DC Previews Picks: October 2013

Okay, so the word on the street is that something has been left out of DC’s solicitations for this month. Not only was it done deliberately, but it seems that other companies are also leaving things out of their solicitations as well. Coincidence? Or something more? I could do some detective work and find out myself… but it’s so much easier to let Rich Johnston do it for me.

Justice League #24, Justice League of America #24, & Justice League Dark #24: All of the solicitations have a “The Justice League is dead!” notice in the text and on their placeholder covers. Coincidentally, all three of these titles are the ones that were participating in the “Trinity War” crossover that took place right before the “Forever Evil” event started. I think we can all connect the dots here. Expect normal service to be resumed by the time the last issue of the “Forever Evil” miniseries ships and the heroes make their triumphant return.

Superman/Wonder Woman #1: DC’s power couple get their own title together because… I dunno, the writers in their own series couldn’t be bothered to develop their relationship? This pairing hasn’t really done anything for me since it seems to be instituted by editorial mandate more than anything else. The characters have spent decades working together and not given off the slightest bit of sexual tension. Even in “Kingdom Come” their relationship was deliberately portrayed as passionless until the surprise twist at the end (which Mark Waid managed to make work). The series is written by Charles Soule who has been getting a lot of DC work lately, though his only series of note prior to this were the two “24” minis at Image. IGN does think that he’s done a bang-up job taking over for Scott Snyder on “Swamp Thing” but he’s got an uphill struggle to make me care about this title.

Damian: Son of Batman: A six-issue miniseries billed as being written and illustrated by one of Damian’s co-creators — Andy Kubert. Unfortunately for this title, though Kubert is a great artist, he’s not the co-creator of Damian Wayne that gets me to buy comics. This appears to be an “Elseworlds”-style story as it picks up in the crazed future where Damian has taken over as the new Batman. It also appears to be an origin story of sorts for how the character came to be “Batman,” but it’s hard for me to really get excited about this when Grant Morrison isn’t involved. At the very least, I’m sure it’s going to be a great-looking superhero comic.

Animal Man #24: Featuring new artist Rafael Albuquerque. This… is baffling to me. Wasn’t the whole point of the “American Vampire” hiatus so that Albuquerque could get ahead on issues and draw the title’s second half without interruptions or fill-in artists? I certainly hope that he has been socking away the issues like nothing else, because it would sure suck to find out that he’s decided to do “other things” instead of finishing off “American Vampire.” If he has, then I’d like to see either Sean Murphy or Dustin Nguyen take over for him. Their work on the two mini-series in the “Vampire” universe show that they’ve certainly got the chops for the job.

Superman — Action Comics vol. 3: At the End of Days HC: Grant Morrison wraps up his take on the character in the “New 52.” I liked the first two volumes, and there was an upward trend to the quality of them. So I’m hoping that continues here. As for what the future holds for the character at DC now that he’s no longer being written by someone with not only a deep respect for, but a real understanding of the character’s history? I don’t think it’s anything good at this point, yet as with all things concerning the dubious choices and standards of the Big Two, I’m certainly up for being proved wrong.

The Sandman: Overture #1: I’m expecting nothing less than greatness when this title is done. After all, Neil Gaiman’s two substantial returns to the character since he ended the series, “The Dream Hunters,” and “Endless Nights,” were both excellent while the writer’s other work has been great fun to read as well. Here, he’s joined by J.H. Williams III who is certain to make the comic look capital-A AMAZING, to the point where I’m sure even the detractors will say that even if the story isn’t any good at least it was pretty. As for the story itself, we finally get to find out what the nature of the conflict Morpheus was involved in prior to his capture in “Sandman #1.” I never really wondered about it, since it wasn’t really necessary to the story. More interesting is the quote from Gaiman in the solicitation text which tells us that one of the Endless dies on page 5. Now if you know your “Sandman” lore, you know that the only one of them to “die” before this series was Despair. The story behind that is something that I have wondered about (particularly with Daniel’s acknowledgement that the person who did it had “better reasons” for it) and that makes me anticipate this even more.

Coffin Hill #1, The Hinterkind #1, The Witching Hour #1: Apparently the success of Snyder and Murphy’s “The Wake” has emboldened Vertigo to unleash both of these titles at once on the public. This strikes me as a recipe for disaster since they’ll be competing for attention from a very limited audience (these days anyway). Neither have particularly high-profile creative teams, though the premise of “Hinterkind,” about a post-apocalypse Earth where nature is reclaiming the land and creatures of myth are coming out of the woodwork, sounds more interesting. That said, neither of these is likely to survive a year unless they’re really good. The kind of good that makes careers.

The Unwritten #54: The finale of the crossover with “Fables,” and what’s Mr. Dark doing on the cover there? Wait, that’s not a cover. That looks like an interior page with Mr. Dark facing off against Tommy Taylor from the books. What the hell is going on with this storyline? I realize that this is likely a major spoiler, but it’s also the kind that raises a lot of questions in the process. I didn’t need the incentive to pick up this title, but it has now made the waiting for the collected edition that much harder.