DC Solicits for May

DC’s full solicits can be found at Comics Continuum and Comic Book Resources.

Let’s see now . . .

Batman Section

The Batman: Dark Detective mini reunites the creative team of Steve Englehart, Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin. This is definitely not a bad thing; I was all about Silver St. Cloud and Joker fish back in the day. Speaking of which, it looks like they’re reoffering the trade paperback collecting their original run, Batman: Strange Apparitions.

There’s finally a second collection of Gotham Central. This one contains issues 6 through 10 and focuses on Officer Montoya. I have yet to read any GC, surprisingly enough. (I say “surprisingly” since I love Powers, and I dug most of the first arc of District X, so this should be my kind of book, right? I guess I just suck. I’ll work on that.)

Superman Section

Here lies a small dilemma. Gail Simone’s the new writer on Action Comics, and I love her work. However, the new penciller is John Byrne, who I’m not feeling right now, and the cover isn’t working for me. We-ell, I’ll give the first couple of issues a try, run ‘em up the flagpole and see who salutes. Or something.

DCU Section

I had forgotten that Joe Bennett was going to be the new penciller on Birds of Prey! I enjoyed his Marvel work with Priest on The Crew and Captain America and Falcon, so I’m looking forward to seeing his work here. Oh, and Gail Simone is still handling her business here. Hey, Dorian—Wildcat is popping up here, as well.

Day of Vengeance continues. On the one hand, the “Identity Crisis spinoff” marketing thing is not a plus for me. On the other hand, I like the Spectre and general DCU magic stuff. So, yeah—I’ll check it out. Possibly the Wrath of the Spectre TP as well.

Firestorm #13 will be Dan Jolley’s last issue as writer. It’s unfortunate that this book couldn’t convince hardcore Ronnie Raymond fans to give it a look. It seems quite likely to me that *POTENTIAL SPOILER* Jason will end up being the physical/active part of the Firestorm fusion, with Ronnie taking over the role of the Disembodied Floating Invisible Head Guy role *END SPOILER* but that still may not satisfy those particular fans. Ah, well.

The new Green Lantern series begins here. I’ve been surprised at how well I’ve enjoyed Rebirth, and rotating art teams of Carlos Pacheco and Ethan Van Sciver sounds like a plan to me. I just hope they keep Moose Baumann on colors; he’s done a lot for the atmosphere of Rebirth.

Speaking of Green Lantern, Kyle Rayner apparently has a role in The Rann-Thanagar War series, spinning out of Adam Strange. I know that Adam Strange was sort of retroactively declared to be another turnip from the garden that is Identity Crisis, but it hasn’t read that way, at least to me; true, it’s got a Travelogue-of-DCU-Space thing going on, but I expected that going in from the interviews I’d read, and besides, how else am I going to see Tigorr and Vril Dox in a new comic book? Anyway, the new mini will be written by Dave Gibbons, with art by Ivan Reis, and it’s more outer-space stuff, which is good. Actually, all of the concepts for the mini-series sound interesting by themselves; it’s the IC mentions that make me leery-slash-cynical.

There’s a new printing of JSA: The Golden Age. This was written by James Robinson before his excellent run on Starman. Good stuff.

Huh—there’s a hardcover collection of Alex Ross and Paul Dini’s oversized specials, for less than the total price of the individual specials. (It’s probably not quite as “oversized”, though—I’d have to check the dimensions.) That’s not a ”must-have” for me, but I’ll keep my eyes open when I’m going over things at DCBS. If the price is right . . .

Wildstorm Section

Desolation Jones. Warren Ellis. J.H. Williams III. Yeah, man.

There’s another issue of Planetary solicited as well. A look at the Drummer is welcome.

The final issue of Sleeper is here. I hate to see this book go, but I’m looking forward to a hell of an ending.

Top Ten: The Forty-Niners. If you haven’t read Top Ten yet, you, uh . . . you might wanna do that. I’m just sayin’. (Of course, I haven’t read Smax yet, so I can’t claim to be hardcore or anything. I’ve heard conflicting reports on that series, but I’ll check it out when DC drops a softcover TP.) At any rate, this is a prequel to the original series. More Top Ten = Good Thing.

Vertigo Section

I don’t really read a lot of Vertigo titles, though I note that there’s a new Losers trade coming out. I see that they’re re-releasing Preacher trade paperbacks. Preacher is on my list of Comics I Intend To Read But Haven’t Yet. (That list has a lot in common with Comics That My Friends Keep Telling Me Are Awesome So I Need To Get Off My Butt And Read Them.) Also on that list are Transmet and Sandman.

You should check out the DC listings for yourself, if only to get a look at some funky covers.