New DCU Team?

I saw this post over at Erin's blog and it intrigued me enough to comment on it over here. Erin found a photo from artist R.B. Silva which seems to depict an unusual grouping of DC characters:

and he includes a line about not being able to talk about it. The characters involved are Nightwing, Batgirl, Booster Gold, Hawkman, Shazam, Black Canary and Red Tornado.

• Nightwing and Batgirl on a team together? Sounds a little redundant to me
• Booster back in action is no bad thing
• Hawkman is, as far as I'm aware, going to be in the new Justice League of America
• Shazam is slated to join the ranks of the established Justice League
• Black Canary still heads up the Birds of Prey as far as I know
• Red Tornado is the one that piques my curiosity most - she's already appeared in Earth 2, albeit not active, and there's an embargo on the duplication of names between the two universes, over and above a handful of them, and the figure in that picture appears to be male. That also ties in with what T.O. Morrow said in the most recent Justice League issue.

Are we looking at an alternate League? Something that comes out of Trinity War? Or just an artist enjoying himself? I can't think of anything that immediately links these characters.

Monday Memories #4 - Emerald Dawn II #4

Each Monday this year I'll be taking a look back at a random comic, prestige format issue, graphic novel or collection of reprints from amongst my 3,000 or so comics that date from 1962 to 2003 - I figured anything in the last ten years would be too recent to hark back to.

The comics are chosen completely at random and apart from a four week lead-in period, even I don't know what I'll be looking at in the weeks to come!

Who'd Like A Cocktail? #212

That's squirrels for you - always looking for the good in people. Usually in their ears.

Can Someone Buy Me This, Please?

The original art from the covers of Watchmen is going to be auctioned off in February.

I've already got someone coming round to remove one kidney, a lung and anything else I can spare to put up on eBay to raise funds and I'll be going round my friends with the begging bowl over the next couple of days, once I've recovered from the surgery.

If anybody else wants to send me some money, please visit ineedtheoriginalcoverartofwatchmentwaymorethanyoudo.co.uk to make a donation.

Just Good Friends

You knew this was going to happen, didn't you? I start reading old Star Wars stories and I'm going to find stuff that - in hindsight - doesn't really tie up with what we know now. Obvious case in point is Luke and Leia's relationship:

"Something more than friends" eh, Luke? How about brother and sister? Or isn't that what you were going for?

The Circle Is Now Complete

Years ago I managed to pick up volumes 1 to 3 of Star Wars: A Long Time Ago, the Dark Horse reprints of the original Marvel Star Wars series from the 70's and 80's. They were fairly expensive as graphic novels go - £25 each brand new - so I left getting the rest for a long while.

Now, though, thanks to Amazon allowing second hand copies to be sold, I've finally tracked the last four volumes down, each one for only a little over half the original price. Sure, one or two of them have slightly scuffed covers but none of the pages are loose or torn and that's the main thing.

So, guess what I'll be reading over the coming weeks?

Monday Memories #3 - Justice League America #37

Each Monday this year I'll be taking a look back at a random comic, prestige format issue, graphic novel or collection of reprints from amongst my 3,000 or so comics that date from 1962 to 2003 - I figured anything in the last ten years would be too recent to hark back to.

The comics are chosen completely at random and apart from a four week lead-in period, even I don't know what I'll be looking at in the weeks to come!

No Cocktail This Week

As is traditional when there's the merest hint of the possibility of the mention of the slightest chance of snow, Britain has ground to a halt. To be fair, the area where I live had a "severe weather warning" on Friday which is when I normally pick up my comics so I didn't bother heading into town to get them.

Still, double the amount next week!

DC's April Solicitations

Just a brief look at a few things that caught my eye in the solicitations from DC, over and above my normal Don't Ask... post from yesterday.

AQUAMAN #19 - sports a lovely cover and asks "The Ice King takes the throne as the true king of Atlantis—but who will be the first to kneel before him?" I suppose it's way too much to ask for a connection between this guy and Ice, is it?

Earth 2 #11

Dr Fate returns, everyone!

"As Dr Fate emerges as the latest hero on Earth 2, what other heroes make a most unexpected appearance?"

Any guesses? Hourman, maybe?

Real Women? Not In The Tenebrian Dominian

Last week's Green Lantern: New Guardians Annual had Star Sapphire Carol Ferris being introduced to a bunch of smugglers in a hive of scum and villainy. This being comics, they all had their code names:

And yeah, the only woman among the crew has a name defined by physical attributes, but at least she owns it (as I believe the phrase goes):

Ouch! That's gotta hurt.

Trouble is, just a couple of pages later we get to see Wide Load walking with Carol:

And instead of a woman proud of her "real hips" we get another generic superhero female whose figure looks pretty much the same as Star Sapphire's.

There's no point in Keith Giffen making note of her hips if Scott Kolins and Andrei Bressan are then going to ignore them.

Monday Memories #2 - Generations 3 #8

Each Monday this year I'll be taking a look back at a random comic, prestige format issue, graphic novel or collection of reprints from amongst my 3,000 or so comics that date from 1962 to 2003 - I figured anything in the last ten years would be too recent to hark back to.

The comics are chosen completely at random and apart from a four week lead-in period, even I don't know what I'll be looking at in the weeks to come!

Who'd Like A Cocktail? #211

You have to admit, he's got a point - the clue was in the name.

That's My Birthday Sorted (Again)

Having spent most of the Christmas holiday just gone playing Lego Lord of The Rings (I'm at 85% completed, thank you very much for asking) it seems the Great Old Ones have accepted my sacrifices answered my prayers about what I'd like for my birthday in August.

Having done a bang-up job with the Lego DC Universe, they're now turning their attention to the Marvel Universe which offers

"an original storyline in which Nick Fury calls upon Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor, Spider-Man, Wolverine and other heroes spanning the Marvel Universe to save Earth from such threats as the vengeance of Loki and the hunger of Galactus, Devourer of the Worlds."

Now I'm not the biggest Marvel fan, but I'll be up for this.

Perusing Previews - January 2013

The current economic climate sucks, doesn't it? While I'm nowhere near broke there's some potentially large scale repair work that's going to be needed on the house soon so I'm having to watch the pennies which means cutting down on things. I'm trying not to get more ongoing comic series but then I see this: Ame-Comi Girls #1. I've heard that it's good fun which isn't surprising as it's written by Palmiotti and Gray of All-Star Western, Power Girl and Freedom Fighters among many others, so it's really tempting . . .

Monday Memories #1 - Preacher #37

Each Monday this year I'll be taking a look back at a random comic, prestige format issue, graphic novel or collection of reprints from amongst my 3,000 or so comics that date from 1962 to 2003 - I figured anything in the last ten years would be too recent to hark back to.

The comics are chosen completely at random and apart from a four week lead-in period, even I don't know what I'll be looking at in the weeks to come!

Who'd Like A Cocktail? #210

An extract from the Dr Arkham guide to picking up girls

Here Is The News

Or at least a bit of news with some rumours. I don't often do a round-up but as I found a bunch of things that caught my eye this morning, I figured it was as good a way as any to really start the New Year.

J.M. DeMatteis on the Phantom Stranger - thankfully this interview does confirm what I hoped for back before Christmas in that DeMatteis is doing the dialogue. He says "Dan does the plots, Brent draws from that and then I script from Brent's astonishing art." Honestly, Brent Anderson's art isn't doing much for me at the moment but with DeMatteis on the book I'll be sticking round for a bit longer.

Justice League film characters rumoured - the list is here but it doesn't really hold any surprises. There's mention that "Green Lantern: Will be Ryan Reynold's character from the Green Lantern movie, but will be freshly written with a more serious tone" but no word whether Reynolds will be returning to the role which I think is doubtful.

Poster for new Sin City: A Dame to Kill For film revealed - possible poster featuring one of the girls of Old Town is up here. With any luck, the new film will remind us enough of the original Sin City film that we can forget about The Spirit film.

Finally some news about Lady Mechanika - it's been absolutely ages since issues #3 was out and I'd just about given up on this series, even more so when I read the headline that creator Joe Benitez has parted from publisher Aspen Comics. However, the article says the split's amicable and Benitez himself says "My plans for Lady Mechanika include finishing "The Mystery of the Mechanical Corpse" this upcoming year and also launching a monthly Lady Mechanika ongoing series."

A monthly? I guess that means a new writer/artist on it then because as much as I love Benitez's work, there seems no way he can run to a monthly schedule.

Who Was Who Is Who Summary

Back last year, not long after the New 52 launched, I had the ridiculous idea to go through my old copies of Who's Who and attempt to predict who would appear in the new DCU in DC comics published in 2012.

I've compiled the full summary here (it may take a moment or two to load) which lists all the characters I made a prediction on along with whether or not I was right. The numbers, though, tally up as follows:

Prediction	Right	Wrong	Right	Wrong
Definitely	19	12	61%	39%	31
Possibly	34	63	35%	65%	97
Probably Not	79	12	87%	13%	91
Definitely Not	361	22	94%	6%	383
Totals	493	109	82%	18%	602

In the Definitely's - those I was convinced would appear - I was almost two thirds correct, a great result tempered only by the complete reversal of the Possibles where I had almost two thirds wrong. Those I was sure weren't going to appear, I did a lot better with; hardly surprising as most of the characters featured in the books were decades old second or third stringers who were passed their sell by date even in the early 80's when the books were first published.

Still, it was kinda fun and a big thank you to everyone who commented to let me know whether characters had appeared in titles I wasn't reading, but especially to Dave Sopko who kindly went through all the Legion characters for me and offered up predictions, and Martin Gray who left a note on most entries.

Tune in next Monday for another round of regular posts!