Thursday, February 2, 2012

Weekly Comic News for Feb. 2nd

Hey Todd Squad that are posing as X-Maniacs as not to hurt X's feelings, JT here. I wanted to debut a new weekly post, since X has his weekly list of books he's picking up, I figured why not try something weekly myself. And with all the comic news always bursting forth, I figured this would be a good way to keep everyone updated on any stories they may have missed. Also, I'll throw in random funny or cool pictures I find over the course of the week, so let's get this started.

Note - Some of this news may spoil future story lines, if you don't want to risk that I'd advise you to skip this post.

The Watchmen 2?

Or should I say The Watchmen 0? This has been pretty big news as DC touted they'd be announcing something fairly soon and it turns out it's a prequel to The Watchmen, called "Before Watchmen". It's going to be a series of books written by such names as Brian Azzarello, Darwin Cooke, J. Michael Straczynski, and Len Wein, writing about mini-series about Rorschach, Silk Spectre, Comedian and your other favorite Watchmen characters. I'm actually in the process of reading The Watchmen currently but I'm sure Watchman fans are happy about this news. If you wanna read more about this, click for official DC links including the announcement and the covers.

Oh, and here's a direct quote from Dan Didio and Jim Lee. “It’s our responsibility as publishers to find new ways to keep all of our characters relevant.” To that line, coming from a company that has yet to find a place for Stephanie Brown, Cass Cain, Wally West and Donna Troy, I simply post this in retort.


That makes 342 Costumes...

It was recently announced that during this Summer's Spider-Man: Ends of the Earth storyline, we will see Spider-Man don yet another new costume to take on the Sinister Six. Taking into account all of the new costumes Spidey's debuted since the Big Time storyline in 2010 (Man, that flew by...), it's become fairly obvious he's just stocking up so he never has to wear the Bombastic Bag-Man costume again.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/02/02/spidermans-costume-gets-colour-scheme/


Spider-Men?

It was recently announced in June we'd see a book/event titled The Spider-Men, but that's all we've heard so far. There's been speculation it will be the return of the Ultimate Universe's Peter Parker to work alongside the new Ultimate Spider-Man, Miles Morales. I wouldn't mind that but I personally feel it's too soon to bring back Peter as Miles has really just gotten started, as well as he has a mentor of sorts with Spider-Woman. Personally I think we may just see Peter and Miles team up since it's an amalgam of the Ultimate and Amazing logos. Alternatively,  I'd love if we saw Peter, Kaine, Ultimate Peter and Miles somehow team up, Shattered Dimensions style, and they could even throw in Flash and Eddie. Either way, I'm interested in what the Spider-Men story may bring to the table.


X, X-Baby

It was recently speculated that a certain member of Wolverine's X-Men squad may be pregnant, this was fueled further by artwork from this month's upcoming Wolverine and the X-Men #5, featuring the expectant mother calling the person believed to be the father to tell him either very good news or very bad news. I'm being vague for the sake of spoilers but if you want to know just who I mean, click here.


Comic Book Artist Al Rio's Passing


Comic Book artist Al Rio was recently found dead by ways of suicide. I almost didn't report this because I don't want to bring anyone down but I think it's better to at least pay respects to the former Zenescope and Marvel Artist. If anyone wishes to read more about Al Rio's untimely passing they can do so here.


Batman: The Dark Knight News

It was announced that Gregg Hurwitz, current writer of the Penguin: Pain and Prejudice mini-series will soon take over as writer of the Batman: The Dark Knight comic series beginning at issue ten. Hurwitz is said to be excited about joining the book, which is probably a promotion for making him write a book centered around The Penguin. Personally I'd like to see him take over Detective Comics, because Tony Daniel pretty much sucks at writing, and if you disagree just take a look at this riveting piece of entertainment from Detective Comics #6.


Riiiiiight.


Justice League: Doom

And lastly, this isn't weekly news but this month marks the release of the upcoming DC Universe Animated Film, Justice League: Doom. As a fan of Under The Red Hood, Superman/Batman: Public Enemies and a lot of the other Animated Films DC releases, I'm definitely looking forward to this, which see's the Justice League take on the Legion of Doom, featuring Bane, Cheetah, Star Sapphire, and they're led by Vandal Savage. As much as I'd prefer Joker or Lex to be included, they aren't but this still looks to be an interesting film. Fans of the Justice League cartoon will be happy to hear that  Kevin Conroy, Michael Rosenbaum (Smallvile's Lex Luthor) and Susan Eisienberg will reprise their roles as Batman, The Flash and Wonder Woman respectively, as will Superman: The Animated Series' Tim Daly reprise his role as The Man of Steel.

For those interested I've included a link below that shows the League taking on a much more impressive Royal Flush Gang as well as hearing an overview of Savage's plans. It's also been noted that this is the last thing Dwayne McDuffie worked on before his passing, and this is an adaptation of the Tower of Babel storyline, which features Batman's contingency plans against any rogue Justice League member falling into the wrong hands. The film will be released on Feb. 28th for anyone interested.



And that's the comic news for this week, If I missed anything feel free to let me know in the comments, as well as if you guys enjoy this feature and wanna see it make a return. But that's it for me guys and gals, I'll be back this weekend picking up the slack since X is going to be fighting back aneurysm if the Giants lose the Superbowl. Until next time, this is JT signing off.

15 comments:

  1. As for the Batman pic, where are his sunglasses and the Who music?

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  2. Haha, if it helps I found this on Reddit http://i.imgur.com/Wm6QT.jpg

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  3. HEY MAN WHAT MOST PEOPLE ARE THINKING IS THAT ULTIMATE PETER PARKER WONT BE COMING BACK BUT THE MILES M WILL MEET THE MAIN UNIVERSE PETER, ONE OF THE 2 WILL CROSS OVER UNIVERSES HOPEFULY TEMPORARLY.
    AND THANKS FOR POSTING ABOUT AL RIOS DEATH, WHERE YOU A FAN. I AWAYS TOUGHT HE WAS AN INCREDIBLE WONDER WOMAN ARTIST.
    http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyowfbDAfn1qdodo2o1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1328315620&Signature=CGWloaP7x%2BdabSrpKSId1%2Fjb%2FEQ%3D

    AND NO MOST WATCHMEN FANS ARE FURIOUS WITH BLISTERING RAGE THAT DC IS MAKING BEFORE WATCHMEN, SPECIALY AS ALAN MOORE THE ORIGINAL BOOKS WRITER IS AGENST IT AS HE WAS AGENST THE WATCHMEN FILM BEING MADE. IM FOR IT THE CREATIVE TEAMS HAVE ME SOLD ON MOST OF THEM. SPECIALY RORSHACHS

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  4. Thanks a lot, some interesting news I would have completely missed if you hadn't shared. I would love to see this become a regular feature!
    The Justice League movie looks like it'll be fun and I'm dead hooked on the pregancy storyline in Wolverine and the X-Men, something so simple and cliche yet always interesting.

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  5. Thanks for commenting guys, as always I appreciate it.

    Movieartman- That's kinda what I was hoping for, it'll definitely inspire Miles even more. And I wasn't that familiar with Rio's work sadly, but I have seen some of his Zenescope work, but that Wonder Woman is great. As for Watchmen, I can't say I'm surprised, but then again comic fans are usually easily upset about stuff like that, myself included.

    B-Guymer - Glad I was able to help ya out, and that comment definitely makes me want to make this a weekly thing. And I'm REALLY looking forward to JL:Doom (notice how much longer it was than the other things I touched upon? Lol) and that pregnancy storyline is interesting. It seems kinda obvious that they'd go with ____ as the father so I'm hoping it goes in another direction, but not just for the sake of a swerve, ya know?

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  6. I really don't understand Watchmen fans.
    The original series are there to be read when they want isn't like his original books will start to melt when "before watchmen" hit the shelves. and i'm sure that those who are complaining will read it anyways.

    Now that comments from Didio and Lee sounds like a direct insult to Moore, like pointing that the characters belongs to DC and they are going to do what they want with them.

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  7. First things first, I've been meaning to compliment you on how great your English has become Alien, you'd never know it wasn't your first language.

    That line about the books melting made me laugh because that's an excellent point. It's a prequel too, you don't have to read it and it doesn't affect anything you've read. Plus the teams seem pretty good from what I've seen, it's not a bunch of nobodies writing them. And even if that's what Didio and Lee meant, they have MORE than enough characters they're letting gather dust that should be used before they even think about using The Watchmen.

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  8. Thanks for the compliment! and is in part thank to you guys because talking about comics force me to put my ideas in right order.=)


    When Alan Moore signed for the original Watchmen series in his contract was a clause that said something like this "if the series is out of print for more than ten years the property of the characters will be of the creators". For some reason Moore and Gibbons did't expect the book to be so successful.

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  9. My pleasure dude, and anytime I can take credit for helping someone learn English I will :P Lol

    Weird... that's such an odd clause. I mean even if you don't expect it to be popular it seems like a weird thing to agree to.

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  10. Awesome idea for a post, JT! You know how incredibly lazy I am(what? we all know it's true!), and as such I don't spend much time looking for comic news, I usually wait for my awesome commenters to send me links to stuff. With that said, I do tend to miss stuff, so a post like this keeps me in the loop.

    Let's see, what do I want to comment on... I COULD make a snide remark about DC changing the writer for yet ANOTHER series, but I've sniped about that enough and will leave it alone... I will say that I literally loled at that awful "bloodbath" line... If he would have put it like this, "...taking a bath... A BLOODBATH!!!" it would have been infinitely more awesome.

    I'm in the camp of people not interested in the Watchmen prequel stuff. But I'm also not gonna go on an extended rant about it either. I'm meh to the whole thing pretty much. I MAY pick the issues up, but probably not. If it was Moore and Gibbons doing it, then it's a done deal. But it just seems kind of disrespectful to do a prequel for that franchise if the original creators aren't interested. Yeah, I get that they seemingly have no rights to the characters anymore, but still, it seems kind of skeevy on Didio and DC's part.

    Oh, and not to be a killjoy or anything, but a few years back Joe Quesada said the 616 and Ultimate Universes would NEVER crossover with each other. That's one thing Joe Q has stuck with since stating it, so I'm not sure if a 616/Ult Spidey x-over is in the works. If anything Marvel SHOULD have done the 616/Ult x-over a few years back(say around 2008 or 2009) to try to re-energize the Ultimate line since that's when it really started to fade. Could it happen, sure. Will it happen? I wouldn't bet on it...

    Oh, and JT? The Giants WILL win the Super Bowl... Positive thoughts my friend! Positive thoughts! :D

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  11. Glad you enjoy the post as well dude, and after all the cool comments I've decided I will make this a weekly feature, so there's that to look forward to.

    Lol, my favorite part is that Bats felt the need to say that out loud as if he was saying it to Alfred or something. Oh that Batman, always fishing for laughs.

    It's skeevy because they just wanna make money off of it, just like the other things from Vertigo that they seemingly neutered when bringing over to DC Comics (Constantine anyone?) and since these have been confirmed to be under the DC banner and not Vertigo it just seems like a very odd choice.

    I guess time will tell? Either way Spider-Man + Spider-Man = me reading it!

    "Oh, and JT? The Giants WILL win the Super Bowl... Positive thoughts my friend! Positive thoughts! :D" I knew that was coming when I typed it. :P

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  12. Sure I'm late with this one but I'm looking forward to this to happen

    http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=36704

    -Constantine as the leader.=)
    -Core team Zatana, Constantine =), Deadman Sigh =/
    -Unlimited Members =)
    -Integration with the other Dark books, =)
    -Constantine interacting with the Justice League YES please!

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  13. Unlimited members makes me think it's gonna be like Suicide Squad with people dying every other issue, but makes me sad because Raven will probably pop up in it and I'm not a big Raven fan.

    I'm MORE interested in if Lemire is gonna do The Robin's book because I'd LOVE to read that.

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  14. I interpret it more like characters coming for some story and leaving, not dying.

    And for the Robin's it sounded like a wild rumor to me. but who knows, with the actual people running DC everything is possible (less a Steph and Cass book)

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  15. I could see them coming and leaving but I could also see them coming and getting killed off for shock value, but time will tell.

    Same, but he didn't deny it and I feel like he would've if it wasn't true. Plus any book with Jason, Damian, Tim, Dick and possibly Steph is fine with me.

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