Category Archives: DC
Superman Has No Underpants!!
This just in from the world of superhero journalism, beloved hero Superman is not wearing any underpants. At least he won’t be in both the upcoming movie, Man of Steel, and the new DC rejiggering this September. The hearts of Internet fanboys everywhere are all a flutter at the prospect that Superman will no longer be wearing his classic, traditional red trunks over the top of his blue costume. You’ve heard all the jokes in the world about how superheroes wear their underwear outside of their pants, well Superman is saying, “No more!”
And I don’t particularly care.
DC is in the process of rebooting Superman so that he can appeal to a wider audience…I guess. I don’t really know what DC’s plan is for Superman, or at least the reasoning behind it. Superman is freaking Superman! Everybody knows him. How wider of an audience can you get? But in the comics, he’s no longer going to be married to Lois Lane, he’s going to be more of an outsider and he’s going to get a new costume. A costume without the underpants on the outside.
Shazam!
First of all, it should be noted that ‘underpants’ is a hilarious word. I vote that it replace ‘underwear’ as the preferred word.
Second of all, this isn’t a big deal in both directions. Nobody cared that Superman, like a lot of superheroes, had briefs on the outside of his costume. And nobody should care that DC is going with a new look. It doesn’t change anything about Superman except for the color of his pelvis. Yes, Superman is very iconic. VH1 did a list of the 200 greatest pop culture icons, and Superman was #2! Oprah was #1. Not even Superman is greater than Oprah (though I beg to differ). But his iconic status has nothing to do with his pelvis. His costume as a whole, sure, but give it a few months and I’m sure nobody will even notice the difference.
But Internet people are the world are up in arms. I’d link to some articles, but I don’t really want to call anybody out. There have been a few candid set pics of the Man of Steel movie released, and there too he’s not wearing the briefs.
I once did an entry saying I hate these types of photos. Damn me!
But it’s not a big deal, in my opinion. Granted, Superman is far from my favorite character, but I still don’t think even Superfans should be worried. At the very least, let’s wait and see what DC does with the character before anybody gets up in arms about his costume. It’s still the iconic red, blue and yellow Superman costume. They just tweaked it a little. Perhaps DC wanted to get away from that joke about underwear on the outside. Mother Goose and Grimm can be brutal.
Oh the humanity!
Fun Fact: Did you know that superheroes wearing their briefs on the outside was taken from old circus strongmen from the turn of the century? They’re the sort of briefs that professional wrestlers now where. It’s not just a silly, cosmetic thing. They actually wore those briefs for a reason. And now you know.
A Better Green Lantern Than the One in the Movie
This song and music video are further proof that the Internet is the greatest invention in the history of everything. It gives voice to the geeks of the world. Let us revel in this wonderfully specific theme song about the Green Lantern. It makes me wonder if bands who record these types of songs can ever play them in live venues. Who else but geeks would understand them?
Believe me when I say this wins all the Internets.
Hot Girl/Girl Action
That’s right everybody, my blog is now going to bring you some hot girl/girl action straight from the comic book page! We’re talking the sexiest superheroines this side of Supergirl, ready to get into hot and heavy action in the name of saving the day. And by ‘action’, of course, I mean fight bad guys and literally save the day. And by ‘hot and heavy’ I mean it’s probably exhausting being a superheroine, and I’m sure they worked up a sweat.
Why? What did you think I was talking about?
The girls in question are Zatanna and Power Girl, two semi-popular superheroines whose final issues dropped last week. They’ve been cancelled. As I’ve mentioned a few times before on this blog, DC Comics is doing a line-wide revamp next month. That means all of the current comics are getting cancelled, including the solo adventures of Zatanna and Power Girl, two of my favorite DC comics. It’s a shame to see them go, so I figured I’d show them off in style by reviewing their final issues: Zatanna #16 and Power Girl #27.
Zatanna #16 and Power Girl #27
First, a word about these types of comics. I love these types of comics. Zatanna and Power Girl are clearly not A-List heroes, like Batman and Superman. Yet with the right writer and some good ideas, DC Comics took a chance and published these series anyway. Comics are filled with hundreds of obscure and seemingly unpopular characters, and every once and awhile, DC and Marvel will put out a series or mini-series starring these characters. Sometimes they’re bad and sometimes they’re great. But I love that comics will take the chance anyway.
It enforces my writing motto: “There’s no such thing as a bad character, only bad writers.”
And fortunately with the Zatanna and Power Girl series, we got good characters, good writers and great artists! Both of their final issues are standalone stories with fill-in writers, so I won’t need to catch you up on any ongoing storylines. They’re both pretty good stories, and are also pretty good examples of what each series was like. Though the Zatanna comic is leagues better than Power Girl.
So let’s start with Zatanna.
The Mistress of Magic!
If you can’t tell from her ‘costume’, Zatanna is a magician. Literally. Her day job is as a classic stage magician who tours and puts on shows all around the world. The catch is that she’s using real magic, and that’s why she’s a superhero. All she has to do to cast a spell is say it backwards, and she can do almost anything. Want to pull a rabbit out of her hat? All Zatanna has to say is, “Raeppa tibbar!” It’s a pretty neat sort of ability. Not many magicians in superhero comics.
Zatanna’s series was about her juggling her stage show and real life with her duties as a superheroine, often with her having to stop some magic-based super-villain. There were a few standalone issues, and some multi-parters. There was a hunky cop who sometimes flirted with her, and she had a stage hand/assistant who helped out from time to time. The main villain, Brother Midnight, was sufficiently spooky and had a storyline or two. Zatanna defeated him in the end. Several issues also featured her cousin Zachary, who was basically just a young, male copy of Zatanna. I never liked him, so ignore him.
The comic was written by Paul Dini, one of the creators of Batman: The Animated Series. Dini is a huge Zatanna fan, and I like to imagine that the series was DC’s gift to him. Like a pet project. Dini and his fill-ins wrote some awesome stories. There was the time she fought the villain who could rewind time, so in order to cast spells she had to speak in only palindromes. Or the time she was almost married to a studly Vegas casino owner so that he could sell her soul to a gambling demon. And my favorite story was probably the time she had to fight a cursed ventriloquist who had been turned into a psycho puppet.
Only to get turned into a puppet herself!
Basically Zatanna got up to all manner of magical mischief, and the final issue is no different. We start on a cross-Atlantic plane ride, with Zatanna taking a red-eye home after a few shows in Europe. Writer Adam Beechen is telling the story with a third-person narrative (different for the series), and it has a fun, playful style to it. The plane almost crashes, but Zatanna raises her sleeping eye-mask, casts a ‘repair’ spell and fixes the plane. All is well and she can keep trying to sleep, though she can’t seem to drift off. When she lands, she’s stuck in customs for a bit and finally makes it home. She crashes into her bed, still super tired, but it seems Zatanna doesn’t get to sleep this night.
The humor in this story, and the series, is delightful
Let me take a moment to say that the art in this issue, by Victor Ibanez, is amazing! It’s a realistic take on the traditional superhero style, and I love it. Zee looks and moves like a real person, not just a flighty superhero. Her facial expressions are a delight as she’s forced out of bed to deal with the books antagonist: the witch boy Uriah. He’s basically just a troublesome little scamp who knows how to use magic. He’s woken Zatanna up in the middle of the night because he wants to be her apprentice. Zatanna is very tired, so she politely tells him to get lost. Uriah doesn’t listen and decides to run wild in her house.
Precocious as he is, Uriah finds Zatanna’s massive library. It’s filled to the brim with magical tomes and books, and Uriah grabs The Book of Maps. The book is what he came for, and it’s supposed to know all the passages and short cuts between dimensions. Uriah’s plan is to use the book to become the most powerful being ever, then perhaps he’ll take over the world. Zatanna can’t allow that, so she chases Uriah from dimension to dimension.
...to dimension to dimension to dimension...
In order to catch Uriah, Zatanna casts a teleportation spell that takes them both to The Dimension of Gargantuans! This next page was wonderfully breathtaking. There are ads in comics, and pages that need to be turned. So a lot of great writers will use those to create a slight cliffhanger and a nice shock page. You see Zatanna chasing Uriah through the portals on one page, read her casting the teleportation spell at the bottom of the page, and then you turn the page to find this:
Booyah!
That’s just awesome and gloriously magical. This is the sort of fun that the Zatanna book brought to the table time and again. When magic combines with awesome, creative writing, you get some really fun adventures. That’s why I enjoyed Zatanna so much. The book never had a consistent artist, but it always had great art issue after issue. And even when Dini wasn’t writing, the fill-ins did a great job.
So Zatanna catches Uriah and takes him back to his witch town. She puts The Book of Maps back into her library and finally gets a moment to sleep. There’s a running gag about her trying to enjoy a dream with studly men and cocoa butter, and the final page shows Zatanna in a sexy bikini standing on a beach, with studly men waving from the ocean. Looks like it’s going to be a fun dream and she’ll be able to get some rest.
This was a fantastic issue and a great send-off to the Zatanna series. It’s fun, zany and funny, with great facial expressions and comedic panel-work. Uriah is hardly a classic villain, but he serves his purpose of being bratty and annoying – two things Zatanna does not want to deal with while she’s so tired. And that added level of being exhausted greatly humanizes Zatanna. She’s tuckered out and just wants to sleep, but instead she has to deal with this annoying thing. We’ve all been there. Humanizing superheroes is the way to make them really stand out as interesting subjects. This issue does a great job of that. I’m sorry to see Zatanna go.
Up next is Power Girl #27, a less interesting comic but still a nice, solid farewell.
We all know where your eyes are focused
Power Girl has a complicated background, but I’ll try to explain it in simple terms. Everybody knows Superman, right? And everybody knows or can understand the concept of Supergirl? Well Power Girl is an alternate reality version of Supergirl, who is now living in the normal DC reality. But none of that matters to this series. All you really need to know is that she’s a youngish woman with all the powers of Superman, who’s trying to make it on her own in New York City. She’s the head of her own tech company, but faces all manner of business and financial problems throughout the series. The book is high on humor and charm, with more than a few bad guy fights to enjoy. It’s not as whimsical as the Zatanna series, but it was fun.
Waking up is hard to do
Especially in the beginning for the first 12 issues, when it was written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray, and was drawn by Amanda Conner. I assume they had the initial pitch for the series, and those first 12 issues are phenomenal. They tell the story of Power Girl as a real person, struggling with her day-to-day life while also trying to be Power Girl. She faces off against some tough bad guys, including 3 diva-like alien women who just want to party on Earth, and an overly macho, Zap Brannigan-esque, hairy-chested space stud who wants to mate with her. The stories were funny and friendly, and the art was amazing. Conner drew those picture I posted above, and she draws absolutely gorgeous facial expressions and body language. Power Girl also has the most adorable cat in all of comics.
I prefer the name 'Mr. Cat'
The stories were largely inconsequential. If you’re a Power Girl fan, the comic was probably a godsend. Straight forward, fun adventures starring your favorite superheroine. But the action was never great. The Power Girl comic succeeded because of the humanity in the main character. The writers, even those that filled in after Palmiotti and Gray left, wrote plenty of scenes of Power Girl at home. She played with her cat, worried about her social life and struggled to keep her company from falling apart. At times the idea that she ran her own massive tech company seemed to stretch credibility, but it never got too out of hand. Other superheroes have been CEOs before.
The final issue is a story about a super-villain giving Power Girl one minute to save 3 different people on 3 different sides of the world. Theoretically she only has time to save one, and the villain wants to find out and take note of which choice she makes. Will she save the old people at the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, will she save the random fishing girl in east Asian or will she save her superheroine friend Cyclone? All three are being attacked by super-villains, so who will Power Girl save in the minute time limit?
All of them, of course.
Take that, ancient monument!
First Power Girl drops a giant boulder into the ocean, creating a tidal wave that will come into play later. She has the strength and speed of Superman, so she’s able to fly all the way to Brazil to save Cyclone first. She beats up the super-villains who are holding her prisoner and gives Cyclone a message to meet her in east Asia in 25 seconds. Power Girl then flies to Italy and beats up the villain who is trying to knock over the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Power Girl puts the tower back up (though not all the way straight) and flies off to east Asia to save the fishing girl.
Along the way she stops to save a cat in a tree. Kind of a dumb thing to waste precious seconds on, but it’s sort of a call back to the adorable cat from the Amanda Conner issues!
The tidal wave she created at the start comes and hits the super-villain, stopping him from killing the fishing girl. Then Power Girl shows up to knock out the villain. Then Cyclone shows up, and together they use their powers to stop the tidal wave.
Blow Power Girl, blow!
In the end, Power Girl is able to triangulate the location of the lead villain who put her up to these 3 tasks in the first place. It’s revealed to be the Calculator, an intelligent, computer-based, thinking super villain. She flies to his base but finds out that Calculator isn’t even there, he’s just talking via monitor to his goons. Calculator sort of explains that he was making notes of who Power Girl saved and in which order, to better predict superheroes’ actions. It’s not very clear, at least not to me. And the book ends with Power Girl getting ready to interrogate the goons to figure out more of the Calculator’s plans.
And that’s where it ends.
Kind of odd really. One is led to believe that it’s leading into a new storyline. But again, this was the last issue. It’s written by a guy named Matthew Sturges, who I am not familiar with. And it’s drawn by Hendry Prasetya. Neither one is part of the regular creative team for Power Girl, they’re both fill-ins. They both do an acceptable job. No one’s art will be as good as Amanda Conner, so there’s no point in trying. Sturges tells a good story, even if it doesn’t work very well as a send-off. It’s just a neat little adventure. Sturges even mixes in some of the humor of the series, but that too is a sub-par effort compared to previous issues. So for its final issue, Power Girl takes a step down in quality, but it’s not so bad.
In the end, these two issues were nice endings to each series. Zatanna was fantastic, and Power Girl was OK. I’ll be sorry to see the two titles go because they were some of the few that I and friend-of-the-site Alyssa both read. She even introduced me to Power Girl. Hopefully we’ll find some new ones to read together after the revamp.
A Few Musings About New DC Stuff
The way the comics industry works is that solicitations for new comics come out about 2 or 3 months in advance, so that shopkeepers can order them. And with the Internet being the way it is, these solicitations are posted online for everybody to read and comment upon. This usually involves the cover and a brief blurb about the story. I enjoy read these every month to look forward to upcoming comics.
Well with this new DC Comics reboot/rejiggering coming up, all their new monthly solicitations are a bit more exciting. What’s the new DC Universe going to be like? Who’s going to be in it? What sorts of adventures are the heroes going to face? Can DC sustain the excitement once we’re past the initial honeymoon phase?
At any rate, the covers for the November Batman books were released today and there were two that drew my attention.
The first is Red Hood and the Outlaws #3.
Specifically the Robin costume in the upper right corner
There’s no blurb to go along with this, only that it looks like the three heroes are trapped in some place that’s making them confront younger versions of themselves from their past. I don’t know if that’s really the case, but I hope it is, because the past Jason Todd/Robin costume looks bleepin’ awesome! It’s a beautiful combination of the original Tim Drake and Jason Todd costumes, updated with modern accessories and style. And the red mask is particularly awesome.
So I don’t know if that’s a realistic look into Jason Todd’s past, or if it’s some fever dream, but it is one awesome Robin costume.
Also interesting Robin news, according to Newsamara, DC has updated their Retailer FAQ to give a little explanation about Robin’s status in the new DCU. Basically, the idea behind the new DCU is that superheroes have only been around for about five years. So how has Batman gone through (at least) four Robins: Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake and now Damian Wayne?
Q: If super-heroes have only existed for five years, how has Batman gone through so many Robins?
A: Robin is an intern program -and a very intensive one at that.
That…kind of puts a bad taste in my mouth. It essentially shortens each Robin’s run down to about a year or so apiece. It also ruins the importance of the role of Robin, saying that Batman strips them off so quickly and moves on to the next one. It takes away from the majesty of Dick Grayson’s tenure as the Dark Knight’s first squire, and weakens the reason why Tim Drake became Robin.
I suppose, like everything else, I’ll have to wait and see how this actually plays out in the real comics. But I don’t like the idea on principle. There were always very specific reasons in the old continuity why Batman moved on to a new Robin. Hopefully those sort of remain, and it’s not just a thing Batman does every year.
The second cover of note is Batman: The Dark Knight #3.
Sultry and silly
We’re introduced to the new Batman villain: The White Rabbit. She’s clearly going for that sultry, sexy vibe, because geek fanboys apparently love buying comics with half-naked chicks in them. That’s probably not debatable (though it’s not one of my reasons for buying), so kudos to DC for grasping the basic concept that ‘sex sells’. The reason it’s drawn my attention is because Marvel Comics has an exact same super-villain named The White Rabbit. She dresses in almost the exact same way, with a sexy outfit, her hair flowing freely and big floppy bunny ears. I realize the concept of the ‘white rabbit’ is probably up for grabs, but somebody at some point just said they didn’t care about the similarities and went for it.
One has to wonder if she’ll be teamed up with The Mad Hatter, Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee, the Walrus, the Carpenter or any other of the Wonderland-themed villains that Batman faces.
Or maybe she’s just going to be all sexy and solo.
I’d also like to point out that Batman: The Dark Knight is basically the third solo Batman title that DC is producing this fall. All three have Bruce Wayne under the mask, as opposed to the past year, which has seen Dick Grayson. If we also add in Batman and Robin, that will be four general Batman comics coming out of DC. Isn’t that a little much!?
So…it’s Superman
Warner Bros. released the first teaser image of the new Superman for their upcoming 2013 movie Man of Steel. The actor is Henry Cavill.
Smashy! Smashy!
I’m in different. Mostly because I’ve never been a big Superman fan. The picture is cool, but at this point it’s nothing more than a tease for a movie two years away. A great tease, sure, but it’s little more than a Halloween costume really. I guess it gives us an early look at the Superman costume.
And it’s really dark. Really really dark. So much for the brightness of Superman. He’s also smashing a vault of some kind. That’s an improvement over not really smashing anything in Superman Returns. But all this picture screams is ‘DARK’. Warner Bros. really wants a dark and gritty Superman movie, so I guess they’ll get one.
But I’m not exactly opposed to that. As I said, I’ve never been a big Superman fan. I like the themes and what he stands for more than the actual character. Which is too bad, since both Clark Kent and I are mild-mannered reporters. So if DC and the WB want to make a dark and gritty Superman movie, I’m not about to complain. The original Superman films were alright. I saw them for the first time only a few years ago, and they were OK. Superman Returns was terrible because it was just a love letter to those original films.
Hopefully with Man of Steel they can try something new and actually exciting with Superman. If it has to be dark and gritty, so be it.
Henchman-4-Hire 