DC Previews Picks: March 2015
DC has been running themed variant covers for a while now, but I think their gimmick this month is the best one they’ve offered up yet. Certain titles will be getting variant covers based on iconic movie posters. So you’ve got “Flash” riffing on “North by Northwest,” “Detective Comics” aping “The Matrix,” “Green Lantern” taking on “2001,” and “Grayson” drawing on “Enter the Dragon” for inspiration. There’s no doubt that many of these are poster-worthy; though, the two I’d be most interested in picking up for myself would be the “Superman”/”Super Fly” and “Action Comics”/”Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” covers. Those were truly inspired. As was the “Justice League”/”Magic Mike” mash-up which gets points just for having the guts to serve up that much superhero beefcake. I give it a facepalm, but that’s just me.
Also, DC cancels thirteen titles this month in the run-up to “Convergence!” Out of all of them, I’m only reading one: “Swamp Thing.” After forty issues, writer Charles Soule’s exclusive contract with Marvel, and declining sales, I’m betting that everyone involved realized that this would be a good place to wrap things up and deliver a proper ending for the title.
Convergence #0: If you believe in such a thing as “the ongoing narrative of the DC Universe,” then this will be required reading for you. Picking up from the “Superman: Doomed” crossover, the “Future’s End” and “Earth 2: World’s End” weekly series, we get to find out where worlds go to die and see DC’s continuity spun from a different perspective. The hype machine for this is running at full tilt, given the fact that this is billed as the biggest story in DC history. Which is amusing since it really only exists as a band-aid to cover the company’s move from New York to Burbank over the following two months. As “the ongoing narrative of the DC Universe” has never been as cohesive as the one Marvel has spun for itself, I think it’s going to be deeply skippable.
Batman: Earth One vol. 2: Advance-solicited for May, which means it’ll be coming out some three years after the first volume. I thought that Geoff Johns and Gary Frank’s take on a younger, more inexperienced Bruce Wayne worked pretty well. It at least offered a version of the character I could believe in, which the “Superman: Earth One” volumes ultimately failed to do and are now collecting dust on a shelf at Book-Off in Torrance. Actually I really don’t know what has happened to those volumes after I sold them. It’s the kind of fate they deserve, though.
The Multiversity: Ultra Comics & [Issue] #2: Grant Morrison’s trip across the DC Multiverse comes to a close. Seeing these issues solicited here now, it feels like the whole thing went by pretty quickly. Which isn’t a problem for me as that just means the collected edition will be here that much sooner. Oh yeah, the “Ultra Comics” issue also promises to make the reader an active participant in the story. I’d be deeply skeptical of such a claim from a book by any other writer, but this is Morrison. Only he has the imagination necessary to actually make such a claim work.
Batman Eternal #’s 48-52: DC’s flagship weekly series also wraps up this month. My copy of the first volume arrived a week ago, and it was a pretty satisfying read. It starts off with Commissioner Gordon being framed for a horrific subway accident and Batman’s relationship with the GCPD being upended as all sorts of old villains, like Carmine Falcone, start crawling out of the woodwork. The story doesn’t deliver much you haven’t seen from a “Batman” story before, but it’s delivered at a high enough intensity and with enough momentum that reading through the twenty issues collected in the first volume is pretty easy. There’s also the fact that, if you’re willing to wait, buying the collected editions is much cheaper than getting the single issues as they come out. If there’s always room on your shelf for a good “Batman” story, then this is worthy of that space (so far, anyway).
Harley Quinn vol. 1: Hot in the City: Hmmmm… Do I want to see fuss is about or keep going through life with “The Animated Series’” take on the character being the definitive one in my mind. Or maybe I just want to get through this and go back to playing “Assassin’s Creed: The Pre-Sequel.” Uh, I mean “Rogue.”
Dial H: Deluxe Edition HC: No, this series didn’t set the sales charts on fire and also features one of those, “We gotta wrap this up NOW!” kind of endings. But it’s also written by an author, China Mieville, with a substantial following so it gets the one-volume hardcover treatment in order to appeal to that base. Flaws aside, I still thought it was an interesting read.
American Vampire: Second Cycle #7: It’s noted that this issue has been resolicited and that all previous orders are cancelled. Hey, remember when Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque put this series on a year-long hiatus so that they could work on other projects and bring this title out on a regular basis together? Yeah, those were the days…
Fables vol. 21: Happily Ever After: Certainly a fitting title. However, this volume seems to be missing something as it only collects issues #141 to #149. The series was set to end with #150 which, come to think of it, hasn’t been solicited yet. Could it be that Bill Willingham is preparing to make the final issue its own graphic novel? It sounds ridiculous, but how else could you explain leaving the final issue out of this collection. Then again, he could just be doing it to make all of us trade-waiters actually pick up an issue of the series. Which I would do for this series in a second.
Astro City: Family Album: Hey, it’s the next volume in the series for me. I finally picked up the first two at conventions earlier this year, and the series’ reputation is pretty well-deserved. Expect a podcast about it once I get caught up on it.