DC Solicitation Sneaks: August 2025
Above-the-Board Recommendation:
Metamorpho: The Element Man
Rex “Metamorpho” Mason has the ability to turn into any element he wants to, and he’s been the star of some of the kookiest stories of DC’s Silver Age, while remaining a cult favorite to this day. So cult that this is his first starring miniseries role in… I honestly don’t know how long. However long it was, “The Element Man” looks like it’ll have been worth the wait. Mighty Marvel Mainstay Al Ewing made his jump to DC to write Metamorpho’s adventures involving villains who can match his transformative powers, global syndicates of evil, and the darkness of his own heart. All illustrated by Steve Lieber, a guy who knows a thing or two about how to make superheroes funny. Ewing has shown that he can tell some great stories while also drawing on some of the oddest bits of their continuity, and that should be true here as well. Particularly with all of the oddness lurking in Rex’s history.
Batman #163: Billed as the shocking finale to Part One of “H2SH.” Yes, DC really seems to be running with this spelling of “Hush 2.” Hopefully the actual story won’t be as dumb, but… you never can tell with Jeph Loeb these days. In case anyone’s wondering: Don’t expect a review of this until vol. 1 hits paperback or they release an all-in-one-edition. In paperback.
Immortal Legend Batman #1: There’s a lot of nonsense in the solicitation text about humanity breaking the boundary between our universe, its shadow, and all the bad stuff that came spilling out of it with one man finding a way to use the energy between our universes to become an immortal legend known as the Cosmic Dark Knight. All you need to know is that this is basically a tokusatsu-inspired take on “Batman” co-written by someone with a lot of experience with this stuff: Former “Power Rangers” and current “Radiant Black” writer Kyle Higgins. Mat Groom co-writes, which doesn’t move the needle for me, but this has Dan Mora on art, which does pique my interest. I have no doubt he’ll draw the hell out of this, even if it’s a subject that I have little interest in myself.
While we’re on the subject, Mora is the real immortal legend this month as this is one of THREE comics he’s drawing. He’s also illustrating Superman #29 which has him searching the future for the Legion of Super-Heroes, and Justice League Unlimited #10 where Apokolips is set to return to the DCU. I’m already reading “Superman” and planning on checking out “JLU” when it’s collected, so hopefully three times the monthly Mora will be better than one.
Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum #1 (of 5): We all know that green kryptonite is Superman’s weakness, and there are other kinds of the mineral out there that do funky or deadly things to the Man of Steel. For this new miniseries from “The Ice Cream Man” creative team of writer W. Maxwell Prince and artist Martin Morazzo, they’ve come up with some new varieties to menace the title character. Get ready for the threats posed by Purple, Cobalt, and Speckled Kryptonite – AND MORE! Yeah, it may sound a little silly when I put it like that, but this is coming from a team best known for a low-key horror series so things may turn out to be creepier than you’d expect.
Justice League Red #1: Writer Saladin Ahmed and artist Clayton Henry give us the story of the covert Justice League that its main heroes can’t know about. Why’s that? Because Red Tornado, the android behind the group’s watchtower has used his computational ability to predict a crisis in the future brought about by current League’s immense power. So get ready to see him press-gang a bunch of heroes into missions that may just save the world. It’s not a bad idea, and I liked Ahmed’s run on “Miles Morales” well enough, so I may check out whether or not this is set to go anywhere interesting when it’s collected.
Cheetah & Cheshire Rob the Justice League #1: The two villains team up, recruit a crew, and make a plan to rob the Justice League Watchtower from under the nose of its heroes. Sounds like a fun premise for a superhero heist comic, right? I think so too, but what surprises me about it is that it’s coming from writer Greg Rucka. He’s written some great comics over the years – superhero and not – but ones that I’d characterize as “fun?” Not so much. Still, there’s a first time for everything and I’d like to see if he can make a comic like that, if that’s even his goal. Nicola Scott illustrates this and if she and Rucka aren’t going to do any more “Black Magick” then I guess this is the next best thing.
Challengers of the Unknown: When Darkseid died, he set the Absolute Universe into motion. He also opened up a bunch of rifts in the fabric of space in the regular DC Universe. Now it’s up to the five-person team that is the Challengers and the rest of the Justice League to seal these rifts. It sounds simple enough, except that a foe from the team’s past is working against them and that may make the difference between a universe that lives and a universe that dies. Christopher Cantwell writes with Sean Izaakse illustrating, and I was more interested in this series before I read Cantwell’s short “Challengers” story with Jorge Fornes in the latest volume of “Batman/Superman.” That was an inscrutable bit of weirdness that I hope isn’t representative of the whole story here.
Green Lantern by Robert Venditti Omnibus vol. 1: Geoff Johns’ run on this title was era-defining and they were going to need someone big to fill his shoes there. DC went with Robert Venditti, and while I liked “The Surrogates” and “The Homeland Directive” well enough, it wasn’t a pick that really excited me. However, Venditti wound up having a long “Green Lantern” run – nearly as long as Johns’, I believe – so it’s clear that he must’ve been doing something right. Now DC is collecting his run in omnibus form, so this looks like the easiest way to figure out what I’ve been missing… assuming I can find a way to fit this first one on my shelf.
Batman Black & White Compendium: Collects the three “Black & White” miniseries that have been released so far, plus all of the stories from “Gotham Knights” and “Batman: The Brave & The Bold.” I’m going to have to check and see if the existing collections contain all of these, because this has been one of the most consistently good anthology series DC has published. Ever. Even when the stories don’t always click (and they usually do) the art is always fantastic to behold. So getting all of these stories, over a thousand pages of them, for $60 is the kind of deal that any serious Bat-fan, or comics fan in general, should invest in.
The Authority Omnibus vol. 2 HC: It doesn’t seem write to say that an omnibus featuring a significant chunks written by the likes of Garth Ennis and Ed Brubaker represents the point where things started going bad for the once cutting-edge superteam… but you can’t pin it all on Robbie Morrison. I do still own the “Authority” comics collected here from Ennis and Brubaker and while they’re not terrible, they don’t represent either writer’s best work. Best to just stick with the first omnibus if you’re interested.