DC Solicitation Sneaks: February 2025
Above-the-Board Recommendation:
Gotham City: Year One
I guess I feel obligated to pick the softcover edition of this story as I just ordered the hardcover from Amazon in a “Get 3 For the Price of 2” deal. (What were the others? “Batman: Hush” in paperback and “Superman vol. 1: Supercorp” in hardcover. All of these were already around 45% off cover price when I ordered them so the price was right.)
This comes to us from writer Tom King and artist Phil Hester and promises to tell us how Gotham became such a cesspool of sin that it needed its richest heir to dress up as a bat and fight crime inside it every night. I kid, but part of me thinks that this is really going to be King telling a story he wants to within the superhero genre with as much hammering as he needs to do in order to get the pieces to fit. Sometimes the results are great (“Mister Miracle,” “The Human Target”) and other times, less so (“Adam Strange,” “Danger Street”). Still, this is going to require just a little bit of suspension of disbelief because any real “Batman” fan knows that Gotham’s corruption started when the demon Barbatos was summoned in a secret ceremony back in the 1700’s…
Batman: The Long Halloween – The Last Halloween #5 (of 10): If nothing else, I have to admire DC’s commitment to getting top-flight talent to illustrate this miniseries. There’s no replacing Tim Sale, but who isn’t going to want to see Bill Sienkiewicz illustrate a full comic these days. Especially one involving the Joker and his special Valentine’s Day gift to Gotham City.
DC vs. Vampires: Darkness and Light (One-Shot): Still going. This one-off written by series writer Matthew Rosenberg promises to show two sides of the same story – from Wonder Woman and Alfred Pennyworth’s, respectively. It’s said to be an examination of how anger and vengeance can either ruin you or be your salvation. Sounds nice. Too bad I lost interest in this series after its initial twelve-issue run turned out to be not all that great and something of a bait-and-switch for a follow-up miniseries. Nikola Cismesjia and Daniel Bayliss illustrate either the “Darkness” or the “Light” half of this issue.
Superman: The Last Days of Lex Luthor #1 (of 3) (2nd Printing): Wow, this takes me back. There was a time when artist Bryan Hitch delivered incredible superhero art in a very slow fashion. Just ask anyone who read the first two volumes of “The Ultimates” on a monthly basis. The man has become much better about getting quality art out in a timely fashion these days as he delivered an uninterrupted 16-issue monthly stint on “Venom” a little while back. So when the first issue of this miniseries was published in 2023 and the two subsequent issues failed to materialize, I imagine everyone got bad flashbacks from Hitch’s (old) work ethic. However, this delay is down to issues with DC’s scheduling department as they published it without realizing that the artist would be unavailable to draw the other two issues before he finished with his Marvel commitments. It looks like that’s been resolved now, so we can now look forward to seeing this Mark Waid-written, Bryan Hitch-illustrated completed (and collected) this year.
Detective Comics #31 Facsimile Edition: Because nothing illustrates the concept of inflation like paying $7 for a replica of a 64-page issue with a cover price of ten cents.
DC Finest: Peacemaker – Kill for Peace: It’s understandable that after seeing the character in “The Suicide Squad” and the “Peacemaker” streaming series, people would want to know more about his comic book origins. The catch is that Peacemaker the character was so obscure prior to John Cena’s portrayal of him on the big and small screens there’s not really a whole lot of noteworthy comics stories featuring him. Which is why we’re getting a bunch of his cameo appearances from a lot of DC comics from the 80’s. Including what looks to be most of “The Janus Directive” crossover between “Suicide Squad” and “Checkmate,” along with issues of “Vigilante” and “Eclipso” because they really wanted to pad out the page count here.
Plastic Man No More! HC: Collecting the four issue miniseries from writer Christopher Cantwell and illustrated by Alex Lins and Jacob Edgar. After suffering from catastrophic cellular damage on a mission with the Justice League, Eel O’Brien doesn’t have much longer to live. So now he has to find a way to make peace with his past, and with his son as well. Which is easier said than done for someone who has spent most of his life being a force for chaos, even when he was a superhero. I’m always interested in stuff from Cantwell and the last days of an off-the-wall cult superhero like Plastic Man seems like a good fit for his sensibilities. The only catch is, you guessed it, that it’s being released in hardcover first. So maybe I’ll pick it up when it comes out. Or maybe I’ll just wait for a big sale or for it to hit paperback, like this month’s “Above-the-Board Recommendation.”
Batman/Elmer Fudd: The Deluxe Edition HC: Reputedly hailing from the land of Far Better Than It Has A Right To Be is this Tom King-written, Lee Weeks-illustrated (with Byron Vaughns drawing the back-up story) crossover between The Dark Knight Detective and the, uh… Hunter of the Wascally Wabbit. This was part of a month of crossovers between DC superheroes and Looney Tunes and easily the most well-regarded of the bunch. So much so that it’s now getting a 96-page hardcover edition reprinting the original story, the original story in black-and-white, an introduction by King, and a new cover by Weeks. Not that I don’t want to read this to see if it lives up to its reputation, but I’m not going to do it for the $20 cover price.