DCU : The Original Universe

[Rollo Tomassi]

I don't think it's spoileriffic to say that Bruce Wayne is back (although it is kinda cheesy and anticlimactic to have all of your One-Shots coming out BEFORE the final issue of your big 'Event' mini series bringing him back)
and from what I read, Bruce is now running around in a Super-Suit that allows him to duplicate HeatVision, SuperSpeed, "Willpower" which is the Green Lantern's power, invisibility, teleportation and other assorted BS superpowers.

Which makes him not the Goddamn Batman. Goddammit Grant Morrison, if I didn't already know for a fact you're a goddman eunuch, I would kick you in the goddamn weebles.

[anarky]

Holy snot, they announced "Retro-Active" one shots by writers from previous decades. ALAN GRANT ON BATMAN AGAIN! I really hope this means Norm Breyfogle will be along for the ride.

Maybe it'll sell well enough that they cancel all the Morrison stuff and make Grant the main architect of all Batman stuff going forward. A guy can dream, right?

[Rollo Tomassi]

That sounds cool. They've done similar stuff before. Englehart and Marshall Rogers (before he died) had a six issue mini series a few years ago. And Neal Adams is doing a maxi series right now called Odyssey.

EDIT: Oh I see. I totally forgot WonderCon is this weekend. The R/A issues are "in continuity". That sounds interesting.

Fuck, they are caving to movie "continuity" and making Bane a fulltime baddie in the comic'verse again. There goes a shit ton of character development out the window.

They seem to ignore the fact that everybody is asking about Wally West and nobody gives a shit about Barry Allen.

[anarky]

Isn't Barry Allen a "One More Day" type of retcon, where the EIC (or whoever) wanted things to be the way they were as kids, never minding that the subsequent continuity had been around for almost as long (Wally and Spidey's marriage both), well more than a generation of comic readership? It'd be like making Dick Grayson be Robin again and magically erasing Jason, Tim, Stephanie, and Damian from existence. (That last part doesn't sound too bad, actually.)

Funny that they want Bane to be a baddie to gel with the movie, but seem to have no problem with Batman being a huge corporation with various Batmen in different countries, eh?

[Rollo Tomassi]

Yeah, pretty much Chief Creative Officer Goeff Johns had a huge hard-on for Barry and Hal and worked ever so diligently to bring them back. Now, with Hal, the Green Lantern comic was lagging in sales and creativity, so Rebirth was pretty good idea. But nobody, I mean NOBODY was all "Hey! Where's Barry!?" because Wally West is a much better Flash both character and sales wise. Barry Allen is a boring fucking tool. I've maintained that if DC offered two ongoing Flash books, one featuring Wally and one featuring Barry, the Barry comic would get cancelled due to low sales in six months.

[anarky]

Breyfogle is confirmed for Batman.

Also confirmed are Giffen/DeMatteis writing JLA, and that 90s Superman will be Louise Simonson and Jon Bogdanove.

I might have to get all of those. Okay, there's definitely no "might" about the Grant/Breyfogle issue.

[Rollo Tomassi]

Ugh. I'm not a fan of Bogdanove's art. Of all the monthly Superman titles in the 90s, Simonson and Bog's Man of Steel was my least favorite.

But the Grant/Breyfogle issue is a MUST.

[Diabolical]

Grant/Breyfogle on Batman?
I just got a boner.

[anarky]

I preferred Bogdanove on Steel, but his style worked pretty well on Superman.

Truth be told, I would've picked one of the other teams, but they all rocked.

And let us not lose sight of the true great news here. I hope Grant writes some awesome tale with all the great characters he invented or popularized, showing that fat guys with dummies don't need to be offed to tell good stories.

Who wants to bet Legs makes an appearance?

[Rollo Tomassi]

In completely unrelated news (but still DC relevant)...

SwampThing?! WTF? Blackest Night and Brightest Day was a lead up to-- bringing back SwampThing!? That's like having a vasectomy as a prelude to a circumcision. Anticlimactic. And that's two years worth of anticlimax we're talking about.

[anarky]

But Swamp Thing is amazing!

Jumping back a bit, and into another thread, here's eight things about Kingdom Come that bugged the shit out of me and I hadn't brought up:

1) When Superman asks Batman what happened to the mansion, he says something to the effect that Bane and Two-Face destroyed it when his identity was revealed. (He doesn't mention how that happens.) Unfortunately, the series is deeply rooted in the 1990s (the Ray is a prominent hero, and Superman has long hair in the flashbacks). How the fuck did Waid miss one of the most important things about Bane? Bane's known who Batman was all along! And Bane has absolutely no interest in destroying Bruce Wayne, just Batman.

2) If Batman's identity became publicly known, and he's essentially running Gotham from the basement of his old house, and there seems to still be an absurd amount of street crime given that he has giant robots policing the city, why has no one launched a concerted effort to just stroll into the cave and pop a cap in him? They know where he is; there are presumably a few badass villains with resources still around.

3) Where the fuck is Tim Drake in all this? Nightwing is back to being (Red) Robin with no explanation given, despite a falling out with Batman that makes it even less likely that he'd become Robin again. Even a line about Tim having died, or one of the bazillion visual Easter eggs being a memorial case holding the 1990s Robin costume would've sufficed.

4) Why does Steel idolize Batman now? This makes no sense. A man does not need a cybernetic suit of armor to gain the powers of Batman. And, even though he represents human achievement in a broader sense, Steel as a character has always been more of the idealist that Superman is. If something changed this, it needed an explanation.

5) Why do Ollie Queen and Ted Kord both act like they've never met Superman in person before and hate him? They're both longtime League members, for Christ's sake.

6) Everyone in Luthor's cabal makes sense to be there. Well, everyone but two. Why the hell are Catwoman and Riddler there? This is the mid/late 1990s, so Catwoman is still an ex-prostitute-turned-burglar, and Riddler is an insane bank robber. There are a shit-ton of villains who would've been better suited to the role they played.

7) So a bunch of superheroes, no matter how powerful, fighting in the isolated wasteland of Kansas, are going to bring about Armageddon, because they can't stop fighting once someone falls in battle? I thought the good guys in this were idealistic superheroes in the classic mold. You mean to tell me Superman isn't going to just get his dudes to stop fighting for the greater good if it comes down to it? And what about Magog? After the buildup, here's where he could've played a pivotal role, and didn't.

Christ, even if they can't stop fighting, wouldn't one side wipe out the other long before they got past, say, Arkansas?

8 ) Doesn't the story refer to civilian casualties in the wake of the final battle? Civilian casualties... in Kansas, which was destroyed. Hmmm....

[Rollo Tomassi]

I thought they had mentioned Tim Drake at one point. I could be thinking of some other alternate timeline story though.

[anarky]

This may not technically be a DC Comics question, but I want to be sure Diabolical sees it.

Check out the screen cap on this page: http://forums.comicbookresources.com/sh ... p?t=367428

Can any of you help identify the Batmen I can't?

Clockwise from the top left:
Azrael Batman (in the Knightfall variation of the suit)
Red Rain vampire Batman
??? (big head Batman)
Batman Beyond Batman
Shazam as Batman (from this episode)
The Batman of Zurr-En-Arrh
??? (he's in black and white, which I'm sure is significant)
??? (Silver Age Batman?)
??? (absolutely no clue on the dude with the hat)
??? (square-jaw Batman)
Fatman
Plastic Man as Batman (from this episode)
Brave and the Bold Batman (in a high-tech suit he created for this episode)
Batman: The Animated Series Batman
Green Arrow as Batman (from this episode)
First Appearance Batman (I think--he's got a purple top, brown gloves, and a knife)
The Dark Knight Returns Batman
Batman and Robin Batman (I think--he's in shadow, but the color and strange armor seem to match up)
The Batman Batman
Adam West Batman
Aquaman as Batman (from this episode)

I think the floppy-eared one might be from the old serials, perhaps? The B&W would fit more, but I don't think the costume is accurate to that version.

Is the one with the hat a version from the Morrison series where Batman has become unstuck in time?

[anarky]

I'm going to have to get the 80s Batman Retro-Active. The solicitation indicates it's set in the post-Crisis universe, and appears to spin out of Year Two.

And Joe Staton is drawing the 80s Retro-Active Green Lantern. Might have to get it, too.

And Grant and Breyfogle are doing a story about SCARFACE! Oyes! Curiously, it says it spins out of 'Tec #613. Which has a cover date of April 1990, meaning it more likely came out in January 1990, making it so barely eligible it's funny, but who would argue? However, I didn't recall that issue involving Scarface, and a quick glance at The Grand Comics Database makes it appear it doesn't.

I really could do without the reprints doubling the cost, though.

[anarky]

Am I the only person here?

Anyone reading Green Lantern? Is there a "road map" of sorts of the most important and best stories since Hal's return? Also, are his stints as Parallax and the Spectre still considered to be in-continuity?

(When they tossed out everything in Crisis, then had the sort of "everything happened unless we say it didn't happen, or was really stupid Golden/Silver Age nonsense," and then had Zero Hour to try to clean things up, we probably should've realized that DC continuity would be a total mindfuck of contradictions and retcons from that point on.)