The X-Men Regenesis #1 one-shot ushers in the post-Schism status quo for Marvel’s mutant heroes that will be introduced across the X-Men line this Fall. We didn’t say much about details of the recently concluded Schism mini-series here at MLD, and much of that had to do with taking a wait-and-see approach after the Prelude to Schism series didn’t connect to it at all. I still enjoyed Prelude, but it was a point of frustration that put me off discussing the details here. Thankfully, Kieron Gillen’s issue chronicling the upcoming changes has put things back on track.

Spoilers for the dawn of Marvel’s X-Men: Regenesis era may follow.

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Today sees the release of Dark Horse Comics’ Orchid written by Tom Morello, guitarist of Rage Against the Machine/Audioslave/The Nightwatchman. We received an advance copy of the book from Dark Horse, but copies on the shelves will include access to Nightwatchman music to accompany the book. The writer of the book being best known for his guitar work should have been a warning that trouble was on the horizon, but he’s always come across as a very intelligent guy so I held out hope for this series when I heard about it. Unfortunately, the writing turns out to have a very amateur feel to it.

Spoilers for Orchid #1 will follow.

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KevinMLD spent a lot of time here discussing what titles were expected to be hits and misses for him this month from DC Comics’ line-wide relaunch referred to as The New 52. I’ve remained relatively quiet while considering his recommendations and spending my time talking about some of September’s Other #1s. I did sample a fair number of New 52 books as well and not surprisingly, I went with almost all super hero titles choosing to leave most of DC’s “Dark” and “Edge” stuff off of my pull list. In fact, even though I feel like I invested a lot in the New 52 this month, I bought fewer than they’re shipping in one week and it’s time to evaluate whether I’ll be back for issue #2 of any of these titles.

Kevin has agreed to join me in running down these books and his perspective as someone who’s followed DC’s publishing line closely over the years should be very different from my own as I’m relatively out of touch with it.

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Once more DC is releasing 13 new number one issues this week. How can anyone possibly be expected to determine which of these new books they should really buy? There’s just so many of them! To make your life easier, I’ll offer my ill-informed, not-quite-expert opinion on what “New 52” titles are worth picking up today.

On this fourth week of the “New 52″ DC Universe, it seems like there are really only two high profile books shipping in my opinion, Geoff John’s Aquaman and Scott Lobdell’s Teen Titans. I guess a case could be made for both Superman and The Flash, but since those books are written by individuals better known as artists than writers, they haven’t really reached my radar. Batman the Dark Knight would probably have been a book I considered high profile had the first volume of the series been better.

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Last Wednesday, in recognition of the second full week of DC Comics’ New 52 promotion, I recommended the seven new DC titles that I thought were most likely to be worthy of your attention and your money sight unseen. Now that we’ve had a week to digest them, the question is how did I do? I think it’s safe to characterize the entire promotion as a monster success for DC at least in terms of PR for month one: sellouts across the line, reprints on the way and copies being ordered in the six figure range. Overall, I can honestly say the quality of the actual product has been stronger than I was expecting. The books I personally recommended for week three in order of expected quality were as follows: Batman, Wonder Woman, Nightwing, Green Lantern Corps, DC Universe Presents: Deadman, Red Hood and the Outlaws and Catwoman.

So how were they in reality?

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