Travel Foreman, the acclaimed comic book artist of the popular DC title Animal Man, was recently taken off of the Animal Man title to work on another DC Comics title: Birds of Prey.
Animal Man was a well-received series loved by many fans for Foreman’s art, and surprisingly Foreman announced on the Comic Book Resource forums that he chose to leave Animal Man and was neither asked nor forced to leave.
Announced in Marvel’s Next Big Thing Liveblog, Sam Humphries will be joining Jonathan Hickman as co-writer of Ultimate Comics Ultimates as part of a transition that will see him taking over the series as the primary writer.
“It’s exciting to be able to come into Marvel on a book like this. You’ve got Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Hulk and all the heavy hitters, but with the leeway to throw them around in ways you can’t in the Marvel Universe,” Sam Humphries says about the opportunity.
Taking a major step in the right direction, Red Hood and the Outlaws turns away from its plot with the Untitled in favor of a very character-focused issue between Red Hood and Starfire. It’s just too bad this great change comes in the same issue that suffers in quality from being split between two writers.
We flashback to the events that immediately precede the first issue of the series, featuring how Jason Todd and Starfire got together. Lobdell promised readers that there was more to those two than it initially seemed, and he honestly does deliver on that. This issue really lays out why the connection between Jason and Kori is so interesting by focusing in on their opposing philosophies about the past. Jason allows himself to be completely driven and consumed by his past, but Kori focuses on living in the moment and really almost hides from her own past. It’s understandable how Kori’s apparent freedom from the past would be appealing in a way to Jason.
Even after a battle to the death with Galaxus copyright Peraxxus, the JLI can not afford to take a minor break in Justice League International #6, the epilogue to the series first story arc Signal Masters. The issue proves not to be the standard epilogue issue with a lot of twists, but the numerous conversations going on combined with out-of-no-where death threats, this issue of JLI does not feel coherent but does feel like a solid bookend to a mediocre first arc.
Batman and Booster take out the guys who blew up the JLI headquarters. Booster must make an appeal to the UN to keep the JLI around. And Godiva and August General… enjoy a hotdog.
Writing super hero comics is tricky business and many fail to do it well. It is one of the main reasons that people tend to age out of reading comics. At some point the writing is just not good enough anymore. Central to the problem is the fact that main characters can’t die (permanently). So the writer is left with the near-Herculean task of creating enough narrative tension that you really do feel for a moment that the hero is in danger. With super hero comics that leads to wondering just how your hero will get out of this. Just how does Batman get out of the situation Snyder put him in during the last issue?
Last issue we saw Batman get stabbed. And Snyder didn’t leave us with the option of the blade getting stuck on some Bat-Armor – no we saw it go through Batman’s torso. If we had been reading’s Snyder’s American Vampire, it would have been lights out for the hero. Snyder has been known to Joss his American Vampire characters. But Bruce Wayne isn’t going out six issues into The New 52. Would we end up with the cop out that it was a hallucination? After all, Bruce was starting to go a little nuts from wandering the Owls’ maze for 8 days straight.
On Saturday, 3 March 10 am (EST & PST) DC and Cartoon network will be premiering a new 1 hour programming block of DC animation. The first half hour will be filled by Green Lantern: The Animated series. This computer animated series focuses on Hal Jordan and other members of the Green Lantern Corps dealing with various dangers to the universe. The second half hour will be taken up by Young Justice Young Justice appears to be Teen Titans by another name because it consists of Robin, Aqualad, Kidflash, Superboy, Miss Martian and Artemis.
This is one of the better issues of Deathstroke that has some depth and characterization pertinent to the plot. Unfortunately the artwork is still filled with awkwardly designed musclemen and blood-gushing soldiers with only some good partial two-paged spreads.
We learn more about Deathstroke’s son, Grant, who continues failing to impress his father. Readers also get some “family time” with the Wilsons before returning to real time, which features Legacy and Deathstroke’s huge battle.
