot "The Cage," which also featured a different set of characters (Spock is the only one present in all casts).  As in "Where No Man," "New Worlds" features the problem of Gary Mitchell, who accidentally develops god-like powers.  Mitchell was Kirk's close friend, and having to eliminate his threat was a considerable challenge on multiple levels.  Byrne presents a deepening of the whole experience, a good one.  There's an essay on the art of photo-novels included, as well as interview with Byrne.

Star-Lord: Annihilation - Conquest (Marvel)

In conjunction with last year's Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel put out numerous special comic book releases reprinting Star-Lord's past appearances.  The last time I sampled one of them featured Peter Quill's earliest adventures, which were generic and as such, to me, terrible.  Thankfully I gave these things another shot.  I just read my digital copy of how the whole Annihilation thing began, so I have some context, but it hardly matters.  This is the only context necessary: Annihilation - Conquest is the secret origin of the Peter Quill and pals everyone fell in love with in the movie.  What a discovery!  And now it only figures that Keith Giffen wrote Annihilation itself, because his more familiar imprint is all over Conquest.  Brian Michael Bendis is generally credited with a lot of what Marvel has been doing at the movies, and rightly so.  He's the one who took up the Star-Lord ball most recently, but without Giffen, he probably would never have thought of it.  Conquest features a somewhat different team line-up, though Rocket and Groot are present and accounted for (second most surprising revelation of Conquest: at least for these specific circumstances, Groot does not only say, "My name is Groot").  This is seriously good stuff, a great, great find.

Action Comics #23.3 (DC)
This is a Villains Month release featuring Lex Luthor!  You'd think there would have been a little more attention given it, given how significant Luthor was in Forever Evil and later, Justice League.  And what's all the more interesting still is that it's written by Charles Soule.  The Luthor here seems far less redeemable than the one in Justice League (as depicted so far), a diabolical one that tracks well with the past and present of the character.  It's also nice to see Lex Luthor star in an issue of Action Comics again, after the Paul Cornell run that helped signal the character's future potential...

Superman: Doomed #1 (DC)
The "Doomed" arc, naturally, features Doomsday, and represents Scott Lobdell's last hurrah writing Superman, working in conjunction with Charles Soule (who had featured the monster in the pages of Superman/Wonder Woman) and Greg Pak.  I still don't get the massive opposition to Lobdell.  I think he does a great job building on existing concepts.  In the post-Convergence landscape, he's got a chance to expound further on his ideas in a whole Doomed series, which speculation must suggest has some relation to this arc and/or Doomsday.  What I read in this issue looked pretty good, a modern take on the Doomsday issue that takes Superman himself to another level.  How exactly the whole infected-with-Doomsday thing played out, is another thing I'll have to find out...

Swamp Thing Annual #2 (DC)
Charles Soule and Swamp Thing.  There's a lot that I need to catch up on, but the bits and snatches I've caught...this stuff is brilliant.  It's almost as if Soule has taken the idea of the avatars Geoff Johns used in Green Lantern and took a more deliberate, intimate approach to them.  Of course, not the Green Lantern avatars themselves, but various elemental ones as related to Swamp Thing.  And it's always fascinating.  I have no idea why I wouldn't have become dedicated from the moment I read it the first time.  This annual explores more about the history of the avatars, and how they affect Alec Holland's future.  I will continue reading more and more of this...

Trinity of Sin: The Phantom Stranger #14 (DC)
This is the the one I most picked up on a lark.  I like the Trinity of Sin concept.  As far as I can tell, it became less interesting when the three characters were finally merged in a single series.  Yet this issue of Phantom Stranger proves it can work.  Good to have in my collection.

Reading Comics 148 "Grayson"

via Gotham Spoilers

So the jury on Grayson continues.

Generally, I'm wildly excited for the potential of this series, as demonstrated in the phenomenal Futures End one-shot, a bold new, deliberate approach to the further adventures of Dick Grayson that finally exploits the character's full potential, unencumbered by whatever identity he happens to be taking.  For such a man, now free to take whichever one he needs, it's the greatest gift imaginable.

The first issue I read recently was Grayson #6, the latest one, featuring a one-on-one confrontation with Midnighter, the WildStorm character who's a facsimile of Batman.  And clearly Tim Seeley and Tom King keyed in on that, because the Midnighter in the issue is all gruff, the Batman of Frank Miller's All Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder (I'm one of a token few who loved that project, and hope Jim Lee can find time in his schedule to finish it).  But as I've feared, the regular series doesn't have as much as the pizzazz, so far, as the outliers that keep showcasing its potential.

Such as the Futures End issue, and Grayson Annual #1, which I resisted reading initially because I feared it would be similar to the series.  But it's a lot like the Futures End spot, clever and focused and an all-around fantastic read, and perhaps not coincidentally featuring a good spotlight for Helena Bertinelli, the erstwhile Huntress.  These are two characters Chuck Dixon and Devin Grayson helped tie together intrinsically in a previous DC universe, and so it was always nice to see them together again.  A Grayson free from any other obvious association should always be with a Bertinelli.

I've made this point before, but Grayson has much of its allure for me based on nostalgic memories of the TV show Alias, where Sydney Bristow and Michael Vaughn had similar chemistry.  The Spyral case is like Dick and Helena's Rambaldi.  

I'll be keeping tabs for sure.

Grayson #3 (DC)

writer: Tim Seeley, Tom King
artist: Mikel Janin

via Comic Vine

So this is my first regular issue of the series.  After the intriguing preview in the last issue of Nightwing from Tim Seeley and Tom King and then the brilliant Futures End edition, I decided to give it a shot despite reservations that it might not as an ongoing experience work as well as I might hope.

Now I'm thinking, what was I thinking?

I love spy capers.  Alias remains one of my all-time favorite TV series, and as it turns out, Grayson reads a lot like that (minus Rambaldi), especially in the early days when Sydney Bristow was still trying to figure out loyalties.

And I also realized something about Grayson.  It's actually a lot like one of my favorite storylines from Dick Grayson's past.  It involves another Grayson, Devin K. Grayson, her "Renegade" arc from the Infinite Crisis era (which is more or less the secret origin of what happened to Dick in Forever Evil and this subsequent reboot, which makes it all the more appropriate).  In that arc, Dick went undercover for an extended period of time.  It was gangster stuff, but still the same general idea.

Seeley and King seemed to understand from the start that Dick's sense of identity is fluid, although he himself remains constant under all his guises.  The point is, he's a character who can handle different personas, whether it's Robin, Nightwing, Batman, or an agent of Spyral.  It's the conflict this always brings him, his ongoing identity crisis, that defines Dick best of all.  It's inevitable that at some point he'll stop being a spy, but it's suddenly such a smart move to have finally moved him past his Nightwing days, that it's surprising to realize all those years where I knew subconsciously the character had grown stagnant led to this moment.

Will most issues feature one-off villains like the guy in this one who uses his guns as his eyes?  I guess I'll see (heh).

Grayson: Futures End #1 (DC)

writer: Tom King, Tim Seeley
artist: Stephen Mooney

via Comic Newbies

An instant classic.  Best single issue I'll read all year.  The Dick Grayson story I've been waiting to read for years.

Need I go on?

The idea of Futures End, whether considering the weekly series itself or the September one-shots, is to present a portrait of the DC landscape five years in the future.  In the weekly series, it's a catastrophe that needs to be undone.  In the one-shots it's a glimpse at where everyone ends up.

Since the New 52 launch four years ago, September has been the best time to be a fan of DC.  The first September was the launch of the initial wave of fifty-two new series, the second a look at everyone's origins, the third a month dedicated to villains.  Every time it's a chance to reconnect with the characters themselves, take a wide view of their activities.  In essence, September is the absolute best opportunity for me to catch my favorite kind of storytelling.

And this year, that happened within the pages of Grayson.  Since the final issue of Nightwing saw Tom King and Tim Seeley take their first stab at defining the career of Dick Grayson, I've been hopeful that these were the writers who would finally do justice to the character.  There have been others in the past who have done excellent work with the character, but few have been as interested in exploring the character in the same way countless creators have, say, Superman or Batman.  I know, Dick Grayson no matter what he's called can't be argued to be Superman or Batman.  I mean, only Superman and Batman are, right?  But Dick's been around for about as long as they have.  He also holds the distinction of making permanent leaps of development into new roles, something no other character has been able to do.  He went from Robin the Boy Wonder, Batman's sidekick, to leader of the Teen Titans, to Nightwing, to a solo career, and several stints as Batman.  And now he's Dick Grayson, undercover as an agent of SPYRAL, the premise behind Grayson itself.

So far I haven't read a regular issue of Grayson.  I've heard some good things about it, but every time I have a look it seems Dick is in the midst of a spy adventure, which is fine.  I'd probably like it just fine, considering it's the last vestige of Grant Morrison's Batman Incorporated.  But over the years, I've developed a real fear of writers wasting Dick on adventures that ultimately mean nothing to the character, a trend that began after some truly excellent material from Chuck Dixon and Devin K. Grayson.  After Dick was scheduled to die in the pages of Infinite Crisis, DC lost its nerve with the character.  Other than the last stint as Batman, Dick has been completely directionless.  And then he was singled out as the victim in Forever Evil, had his superhero identity stolen away, and ended up thrown off the deep end.

The Futures End one-shot changes everything.  It's the story that finally tells the story of Dick's life, all of it.  Even if the destination ends up being something that never actually happens, that's not really the point.  The particulars don't matter.  It's the story, and the effort to make a cohesive thru-line for everything Dick has done.  King and Seeley skewer heavily toward his later solo adventures, and naturally the context of Grayson itself, and this works incredibly well.  Helena Bertinelli, the erstwhile Huntress, has considerable history with Dick, so it's nice to see her so important to the story, at last, in this version of events, the permanent romantic foil he's been searching for his whole publication history (Dixon had a few ideas, and of course there was also Starfire in the Titans days and Batgirl, a notion that's been danced around for so long it's actually lost its appeal).  Helena was always the contrasting figure who challenged Dick best, and nowhere is that more evident than in this one-shot.  Their interactions force Dick to remember the signal moments of his career, incidental ones that represent the impermanence of his life, how he was living it even before becoming Robin, as a circus performer.

The brilliance of the story might be blunted in some eyes by the gimmick of unfolding it backwards, but I've always liked that idea, and it's done perfectly anyway, even with a nice cylindrical nature to it.  There's a command to the whole thing that's rare in storytelling anywhere, let alone comics featuring superheroes.  This is very deliberate stuff, not plodding but calculated, that rewards repeat reading (demands it, in some respects, depending how much you follow initially). 

If the series as a whole is as good as this, I'll probably be adding Grayson to the growing list of series to read in trade collection format, because it seems as if it's another experience that would greatly benefit from that style.  Hopefully King and Seeley stick around for a while, get as far along the Futures End narrative as they can, because they've proven a long-term and enduring benefit to Dick's current role, how it fits in with his whole history, enhances it.  I wouldn't mind their doing side projects exploring his past a little more, either.

But the beauty of it is that even if that doesn't happen, this one-shot still exists, and it already does all that, and it has a great deal of fun in the process, something that's been missing from the character for too long.  It's a perfect single issue, and thankfully King and Seeley were smart enough to realize that the Futures End month gave them such an opportunity.  I don't know if they already had ideas like this percolating for the series or if the prompt forced them to this creative peak.  It doesn't matter.  It happened, and it's the new high-water mark for Dick Grayson stories.