Nerdy Nuggets of News: July 2005 Archives

Loads of Infinite Crisis news bytes today: Rich Johnston reported a terrific spoiler about what happens to Batman during the One Year Gap. Apparently Bruce Wayne will be locked up in Arkham Asylum and Dick Grayson will take over as Batman. In the meantime, the Nightwing comic continues, but who is Nightwing? The Onion A.V. Club has an interview with Geoff Johns and several of the questions are related to Infinite Crisis. Dan Didio gives us the low down on “52”, a weekly comic that will tell stories about what happened during the One Year Gap. It will have rotating teams of writers/artists telling stories of various heroes and what they did during that missing year. One retailer is already upset about having to order eight issues of this book in advance without knowing if it sucks or not. Update: Greg Rucka has an interview about "Sacrifice", running through all of this month's Superman titles and concluding in Wonder Woman 219. Rucka calls this story arc "OMAC 3.5", as it takes place between issues 3-4, and says, "...we tried very hard to build OMAC so that you weren’t obligated to buy anything else, and we failed."

In non-Crisis news, there’s a rumor that Grant Morrison may team up with Jim Lee on a Wildcats revival. It’s not tremendously exciting to me. Wildcats have had James Robinson, Alan Moore, and Joe Casey as writers, but the characters and their raison d'etre don’t interest me all that much. The best character ever to come out of the series was Tao. I am sure Lee wants to revive his own property instead of drawing another DCU character. Warren Ellis has been posting on his “Bad Signal” email list for some time about the “fight comic” he’s been planning for Marvel. He’s been thinking about the nature of superheroes and how their story structure revolves around the Big Fight. The name of his “fight comic” will be called NextWave and it features C-list characters like Machine Man, Boom Boom, Photon (or Black Captain Marvel), etc. It sounds a bit kooky and hilarious, maybe it will be the new Damage Control. Nuff said.

San Diego Comic-Con 2005 is over and no big announcements of what DC will be like post-Crisis 2. The Superman rumblings were enough to tell us something will change but we are not quite sure what. We do get the impression that Superman Returns will probably kick ass from such people as Jim Lee on the blue tights site. The biggest DC news after the Spirit-Cooke deal is that Mark Waid is now exclusive. He’ll be a consulting editor and bringing back the Brave and the Bold team-up series. I found this quote from Waid to be tantalizing: “Clearly, the post-Infinite Crisis DCU is designed to be a much different landscape than what we’ve got now...this is your travelogue of the new DC Universe.” I wonder if Crisis 2 will be the opposite of Crisis 1. Will it pull apart DC’s heroes into separate universes? When I read Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers mini-series, I definitely get the feeling this is a brand new universe where the characters are re-imagined.

For the best DC Universe news summary, take a look over here at Comics Continuum’s coverage. Likewise, they have an excellent Marvel summary here as well. The biggest surprise that Marvel had at the con is that Moon Knight is returning in a series by Avengers artist David Finch and fiction writer Charlie Huston. Other than that, I see them mangling more characters than ever.

The coolest news I’ve seen is the Justice League Unlimited panel recap at the Continuum. JLU will continue for another season with all the villains gathering in one super-sized Legion of Doom. Hawkman and the Legion of Super-Heroes will make appearances. The Legion is another one of those gems that DC could really capitalize on in animation. Nuff said.

Day one of the San Diego Comic Con is over. While I am not there I feel like I am due to all the news reports coming in from various sites and blogs. The biggest news is the new Spirit ongoing series, written and drawn by Darwyn Cooke. This is a huge surprise, and it’s going to be kicked off by a Batman/Spirit one-shot, co-written by Jeff Loeb. I think only a few people could do the Spirit justice, and besides Alan Moore or Frank Miller, Cooke is the perfect choice. I am intrigued by his decision to update the series, bringing the Spirit into the 21st century, and giving his girlfriend Ellen thigh-high boots. It’s a bold choice. Cooke also wants to use modern computer technology to do new things with the Spirit “logo-forms” (as Moore called it).

Geoff Johns gives the low down on the new Green Lantern series over here. They explain the yellow impurity in the rings and tell us that junior GLs won’t have immunity over the color yellow. The inevitable Green Arrow reunion happens in GL#7. There’s an interesting hint that James Robinson may be coming back to revive more Golden Age characters.

I read a rumor somewhere the Geoff Johns will be writing a Superman title, and I bet dollars to doughnuts that Adam Kubert will draw it. That would be a good move. I recently picked up the last three issues of Superman by Mark Verheiden and Ed Benes. Pretty good superhero stuff, much better than the Jim Lee run, and Lois now looks like she could guest star on Baywatch. Everyone’s complaining that the OMAC tie-in is very slight, but I think these tidbits are making it a cohesive universe. Let’s just hope it really leads to something big.

Cap the day off with a peek at the new Thing series. Dan Slott’s a fan of Marvel Two In One and he wants this to be a light hearted title with lots of action. Greatness! Let’s hope Wundarr makes a guest appearance. Nuff said.