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DC Comics just announced to CBR that five ongoing series of the DC You launch are being cancelled. Among the books just announced for cancellation include fan favorite title The Omega Men by Tom King and Barnaby Bagenda. The others include Lobo, Justice League United, Doomed, and Gotham By Midnight. Catwoman has been assigned a new […]

It’s that time again! Just like last week, I picked up every issue DC Comics put out of their current “DC You” initiative, and I’m here to present my scattered and unorganized thoughts in a few sentences. Again, none of these should be construed as reviews really, it’s just a quick glimpse at one fan’s thoughts on the newly evolving line of comics from his long-time favorite publisher.

Also, just a point of clarification, I bought all of these with my own money. Not one comp copy was involved in the writing of this piece, if that sort of thing means anything to you.

Batman #41: I’m not fully sold on the Jim Gordon as Batman take yet, but this new arc continues the rather fun zaniness that’s been part and parcel of the Scott Snyder–Greg Capullo run since “Zero Year”, and Capullo continues to be one of the best artists at the Big Two. His work pops in a way that so few superhero illustrators can manage, and he just keeps getting better. I also can’t say enough about FCO Plascencia‘s colors. The new status quo is intriguing enough, and I look forward to seeing how it spills over into books like Batgirl, Grayson and Detective Comics (see below).

Verdict: Already on my pull and staying there

Batman/Superman #21: I love Greg Pak‘s work on Action Comics, so it vexes me a bit when I can’t seem to reconcile the great work he does there and the fairly pedestrian stuff he cranks out for this title. The new shift for Superman, which inevitably is the character this title has focused on in greater detail, hasn’t really done much to refresh a series that can’t escape a feeling of staleness and bland superheroics. Being envisioned by the house-stylings of Ardian Syaf doesn’t help either.

Verdict: Stopping here

Catwoman #41: I missed the boat on early issues of the critically acclaimed, but fairly under-read (and promoted), Genevieve Valentine Catwoman run. I think I may have assumed too much to think that I could just jump on-board here. It’s really well written, you can tell Valentine has a pretty elegant control of prose, but I’ll be damned if I knew what the heck was actually going on. I found it difficult to keep up with who each character was, and what purpose they served in Selina’s world, though in ensemble-based crime fiction, I sometimes bump into that barrier. I’m maybe intrigued enough to try again, with the hope that familiarity will breed some affection, but I can’t say I’d recommend it for the first timer.

Verdict: On the fence

Constantine: The Hellblazer #1: Riley Rossmo can do no wrong, and the Dante‘s Inferno-inspired spread found within is the kind of panel layout that will always grab my attention. This is a really fun reintroduction to the John Constantine that we used to see back in the Vertigo days, rather than the New 52 superhero that had populated books like Justice League Dark and the previous Constantine title. I like this more arrogant and amorous John, and the fact that DC is putting out a book that pushes their general boundaries of content within the main line is nice to see. It’s a bit over-written, with its themes hammering you over the head (especially in a secondary character’s denouement), but I’m mostly sold provided that one big flaw is rectified in subsequent months

Verdict: Going onto the pull-list

Detective Comics #41: I really like Francis Manapul and Brian Buccelatto as an art team, frankly as far as “cape comics” go, there are few better. As writers though, I’ve had more trouble with their output. Their angle on the Jim Gordon as Batman take is solid enough: a book about Harvey Bullock and Renee Montoya will always grab my attention in some form or fashion. But I’m not sure I found enough here to really hook me between a few iffy narrative conceits and some dialogue that didn’t quite land with me. Additionally, while I think Fernando Blanco does a decent enough Michael Lark, I’d be more excited about this title if Manapul was penciling it himself still.

Verdict: Stopping here

Earth 2: Society #1: I had hopes that perhaps with a fresh start, Daniel Wilson might be able to employ something worthwhile into the literal new world that the Earth 2 characters are now inhabiting. How wrong I was, as this was basically unreadable. I liked the Johnny Sorrow appearance at least, but it was basically negated by Terry Sloane sprouting mechanical wings.

Verdict: Stopping here

Gotham Academy #7: I can’t even begin to pretend like I’m not in the tank for this book. I love it, and even when it has fill-in artists like Mingjue Helen Chen, the title is able to uphold its cinematic qualities. Chen’s work here reminds me a good deal of Irish animator Tomm Moore, and her gorgeous cartooning provides a perfect spotlight for secondary character “Maps” and the meet cute that occurs between her and Damian Wayne. There are a couple of spatial hitches where I was bit disoriented as to what was happening in a panel or two, but otherwise, this is a pretty great all-ages adventure.

Verdict: Already on my pull and staying there

Harley Quinn #17: Maybe it’s The Naked Gun fan in me, but I always laugh at a good beaver joke, and this one had me guffawing a bit. I hadn’t read an issue of Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti‘s take on Harley since its debut issue and this month’s offering had me wondering why I hadn’t. It was humorous, zinged with energy, and Chad Hardin‘s art looked way more suited to the material than I remember it. I thought the Gang of Harleys was a pretty fun idea too.

Verdict: In for the next issue

Red Hood/Arsenal #1: The idea of a “buddy comedy” comic book isn’t a bad one, it works well for titles like Archer & Armstrong, and in theory Jason and Roy should be diametrically opposed enough that it should make for some solid hinjix. Unfortunately, with Scott Lobdell at the helm, you may as well dash those hopes. It’s funny, looking at Denis Medri‘s art, I could see a fairly effective intro tale being weaved here if someone else wrote the dialogue. But Lobdell’s attempts to give an edge to every character voice makes them all sound like the same person. It’s better than Earth 2: Society, because I could at least tell what’s going on, but it reads like a comic that Poochie from The Simpsons would write.

Verdict: Stopping here

All-Star Section Eight #1: Yeah, this was pretty awesome. I never read Hitman, I should probably get on that (it’s 99 cents a pop on Comixology right now after all), but I thought what Garth Ennis and John McCrea were up to here was hilarious. It’s a bit “inside baseball” in the way a good Ambush Bug comic might be, particularly in its shoutouts to the 90’s “Bloodline” event and the various iconic Batman poses being used to pretty great effect, but it’s all presented in a way that shouldn’t detract from a new-comers enjoyment much. I mean, who doesn’t find a Batman that’s too cheap to pay a $3 ATM fee endearing? Yeah, Hitman, I need to read it.

Verdict: Going onto the pull-list

Starfire #1: I think I may have liked this better than even Harley Quinn this week, perhaps because I was entering at ground zero, but I have some affection for well done “fish out of water” stories and this is a particularly good one. There’s a great deal of damage control that needed to be done with Kori in the New 52, and I’m confident Conner and Palmiotti are well on their way to rectifying those issues. It’s Starfire getting into hijinx in a trailer part in Key West. This is my kind of jam, and I’m really appreciating the story-telling corner that this team is building for themselves.

Verdict: Going onto the pull-list

New Suicide Squad #9 – It’s hard to separate the real world inspiration for this story from the potential of the narrative. On paper, the idea of a group of supervillains going undercover into a bigger hive of evil-doers to take them down is attention grabbing enough (and as a big fan of COPRA, I’m primed to love a Suicide Squad story), but the parallels between this League of Assassins splinter group and the real-world ISIS rubs me the wrong way, and fairly bland sub-Rags Morales like linework pretty much put my interest in this book out of its misery.

Verdict: Stopping here

This week’s must-reads: Batman, Constantine: The Hellblazer, Gotham Academy, All-Star Section Eight, Starfire

Next week: Sonny Liew draws Doctor Fate, Martian Manhunter gets a solo series, the Batgirl spin-off Black Canary takes flight, and I try to reconcile mentally why I’m buying anything from the current Wonder Woman run.

Girl in Dior has been getting great press worldwide for its depiction of one of the most influential premiere collections in fashion history, but there are a couple of classic superhero connections as well.

Sixty-eight year old fashion spoiler alert!

As Girl in Dior aptly depicts, the designer’s debut collection split the fashion world. For some, the longer length of the skirts in Christian Dior’s first collection in 1947 was a step backward, but what ultimately won the day was a sense that Dior had tapped into deeper, more vital currents in the post-war West. Besides changing the course of fashion for a generation and, along the way, mentoring his successor in innovation, Yves Saint Laurent, Dior inspired a description that immediately became synonymous with his designs and, over time, any revolutionary break from existing style: the New Look.

Girl in Dior beautifully depicts the entry of this phrase into the fashion lexicon. After noting the presence of legendary Harper’s Bazaar editor Carmel Snow in the front row, author Annie Goetzinger lavishly recreates the moment when, following the show, Snow uttered the phrase that solidified Dior’s place in fashion history.

If you’re reading this site, though, chances are that you’re already thinking that the New Look sounds mighty familiar.

It was, of course, the name famously — and not coincidentally — given to the modernization of Batman's appearance in 1964.

But that wasn’t the first time Dior’s New Look appeared in Batman comics – there’s also a reference contemporaneous with Dior’s early work.

Dior’s New Look garnered a lot of press in the U.S., from the revolutionary collections in the late ’40s to the Dior-mania of the subsequent decade and more. For our purposes, two articles in particular stand out: a January 1948 New York Times piece headlined “New Look to Stay, Expert Asserts” and Life Magazine‘s coverage of Dior’s latest “New Look” collection in February 1948.

To see how such stories influenced comics, we can turn to the June 1948 of Batman, which re-tells Batman’s origin and includes his epic encounter with his father’s murderer, Joe Chill. However, that’s not the only story in this book, which deserves a digital restoration in full on Comixology (hint, hint).

The landmark Batman #47 actually opens with a Catwoman story called “Fashions in Crime.” The tale begins with Catwoman breaking out of jail, only to hear herself mocked by other women as she walks down the street while wearing her civilian clothes:

“Hmmph! She’s wearing a short skirt! She doesn’t have the NEW LOOK!”

As the women go on to ridicule her for not reading the latest fashion magazines, Catwoman makes the painful realization that “since [she’s] been in prison, the style has changed.” But this also gives her an entrepreneurial idea: she creates her own fashion magazine, Damsel, along with a Damsel fashion TV program.

Months later Damsel is the hottest media empire in the fashion world, and the scene shifts to an older socialite, who, wearing an elaborate hat, notes that Catwoman-turned-Damsel-publisher-Madame-Moderne’s latest designer favorite is “a gown by Millie Karnalee.” Karnalee’s name seems odd, but at the time it would have made sense as a pun on the popular American designer Hattie Carnegie, the subject of the January 1948 New York Times piece. Carnegie, besides, ahem, adapting (i.e. copying) Dior’s “New Look” at a lower price for the U.S. market, also made a point of condemning the predilection of younger women not to wear hats.

And despite a nifty later scene wear Batman cracks the case thanks to his encyclopedic knowledge of fashion illustration technique, that’s where the story begins to diverge from the world of Girl in Dior.

Apparently the writers weren’t aware of the free samples and ample cashflow that would have been accrued to the publisher of the world’s hottest fashion magazine, because Catwoman proceeds to use her newfound high-society access to steal clothes and rob women at an exclusive fashion show. Not surprisingly, the scene at Catwoman’s show is rather different from the more modest Parisian runways of the time — in true 1940s Batman fashion, it features “giant needles … scissors … thimbles … and a huge sewing machine!”

Girl in Dior might not end with a fight on oversized designer props, but it is nonetheless a most enlightening read. I could go on, but I’ll leave that to an actual reviewer – ceci n’est pas une critique de Jeune fille en Dior.

Darwyn Cooke is another great cartoonist from Canada to grace the pages of mainstream comics. Cooke’s current career in comics began when he wrote, and drew the memorable DC Elseworlds special Batman: Ego. After a short stint in comics in the mid-late 80’s, he found success as an animator/storyboard artist for Batman: The Animated Series & Superman: The Animated Series in the 1990’s, including creating the main title design for Batman Beyond.

Notable works from Darwyn are DC: The New Frontier(which told the tale of DC Superheroes during the dormant period of the 1950’s), Catwoman’s reboot/redesign in 2001 with writer Ed Brubaker(this run of comics is proving to be ahead of it’s time since we’re seeing a new trend of rethinking/redesigning superhero style & character; i.e. Ms. Marvel, Batgirl, etc.) , the comics adaptations of Donald E. Westlake’s classic crime thriller series Parker, and a recent spate of cover art, including a whole month’s worth of variant covers for many of DC’s flagship titles, and the first issues of IDW’s King Features line.

You can keep up with all things Darwyn Cooke on his website here.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com - Andy Yates

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On March 30^th, WonderCon attendees got treated to a bonus feature in a Spotlight panel with Ann Nocenti, Jim Lee acting as her interviewer. The two had so much shared history that they reminisced about the “good old days” at Marvel as well as plunging into the current artwork that most impresses them on their work for DC. The panel opened with a tone-setting description from Nocenti of her time as a Marvel writer and editor, “back in the day when Marvel Comics was so much fun”, when you could “smoke and drink and have guns in the office”. Lee confirmed that the gun in the office was an observable phenomenon, and Nocenti added by way of explanation that guns were needed for “reference”.

Lee started off by introducing Nocenti as the “self proclaimed female token writer at DC” and asked her how her current state came to be, considering that in her Marvel days there were several women on staff. Nocenti commented that though there were women at Marvel, she recalled that there were never any women at comic cons back then, unlike the demographic at WonderCon. “It must have been rough on you guys”, she teased Lee. Some of her workmates at Marvel, she explained, were Mark Gruenwald, “the soul of Marvel Comics”, Larry Hama, who was known for “pounding, crazy music” in his office, and Peter Sanderson, a “living archive” of all things Marvel.

Nocenti obviously had fond memories of the bullpen days at Marvel, stating, “The physical bullpen made the place creative”. She had a steep learning curve upon arriving at Marvel with a fine arts background, and had a lot to learn under her first editor Jim Shooter, someone who she described as “having a beautiful sense of story” and who ingrained in her the need for a “can’t/must” moment of conflict for a hero. The maxim still holds true for Nocenti, she confirmed. “He’s right”, Lee said, “Conflict is one of the key things in drama”. “Louise Simonson also had a huge influence on me”, Nocenti added, a woman who had the “power to cloud men’s minds” according to legend, by infusing even her most severe criticisms with a “cheerful attitude”.

Nocenti shared some of the lessons she learned from editing at Marvel with the audience, including the need for the editor present a fan’s perspective to the writer or artist: “A good editor has to understand that a writer is working so hard, and is so over worked, that they need ideas thrown at them from a fan’s perspective”. But from the editor’s perspective, she observed, it often leads to bizarre conversations and often caused her to ask herself “Did I just say that?” when generating “wacky” ideas with writers. Nocenti particularly enjoyed crossover development in the bullpen, and feels that she wasn’t alone in that enthusiasm, sharing “really exciting creative meetings” where “everyone would want to play at the same party”. Her advice to editors is to “learn everything”, like a “captain knows how to run a ship”, and she feels that this approach was encouraged at Marvel, but is less common today. This enables an editor to “know what everyone’s going through”.

Lee presented Nocenti with a copy of a comic they had once collaborated on together, though she confessed she didn’t recall the book, X-Men #39. After flipping through it and chatting together, Nocenti declared, “This looks like a great story. I want to buy this and read this!”, to the audience’s amusement. Lee’s questions, however, led Nocenti into darker recollections, about the “mini implosion” period at Marvel that led to her departure. Ron Perlman, she narrated, came into her office one day, wanting to meet her, and was fairly charming, but the “next thing we knew, he had gutted Marvel” financially. It was a “very traumatic” experience for “old timers”, she commented, and brought to her attention a famous quote from Dorothy Parker: “Don’t put all your eggs in one bastard”. After leaving Marvel, Nocenti worked in journalism, teaching, and filmmaking, gaining a wealth of experience that she now finds useful for life back in comics.

Writing a story about Catwoman in Arkham Asylum, for instance, she said, is drawn from a combination of her experiences working “at a place like Arkam” in her youth, and also from later editing Prison Life Magazine, which contained the work of prisoners. She observed a psychological feature that she’s incorporated into comics, the fact that it’s often “one small thing” that drives people crazy, not necessarily the bigger issues in life. Her experiences as a journalist and activist also led Nocenti to visit China, and some of her observations there led directly to her recent writing on GREEN ARROW, particularly noticing the pervasive “firewalls” on internet access in China and the sense of surveillance. Though she enjoyed working on GREEN ARROW, Nocenti explained that she “just couldn’t find her connection” to the character and was happy to move on to writing CATWOMAN, a character who she felt immediately in sync with. Her work on KATANA, too, keeps her imagination on its toes, drawing on the “idea of ancient clans, where the rich hire Samurais and ninjas are like spies”.

Lee and Nocenti spent the remainder of the panel showing and discussing process artwork and completed panels from upcoming CATWOMAN and KATANA stories, and enthusing over their finer features. The images included the set up for what Nocenti described as a “big gang war” for Catwoman and scenes in Arkham with “old torture devices”. Nocenti’s work on KATANA is based on her own obsession with martial arts and Kurasawa and martial arts films. “All comic book writers are doing really is unloading their personal obsessions on the page”, she confessed. This leads the writer to worry that readers might not find it interesting, she said, but in the case of Katana, Nocenti’s obsessions have translated to plenty of interest from fans. Nocenti regularly practises karate and judo around the house to see how Katana would move and act, and makes things even more “realistic” through watching martial arts films. It’s clear that her adaptable nature, shown throughout her varied career paths, is still going strong, and that her personal enthusiasm for her projects is still one of Nocenti’s most defining features.

Photo Credits: All photos in this article were taken by semi-professional photographer and pop culture scholar Michele Brittany. She’s an avid photographer of pop culture events. You can learn more about her photography and pop culture scholarship here.

Hannah Means-Shannon writes and blogs about comics for TRIP CITY and Sequart.org and is currently working on books about Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore for Sequart. She is @hannahmenzies on Twitter and hannahmenziesblog on WordPress.

Aware that Catwoman will be the focus of mainsteam attention this year in the wake of Christopher Nolan’s superhero mumblecore joint ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ (and also that Laura Hudson just stepped down from Comics Alliance); DC have decided to capitalise on the moment and release this cover for Catwoman #0, coming in September.

The spherical nature of Catwoman’s pose on this cover has intrigued and delighted the internet, who have spent the past twenty-four hours trying to work out what’s happened to the once human-shaped antihero. While many will wonder what has happened to her spine, shoulder and arms, I can’t help but wonder how she’s managed to apply her lipstick to haphazardly. Presumably it’s because her back is crippled and she has no upper-arm strength anymore. Couldn’t Batman have applied it for her, or something?

The issue sees Catwoman’s origin explained, making it perfect for new readers who want to pick up the issue after seeing Ann Hathaway’s turn as the character in the movie. And what a treat, when they walk into their local comic store, look nervously at the rows and rows of comics they don’t understand, and finally get walked across by a helpful store assistant to where this book is sat on the shelf. After five seconds of looking in bewilderment at what appears to be a blow-up beachball wearing a wrinkled condom, they then walk out and go spend their money on legitimate entertainment instead – like a crisp DVD copy of Love and Other Drugs, perhaps.

The internet have been gathered to gawp at Guillem March’s cover, leading several of the leading experts in lady spinal torture stepping up to offer their analysis. Kate Beaton was first, followed by Meredith Gran and John Troutman - among several others. The general consensus is that she has had her spine broken, throat ripped out and possibly a leg taken off, in order to achieve the pose seen in the cover. And she’s not wearing high heels, which is disappointing.

In an extra nod to the currently-showing Prometheus, this weirdly unsexual ’sexy Catwoman’ appears to be bursting out of the stomach of her own unsexual ’sexy body’ from the cover of Catwoman #1. So don’t say DC don’t know how to capitalise on the popularity of the movies, you guys.

And of course, this isn’t the first time a female character has broken her back in the name of… whatever is going on here. Who can forget that time the notoriously prude Mockingbird did the same thing in order to hide her bits from the reader?

Legendary Pictures has released a two-minute trailer for The Dark Knight Rises, the conclusion of Christopher Nolan‘s Batman film trilogy.

Follow this link to watch the trailer–what do you think? Nolan collaborated on the screenplay with his brother, screenwriter Jonathan Nolan. The movie will hit theaters in July 2012. The trailer highlights the infamous Batman villain Bane as he wrecks Gotham City.

Here’s more from Movies.com: “[The trailer revealed] some enticing dialogue from Anne Hathaway, playing Selina Kyle (aka Catwoman). Naturally her chat with Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), as they dance close together at a masquerade ball, falls somewhere between seductive and threatening, but that’s what we expect from her character. Will she be a villain? A romantic sidekick? Both? Other brief glimpses of Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine and Matthew Modine are exactly that — brief glimpses.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Jim Campbell has helped me out more times than I care to mention. He's lettered samples, collaborated on un-paid submissions and has recently worked with me on a tricky job to produce some poster sized comic pages.

Jim has just launched his own blog, Clint Flicker, where the man of letters will deal with his highly under-rated discipline's subtleties.

This weekend is the Birmingham Comcs Convention and hopefully I will have already managed to give Jim the original inks to the illustration of Catwoman below - small thanks for his efforts on my behalf.



This piece also figures as new porfolio piece for the convention and all things being well you can see a coloured version over on Scotch Corner today.