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 »

This article has been planned since shortly after MLD ran the State of the X-Men piece back in November. The delay in the post has been directly tied to the delay in DC Comics publishing their second new high profile Batman title, David Finch’s Batman: The Dark Knight, which was originally due to ship November 24. Well Batman: The Dark Knight #1 is supposedly shipping this week (though I’ll believe it when I see it), so this seems like as good a time as any to assess the state of the Batmen Family.

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J. Michael Straczynski. JMS as he’s commonly called. I don’t even pretend to know the dude’s name or how to spell it were it not in front of me. Everybody knows something he’s written, whether its the Spider-Man comics that erased 20 years of continuity, Babylon 5, The Changeling… Something.

He’s been at DC for awhile now writing their team-up book The Brave and The Bold. I’ve picked up the occasional issue, but while it’s fun, the book had been nothing particularly special. The stories are all told in a single issue. Cliff Chiang’s art is solid but not spectacular. Also, the fact that they’re telling lost stories plays a part in the book’s blandness… Nothing feels like it counts. Issue 33 isn’t one of those issues, however.

The issue teams up Wonder Woman, Zatanna, and Barbara Gordon as Batgirl. It seemed like an oddball team up if I’ve ever heard of one and yet somehow it was impossible to ignore. The story starts out strangely with Zatanna and Wonder Woman deciding to enjoy a night out on the town.

Half-way through the second act it becomes chrystal clear where the story is going. There’s only one moment it can be leading up to… and yet when we get there the book manages to be surprisingly uplifting.

I don’t know how else to say it… this issue is something really special. If JMS keeps writing stories like this, I’m on board.