DC Previews Picks: October 2018
“Batman #50” came and went leaving a crater of fanboy and retailer expectations in its wake. While I’ve done my best to remain ignorant of the developments revolving around the wedding that was meant to take place in the issue, the event seems to have caused quite the uproar amongst fans. Not in a good way, mind you, as evidenced by the bodyguard that writer Tom King was assigned by DC during his time at Comic-Con. Retailers, on the other hand, raised enough of a fuss about supposed bait-and-switch tactics employed by the company to sell the issue that DC has since made it returnable. So while retailers will be able to get their money back, fans will just have to tough it out and see if the “Bruce Wayne: Jury Duty” storyline that’s following the wedding gets the series back in their good graces.
Meanwhile, DC unveiled a number of high-profile limited run series at the convention. They included Marc Silvestri’s long-in-the-works “Batman/Joker: Deadly Duo” miniseries, which will feature seven (and a half) issues fully illustrated by the artist who is writing the series as well with his Top Cow buddy Matt Hawkins editing it. The Batman Who Laughs will be getting his own miniseries from Scott Snyder and Jock as he looks to raise hell throughout the multiverse. I’m not as keen on the character as others, but Snyder and Jock are a solid creative team so I’m curious to see what they do with him. The best of these announcements is the long-rumored “Green Lantern” run from Grant Morrison and Liam Sharp. Morrison has said he’ll be diving fully into the “Hal Jordan: Space Cop” aspect of the character and the cosmic setting means that the encounters Hal will have are only going to be limited by the writer’s imagination. Sharp is a versatile artist who should have no problem matching Morrison’s madness, which means my biggest disappointment with this is that their run is only set to last for twelve issues.
Cursed Comics Cavalcade #1: A horror anthology set to arrive a few weeks in advance of Halloween. It gets points for the title, if nothing else, which will feature the expected mix of A-list characters (Batman, Wonder Woman), characters you’d expect to see in a superhero-themed horror anthology (Zatanna, Swamp Thing), and Guy Gardner. It’s got a decent lineup of creators, but only Becky Cloonan is the real standout in my opinion. I hope her story is reprinted elsewhere because I can’t really bring myself to pay $10 just to read it here.
The Books of Magic #1: The Vertigo resurgence continues with this latest go at giving Tim Hunter an ongoing series. Hunter was Vertigo’s answer to “Harry Potter” a good ten years before that series was published. However, he’s slightly more than a footnote today because after the excellent Neil Gaiman-written series that introduced the character and the seventy-five issue ongoing series that followed it, subsequent attempts to build on that with “The Age of Magic” and “Life During Wartime” only demonstrated the principle of diminishing returns. This latest ongoing looks to bring the character back to his classic interpretation of a teenage schoolkid who has to cope with everyday pressures on top of the fact that he’s destined to become the most powerful mage who ever lived. Kat Howard writes and Tom Fowler pencils and if this sounds good to you then go for it. Only the first “Books of Magic” miniseries has ever struck me as essential reading regarding Tim Hunter, so my inclination is to just shrug this one off.
Lucifer #1: See above, only with “shrug harder.” Mike Carey, along with regular artists Peter Gross and Ryan Kelly, gave us the first “Lucifer” series. It hailed from the land of “far better than it has a right to be” because creating an ongoing spinoff of “The Sandman” is just asking for trouble when you consider the quality of the source material. That series told a very self-contained story and the thought of seeing that undone caused me to take a hard pass with the last “Lucifer” ongoing which launched in hopes of getting some sales synergy with the TV series. Now we’re getting another series featuring the character (Maybe timed for the show’s fourth season revival on Netflix?) imprisoned and tortured by unknown foes after he left on a quest to find the mother of his abandoned son. I can only assume that setup means this series will be following up on the previous one, because why else would you start a “Lucifer” series that way?
Old Lady Harley #1: Ha ha DC, I see what you did there. Next please…
Deathstroke/Yogi Bear Special #1: … maybe “Old Lady Harley” doesn’t seem so bad now. DC’s got another round of Hanna Barbara crossovers out this month. Unless you really like how Mark Russell has been using these characters as vehicles for social commentary, and this time he’s got John Stewart and Huckleberry Hound teaming up to fight for social justice in the 70’s, then this may be your best bet. …Ok, who am I kidding, writer Frank Tieri looks to have Deathstroke fighting a version of Yogi that resembles the character in only the most superficial ways possible. To the point where it appears very likely that if you changed Yogi’s name you’d have a perfectly serviceable comic about Deathstroke taking on a wild bear. Unless that cover by Tyler Kirkham is misleading and artist Mark Texeira has drawn Yogi in a traditionally animated style this looks like an awful misfire.
Sideways Annual #1: Grant Morrison is listed as a co-writer on this issue, which makes you wonder what Dan Didio (writer of this series and co-publisher of DC Comics) has on him. Or maybe I’m being too cynical about that and the reason Morrison is contributing to this issue is because it features elements of his “Seven Soldiers” series of miniseries. Considering that event was effectively wiped out of continuity with the advent of the “New 52” I wouldn’t blame the writer for trying to find a way to re-insert it here, even if that means co-writing an annual for one of the “New Age of DC Heroes” titles. An initiative which is looking increasingly doomed as each month goes by.
Justice League vol. 1: The Totality: Kind of a bland subtitle for this volume of “Justice League,” which runs in contrast to all of the craziness that I heard writer Scott Snyder talk about at the panel for the series at Comic-Con. His excitement about it was infectious and even if I wasn’t sold on the series following his prior DC superhero work, I likely would’ve made a note to pick this up after listening to him. What is “The Totality?” No clue, but you can expect to see the League throw down with the latest incarnation of the Legion of Doom and see Batman be the League’s equivalent of a crazy uncle. All that and art from Jim Cheung, Jorge Jimenez, and Doug Mahnke.
Mister Miracle: “The Sheriff of Baghdad” is the work I’ve liked the most from Tom King and here he teams up with the artist of that title for a maxiseries about the New God who is also a master escape artist. Scott Free is a man who appears to have it all, but is still bothered by the one thing he has no idea if he can escape: Death. If that sounds like a downer of a setup, then you probably won’t be reassured by how I’ve heard that the series is an examination of depression using the framework of a superhero universe. Given the creators’ track record it’s possible we may have the best “feel bad” read of the year right here.
Motherlands: Even if Vertigo is no longer the creative force it once was, you can still count on the imprint to produce some interesting work. At least occasionally, these days. Take this latest miniseries from Si Spurrier, featuring art from Rachel Stott, Pete Woods, and Stephen Byrne, which takes place in a dystopian future where bounty hunters have become the new rock stars as they chase super-criminals all over the universe. One of them is Tab, who finds herself hunting down her biggest target yet. The only problem is that the only person she knows who can identify him is her overbearing, hypercritical, former superstar bounty hunter mother. So it’s a miniseries about the often fraught bonds shared between a mother and daughter — only with crazy future guns and a big heaping of violence! Now that’s a mother/daughter story I can get into!