DC Previews Picks: June 2019

Above-the-Board Recommendation:

The Green Lantern vol. 1:  Intergalactic Lawman

 

I never planned to keep reading “Green Lantern” after Geoff Johns left.  He redefined and expanded the character’s mythos in a way that’s rarely seen in superhero comics.  It was the kind of high water mark that left you feeling sorry for the writer who was going to follow Johns because how could they match this?  I do remember thinking something along the lines of, “Well, maybe I’d consider reading it if they got Grant Morrison…”

 

Flash-forward to today and Morrison has teamed up for a twelve-issue run on “The Green Lantern” with artist Liam Sharp.  The writer’s aim for the series was to take Hal Jordan fully into the role of “space cop” with his run essentially being a sci-fi police procedural.  It’s the kind of simple yet brilliant high concept that Morrison has pulled off time and again in his superhero comics and I’m trusting him to deliver the goods here as well.  So much so that I’ve got no problem picking up his first volume in hardcover when it arrives.

 

Oh, and as for the writer who did follow Johns’ run, Robert Venditti, he wound up delivering an 80+ issue stint on “Green Lantern.”  Not only is that almost as long as the run Johns had, but the simple fact is that you don’t have a run that long on any superhero comic in this era or the ones past without doing something right.  What I’m trying to say is that I may have been a little premature in deciding not to check out what Venditti had to offer. So I’m planning to rectify that… as soon as the start offering the first deluxe/omnibus/compendium edition of his run.

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Event Leviathan #1 (of 6):  Bendis stages his first major event at DC as the spy organization known as Leviathan makes its move to remake the world in its image.  I’m still not sure if this is the same Leviathan that Morrison introduced during his “Batman” run, or if the writer just thought the name was cool and is just running with that.  The writer does have a checkered history with his event series during his time at Marvel: While he brought us “Secret Invasion” and “Siege,” he was also responsible for “Age of Ultron” and “Civil War II.”  What none of these events had was art from the artist who has worked with the writer on some of his best projects, Alex Maleev. Much as I love Maleev’s work, he’s not the kind of guy whose style screams “Mainstream Superhero Event.”  Which means that this may not be a A-list DC event like “Metal” was. Even if it is a B-list event that only has significance to the writer’s titles, that status may give it the freedom to be more interesting than you’d expect. Even with its dumb name.

 

Superman Year One #1 (of 3):  Hoo boy… Frank Miller is back to writing for a big DC project, and it happens to be the “Black Label” story of Superman’s first year on the job.  While “Batman: Year One” was one of the stories that helped cement the Miller legend, the writer is a loooooooooooooooooooooooong way from those days.  Even though he’s teaming up with John Romita Jr. for this story, I’m still more than a little apprehensive. They did great work together back in the day on “Daredevil:  The Man Without Fear” and “The Dark Knight: The Last Crusade” was the only “Dark Knight” story to come within spitting distance of the original work. While “The Last Crusade” might suggest that maybe Miller can still do good work when teamed with the artist, it was co-written with his “Master Race” collaborator Brian Azzarello and read more like that writer’s work.  Based on all this I can only imagine that this miniseries is for people who are still in the tank for Miller after all these years, or those who buy their comics based on their potential to read like trainwrecks.

 

The Silencer #18:  This series about the greatest assassin you’ve never heard of reaches its final issue.  With that, “The Terrifics” becomes the last “New Age of DC Heroes” title standing. It reaches issue #17 in these solicitations, so does that mean it’ll be given the axe next month?  Given that new writer Gene Luen Yang came on with issue #15 you’d think that it’d be safe for a while. Still…

 

The Wild Storm #24:  Warren Ellis’ new vision of the Wildstorm Universe reaches its final issue as well.  Some people heard this news and announced that the book had been cancelled. Which caused the writer to state in his newsletter from two weeks ago, “[D]id you not notice the 24-issue counter built into the fucking logo since issue 1?”  Ah, Warren. Please never change.

 

Batman by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo Omnibus vol. 1:  Collecting the first 33 issues of their “Batman” run.  Which, in storyline terms, means everything up to the end of “Zero Year.”   Also, this omnibus features work from lots of creators who aren’t Snyder and Capullo.  Including: James Tynion IV, Rafael Albuquerque, Becky Cloonan, Andy Clarke, Jock, Andy Kubert, Dustin Nguyen, and Alex Maleev.

 

Justice League vol. 3:  Hawkworld:  With a title like that, you’d have good reason to be afraid that Scott Snyder is going to venture into the tangled morass that is Hawkman’s continuity.  Fortunately the solicitation text gives every indication that this is going to be a straightforward sci-fi adventure as the League heads to Thanagar Prime to get more information about the nature of The Totality.  It also lets me know that vol. 2 is going to be the “Drowned Earth” event and I’m not going to have to buy the hardcover collection to read it. Which is the minorest of reliefs.

 

The Trials of Shazam:  The Complete Series:  Would we be getting a one-volume collection of this twelve-issue maxiseries if it wasn’t for the upcoming “Shazam!” movie?  I sincerely doubt it. That said, why is this being advance-solicited for July when the movie comes out in a little over a week?  We’re gonna need the wisdom of Solomon to figure that out!

 

jason@glickscomicpicks.com