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With James Robinson leaving DC’s Earth 2 after issue #16, many wondered who would take on writing duties for the series. An official DC statement revealed that Tom Taylor, writer for the Injustice: Gods Among Us tie-in, will be taking over for Robinson beginning in October.
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One of the more controversial in-universe decisions in crafting the New 52 was the break-up of Superman and Lois Lane, followed by the subsequent pairing off of Superman and Wonder Woman. I don’t really know anyone who was terribly excited for a ‘romance’ between the two marketing powerhouses, but the storyline has mostly played out in the background, not really changing the quality of either character’s books. It looks like DC was just biding time before a big announcement, however: According to IGN, you can expect a new ongoing series titled Superman/Wonder Woman to launch this October.
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In light of the release of Man of Steel, I decided to take a look at Superman stories across many periods of his history, calling this The S stands for Superman Tales. From stories that you’ve heard of, others that you may wonder why they exist, and others that I say you should be hunting down. I decided to begin with a lesser story that I’d never heard of until the covers by Dave Bullock caught my eye – “The Harvest” written by Joe Kelly – or the man who wrote Action Comics #775, introducing the Elite. When you have Dave Bullock, who did work on Batman Beyond, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and Justice League doing covers, that can’t help but catch attention. I’m glad they did, Joe Kelly’s “The Harvest” was a unique beast to say the least, which I’ll go into more as we go on. “The Harvest” takes place in the latter half of Joe Kelly’s run on Action Comics, using the idea of a Meta Gene run wild and activating itself in surprising and brutal ways all across America. Throughout “The Harvest” you’ll get a minor introduction into “Our Worlds At War”, President Lex Luthor, and something loosely involving General Zod. Time to take a look at Action Comics #801-805, to see where “The Harvest” takes us.
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Man of Steel is often good. At times, Man of Steel approaches greatness. For a lion’s share of the first two-thirds of the movie, I wasn’t just thinking, “This is the best Superman movie I’ve ever seen,” but “This is one of the best superhero films I’ve ever seen.” It just clicked. And while it eventually soured – badly – as we approached the end of the movie, I still legitimately really like the first two-thirds of the film.
*Spoilers Ahead*
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We’ve all seen a lot of Superman recently. In addition to Man of Steel’s release, this year marks Superman’s 75th anniversary, so his flooding the market is pretty understandable. To battle the apathy that often accompanies oversaturation, we here at Comics Crux have decided to take a loving look back at the moments that make us truly appreciate Superman.
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DC Entertainment’s We Can Be Heroes campaign is changing up their perks and incentives. The beginning of their Indiegogo campaign in April featured Batman-related merchandise; now the campaign will offer merch with the Man of Steel.
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Prequels are hard to do. They tend to be just a little inert, because, well, we already know where all this is going. A bad prequel often tries to play off your love of a franchise by including as many references to the current status quo as possible in a self-congratulatory attempt to make you feel good for ‘getting it’. A good prequel seeks to deepen your understanding of who these characters are and how they became the kind of people you now avidly follow. Just to give you an idea of what kind of prequel this will be, at one point, Bruce puts on a cap with the ‘Robin’ symbol on it before Phillip Kane picks him up from his flat in Crime Alley to take him to Wayne Enterprise’s new building, which has a giant penny in front of it.
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Superman Unchained was the comic that I’d been awaiting since the announcement of the book. It’s Scott Snyder and Jim Lee on a comic together and how can that go wrong? It’s an A-list team that can’t help but get any comic fan salivating. As this comic came out in the same week of Man of Steel, the hype machine was huge on Superman Unchained. I’ll fully admit I was even more increasingly hyped when I saw that wonderful pullout Jim Lee did online. That all being said, Superman Unchained managed to be the kind of Superman comic I’ve been looking for, and managed to exceed my expectations in ways I couldn’t even fathom. After dealing with the messy experience that has been Superman in the New 52, hold tight Superman fans,Superman Unchained is the Superman comic we all deserve.
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Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment has released a new gameplay trailer for Batman: Arkham Origins for all to see! While the first trailer showcased an amazing fight between Deathstroke and the dark knight with cameos from Deadshot and the Black Mask, this new trailer announces some of the villains featured in this new addition to the Arkham series.
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Not since the introduction of Zoot suit Joker in Frank Miller’s iconic The Dark Knight Returns have there been an array of Batman characters with so much, dare I say, pizazz? If you are anything like me and have a deep affinity for handlebar moustaches, jive talk and long smoking jackets; then you are absolutely going to lose your damn mind when you get introduced to Francesco Francavilla’s Batploitation, ya dig?
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We’ve written before – hell, EVERYONE has written before – about the editorial plague that has come to dominate and in some ways define this modern era for DC Comics. There’s been no shortage of stories in the last couple years about editorial tyranny running creators off of books (and even sometimes away from the company entirely), the most recent of whom, Paul Jenkins, recently made waves when he announced that he would write exclusively for BOOM! Studios in the near future. In an interview on Bleeding Cool that spilled out into the comments section, Jenkins then shared a story that is almost instantly emblematic of the editorial problems at DC:
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DC Comics has been known on Comixology to be the most reliable in doing month by month price drops on their New 52 titles. The plan was that for day and date you pay full price but if you wait, or say new readers hop on board, the next month you can grab the comics for a dollar less to catch up to the series. A neat idea that has served well in driving comics fans to be able to play catch up at a fairly reasonable price. Now, DC has confirmed that it has altered their price reductions. Instead of once a month, it’s now once every eight weeks for all day and date digital comics. The price is still unaffected for digital first comics, they’ll still be 99 cents no matter what, and DC Comics plans on offering back issues of older titles at a reduced rate.
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The legendary, Eisner Award-winning anthology series Batman: Black and White is returning in September with six double-sized issues. The first issue will feature stories by Chip Kidd and Michael Cho, Neal Adams, Joe Quinones and Maris Wicks, John Arcudi and Sean Murphy, and Howard Mackie and Chris Samnee. The anthology will be 48 pages and will be priced at $4.99.
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You know I’m excited for Man of Steel. Months after the vague-but-promising teaser trailer that aired before The Dark Knight Rises, the movie released a fantastic full trailer, and that’s when I really started to get excited. Now, with only a week left before release (and with positive advance reviews leaking out around the embargo), Nokia brings us one last action-packed trailer to get us excited.
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Warner Home Video has announced details and a release date for their The Best of Warner Bros.- DC Comics Collection DVD. The collection of 25 animated episodes stars assorted DC Comics characters and is slated for release later this year.
