The way the comics cookie crumbles means that we’re already looking ahead to the stuff that will be hitting shelves in November. At least it gives us an excuse to start saving our valuable pennies. Speaking of pennies, what do people do to get rid of them? Put them in a jar? Stack them up to make a miniature city? Meld them into a giant penny and store it in your cave next to a dinosaur? None of those questions will be answered here, but there is some stuff about comics.
Zero Year just got bigger
No longer able to be confined by a single Bat-book, Scott Snyder’s “Zero Year” event bursts out of its own story arc and spills over into the other Bat-books in the Newish 52. Lucikly, there’s about forty of them, so it can grow as big as it likes. This giant Zero Year will devour us all! Zero Year tie-ins will be found in some unexpected places too, including Action Comics #25, Birds of Prey #25, Catwoman #25, Nightwing #25, Detective Comics #25, The Flash #25, Green Lantern Corps #25, Green Arrow #25 and Red Hood and the Outlaws #25. Curiously, rather than simply being “origin stories” for each of these characters, it somehow ties in with them all finding their feet in Gotham City at the time Batman was. Doesn’t that make Bruce Wayne’s idea less trendsetty and more zeitgeisty? Guess we’ll find out in a few months…
Harley Quinn is taking auditions
The previously announced Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti team will write the debut issue of Harley Quinn’s first Newish 52 solo adventure. Yet she won’t just have one artist: Darwyn Cooke, Sam Kieth, Tony S. Daniel, Paul Pope, Walter Simonson, Art Baltazar and others will audition for the chance to tell Harley Quinn’s life story. It seems that the Clown Princess of Crime has some pretty high standards. This will kick off with its own “zero” issue, labelled Harley Quinn #0 with a monthly series to follow. Guess we’ll find out who the monthly artist is when December’s solicitations are released.
Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Tom Taylor and Nicola Scott begin Earth 2
Australians being more visible in the US comics industry is all kinds of awesome, so the first all-Australian duo on a major US comic is an event worth noting. Melbourne’s Tom Taylor has shot to the top of the pops with his Injustice: Gods Among Us sandbox comic, and here he gets a chance to do the same for the Earth 2 universe following the departure of James Robinson. Nicola Scott, of course, is the Sydney-based artist who has been working on the title sine 2011, previously notable for Birds of Prey and Secret Six. It’s a bit of a dream team in any book, and a massive coup for Australia.
We’d buy that for a dollar!
DC and Vertigo are making it easier for folks to jump aboard some of their key titles, by releasing reprints of #1 issues for New 52 titles Justice League and Green Lantern, along with Fables and Y: The Last Man, for only a dollar. If you like Fables, you’ll only be 134 issues behind by November. If only there was some kind of trade collection that put them together somehow. The last one is a bit confusing, especially given that the series finished several years ago. Surely one of the ongoing series such as The Unwritten would make more sense? Well, there’s still plenty more months in the sea.
Scooby-Doo: where are you? Oh, you’re with Batman…
Scooby-Doo Team-Up #1 makes effective use of the hyphen and brings together the Scooby gang and the Caped Crusaders to hunt for the Man-Bat, in the start of a crazy bi-monthly series of collaborations that we hope leads to something involving Animal Man and the Rot. This first issue is written by Sholly Fisch, with Dario Brizuelao on art duties. Of course, this isn’t the first time the duo has teamed up, the first being in the 1972 New Scooby Doo Movies “The Dynamic Scooby-Doo Affair” and “The Caped Crusader Caper”. Between this and Batman ’66, DC are ensuring that the kids of today understand the kids of yesterday a little more.
Carrie Kelley Redux?
“Who is Carrie Kelley and how can her mysterious connection to Harvey Dent help Batman?” asks the solicitation. The ever-changing Batman and Robin title gets a new partner in Batman and Carrie Kelley, a character who has been teased in the last few issues of the title. The character was first introduced in Frank Miller’s seminal Elseworlds series Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Will this mean that she will be the new Robin in a crazy post-Flashpoint union of worlds? Or is this another massive tease to get fanboys with blogs like this one to write free publicity for upcoming issues.
The Dead Boy Detectives
The relaunch of Vertigo continues in November with another new title from the imprint, as they continue to go from critical strength to critical strength. Spinning out of the pages of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, also returning in October from the original author, two dead British school boys star in their own monthly series and solve crimes in the 21st century with the help of a new female accomplice. Premiering in November, The Dead Boy Detectives is written by noted British novelist Toby Litt with layouts and painted covers by Mark Buckingham (Fables).
What’s in a name for Collider?
With the dust still settling on the BubbleVerse disaster, Adam takes a trip into the desert to look for answers about his past and the father he never knew…and change the name of the book. Vertigo’s recent success of Collider has brought the attention of another copyright holder that staked a claim on a the name. The less interesting new title is FBP: Federal Bureau of Physics, based on the crazy physics in the book. The name change will actually occur from the second issue, but this is the first solicitation to reflect the new name.
