Soliciting Multiversity: DC’s July 2012

“The Ravagers” #3

Without a major crossover or line-spanning event on the calendar, July in DC-ville seems like a pretty quiet month. Let’s dig a little deeper to see what Dan DiDio and co. are up to on their summer vacation after the cut.

The biggest news this month is the continuing saga of “Before Watchmen,” now in its second month. This month sees the release of “Ozymandias” #1, along with second issues of “Silk Spectre,” “The Comedian,” and “The Minutemen.”  This whole “one issue a week” thing is an interesting attempt to spread out the event, but it is also a bit frustrating to be 8 weeks in with no Rorschach or Dr. Manhattan books, inarguably the two characters most identified with “Watchmen.”

“Ozymandias” has been championed as featuring the best work of Jae Lee’s career and, as under the pen of Len Wein, I have higher hopes for this series than some of the others. Darwyn Cooke’s work looks as great as to be expected on the Minutemen title. Actually, all of the books look as good as one could reasonably expect “Watchmen” prequels to look — and although there are lots (and lots) of reasons why these books maybe shouldn’t be happening, I’m not going to list them here.

“Earth 2” #3

The “Second Wave” of the New 52 is upon us, and since we’re still a few weeks away from the first issues of these books, we have really nothing to go on save the solicits for any clue as to the direction or tone of these new books.

“The Ravagers” appears to be where DC is putting all the teenage characters that aren’t legacy characters or new minority characters instead of having them join the Teen Titans. So, Beast Boy, Terra, Kaitlin Fairchild, et al — get ready for Howard Mackie to take you to the promised land!

“Batman, Inc” is hyping the coming out party for…Matches Malone? This books gets less and less essential for me every minute.

The rest of the books don’t have too much in terms of news to report, except that “GI Combat” is still the weirdest-named dinosaur book in history.

“Batman” #11

The first crossover to feature more than 2 titles is in the books, and the Bat books go back to normal — or as normal as any series of books written by some of the best and worst writers on DC’s payroll can be. We get to see “Birds of Prey” somewhat crossover with “Animal Man,” Catwoman and her new partner Spark get to steal stuff (I guess), and Bruce Wayne fighting a veritable “Who’s That?” of eighth string villains (and Scarecrow).

James Robinson is writing four books this month, only being matched by Scott Snyder and Brian Azzarello for sheer number of books being released. However, no one can match the insanely varied batch of books that Robinson is writing: “Earth 2,” “The Shade,” “DC Universe Presents” and “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe.”

“Earth 2” and “The Shade” are natural fits for Robinson, as is the man responsible for the recent surge in interest in the Justice Society of America and the architect of The Shade as anything other than a minor Golden Age Flash villain. I’m interested to read Robinson’s take on Vandal Savage in “DC Universe Presents,” if for no reason other than to compare it to Paul Cornell’s jolly version in “Demon Knights.”  But if you gave me one hundred guesses to predict who would be the guy to write a “Masters of the Universe” mini, Robinson probably wouldn’t make the list. It is such an odd fit, but I don’t know if it is a bad one. Robinson is great at giving characters deeper meaning than their pasts may suggest, and so perhaps he’s the perfect guy to tackle this property based off of a toy line.

Plus, I’d lose my Robinson fanboy card if I didn’t at least plan on buying it.

“Green Lantern” #11

Green Lantern #11 presents the DCnU an interesting challenge: how much of “Blackest Night” is going to be referenced in this story? ‘The Revenge of Black Hand’ is all about what happened when the one of the men responsible for Blackest Night was taken in and “reformed” by the Indigo Tribe. Now, granted, the Green Lantern books were the least-touched by the reboot, but it seems like the whole event can’t really be white (lantern) -washed over while still making this a story worth telling. And how in the hell do books like “The Flash,” “Aquaman,” “The Fury of Firestorm: The Nuclear Men” and “Stormwatch” deal with the fact that at some point in the last five years, their main characters died and were resurrected as zombies, but then resurrected for reals? They don’t, so did “Blackest Night” ever really happen? My head hurts.

“National Comics: Eternity” #1

“National Comics” debuts this month; it is being described as an anthology of one and done stories about lesser known characters in the DCnU. This has “Brian” written all over it; sadly it also has “lasts 8 issues” written all over it. While I hope I’m wrong about the immense selling power of (Kid) Eternity, I just can’t see a lot of people being excited about this book. What it could (and should be) is a place to showcase talent, mostly new, tackling characters with potential — specifically characters that don’t have an analogue currently running around this universe.

It is unclear if the series will be numbered as “National Comics” #1, or if each character gets their own #1, as this is solicited as “National Comics: Eternity” #1, so next month would men “National Comics: Madame X” #1? I’m hoping for the former, because the latter is aesthetically unpleasing (and would make my longbox organization even more scattered than it already is).

“The Judas Coin”

Just when the world is starting to recover from “Batman: Odyssey,” we get “The Judas Coin,” an original Batman-centric graphic novel by Walter Simonson. This book chronicles one of the coins paid to Judas for the betrayal of Jesus all the way to Two-Face and beyond. Could this be another “Batman: Odyssey” waiting to happen? For the sake of The Minute Cosmic, I hope so.

For some reason, DC is very comfortable letting people tackle out of continuity Batman stories (see the new digital Batman series for more proof), and I suppose if it gets them in the good graces of guys like Adams and Simonson, that is good for PR reasons? Because it isn’t as if either guy is exactly contributing monthly to their books — in fact, this is also the Tony Daniel/David Finch treatment — let good Batman artists write bad Batman books, presumably to keep their good skills in house. Although for Adams and Simonson, their skills aren’t really needed. Oh well, I just hope we get more Jamroth Bok and his “sidekick” Primus!

It works out really well for that joke that Vertigo is putting out thirteen books this month. But honestly, the lineup is pretty stacked. Two “American Vampire” titles, the two “Fables” books, the penultimate “Spaceman,” “the Unwritten,” “Sweet Tooth,” “iZombie,” and “Hellblazer”  are all almost guaranteed to be great, and Punk Rock Jesus looks like a ton of fun. I’m still not sold on the newer books like “The New Deadwardians” and “Saucer Country” just yet, but there is no denying that Vertigo is still doing some pretty incredible work and comes in tops (only Image comes close) in terms of the ratio of good to bad books being released each month.