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June 6, 2005
Wizard Philly 2005 news wrap-up!
We let Cousin go wild with the WWC Philly 05 news last Friday—most of it was his drunken ramblings. For the real news, we’re most excited about DC’s Showcase reprints. Finally, DC gives us a product similar to the Marvel Essentials line, 500 page black and white reprints of their classic stories. And they seem to realize that the perfect starting point is the Silver Age. Perfect! Now I can collect all those Superman, Green Lantern and Justice League of America stories without paying $50 a pop for the archive editions. Click here for an interview with Bob Greenberger about these new Showcase reprints.
DC’s biggest announcement was that the Kubert brothers are re-joining DC, but there’s no word on what they will draw. Ditto for Jeff Loeb, who is working on a special project to replace Superman\Batman, his lips are sealed as well. The one guy who won’t stop talking is Bruce Jones, who is doing revamps of Vigilante, Deadman and Warlord. I can’t get excited about his descriptions for these series. I think Jones is talented at doing those Warren-type horror and sf short stories, but any time he’s done (or re-done) an established character, it hasn’t worked for me. For the main DC heroes, other than the One Year Later event during Infinite Crisis, nothing much was announced as I am sure they have a bunch of surprises coming up. Didio teased an awful lot about the fate of the Flash during the Crisis.
Marvel spent most of their WWC Philly event plugging House of M, which I won’t buy unless it gets stellar reviews and in collected form. They are saying that HoM won’t be a mere alternate reality story, but it will leave a lasting impact. I predict Daredevil’s secret identity will be restored. It would be shocking if they had Gwen Stacy remain alive. For the new series coming out later this year, I am looking forward to Joe Casey’s Fantastic Four: First Family mini-series. The Defenders book could be good, even though I don’t like my favorite non-team played like the three stooges. The Sentry sequel by Paul Jenkins and John Romita, Jr is promising but the Ghost Rider series by Garth Ennis is not. I just don’t like anything Ennis has done for Marvel. And finally they give The Thing his own series, the cover by Andrea DeVito looks great, and I think Dan Slott has the right take on it. (Marvel’s releasing a Marvel Two-In-One Essentials if you want to see the Thing in his glory days.) Nuff said.
