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.

Read more of this article »

Last Wednesday, in recognition of the first full week of DC Comics’ New 52 promotion, I recommended the six five 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? Undoubtably I think it’s safe to characterize the week as a monster success for DC at least in terms of PR: tons of sellouts, reprints and series being ordered in the six figures.  Overall, I can honestly say the quality of the actual product was stronger than I was expecting. I personally recommended the following series in order of expected quality: Swamp Thing, Action Comics, Animal Man, Batgirl and Stormwatch (and Hawk and Dove). So how were they in reality? Read more of this article »

So tonight’s the night. At midnight, DC Comics releases Flashpoint #5 and Justice League #1 and the DC Universe as we’ve known it will be washed away to some currently unknown extent and replaced by 52 new titles; many with brand new continuity.

I don’t know what to think about all of this. I’m excited to see what DC has up its sleeves, but I’m sad to know some piece of this universe I’ve loved for twenty years can never really ever quite be the same again. I have a great deal of distrust for DC publisher Dan Didio and his personal tastes. I know they don’t align with mine. But I love the grand ambition behind all of this. This is a giant gamble and I dig that.

Read more of this article »

It’s like Paul Cornell reached down into my brain, poked around a bit, and decided to write a Lex Luthor comic designed just for me. I don’t know if it’s possible for Cornell’s eventual conclusion to his Luthor epic to live up to my giant expectations at this point.

Highly recommended.

Editor’s note: Action Comics #897 is available in stores now should you want a glimpse into KevinMLD’s ideal vision of a Lex Luthor story by Paul Cornell and Pete Woods. Cover art by David Finch.

The Larfleeze Christmas Special may have been my most anticipated comic of the year. While it wasn’t as good as I had imagined it to be in my head, it was still a pretty enjoyable book. Before I discuss the story, I figured maybe I should give you some background on this relatively new character, Larfleeze.

Read more of this article »