Springing off the back of the New York Comic-Con announcements, DC Comics have pulled out their solicitations for January 2014. In addition to launching tie-properties for The Vampire Diaries and Scribblenauts in the comic book world, there’s some strange things afoot in the land that the Bat built…
Frank Miller and “Gothtopia”
No, it’s not a playground where The Cure and Evanescence play on a constant loop, and black clothing and pancake makeup is always on sale. Instead, DC are celebrating Detective Comics #27, and it’s a monumental achievement that any of the New 52 titles have made it to 27 issues. Recalling the original numbering, it’s a celebration of the debut of Batman back in 1939. The issue will kick off the event with John Layman and Jason Fabok’s story in Detective Comics, and the event continues over in the January issues of Batgirl, Batwing, (really? That’s still going?), Birds of Prey and Catwoman. According to the solicitations, Gothtopia is “a bright, shiny, happy place where dreams come true…as long as you don’t look at things too closely.” Just like the rest of the New 52 then.
If that’s not enough, the Detective Comics #27 issue will contain “a modern-day retelling of The Dark Knight’s origin” (isn’t that “Zero Year“?) from the dynamic duo of writer Brad Meltzer and artist Bryan Hitch, plus new stories and art from Scott Snyder and Sean Murphy, Peter J. Tomasi and Guillem March, Paul Dini and Dustin Nguyen, Gregg Hurwitz and Neal Adams. Did we mention that Frank Miller, yes the Frank Miller, is returning to art duties for one of the stories on the issue?
Injustice: Year Two
Australian writer Tom Taylor promised it would be back, and he wasn’t kidding! Entering the second year of the prequel series to the Injustice: Gods Among Us video game, DC says “The death of one of their own has divided Earth’s protectors as hero turns against hero. As Superman’s iron grip on the world tightens, at the edge of the galaxy, fear approaches…” The cover features Superman holding the bloody helmet of the recently decowled Batman, and that doesn’t look like the happy Gothtopia we’ve come to know and love in the last few days. Mr. Taylor is a huge fan of Superman, but that hasn’t stopped him from doing terrible things to the character – and we love him all the more for it. Between this and Earth 2, Taylor has the alternative universes of the DCU all tied up!
Cancellations: The Green Team cashes out, Vibe and Katana go missing
It seemed like an inevitability, but DC’s short-lived revival of the most unlikely of series comes to an end in January, with The Green Team: Teen Trillionaires #8 marking the end of the road for this experiment. “Will this final issue be their breaking point?” asks the solicitation. Well, yes: because it’s the final issue. It’s a shame, as DC needs to start making successes of some of these off-the-wall concepts, as piling on more Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman books (or various team-up combinations) is simply not friendly for new readers. It’s also interesting to note that Vibe and Katana haven’t been listed for January 2014, and while it might simply be an oversight, it’s also likely that those two series will come to a close in December. Neither are terribly surprisingly, but it’s also been noted that Superman Unchained is not listed either, although as Newsarama points out, it probably “needed a skip month for the detailed art of Jim Lee to grace the pages of the full story by Scott Snyder and the busy co-publisher.”
