DC Previews Picks: April 2013
If the creative teams for “Constantine” and “Birds of Prey” look a little different from last month, it’s because they’ve been retroactively changed since then. Robert Venditti is off the former, replaced by Jeff Lemire and Ray Fawkes plotting it with Fawkes scripting, and Jim Zubkavitch is off the latter, with Christy Marx now onboard. Apparently this is part of Dan Didio’s plan to rejuvenate second-string DC titles with big events to follow as well. While I’m all for a change in creative teams if things aren’t working out, this kind of editorial second-guessing does not inspire confidence. It’s even getting to the point where this is all starting to remind me of the constant game of musical chairs you saw in the core “X-Men” titles in the latter half of the 90’s where the writers would change every six months due to editorial meddling. Apparently the only way around this is to be a writer with clout like Grant Morrison, Geoff Johns or Gail Simone so that they can’t push you around. In any event, all the shuffling just makes the books look that much less desirable to me.
Detective Comics #19: It’s an 80-page anniversary issue. Celebrating what? Why 900 issues of this title of course. The original series wrapped up with #881 before the relaunch, so writer John Layman and artists Jason Fabok and Andy Clarke are bringing us an extra-sized story called “Mystery of the 900” to commemorate the occasion. Though it can’t help but feel a bit arbitrary, I’ve been hearing that Layman’s run has been alright so far. It might be interesting to see what he does with the extra space here.
Green Lantern #19: It appears that “crossover season” is officially over with these titles. Doing back-to-back crossovers between these titles does seem a bit excessive, but seeing as how they all pivot around the Johns/Mahnke mothership here, I’m not too worried. Plus, the lead-in for the first of these, “Rise of the Third Army,” was pretty solid. Expect a review of the second hardcover volume of “Green Lantern” either later this week or next.
Arrow #6: While I initially thought it would’ve been hilarious for the TV series this is meant to tie into to have been cancelled before it even started, that didn’t happen. It has since become The CW’s biggest hit since “The Vampire Diaries” and is encouraging the network to look at more characters to give this treatment to. “Amazon” — no points for guessing who that would be about — is one title I’ve heard mentioned. Batman, though, is still off-limits as a guest star. Him being a big movie star who can’t be seen to mingle with the TV folk while his career is so hot.
Aquaman vol. 1: The Trench: Now that it’s in paperback, I’ll be checking out Johns’ new take on the character to see if it’s as good as the hype. Hey, after the job he did and is still doing with Green Lantern, I have every right to be optimistic about this. Let’s see how far that’ll get me…
Demon Knights vol. 2: The Avalon Trap: I thought the first volume was great, let’s see if this second one can make me even more disappointed that Paul Cornell is no longer writing it.
Solo Deluxe Edition HC: A massive collection of the twelve-issue series that served to spotlight the work of a particular artist in each issue. The artists were: Tim Sale, Richard Corben, Paul Pope, Howard Chaykin, Jordi Bernet, Mike Allred, Teddy Kristiansen, Scott Hampton, Damion Scott, Sergio Aragones, and Brendan McCarthy. I actually bought the Aragones issue when it came out. Why? Well, when it came out this series had a real veneer of respectability to it. Here you’ve got these great comic book artists finally able to cut loose and do whatever they wanted within the pages alotted to them — so long as one of their stories involved a DC character. It all came off as very high class, real “comics as art” kinda stuff, and throwing Aragones into that kind of mix seemed at odds with all that. In a good way, though, since the thought of him as a respectable comic book artist amused me so much that it got me to actually buy the single issue. I didn’t regret it at all, thanks mainly to the autobiographical stories he told inside. Who knew he had a hand in the death of Marty Feldman?
… But I’m sure the rest of the artists here were pretty good too.
House of Secrets Omnibus HC: This collects the moderately successful Vertigo relaunch of the series from the 90’s by Steven T. Seagle. I say “moderately successful” because it lasted 25 issues with a two-issue mini, which is more than a lot of other titles than the imprint could claim at the time or now. Even so, it’s not as if this is a lost classic tied up in rights limbo like Morrison and Quitely’s “Flex Mentallo” was so I’m kinda curious as to why it’s getting the hardcover omnibus treatment now. If you see the “House of Secrets” pop up as an event in future DC solicitations, then I guess that’ll be the answer.
Lucifer Book One: Collecting the first two paperbacks of Mike Carey’s “better than it has any right to be” “Sandman” spinoff. Let me say that I NEVER would have given that first volume a shot had Neil Gaiman not written the introduction for it and effectively given it his seal of approval. It takes a lot to get me interested in a spinoff from that series thanks to the enormously high standards that Gaiman set with it. So far I’ve only bothered with the “Dead Boy Detectives” mini, because that was by Ed Brubaker and Bryan Talbot and “Taller Tales” because they were all written by Bill Willingham. Even if “Lucifer” was never on par with its source, it still managed to come very close and ultimately craft its own identity. Which also happened to be a key theme in the series itself. Funny thing, that. Anyway, this is another one to file under, “If you’ve never read it before, now you have no excuse.”