The Unholy Dragon

That one's ROUGH. 52 is no age to go. This follows Bernie Mireault passing last week. Just a week of tough losses of real tremendous artists.

Since the show came out and everyone is determined to be the loudest one to yell about how much better they think it is than the comics, I've been very tired with Boys discourse because I really truly feel like it's a book whose vulgarity leads people away from recognizing how smartly written it is. But a lot of that is also down to them taking it at face value as a satire of superhero books when it's really using that as a shell game to satirize the US military industrial complex and it's relationship with pop culture as propaganda. I'm not saying it does everything right or that there isn't a better balance to be had, but it has some shockingly nuanced bits in it which are unfortunately lost in the discourse to the big gross out stuff.

Public Domain is less of an issue for many of the characters than it seems, since every year of new stuff (design, story elements) only unlocks an equal amount of years after it came out as the first appearance, so while some version of the characters may pop up, the familiar ones will still be locked down for longer than we'll be alive. I do think that DC is probably looking at how to modernize the key characters a bit so that they're distinct from the Golden Age versions that will hit PD though.

I mean I'll say this for the Absolute lineup, the starters are all fantastic writers. Also the rumour of an Al Ewing GL book has so much of my interest reserved.

I thought Phoenix was fun. Felt like a reach for something in the vein of Ewing or Morrison with a touch of Aaron's Thor in the setup. I'll be curious how Phillips builds it out. It definitely feels like a book that could be a breakout hit for her.

Johns is gone. It's Snyder and Williamson.

From the Youtube announcement video (slightly paraphrased) "If the main universe is predicated on Superman energy and the Metaverse concept first introduced in Doomsday Clock, then this universe is founded on Darkseid energy." Oh so we're still doing "Grant Morrison but stupid" as the infrastructure of the DC Universe.

The complete abandoning of Doc Green is on my shortlist of most frustrating things cut for a reboot. I like Duggan for meat and potatoes action and character stuff, but him trying to do Morrison/Hickman stuff and being played off Ewing and Gillen both doing it MUCH better in the FoHoX/RotPoX era didn't do him any favours imo.

Real curious what the Absolute line ends up looking like. The creative teams for the launch books are stellar, but I'm more interested in how they expand past the trinity (though tbh I can see Absolute WW outselling the main title in my shop). Weirdly, I'm almost more interested in what the standard DCU slate looks like under the All In branding. A LOT of new creative teams and rumoured to have more B-D list stuff again. SDCC announcements could still go wild.

Bleeding Cool says James Robinson and Tony Harris are bringing back Starman for a Black Label series, presumably a mini. Announcement to come at SDCC if DC doesn't blink due to it coming out sooner. Very interested in how this might go. The Shade maxi some years back was great, but it's always a question of whether or not the magic is still there.

Bleeding Cool says James Robinson and Tony Harris are bringing back Starman for a Black Label series, presumably a mini. Announcement to come at SDCC if DC doesn't blink due to it coming out sooner. Very interested in how this might go. The Shade maxi some years back was great, but it's always a question of whether or not the magic is still there.

I'm in the home stretch on The Raven Cycle and the Dreamers Trilogy by Maggie Stiefvater and it's been a real strong case in point for why I try to distance myself from popular opinion. Raven Cycle is often meandering in a way that made my interest waver, but the great characters, interesting magical stuff, and overall style got me to the finish line. Finding out that it was the better liked series by the fandom made me a little unsure if I wanted to jump into the second one, but eventually I gave it a try and I'm glad I did because it absolutely rocks and is, for my money, significantly better than the first series. It still has the sort of wandering dream logic plot work driving it, but it keeps a tighter focus on its leads and has a forward momentum at all times that's kept me hooked end to end. On the final book right now and genuinely hyped to see how it all wraps. It's a shame she's decided not to write anything else in this universe because I'd love to see more of it.

Yeah, the early books are great. It gets real bad as it goes long, mostly because it becomes much more obvious that Sim is a misanthropic misogynist and the book just reflects that more and more. Ending is genuinely Very Funny though. Probably worth the $18. Curve that slider to give Sim less and charity more and you're golden.

I suspect this is a wider issue. If Tom Brevoort is to be believed, basically every Marvel editor and a few creators were trying to figure out how to get rid of the marriage more or less as soon as it happened. A lot of younger creators seem to love the marriage and want to restore it, but you'd need an overall editorial overhaul to get there and tbh for Marvel as a whole to want something closer to Spider-Verse Peter rather than MCU Peter. Honestly, writing a run whose late game twist depends on editorial changing their minds about a hard line edict is always a fast lane drive to failure. The sort of successes in that regard all involve either pitching an upside that editors buy into (Jason Todd/Bucky revivals) making a case that you have a good finger on the pulse of the audience and the benefits outweigh the risks (Snyder/Tomasi one-two punch of bringing back Steph/Cass in the New 52 and getting them back to Batgirl status, Tim back to Robin) or just straight up sneaking stuff past the editorial team (Meghan Fitzmartin canonizing Tim being bi and putting him in a relationship with Bernard) rather than just starting stuff and expecting they'll back down because the endgame wants it. That said, the current editorial push to seemingly do the most annoying kind of bait and switch with Peter and MJ is especially infuriating. X-Terminators rules. Blood Hunt has been a hoot, but I'm once again disappointed that Marvel pulled a Shadowland on me with regard to the villain.

Most of that was just Frank Miller. He introduced James Jr. and Jim cheating on his first wife with Essen in Year One and DKR had Essen as Jim's wife/ex-wife (can't remember which offhand). It was also because of the absence of Babs in his run that they retconned her into being his adopted daughter rather than his biological one. Because Barbara is the interesting one with the Batgirl stuff, most subsequent writers ignored James Jr.'s existence, leading to Scott Snyder thinking of an angle to explain why he just kind of disappeared and tying it to the themes of Dick as Batman. It's all a bit of a ride but it's really just two creators making specific story choices that ended up with wider repercussions, with all of it coming back to Year One in one way or another.