Reading Comics 243 “Comics Garage: First Box!”

 Having apparently ended my Forbidden Geek experiment only earlier this year (it feels like longer, although partly because it took so long to get that last box), I guess I was in the mood to try another service (or Amazon thought so, and I agreed). Like Geek, Comic Garage ships out assortments of random comics monthly. There are a variety of options. I opted, naturally, for DC titles, and ten comics per box. This is what I got in my first box:

Batgirl: Futures End #1

I’m pretty definitively determining that I just don’t care for Gail Simone. Most of the time I try to read her I hate the results. Somehow she even managed to screw up what so many other Futures End one-shots managed to accomplish, which was to give clever glimpses, well, into the future. The only worthwhile thing she does is gather the Batgirls together (and add a new one): Babs, Stephanie Brown, Cassandra Cain. But the other inexplicable thing Simone can be counted on is to screw up Bane, who was part of her Secret Six. She somehow takes Bane seriously for a change, but her idea of giving Barbara Gordon character development is to make her hulk out as part of a con job against him. I honestly have never seen Simone’s logic appear remotely logical. There’s a very real phenomenon called comic book logic, which I associate mostly with Marvel comics (and movies). Simone should probably just head over there. And stay there. She would be a killer writer for Squirrel Girl. That’s, ah, a whole other inexplicable thing...

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #121

As part of the “No Man’s Land” arc (loosely adapted as part of The Dark Knight Rises), Larry Hama (the G.I. Joe guy) tells a wimpy Mr. Freeze tale that’s about as generic as possible. I have nothing against Hama, but it at least seems like he was wildly out of his element. I have no idea how long he stuck around Batman at this time. Hopefully not very long.

Freedom Fighters #10

The newest (from last year) comic in the box is one I’d wanted to check out anyway. It’s written by Robert Venditti, another writer I’ve tended to struggle with. The only problem here is that this is toward the climax of the story (it was a twelve-issue series), so it’s all action. Most stories you really ought to be able to jump in and have a good chance to understand the tone of it, but unless it’s a movie it’s going to be hard to appreciate if it’s anywhere near the climax.

Green Lantern #53

The classic Ron Marz/Darryl Banks comics (receiving a lot of nostalgia recently, a quarter century in), at this point still featuring the nascent adventures of Kyle Rayner. This was prime comics for me at the time. If any era had been in a position to replicate the Silver Age generational shift, it would’ve been this one, which at least for a decade ended up being exactly the case. Wally was a new Flash, Kyle was a new Green Lantern, there was even a new Green Arrow, and of course there was the poster boy, Jack Knight. 

Reading this particular issue again was interesting. Kyle battles Mongul, the big brute Alan Moore created with the Black Mercy gimmick who later turned into Cyborg Superman’s key collaborator but somehow ended up taking an extreme backseat. He instead became a punching bag, here for Kyle and then again later for Wally. 

Superman sort of co-stars (Banks does not nail Mulletman), giving Kyle a mainstream link for the first time. But the big development is Major Force taking on the assignment that will lead to the most infamous moment in the Marz/Banks run (Women in Fridges, which coincidentally also gave Gail Simone her career; two wrongs don’t make a right). 

The thing is, this is the first time I actually found Kyle’s ill-fated girlfriend Alex almost necessary to sacrifice. Marz set her up as a way to establish Kyle as requiring a steep learning curve, but she actually sort of inadvertently made it steeper than it really needed to be. In hindsight it would perhaps have been better to have her be the classic archetype of girl who falls for boy after seeing in action as a superhero. Instead their relationship predates the costume, and she spends all her appearances questioning his pedigree. And in hindsight it’s pretty annoying. I guess it’s the difference between experiencing it as an adult rather than a teenager. That and knowing her ultimate fate. Ultimately Kyle’s journey becomes completely his own, and meeting Superman means more than what Major Force ends up doing. The intention to have him (and readers) shocked into character development becomes superfluous, especially because it happens so quickly. If the intention was to try and replicate Uncle Ben, then it backfired. Once she dies Alex becomes almost completely invisible to Kyle’s existence.

(Though if Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale ever returned to DC and did the kind of comics they did at Marvel, it would be really easy to guess what they’d do with Kyle, if they chose him as a subject.)

Martian Manhunter #11

In contrast to Freedom Fighters, this late-issue climax was easier to read, in part because I had already read and enjoyed this Mr. Biscuits, Williams/Barrows comic (though, alas, Barrows isn’t on art this particular issue). In recent years DC has been leaning heavily into J’onn’s alien nature (though, I guess, since the Ostrander/Mandrake series, so for some twenty years), and I think this was about as extreme, and awesome, as it’s likely to get. Really wish someone could manage to do it while also integrating him back into the rest of the DC landscape, though. Sort of like Aquaman, who only seems to look relevant if he’s worrrying about underwater politics. 

Nightwing #45

The classic Chuck Dixon era! This issue is part of a Birds of Prey crossover, “The Hunt for Oracle,” which is to say, the villains finally figuring out Oracle exists and maybe they should make that stop. The weirdest thing about recent comics is that Babs is Batgirl again. Naturally it was Gail Simone who wrote the initial stories, although it wasn’t until Burnside (and apparently de-aging her) that it was at all relevant. And as stupid as it was to cripple her in the first place, it was probably even dumber to un-cripple her, after years of developing an entirely new career, and apparently not even bothering to have her pass it on. In an era where if anything Oracle would have been even more relevant...

(Incidentally, I finally figured out where MCU Spider-Man came up with the “man in the chair” trope. I was rewatching Batman Returns and...it’s Alfred, of course.)

Robin: Son of Batman #1

Patrick Gleason started out this series as writer/artist. I think he did a brilliant job. It’s a direct continuation of his and Tomasi’s Batman and Robin, and is therefore a must-read for anyone bold enough to admit that those were the best Batman comics of the New 52. Fans still seem convinced Damian is a snot-nosed brat. I can only assume far too few have read this material.

StormWatch #21

Speaking of the New 52, I cannot fathom this series reaching anywhere near this many issues. And based on this issue, I wouldn’t have bothered reading anywhere near this many...

Action Comics #764

The Loeb/Kelly/Casey era! This was the bold break from the ‘90s triangle era, bold new writing and art styles that ultimately ended up remembered best by Loeb’s subsequent Superman/Batman. The Kelly in question is Joe Kelly. This issue is brilliant, a creative approach to the controversial decision the team had made to put relationship troubles into the married life of Lois & Clark. Superman spends much of the issue talking things over with Ma & Pa Kent, doing an extremely good deed for an old lady...and getting no closer to solving his real problem, alas. Plus Lex Luthor is up to something, but as far as this issue is concerned, I have no idea what. This is always a great era to revisit. They took huge risks, but not necessarily in bold dramatic arcs (at least, not all the time; this is also the era of “Emperor Joker,” after all).

Teen Titans #35

By the time the Doom Patrol shows up, I have to wonder why Geoff Johns never went and outright pursued a comic with them. He randomly brought them up in his Justice League, too, but didn’t go very far there, either. Maybe some day! This issue otherwise reads a lot like the Titans TV show (which I love).

I’ve read other comics since I last checked in here, but at the moment I figure it’s okay to leave them unobserved here. Will be back with more comics from Walmart...!

Reading Comics 224 "King is King, and Morrison's Green Lantern, and Orlando's Wonder Woman"

Batman Secret Files #1 (DC)
Back in the day the Secret Files comics were more or less updates of the old Who's Who files, and they were more or less excuses to hype upcoming events in a particular series or family of books.  They also contained short stories and other throwaway materials like diagrams and timelines, all of it fun little celebratory stuff.  But in the final analysis, you could probably skip them.  Some readers complained when they saw this updated take, which includes...nothing but storytelling.  Why even call it Secret Files?  But if I may...repurposing a title is perfectly fine, especially in an era that really doesn't have any other space for the kind of stories that appear in it.  It's like a one-shot Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, or Batman: Confidential. 

The lead is written by Tom King.  It can be interpreted as a cheap way to get Batman thinking about the past, or as another way King ruminates on the cumulative toll being of Batman.  Then a bunch of new creators have a shot at exploring Gotham, and that's pretty awesome.  Ram V and Jorge Fornes set the tone nicely with a Brubakeresque tale of a cop who was caught in the crossfire of Scarecrow's latest caper, and can't shake the effects of his fear gas.  Cheryl Lynn Eaton and Elena Casagrande offer fairly similar material, although they have a lot more space for Batman, and leave a lot more ambiguity to the aftereffects of a girl on the street being forced to defend herself with a gun.  Jordie Bellaire and Jill Thompson help Batman spend time with himself, waiting to find out what Man-Bat's up to, and for someone like Batman that's almost as bad as confronting Man-Bat right away...Finally, Tom Taylor and Brad Walker revisit Dark Night: Metal's take on Detective Chimp as Batman acknowledges his skills and they try to help a former Riddler goon.  It's a great collection of stories and showcase for these creators.  Anyone who's begun to wonder whether King's the only creator outside of Detective Comics DC's willing to entertain in Batman comics should definitely check it out. 

Batman #59 (DC)
After we learned that the Batwedding didn't happen thanks to Bane's manipulations, it was only a matter of time before Batman once again clashed with one of his most famous foes.  This issue, solicited as part of Batman's unlikely team-up with the Penguin, is really all about Bane driving a wedge between Batman and Commissioner Gordon by pretending to be a vegetative inmate of Arkham, and even allowing the ruse to reach the point where Batman himself questions his conclusions.  In the long run this will prove a highly crucial issue.  Mikel Janin's art has apparently reached an evolution, meanwhile.  He's begun taking on a more stylized approach as opposed to his cleaner look previously.

Green Lanterns #57 (DC)
The final issue of the series, Dan Jurgens completes a short run with another look at Cyborg Superman and whether or not his threat will ever be concluded, this time in the context of what he famously did during "Reign of the Supermen" to Coast City, and what effect that had on Hal Jordan.  But the series ends with Jessica Cruz deciding to once and for all leave her comfort zone, and Earth! 

The Green Lantern #1 (DC)
It's here!  Grant Morrison is now writing the adventures of Hal Jordan!  And of course, once again, he's managed to approach his subject as no one else has before!  After more than a decade of storytelling dominated by the big ideas of Geoff Johns, Morrison grounds Hal back in a more personal context.  In interviews he's described it as putting the focus on the effect Hal's life as Green Lantern has on him, which is something previous decades used to do all the time, how he went through a whole series of civilian jobs because he couldn't hold anything of them and have a power ring's responsibilities at the same time.  And also the mundane oddities of being a space cop!  Liam Sharp (I hate the composition of the cover image, which was available in poster form at the new location of Comics & Stuff, which I declined to accept on that basis, even though it would've otherwise been a great thing to celebrate on a wall) is great in the interiors, bringing a bright new vividness to Green Lantern.  All I can say is, wow!  Never expected this to happen, but am very, very pleased that it has, and that Morrison is clearly bringing all his celebrated wild imagination to it!

Heroes in Crisis #2 (DC)
A lot of fans have obsessed over the fact that Wally West died in the first issue.  I just don't know how to make sense of that.  Wally just returned.  He's been gone for years!  But...he just returned!  You really think he can't, I don't know, do that again?  Really?  But we live in outrage culture these days.  You really would think we'd never seen anything at all before.

Anyway, the idea of Booster Gold and Harley Quinn on the run, suspected of the massacre at Sanctuary, it's great, and it's a totally new story, and Booster and Harley are great choices as leads.  Booster hasn't truly been relevant since 52 (anyone with even a fleeting grasp of my favorite comics knows how much I love 52, of which you can find an annotated commentary right here at Thought Bubble Comics).  It's also crazy to think, and also funny that DC's event comics have slowed down so much, that since she became a significant corner of the DCU during the New 52 era, Harley has never been in this position before.  This is acknowledging the changing landscape.  This is helping legitimize Harley.  I get that there's a certain style of Harley storytelling that's been the standard over the years, but allowing her to be seen in different ways, in more dramatic ways, in an important step in solidifying Harley's legacy.

Mister Miracle #12 (DC)
The end of King's epic mini-series (I also picked up a Director's Cut of the first issue, a rereading of which helped me understand this final issue) makes clear that the story was always about Scott Free coming to grips with life, basically, as a war veteran.  It joins Omega Men and Sheriff of Babylon as a trilogy of King's experiences from the Iraq War, and as such an essential artifact of the modern era, in and outside of comics.  Some readers, for any number of reasons, are just not going to be able to appreciate that.  Fine.  Good for them.  Some of them are going to continue to look toward The Vision as King's definitive work, and Mister Miracle as a poor attempt to duplicate it for DC.  A lot of them only discovered King through Vision.  Having first encountered him as a solo creative voice in Omega Men, Vision for me was actually jarring, a slowed down version of what I already knew, impactful but at a scale that seemed small in comparison.  Over the years I've come to appreciate Vision more, and have of course read a lot more King, and if anything, Mister Miracle helps put it in greater context.  This is what he's been doing in the pages of Batman for three years.  Just imagine if he'd done only twelve issues! 

Nightwing #53 (DC)
What I liked about this latest installment of the amnesia saga was the cop who attempts to fill the Nightwing void.  It's become a full-blown tradition for impostor Nightwings to pop up! 

Adventures of the Super Sons #1-3 (DC)
With the dawn of Bendis Superman, Pete Tomasi was forced to vacate his space, and take his Superboy along with him, and also Robin, who he'd been bringing along since the last time he was asked to move on.  This time he leaves with a huge parting gift!  One grand adventure with Jon and Damian, and I think that's exactly the spirit of how he decided to approach this next generation World's Finest from the start.  And just like that, his Superman has officially acquired its final context, just in case anyone was still wondering.

Wonder Woman #51-52 (DC)
I've spent a lot of time at the library over the past year reading comics.  Most of them have been collected editions, but this particular branch also has a somewhat extensive collection of solo issues for Superman and Wonder Woman, which apparently began at the very end of the New 52, so that's how I ended up reading the majority of Tomasi's Superman, and how I eventually first read these two comics.  The first was the one I definitely wanted to own.  Steve Orlando's run is going to be more of a sprint, sandwiched between James Robinson and G. Willow Wilson, but as far as I'm concerned?  It's going to loom large.

#51 is great issue.  It's a one-shot in which Diana makes a series of trips across many years to visit a villain she randomly came across in someone else's story.  It's a redemption arc, as the villain struggles to find peace with what happened, and Diana's insistence on the visits.  It's a perfect encapsulation of what makes Diana different.  You can't really picture Batman doing this, and for all the Superman stories that have been created over the years, I'm fairly certain he's never done it, either.  Anyway, it was instantly one of my favorite comics of the year, and the reread confirmed that.

#52 is the start of an arc, and it features a new female Aztek, a character who debuted in the '90s, written by Grant Morrison and Mark Millar, who eventually joined Morrison's JLA.  Kind of instantly became obscure, especially for having been a Justice Leaguer in an era where it was once again composed almost exclusively of all-stars.  But Aztek was always a great concept, and Orlando instantly grasps it.  He also brings in Artemis, who was recently part of Red Hood and the Outlaws, but who also comes from the '90s, the lesser known Wonder Woman replacement from a time when all the big characters were being replaced.  It feels like a big Wonder Woman story in ways that rarely happen, and it's also kind of a comic book version of the allies she assembles in the blockbuster movie.  Orlando's Wonder Woman will definitely be a collection I will add to my collection.

The Wrong Earth #3 (Ahoy)
Ahoy Comics launched to some amount of buzz in part thanks to landing a Grant Morrison prose backup feature.  The company's whole thing seems to be another of those "we're bringing comics back to how you remember them!" deals.  But these aren't comics as I want to read this.  The Wrong Earth reads like a shallow parody.  Nuff said.

Uncanny X-Men #1 (Marvel)
I haven't particularly cared about the X-Men since the Hope saga ended.  Of course I've never been a dedicated reader.  Still haven't even read Morrison's complete New X-Men!  So to say I've been part of the legion (heh) of observers who've been wondering if the X-Men were ever going to be relevant again, it doesn't carry the same weight as fans who've spent more time with them. But I wanted to see what this latest effort was going to be like.  I like Bishop being right there on the cover.  Ever since I came across him in the '90s I've always thought this was a character with at least equal potential as Cable.  Both of them were time-traveling mutants from dystopic futures, but Cable always hogged the spotlight.  A number of creators working in converging narratives come together to explain the latest mutant crisis, another drug threatening to take their abilities away.  But this time as a vaccine, that will prevent new mutants from ever knowing they were ever even mutants.

Now, this has a ton of storytelling potential.  A lot of fans accused Marvel in recent years of trying to replace the X-Men with the Inhumans, whose major recent story was the roving Terrigan mists that randomly created new Inhumans.  But this is something very different.  This isn't people being scared that they're going to be victimized.  This is a new twist on the familiar narrative of denying mutants a future.  There's apparently going to be another Age of Apocalypse style event following the "X-Men Disassembled" arc, and Marvel fans, who complain about everything Marvel does these days (we're a long, lone way off from the old Marvel zombies days, which conveniently now exist in cinematic form), are complaining that Marvel is just piling event after event.  But I suspect there's method to this madness, and I'd like to keep tabs on it.

Reading Comics 222 "Nightwing, Halloween ComicFest, Walmart 3-Pack Residuals"

Been lousy keeping up Thought Bubble Comics, I know, I know...

Halloween ComicFest 2018
Here's another free comics event, one I haven't really participated in as enthusiastically as, well, Free Comic Book Day, mostly because, well FCBD is a legit phenomenon and this isn't.  It's just an excuse for some free comics!  Not that there's a problem with that sort of thing, right?  Of course, participating publishers also have a kind of themed mandate with this one where they don't on FCBD.  As such, it was far harder, and conversely far easier, to make selections.  I ended up with just two, DC/Vertigo's John Constantine: Hellblazer special edition and Marvel's Thor: Road to War of the Realms.  I wasn't really interested in anything else (not even anything particularly relevant to snag for my three-year-old niece, alas), though I hemmed and hawed, because free comics, yo. 

Obviously DC was most interested in selling the Vertigo brand itself, and Constantine is as reliable a selling point, as signature an element, as Vertigo ever had, sort of the last crayon in the box by the end, absorbed into DC proper eventually but never really feeling at home there.  I mean, the whole concept was built for the original Vertigo mandate of the creepy fringe elements.  I never really got into the character, mostly because he seemed to be used mostly as an excuse, a vehicle, more than for whatever he specifically brought to the table, or that his fans were not particularly vocal about his selling points.  I mean, the concept, which became a Keanu Reeves movie at one point, and then a short-lived TV series and then featured player in another show.  This issue was written by Neil Gaiman, who does Neil Gaiman at his most vague.  What always made Gaiman's instincts work so well in the pages of Sandman was that it was always grounded in real human pathos.  There's an attempt made in the story, but Constantine is inherently uninterested in what's most interesting in Gaiman's best material.  And I'm not really much of a horror for horror's sake kind of reader.  So anyway, still haven't figured out the guy's appeal, or waiting for a writer like Lemire, in the pages of I, Vampire, to figure out how to draw him out of his shell.  What he needs is other characters to consistently react against. 

The Thor issue was part of Jason Aaron's sprawling run, apparently somewhere near the beginning (third out of twelve volumes helpfully spelled out in the back pages).  What's most annoying about Thor as a character, to me, is that he's so often, certainly in Aaron's hands, entirely limited to Asgardian business.  It's like Aquaman only concerned with Atlantis court intrigue.  You need to remember that this is a character who will thrive best as a fish out of water, not forever thrust in alienating context.

Anyway...

Batman #57
Tom King's latest successful outrage magnet was hobbling Nightwing (more on that in a moment) in the midst of a mini-arc with the KGBeast.  I was perfectly okay with this for any number of reasons.  One is that he previously made a very early career mark with the Beast in the pages of his seminal Grayson: Futures End, which of course featured Nightwing, years before King wrote an issue of Batman.  Another is that this arc instantly further elevates the Beast's credibility by placing him, basically, at the same level as Bane, who in King's hands has finally reached his full "Knightfall" potential.  And as he has so often demonstrated, King used this moment for another excellent character study.

But let's move on to...

Nightwing # 50-51
Between Ben Percy and Scott Lobdell, this is the start of a bold new era for Dick Grayson.  Another bold new era.  This is a character who has defined bold new eras in DC. Fans like to slake their need for nerd outrage by claiming Dan DiDio has long had it ought for Nightwing, but...the results?  They kind of suggest the character has blossomed as never before under DiDio's watch.  Whether it was in the pages of the New 52 Nightwing, where he was consistently presented as relevant to Scott Snyder's Batman, which never happened in the long-running first Nightwing ongoing (which went on for a hundred and fifty issues, no less), or the bold new era of his exposed secret identity, which led to the spy adventures of Grayson, which by the way introduced readers to Tom King, the character has had it good.  For a character almost as old as DC itself, who went from a kid sidekick to growing up and claiming his own identity, who had his own team built around him, these have all been milestone events not just for Nightwing but DC and superhero comics in general.

So quit complaining already.

This time it's "merely" a story where he's temporarily forgotten all about having ever been Nightwing, Robin, any of that.  As if that's going to last.  In the meantime, there are going to be entirely new Dick Grayson stories.  That's always a good thing.  Too often, Nightwing stories are most worried about distinguishing him from Batman.  And just as often, a new creative team becomes obsessed with returning the character to his roots.  Somehow Kyle Higgins was the first one to do so as literally as taking him back to Haly's Circus. 

Which means letting him experience something that's not comparing him to Batman or harking back to some previous era (which is not to say material that's done this hasn't been very good) or setting him up in some new territory...This is, once again, a great time to be a fan of Nightwing.  That's the bottom line here, folks.  And Percy and Lobdell in these issues prove they're capable of making it interesting, and good reading. 

Walmart 3-Packs
Ah!  So I've continued reading the latest DC gifts to Wallyworld, the 100-page giants, and while I wish I'd been talking about the King and Bendis tales now unfolding in them here, it's always fun to revisit the 3-packs that still haven't sold out and were trotted out when the giants' display boxes went up.  So I started buying them again, of course, because someone has to...

Batman #1, 25, 34 - These are all from the New 52, and were fun to read.  I was never the biggest fan of Scott Snyder's much-acclaimed and -read run, but I appreciated what it was doing.  And the funny thing is, I always seem to enjoy reading it, too.  The twenty-fifth was a "Zero Year" issue, while the thirty-fourth was written by Gerry Duggan, who later took his talents to Marvel (where the state of its zombies is such that they have no idea Duggan is a great talent they ought to be appreciating).  It's a great issue.

Batman Eternal #1 - The start, all over again, of the weekly series that sort of allowed Snyder (and a host of collaborators) to play in the established sandbox a little more than he allowed himself in the main series.  I'm still surprised that there's so little appreciation for the results. 

Green Lantern Corps #34 - John Stewart is still trying to deal with the fact that he let a planet die in Cosmic Odyssey.  It's just one of those late-80s things that has a longer shelf life than necessary.  But it also gives Kyle Rayner-era villain Fatality more stories, and weaves into the complicated nature of the expanded spectrum.  Good GL mythology snapshot (for an issue with a "selfie variant cover," ironically or not).

Trinity of Sin: Pandora - Futures End
Pandora is that signature New 52 character who kind of helped lead the charge of disappointment for fans, who ultimately found her underwhelming despite a massive amount of hype.  But the funny thing is, and I'm pretty sure I've now read this issue through the acquisition of several copies enough times for it to finally sink in, that the fate of the New 52 era is spelled out, how it always seemed destined to lead to DC Rebirth.  Because as far as this issue is concerned, apparently that was always the purpose of Pandora.  Never mind how Geoff Johns later had Doctor Manhattan unceremoniously obliterate her, a kind of symbolic gesture on the whole New 52 era.  Or maybe even that was intentional.  Most fans are never going to care.  But Pandora deserves a better fate.

Reading Comics 216 "Kings Cross"

I'm about to relocate again.  Don't know what kind of impact this will have on my admittedly at present sporadic comics reading, but it's certainly worth noting.  This batch of comics represents what could be my last trip to Zimmies in Lewiston, Maine, which is a shop I've been visiting in its several incarnations since I bought my first comics nearly a quarter century ago. 

Batman Annual #4 (DC)
This one's from 2015 and is set during Snyder's Commissioner Batman era, when Bruce Wayne has amnesia.  It's James Tynion writing Bruce as he returns to Wayne Manor, which at the time had just finished being used as the new Arkham Asylum.  It's interesting, story-wise insofar as it posits Bruce Wayne as a target for Batman's enemies, who may have mistaken him as the Dark Knight's financier.  But it's the cover and the art that really interests me.  The cover is from Sean Murphy.

Murphy has been a favorite since he collaborated with Grant Morrison on Joe the Barbarian, and I've tried to keep track of his work ever since, whether Punk Rock Jesus or the Detective Comics #27 (New 52 era) story he did with Snyder that rumor has it they'll be returning to soon.  Murphy also has Batman: White Knight coming up, and that sounds fascinating.

The interior is from Roge Antonio, whose work looks like Snyder's American Vampire collaborator Raphael Albuquerque.  Have a look at it yourself:

Apparently he's been on the Rebirth series Batgirl and the Birds of Prey these days.  A career well worth tracking, too, I think.

Batman #30-31 (DC)
The first is "The Ballad of Kite Man Part 2," which is apparently hugely controversial, both parts, as it seems way too heavy for some readers.  I just don't get that.  This is literally the most relevant Kite Man has ever been.  I don't expect Tom King is done with the guy just yet, sort of like Gotham Girl.  The second is the penultimate chapter in "The War of Jokes and Riddles" itself, which promises an explosive ending (and apparently whether or not Catwoman accepts the proposal).  I think the arc's been brilliant.  This is a Joker who has been every bit the savage beast he's sometimes been depicted to be (The Killing Joke) but in a context where he's "lost his smile" (quotations thanks to Shawn Michaels).  This is a Batman who has apparently been forced to ally himself with the Riddler.  This is a story that once again feels, if Batman were every to be taken seriously, and his whole world around him, like this is what would actually happen.  Too often these characters only exist one story at a time, or locked up in Arkham.  What if Batman's foes were forced to take sides?  What if Batman himself was forced to take sides? 

Birthright #19 (Image)
This is from 2016, and is Josh Williamson's main interest outside of DC and The Flash, and I figured I'd finally have a look.  Naturally it's a little difficult to know exactly what's going on, but it seems pretty fascinating.

Black Hammer #2, 13 (Dark Horse)
A kind of alternate DC from Jeff Lemire, in which the aftermath of a crisis left the heroes trapped in a kind of pocket dimension (wonder if Infinite Crisis will be reflected).  These particular issues feature a kind of Shazam in a kind of I Hate Fairyland situation, the Skottie Young series where a young girl has been a young girl for far too long in a scenario she is well and truly over.  I've been hearing that this is Lemire's best work.  I'm a huge Lemire admirer, whether his recent Moon Knight or Descender, which I wish I were reading regularly.  I'm not ready to declare Black Hammer in that league, but I suppose for fans wanting him to reflect superhero comics, in a way that makes sense to them, this is a good option.

Mister Miracle #2 (DC)
Like his Batman, King is finding readers who don't understand what he's doing in Mister Miracle.  But I'm loving it.  He is absolutely one of my all-time favorite comic book writers at this point, and I look forward to having this whole thing to relish.

Nightwing: The New Order #1 (DC)
I was quite happy when I heard this one announced.  It's a Nightwing mini-series, the kind usually only Batman and Superman, and once in a while Wonder Woman, get.  It's also Kyle Higgens returning to the character.  He was the writer who launched the New 52 series and was at one time Snyder's running mate, the role Tynion later assumed.  So I'm glad to see that The New Order was worth the interest.  This first issue isn't really going to be able to explain how Dick Grayson ended up deciding superpowers are a bad thing.  What it does instead is bring the focus to Dick's relationship with his son.  This is a scenario previously featured in the Earth 2 comics, and an interesting continuing consideration for Nightwing's further legacy.  We find out at the end of the issue that the mother is Starfire, which begs the question...is Dick's position based on heartbreak?  Either way, I'll definitely want to read more of this.

Rise of the Black Flame #2 (Dark Horse)
This is another comic from 2016, part of the Hellboy universe.  I bought it mainly for the Christopher Mitten (Wasteland) art.  Always glad to see more!

Reading Comics 207 "August 2017 LCS Trip"

Here's a brief look at my latest check-in:

Descender #22 (Image)
Remains a favorite, even if I'm not reading it all the time.  The metaphorical knife that was stuck into poor Dr. Quon so brutally early in the series just keeps getting twisted.  In a lot of ways, that makes this his story almost more than Tim's...

New Gods Special (DC)
Shane Davis (Superman: Earth One) turns in a thoroughly competent look at Orion.  He seems to come off best when he's in the spotlight (Orion, I mean).

Nightwing #26 (DC)
Tim Seeley continues extending Grayson's legacy, and Dick Grayson's legacy in general, bringing back Huntress into the fold.  I know fans like to imagine Dick and Barbara Gordon (Batgirl) will one day officially declare a relationship, but between Grayson: Futures End (one of my all-time favorite comics) and the Nightwing/Huntress mini-series from two decades ago...my money's on them.

Revival #43-47 (Image)
Speaking of Seeley, I decided to finally have a look at this, and as it turns out, these are the final issues of the series.  While he's working from a familiar playbook (the most famous recent example being The Walking Dead, which you may have heard of), Seeley injects enough into the intricacies of character dynamics that Revival reads as a distinctive piece.  I'm sure anyone who'd read the preceding 42 issues will take away a lot more, but it was surprisingly easy to get into, with or without the short recaps inside the front covers. 

Reading Comics 206 "The War of Kings and Seeleys"

Tom King and Tim Seeley established their mainstream cred together in the pages of Grayson, and it seems they're still creating some of my favorite comics, several years later.

I've talked a lot about King already.  I became hopelessly devoted to him thanks to Omega Men, and have been reading his comics as faithfully as I can ever since.  In Batman #27, the latest issue I've read from the run, an interlude in the "War of Jokes and Riddles" arc, he finally gets around to explaining Kite Man.  Kite Man has been making appearances throughout the run, and he's always saying his name, "Kite Man!"  Now, Kite Man is hardly an iconic Batman villain.  That King has been using him at all has probably been the most notable thing Kite Man has ever done.  This issue gives him a tragic backstory and origin.  Some readers have found it needlessly dark.  King has kept Batman a bestseller, and with that has found plenty of readers who find his work incomprehensible.  I think this issue, which is the first of two, is absolutely brilliant, full of time jumps of the kind that first made King notable (Grayson: Futures End) for me.

The issue also includes a preview for King's Mister Miracle, which promises to be the DC version of his breakthrough Vision at Marvel, the run that introduced other readers to his talent.  I can't wait to read more of it, although it seems somewhat likely that I'll either be playing catchup (as I did with Omega Men) or wait to read the trade collection.  I'm still nowhere near a point where I can read comics regularly again, no matter how fascinating some projects are.

I finally played catchup with King's Sheriff of Babylon, his previous project with Mister Miracle artist Mitch Gerads.  If I ever managed to copy my Goodreads reviews to this blog, you'd know how much I loved that.

Seeley, I kind of thought was just trading on King's greatness, there to help him transition into writing comics regularly.  But the more I've read his solo work (have yet to catch an issue of Revival, alas), the more I realize I was wrong.  Nightwing #25 is brilliant, in a different way than King is brilliant, but it's the latest example of how much I love Seeley's Nightwing.  It's becoming my all-time favorite Nightwing.  This issue wraps up a Blockbuster arc.  Blockbuster was the dominant villain of the first Nightwing ongoing series, the DC Kingpin to Dick Grayson's Daredevil (as the analogy always seemed to be).  This of course means that Dick has been running around Bludhaven again.  Seeley has made Bludhaven more real in one issue than Chuck Dixon and Devin K. Grayson (as awesome as they were for a combined hundred+ issues) ever did.  He's envisioned a reason Bludhaven exists, other than to create a Gotham for Nightwing, and a working framework with its own internal logic.  His Blockbuster combines the version who previously battled Nightwing with the original conception of the character, before he got smart via Underworld Unleashed. 

The result is that both King and Seeley are innovating superhero mob comics.  I have no idea if they talk about these things with each other, if it's a coincidence, if there's competition, what have you.  Even if King is getting all the attention, Seeley deserves just as much, from a character perspective, literally synthesizing all of Nightwing's recent history to create a cohesive whole.  He's no longer jumping from concept to concept in an effort to find something that works, but rather drawing from what's worked and finding ways to help it keep working.  He's not only continued his and King's Grayson material, but Grant Morrison's Batman saga, and of course the Bludhaven era.  And this is going to make Seeley the new touchstone on the character. 

Like I said, he's giving King a run for his money.  They're both doing definitive work.

Reading Comics 204 "Fifth Trip 2017"

American Gods #2 (Dark Horse)
Amazingly, this adaption of the Neil Gaiman book still really hasn't reached the actual concept of the story.  Although Spider does drink an amazing amount of mead, and beats up a rather tall leprechaun.

Bane: Conquest #1 (DC)
Chuck Dixon and Graham Nolan reunite and return to the chronicles of Bane.  The results may baffle readers who are less familiar with Vengeance of Bane (parts 1 & 2) and more "Knightfall," Dark Knight Rises, Tom King's recent "I Am Bane," or any manner of terrible Bane appearances over the years, but they're entirely in-character, especially, again, for the Bane of Vengeance of Bane (parts 1 & 2).  The luchadore mask Nolan gives Bane for this comic is a fun little nod to the fact that the character is, technically, Latino, even though that never seems to come up other than his base of operations and/or origins.

Batman #21 (DC)
The Flash #21 (DC)
Batman #22 (DC)
Parts 1-3 of "The Button" see Tom King and Josh Williamson collaborate on a sequel to Flashpoint (the importance of this classic story to yours truly is chronicled in the early period of this blog) that also helps set up later DC-wide storytelling first introduced by DC Universe Rebirth.  Very, very good storytelling here.

Blue Beetle #8 (DC)
Giffen/DeMatteis have apparently taken over the title as of this issue, and bring a strong Larfleeze feel to the proceedings.  I loved the original Jaime Reyes series post-Infinite Crisis, and so it's great to read his Blue Beetle again.  The big draw for the issue, however, is that the magical scarab that has granted him powers (and/or de facto Iron Man suit) all these years has been taken from him.  So he and Ted Kord (the second and most famous Blue Beetle) make a bold decision: Jaime will now, even if temporarily, revive Ted's classic costume.  Yeah!

Divinity III: Stalinverse #4 (Valiant)
Matt Kindt will be moving on to Eternity, a sequel rather than continuation to Divinity, so this is the conclusion of this particular vision.  And I think, having read it twice, he came up with a good one:

"This world you've built may be real.  But you know it is not true.  You read books when you were younger.  Just as I did.  Do you not remember?  We are similar, you and I.  We were not forced to read.  We were encouraged.  But my adoptive parents raised me.  Treated me as their own.  They gave me books.  Science fiction was my favorite.  I read everything they gave me.  It wasn't until much later that I realized what they'd really done.  My parents couldn't force me...or anyone to be good.  Just as the Soviet Union cannot.  All they could do was present me with their example.  And with stories.  With writing.  With ideas.  Through those books I learned the danger of power.  I learned of the terrible effects of violence and conflict.  Of the unending cycle of war that we should be working to break.  And I learned the importance of love and to be loved.  Earth...humanity?  They are our children, Kazmir.  They can't be forced to learn.  They must learn by example.  They must be taught with stories.  With experience.  We have the power of gods, Kazmir.  Yet you choose to live a parasitic life inside Myshka.  And you choose to obey a small-minded oligarch.  But there is an entire universe out there for you.  Worlds to see.  Galaxies to explore.  Just like in the books we read when we were younger.  I am sorry for what happened to us out there...in the unknown.  I am sorry I did not bring you back when I returned.  And I am sorry that Myshka broke your heart.  I understand why you came back for revenge.  What I don't understand is why wouldn't you stay out there?  Why wouldn't you go further?  Why wouldn't you want to see more?  Our conflict will have a winner and a loser.  That is the nature of the game.  But why should we confine ourselves to the game?  Ti these pieces?  To this artificial boundary?  To Earth?  When there is the unknown all around us?  Waiting to be explored?  I tell you all of this, Kazmir, not to "win."  But to set you free."

That's the best argument an hero has probably ever made to their enemy, in a comic book.  It's an argument that can only be made in a comic book, I think.  It's a perfect synopsis of superhero logic, as has Divinity been from the start.  I don't know why Divinity hasn't become more important among comic book readers.  It's the Watchmen of intellectual superhero storytelling.  It's surely one of the most fascinating comics I've ever read.  Every issue has someone involved in creating the issue provide commentary.  Most of it is somewhat hugely overblown praise. Most of it seems to miss the point.  It's not just how it's executed that makes Divinity great, but its ideas.  I'm hugely glad to have read along.  And to see where Kindt goes next.

Planet of the Apes/Green Lantern #3 (Boom!/DC)
This latest mash-up is about as good as Green Lantern/Star Trek (which is to say, good), but it's the art I came to see.  Omega Men's Barnaby Bagenda, to be precise.  That guy deserves to reach the stratosphere, like his collaborator, Tom King.  Hopefully it'll happen at some point.

Green Lanterns #22 (DC)
The adventures of upstarts Simon Baz and Jessica Cruz have now reached the stage where they're actively interacting with the rest of the Green Lantern Corps.  Continues to be what I've long hoped to read in a Green Lantern comic again.

Nightwing #19, 20 (DC)
Well, hot damn.  Tim Seeley has turned Nightwing into a must-read after all.  Nightwing has been so hit-and-miss since the Dixon/Grayson years, a lot of creators coming in hot and then sort of sputtering out.  This includes Grayson, Seeley and Tom King's bold revision that saw Nightwing become a spy for a couple years.  But to take Nightwing away from Dick Grayson is to take away the essential part of the character, no matter how intriguing the results.  Too many of these writers have tried to forget this or that element of the character.  Seeley seems to have built not only on the Grayson momentum, but folded Dick's Batman and Robin days back into his adventures.  "Nightwing Must Die" is a Dr. Hurt story (the whole thing plays nicely with Batman and Robin, Grant Morrison memories), but it remembers that Dick's whole history is what defines him, perhaps more than any other superhero.  Possibly the two best issues of Nightwing I've ever read (Grayson: Futures End notwithstanding).

Savage Dragon #223 (Image)
If you were to read, in 2017, only one comic book series in its entirety to figure out what superheroes are all about, I think Savage Dragon would have to be that series.  Erik Larsen is the Image creator who never gave up on the original vision of the company, who never decided to pursue other interests at the expense of the creative freedom and opportunity his vision gave him.  The letters column is almost more important than the comic itself this time:

"Change is inevitable and being more stuck in the past is no solution. Styles change, people change. You loved that old stuff because you were 12 and that was your sweet spot. You may not want change but I crave it. Doing the same drawings the same way for decades is mind-numbingly monotonous. I love nothing more than finding new ways of tackling a similar problem. I look at the older issues and see all the mistakes. I see all the poor drawings and attempts to hide my deficiencies behind a wall of crosshatching and it doesn't do much for me. The lines aren't defining shapes and establishing light sources. They're lines for the sake of lines. Emulating that seems insane. 

Strong iconic poses are great, sure, but ultimately, I'm trying to tell a story here, not compose pictures to be popped onto T-shirts and lunchboxes. And given the choice of repeating a familiar shot or finding something new--nine times out of ten I'll go with the new.

It's not an easy path. Some artists get stuck in a rut, forever repeating and emulating their old work. Readers get bored and move on. Others keep trying new and different approaches but that can alienate old readers who liked the way things had been. There's no simple solution, clearly, but in order to preserve my sanity, I need to keep moving. If I'm not kept engaged, I can't expect my audience to be. If I'm bored, it's reflected in the work. So I tend to try something new. Sometimes it's successful and sometimes it's not, but hopefully it's worth your attention. 

And honestly, it's important to unlearn what you've learned. A lot of what made earlier work vibrant and full of life was the learning process. I was figuring stuff out. And part of that involved screwing up. I can look back at old art and see where arms were clearly too long or faces were constructed poorly, where compositions and anatomy and perspective are all skewed and line work makes no sense. It's hard to recreate that--and why would I want to? It would be like going back to high school."

To my mind, it reads like Larsen becoming the Bill Watterson of comic books.

Superman #22 (DC)
I really need to read more of this run.

Old Man Logan #22 (Marvel)
Jeff Lemire continues his concluding run with Wolverine exploring the character's fictional past, brilliantly, literally revisiting famous stories (at one point his origin in the pages of a Hulk comic, complete with the original dialogue).  If anyone had to tell Old Man Logan stories as a surrogate to actual Wolverine stories, I'm glad it was Lemire.  He proves why it was such a good idea all over again.

Reading Comics 197 "DC Rebirth Week Nine, DC's Young Animal, Avatarex, Bombshells, Iron Man, Moon Knight"

Covered this edition: DC's Young Animals Ashcan, Avatarex #1, Batman #4, Bombshells #16, Green Lantern #4, Harley Quinn #1, Invincible Iron Man #12, Moon Knight #5, Nightwing #2, Suicide Squad: Rebirth #1, and Superman #4.

DC's Young Animal Ashcan (DC)
Gerard Way (Umbrella Academy, The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, My Chemical Romance) has finally made his way to DC, and is helping launch what is kind of Vertigo 2.0, reimagining some of the company's unused properties from a new perspective, starting with a couple of titles inspired by ones that helped launch Vertigo itself, Shade, the Changing Girl (originally Shade, the Changing Man) and Doom Patrol, which Way is writing (along with co-writing Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye, which is probably the title I'm most interested in; the fourth in Young Animal's debut set is Mother Panic, which seems to be the imprint's Batman title).  What I love about Way's approach to Young Animal is built into his introduction from this preview: "With a monthly book, it is real seat-of-your-pants comic making, and you sort of have an end in sight, but you don't know exactly when you'll get there."  It's a refreshing perspective on the nature of writing at the Big Two, whether or not you have your own imprint.  The ashcan was done in the style of the old Who's Who comics, with profile pages for key characters in the upcoming launches, plus some artwork.  Michael Avon Oeming, who helped create Powers with Brian Michael Bendis and Mice Templar with Bryan JL Glass, does art for Cave Carson, and it's weird seeing him do humans again.  I know people are probably more familiar with his Powers work (which has since become one of the many streaming TV shows people can obsess over), but I know him better for his Mice Templar, so...it's weird seeing him do humans again.  I'm so glad DC is doing Young Animal.

Avatarex #1 (Graphic India)
Now that I've finally gotten a copy of the debut issue, there's not a ton of difference between what inside and what was previously featured in the FCBD release, but all the same, I love that Grant Morrison is exploring the idea of a superhero who has no idea how complicated the modern world really is in relation to superheroes, which in conception is almost like how Marvel was originally telling its Thor stories with the Don Blake character.

Batman #4 (DC)
Tom King's the first one advancing his Rebirth story by getting to the point where Gotham (the superhero) cracks, while also making a strong Suicide Squad connection, which is hugely smart, with Amanda Waller making one of the keenest observations ever in a Batman comic: "Zero Year.  Owls.  The Joker.  The Joker again.  Bloom.  Plus all your colorful friends [referring to other villainous foes].  Ever since you arrived, Gotham has been on fire.  This is America.  We don't stand idly by while our cities burn."  While certainly New Orleans and Detroit might argue with that over the past decade, it's interesting, because we're so used to Batman essentially operating in a vacuum, existing in a chaotic environment with one crisis after the other, and only him capable of intervening.  I know Scott Snyder (and Christopher Nolan, in The Dark Knight Rises) came up with certain reasons why soldiers couldn't disrupt Zero Year, but it's been traditional to let Batman exist in his own little world, and continue a war that never seemed to get better and in some respects get progressively worse without anyone else ever stepping in (the No Mans Land arc is probably archetypal in this regard).  I'm not at all surprised that it's King penning this insight.  I figure it'll play into the future of his run, too.

DC Comics Bombshells #16 (DC)
I figured I would finally have a look inside one of these, and saw that one of the stories in this issue features Mera, who in recent years, thanks to Geoff Johns, has risen to costar status in Aquaman stories, so I bought the comic and found it well worth it.  I'm familiar with Marguerite Bennett as a presence, but this is the first time I've really found her notable.  The lead story is kind of like the DC superheroine version of Kurtis Wiebe's Peter Panzerfaust, which updated the Peter Pan story in a WWII context.  Obviously a DC equivalent would be backtracking back to the company's roots.  It was a fun read.  But the Mera story, as I figured, was more interesting.  This version of the Atlantis saga puts her squarely in the lead, with the monarchic saga (Game of Thrones fans will appreciate it) at the fore, with Arthur Curry (Aquaman) tagging along.  I honestly have no idea why she hasn't already gotten an ongoing series.  It would almost be a better sell than Aquaman at this point.  Bennett would be an ideal writer, naturally...

Green Lanterns #4 (DC)
Sam Humphries continues his exploration of Jessica Cruz and Simon Baz as they learn to trust each other.  I'm so, so happy this series is happening.  Every now and then, this franchise benefits greatly from the introduction of new leads, and Humphries is proving that all over again.

Harley Quinn #1 (DC)
Blatantly a continuation of the recent series (it figures, with Harley), with some quick reintroductions, including Red Tool, the parody of Deadpool that's been featured previously.  (It's only natural; Harley is DC's Deadpool, after all.)

Invincible Iron Man #12 (Marvel)
I figured I'd check back in with Bendis and Tony Stark, what with Civil War II going on and the announced Riri Williams era that will follow it.  Bendis is writing the cinematic Iron Man so thoroughly it's almost disappointing at this point, but I'm also the guy who had no idea why Marvel wasn't doing that already. 

Moon Knight #5 (Marvel)
Jeff Lemire's masterful saga continues and/or concludes, depending on your level of mental engagement.  Marc Specter, by the end of the issue, has confronted his psychiatric issues, realizing that it's Khonshu who's been messing with him, only to be booted into a different persona, Steven Grant.  Lemire is being incredibly thorough and comprehensive, and you don't have to be a long-time fan, or at least know vaguely the Moon Knight backstory, to follow along.  The best thing about Marvel, and DC, is that these minor characters do get to have comics this rich, the most daring and experimental stuff from the mainstream, and sometimes, the best, like Lemire's Moon Knight.

Nightwing #2 (DC)
As someone who hasn't really read a great Nightwing comic since the Dixon/Grayson era (aside from the brilliant Grayson: Futures End one-shot), it's so nice to be reading one that totally gets what the character is all about, and what he represents, which as described in this issue: "hip new version of an old beloved product."  At his best, Nightwing really is Batman, but less grim.  I mean, wasn't that the whole idea of Robin to begin with, making the Dark Knight more accessible? 

Suicide Squad: Rebirth #1 (DC)
Rob Williams, at least in this debut, doesn't arrive in the title with the same thunderclap that he brought to Martian Manhunter, but that may be due to the fact that this is a concept that kind of overshadows the messenger.  Just look at the reaction to the movie.  (Critics hated it because it sells the concept of superheroes too strongly, which is why they've hated most of DC's movies; Marvel's tend to be far more flippant about it, which is why critics tend to love them, because that's how they approach superheroes, too.)  Anyway, the issue is really an introduction to Rick Flag, the ringmaster of this circus, the military leader tasked with keeping Task Force X in-line.  Williams has President Obama (in image if not by name) talk about the moral repugnance of the team, while Amanda Waller argues that in the grand tradition of black ops apologists, this nasty work is necessary to maintain the goodness everyone prefers to think about.  This is clearly a military title (the movie got that, too; it's no surprise that director David Ayer has Fury under his belt, along with all the grey areas explored in other movies like Training Day, which he wrote, and End of Watch, the previous directorial effort I've seen, which was brilliant), and I'm not sure previous incarnations got that.  Hopefully Williams keeps that in mind.

Superman #4 (DC)
It's so good to see Patrick Gleason back on art.  I realize the twice-monthly shipping schedule will probably prevent him from doing so every issue, but as much as I admire his writing ability, too, I can't help but long to see his artwork help lead the storytelling.  I loved seeing Bibbo (one of the signature '90s supporting characters), and the Kryptonian ghosts end up not being adversaries, as they at first seemed.  I hope fans are appreciating this run as much as I am.

Reading Comics 196 "DC Rebirth Week Eight, Divinity II, Moon Knight"

Covered this edition: Detective Comics #937, Divinity II #4, The Flash #3, Moon Knight #4, Nightwing #1, Red Hood and the Outlaws: Rebirth #1, Action Comics #960, Titans #1, and Wonder Woman #3.

Detective Comics #937 (DC)
Batman escapes from the custody of the bad guys this issue, which features the return of Ulysses Hadrian Armstrong (I remember him fondly from the pages of '90s Robin), who is a little criminal genius in the making.  As this is the bulk of the issue, it's a slam dunk of a sequence.

Divinity II #4 (Valiant)
The final issue of this particular story in the saga (an ad promises Divinity III this December, as does some quick foreshadowing) is a remarkable conclusion to Abram Adams' war with Myshka in which he's able to connect with his fellow cosmonaut-turned-god on a strangely human level.  Matt Kindst's work with Divinity remains some of the best stuff being published today.

The Flash #3 (DC)
I can't even begin to describe how happy I continue to be about this relaunch.  I haven't been (with all due apologies to Geoff Johns) been this interested in a Flash comic since Mark Waid's prime.  The cleverness just doesn't stop.  One would think Central City being flooded with new speedsters would diminish the role of Barry Allen as a significant figure, other than as budding mentor (can you say Max Mercury?), but then his new sidekick August Heart says something brilliant like, "Do you know how fast you were going?" 

Moon Knight #4 (Marvel)
Jeff Lemire continues to knock this one out of the park.  (If chosen carefully, the things you enjoy shouldn't be so difficult to enjoy.)  I decided to catch up with this weeks-old issue, and damn if this isn't one of my favorite comics in recent years.  It's really that good.

Nightwing #1 (DC)
This is a strong follow-up to the Rebirth one-shot, in which Nightwing repositions himself as a mole in the Parliament of Owls and then meets Raptor, the latest dude who thinks Dick Grayson can't hack it on his own.

Red Hood and the Outlaws: Rebirth #1 (DC)
This is Scott Lobdell's restating of the Jason Todd biography, although this time he makes the point that Jason is uniquely suited to appear like he's the compromised Batman, which is interesting.  I know Frank Miller probably has conniptions every time a comic book suggests Boy Wonders aren't destined to become lunatics, but I don't have a problem with it.

Action Comics #960 (DC)
Wonder Woman enters the fight, but other than getting some readers up to date about Doomsday's origins, nothing much significant happens this issue.

Titans #1 (DC)
This fairly Wally West-centric issue also features Linda Park.  Hey, I can't argue with that.  Dan Abnett lets other Titans in on the act, notably Lilith, who's one of the more obscure members of this family, before shockingly revealing that Abra Kadabra is claiming responsibility for Wally's disappearance.

Wonder Woman #3 (DC)
Greg Rucka does a pretty powerful study of Cheetah, one of Wonder Woman's most famous foes, who probably comes off better in this one issue than she has in all her other collective appearances combined.

Reading Comics 194 "DC Rebirth Week Six, Earth 2, Millarworld Annual, The Vision, Old Man Logan"

Covered this edition: Detective Comics #936, Earth 2: Society #14, The Flash #2, Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps: Rebirth #1, Millarworld Annual 2016, Nightwing: Rebirth #1, Action Comics #959, New Super-Man #1, The Vision #9, Old Man Logan #8, and Wonder Woman #2.

Gosh, so I kind of got all the DC Rebirth releases this week...

Detective Comics #936 (DC)
This isn't the first Detective Comics issue of the Rebirth era, but I was curious to read an issue because the spotlight was on Batwoman, Kate Kane, a character that's fascinated me since her debut in 52.  As one of the more high profile openly homosexual characters in comics, Batwoman has had a certain level of prominence over the years, although since she was created by Greg Rucka and had J.H. Williams III as her artist for a number of years, she was allowed a great deal of creative freedom, too, up to and...excluding, infamously, a wedding in her New 52 series.  The writer of Detective Comics is James Tynion IV, whom I've somewhat unfairly judged over the years due to his association with Scott Snyder, whom I've sometimes found difficult to appreciate.  But Tynion is a pretty good writer, and as this issue is a pretty good Batwoman story, I may have to once and for resolve to consider Tynion positively going forward. 

Earth 2: Society #14 (DC)
I'm not sure how much Dan Abnett is commenting on the creative reputation of the series he inherited several issues ago or if it's just coincidence, but there's much ado about the broken nature of the new society this alternate world of heroes represents.  Still, there's a strong focus on Dick Grayson's Batman, which hasn't really happened since Convergence, and that was good to see, as was the return of his son.  Which, all told, Dick himself is far less pleased about, given the unfortunate circumstances...I still think Earth 2, under its various creative directors, has been one of the shining successes of the New 52 era.

The Flash #2 (DC)
Barry Allen begins training his friend and colleague August Heart, who has just acquired access to the Speed Force, and that's fun in and of itself, their contrasting stances on what they should do with it, when the series takes a page from the unrelated TV show and has STAR Labs become the source of trouble, revealing who's behind the freak lightning storms, and what they're after.  It's such a good feeling, knowing I love reading The Flash again...

Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps: Rebirth #1 (DC)
Maybe it was because I never intended to read it full-time, but Robert Venditti's Green Lantern eventually lost its status as a worthy creative follow-up to the work of Geoff Johns, in my estimation, and once it fell, it plummeted.  Funny enough, Venditti explains his thought process in this issue, and it has great relevance in the policing controversies spread across newspapers seemingly every day for the past few years.  I have no idea where Venditti started the idea, but it begins to make more sense, seeing it all laid out, and where he has Hal Jordan continue to go with it.  So I'm glad I can finally say I get his take.  It's not Johns (but few could be).  And I'm okay with that.

Millarworld Annual 2016 (Image)
Putting all the cards on the table, the international competition for this thing that sought submissions from new creators was something I entered last year, basing my entry on Starlight, which you can look elsewhere to see how much I enjoyed.  I've been a member of the Millarworld message boards ever since, and so was able to keep tabs on when this would be released.  Obviously I had something of a vested interest in it.  The writer I got to know the best from the boards, perhaps somewhat naturally, was Deniz Camp, whose Starlight effort did win.  I can admire Camp, because he too admires Grant Morrison.  But the standout entry in the annual, for me, very easily, was Cliff Bumgardner's American Jesus script (just as amazingly illustrated by Steve Beach), which took a moment out of time from Mark Millar's original comic (originally titled Fallen) and explored the consequences of saving a dog's life, which was to inadvertently have the effect of stopping death from occurring, during those moments, around the whole world.  It gave me chills to read.  It was like reading Stephen King, or at any rate, a first-fate professional.  Kudos, Cliff!

Nightwing: Rebirth #1 (DC)
This was exactly the connecting story fans of Dick Grayson could have hoped for, as Dick's adventures with Spyral aren't just unceremoniously dumped, but incorporated into his greater adventures, as he realizes he probably really does have to become Nightwing again, an identity Tim Seeley (Dick Grayson's amazing co-writer, along with the incomparable Tom King, but more on him a little later) explains, as been explained many times before but still comes out fresh, because for the duration of the New 52 it was kind of ignored, as having been inspired by Superman and not Batman, as might be easy to assume.  There's also some good Parliament of Owls stuff in the issue, proving that maybe that whole story really should have been Dick's all along...

Action Comics #959 (DC)
The Rebirth era Doomsday saga continues, with parallels popping up all over the places, plus a few new wrinkles, like Superman being forced to concede that the New 52 Lex Luthor may not actually be an exact match for the one he used to know.  Otherwise, the reader will just have to continue waiting to see just where the new wrinkles are really headed...

New Super-Man #1 (DC)
I loved, loved, loved Tony Bedard's The Great Ten, which was about a group of Chinese superheroes.  Each issue told each member's story.  It was a true overlooked masterpiece.  Fortunately, someone realized China is perhaps a hotter topic today than when Great Ten was published only a handful of years ago.  And even more fortunately, a writer of Gene Luan Yang's quality is around to explore the landscape all over again.  Yang's Superman wasn't everyone's cup of tea, perhaps unfortunately coinciding with the "Truth" arc that wasn't really what anyone wanted to read in the Man of Steel's adventures.  His New Super-Man features as unlikely a protagonist as you'll find.  When first seen he appears to be a jerk!  (Bonus points to the Silver Age for being relevant again.)  But his personality is entirely in keeping with Chinese society, which is an extreme example of what we experience in the States (and you thought it was bad here!), with income disparity resulting in social dynamics that will probably surprise readers.  Yang's origin continues along so that his Chinese Superman ends up kind of being a DC Captain America, with his powers literally being infused into him (and making Chinese Superman to be something of the Rebirth Superboy).  I applaud DC and Yang for coming up with this, and I hope enough readers are culturally curious enough to keep it going a while.

The Vision #9 (Marvel)
For me, there was no question that Tom King's greatest superhero work of the past year was The Omega Men, to the point where I was willing to sell his Vision short (heh).  Yet, as of this issue, which details how Runaways character Victor Mancha went from uncle to murderer, explaining all over again how rich a creative source King's war experience really is, I'm completely sold on it.  So clearly King had room for two masterworks, in a very short time.  Here's hoping he has many more.

Old Man Logan #8 (Marvel)
This spin-off of Mark Millar's original story, generated in the wake of Secret Wars and I'm not sure how related to a similar Brian Michael Bendis mini-series during that event, was something I was slow to give much credit to (there I go again), because I just didn't see the point.  But if comic book logic counts for anything, then something like this makes its own kind of sense.  And it can't possibly hurt to have Jeff Lemire writing.  This is the story of Wolverine, decades older, whose whole life and world crumbled in the wake of a catastrophic supervillain victory (think Final Crisis or  Forever Evil, but more permanent), and he was left virtually alone to pick up the pieces.  Somehow he was transported to the present.  This issue, Lemire helpfully spells out the whole thing, and helps Logan come to a kind of peace with his situation.  He's been in constant dread that he's going to have to experience the fall all over again.  Curiously, the time-displaced Jean Grey, from Bendis's (it figures, right?) All-New X-Men, is the one who helps him.  This is Jean at the start of her career.  She hadn't even met Logan yet, when she was pulled from the past.  And all over again, the value of Jean Grey is exhibited.  Great issue.

Wonder Woman #2 (DC)
Greg Rucka's origin of Wonder Woman begins.  Suddenly, there are a million Wonder Woman origin stories going on.  There's Legend of Wonder Woman, Wonder Woman: Earth One, the upcoming Wonder Woman movie, the upcoming Wonder Woman: The True Amazon...  Yet, for all that, it is worth visiting and revisiting.  Every creator has a fresh perspective, and with Wonder Woman, finally getting her creative due, it's more relevant than ever before.  This is a character who's always been touted as one of DC's most important characters, but she's never been near as popular as Superman or Batman, and as such her origin isn't as well-known.  As more fans come to check out what she's all about, it presents, obviously, a rich opportunity to explore, right from the beginning of the story.  Rucka's vision is pretty focused, as the Amazonian princess Diana is alone interested in a world she never knew, as she's the first of her kind to be born since they were sealed off from Man's World.  He assumes you already know, or don't care, about the particulars of her birth (although the alternating arc in this twice-monthly series does feature exactly that), and just runs from there.  The in-house ads talk about each series of the Rebirth era featuring a new epic that starts now, and as far as I can tell, that's exactly what DC has been delivering.  Azzarello set such a high mark in the New 52 with Wonder Woman.  Rucka seems intent to, and capable of, surpassing it.

Quarter Bin 82 "Return of the Duck Knight, Dixon & McDaniel's Nightwing, Pandora's Futures End, Rucka's Queen & Country, Dixon's Robin"

Not always, but this time the title of this column may be taken literally.  Thank you for reading this.

The Midnite Skulker #2 (Target)
From August 1986.
This issue, as you can tell, is dubbed "Return of the Duck Knight," which makes this a vintage parody of Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns.  I just had to read it.  We live in an age where anything that's parodied isn't taken seriously (it's funny because literally anything can be made to sound ridiculous, right?), but there was a time where it was taken for granted that anything was fair game, including something that was just beginning to become a touchstone.  E. Larry Dobias delivers a pretty spot-on parody, down to panel structure and emphasis on TV reportage.  The whole Duck Knight thing was later absconded by Darkwing Duck, but...Dobias get there first!  Midnight skulkers, meanwhile, also exist in the comic strip B.C., which means you have to be pretty specific to find this on Google.  I know people who aren't fans of superheroes find it very hard to take them seriously, so it's not surprising that someone instantly showed up to make fun of Dark Knight Returns, but it's pretty funny, observing how much pain Bruise Wane, I mean Bruce Wayne would be in if he really did try and resume a young man's career when he was anything, anything but.  I mean, if you were to make a movie about Old Man Bruce, I wonder if anyone would take him seriously.  I remember critics pointing out how Jack Bauer probably couldn't absorb relatively easy jumps at his age when the last 24 revival happened.  And Jack would still be young compared to the Bruce Wayne of Dark Knight Returns!  Clint Eastwood had some hits as an old man adventure star (Unforgiven, Gran Torino), but again, no real comparison to Miller's vision.  Apparently, only ducks can pull it off otherwise...

Nightwing #26 (DC)
From December 1998.
When I quit reading comics before heading off to college, I quit cold turkey, unlike what I've managed to do in this Comics Readr era (although I'm hoping to make a better go of it in a few months).  The transition was during my senior year of high school, and I guess it was more staggered than I now remember, because I don't remember reading this issue back in the day, in which Huntress enters the series proper (there had been a mini-series team-up previously) under the auspices of Chuck Dixon and Scott McDaniel, who somehow managed to turn Dick Grayson's first ongoing series into their own little creative showcase, especially McDaniel, who parlayed this work into higher profile stuff with Batman and Superman, before gradually be used less and less, to the point where you'd hardly know the poor guy's still working in comics...Anyway, I loved this era, and it's always worth revisiting.  Clancy's still there, Soames is still there, Tad is still there, and even Cisco!  It's easy to forget Cisco, because he wasn't as well defined as some other characters, but this was such a rich vision of Dick's further crime-fighting career, I wish it got more respect later.  There are always reprints, and back issues...

Trinity of Sin: Pandora - Futures End (DC)
From November 2014.
I continue to pick away at the Futures End and Villains Month comics DC put out, since there's such a wealth of material to be found.  The latest is Pandora, who was seemingly intended to be the major new character of the New 52, and who was killed off in DC Universe Rebirth, and apparently in this story, too.  It seems that was always her fate.  As part of the "trinity of sin" (along with the Question and Phantom Stranger), she ended up inhabiting one of the more obscure corners of the DC landscape.  These are characters who recur in the comics with some regularity, but they're rarely around for much more than a visit.  Pandora was inhabiting, at first, the role of Harbinger from Crisis on Infinite Earths, and so it can actually be said she had remarkable staying power.  It's time to put aside the notion that she was a creative failure.  The surprisingly dependable Ray Fawkes, still looking for a true breakout project, was responsible for this.

Queen & Country FCBD (Oni)
From May 2002.
This was one of the releases from the very first Free Comic Book Day.  (Read a little about that here.)  With the recent return of Greg Rucka to the pages of Wonder Woman (and DC in general), it's worth remembering that he's got a pretty long history in comics at this point.  His first creator-owned success was Whiteout (adapted into a 2009 film), but Queen & Country is what, besides his Batman work, put Rucka on the map (for me, he'll always be best remembered as part of the writing dream team of 52).  Until now, I'd never read any of it.  Turns out it's pretty good.  It's also worth noting, with some amusement, that Bryan Lee O'Malley, who would later launch the innovative Scott Pilgrim series of graphic novels at Oni, appears listed as artist for someone else's project.  You just kind of expect someone like that to have emerged fully formed, but apparently that wasn't the case.

Robin #75 (DC)
From April 2000.
This was from later in Chuck Dixon's long run on the title he helped launch (he had nearly twenty-five issues left to go after it, reaching the hundredth issue, and then a few more later).  By this time, Tim Drake is about ready to take his break from being the Boy Wonder, and Stephanie Brown will assume her ill-fated turn, in what is still a shockingly downplayed part of the Robin lineage.  But that's about fifty issues and two writers later.  It's not surprising that Dixon would be the writer to shepherd Tim away from the Dynamic Duo partnership, as the beginning of the series had Tim breaking away from "AzBats" and thus a Robin striking out on his own for the first time.  Tim kind of remains in that mode, actually.  The artist is Pete Woods relatively early in his career.  I can't believe I'm just making a label for the guy.

Nightwing #30 (DC)

writer: Tim Seeley, Tom King
artist: Javier Garron, Jorge Lucas, Mikel Janin

via Bleeding Cool

Among the many fake controversies to be found recently on the Internet was the one surrounding the final issue of Nightwing (this one).  Apparently there's a whole alternate, original version that exists and does the elegiac, retrospective, reverent look that fans might have wanted to see otherwise, and this one has been seen a crude patchwork, poor substitute.

Yeah.

I'll admit, it's not a perfect issue.  But it's a far better one than it could have been.  As you may or may not know, Dick Grayson ended up being a pivotal player during Forever Evil after he was kidnapped by the bad guys and exposed to the world as being the face behind the domino mask of Nightwing.  By the end, he "died."  Not in the typical comic book fashion.  More like a cliffhanger.  In the final issue of the crossover event, he was alive and hardy.

And repositioned.  And so his ongoing series, Nightwing, was cancelled, and was just relaunched as Grayson.

Dick Grayson was originally introduced in 1940's Detective Comics #38.  He is of course the original Robin, Batman's sidekick, the Boy Wonder.  Over the years his role has evolved.  He was the original reader surrogate, the Spider-Man prototype if you will.  Eventually he struck out on his own, starting when he helped form the Teen Titans.  In the '80s he adopted a new superhero identity, Nightwing, and a new costume.  In the '90s he donned the cowl of Batman for the first time.  He was scheduled to die in Infinite Crisis.  Grant Morrison had him reprise his time as Batman.  And now this.

I've long been a fan of the character, thanks to Burt Ward's depiction in the classic '60s TV show.  (Holy glove-fidgeting, Batman!)  I was too young and unfamiliar with the actual comics at the time to know it wasn't Dick who was killed off in "A Death in the Family."  I was devastated when I saw the news in the paper.  I wondered why he wasn't in Tim Burton's Batman.

And, eventually, I thrilled when Chuck Dixon and Scott McDaniel launched the first Nightwing ongoing comic.  I loved that run.  I loved Devin K. Grayson's run.  And I wondered why it was so hard for subsequent creators to sync up with Dick the way Chuck and Devin had.  When the New 52 came around and Kyle Higgins launched the next Nightwing ongoing comic, I thought someone had finally figured it out.  And for a brief moment, he had.

And...so it reached the point where Dickwas once again expendable.  Or, malleable.  A trait that has become perhaps Dick Grayson's defining characteristic.  The ability to be "who you need me to be."

That's from this issue, by the way, those very words, the final ones of this final issue.  It's not a perfect summation.  It's something a character in transition would say in lieu of something more definitive.  But that's what's unique about Dick.  He's an icon who's free to evolve.  Always looking for that chance to define his legacy.  All over again.  Because he's always changing, it's hard to think of him in the same way one does, say, Batman or Spider-Man.

That lost version of Nightwing #30 might have been that statement.  Who knows?  What I love about this version is that it's a final issue that actually speaks to the next issue.  Directly.  You have no idea how rarely that happens.  Is this actually the first time?  Correct me here, folks.

So often, the final issue of a series, or sometimes just a creative run, is self-reflective, self-referential.  Most of the time it's be a different creative team than the one that was last best known, and is incongruous.  Or dismissive.  What have you.

You will note the absence of Kyle Higgins in the credits.  No Chicago (Dick's last context prior to this and/or Forever Evil).  I don't have notable history reading Tim Seeley or Tom King, both of whom write Grayson, along with artist Mikel Janin.  They're all here.  A lot of the issue is representing the new context, Dick as an undercover agent infiltrating a criminal organization known as Spyral.  His new context is being a spy.  Actually, it's not terribly different from Devin K. Grayson's Renegade arc (so there's even precedence!).

There's also Batman beating the stuffing out of Dick.  And Dick fighting back.  We get Dick's version of the mission statement Christopher Nolan had Bruce Wayne's father give him in Batman Begins ("And why do we fall, Bruce?  So we can learn to pick ourselves up."):

"We fall because someone pushes us.  We get up to push back."

I consider this a pretty good time to be a fan of Dick Grayson.  I think the more DC's writers are forced to think about him and work with him, rather than merely write more adventures (which is what it might seem they're doing now), the better he is.  So I'm happy that an issue like this exists.  I'm happy that it tries to reconcile the present with the past.  I'm happy that the ending is the same as the beginning.

But I'm strange like that.

Nightwing #15 (DC)

writer: Kyle Higgins
artist: Eddy Barrows

(via dccomics.com)

"Death of the Family" kicked off in October, but the major event kicked off in December.  DC created nifty die-cut covers, which is not represented in the above image.  That was an alternate cover for the issue.  The one I have has the "face mask" of the Joker as he currently exists included as a flap under which is Nightwing's own face.  Apparently there was the chance that Joker was actually going to cut the faces off Batman's allies (the only time I heard about this before the conclusion of the story in the recent Batman #17 was in relation to Jason Todd, who shares the Red Hood identity with the Joker, who had that persona before his transformation into the Clown Prince of Crime), so these covers would have been pretty ironic in hindsight.

And so goes the cleverness of the whole arc.  Some fans were disappointed that Joker didn't have a "Death in the Family" (in which he murdered Jason, who got better) or The Killing Joke (in which he crippled Barbara Gordon, who got better) moment, while others thought it was all about the emotional impact.  As in "Night of the Owls," Dick Grayson and his current writer Kyle Higgins enjoyed the story by making it extra personal, and once again tying in the renewed Haly's Circus connection that has been the hallmark of this New 52 series since its launch.

Early on I was a pretty big cheerleader of both the series and Higgins.  Lately I've cooled on both.  It's become easier to skip issues, and it's much for the same reasons that I've found it so easy to not read Higgins pal Scott Snyder's Batman.  When Snyder first starting writing the Dark Knight in the pages of Detective Comics, it seemed like he would be a writer who would really be able to exploit the character's rich lineage.  There was a moment where he actually had the crowbar used by Joker to murder Jason on auction.  Then Snyder got Batman in the New 52 relaunch and started writing in arcs that the whole Batman family got to participate in.  He and Higgins had previously written Gates of Gotham together, so it was no surprise when Nightwing had a little extra significance in "Night of Owls," and at that point I still believed that Higgins had a vision, the way Chuck Dixon and Devin K. Grayson (no relation to Dick) did before him.  He started out so well.  But he's since begun wallowing in randomness, meandering through rather than exploring Nightwing's life, using something relevant to do nothing at all with it, which is Haly's Circus, where Dick grew up, where he lost his parents, and where a connection with a character named Zucco only goes so far (Tony Zucco called the hit on his parents, while Sonia Zucco is his current love interest).

Sometimes a slow burn is worth it.  Sometimes it's just a writer spinning his wheels.  Maybe it's because Higgins has to write around Snyder, maybe it's because he trusts Snyder too much, along with so many Batman fans.  And I'm not reluctant about Snyder because he's supplanted Grant Morrison as the main Batman writer (while Morrison is still writing Batman), but that his stories never seem to go anywhere, either.  I read the early issues of American Vampire because Snyder was working on that book in association with Stephen King, who wrote a separate narrative that did go somewhere, while Snyder didn't.  Sure, King's work ended early while Snyder's continues (currently on hiatus, though), but every now and again I want my faith in a writer to be rewarded.  King has proven that many times over.  Morrison has.  Snyder hasn't, and Higgins has reached that point, and I'm afraid he won't get beyond it.

Solicitations for future issues of Nightwing have him agonizing over the fallout of "Death of the Family," yet as evidenced in #15 there's really nothing to worry about.  Sure there are personal deaths associated with Joker's actions at Haly's Circus, but these are characters Higgins has really only just introduced.  Part of Dick Grayson's problem is that he's never had a consistent supporting cast.  He's had Batman, Barbara (maddeningly always only a would-be lover), the Teen Titans.  I mean, Jason has managed to go further with Starfire than he ever did, and Dick married the girl!  (Although the wedding went horribly, thanks to Raven, not that anyone cares.)

Anyway, this is to say that Nightwing in my experience with "Death of the Family" was certainly no Batman and Robin, which you'll remember I was gaga over.  Brilliant work there.  Not so much here.  More like frustrating.  I want something to happen in this series.  Dick has proven time and time again that he's not just a supporting character in Batman's world.  Higgins has returned him to his own.  But in many ways, he's also brought him right back to where he started, under the shadow of the Dark Knight.  That's just not right.