DC Solicitation Sneaks: May 2021
Above-the-Board Recommendation:
Superman & The Authority #1 (of 4)
During their brief heyday at the turn of the millennium, “The Authority” were a team that made you question the relevance of Superman. After all, if this team was able to handle global, interdimensional, and intergalactic threats with a maximum of violence, the murdering of bad guys, and proportionate levels of debauchery, the Man of Steel tended to come off as a relic next to them. Flash forward some 20 years and now Superman is running his own version of the team with professional scumbag (and leader of “Authority” knockoff “The Elite”) Manchester Black in charge. The plan is that Superman will be able to keep an eye on Black while working to reform him as he and his team, which includes former “Authority” mainstays Apollo and the Midnighter, handle threats that the Man of Steel would find daunting on his own.
The solicitation text also describes Superman’s approach as requiring methods that don’t scream “Justice League” and “business that can be taken care of on the sly.” So what we’re getting here is effectively Superman’s “Black Ops” team. If there was ever a superhero who didn’t need a “Black Ops” team, it’s Superman. This would normally be cause for concern… if this miniseries wasn’t being written by Grant Morrison. He’s a writer who knows the character, and his morality, like the back of his hand. So even if this looks like a morally dubious setup, my gut feeling is that’s all part of the Man of Steel’s master plan to reform Black. I’m onboard for this, which will look great regardless of how the story turns out as Mikel Janin is handling the art here.
Superman: Son of Kal-El #1: One of the plans for DC’s aborted “5G” initiative was for Jonathan Kent to take over as Superman. The specifics of how this was going to be done is not known; however, it looks like DC is still going to go through with the whole “Jonathan Kent Takes Over the Mantle of Superman.” In case the title of this series didn’t already clue you in to that. Managing the transition will be writer Tom Taylor and artist John Timms, who have both done a lot of quality work at DC over the past few years. I’m interested in seeing what they’ve got planned for him, as well as what DC has planned for his dad. What I’ve heard Clark Kent’s retirement is that it will be… otherworldly. Uh, not in the supernatural sense. I mean in the planetary sense.
Static: Season One #’s 1&2: DC’s long-awaited relaunch of the “Milestone” imprint begins this month with this title from writer Vita Ayala and artists Chriscross and Nikolas Draper-Ivey, and “Icon & Rocket” from writer Reginald Hudlin and artist Doug Braithwaite. “Static’s” relaunch gets my attention mainly because it’s doing it in a way that both gets my attention and makes me feel uncomfortable. Virgil Hawkins was just your everyday bullied nerd, until he got as mad as everyone else and went to a protest in Dakota City. There, he and his classmates were hit with an experimental tear gas that left some injured, others dead, and a few more with superpowers.
That’s right, we’ve got a superhero who got his powers after being hit by experimental tear gas. I can understand the desire to tie Static’s new origin to our modern protest culture, but this just feels like too much of a reach and a bit on the nose as well. Pretty silly too, the more that I think about this. Oh, and some of the kids who bully Virgil also get superpowers this way, so that’s great. Maybe I’m wrong in feeling this way, but we’ll see how everyone else feels in three months.
The Conjuring: The Lover #’s 1&2 (of 5): Kicking off a new “DC Horror” imprint, which… Huh… Didn’t DC used to have a horror-based imprint that would also publish movie-based tie-ins to a mature audience? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to publish it through that one than to come up with a whole new imprint? Anyway, I’m rambling and this is a five-issue tie-in to the upcoming “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It” movie from screenwriter David L. Johnson-McGoldrick and Rex Ogle. with art from Garry Brown. I have not seen any of “The Conjuring” films, though I’ve heard nothing but good things about the first one, so I feel like I should check it out at some point. In the meantime, a back-up story in the first issue from Scott Snyder and Denys Cowan is all that this miniseries has to entice me.
Suicide Squad: Get Joker #1 (of 3): This has been in the works for a while and, if I’ve heard correctly, is meant to be part of the “Jokerverse” that writer Brian Azzarello and artist Lee Bermejo delivered with “Joker” and “Batman: Damned.” Azzarello is writing this miniseries with Alex Maleev providing the art and the premise is simple: The Suicide Squad has been tasked to take out the Joker, and they’re forcing the Red Hood to work with them here. Normally this sounds like a can’t-miss premise, but Azzarello has never been keen on delivering exactly what he’s promised in a setup. So while there will likely be some creatively gory violence that earns this series its mature-readers standing and some pithy one-liners from the cast, it’s equally likely that there will be lots of people standing around and debating the morality of what they’re doing in order to generate “atmosphere.” It’s titles like this one that make my trade-waiting worth it as I feel content to let word-of-mouth make its way back to me in regards to this title’s overall quality.
Batman/Fortnite: Zero Point HC: Everyone reading this should know that I love a good “Batman” story. That said, I have no interest in “Fortnite” at all. It’s less of a generational thing than the fact that I’m just not into the whole “Games as a Service” business and prefer my single-player games with beginnings, middles, and (most importantly) ends. The reason I’m bringing up this collection is because its most hyped moment has Batman facing off with Snake Eyes. That sounds cool, even though I’ve long outgrown my “G.I. Joe” fandom. Snake Eyes’ involvement does make me want to pick up this collection (if not in hardcover, then when it hits softcover) because he’s not a character owned by DC. Which means that whenever whatever permission DC got to use him in this story expires, you’ll never be able to read this story again unless you bought it. So yeah, the idea of a “story with a limited shelf life” does have a certain kind of appeal to me.
Sweet Tooth: The Return: Welp, looks like it’s time to sit down and give “Sweet Tooth” that re-read it’s been asking for since I’ve come to realize that Jeff Lemire isn’t as great a writer as I thought he was. “Sweet Tooth” wasn’t a very original story itself, but its execution made the series stand out in my mind and help sell the tropes it was peddling. “The Return” looks to be a sequel picking up long after the original series ended. It’ll focus on a human-animal hybrid like Gus was in the first series, only now this hybrid is here to help save the humans from the oppression of the hybrids. So it’s the same story… just inverted. I can hope that this is ultimately a fake-out and the humans are revealed to be just as craven as they were in the original series, but Lemire hasn’t left me with a lot of evidence to believe he’s actually that clever.