Spoilers for Adventure Comics #6

Read the rest of this entry �

Cutty-cut!

Read the rest of this entry �

What had me singing “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,” today?  Sure, my week brightens around Wednesdays.  And sure, I was still riding high on the leftover Batmanderthal vapors.  But this is what really kick-started my morning:

The Birds of Prey are back!  And they’re being written by Gail Simone!

Of course scans_daily is all over this, including the mysterious blacked-out figures in the background.  Creote is the front-runner, as far as speculation goes, for the big figure.

There are more contenders for the flying figure.  They include

1.  Misfit – Charlie Gage-Radcliffe  (Yeah, yeah.  “Dark Vengeance.”  Not my favorite.)

2.  Batwoman – Kate Kane (I’d think she’d be up front in the picture, though.)

3.  Batgirl – Bette Kane (That could be interesting.  And I’m pretty sure she’d be pissed to see how many people have stolen her moniker.)

4.  Manhunter – Kate Spencer (Very unlikely.)

5.  Spoiler/Robin/Batgirl – Stephanie Brown  (I don’t think Gail Simone has ever written her before.  That could be cool.)

Simone states that the two new characters are a pair, which cuts down on a lot of possibilities.  I suppose they could be Creote and a very interestingly posed/surgically altered Savant.  The ruling theory, though, is that they are Hawk and Dove  in some new iteration of the pair.  We’ll know in spring.  Until then, I’m humming the rest of Oklahoma!, and keeping hope alive.

Oh, yeah.

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL!!!!!!!!!!!!

Life is beautiful.

Alert reader Nathan Valle sent me an email.  A cunning gentleman, Valle opened the email with a link to this entry, knowing that I can’t resist reading my own work.  In the linked piece (on the off chance that you, the reader, don’t want to read my opinion all over again), I bemoan the fact that Tim has become grim, gritty, boring, and completely unrecognizable to long-time fans. 

It seems, though, that a change has come over Tim Drake.  There’s a new love interest, who both knows that Tim Drake is Robin and seems to be okay with it.  That cuts out a lot of the usual superhero love story cliches, in which a superhero keeps trying to make the relationship work while keeping the dominant facet of his or her life under wraps and therefore failing at both crime-fighting and love.

Tim also seems to be more cerebral.  The exact quote was, “he’s stopped acting like a crazy man and actually using his head.”  Good news, indeed.

And so Valle concludes, “So essentially this is my “there are no more sharks in the beach” “all clear” message, not a two fisted urging that you come back since Yost did decide to go this route in the first place and that may be enough for most to stay away, but I personally have hope for the future now.”

We shall see, sir.  We shall see.  I’m picking up Red Robin next week, and if it’s still all grim, I am calling you a liar to your face!  On the internet!

Any readers who wish to side with this gentleman can comment below.

Greame McMillan at Io9, has quoted Grant Morrison as revealing that the Pirate Batman we saw was only concept art, and not the center of a story. 

I’m heartbroken.  That art was incredible.  Batman, staring out of the page, daring you to make fun of his puffy shirt-cuffs and tri-corner hat.

But I can let that go.  I can let everything go.  It’s funny, the persistence of hope.  Even now that I know there’s no chance, some part of me cradles the flickering hope that Batmanderthal will be in the comics.  I don’t know how he would go about serving justice pre-bronze age, but I know it would be fantastic.

Just concept art?  Say it ain’t so, DC.  Say it ain’t so.

Spoiling.  It’s what I do.

Read the rest of this entry �

One comic coming out for DC?  ONE?  And it’s Blackest Night?  And Marvel’s just handing out calendars?

I know this week is generally ignored (see the quality of this post) but I don’t recall this happening before.  I guess everyone really got screwed timing-wise.

Overall:  Not bad.

Any more, and I’ll be spewing out spoilers, so only click if you want to know.

Read the rest of this entry �

I guess almost everyone who celebrates Christmas has their little media rituals involved with it. 

Mine used to be A Christmas Story.  Yes, despite everything.  Don’t judge.  Some people watch the Yule Log.

After it started coming on for twenty-four hours at a time, even I was over-saturated, and so I started looking for other things to enjoy during Christmas.

Geeky though it is, I love the JLA Christmas special, titled Comfort and Joy.  With three stories, it doesn’t let us get bored, and there’s something for everyone.  Shayera and John get an unconventional Christmas.  The Flash gives us our Scrooge parable.  And Clark and J’onn?  That’s my favorite one.  I love that Clark still tries to figure out what his presents are, and I love that the Kents wrap them in lead foil, and I love that when the Kents talk about how they wrapped the gifts in lead foil, Clark frowns and says, “You mean Santa wrapped them.”

Best of all, I like the ending of that story, which was corny and sincere and, in a way, understated.

See it on youtube.