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'Wonder Woman': The Best Modernized Superhero Pantheon

Chris Murphy — 2011-12-27T14:00:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, Opinion

For years now I've felt like Wonder Woman is a character that I wanted to enjoy reading about more than I actually did. Regardless of the take on the character, something always felt just slightly off, slightly missing, as if all the individual elements were there for a great story but no creator was putting them together in a way that felt right to me. But when DC relaunched their entire line this year, they made the bold and surprising choice to give the new Wonder Woman series to writer Brian Azzarello and artist Cliff Chiang. They gave readers a modernized take on Greek mythology, full of jealous gods and mortal heroes victim to their whims, and I've found myself finally looking forward to every issue.

Wonder Woman had always been a character connected to Greek mythology in the DC Universe, but before the relaunch it was never quite so big a deal. Sometimes Greek gods would make a cameo, but more often they'd merely be mentioned as a censor-friendly profanity substitutes. (Seriously, go find every time she says "Great Hera" and replace it with an F-bomb). They were wise mentors or comic book villains rather than the scheming, grudge-holding Olympians seen in mythology. Wonder Woman's connection to them was merely an origin story for her superpowers.

In Azzarello and Chiang's Wonder Woman, the Greek gods are back and they've brought all the prophecy, tragedy and blood readers of classic myth would expect. And by telling a story where Wonder Woman deals only with gods rather than any superheroes or supervillains, they've reminded us just how much of a difference there is between the worlds of togas and magic and those of capes and tights.

Azzarello is building a complex story, as Diana finds herself drawn into a fight between gods that she would rather have no part of. But as she discovers that her past was a lie, she's pushed away from the comforts of home into a conflict between powerful, vicious beings who see mortals as playthings or as tools to be sacrificed. It's not the reintroduction to the character you might have expected, but it also shows an awareness that if they want to attract new readers then taking a risk on a talented writer and artist combination taking a character in an unexpected direction might be more rewarding than more of the same but with less continuity to learn.

Chiang's inclusion on the series as artist is both welcome and a pleasant surprise. DC's taken a lot of criticism for seemingly trying to appeal only to 18-35 male demographic, but Chiang's art is a wonderful departure from the way women are so often drawn in the typical DC superhero style. He's done a great job depicting Diana and the Amazons of Paradise Island as tall, imposing women who are part of a believable warrior culture. His designs for the Greek Gods also impress, each taking a human form that's just inhuman enough to inspire the proper amount of awe or fear.

With the book's focus on struggles between gods and magic, Azzarello and Chiang's Wonder Woman often feels like it's part mainstream DC, part Vertigo. Many of the relaunch's most impressive titles so far, including Swamp Thing and Animal Man, took Vertigo books and moved them more into the DC Universe, finding a sweet spot between the two, but Wonder Woman has found that same place coming from the other direction, creating a more varied DC Universe of mysteries and dangers outside the normal scope of superheroes. If you've tried and failed to love Wonder Woman before, give this book a shot; it could be the one that changes your mind.

Buy Wonder Woman at your local comic shop or online.

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'Demon Knights': The Most Compelling Fantasy in the DC Universe

Chris Murphy — 2011-12-23T10:00:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, Opinion

"Epic" is a word that's often thrown around before the phrase "sword and sorcery," probably because when there are wizards with white beards of formidable length abnd enchanted arms and armor and taverns that serve ale in wooden tankards, the stories that will follow are rarely succinct. Generally, they require a trilogy with extended editions or a seven-book/eight-movie franchise, which is why it's so impressive that Demon Knights is attempting to do epic fantasy in a monthly comic format.

Writer Paul Cornell, artist Diogenes Neves and inker Oclair Albert's series stands out from the rest of DC's New 52 relaunch thanks to its cast, its focus on character interaction, its setting and its willingness to forge new paths with existing characters. Demon Knights' beginnings have been promising, mixing action and comedy into an underlying dramatic saga that hints at a much larger story waiting to be told.

Demon Knights is built around an ensemble cast made up of faces both familiar and new. At its center is the demon Etrigan, bound to Jason Blood by the wizard Merlin at the fall of Camelot. The two have been trading off control of the same body and have traveled for hundreds of years in search of a way to undo their magical connection. Jason/Etrigan's current traveling companion and romantic interest is the also centuries-old Madame Xanadu, a magically gifted woman who appears to be playing the two individuals stuck in this body time share against each other without either's knowledge.

At a tavern the pair meet fellow immortal Vandal Savage, a more fun-loving, swaggering, boastful warrior here than the cunning villain of the modern day DCU, and Sir Ystin, a version of the Shining Knight character most familiar to readers of Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers. And then there are newcomers like Exoristos, a possibly Amazonian warrior woman, and Al Jabr, an Arabic inventor who's a medieval fantasy gadget-based hero. Oh, also there's the Horsewoman. What's known about her so far is that she's a woman who rides... you know, you can probably finish that sentence without my help.

This being a work of fantasy, the tavern is soon attacked by an army of both men and "true dragons." "True dragons," in this case, being fantasy speak for dinosaurs. Vandal Savage's reaction to them:

"True dragons" is to differentiate them from "heraldic dragons", the book's term for fire-breathing dragon machines piloted by men. These men, monsters, and men-driven monster-machines are all under the control of the evil wizard Mordru and the Questing Queen, who are waging a war of conquest from a palace of bone built on the back of an enormous sauropod. And also, as revealed in the recent fourth issue, questing for a powerful relic that's been sought for countless years by Sir Ystin.

More than most of DC's new books, Demon Knights feels driven by character interaction and development in a way that's genuinely exciting. The seven cast members have been thrown together by the presence of a common foe, but some would still rather flee than fight to protect the endangered townsfolk of the small village where they've become surrounded. These conflicting desires create tense, high stakes situations between the book's main cast that I was afraid I wouldn't get to see in a DC Universe that no longer had Gail Simone's Secret Six.

Demon Knights' fresh takes on its familiar characters also feel more like new introductions because so much has changed, and many of these characters are in a setting we don't usually see them in. So even though the book has gone through several issues of introducing the cast at this point it doesn't feel as tiring as the re-introductions to old characters for whom little has been significantly changed in other DC books. This week's fourth issue presents a new origin for the Shining Knight that gives a new perspective on Sir Ystin and Merlin, even connecting Merlin to Stormwatch.

The vast scope hinted at in Demon Knights is both its most exciting and its most worrying aspect. The story's cycle of multiple fallen Camelots and its many immortal protagonists with connections to Merlin all point to a much larger saga than the Magnificent Seven-like scenario of the book's first arc. If allowed to grow into a true, sweeping fantasy epic, it could serve as a example of how DC's New 52 really has branched out to new readers that mainstream capes-and-tights stuff don't reach, but that's going to require a consistent creative presence. I'm not sure this is a book that would be able to survive frequent creative turnover; in particular, I'm not sure the book could maintain its current sense of long-term direction if writer Paul Cornell were to depart.

With the prophecies and revelations of this week's fourth issue I feel confident saying that no other DC relaunch title has as ambitious a plan to develop a large story as Demon Knights. Here's hoping this marks the beginning of a memorable run for the series.

Buy Demon Knights at your local comic book shop or online.

Preview pages from Demon Knights #4, written by Paul Cornell, pencils by Michael Choi & Diogenes Neves, inks by Michael Choi & Oclair Albert, color by Marcelo Maoiolo, cover by Michael Choi:

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Hercules: Four Incredible Years with the Mythical Marvel Hero Come to a Close

Chris Murphy — 2011-12-02T16:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Marvel

Most heroes of the stories we tell each other are slowly forgotten over time, or if they're lucky, enter into myth, their details slowly blurred by decades. Every so often, though, this process goes in reverse, and legends are pulled forwards through time to inspire great new stories about old heroes. Such is the case with Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente's four-year run with the legendary Marvel Comics character Hercules, which ended this week in Herc #10.While it's sad that Hercules won't be making appearances on comics shelves as frequently in the months to come, it's also a time to reflect on how Pak and Van Lente have made the Marvel Universe a richer place by elevating the character to where he is today. Although Hercules had been part of Marvel's cast of heroes for over forty years, the characters rarely reached the heroic stature of the original Greek myths that inspired him. Instead, he was most often seen as a friendly rival to Thor or a swaggering strong man in a superhero team book. Moments in the spotlight were few, far between and brief when they came.

Then in the aftermath of the World War Hulk event, Incredible Hulk was retitled Incredible Hercules and Pak and Van Lente debuted their first issue co-writing the adventures of the Greek demigod. Herc got a new sidekick, the young supergenius Amadeus Cho, whose brilliant but cautious approach was the perfect foil for the millenia-old but still impulsive demigod. Pak and Van Lente didn't play down the bragging, partying qualities that had previously defined Hercules, but helped transform him into someone more multi-dimensional by giving him responsibilities and a sidekick to mentor.

Since then they've taken a character who existed for decades as a second or third-string Marvel hero a supporting comic relief role and fleshed him out into a more well-rounded character who took center stage in his own series and even starred as the main protagonist of a crossover event.

The Incredible Hercules series ended its run with the Assault on New Olympus, an event where Hercules leads a team of heroes to stop Hera from destroying all of humanity. Hercules was believed killed in the victorious battle to save the world, only to return later in the Chaos War crossover event, where once more, he won the battle at a great cost, sacrificing his god-like powers to save the universe.

No longer just someone along for the ride to heads to knock together or drink beer, Hercules had become a champion who rallied others to his cause. By showing Hercules through the eyes of other heroes, both at his funeral and during his finest moments in Chaos War, Pak and Van Lente cemented his place as someone worthy of standing shoulder to shoulder with the greatest heroes of the Marvel Universe.

Hercules then spun off into the series Herc, also by Pak and Van Lente, where Amadeus had struck out as a hero on his own, while a de-powered Hercules used an array of mythical weapons and armor to defend the people of his new home of Brooklyn. It's a little unfortunate that the series began with two event tie-in arcs connected to Fear Itself and then Spider Island, because it meant that the book only started to tell stories on its own terms in what turned out to be its final arc.

While I'll miss the lack of Hercules in the months to come, Pak and Van Lente have produced several other great books writing for Marvel, and will hopefully continue to do so (although the recent cancellation of Van Lente's Destroyers miniseries before it even began is another let down). And whoever the next writer is to tell Hercules' stories in the Marvel Universe will benefit from the pair's four years of amazing work that kept what was already good about the character and then built more upon it. Marvel's Hercules is now a deeper, more awe-inspiring, and even more fun character now than he was before.

If you haven't read any of Pak and Van Lente's Incredible Hercules run, or you're feeling like rereading it, the first 13 issues are available digitally.

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'The Unwritten': The Grown-up Boy Wizard Comic Begins a Twice-Monthly 'War of Words'

Chris Murphy — 2011-11-29T15:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Vertigo, Comics We Love, Opinion

In the pages of The Unwritten, Mike Carey and Peter Gross have crafted a remarkable epic about the power of stories. (If you've yet to try it, Vertigo offers the first issue as a free download.) On one level the Vertigo Comics series is about the power of fiction to subtly shape the world around us through shifts in opinion and belief. On another level, as seen in the current "Tommy Taylor and the War of Words" arc, it's about a grown man using magic pulled from the pages of Harry Potter-esque boy wizard books to battle an international shadow conspiracy devoted to controlling the world's literature. Now, in a series of five bonus issues starting with the recent The Unwritten 31.5, those antagonists with take center stage in a twice-monthly "War of Words" event that will reveal the secrets of the Cabal.

The "War of Words" will unfold in ten issues total over five months, from issue #31 to issue #35. Regularly numbered issues will tell one long story about Tom's war against the Cabal, while issues numbered ".5" spin one-off tales about the history of the Cabal throughout time in settings like Ancient China, Medieval Germany, the American Civil War, and World War I.

Carey and Gross have built an engaging cast of characters and I'm thrilled by the chance to see more artists flesh out the shadowy edges of their world further. An extra issue per month of what's become one of my favorite books ever published by Vertigo would be exciting on its own. More than that, though, whenever the focus of The Unwritten has strayed from Tom Taylor in the past, the result has been some of the best issues of an already exceptional series.

The first of these, a story of the Cabal's involvement with the career of Rudyard Kipling in issue #5, was deservedly nominated for the Eisner for best single issue in 2010. In one issue, with minimal appearances from its main cast, the Kipling story delivered a remarkable tale. And it also set a tone for the series to come, hinting at the scale of the conflict with the Cabal with events stretching back over a hundred years and drawing in figures like Kipling and Mark Twain to illustrate the book's ideas about the impact of stories.

Issues #12 and #24 were both one-shots following Pauly Bruckner, a Cabal hitman trapped in the body of a children's storybook rabbit after ending up on the wrong side of Wilson Taylor. Pauly's foul-mouthed adventures were darkly hilarious and thought provoking done-in-one stories that rank among the most enjoyable single issues of a great series. These issues all demonstrated that Carey could weave the themes of The Unwritten into a tightly constructed single issue story that left a lasting impression on the reader, and I can't wait for five more opportunities for the same experience in the months to come.

If you've been as excited for each new issue of the series as I have, make sure not to miss issue 31.5, available for purchase in comic shops and digitally at ComiXology. And if you've been reading the series in trade, Carey's ability to produce astounding one-shot stories might convince you it's worth reading on an issue-by-issue basis.

Cover art to The Unwritten 31.5

Cover art to The Unwritten 32.5

Cover art to The Unwritten 33.5

Cover art to The Unwritten 34.5

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Cosplay: Banana Wolverine. Seriously, Wolverine as a Banana [NYCC 2011]

Chris Murphy — 2011-10-16T17:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Humor, Culture

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Cosplay: Joker Has Serious Regrets About Volunteering for the 'Just Dance 3' Demo [NYCC 2011]

Chris Murphy — 2011-10-16T13:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Culture

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Cosplay: Gender-Swapped Slave Leia Rocks the Metal Bikini [NYCC 2011]

Chris Murphy — 2011-10-16T10:30:00+00:00

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The Image Comics Show [NYCC 2011]

Chris Murphy — 2011-10-15T16:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Image, Conventions, News

Image Comics hosted its traditional "Image Comics Show" presentation at New York Comic Con to highlight several new and upcoming series and give a large panel of creators and opportunity to promote their new books. Among those in attendance were Blair Butler, Joshua Hale Fialkov, Joshua Williamson, Justin Jordan and Landry Walker.LAST OF THE GREATS

From writer Joshua Hale Fialkov, this series tells the story of the last survivor of a family of superheroes agreeing to save the world from an alien invasion in return for being given total rule over the Earth. Issue #1 is on sale now.

THE STRANGE TALENT OF LUTHER STRODE

Writer Justin Jordan was on hand to discuss his new series about a bullied teen who sends away for a Charles Atlas-style strength training course that gives him superpowers, only to find his new abilities draw a lot o the wrong kind of attention. Jordan's hopeful that the six-issue miniseries will have a good enough reception that it'll allow him to tell further stories he's already planned.

XENOHOLICS

Writer Joshua Williamson is aiming for a 20-issue run for his comedic take on an alcoholics anonymous-like program from alien abduction victims.

HEART

Writer Blair Butler and artist Kevin Mellon's new four-issue series about a fighter rising up the ranks of mixed martial arts competitions is nearing its premiere. Butler's simple pitch to readers: "If you enjoy people being punched in the face please give our book a try."

LOVESTRUCK

Kevin Mellon also talked about Lovestruck, a graphic novel he illustrated that's written by Dennis Hopeless. On sale now, the book is set in a world where Cupid is operating as a corporation, creating romances as part of a long-term moneymaking strategy.

THE DANGER CLUB

Writer Landry Walker talked about his upcoming series with artist Eric Jones, which follows a group of teenage superhero sidekicks left behind after their mentors leave Earth to go fight an extraterrestrial menace. It's "Teen Titans meets Lord of the Flies." The book will be available in February.

ALPHA GIRL

Co-created by Jean-Paul Bonjour and Jeff Roenning, this is a new zombie comic with a peculiar twist of the plague being started by a bad batch of cosmetics that affects women only. A 17-year-old girl with a natural immunity has to make her way through the chaos to rescue her brother, who's stuck in a juvenile detention facility when the outbreak happens.

CAP'N BROOKLYN

Writers Jimmy Palmiotti and Frank Tieri team up with artist Amanda Conner to present this three-issue adult take on superheroics. The book follows an ordinary guy who lives in Brooklyn and takes care of his grandfather. Saddled with some pretty poor decisions from his past, he gains superpowers from a fortunate exposure to the Gowanus Canal. Palmiotti described the book as appealing to the same sensibilities that his and Conner's R-rated superhero hooker comedy The Pro did. As someone who lived a block from the Gowanus Canal for two years, I must sadly report that the experience never produced any superpowers, with the possible exception of developing an invulnerability to the smell of the Gowanus Canal.

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Symbiotes And Scarlets At Marvel's Spider-Man Panel [NYCC 2011]

Chris Murphy — 2011-10-15T15:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Marvel, Conventions, News

The talents at Marvel's Spider-Man panel at New York Comic Con included writer Dan Slott, artists Ryan Stegman and Paolo Rivera, and editors Stephen Wacker, Ellie Pyle and Thomas Brennan. The prodigious group highlighted upcoming developments for the legendary webslinger and a variety of related Spider-heroes and villains, as well as a few other books Wacker is responsible for editing including the fan and critical darling, Daredevil.AMAZING SPIDER-MAN

Spider-Island will be wrapping up before too long with an epilogue issue that features a "NEW YORK DESTROYED" newspaper headline on the cover. This prompted an audience question, "How come you always destroy New York? What about LA, that place is a s***hole", which drew massive applause from the convention crowd.

Dan Slott talked about a bigger role for Otto Octavius aka Doctor Octopus, saying the character's master plan slowly comes together ahead of his imminent death by fatal illness.

There'll be an issue of Amazing next year that has no Spider-Man at all and tells a story entirely from the perspective of the new Sinister Six.

Before the panel ended, we were treated to a a teaser image containing the words, "Ends of the Earth" surrounded by two of Octavius' metal arms. Whatever that may be, it will come courtesy of Slott and Stefano Caselli below it.

SCARLET SPIDER

Believe it or not, there'll be a new Scarlet Spider ongoing series in January 2012. The book will be written by Chris Yost with art by Ryan Stegman, who created a new, hoodie-less costume design. Wacker and the rest of the panel stayed very quiet about the Scarlet Spider's identity, but the book aims for a tone somewhere in between Dan Slott's Amazing Spider-Man and Rick Remender's Venom, and is meant to be a way to take Spider-style adventures outside their usual New York environment.

AVENGING SPIDER-MAN

The new November series by Zeb Wells and Joe Madureira following Spider-Man's more action-packed superhero team-ups is going to be a test case for Marvel's digital operations. The book will package a digital comic redemption code for no additional charge. If sales are high and enough people redeem the codes, Wacker expected that approach to carry over to more of Marvel's $3.99 line of books.

CARNAGE USA

An upcoming limited series by Zeb Wells and Clayton Crain features Carnage taking over a small town. Wacker said, "And by taking over a small town, I mean he kills a lot of people".

VENOM

Adding to what's being described as a big year for symbiotes is the continuing adventures of Flash Thompson and Venom. Following the events of Spider-Island, Flash and the symbiote are hitting the road.

DAREDEVIL

Mark Waid will be writing a two-part crossover between Amazing Spider-Man and Daredevil that'll involve the Black Cat and take up one issue of each book, giving Dan Slott a short break post-Spider-Island. Those issues will be released in January, with art by Emma Rios and Kano.

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Minecraft Link Cosplayer Blocks Out 'Legend of Zelda' [NYCC 2011]

Chris Murphy — 2011-10-15T11:30:00+00:00

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Vertigo Goes Same-Day Digital, Announces Paul Cornell's 'Saucer Country' [NYCC 2011]

Chris Murphy — 2011-10-14T18:00:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, Vertigo, Conventions, Digital Comics

Vertigo came to NYCC armed with a few announcements and plenty of updates this year, including news that many of its ongoing titles will accelerate its transition to a simultaneous digital and print release schedule beginning in November and continuing through 2012. The panel also broke news that Saucers, a series by Paul Cornell and Ryan Kelly that Cornell described on Twitter as "...The West Wing does The X-Files. It's about a Presidential candidate who's 'abducted by aliens'..." adding, "Saucer Country is about the richness of UFO mythology and all its beautiful and chilling permutations."Vertigo editors Karen Berger, Shelly Bond and Will Dennis were at the panel as well as creators Jason Aaron (Scalped), Jeff Lemire (Sweet Tooth), Scott Snyder (American Vampire), Douglas Rushkoff (A.D.D.), Chris Roberson (iZombie), Selwyn Hinds (Voodoo Child) Phil Jimenez (Fairest), Rebecca Guay (A Flight of Angels), Marzena Sowa and Sylvain Savoia (Marzi).

Berger announced that Vertigo would continue its process of transitioning series to release books same day digital as print. Beginning with Sweet Tooth #26, which is available now. Vertigo will be making books available as new storylines launch rather than starting same day digital releases mid-arc. According to The Source, the release schedule will flow as follows:

· SWEET TOOTH starting with issue #26 available now
· SPACEMAN the new mini-series by Brian Azzarello and artist Eduardo Risso will launch with issue #1 on sale Oct. 26. This exciting new series featuring award-winning talent will be available for a special price of $.99 - a first for digital pricing that makes this series a "can't miss" event.
· THE UNWRITTEN beginning with #31 on sale Nov. 9
· iZOMBIE beginning with issue #19 on sale Nov. 16
· THE UNWRITTEN .5 issues beginning with #31.5 on sale Nov. 23
· FABLES beginning with the special holiday issue #112 on sale Dec. 21
· AMERICAN VAMPIRE beginning with issue #22 on sale Dec. 28
· HELLBLAZER beginning with issue #287 on sale Jan. 18

The panel then transitioned to talking about Vertigo's upcoming titles, including A.D.D., Saucer Country, Marzi, Voodoo Child, Gone to Amerikay, Fairest, Spaceman and A Flight of Angels.

A.D.D.
Coming out at the end of January is a new book written by Douglas Rushkoff. The book is a way for Rushkoff to delve into his major area of interest, examining the societal ramifications of new media and new technology. A.D.D. follws a group of kids raised from birth to be video game testers, and examines how Attention Deficit Disorder might become an adaptive strategy rather than a bug in a situation that requires someone to break through the constant control of an entertainment.

Saucer Country
Writer Paul Cornell and artist Ryan Kelly are teaming up on this newly announced series described as "The West Wing meets The X-Files". It follows the Mexican-American Governor of New Mexico Arcadia Alvarado. Her abduction by aliens on the eve of her presidential campaign changes her outlook on why she needs to become President. But leads the public to question her sanity. The series comes out in February.

Marzi
Writer Marzena Sowa's autobiographical tale of her childhood in communist Poland is told through a series of vignettes illustrated by Sylvain Savoia. First published in France, the book is intended to appeal to readers of all ages.

Voodoo Child
Hinds talked at length about his new series which explores both the real life New Orleans and a supernatural mirror run by a court of voodoo demigods. The series follows a young woman framed for the post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans murder of the queen of the voodoo court as she attempts to clear her name. Hines compared his take on Voodoo to Mike Carey's take on Christianity in Lucifer, presenting its demigods as an Olympian-pantheon like cast of characters.

Gone to Amerikay
Writer Derek McCulloch and artist Colleen Doran's graphic novel will be coming out in March. It follows three generations of Irish immigrants whose lives are intertwined by a mystery.

Fairest
Artist Phil Jimenez was on hand to talk about his work on the first arc of Fairest, the upcoming Fables spin-off title. Jimenez will team with writer Bill Willingham for the book's first arc, a tale of Ali Baba and Sleeping Beauty. The series, with covers by Adam Hughes, begins in February of 2012.

Spaceman
Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso's new nine-issue semi-monthly sci-fi series comes out with its first book at the end of October. The first issue will be sold for $1 in print and $0.99 digitally. Azzarello encouraged the crowd to "Do Vertigo a favor and make it outsell Justice League", which drew huge applause from the audience.

A Flight of Angels
Fantasy painter Rebecca Guay brought together a team of artists to tell stories about angels, framed around a group of fairies who discover an injured angel and hold a tribunal to determine whether he should be saved or killed. Guay's painted style changes from piece to piece to match stories bright and dark set in times from an ancient past to the present. The anthology releases November 2nd.

The panel then gave updates on current titles, including The Unwritten, Scalped, Fables, iZombie, Sweet Tooth and American Vampire.

The Unwritten
Mike Carey and Peter Gross' series begins shipping twice a month for ten issues with the "Tommy Taylor and the War of the Words" arc. Whole numbered issues will follow protagonist Tommy's fight against the cabal. While .1 numbered issues will be one-offs by a team of guest artists that focus on the supporting characters of the book.

Scalped
Scalped continues to build to its 60th and final issue, as the penultimate arc "Knuckle Down" ends and gives way to the final six issue arc, entitled "Last Trail."

Fables
Berger excitedly invited readers to keep following Bill Willingham's series that's "better than those ripoff TV series". Issue 112, an extended length Christmas special, will be the first same day digital release for Fables.

iZombie
Roberson was on hand to talk about the upcoming new arc. Which will include the series calming down after its recent big conflicts and a date for Spot following his life-changing personal discovery.

Sweet Tooth
Matt Kindt is taking over art duties from Lemire for a three issue arc to give Lemire time to write his DC Universe books. The three-issue flashback arc will reveal the origin of the book's mysterious killer plague. Lemire comes back to art duties for issue 29, and is currently seeing the series as going on from 40-45 issues in length, although that's not definite at this point.

American Vampire
The series' next new arc will take the story to the 1950s, which Scott Snyder admits is a favorite time period for him and which will be the setting for several arcs. The first four-issue arc is framed around a Rebel Without a Cause-esque car race over a cliff and will introduce a new character, a rockabilly punk vampire hunter who bites vampires back with a set of carved wooden fangs.

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'Secret Avengers' by Warren Ellis: Big, Smart Stories One Issue At A Time [Review]

Chris Murphy — 2011-09-29T10:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Marvel, Reviews, Comics We Love, Opinion

Superhero comics have with increasing frequency been turning out stories that match epic scope with epic length, with massive world-saving adventures featuring casts of hundreds covering several issue-long arcs crossing over into multiple other books with spin-offs and tie-ins. And that's fine. I love a good, long, engrossing read that keeps you excited to see what happens next month. But there's also something to be said for a story that can capture that same epic scope of a world-in-unimaginable-peril and condense it down into a single issue. That is precisely what writer Warren Ellis, supported by various talented artists, is doing on his Secret Avengers run right now. His latest issue hits shelves this week from Marvel Comics.

Secret Avengers follows the black ops Avengers team as they fight dangers and confront conspiracies too dire to be revealed to the Marvel Universe's public. Ellis' stint as writer on the book began with issue #16, which featured artwork by Jamie McKelvie and colors by Matthew Wilson. That story saw Steve Rogers, Black Widow, Beast and Moon Knight infiltrate a secret underground city beneath Cincinnati and stop an enormous time machine from wiping Cincy off the map by sending it through space and time to be used as a blunt force weapon of mass destruction. This was accomplishing by, among other things, turning a convertible atomic Cadillac into a makeshift neutron bomb.

Secret Avengers #16 was a great read for so many reasons: Ellis' clever, quick and often biting dialogue was there, voiced most entertainingly by Beast; the character was a joy to see drawn by McKelvie again after the brief but wonderful S.W.O.R.D.; and the issue touched on how amazingly advanced technology can evoke wonder and terror at the same time, an idea that Ellis has often turned into a thoroughly compelling read. If you missed Secret Avengers #16 the first time around, make sure to pick up the second printing, which is also out this week.

Alongside that second printing of issue #16 will be the brand new Secret Avengers #17. This time joined by artist Kev Walker and color artist Frank Martin, Ellis tells a single-issue story of Steve Rogers, Sharon Carter, War Machine and Valkyrie investigating a high-tech device being used to abduct displaced refugees in Serbia. It's another sci-fi action story and cautionary tale about how giving people the power to do things no one imagined before means that sometimes they'll choose to do the unthinkable. Despite how far humanity has come, all too often we're still screaming apes attempting to put hard pointy objects into our perceived rivals from a safe distance and continue doing so until they stop moving. Also, the issue has a fight involving a man with a laser on his motorcycle, a woman with a sword and a flying horse, and a heavily armed big rig.

Ellis and his rotating art teams have been doing great work turning out self-contained stories. Please do yourself the favor of checking out Secret Avengers, because it'd be a shame if they got lost in a sea of big events and reboots because they don't have a month-to-month cliffhanger to build buzz.

Secret Avengers #16 and #17 are on sale now at finer comics shops.

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Bruce Wayne Wages 'Jihad' In 1991's 'Batman: Holy Terror' [Review]

Chris Murphy — 2011-09-27T14:30:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, Reviews, Opinion

Frank Miller's Holy Terror~~, Batman!~~ goes on sale this week after a long and strange journey from initial concept to finished graphic novel. When first imagined, the book was a story of Batman fighting Al-Qaeda titled Holy Terror, Batman!, as a nod to Robin's catchphrase exclamations from the late '60s television series. As you probably know, ComicsAlliance's David Brothers has written an essential review of the Miller book. But what you may not know is that those three words, "Holy Terror, Batman," in a different order, have been the title of another Batman story before.

Back in 1991, DC Comics published a prestige format one-shot called Batman: Holy Terror. The book was written by Alan Brennert with art by Norm Breyfogle and colors by Lovern Kindzierski. As part of the publisher's then-popular Elseworlds line, the story was set in an alternate history United States that had been established and governed for centuries as a Protestant Christian theocracy, one that had twisted its philosophy into an extremist and oppressive regime.Over 20 years later, Batman: Holy Terror is still relevant for addressing the concerns of a state strictly enforcing religious beliefs as law, as well for its careful handling of the distinction between a religious faith and those who corrupt it as a means to control others. Indeed, the book remains an enjoyable one-and-done 40-page story with great artwork. Batman: Holy Terror is of course out of print but can still be found in back-issue boxes at comics shops and from the usual internet retailers. Spoiler warnings don't usually apply to 20 year-old comics, but there you go just the same.

For those of you unfamiliar with DC's old Elseworlds line, it was a series of standalone books and occasionally miniseries that took place in a wide variety of alternate history or alternatue future DC Universes. In some cases, a character's singular destiny was changed (like Bruce Wayne receiving a Green Lantern ring instead of Hal Jordan). In others, superheroes existed in different time periods, like Batman as an agent of President Lincoln.

In the world of Batman: Holy Terror, English Protestant leader Oliver Cromwell survived the fatal case of malaria that actually killed him in 1658 and lived another ten years. As put forth in the book, that extra decade meant Cromwell's revolution and its devoutly Protestant beliefs were never swept away after his death, and served to create a similar system of beliefs and, along with them, a complete absence of the separation of church and state in America. Flash forward to late 20th century in Gotham Towne, where Thomas Wayne, the Personal Physician to some of the country's highest political leaders, is killed in a mugging along with his wife Martha. Their son Bruce is left an orphan, and Gotham Inquisitor Jim Gordon is left to frustratedly furrow his brow under a curly white wig when his efforts to further investigate the case are blocked.

Years later Bruce Wayne is a grown man who's turned down an opportunity to join Lord Commissioner Gordon as an Inquisitor. Instead, Bruce has chosen to become a Reverend. On the eve of his ordination, Gordon pays Bruce a visit and reveals a shocking secret: Bruce's parents weren't killed in a random crime, they were executed as enemies of the state. Thomas Wayne had been running an underground clinic to help people who had been cast off by the state. Among them, homosexuals subjected to burns and shocks as part of a government-run behavior modification programs, and women who had attempted to dangerously end their own pregnancies because of the unavailability of safe and legal abortion. The Waynes were too prominent to be publicly tried, so their crimes were hushed up and their punishment made to look like an unrelated incident.

The revelation crushes Bruce, who had seen the church as a way to find meaning after the loss of his family. At the same time, the news ennobles Thomas Wayne as someone who's not merely a good man willing to use his power to help the less fortunate, but a man willing to risk his very life to help lessen the suffering of others. Bruce finds an old demon costume his father used to wear in a church passion play and decides to use it as a disguise in his quest to find who was directly responsible for his parents' death. Thus, the Batman is born.

The investigation leads Bruce to Gotham's main cathedral. Breyfogle and Kindzierski's art in Holy Terror is very good, if somewhat dated by a modern audience's standards, but where it's most impressive is in depictions of the massive scale of church architecture in Gotham Towne. Religious buildings tower over the people and impress them into obedience. At the same time, this version of the city still feels like the Gotham we know, just a Gotham whose skyscrapers and gargoyles have been replaced with crosses and spires.

Holy Terror gives in to one of the regular problems of the Elseworlds line and decides that if it's going to show an alternate version of the DC Universe, then it's going to cram in as many alternate versions of DC characters as it possibly can. The religious police state has been capturing and studying anyone with superhuman powers in order to give similar abilities to those fighting the worldwide crusade to spread the faith. Amusingly, this crusade is led by General Oliver North, which is a reference some of you are too young to get, which makes me feel very old (and some of you probably guessed he's an old DC character that doesn't get used anymore, and that makes me feel worse). Bruce's quest for justice suddenly turns into a rescue mission to help familiar faces like Barry Allen aka The Flash and Arthur Curry aka Aquaman. Batman's efforts are opposed by fanatical religious convert Zatanna, Clayface and the program's director Saul Erdel. Erdel has escaped the official state persecution of Jews by providing a service that's useful to the country's elite. He takes a sadistic joy in what he does, turning Barry Allen's power against him in a way that causes Barry to burst into flames (and Bruce to weep openly about a man he only met a half-hour ago).

Erdel's worst crime, however, is the study, killing and dissection of a a man turned over to the state after he was found as a baby in a field by "a God-fearing couple in Kansas." And although most of the superhero cameos in Batman: Holy Terror don't add much to the plot, Bruce being shown the body of the man who should have been Superman, in a pose with blatantly obvious symbolism, is a powerful moment by Brennert, Breyfogle and Kindzierski.

The Superman scene inspires Bruce to never give up, and he fights back until Erdel inadvertently kills himself when a bullet from his gun ricochets back off Superman's body and hits him in the chest. So even though the two never met while both were alive, Batman: Holy Terror's world still sees Superman and Batman working together to fight evil.

Bruce finally comes to the Star Chamber, the secret court that ordered his parents' execution, intent on revenge. But the truth he finds there isn't to his liking. The Star Chamber acts by having its twelve members vote entirely by secret ballot, with no records of the decisions kept. Bruce can never know who ordered his parents killed. But at the same time he realizes it's the system that's at fault, for it allowed such a court to hold power in the first place. If he wants to see justice done for his parents, Batman must dedicate his life to bringing this system down.

Batman vows to continue his fight as a masked vigilante by night, but remain Reverend Bruce Wayne by day. As much as the corrupt state and its abuses of the church's religion offends him, Bruce still believes strongly in his own faith. He claims that "Defiance of Gods' self-styled interpreters is not denial of God." The teachings of the Bible that helped this Bruce Wayne come to terms with the death of his parents and seek to help the less fortunate are not something he's ready to throw away because others have used the same holy book as justification for horrible acts. Bruce stills sees it as doing God's work to preach during the day and fight a corrupt system by night, a campaign that Bruce himself even refers to as a "jihad," borrowing the Arabic word for a religious struggle (either military or spiritual) whose use has become so intensified in the years since this comic's release.

The title has uncomfortable implications in today's post-9/11 world, but Brennert, Breyfogle and Kindzierski's Batman: Holy Terror is in many ways is less outdated in its confrontation of the issues of corrupted faith and violence now, 20 years after it was published, than Frank Miller's Holy Terror is in the first week of its release. Religious outcasts like those Thomas Wayne sacrificed his life to protect are still discriminated against across the world, and Batman's resolve to exemplify the best traditions of his faith, even in a world where men can and do perform terrible actions in that faith's name, is a powerful idea that has taken on new relevance in the world of today.

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Talking with Jim Lee & Geoff Johns about 'Justice League' #1 and the DC Relaunch [Interview]

Chris Murphy — 2011-09-01T13:00:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, Interviews

Before their signing of Justice League #1 at Midtown Comics on Tuesday night, ComicsAlliance had a few moments to talk with writer Geoff Johns and artist Jim Lee about DC Comics' 52 relaunched titles. Read all about the duo's Justice League plans, how they're presenting it for readers old and new, their thoughts on the importance of continuity, and some of the titles they're most excited for readers to discover after the jump.ComicsAlliance: So with the release here you can finally start showing to the world the new DC Universe after having all the excitement and expectations built up after the relaunch announcement. How does that feel?

Geoff Johns: It's good. I guess it's like, I've never had a kid but [to Lee] you can...

Jim Lee: I've never given birth, but I imagine if you were pregnant, and past your due date, this is what it would feel like.

CA: A large group of people involved in one enormous pregnancy, that's finally here?

JL: There's a certain sense of relief that the day has finally come. The time has flown by. I can remember when we first sat down and started this book and we're just excited to share it with everybody. So much talk has been devoted to the September relaunch and Justice League's a big part of it. We want to see what people's reactions are now.

CA: There's been a lot of buzz since the announcement of the relaunch. How do you keep that excitement and energy going now that it's finally here?

GJ & JL (Simultaneously): By delivering great stories.

JL: People have really been given the top line. These are the story beats, these are the things you have to look forward to, but even with Superman finding his costume in Action [Comics], that could be told in an infinite number of ways. So it really comes down to how Grant [Morrison] and Rags [Morales] do their job. They're going to do a great job, I think, of really convincing people that this is a good thing to add to the mythology, good thing to change the mythology. But when you talk about keeping up the energy, to me it's like running a marathon. It's not a sprint as much as those deadlines really make it feel like a sprint. You always have to pace yourself. So I can say with conviction that issue #2's better than issue #1, so if you like issue #1 . . .

GJ: And issue #3's better than issue #2.

CA: In Justice League issue #1 and the new DC Universe in general, there's a sense that superheroes are something that people are suspicious of, that people are afraid of. Can you talk about that a little bit?

GJ: Really, it's a tone set in the early years of the DC Universe. One of the things that I wanted to do when we set out to do Justice League was [make it] the origin story of the superhero more than the origin of the Justice League. You see why the DCU is an optimistic place; why the people do look up to the heroes. How the DC Universe grows organically into what its best aspects are. We're trying to accentuate that, from public perception to everything else. But there is that story of mistrust, and maybe just a little bit of apprehension. They're unknown, these superhumans, and it unfolds into a story that shows us why the Justice League becomes the Justice League.

JL: It's really a history of the origins of the DC Universe. Emergence of these super-powered beings, public anxiety as you noted, but it's really about how the heroes turn that perception around. It develops in a very organic way, it actually comes through character. So much of the story, the way Geoff writes it, there's a lot of humor, a lot of witty banter, you see the personalities behind the masks come out. And through that human interaction I think you start seeing why the League matters to people, how it humanizes the characters behind these iconic names, and how that's important to the rest of society.

CA: In the new universe there's a little bit of timeline juggling. You've got some stories taking place after the events in Justice League at the same time you're publishing new origin stories like Justice League and Action Comics. Has it been tricky making all that work?

JL: I think there's a loose time frame. I don't think it serves the story to get too wrapped up in the minutiae of continuity and timeline. It's always been kind of loosely handled before. People were happy and picked the stories that were the best stories and defined the characters and accept that into canon even if there were irregularities or conflicts. People have a way of creating their own continuity that works. And I think that same level of thought and same attitude should be approached going forward.

GJ: The best ideas stick. The best stories stick.

JL: Exactly. There's no way there was 75 years worth of Batman stories that could all be condensed into one adulthood. That's really what we're asking for from the readers. Assume that the best stories happened but going forward we're really talking about the future destinies of these characters. The future storylines that we hope to tap into with all these creative changes happening in September.

CA: One big focus of the relaunch is the ability to bring new readers in. More than the ability to bring in readers who already read comics, how vital is it to the future of comics to bring in people who haven't read a comic in years, people who watched Smallville or The Dark Knight and loved it but have never picked up a comic? How important is that?

GJ: It's really important to keep expanding the audience and bringing readers in. Obviously. That's a loaded question, you know the answer to that. It's yes, it's super important. I think digital day-and-date helps tremendously. And hopefully the relaunches and the stories that people are trying to make accessible stories again introduce these characters to a new audience. But the hope is people pick them up. I think the key is making it accessible, both in an availability way and also in a story way.

CA: You've put a lot of work into your own books. But what are some of the books you're most excited about that you haven't gotten to touch?

GJ: I've said this a lot. I think Jeff Lemire's books, Animal Man and Frankenstein, are terrific. Those are probably two of my favorite books out there right now. I'm excited to read the issue 2's and 3's.

JL: For me it's the return of the Wildstorm characters back into print. Obviously it's going to be handled a little differently because they're going to be part of the DC Universe and kind of fill a niche in terms of the genres that the DC Universe covered. And that's something I've been very purposefully hands-off on in terms of the creative development. Primarily because I didn't want to steer that ship back towards the way it was before. So to me, with the editors and creators involved, they really took a lot of the notions and the concepts of the original Wildstorm Universe, Voodoo, Grifter, and later Stormwatch, and retooled them in the spirit of what we're trying to do in September. Some of the things I might not necessarily have done myself, but I understand why they're doing it and it keeps the concepts fresh and interesting to longtime readers and also to new readers.

[Editor's note: While at Midtown Chris Murphy was, in turn, interviewed himself by CNN. Catch the clip below]

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'HeroClix Online' Beta Is A Solid Reproduction Of The Tabletop Game [Review]

Chris Murphy — 2011-08-31T14:45:00+00:00

Filed under: Reviews, Gaming

HeroClix Online, the digital version of the collectible miniature toy strategy game featuring characters from the Marvel, DC Comics and other franchises, is currently in the process of hosting its paid beta version, giving early adopters a chance to take part in testing an early version of the game on the cheap. Parent company WizKids gave ComicsAlliance access to the beta version, which reproduces the game well, albeit with room for a few desired improvements moving forward.

What Works: HeroClix rules have been excellently digitally reproduced

The game does an excellent job at replicating HeroClix in a digital edition. Over the course of the game's almost ten year existence it's grown more complex in an effort to make each superhero figure play more like the specific character it represents. And HeroClix Online does a great job of keeping all of that while maintaining as simple an interface as possible. The game keeps track of any complex interactions between powers canceling out other powers or modifying ability scores so you're never at risk of forgetting something important in a large game. It reminds you when you've got an ability you could use to modify an attack roll. It automatically judges line of sight so there's no arguing with your opponent over whether your Doctor Doom can clearly shoot his Mister Fantastic. It doesn't go very far in adding to the experience of the original. While maps are rendered in three dimensions, with walls and upper levels no longer limited to a flat surface, characters remain a static three-dimensional duplicate of the original figure with no sort of added animation to represent combat. In short, it's a faithful recreation of the tabletop game.

What Could Use Improvement: Pricing, Introducing more franchises, Mac support

My biggest concern with the current version of the game is its pricing. As of the beta, digital booster packs of 5 characters cost about $12, about equivalent to the price of a real, physical booster pack of HeroClix. And that's a deal-breaker. According to a recent statement by the HeroClix Online team, the justification for that pricing is-

HeroClix Online is designed to provide an alternative method for eager players unable to make it to their local hobby shop to enjoy the game. As such, it is not intended to compete with the physical tabletop game-neither in gameplay nor pricing. The local game and comic shops are the lifeblood of the product line. Willingly competing with our stores on front list product is NOT the intention of WizKids or HeroClix Online.

And while I can understand an explanation like that being given for the digital edition of a trading card game, this is different. HeroClix figurines cost more than other collectible games because the small, painted plastic figures have higher production costs. The savings on not producing those figures needs to be passed onto consumers. But more than that, a HeroClix figure is also a small collectible item, something that's visually appealing to have on, say, a desk or a shelf with a few other toys. Expecting players to pay the same amount for the right to access numbers and pictures on a server seems impractical, and potentially discouraging for new players on HeroClix Online's part.

Future digital sets may include boosters that cost $1 and contain one random figure. But the game's store uses a special non-refundable in-game currency, ClixBux, that's only sold in increments of $5 and can't be bought in amounts less than $10 at a time. The game's in-game auction house, which also uses ClixBux only, may provide an alternative for players only looking to grab specific figures, but as of yet it's unclear how easily available or expensive they'll be once the game goes public. The possibility of including codes in physical products that unlock related content online is another alternative HeroClix is exploring that might help matters.

Another less significant issue is that, in general, the game's target audience consists of players looking for one-on-one games against random opponents in a competitive tournament setting. As someone who'd like to reconnect with friends I used to play the tabletop with, who have since relocated across the country, I'd like to see a little more support for players interested in larger multiplayer games. While HeroClix Online can handle tournaments of up to 64 players at a time, those consist of only one-versus-one matches. The most fun games of HeroClix I've played have been two players versus two players or four standalone players. I didn't have a chance to try HeroClix Online with more than two players, but the fact that dropped connections result in automatic player forfeit could make multiplayer tricky. Considering how long multiplayer games of HeroClix can go, it'd be nice to have the option in non-competitive games to save and resume later, which is currently not possible in the beta. Otherwise I'm not sure I want to risk losing a 45-minute game at the end because one of my friends had a network or wifi hiccup.

The casual game side of HeroClix Online is also a much bigger draw for me because tournaments don't allow cross-brand teams, and if I can't have a team that includes both Batman and Wolverine I'm not sure why I'm playing HeroClix in the first place. On that note, I'm hoping HeroClix Online is quick to include more of the various brands and universes the tabletop game has included over the years. While both Marvel and DC sets are on the horizon for HeroClix Online's wide release, being able to form team Batman-Spider-man-Hellboy-Guile would certainly tempt me to come back for more.

One last note. Currently, and for the foreseeable future, HeroClix Online is PC only. Sorry Mac users. I happen to know a lot of people who work in comics, love comics, are fans of HeroClix, but own Macs. These are people who not only might play the game, but might also publicly advocate the game to other fans and potential online players. Giving them a chance to play without having to jump through the hoops to play PC games on a Mac might be beneficial to HeroClix Online in the long run.

What I'd ideally like to see in the wide release:

As a literal translation of the HeroClix tabletop game, HeroClix Online mostly delivers. Though aspects of the game may see minor mods or major overhauls by the time the game sees wide release, the beta could benefit from a more multiplayer-friendly approach, the inclusion of more character sets and brands from the tabletop version and Mac support.

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Geoff Johns and Jim Lee Launch DC's New 52 at Midtown Comics in NYC [Photos]

Chris Murphy — 2011-08-31T13:00:00+00:00

Filed under: DC

To mark the release of Justice League #1, writer Geoff Johns and artist Jim Lee appeared at a special midnight book signing at New York's Midtown Comics Times Square store to meet fans and sign copies of the first title of the 52 newly relaunched DC comics to his shelves. ComicsAlliance was on hand to snap photos of the proceedings.Fans started lining up for the signing before noon -- 12 hours in advance -- in some cases bringing along chairs to make the wait more comfortable. While Johns and Lee were the headliners, other DC writers and artists showed up, including Batman, Swamp Thing and American Vampire writer Scott Snyder, who walked up and down the line talking at length with excited fans about his books.

Johns and Lee showed up with boxes of pizza to give out to everyone waiting in line:

Delicious pizza.

Pizza that not even Scott Snyder could resist.

By the time it was nearly midnight, the line had grown to over three hundred people and Midtown Comics was having to turn people away out of concern there wouldn't be enough time for everyone to get a book during the two-hour signing.

A few fans showed up in costume, and Midtown gave out prizes to the winners of a costume contest.

As midnight arrived, Johns and Lee took their places and the store opened its doors to the fans who had waited so patiently:

The first two people in line were given posterboard artwork of Lee's new Justice League designs:

One fan showed up asking Lee to sign his copy of X-Men #1 from 1991. Johns checked out the foldout cover.

And the fans weren't the only ones to walk away with something. Swamp Thing writer Scott Snyder picked up an action figure to take home:

Congratulations to all the fans (and retailers and creators) who put so much time into this event, which was clearly enjoyed by one and all. Did you attend a midnight release? What was your experience like? Let us know in the comments.

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ComicsAlliance Previews Half of DC's 52 New Comics

Chris Murphy — 2011-08-30T18:00:00+00:00

Filed under: DC

ComicsAlliance was recently given the opportunity to visit the DC Comics offices in New York City and read the first two weeks of the 52 relaunched books that will recreate the DC Universe Here are some quick, spoiler-free initial impressions of what we saw.

ACTION COMICS

Grant Morrison and Rags Morales delivered the best issue out of everything I read, and the one that's most got me most excited for more. Do not miss this book. Across all the books of the new DCU, there's a tone of superheroes being something that people are unsure about, even afraid of because they haven't been public for very long. Here in particular, Morrison begins with a story from very early in Superman's time in Metropolis, in which his quest for truth is a young, idealistic reporter's quest for social justice. This is a Superman who harkens back to the earliest days of the character, when he'd often fight on behalf of the less fortunate against the powerful and corrupt. And so while this Superman is feared, he's feared only by those in authority. I can't wait to see where this goes.

DEMON KNIGHTS

Of all the books I saw, I had two clear favorites, and the second after Action was emon Knights by Paul Cornell, Diogenes Neves, Oclair Albert and Marcelo Maiolo. It's a fun superhero fantasy epic ensemble adventure book that immediately feels like it has a grand story to tell. The art team does a great job of making it feel different from any of the other DC relaunch books, and Maiolo's color work in particular lends a great fantasy feel to a cast of several familiar characters and some new ones. There's the sense of an enormous tale to tell and I loved it. Please check it out and pass on the good word if you like it, I'd hate for this title to get lost amidst the other new release and have to fight to keep going.

JUSTICE LEAGUE

As the flagship release of the week, Geoff Johns and Jim Lee's new Justice League book is a good introduction to DC's new setting. It goes more into the very early years of superheroes first going public in a time when the world's still suspicious of them and they're still suspicious of each other. The banter between Batman and Green Lantern is a lot of fun, showing a refreshing level of self-awareness of fans' attitudes toward these characters that's reflected in their attitudes toward each other.

BATWOMAN

We've been missing this series for a while since Greg Rucka's departure, and it's great to see it back again. And while not having Rucka as a writer weakens the book some, J.H. Williams III's art remains gorgeous, and was the strongest part of the series. There are still incredible splash pages unlike any other comic currently out there. While other books' first issues are more concerned with establishing the new status quo, this one picks right up from when we last saw these characters.

FRANKENSTEIN: AGENT OF S.H.A.D.E.

DC's paranormal monster hunter team gives off a vibe that's similar to horror adventure books published by Dark Horse, and I intend that as a compliment. There's a grotesque roughness to the art of Alberto Ponticelli that sets a mood for the series better than the traditional superhero art style of their Flashpoint mini did. The settings are imaginative, and there's a great cast of supporting characters.

STORMWATCH

No other book felt as grand in scope as Paul Cornell and Miguel Sepulveda's Stormwatch. With multiple storylines happening simultaneously around the globe as well as off of it, this is a series that screams big ideas in the tradition of the Wildstorm books that preceded it. I was a little surprised at some of the characters that were chosen restarted nearly from scratch rather than keeping an existing long backstory.

BATGIRL

I was struck by just how much this book is not shying away from the contentious issue of The Killing Joke. That event from Barbara's past looks to be significant to the first arc. And while that's bound to lead to continued debate over the topic, addressing it in the way it's being handled may end up better for the character and the series in the long run.

STATIC SHOCK

I've heard it said (by ComicsAlliance's own Chris Sims) that Wally West was the closest character the DCU had to Marvel's Spider-Man. With Wally now absent, the first issue of John Rozum, Scott McDaniel & Jonathan Glapion's Static Shock makes a good case for Virgil "Static" Hawkins taking up that mantle. With Virgil as a young wise-cracking genius living in New York trying to balance a personal life and superheroics, the comparison's obvious. And I can't wait to see him take a larger role interacting with the DCU as a whole.

GREEN ARROW

As has been pointed out on this site before, Smallville's Green Arrow often came across as a stand-in for Batman, a younger, hipper, wealthy vigilante crimefighter. That version's now carried over into comics. The new Green Arrow is the same younger, hipper, world-traveling version of Bruce Wayne complete with a team of younger, hipper Alfred-equivalents.

OMAC

Keith Giffen, Dan Didio and Scott Koblish's OMAC is more than a revival of one of DC's many Jack Kirby characters; the book's art is entirely an homage to Kirby's visual style.

SWAMP THING

Writer Scott Snyder's putting a lot of effort into honoring the character's long history, and his approach to finding a place for Alec Holland in that history and finding a way to fit Swamp Thing into the larger DC Universe starts promisingly.

MEN OF WAR

The first of the two stories in Men of War shows a world in which superheroes are introduced to modern warfare and all hell breaks loose. Almost reminded me of scenes from police superhero comics like Powers or Gotham Central where all the rules of ordinary police work are completely disrupted when superpowers intervene, except on a much larger, more violent scale.

DEATHSTROKE

Deathstroke was the biggest surprise out of the books I wasn't expecting anything from. I enjoyed it, mostly due to how well it builds up to a great conclusion to the first issue.

SUICIDE SQUAD

King Shark, Deadshot and Harley Quinn have been characters I've enjoyed reading in the past, so seeing them portrayed in this book as psychopaths with no sense of humor at all was painful for me.

THE LATER RELEASES

Only art previews were available for the books coming out in the second half of September, and the series I'm looking for to the most is Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang's Wonder Woman. Chiang's the perfect choice here, his ability to draw a bad-ass, pants-less Wonder Woman that doesn't feel like pin-up art is something I'm always happy to see in comics. His mythological character designs on figures ranging from Hera to Hermes to Apollo impressed as well.

The other series that intrigued me most from visuals alone was Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato's Flash. Manapul's work is gorgeous, and the fact that he's both co-writing and doing the art on the series seems to have given him the opportunity to do incredible page layouts to portray moments ranging from action scenes to the Flash's accelerated thought processes. I'll be paying a lot more attention to this one.

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GET TO THE FLASHPOINT, Week 13: Lois Lane, Superman, Kid Flash, Hal Jordan

Chris Murphy — 2011-08-25T15:00:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, Opinion

Flashpoint is DC Comics' summer event of 2011 that promises to change the DC Universe unrecognizably until the event's climactic finale, when the DC Universe will instead be left changed somewhat recognizably. In support of the event, DC is releasing 60+ issues of comic books across 22 titles in just three months. You'd have to be deranged to expend the time, effort and money to follow it all, but fortunately for you, ComicsAlliance has never been particularly whole in the sanity department. Over the next few months we'll be reading every single Flashpoint tie-in so we can tell you what you need to know. There are bound to be some good ones and we'll recommend them to you. The rest of them may contain some facts you'll need to make sense of what's going on in the overall Flashpoint, and we'll help you piece that together as well.

This week in Get to the Flashpoint, we look at the final issues of

Project Superman by Scott Snyder, Lowell Francis and Gene Ha
Lois Lane and the Resistance by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Christian Duce and Walden Wong
Kid Flash Lost by Sterling Gates, Oliver Nome, Scott Kolins and Trevor Scott
Hal Jordan by Adam Schlagman and Cliff Richards

LOIS LANE AND THE RESISTANCE #3

Penny Black was a technician aboard an experimental British ship that generated a "frictionless field" so that it might travel faster than any other vessel. With shades of the supposed Philadelphia experiment involving the USS Eldridge, Black's ship disappeared from the ocean but later reappeared on land next to Stonehenge, with the entire crew gone -- except Penny, who all of a sudden had superpowers. The government made her a suit of armor to focus those powers and she became Britannia, who's kind of like a British Iron Man with a DDD-Cup.

The last issue of Lois Lane ended with Lois and the resistance trying to break into a guarded location containing a secret weapon developed by the United Kingdom's military -- a weapon invented by Penny Black. Ms. Hyde has captured Lois in an ambush and threatened to kill her unless the others surrender, as Hyde's turned traitor thanks to the Amazons' offer of a cure for her condition. Or at least the part of Hyde that's actually Bobbie Stephenson turned traitor. When she suddenly turns back into Hyde, her other persona's firmly on the resistance side and starts swatting Amazons. While Grifter and the Demon hold their attackers off, Lois and Penny go in search of Penny's armor.

Penny finds her gear just in the nick of time, with the Amazon Artemis inches away from cutting Lois open. Penny stops Artemis by punching her torso off. Lois Lane is seconds from death when a woman in a metal suit of armor punches another woman so hard that her torso is graphically separated from the rest of her body, spinning upward and sending blood and intestines flying everywhere.

Penny leaves to fight Wonder Woman while Lois stays behind. There's a big confrontation where Penny reveals to Diana the prison camps and genetic experiments the Amazons had been conducting on the native population. Understandably upset, Diana has a change of heart and orders the camps immediately shut down before setting off to have the confrontation with Penthesilea we saw last week... so that she can then go have the confrontation with Aquaman we saw two weeks ago.

You may have noticed that Lois has been taking a mostly supporting role so far. Given how little she's had of the spotlight in her own title, I almost feel like calling this book "Lois Lane and the Resistance" is like saying "Ringo Starr and the Beatles." However, Lois does get one last moment of glory when she finds an old emergency broadcast unit that she uses to send out into the world a report on the Amazons and the Resistance. A group of Amazons find her and cut her broadcast off for good. Or so it would seem...

PROJECT SUPERMAN - RECOMMENDED #3

For anyone who only read Lois Lane and the Resistance, it would appear that Lois dies off-panel, after the Amazons crept up behind and we "heard" an ominous "BOOOM!" But Project Superman reveals that said "BOOOM!" was actually caused by Kal-El, bursting through the wall to save Lois Lane.

The final issue of Project Superman picks up not from the conclusion to issue #2, but from Flashpoint Superman's disappearance in the main Flashpoint book after Cyborg, Batman and the Flash broke him out of the secret government lab where he'd been imprisoned. Superman heads directly for the UK and is horrorstruck by the carnage. He soon speeds off toward what he's really there to find: Lois Lane.

Also freed in the break-in that set Kal loose was Subject Zero, the previous super-soldier experiment from Project Superman. He's freed from the Phantom Zone and out for revenge. First Subject Zero kills General Lane, then he sets off to find Lane's daughter and the boy Lane came to see as a surrogate son, Kal, but not before absorbing the residual energy from the corpse of Doomsday that he happened to find in a spare room somewhere.

Transformed in a hulking beast, Subject Zero shows up to challenge Kal, who looks so much like the stereotypical 90-pound weakling that you'd believe Zero could beat him just by kicking sand in his face. But Kal's starting to get the hang of his powers and puts up a fight. Zero yells at him, repeating his zen mantra that Kal's only suffering because he's allowed himself to become attached to the world and the people in it. But Kal finds new strength and a reason to fight, and for the second time this week someone's torso gets punched off.

The torso-punch has the unfortunate side-effect of sending out shrapnel or excess energy (or something) that fatally wounds Lois. Her final words to Kal explicitly address the cliche of the girl dying to inspire the hero, and she tells him to go save the world because it's the right thing to do. So with Lois dead (again), Kal declares that he must now "be a superman", which we'll see happen in Flashpoint #5.

As self-admittedly cliched as Project Superman's finale sometimes was, it was still an enjoyable read. The arcs of Kal and Subject Zero across the series were well told, and Lois has a more significant role to play here than in her own book. The weakling Kal-El was an interesting twist to the Superman mythos that explored in a new way important themes about power and the responsibilities of those who have it. Project Superman was able to be both fresh and familiar, and stands out as one of the best tie-in series to come out of Flashpoint.

KID FLASH LOST #3

Kid Flash Lost also ended strongly this week, with an issue that made me wish the rest of the series could have been more like this one. When last we'd seen Bart Allen he'd escaped a dystopian future ruled by Brainiac by getting drawn back into the Speed Force. But when he first appears in 1889 Texas, Bart's been somehow contaminated with the death energy of the Black Flash. When he touches fellow speedster Max Mercury, who dedicated Flash fans know was alive at the time, Max is killed and Bart absorbs his speed force energy.

Bart continues to be pulled through time and begins to recognize the rift in reality that's creating the Flashpoint universe. Kid Flash witnesses the death of Jay Garrick and sees the grave of Wally West. He draws speed force energy from these other speedsters until he finally finds Barry Allen. Upon meeting his grandfather, Bart becomes a "White Flash," "the living embodiment of the energy of the Speed Force", before transferring his powers to Barry and then disintegrating like Barry did back in the original mega-event, Crisis on Infinite Earths.

It's a touching death for the character that also seems meant to be a farewell, in a way, to all the other speedsters as Barry Allen takes on that responsibility almost on his own in the imminent DC Comics relaunch. Of course, that does make it a bit odd that Bart was the character chosen to tell this particular story. Because Bart will return in Teen Titans, this story would have had a much more powerful impact if it were Wally West disintegrating and passing back the torch that had been given to him in the first Crisis. Even Jay Garrick would have worked, considering we still don't know when we might be seeing the Golden Age DC heroes again. Nevertheless, this was a satisfying end to the miniseries.

HAL JORDAN #3

How many times have you seen the movie Independence Day? In watching the climactic battle scene in which Randy Quaid sacrifices himself to kill aliens and save us all, have you said, how many times have you asked, "This is great but I wish I could read it as a comic instead?"

The second issue of Flashpoint's Hal Jordan miniseries ended with Hal volunteering for a suicide mission into Amazon territory, where he was to launch a nuclear weapon. Even though the most recent issue of the main Flashpoint book announced that Hal had died a hero during the mission, I was expecting there to be some twist in this miniseries, but there isn't. He's dead, and before this issue even came out.

We see Carol Ferris volunteering to go along with Hal, but when they arrive at the Amazon-held United Kingdom they discover that their target is -- gasp -- surrounded by a force field, so none of their shots are getting through. Richards' art does well to capture the large scale of the combat, which includes invisible planes, Amazon furies with armored wings, and Giganta, whose eyes Hal shoots out.

It all builds to a climax in which Hal's plane is damaged, his nuclear missile won't launch, and his ejector seat won't eject. Carol's in bad shape, too. Hal tells her they'll both eject on the count of three, but as she ejects at a safe distance he's stuck riding his jet into a nuclear fireball.

In an epilogue we're shown Carol being given Hal's belongings, including his journal, his flight jacket, and a small box. Carol reads the journal, in which Hal left a message telling her he'd always loved her but was afraid to tell her. She opens the box to find a wedding ring. Not an engagement ring, mind you, but a wedding ring. Suggesting he was sure what her answer would have been if he'd ever told her. Because even in death, Hal Jordan is an over-confident self-assured jerk.

This brings us to the end of the Flashpoint tie-ins. Thanks for following along. If you haven't been reading every single tie-in published, I'd recommend at least checking out Batman: Knight of Vengeance and Project Superman. If you're looking to read the books that'll most provide the background to the events of Flashpoint #5, give a look to Emperor Aquaman, Wonder Woman and the Furies and Lois Lane and the Resistance.

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GET TO THE FLASHPOINT, Week 12 - Wonder Woman, The Outsider, Abin Sur, Legion of Doom

Chris Murphy — 2011-08-18T14:00:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, Opinion

Flashpoint is DC Comics' summer event of 2011 that promises to change the DC Universe unrecognizably until the event's climactic finale, when the DC Universe will instead be left changed somewhat recognizably. In support of the event, DC is releasing 60+ issues of comic books across 22 titles in just three months. You'd have to be deranged to expend the time, effort and money to follow it all, but fortunately for you, ComicsAlliance has never been particularly whole in the sanity department. Over the next few months we'll be reading every single Flashpoint tie-in so we can tell you what you need to know. There are bound to be some good ones and we'll recommend them to you. The rest of them may contain some facts you'll need to make sense of what's going on in the overall Flashpoint, and we'll help you piece that together as well.

This week in Get to the Flashpoint, we look at the final issues of

Wonder Woman and the Furies by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Agustin Padilla and Jose Aviles
The Outsider by James Robinson and Javi Fernandez
Abin Sur: The Green Lantern by Adam Schlagman, Robson Rocha and Felipe Massafera
Legion of Doom by Adam Glass, Rodney Buchemi and Jose Marzán, Jr.

WONDER WOMAN AND THE FURIES #3

The cover of this book shows Aquaman and Wonder Woman fighting with the tag line "The Fight of the Century!" Isn't that what this, the third and final issue of the series, should be about, I can hear you ask? To which I say, ha ha, of course not! Nowhere is the expression "You can't judge a book by its cover" more literally true than in the comics industry. All we see of that fight is a two-page spread at the end of the book. If you wanted to see what happens on the cover of this issue, you should have bought Flashpoint #4-5. That should be obvious.

The final issue of Wonder Woman and the Furies book gives us more background on Penthesilea and Orm's nefarious plot to undermine Arthur and Diana, and it is an evil scheme that gets dumber every time they reveal another detail about it. In last week's Emperor Aquaman, Wonder Woman revealed that she discovered Orm and Penthesilea kissing in her headquarters after Orm was sent into London on a secret Atlantean mission. That is exactly what we see here: Orm and Penthesilea just stopping for some serious makeout time in the middle of a large, well-lit room in the Amazon's headquarters, standing over the corpse of Siren, who Penthesilea just killed. There is absolutely no attempt whatsoever to hide it, yet Penthesilea is surprised when Diana finds her like this. Also, the entire compound is on alert because all the Amazons are looking for the two Atlantean infiltrators, you know, the one Penthesilea just killed and the one she is currently kissing.

Anyway, Penthesilea proceeds directly into her crazy rant about how she wanted the Amazons to be a strong warrior people and some sacrifices had to be made. Wonder Woman then sets an ineffectual group of guards on her and leaves to confront Aquaman in the scene we saw last week. That confrontation takes place on one of the many ships that Orm promptly blows up with the explosive detonator button he's allowed to keep hidden on his gauntlet because the guards are grossly incompetent. As Orm and Penthesilea kill those same guards to escape, we see the backstory of their plot:

When Arthur and Diana announced their intention to unite Atlantis and the Amazons through marriage, Orm and Penthesilea were pissed. They were proud of the long warrior tradition of their two nations, and were unhappy at the peaceful tone the new union was taking. The two conspired to undermine the alliance by framing the Atlanteans for the assassination of an Amazon leader (Diana was the target, but her mother took the spear for her). In the chaos that followed, Orm and Penthesilea positioned themselves as leaders of their respective peoples and brought about the apocalyptic war against which our story now takes place, and which has naturally caused enormous casualties on both sides.

How is that in any way a good idea? Why is Orm blowing up all the ships in his own fleet if he values his warriors so much? Why is Penthesilea murdering her own guards (who seem to be about as good at fighting as at guarding)? Why did these two geniuses decide the best person to frame would be each other? This is a plan so terrible that only Cobra Commander could have made it worse.

THE OUTSIDER #3

In the Flashpoint universe, J'onn J'onzz was brought to Earth by an experiment conducted by Dr. Erdel under the supervision of the Outsider's massive organization. Erdel died in the process, and J'onn was subsequently sold to Russia. He was experimented on in the hopes that Russia could compete with the U.S. government's Project Superman. Instead, J'onn escaped alongside an imprisoned Black Adam back to Adam's home of Kahndaq. J'onn betrayed Adam, and then used the identities of Black Adam and Blackout as red herrings to lure the Outsider into the open. J'onn blames Michael Desai for bringing him to Earth and turning him into a tortured and twisted creature with no goodness left in him. Plus he's getting paid a large sum of money by either the Amazons or the Atlanteans to take Desai out, he won't say who.

They fight, and even though J'onzz has super strength and flight and can read minds, the Outsider wins because his name is in the book's title. He uses a device that strongly resembles but is legally distinct from Doctor Who's sonic screwdriver to trap half of J'onzz in one of the Multiverse's 52 realities and the other half in another. When J'onzz refuses to tell him who's paying to get the Outsider killed, Desai shuts the portal, leaving half a dead Martian corpse in two realities.

The Outsider's awareness of the 52 DC realities seemed kind of jarring. It was a blatant reminder of DC having 51 other realities it views as "less real" than the one which has been affected by Flashpoint, because that same fate is coming for Desai in about two weeks when DC relaunches its entire superhero line. But for now Desai pledges to join Batman and Cyborg's fight against the Amazons and Atlanteans in order to find out who's out to kill him.

As such, Flashpoint has now added yet another story that's "to be concluded" in Flashpoint #5. Is there really going to be enough space to offer a satisfying conclusion to each of these tales while at the same time launching the new DC Universe? Is DC really need to entice people who've read all three parts of Flashpoint's tie-ins like this into buying the last issue of the main event book?

ABIN SUR: THE GREEN LANTERN #3

When last we saw Abin Sur, his right hand had been grotesquely severed during a fight against power-hungry Green Lantern Thaal Sinestro. Sinestro has been told the prophecy of Flashpoint, knows the Flash is on Earth, and knows that he can use The Flash to change the universe as he wishes. Abin Sur is stunned by this sudden betrayal, because if you can't trust a guy with a Satan mustache and Satan ears and a Satan haircut and a name that roughly translates as "evil", really who can you trust?

Fortunately Abin Sur's willpower turns out to be so strong that he can summon his power ring from his severed hand and use it to make a new hand with which to crush Sinestro's ring. With no time to lose, Abin flies off to save the world. But the Guardians just want him to take the white entity and leave the Earth to its fate. One drastic change in art style later, they strip Sur of his position with the Green Lanterns, leaving him with only what power remains in his ring before it will be useless forever.

Sur arrives at the climactic Flashpoint beatdown in London, where Cyborg asks him to destroy the Atlantean geo-force bomb threatening to tear the world apart. Abin is apparently killed in the process, as his green power ring leaves to find a replacement. And even though Flashpoint #4 suggested Hal Jordan was dead, I'm still thinking there's a slim possibility that ring makes it to a still-alive Hal in time for next week's Hal Jordan book, also written by Adam Schlagman. Abin, meanwhile, has a vision of his dead sister and is then brought back to life by the white entity as the White Lantern. Abin is ordered by the entity to save the world, something he'll do in the pages of . . . everybody say it together now . . . Flashpoint #5.

LEGION OF DOOM #3

The Legion of Doom tie-in was in its first two issues about Heatwave and evil Plastic Man killing people in ways as gruesome as possible. Unsurprisingly, this issue opens with Plastic man ripping a guy's heart out through his mouth and stabbing another guy's eyes out with pointy plastic fingers. Those guys, if you care, are Sportsmaster and Lock-Up, respectively. These kills actually happen because Plastic Man has decided Heatwave's plan to crash the flying supervillain prison into the city of Detroit goes too far. Heatwave responds by melting Plastic Man alive.

Cyborg rushes to the defense of Detroit and brings the prison down into the river instead of onto the city. But enough of the prisoners survive -- including Heatwave, who picks up Cyborg's own severed cybernetic arm and proceeds to beat him with it until Cyborg pulls a move from the playbook of Futurama's Bender Bending Rodriguez. Yes, it turns out Cyborg still has control of the unattached limb, and he defeats Heatwave.

Next we see of Heatwave back in jail and given a new cellmate who's smuggled in a familiar flexible man inside his stomach, one who's come after Heatwave looking for revenge. On that thoroughly bloody scene we finally bid farewell to this mess of gore and fire that's rightfully earned its place as the worst of Flashpoint's many tie-ins.

Next week - The Flashpoint tie-ins come to an end with the conclusions of Project Superman, Lois Lane and the Resistance, Hal Jordan and Kid Flash Lost.

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GET TO THE FLASHPOINT, Week 11: Frankenstein, Deadman, Aquaman, Citizen Cold

Chris Murphy — 2011-08-11T13:30:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, Opinion

Flashpoint is DC Comics' summer event of 2011 that promises to change the DC Universe unrecognizably until the event's climactic finale, when the DC Universe will instead be left changed somewhat recognizably. In support of the event, DC is releasing 60+ issues of comic books across 22 titles in just three months. You'd have to be deranged to expend the time, effort and money to follow it all, but fortunately for you, ComicsAlliance has never been particularly whole in the sanity department. Over the next few months we'll be reading every single Flashpoint tie-in so we can tell you what you need to know. There are bound to be some good ones and we'll recommend them to you. The rest of them may contain some facts you'll need to make sense of what's going on in the overall Flashpoint, and we'll help you piece that together as well.

This week in Get to the Flashpoint, we look at the final issues of

Frankenstein and the Creatures of the Unknown by Jeff Lemire, Andy Smith and Keith Champagne
Deadman and the Flying Graysons by J.T. Krul and Fabrizio Fiorentino
Emperor Aquaman by Tony Bedard, Vicente Cifuentes and Diana Egea
Citizen Cold by Scott Kolins

FRANKENSTEIN AND THE CREATURES OF THE UNKNOWN #3

Frankenstein and the Creatures of the Unknown really impressed me with its first issue, and I had more fun reading this book than most other Flashpoint tie-ins. Issue three picks up from the resolution to issue two, where the Bride of Frankenstein has shown up to rescue Frankenstein, the vampire Velcoro, the werewolf Griffith and the fishwoman Nina Mazursky. Also still alive is Shrieve, the monster hunter sent to kill the team who she blames for her grandfather getting killed by the monsters he recruited to replace them. The Bride has shown up on behalf of S.H.A.D.E., the Super Human Advanced Defense Executive. This secreter-than-top-secret black ops group needs Frankenstein's help and are counting on him bringing his Hitler-killin' know-how to deal with the escalating crisis presented by the Amazon-Atlantis war destroying Europe.

The Bride also informs Shrieve that her family was actually killed on the orders of General Lane, who wanted to get the elder Shrieve out of the way because he was bothered by the man's quest to find the original Creature Commandoes. Despite the fact that this story is presented to her by a monster who was moments ago shooting at her and with no other evidence, Shrieve buys this story after minimal protest and sides with team good guy monsters. But Frankenstein refuses to help unless the Bride helps him find Dr. Mazursky to save the wounded Griffith, so it's off to Romania.

So the monsters arrive in Romania to find a hidden village populated entirely by vampires, werewolves and fishmonster people who all lived in peace. Until a few minutes ago when a giant robot showed up and killed them all. Still alive is Dr. Mazursky, who has wrapped himself up in mummy bandages and used other mystical powers to live to a very old age. He reveals that he discovered this village in the 1930s and used genetic material from its inhabitants to make the Creature Commandoes. And that his daughter Nina was never really a human and had always been a fishperson he kidnap-dopted. While he uses advanced monster science to heal Griffith and cure him of being a werewolf, Frankenstein and the Bride fight the military super-robot. And that fight scene includes the Bride using all four of her arms to shoot four pistols at once, which is provably awesome. Velcoro sacrifices himself to save Frankenstein, and while Frank, the Bride and Shrieve depart to help save the world, Nina and Griffith stay behind, presumably to live happily ever after as man and fish-wife. Not in the old-timey fish-selling sense.

The series still left me wanting to read more of Frankenstein's adventures in Lemire's upcoming S.H.A.D.E. book in the DC relaunch. I was glad to see a larger role for the Bride, whose matter-of-fact, sometimes foul-mouthed, sometimes joking tone makes a nice contrast to Frankenstein's more lofty, archaic pronouncements. I could see myself enjoying a team book built around those two.

DEADMAN AND THE FLYING GRAYSONS #3

When last we saw these characters, the story had turned more into Deadman and the Dying Graysons. Ha ha, am I right? Ha. But no, seriously, Dick Grayson's father is dying before his eyes after Amazons attacked their traveling circus and killed Dick Grayson's mother and that is very sad.

The Amazons have come in search of the Helm of Nabu, worn by Kent "Doctor Fate" Nelson up until his recent death by spear-through-chest. Dick Grayson, Boston "Deadman" Brand and Ragdoll have been rescued by Count Vertigo and are trapped in a basement in the middle of a city that Amazon Starfire is gleefully burning to the ground. See, the Amazons know the Helm will survive intact to be found later. With little choice left to them, the group makes a run for it.

Ragdoll is the first to be killed and Count Vertigo takes another spear to the chest soon afterward, leaving Dick and Boston to take the Helm away from the Amazons. Starfire causes a building to collapse on top of them. Boston gets up to look down at Dick's sprawled body. He fears that Dick's dead and that he was unable to fulfill his promise to Dick's father to save his son. But no! Dick was fine. And it turns out Deadman was dead all along! Which leads to possibly the first time ever I have seen a man kneeling at the side of his own body, looking skyward, and screaming "NOOOOOO!"

Now-actually-dead-Deadman regains his composure quickly enough to notice Dick Grayson's master plan: Dick's found a gas tanker attached to a train and is leaking it so that when Starfire attempts to shoot him, she'll blow the entire train up. Deadman possesses Dick and makes a dramatic leap to safety away from the exploding train, where Starfire and a few Amazons have probably been killed.

Dick meets up with members of the Resistance, including Britannia, Kid Devil, and what appears to be the Vic Sage version of the Question. (will Vic be replacing Renee Montoya post re-launch?). Dick takes the Helm, declares himself to be the new Doctor Fate, and pledges to help the Resistance in their war effort.

Maybe we'll see a panel or two of how all that turns out in Flashpoint #5. That's been a recurring problem with the Flashpoint tie-ins, where a lot of these three-issue miniseries have ended on a "to be continued . . .?" note. Because DC's not likely to return to this setting again, and there's not going to be enough room for closure to each tie-in in Flashpoint #5, it'd be nice if there was a greater sense of finality to these series on their final pages.

EMPEROR AQUAMAN #3

The finale of Emperor Aquaman picks up from Wonder Woman arriving on Arthur Curry's submarine to fight him -- except that's not actually what's she's there for. Diana, you see, discovered that her Aunt Penthesilea and Aquaman's brother Orm the Ocean Master were having secret makeout sessions. And what's more, that these secret makeout sessions were taking place in between secret concoct-a-massive-conspiracy-in-which-Wonder-Woman-and-Aquaman-are-pawns-in-our-plans-to-conquer-and/or-destroy-the-world-we're-not-really-clear-on-which sessions. Aquaman wants to hear none of it because he's still pissed that Wonder Woman killed his wife. Mera, and that she's been wearing Mera's helmet as a trophy ever since.

Wonder Woman gives Aquaman a lot of backstory on Penthesilea and Ocean Master's nefarious schemes, some of which we've seen before and some of which is probably jumping the gun on the final issue of the Wonder Woman tie-in. But Arthur is mad and just wants to fight to the death. Meanwhile, Wonder Woman's guards are turning out to be super incompetent, as instead of imprisoning Penthesilea and Ocean Master they just decided to make them stand in a corner. As such, Ocean Master is completely free to push a button that explodes bombs in all the Atlantean ships.

Whose side exactly are Penthesilea and Ocean Master on in the first place? Like, is he betraying the Atlanteans for her? Because blowing up all Atlantis' ships does not seem like a good move even if he secretly seeks to take his brother's throne. Why not just blow up the ship Aquaman is on? If he has betrayed Atlantis for the Amazons' cause, why are the Amazons upset with him and holding him prisoner? Shouldn't they be happy he just pushed a button that made all their enemies explode? Are both of them betraying their own people? Why? On whose behalf? Why have these two conspiratorial geniuses crafted a scheme that has resulted in the deaths of untold numbers of their own people and, in the Amazons' case, the destruction of their homeland? What exactly are they gaining from this? It's pretty close to the end, shouldn't we know that by now?

No, apparently the end of the series is too soon to know that. So there's a lot of yelling and glowering from Aquaman and a weird narration about how, if he had been able to have a proper Christian upbringing, he would have better learned the importance of forgiveness and none of the world would be so screwed because he's just so determined to murder Wonder Woman. I was not expecting a book about a make-believe warrior king of a race of undersea people out for revenge against the ruler of an island of Amazon women with invisible planes to end with such a strong endorsement of Jesus Christ.

CITIZEN COLD #3

There isn't that much going on in the last issue of Citizen Cold. Len Snart's true criminal identity has been discovered by Iris West, the woman with a conflicted attraction to him despite his ever-more-creepy attraction to her. Snart offers Iris the chance to run away with him to Dubai after he handles the teensy-weensy detail of killing all of his rogues because they just murdered his sister (whom he had conveniently locked up in the same prison as the rogues to keep his secret safe). Cold kills Tarpit and Fallout by freezing and shattering them and kills Weather Wizard by snapping his neck, just for variety's sake. Cold is stabbed Mirror Master, who Cold then pushes out of the Mirrorverse, causing Mirror Master to become frozen and shatter.

Cold returns to his apartment to find Iris waiting with Pied Piper. The Piper, who Cold unsuccessfully killed, wants revenge for his best friend Wally West, who Cold froze to death at the end of issue one. Iris is also not pleased to discover her nephew was killed by the man who's been so awkwardly hitting on her, and thankfully that last bit of evidence seems to have made her come around to the anti-Citizen Cold side of things. She freezes Cold to death with his own weapon and ends the book with an ice-related pun that of course I had to reread out loud to myself in a Schwarzenegger voice.

Next week, the conclusions to Wonder Woman and the Furies, The Outsider, Abin Sur: The Green Lantern and Legion of Doom.

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