Publisher DC Comics - Review

House of Mystery Halloween Annual 2

I was looking for a ‘give it a go’ buy for the week, and this caught my eye. Pete Milligan, Mike Allred – yeah, surely worth a try.

The Return of Bruce Wayne

All credit to Grant for the way he has played Batman’s death. Yes, he gave us some ‘he really is dead’ stuff in the wonderful Final Crisis series where Batman and Darkseid kill each other, with Superman carrying the clearly dead body. However, he also ended the series with a clear statement that he isn’t dead, that he is now somehow lost in the depths of the past.

American Vampire 9

I sometimes struggle to see the point of Vertigo. I guess it wants to be seen as DC’s serious, arty line, far from the superheroes, for intelligent adults, equating to indie graphic novels. Trouble is, it always seems to me to be kind of like a DC comic but with more violence and swearing and stuff like that, and rarely any more genuine intelligence or substance, mostly just the trappings of those kinds of values.

The Extremist

The Extremist was a four issue limited series from Vertigo in the early 1990s that they have now reissued as part of their Vertigo Resurrected line. Set in San Francisco, the book concerns itself with the Order, an organisation of Sadeans with outré sexual urges.

Batwoman 0

If an issue 0 (why?) has any purpose, surely it is as a promo, to entice us to add this series to our pick-list. Instead, the story deftly blends the idiotic with the dull.

Supergirl 58

I read this on a whim. Even back in the days when I read superhero comics with any regularity, Supergirl was never one of my favourites. Any memories I have of the character are tied up in reprints of the Maggin/Swan stories from the 1960s, and I usually envisage her accompanied by a menagerie of super animals.

Batman Inc. etc.

The changes Grant Morrison is making now were not expected. Batman Incorporated: a whole organisation of Batmen and associated characters. It’s one of the most daring changes I’ve seen, given the huge stature of the character – but is it a good move?

Knight & Squire 2

There’s a very specific set of people that Knight and Squire is going to sell to. It’s a shame, really, that that group (UK-based superhero fans) is such a small subset of the comics-buying public as a whole – because despite its wit and charm, the series is going to leave the dominant US-based market, on the whole, somewhat baffled by its firmly British eccentricities.

Incognito: Bad Influences 1

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips have been making comics together for some time now. Incognito is an attempt to apply the approach seen in their Criminal to something bearing a closer relationship to mainstream superhero comics.

Jonah Hex 61

Do not start reading Jonah Hex with this issue. It’s one of the best issues of the series.