Category Archives: Comics
Red Robin to Return to Batman Family
Tim Drake is rejoining the Bat-family, baby! At least temporarily!
The comic book solicitations for April are starting to come out, and CBR has all of the Batman titles. The Night of the Owls will be in full effect, and I’m happy to say that my favorite Robin, Tim Drake, is going to take time away from his Teen Titan duties to make a jump back to his Bat-family roots! For people who don’t have any clue what I’m talking about, this probably won’t be that important. But to a comic book geek like me, this is fantastic news!
Red Robin will be appearing in Batman: The Dark Knight #9.
Kick his ass, Red Robin!
For those of you who have no clue what I’m talking about or why I’m so excited, allow me to explain. Because I love talking about comic books.
So everybody knows about Batman and Robin. Well in the comic books, Batman has had 4 Robins. Every time one of them outgrows the role of sidekick or dies, Batman gets a new apprentice. My favorite Robin is Tim Drake, who was Robin from the early 90s to the late 00s. Which is a very long time. Well as the story went along, Drake ‘graduated’ from being Robin to make way for a new apprentice, and Drake instead became Red Robin.
Then in the New 52 reboot from last September, DC drew several clear distinctions between their ‘families’ of comics. Red Robin was taken out of the Batman family of comics and placed in the Teen family, as leader of the Teen Titans. Which is too bad, because I like my Tim Drake as Batman’s sidekick, even if there is already a new Robin who has replaced him. Since September, Tim Drake’s adventures have had very little to do with Batman. Which, again, is a shame.
But with this new epic Batman story, The Night of the Owls, DC has decided to let Tim Drake return to Batman’s side to lend a hand. They could have just had Red Robin skip the whole Owls thing and nobody would have batted an eyelash. So I’m now even more excited for Night of the Owls! And I can only hope you are too.
Shows What I know About The Ravagers
Remember this new comic book from DC, The Ravagers? I picked on it a couple days ago because, based on the cover, I thought it was made up of a bunch of brand new characters that nobody would care about.
Turns out I was wrong.
Turns out they only look like nobodies from a distance
Thanks to an interview with writer Howard Mackie at Newarama, I now know that only the big, brutish looking guy is a new character, named Ridge. Everyone else is a revamped version of a known character, just like I’d suggested! We already know that the buff redhead up front is Fairchild. Well the red wolfman is a new version of Beast Boy. He’s red instead of his usual green because of something to do with Animal Man, which makes sense. Animal Man is doing something pretty freaky deaky with the animals of the world, and if this new Beast Boy taps into that same animal freaky deakiness, then red is a good color for him.
The brunette in the middle with the yellow circle on her shoulder is a new Terra. And the last two, the black guy on the left with the chest beam and the white girl on the right with the freaky half-hair are a new Thunder and Lightning! Which is cool, because I’ve thought they should have a bigger roll ever since they appeared in that one episode of Teen Titans.
So there we have it. DC Comics shoved my criticism back in my face. Point to you, DC.
6 Superheroes Put on Trial
As is usually the case with my life, I put everything in the context of comic books. My two weeks covering a murder trial for my day job is no different, so I thought about comic books in the courtroom. Not actually reading comic books in the physical courtroom (though that would be fun!), I mean when comic book writers put their heroes and villains on trial. The whole point of superhero comics is fighting crime, right? So you’d think that, in theory, all of these super-villains eventually have to appear before a judge, right?
Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. And sometimes, it’s the superheroes who are put on trial!
I sense prejudice on the bench
So I scoured the Internet and the world of comics to find 6 cases when a superhero was forced to face the judicial system as part of a story. I mean an actual, normal courtroom with a judge, a jury and everything! And not those weird cosmic trials, like when Reed Richards went to Universe Court for the genocide of the Skrulls, and Galactus was called as a witness. That’s just crazy. Here are 6 cases when heroes were put on trial for their crimes!
Review: Scarlet Spider #2
The second issue of this new Scarlet Spider series lives up to the awesomeness of the first. Kaine is badass and very much still in line as the Anti-Hero Spider-Man. There is one little hiccup towards the end, which I’ll discuss later. But it’s safe to say that the book has a good start. There is no second-issue-slump. Writer Chris Yost continues his world building efforts, and I hope he gets a chance to really flesh them out.
Scarlet Spider #2
Because frankly, there’s nothing very special about Scarlet Spider.
Comic rating: 4/5: Good!
I know that sounds negative, but it’s true! There’s no hook to this book. There’s no catchy or flashy gimmick, no particular reason for it to exist. It’s just Badass Spider-Man being badass – in Houston of all places! So I’m worried that Scarlet Spider is just not going to keep an audience. It’s written like a generic superhero title, one that just happens to cling to the Spider-Man family of books to stay afloat. I’m sure a large portion of its audience are people like me, who are big fans of Kaine and the very concept of a ‘Scarlet Spider’ series. But that audience alone can’t sustain a book.
Yost needs to come up with a very compelling reason why people should keep reading. Spoilers and synopsis to follow!
The One Thing Everybody Knew About Power Girl is Now Gone
Namely, her boobs.
Just like The Ravagers cover from earlier today, DC Comics has released the cover to the first issue of World’s Finest. The new series will star Power Girl and Huntress from Earth 2, only they’re stuck in the normal DC Universe and trying to find a way home. This comes with an updated costume for Power Girl, but oddly, not for Huntress. I like the new costume, but it pretty much does away with the only thing people really knew about Power Girl.
Bye, bye cleavage window!
Hello random neckerchief thing
For the uninitiated, this is what Power Girl’s costume used to look like. And yes, everybody made fun of it. so you can see why they decided to make a change. Power Girl and her cleavage window were pretty much their own meme.
If I wanted to look at your eyes I would have
Also, it should be noted that the ‘flashback’ image behind the two superheroines seems to indicate that Huntress used to be Robin. That’s pretty neat! More on that later when I post the preview cover of the new Justice Society!
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