Re: DC UNIVERSE Reboots in September, Same Day Digital Linewide
 

I was in college when Superman Vol. 2 #75 (the Death of Superman for the uninitiated) came out. My comic book store didn't do that, but they did run out as people reserved basically all the copies they were going to get.

I was more than happy to speculate back in the day (selling stuff like this in order to afford stuff I really wanted) and had purchased three copies. As I walked out of the store, a guy rushes me, shoves a $100 bill in my face and implores me to sell him a copy of Superman. That $100 bill paid for my comic books for a month.

Stupid people. You have to love them...

Re: DC UNIVERSE Reboots in September, Same Day Digital Linewide
 

And the titles:

Re: DC UNIVERSE Reboots in September, Same Day Digital Linewide
 

I just looked at DC's subscriptions page and what's interesting is that not all 52 titles are even available. I wonder if the absent titles are the ones on the bubble. That is, the ones they're willing to ax if sales aren't immediately satisfactory. Here are the titles not being offered for subscription:

Batwing
Captain Atom
Mister Terrific
Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E.
I, Vampire
Resurrection Man
Demon Knights
Stormwatch
Voodoo
Grifter
Deathstroke
Suicide Squad
O.M.A.C.
Blackhawks
Men of War
All-Star Western
Static Shock
Hawk & Dove
Legion Lost

So if any of those are on your radar, you might want to make a point of buying early. Three of the titles that interest me are actually on this list: All-Star Western, Suicide Squad and Voodoo (which I wasn't interested in until I found out Ron Marz is writing it). Most of these I would have expected to be on their "uncertain" list, but I am a little surprised they have such little confidence in Static Shock.

Re: DC UNIVERSE Reboots in September, Same Day Digital Linewide
 

Based on the Flashpoint Frankenstein series (written by Jeff Lemire, who will be writing the Frankenstein ongoing), Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. will be the most awesome comic ever.

Re: DC UNIVERSE Reboots in September, Same Day Digital Linewide
 

Speaking of Frankenstein and comics, if you're looking for a time-suck, Kevin Nowlan has a blog and he loves him some Frankenstein. Lots of other great stuff on there, too, including a lot of posts that show a work in various stages (i.e., pencil concept through to completion).

I'm still tinkering with my list of New 52 titles I want to explore. I'm trying to keep it small, but I confess the more I look at this, the more I start wanting to read more of them! Currently, I've got it down to:

For Sure

• All-Star Western - Easily the most interesting concept in the whole lot for me.
• Batgirl - I love Barbara Gordon as Batgirl and I trust Gail Simone to make this worth reading.

Strongly Interested

• DC Universe Presents - A Legends of the Dark Knight-type serial anthology for the DCU's secondary and tertiary characters? Y'okay.
• Superman - I have a suspicion this will be the Superman-as-Allegory-for-Social-Issues book. That's my bag.

Maybe

• Action Comics - Superman interests me more, but I could get into either book.
• Batwoman - Been meaning to read the character for years now; this could be the perfect time to start.
• Catwoman - Always liked the character.
• Green Lantern: New Guardians - I like Kyle Rayner, but I'm afraid of the Geoff Johns Epic era.
• Justice League Dark - A team of the supernatural characters shouldn't interest me, yet it does.
• Justice League International - A callback to the Keith Giffen era, plus Dan Jurgens is doing it.
• Voodoo - Ron Marz is writing.
• Suicide Squad - I like the concept and I like Harley Quinn.

The weird thing is, my favorite DC character/mythos by far is Batman. But Bats represents, like, 25% of all titles either directly or through associated characters such as sidekicks past and present. I've already gone through one era of my comics budget being dominated by Batman and just a couple other characters, and I'm not interested in doing that again.

Re: DC UNIVERSE Reboots in September, Same Day Digital Linewide
 

My list:

• Animal Man -- For my money, Jeff Lemire is the best writer to come along in mainstream comics the past decade.
• Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. -- See above
• Legion of Super-Heroes -- I love me some Legion. Plus, Paul Levitz. Need I say more?
• Legion Lost -- Like I said, I love me some Legion. And Fabian Nicieza rarely disappoints.
• Fury of Firestorm -- I like the character, like Simone's writing, and like Cinar's art. Not too familiar with Van Sciver as a writer, but I'm sure he'll do great.
• Justice League International -- I'm on the fence with this one and can't remember if I told my shop to pull it for me. But I like the characters and Jurgens is pretty good when he hits, so I'll probably give this a try.
• All Star Western -- I read every issue of Palmiotti and Grey's Jonah Hex; why should I quit now?
• Demon Knights -- It's the Demon in Camelot written by Paul Cornell. What more could anybody ask for?
• Resurrection Man -- I've heard so many good things about the original run that I have to give this a try. Hopefully, it will be successful enough that they reprint the 90s stuff.
• I, Vampire -- I'm wait-and-see on this one, but I'm definitely keeping my eye on it.

Re: DC UNIVERSE Reboots in September, Same Day Digital Linewide
 

^ Interesting. There are only two titles we have in common: All-Star Western and we're both maybes on Justice League International. I'm trying to get my list down by about half, which means sifting through the maybes. The longer I think about it, the more I feel like I could live without reading any of them. So I dunno. Most of the ones on my list are scheduled for the last two weeks of the month, so maybe I'll just pick based on that so I don't have to fuss with anything that comes out the first two weeks. That's an odd way to pick what to read, though, isn't it?

Re: DC UNIVERSE Reboots in September, Same Day Digital Linewide
 

And neither of you guys are picking up JLA... :)

I've already said I'm only picking up both Legion titles, and Action for now because of a deep discount I got on the first issue. Lemire is tempting me, but there's nothing here that won't be immediately collected into trade if it's good, or that I'll regret missing if it's somehow so unpopular that it never even makes it to trade.

I am interested in seeing how a few pan out, sales-wise:

Hawk and Dove: I think Brian Hibbs is the one who said that this is the only one out of the 52 titles that he had yet to have someone put on their pull list. As a Teen Titans fan, I love Hawk and Dove, I liked the original miniseries that Liefeld drew, I collected their ongoing and I hated the Monarch reveal... but I'm not getting this. I wonder who will. They h ave some visibility coming out of Brightest Day, but I wonder how BD really went over with the readers.

Aquaman: They have a great creative team on this, but this didn't crack 100,000 (and a John's-less Flash with an unproven writer did). I think Johns will have a tougher time revitalizing Aquaman than he did on GL and Flash (and let's hope this doesn't result in some Aquaman crossover in a year).

Teen Titans: They have a decent creative team on this, but it's soo different from the recent past, and it's also really different from the Young Justice series. Tim Drake fans have nowhere else to turn, but this one looks the most like one of those Image launch titles from back in the day. I've sat through some horrendous Teen Titans runs in my day, but they took all the nostalgia out of this book, and I'm out.

Birds of Prey: This title was on it's last legs as it was, and I still think most of the fans were just rabid Simone fans who will just hop on over to Batgirl instead (which also means no Oracle in this book, which had been a standard since day one).

All Star Western: I'm not a huge fan of western comic books, but this is where DC is making moves to branch out so I want this to succeed. I fear that the slightly higher cover price and the niche market will keep orders low, so hopefully this is good enough to get enough word of mouth in time for issue 4's orders.

Re: DC UNIVERSE Reboots in September, Same Day Digital Linewide
 

You know, I briefly considered it as one-stop shopping for DC heroes, but that six page preview just killed any interest I might have had in it. Was the art pretty? Sure. But I need some actual story and six pages of nothing isn't going to get my money. Plus, I looked head and issue #2 features a fight between Batman and Superman. Yawn. Nothing original here so far to make me care.

That's exactly the one reason I was interested, and the reason quickly wasn't.

This is the one title that excites me the most, partly because I see little chance for it being co-opted into a sprawling crossover with other titles. It just feels like the outsider of the entire relaunch, and that appeals to me. I was, however, disappointed to see it's one of the few $3.99 titles. I just have a really hard time with that psychological threshold for a cover price.

Re: DC UNIVERSE Reboots in September, Same Day Digital Linewide
 

Batgirl #1 preview

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=preview&id=9630

Wow just wow. The dialogue is absolutely horrendous. A five year old could come up with better dialogue than that.

Its like DC is just trolling all their fans, especially with how Barbara gets angry when someone calls her Batwoman instead of Batgirl. Most 20-something females would prefer to be called woman, not girl. That was always my biggest complaint too, that they should have made Barbara Batwoman and kept Steph as Batgirl.

At least the preview does show that The Killing Joke is still canon. That's about the only good thing in those six pages. As bad as the Justice League #1 preview was, it was still a lot better than this crap.

Re: DC UNIVERSE Reboots in September, Same Day Digital Linewide
 

Larger scans, courtesy of CBR boards

http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/960...29103510am.png
http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/856...29103513am.png
http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/3...29103518am.png
http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/9...9103523amb.png
http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/562...29103532am.png

Gail is posting also:

http://forums.comicbookresources.com...d.php?t=382440

Re: DC UNIVERSE Reboots in September, Same Day Digital Linewide
 

Now you post larger scans after I already strained my eyes reading the tiny low res scans. :)

I can't believe that most people on the cbr forum seem to be liking the preview. Personally I thought it was horrible. The art is nice, but the dialogue is just plain bad. I care more for the dialogue and story than art, but I guess I am old school like that. Graphics whores ruined video games, and now they are ruining comics. *grumble grumble*

Re: DC UNIVERSE Reboots in September, Same Day Digital Linewide
 

I didn't find it terrible, but there's undeniably an overuse of the word, "creep." Also, I could have done without the cartoonish "Kerrash" in the first panel. I would think the image itself is sufficient to evoke the sound of breaking glass.

I didn't read Barbara's reaction as being particularly angry, but rather a sort of semi-frustrated, semi-indifferent "Not this again" kind of thing, like when a person is introduced by an old nickname they wish would just go away but have learned to accept.

Still, I agree with your point about "woman" vs. "girl." It's problematic in general anyway with superhero monikers. I'm curious how many prominent female superhero characters have names that don't include some kind of gender identifier. Wonder Woman, Batgirl, Supergirl, Hawkgirl, Ms. Marvel, Spider-Woman, White Queen, Invisible Girl/Woman... All I can think of offhand is Jean Grey who resorted to using her real name after years of being saddled with "Marvel Girl."

On that, we disagree. Stuff actually happened in the four pages of Batgirl. Not only did we see her in action, but we learned how shaky she feels about it, we saw her take down the four murderers, make her escape and even reflect on the trauma that looms over her. Conversely, the first five pages of Justice League are entirely superfluous; all that matters is conveyed in that sixth and final page: Batman is chasing someone while himself being pursued by cops in helicopters and he encounters a disbelieving Hal Jordan. That's all that happens, and that's all we know. We don't even know why Batman was in pursuit of that guy. Maybe he left his wallet at a restaurant, for all we know.

By the way, I love the Bat-logo on the fifth page of this Batgirl preview. I didn't even notice it at first

Re: DC UNIVERSE Reboots in September, Same Day Digital Linewide
 

Barbara when she went by Oracle...


Go back and look at it again. It wasn't just "some guy." It was a parademon that Batman was chasing, which essentially indirectly confirmed that Darkseid is the villain of the first arc a month before it was officially confirmed.


Edit:

Flashpoint #5 preview

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=preview&id=9631

Pretty much confirms what was already suspected. The timeline gets irrevocably screwed up, leading to the DCnU. Although something I didn't suspect is that

Re: DC UNIVERSE Reboots in September, Same Day Digital Linewide
 

Duly noted, but of course she gets the same asterisk as Jean Grey for originally going by a feminine alter ego.

I just re-read it (which took all of about 40 seconds) and I will revise my initial remarks. We know Batman was chasing this guy because Batman wanted to know why he was at the docks. Also, we know that Bruce Wayne is filthy rich because he has some of the brightest white teeth I've ever seen. Which reminds me, shouldn't about half the superheroes have replaced their teeth with dentures by now, given how frequently they're pummeled?

Re: DC UNIVERSE Reboots in September, Same Day Digital Linewide
 

That's a little unfair. The analogues to those names are (well, nothing for WW), Batman, Superman, Hawkman, Captain Marvel (which is not gender specific, but hey, he did come first), Spider-Man, the Black King, and Mr. Fantastic, which all have gender identifiers. The girl as opposed to man thing is a point well taken, though it usually denotes someone younger (when did they start using Hawkgirl instead of Hawkwoman anyway?)

Black Canary isn't necessarily gender specific, though it does seem feminine... I just can't tell if it's because I instantly associate the name with the character.

Re: DC UNIVERSE Reboots in September, Same Day Digital Linewide
 

Well, it does look like she's moved back in with her dad, so...

THAT IS THE OLD DC! THIS IS THE NEW DC! WORLDS WILL LIVE! WORLDS WILL DIE! AND NOTHING WILL EVER BE THE SAME AGAIN for at least twelve months!

Re: DC UNIVERSE Reboots in September, Same Day Digital Linewide
 

Marvel Girl is probably the only X-character who does, so depending on how you define "prominent," you've got Storm, Rogue, Shadowcat, Phoenix, Wolfsbane, Mirage, Magma, etc.

Re: DC UNIVERSE Reboots in September, Same Day Digital Linewide
 

Those were off-the-cuff names, though I might actually dedicate some real thought to the subject later.

Another good catch!

:lol:

Storm and Rogue are good examples; Phoenix was just Jean Grey, though, right? (Was there a separate Phoenix I don't recall?) Shadowcat would be another good one, and also another character who eventually just dropped the name entirely in favor of her real name.

Re: DC UNIVERSE Reboots in September, Same Day Digital Linewide
 

I thought a bit more about this and came up with a few more. I am not that familiar with Marvel, so I just tried to remember female members of Teen Titans and Justice League.

For Teen Titans I thought of Starfire, Raven, and Terra.
Going back to the old JLI days there was Fire, Ice, and Maxima.
Stephanie Brown was originally Spoiler.
The first Post-Crisis Supergirl was actually simply named Matrix.

Re: DC UNIVERSE Reboots in September, Same Day Digital Linewide
 

I'm trying to think more old-school here, since I'd actually think it'd be rare for more modern (80's) superheroes to have -boy, -man, -girl, -woman in their names anymore. Heck, they even tried to go away from that with the Legion (and I hated it... screw Livewire, he'll always be Lightning Lad to me). But yeah, a lot of the female superheroes came after the male ones, and thus got hand-me-down names... even stuff like Namorita/Namora. And it's not like there were a ton of female supeheroes either. But hey, the Wasp. Zatanna and Electra, though those were ostensibly their real names and adding an 'a' at the end denotes female, at least in Latin.

Re: DC UNIVERSE Reboots in September, Same Day Digital Linewide
 

"Gotham, bless my aim." That is some of the corniest dialogue ever written in a thought bubble. I still think DC wanted to wipe the Killing Joke from Barbara's history, but deemed it too politically sensitive to do that to a character that had become so identified with the handicapped community.

Re: DC UNIVERSE Reboots in September, Same Day Digital Linewide
 

That art on Batgirl is leaving a little something to be desired. Maybe it's just Marcos Martins' Batgirl Year One is my definitive vision of that character.

Re: DC UNIVERSE Reboots in September, Same Day Digital Linewide
 

Finally added some of the titles to my pull list last week.

Justice League - I've become bored and frustrated with Geoff Johns and I'm not much of a Jim Lee fan but I'll give it a try for a few storylines.

Justice League Dark - I'm a longtime fan of John Constantine/Hellblazer. Also love the Vertigo version of Shade the Changing Man and have a unexplained fondness for Deadman. There's no way I can pass this up. Peter Milligan has done some great stuff. Unfortunately, he's done his fair share of mediocre and just plain bad stuff. I'm interested enough to see how this turns out, but I won't stay around long if it disappoints.

Wonder Woman - Another one that I'll keep on a short leash. I loved 100 Bullets, but haven't been too impressed with Azzarello's superhero work. I was on the fence about adding this. Cliff Chaing's art was the deciding factor.

Action Comics - Okay Grant Morrisson. Let's try this again. I never seem to enjoy your recent work as much as so many others seem to, but I'll give it a shot. But this is the last time!

Until the next time.

Batman - Haven't read a Batman title since the end of Batman:RIP, but I've heard good stuff about Scott Snyder's recent run.

Stormwatch - Paul Cornell's recent Lex Luthor run in Action Comics has me wanting to read more of his stuff. May as well start with a new #1.

Frankenstein: Agent of SHADE - The only Flashpoint tie-in that I read, and I agree with what others have said here. It's my most anticipated new title.

I'll also be sticking with Green Lantern and The Flash for a while because I'm a glutton for punishment.


I may also pick up the following based on reviews and word of mouth.

Batwoman - I read the preview a few months back. If the level of writing can reach that of the beautiful artwork, I'll pick it up.

DC Univrese Presents - When it comes to anthology titles like this, I yend to make my decision cased on the character involved and who is writing it. I probably won't get it every month, but I'll pick it up from time to time.

Swamp Thing - Every couple years someone tries to tackle Swamp thing in get it back on the rails after years and years of bad ideas, poor execution and messy convoluted mythology. This character could benefit a great deal from the rebbot, but I'll wait and see.

Animal Man - I like the character, but has there been a worthwhile Animal Man story since way back when my nemesis Grant Morrisson was writing it?


It looks like DC's play worked on me this time. With at least seven new titles added, I've about doubled my monthly pull list.

Re: DC UNIVERSE Reboots in September, Same Day Digital Linewide
 

Action #1

http://robot6.comicbookresources.com...on-comics1.jpg