Oh, hey, remember comics?
I thought I’d spare you yet another trading card post, and give you instead a comment or three about the new DC solicitations, some of which I could have saved for the next End of Civilization post, but what the heck:
- A couple of notes right off the bat: first, I’m getting a bit tired of all these variant covers. Yeah, I know, “Standard Comics Fan/Retailer Complaint #18,” and Marvel’s just as much to blame as DC, but still, seeing “variant cover will feature the standard edition cover in a wraparound format” and “1 in 200 black and white variant” and “1 in 25 variant” and blah blah blah over and over again…it gets wearying.
Also, sure are a lot of guest artists in this month’s solicitations. In all fairness, I should note Rob Liefeld is still hangin’ in there on Hawk and Dove (which isn’t selling too badly at the shop, by the way).
- “The awesome consequences of this high-stakes battle” in Justice League #6 will resonate within the series for years to come!” or until everything’s rebooted again. Or just cancelled outright and all the characters are simply handed over to the licensing and movie/television divisions.
- Speaking of new artists, the next story arc on Batwoman will be drawn by Amy Reeder and Richard Friend, which may give some fans of the title the vapors when they don’t see J.H. Williams’ art. But, Reeder’s work looks like it’ll fit in just fine, and I’m looking forward to it. But I can already hear a customer or two telling me “it looks different!” I’ll assist them in bearing the transition, I promise.
- Oh, good, they’re bringing back Batman Beyond (as Batman Beyond Unlimited)…that previous series did fairly well for us, and hopefully the several-month break between series didn’t kill that momentum.
- Green Lantern #6:
“Sinestro and Hal are left at a crossroads. They must pick up the pieces of their lives. The question is, will they do it alone…or together?”
Had no idea Green Lantern turned into a romance book.
- And speaking of variant covers, Swamp Thing has ’em. Dammit.
- A couple of interesting Batman trades this time around: Batman: Birth of the Demon, collecting the three Talia & Ra’s Al Ghul storylines into a single volume; and the Legends of the Dark Knight: Jim Aparo hardcover, gathering together his early Brave and the Bold work. Aparo was always one of my favorite Bat-artists, always doing solid storytelling, and it’s nice to see a volume devoted to his output.
- Absolute Final Crisis at $100, New Teen Titans Omnibus at $75, even volume 6 of The Flash Archives at $60…seems like it’s really the wrong market for these reprint projects at those price points. Nobody pays full price for these things. The only way we can compete with Amazon on these books is by selling them at a percentage off the list price, not nearly as deep as Amazon’s standard discounts, but hopefully low enough that the convenience of having the book in hand right there and then outweighs having to wait for the book to ship out even with the additional savings. …Ah, retail.
- The solicitation for the Black Orchid Deluxe Edition hardcover notes that it reprints the “4-issue” series…it’s only a three issue mini, but the page count of the hardcover is about 20 pages over that of the mini’s page count, so I suspect there will be some extra bonus hoohar in there.
- Fables #114 begins an eight-part back-up series painted by Shawn McManus…I do love the Shawn McManus art, so I’m certainly looking forward to this. Not that I don’t usually look forward to Fables anyway.
- So, a Green Lantern Vs. Parallax statue for $300, or a $125 Atrocitus statue based on the GL animated series? I suspect both would look equally good as centerpieces on the dinner table.
I am the market for Absolute Final Crisis IF you give me some fun value-added material, like Absolute COIE. But just a oversized version of the HC? No thanks.
And isn’t it odd there’s an Absolute Final Crisis before an Absolute Infinite Crisis?
A hardcover of early Jim Aparo B&B? I am there! I think my first comic was B&B 109 – “If Gotham Bay Be My Grave” Great stuff.
Hal and Sinestro the Romance Comic will never work. The Supreme Court will strike dowm DOMA and Congress will replace it with DOMAA – the Defense of Marriage to Aliens Act.
It was the variant covers of Spider-Man #1 and those Valiant(?) #0s that made me crazy back in the 1990s.
What does “Beyond Unlimited” even mean?:P
Yeah yeah, I know what it means and you know what it means, but for someone who might not be familiar with Batman Beyond (aka possibly some of the young, new DC readers) it’s gonna seem like a strange title, I think…
Speaking of upcoming books… how do you feel about the upcoming Dardevil crossover with the Amazing Spider-Man book? You still get Mark Waid writing for both, with the main artist on the Daredevil portion (I believe), and what looks like a fun little plot, buuuuutttttt…
This does sort of run against the ‘self-contained’ vibe that book really should keep, right? Do you think these sorts of things can be pretty good and turn out alright when you get the right guy steering the ship?
did you see ulysses farinas’s swamp thing?
http://ulisesfarinas.com/2011/11/15/what-i-do-when-im-not-drawing/
If you said to me,”I’m an all-powerful being,and I’m going to destroy all back issues/trades of every comic series ever,but I’ll let you pick ONE to save,and it will be the only surviving example of sequential art in the world.”
I would say Haney/Aparo Brave and the Bold.
Ha! You had the same reaction I did to the solicitation for Green Lantern. Suddenly…it’s a gay interspecies romance book! Ah, if only that were true, I’d be so delighted with DC.
The Haney/Aparo omnibus is tempting me. Also, not mentioned by you, but there’s the Showcase Presents…The Losers coming as well, which is also tempting.
Yes, the Showcase Presents Losers is all I need out of this months solicitations. :)
Now DC, when will you realize that if you can sell Showcase volumes of Losers and Secret House and Young Romance then a Tomahawk volume should be a no-brainer?
I really want a Tomahawk collection. :)
On the extra issue of Black Orchid, wasn’t there a prologue or epilogue story that Neil Gaiman wrote with Poison Ivy in it? Maybe it’s that.