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?

Who'd Like A Cocktail? #170

You have no idea how many times I've said that to my wife.

Who'd Like A Cocktail? #168

Somehow, I can't see Batman ever saying that.

Global Guardians #3 - Our European Cousins

For the next few weeks, I'm going to be running through the DCU appearances of the Global Guardians post-Crisis, pre-Flashpoint (or at least all the appearances I have) and wonder why they never had a title of their own and find out where they are now. Or were, pre-Flashpoint.

After the events shown in last week's instalment, Jack O'Lantern and Owlwoman are seen safely ensconced as part of the Queen Bee's retinue following her usurping of the Bialyan throne. The Justice League, helpless in the face of her overwhelming support from the Bialyan people, leave with their tail between their legs.

Not long after that, Invasion! takes place where various alien races band together with the Dominators to try and take over the Earth. At the end of that, a decision's made to increase the scope of the League's activities and Justice League Europe is created, based in Paris which, you may remember, also houses the Dome, home of the Global Guardians.

Global Guardians #2 - Moving On

For the next few weeks, I'm going to be running through the DCU appearances of the Global Guardians post-Crisis, pre-Flashpoint (or at least all the appearances I have) and wonder why they never had a title of their own and where they are now.

Following the events of Legends, the Justice League was revitalised (to say the least) and from its beginnings as simply a new version of the JLA, was transformed into a United Nations sponsored world-wide group of superheroes with embassies in most major countries.

Thing is, there was already a group with the same mandate, one which had a more international membership than the fledgling JLA/I. Sure, the League had a more interplanetary membership (with J'onn J'onzz and Mr Miracle) but the Global Guardians were already in place and as we saw last week, represented more of the globe than the League.

Still, politics being what they are, with the UN sanctioning the League, there was no need for the Guardians.

Justice League International #9 featured the first of several back-up appearances of the Guardians as they dealt with the closure of the Dome and while some, such as Belphegor and Dr Mist were quite philosophical about the affair, the Irish hero Jack O'Lantern was definitely not.

Who'd Like A Cocktail? #161

Come on, Godiva, most of us would kill to be in space. Some of us have . . .

Who'd Like A Cocktail? #157

Uh-huh . . . that's how to start a story, alright.

Too Clever For My Own Good

I really wish I hadn't made the post about that damn picture - it keeps skewing my traffic results. Look at the top keywords that brought people to the blog over the last week:

And is it just me or does anyone else wonder why someone's searching for "guy gardner in ice" or, indeed, "ice in guy gardner"?

What sort of blog do you people think I'm running here?

Who'd Like A Cocktail? #153

Adam shows he's not best at forward planning.

Jurgens League #6 - Blood Secrets

And here we go again, casting our eyes back over an older incarnation of the Justice League, this time from the early 90's when Dan Jurgens was in charge. With that in mind, I had to call this the

JUSTICE LEAGUE AMERICA #76 - #77 - written by Dan Jurgens with art by Dan Jurgens and Rick Burchett.

Who'd Like A Cocktail? #149

Adam One's a bit thirsty at the dawn of time.

Jurgens League #4 - Doomsday!

And here we go again, casting our eyes back over an older incarnation of the Justice League, this time from the early 90's when Dan Jurgens was in charge. With that in mind, I had to call this the

JUSTICE LEAGUE AMERICA #69 - 71, written by Dan Jurgens with art by Dan Jurgens, Sal Velluto and Rick Burchett.

Jurgens League #3 - Atom And Aliens

And here we go again, casting our eyes back over an older incarnation of the Justice League, this time from the early 90's when Dan Jurgens was in charge. With that in mind, I had to call this the

JUSTICE LEAGUE AMERICA #66 - 68, written by Dan Jurgens with art by Jurgens, Rick Burchett and Jose Marzan Jr.

Jurgens League #2 - Starbreaker

And here we go again, casting our eyes back over an older incarnation of the Justice League, this time from the early 90's when Dan Jurgens was in charge. With that in mind, I had to call this the

JUSTICE LEAGUE AMERICA #63 - 65, written by Dan Jurgens with art by Jurgens and Rick Burchett.

Despite Superman's protests, Max Lord still has a hand in the League's business and after defeating the Weapons Master (see last week's entry) Lord does a deal with the UN which gets the team their own, brand new building right next to that of the UN.

Jurgens League #1 - A Spectacular Rebirth

And here we go again, casting our eyes back over an older incarnation of the Justice League, this time from the early 90's when Dan Jurgens was in charge. With that in mind, I had to call this the

JUSTICE LEAGUE SPECTACULAR #1 - written by Dan Jurgens and Gerard Jones with art by Dan Jurgens, Ron Randall, Rick Burchett and Randy Elliott.


JUSTICE LEAGUE AMERICA #61 - #62 - written by Dan Jurgens with art by Dan Jurgens, Rick Burchett and Jackson 'Butch' Guice.

Before we delve into the issues, a quick bit of background as to how we got here. The Giffen / DeMatteis (and Jones) runs on Justice League America and Justice League Europe came to an end with the Breakdowns storyline which saw both branches of the League dissolve after facing various foes. The one-off Justice League Spectacular featured new writers Dan Jurgens, who would take over the American branch, and Gerard Jones who was now writing the European team without Giffen.

Who'd Like A Cocktail? #145

Booster Gold shows he has limits.

Cherry Picking Canon

Erin over at Exploring The Time Lab posted a simple yet interesting question the other day:

"What would you change or keep in canon if you were in charge of the DCnU?"

She has her own ideas, most of which I agree with (particularly "Countdown never happened. Countdown happened for no one.") and it got me to thinking about my own choices.

First, I'd keep everything pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths. Even the really weird stuff because by keeping all of that, we get to keep this:

Yep - Crisis... itself. It's a great story and one of my all time faves. You keep Crisis... and you can then get to keep the good stuff that came out of it, principally the revamps of Batman and Superman. But you also get to keep Power Girl (as survivor of Earth-2 - the Arion stuff never happened) and Helena Bertinelli's Huntress which then leads into Birds of Prey which is well worth keeping.

I'm happy with keeping Infinite Crisis as it does form a good sequel to the original, but we can lose both Identity Crisis and Final Crisis from my new DCU. Keeping Infinite Crisis allows us to keep Villains United which means we keep Secret Six so all's well and good there.

I'd keep the Justice Society and, in general, keep most of the legacy heroes as well - Ryan Choi's Atom, Mia Dearden's Speedy, Conner Hawke's Green Arrow and Jaime Reyes's Blue Beetle off the top of my head.

52 would remain canon as well because I like having a multiverse, dammit, though Grant Morrison would not get to keep it all to himself and his long-touted yet never appearing Multiversity which, I suspect, will do for the multiverse what the original Crisis... did to Hawkman: make it so toxic no-one will approach it for years.

Oh and Ice has her original origin restored, though that should go without saying.

Open Letter To Dan Jurgens

Dear Mr Jurgens

I appreciate you're probably really busy at the moment so I'll keep this nice and brief.

As you're the writer for the new Justice League International book that's coming out with the DC relaunch and able to affect or rewrite any continuity that's gone before, could I ask a simple, small favour?

Could we please get rid of this Ice:

and have this one back, please?

Thanks very much.

Gary

Good News, Everyone!

Following the big announcement about the DCU reboot, we're getting more details as the time goes one. Just read this over at the DCU blog:

"A team of internationally-drafted superheroes fight each other and their bureaucratic supervisors as much as they do global crime in JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL #1 from writer Dan Jurgens and artist Aaron Lopresti. The cover to issue #1 is by Aaron Lopresti."

And here's the cover:

"Part Of Some Larger Purpose"

Justice League: Generation Lost finished up last week with a relatively satisfying end, at least from the point of view of a new Justice League International book being confirmed. Sure it would have been nice to have Max Lord brought to justice but the new team's going to need a bad guy to fight and he's the perfect candidate.

But one thing's still niggling at me and long time readers will probably be able to guess what it is while they stifle a groan: Ice's ret-conned origin. In #12 of Gen Lost, Winick revealed that Ice's whole background was a lie she had created to replace the supressed memory of her accidentally killing her father which I talked about at length here. And here.

In an interview with Comic Book Resources, Winick stated:

"As much as folks think we're doing it for shock value, nothing we did in the story was for shock value. In my opinion, everything that's done builds upon other things. The Creature Commandos don't show up just because I think they're cool, they show up because they are part of some larger purpose."

See that? Everything that was done in the series was done to "builds upon other things" which of course includes Ice's ret-conned origin. This leads me to ask what was the purpose for the ret-con? What built upon it or what did it build upon?

I probably have too much time on my hands, but I'd like to try and find out.