DC Solicitation Sneaks: January 2021
Above-the-Board Recommendation:
Swamp Thing: The New 52 Omnibus
This is a comic of two halves: The one written by Scott Snyder and the one written by Charles Soule. If you’re wondering how that shakes out quality-wise, imagine a curve that’s more like a valley than a mountain. Snyder’s run started off well enough, but was eventually waylaid by the “Rotworld” crossover with “Animal Man” which had Swampy journeying through an “Age of Apocalypse”-esque future where everything was predictably awful. So Soule kind of had his work cut out for him in taking over from that storyline. The thing is that his first arc after that one was a bit of an improvement. As was the one that followed, and the one after that. Soule didn’t give us a big overarching, intricately-planned story to follow over the course of his run. Just one that kept bringing new things to the table right up until the very end with its “Future’s End” story. So I’m mainly recommending this volume because it represents something that has become increasingly rare in superhero comics: A new writer turning things around on a title after they went bad.
Future State: The Next Batman #’s 1 & 2 (of 4): Once upon a time (about a year ago), DC was deep in the planning stages for an initiative known as “5G.” It was to be the latest reinvention of their comics line and see new individuals take over the mantles of their superheroes. Then DC changed their mind about it, fired its chief architect, Dan Didio, and set about finding something new to do that wasn’t quite as drastic. However, a lot of work had already been put into this initiative and DC wasn’t about to let it all go to waste. Which is how we have the two-month event that is “Future State.” It’s a look at a bleak, fascist future for the DCU which was either the intent of the relaunch, or something that was shoehorned into these existing stories. My money is on the latter.
It probably wouldn’t surprise you to learn that a “Batman” title was set to lead the charge into the wild world of 5G. Academy-Award-winning writer, and writer of DC’s two “The American Way” miniseries, John Ridley was set to write it with Nick Derington providing the art. The big hook for the series was that it would see Lucius Fox’s son Luke take over the mantle of Batman, making him the first African-American version of the character in the main continuity. Now he’s just another alternate continuity version of Batman, of which there are a dime a dozen. I’m sure Ridley has a good story to tell here, with Nick Derington and Laura Braga splitting the art duties on these issues. It’s just that it feels hard to care about this when I know that there’s only going to be four issues of this new Batman, unless it turns out to be really, REALLY good.
Oh, and these aren’t going to be single-story issues. DC has apparently decided to append additional completed issues to “The Next Batman,” as well as other high-profile “Future State” titles. So these are actually $8, 64-page issues that feature stories about the Outsiders, Arkham Knights, Batgirls, and Gotham City Sirens. Appending lower-profile stories to a title like “The Next Batman” is certainly a way to get people to read them. Unless you’re only expecting the main story to be the only good one, which is a distinct possibility here.
Future State: Dark Detective #’s 1: With someone else taking over the mantle of Batman, what’s Bruce Wayne up to now? Taking the fight to the evil security force known as the Magistrate which has taken over Gotham City. Mariko Tamaki writes and Dan Mora illustrates the main story while Matthew Rosenberg and Carmine Di Giandomenico give us a story of Grifter in the first issue, and Joshua Williamson and Giannis Milonogiannis tell us about Jason Todd in the second. I’m mainly bringing this up because I was surprised to see Mora credited as an artist on these issues. When did he find the time to draw them while he’s been working on “Once and Future” with Kieron Gillen for the past year?
Future State: Legion of Super-Heroes #1 (of 2): While the setting of these “Future State” titles isn’t meant to be the actual future for the DCU, this one may be a little more relevant to its parent title than the rest. That’s because it’s the only one being written by the writer who was handling the title prior to all of this. In this case, it’s Bendis, who will have written twelve issues of “Legion of Super-Heroes” before “Future State” goes down. Vol. 2 isn’t set to collect this two-issue miniseries, which isn’t an immediate problem until you realize that DC is set to reboot their line after this and there’s been no word about whether or not Bendis will continue writing “Legion” after this. What I’m getting at here is that this might be the writer’s finale/epilogue for his run. I imagine we’ll find out whether or not that’s actually the case in another two months when the solicitations for March 2020 come around
The Joker War Saga: An omnibus collection of the event. From the spine of the story in “Batman” to the myriad amount of spinoffs and tie-ins it spawned. I’ll be passing on this because I’m still lukewarm on James Tynion IV’s writing for DC when it’s superhero-centric as opposed to villain-centric. Now, if DC is planning on eventually releasing a collection of his run from its start in “Batman” #86 to the end of the “Joker War” in #100, then I’d probably consider picking that up because it’d likely represent a better value for my money.
Hellblazer vol. 24: Sanctioned: In which John Constantine gets married to cute, young alchemist Epiphany Graves. A development which turned out to be much more fun and interesting than I was expecting from the character. I mean, John Constantine — MARRIED?! The 250-plus issues which preceded the ones collected here made a good argument for the idea that any long-term relationship he was in was bound to end in disaster. So it was actually nice to see John’s relationship with Epiphany work out, even if the wedding set things up for some bad times between John and his niece Gemma. This volume also collects the five-issue miniseries “City of Demons” which features art from Sean Murphy, and is written by Si Spencer. Note that’s “Spencer” not “Spurrier.” So when you read this story and think, “Hey, the art is really great, but the story is kind of crap,” that’s the reason why.