from marvel’s war of kings: darkhawk #2, words by cb cebulski, art by harvey tolibao

You should be able to control your anger when you encounter:
1) Rush hour traffic
2) Underdone omelet
3) Stubbed toe
4) Your mother being put into a coma a couple hours ago by a giant monster from space

Clearly, Chris Powell, bka Darkhawk, is wrong to be upset here. Maybe he should get himself under control, as this fine young beacon of rationality and sense is suggesting!

And now for something completely different.

DC has just announced a new weekly.  It’ll be oversized, sixteen pages, and feature one-page stories about all kinds of different DCU characters.  There will be the typical characters like Batman and Superman but Wednesday Comics, the title of the weekly, will also bring all of DC’s obscure characters into the limelight.

The thing about me is I hate and fear change.  I’m also not a fan of disorder, and I know these things won’t fit in my long-boxes.  And yet, I cannot resist this.  Standalone stories.  Random characters.  I’m there.

You?

Dwayne McDuffie: I wrote a scene set at their gravesite that I recently had to quickly rewrite into something not very good.

Matthew Murray: Do you actually enjoy writing JLA? It just seems to be constant editorial rewrites and bad art.

McDuffie: No, I don’t.

To be honest, I wouldn’t like writing JLA either if I was paired up with an artist with zero storytelling skills, multiple tie-ins and interruptions due to crossovers or just editorial mandate (no one but Dan Jurgens cares about Tangent Comics, DC), and having to clean up Brad “Write First, Think Later” Meltzer’s crappy subplots.

I think back to this, back when I was excited, and this, when the shine first started wearing off, and then this, coming a year later, in which I don’t even want to read a series I was hyped for and features characters I love because I know it’s going to be subpar.

I said it in 2007:

Step 1: Hire a quality writer, one known for doing right by your characters.
Step 2: Pair him up with a T&A artist or two, neither of whom are known for their ability to convey emotions beyond Angry, Shocked, and Aroused.
Step 3: Hamstring the writer by making him tie into your crappy stories that have nothing to do with the book he’s writing.

Turns out I was right.

Well done, DC Comics.

(thread on McDuffie’s forum here, via the new scans daily)

DC Comics is bringing back Milestone Comics this year, or rather the characters from it. They got a fairly high profile reintroduction in JLA, which is getting a hardcover in October, and there are a series of trades coming out soon collecting issues of the old series. I’m not exactly clear on whether or not they will be collecting the full runs, but the trades are coming. Static Shock has already been announced, for example. I’m a little skeptical about it collecting what’s basically the beginning and the end of the series, but you know what? Both are really good stories, so that’s fine.

No, my problem is this. I’m starting a new weekly series tomorrow morning, and I’m prepping posts ahead of time. I wanted to see what trades were coming out for Milestone, as I’m only going to be showing off stuff you can actually buy in a store or on Amazon, so I popped over to dccomics.com to see what trades where coming.

Milestone Media is a fairly well-regarded institution. Its comics are fondly remembered, they broke a ton of industry talent, created a few fascinating breakthroughs in coloring, and DC obviously thought well enough of them to bring them back into the fold after a lengthy absence.

I’m not exactly asking for dccomics.com/milestone, though that is a great idea and should probably happen. But, if you’re doing this big relaunch of a specific property, why can’t I use the search to see what’s coming? I ended up searching by series and found two Static trades (Trial By Fire is out of print and Rebirth of Cool comes out in June) and one trade of Icon, which is out of print.

Some kind of microsite or something pointing the way to what Milestone is, what’s coming, and what’s come before would be nice. Even just the word “Milestone” in the descriptions would work, so that I could find these series via search.

C’mon, DC Comics. This is easy. Even better, holler at this guy, jazz it up some, turn it into dccomics.com/milestone, and throw him a few hundred bucks. The work is already done.

Alanna, my friend who made the GIF that should clearly show you why you shouldn’t be reading or buying comics by Greg Land, read Green Lantern from last week and, like a lot of really smart people (me), realized that something sucked. In her own words:

I really hate the Star Sapphire outfit. A lot, it’s a stupid outfit and a recent redesign, so someone looked at it in the last decade and thought it was a good idea, and that’s terrible. But I think I get the idea, the designer tried to make it a sexy costume to go with the whole love theme. It’s just that they just made it impractical (especially when you’re as endowed as most of the Star Sapphires) and completely ridiculous. Bits of the detailing are neat, but they’re completely overwhelmed by the rest.

I figured they’d look far better, or at least like a Corps worth taking seriously, if they’d put on something that isn’t a wardrobe malfunction waiting to happen. So I threw this together.

Alanna popped into Photoshop and sent over this:

Things I like about this:
-The black provides a great parallel to the uniform of the Green, Yellow, Red, and Orange Lanterns. Put simply, it makes the Star Sapphires actually look like a Corps, rather than a legion of space hookers.
-Black and violet goes together pretty well, and even gives the uniform something of a sinister look. The Sapphires are straight up brainwashing people into their corps, so this really works.
-Love doesn’t, and shouldn’t, equal sexy. Therefore, the Love Corps shouldn’t really be letting it all hang out. Isn’t a big part of love keeping it all your private bits limited to one person? Sexiness at least has an element of “Hey look at THESE,” but I’m pretty sure “love” as a concept requires a bit of discretion or discernment.
-It’s way better than the real uniform.

vs

Flip it horizontally, and what do you have…?

Tatt’ed Man is so hoooooooooood!

Obviously, the winner, as previously suggested on this site, should be Ted Kord, who I am assuming is not in the picture in order to preserve the element of surprise.

But if it ends up being Alfred?  In that uniform?  It’s all been worth it.

Black Adam & Isis: Arab

Mister Miracle: Black

Ra’s al Ghul: Arab

Talia al Ghul: European, Chinese, and Arab (apparently)

Renee Montoya: Dominican

Me: Looking back on the past month or so of DC’s comics

Dave Sim‘s fabulous, startling, and _____ glamourpuss magazine has taken a decidedly political stance in just its fifth issue! The eponymous glamourpuss has something to say and she isn’t holding back! Read on, but brace yourselves, because this is fabulously startling!

Oh my! Sadly, the brutality of the print industry strikes again. No, glamourpuss (the magnificent magazine) hasn’t been canceled, nor has glamourpuss (the fabulous fashionista) been removed from her lofty position. No, she’s just missing a bit of the latest development in the now-past presidential race:

Barack Obama made Hillary Clinton (wait for it) Secretary of State.

The nerve!

(haunted tank #2)

I’m done. Horse is dead.