Quick reviews: Children's Crusade, Detective Comics, Xombi

Avengers: The Children's Crusade #6 (of 9)
Written by Allan Heinberg; pencils by Jim Cheung; Inks by Mark Morales, John Livesay, Dave Meikis; colours by Justin Ponsor; Marvel.

So for several issues now the Avengers have been in pursuit of the Young Avengers, who disobeyed their orders and set off on a quest to find and rescue Wanda Maximoff, aka the Scarlet Witch. Halfway through this issue, there's a scene where all the big guns, including Iron Man, Captain America, Wolverine and a bunch of other very important and powerful and angry characters, are shown rushing toward the scene where Wanda and the Young Avengers are. Tony tells Hawkeye, who's there with the Witch and the kids, to "Make sure they stay there, you hear me? No one leaves the compound. Do whatever you have to do." You'd think this was all leading to some big confrontation, right? But no. Two pages later, we're in a completely different location, an unspecified amount of time has passed, and we have no idea how any of the characters got there, why Hawkey let them leave, or what happened when the Avengers showed up and realized they'd rushed there for no reason. Absolutely zero pay off for all that build-up.

Why am I reading this book? It's an incredibly convoluted story that relies heavily on the reader's knowledge of Marvel continuity over the past decade or so, referencing stories like Avengers Disassembled, House of M, and God knows what else, none of which I've read. I seem to have picked the worst possible series for a total Marvel noob to pick up. As a result, this barely makes any sense to me and it's very difficult for me to care about what happens. The art is very pretty, so that helps a little, but I'm having a very hard time justifying why I've stuck with it for six issues (over 12 months). It almost seems silly for me to drop it after having gotten that far, but whatever. This is obviously not written for me.

DROP

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Detective Comics #878
Written by Scott Snyder; art by Jock; Colours by David Baron; DC.

I couldn't help but think of the old Adam West TV series as I was reading the opening scene of this comic. Batman is hanging upside down over a very angry killer whale, while the villains soliloquy about why they do what they do and what's going to happen to Batman now that he's tried to interfere with their plans. Classic (and a little ridiculous) superhero tropes, but thanks to Synder and Jock's perfect pacing and tone, it feels fresh and exciting. After the action-packed opener, which occupies the first 11 pages of the comic, we get a brief and quiet scene with James Gordon, then a visit to Sonia Branch (aka Zucco), and finally a two-page shocker that will send chills down your spine. I have to give a shout-out to colourist David Baron, who really captures the changing light as the day progresses - from the bright white backgrounds of the opening scene, to the warm sunset tones during Dick's meeting with James, to the purple night skies for the rooftop scene with Sonia - it really helps to show the passage of time, as well as to give each scene a distinct look and feel.

VERY GOOD

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Xombi #4
Written by John Rozum; art by Frazer Irving; DC.

This whole issue, up until the last few pages, is one big exposition dump. Maybe this is the comic Dan DiDio and company had in mind when they said that starting in September DC Comics would not feature any talking heads going on for page after page. (And John Irving literally draws them as floating disembodied talking heads!) I certainly hope not, because this is still a damn good comic. We've just had three issues of pretty crazy action, and this slower paced issue where the characters actually all sit together and have bagels and talk about what just happened and what they're going to do next feels exactly right. Rozum keeps the dialogue interesting with his weird sense of humour and throwaway high concepts that make you stop and think about all the stories that could be written about them ("pearls of wisdom collected from oysters grown in the Sea of Tears"), while Irving  pretty much blows your mind on every page with his expressive faces and unconventional use of colours. This is the best comic book that DC is publishing right now and I'm incredibly sad that it's apparently getting cancelled after only six issues to make way for DC's relaunch. Xombi hasn't been solicited as one of the 52 books coming out in September. When I asked Frazer Irving if there was a chance of the book coming back at a later date, he said he couldn't comment, which I took as a hopeful maybe. Fingers crossed.

AWESOME

Is It Wednesday Yet?

Back issue frenzy

I bought a few fills for my collection of Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight back issues last weekend. I've been trying to roughly the first half of the series - skipping over the Knightsquest/Knightsend crossover issues (#59-63) and stopping just before No Man's Land (#116). That's a total of 110 issues, of which I already have more than half. Most of these back issues are relatively easy to find and they tend to go for pretty cheap. The nice thing about this series is that the stories are all pretty much stand-alone and by different creative teams, so as long as you have complete stories you don't really need to read it in sequence. Over the next few weeks, I plan to read all the full stories that I have so far and review them here. I expect that there'll probably be some stinkers in there, but hopefully there will also be a few gems.

Those are not the only back issues I need to read. Since I got kind of fed up with Tim Drake as a character after reading Fabian Nicieza's take on him in Red Robin, I've put my Tim Drake from the Beginning series on hiatus, but I still have the first 100 issues of Robin in a short box waiting for me. I'll get to them eventually.

And something else I'm collecting: Walter Simonson's 26-issue Orion series. Those issues are somewhat more difficult to find, but I'm pretty sure I'll get a complete set sooner or later. I still have a few tricks up my sleeve, including the Montreal convention in September.

DC no longer "writing for the trade"

Among the many confusing and sometimes contradictory bits and pieces of info trickling down to the common folk from DC's retailer roadshow, one interesting message is that DC writers will no longer be asked to "write for the trade". I had an interesting conversation about it with Darryl Ayo on Twitter a couple of days ago, at the end of which I realized that I didn't fully understand what the expression means in the comics world. It also highlighted just how disconnected I am from the majority of mainstream comics fans.

To me, "writing for the trade" sounds like a good thing, almost a no-brainer, since it's obvious that trade collections have a longer shelf-life than single issues in today's market. They also have the potential to reach a much wider audience, since they end up on Amazon and in bookstores. Keeping in mind that a story is going to get collected in a single book and be sold as a separate, more or less standalone entity, just seems like good practice.

When DC talks about wanting to attract new readers, I find it very hard to imagine that those new readers are going to jump right into monthly comics. Honestly, the likelihood of that happening seems almost nil to me. Readers need to be eased into that market, and as I see it there are two potential "gateway drugs" to achieve this: trade paperbacks and (cheap) digital comics. I got into it through the former, but more and more I suspect that people will get into it through the latter.

But when non-regular comic readers pick up a trade paperback at a bookstore, they don't necessarily see it as a random collection of single issues from an ongoing series. They tend to think of it as a "graphic novel," so they expect a story that has a beginning and an end. The last thing you want to do is make that book so impenetrable that your potential new readers will be turned off by it and give up rather than keep reading (and buying) your comics. And that's why I think it makes sense to "write for the trade."

But as Darryl pointed out to me on Twitter (and as covered in the Robot 6 piece I linked to earlier), this is not what "writing for the trade" usually implies. Readers usually think of it as stretching out stories that could be told in 3 issues to fill a 6-issue arc. As such, "writing for the trade" is tied to the notion of "decompression," and under this light I can see why the news that DC is abandoning this practice would be received with cheers from fans.

Obviously, padding out stories with boring dialogue to fill a trade paperback sounds like a terrible idea. Still, I can't help but feel that DC is approaching the issue from the wrong angle. They stubbornly cling to the idea that the monthly comic book is the most important aspect of their business and that this is the area where they need to bring those hypothetical new readers. There must be some economical reasons behind this business strategy that I don't fully grasp, because it doesn't make much sense to me.

New comics this week! 

• American Vampire #16 (Vertigo)
• Batman Inc #7 (DC)
• Detective Comics #878 (DC)
• Flashpoint: Project Superman #1 (DC)
• Xombi #4 (DC)
• Butcher Baker #4 (Image)
• Super Dinosaur #3 (Image)
• Amazing Spider-Man #644 (Marvel)
• Avengers: Children's Crusade #6 (Mavel)
• FF #5 (Marvel)

 Those are the items on my pull list this week. A bit on the heavy side. I'm most excited for Xombi and 'Tec.

One-paragraph reviews: All Nighter, Flashpoint tie-ins, Gatest of Gotham, Silver Surfer

All Nighter #1 (of 5)
Created, written and drawn by David Hahn; Image.

This is the first thing I've ever read by David Hahn. It was completely off my radar until I saw a link to the free PDF download of the first issue of this mini-series on Hahn's website. I downloaded it and only read a few pages before I knew this was something I wanted to get. The best comparison I can think of is Love and Rockets, or at least what I imagine Love and Rockets to be, since I've never actually read it. Instead of reading this review, you should probably just go download it and check it out yourself.

GOOD

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Flashpoint: Kid Flash Lost #1 (of 3)
Written by Sterling Gates; pencils by Oliver Nome; inks by Trevor Scott; colours by Brian Buccellato; DC.

Kid Flash wakes up in a Matrix-style virtual reality prison in a nightmare futuristic version of Metropolis. He's lost his access to the speed force and needs to figure out what's going on and how to get back to the right timeline. There's not a whole lot to this, but it's enjoyable because Bart Allen is a character that I like and Sterling Gates writes him really well. Oliver Nome's style is functional more than it is impressive, but I really like the way he draws Bart's face (and especially his cute little button nose). I'm going to keep reading this, even if I'm not all that interested in Flashpoint anymore.

OKAY

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Flashpoint: The Outsider #1 (of 3)
Written by James Robinson; art by Javi Fernandez; colours by The Hories; DC.

As far as I can tell, The Outsider is one of the few totally new characters in Flashpoint. His name suggests a connection to the team formerly known as the Outsiders, but I really don't know enough about them to see any connection beyond that. Like with the Kid Flash issue, there's not a lot to go on in this issue. It mostly just establishes the character and his origin within the Flashpoint universe, then there's a fight that goes on for several pages. But it works because I like the character and want to find out more about him. James Robinson seems to have found the right voice for him and I can see how, outside the confines of a major comic book event tie-in, he could take him to some really interesting places. I hope this character will survive Flashpoint and that there's an ongoing by Robinson that has yet to be announced post-relaunch, as some have been speculating, because it's something that I would definitely read (in trades, probably).

OKAY

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Batman: Gates of Gotham #2 (of 5)
Story by Scott Snyder and Kyle Higgins; written by Kyle Higgins; art by Trevor McCarthy; colours by Guy Major; DC.

I liked this more than the first issue. Either the art has improved or I'm starting to warm up to McCarthy's style. But what really won me over was the way Kyle Higgins writes the scenes between the different bat kids. He nailed the interaction between Cassandra Cain and Damian Wayne. Damian tries to prove his superiority while pretending not to be impressed by Cass, but really it's clear that he's a little bit in awe of her or he wouldn't be so desperate for her approval. It's basically the same dynamic he had with Dick before they became BFFs, except that Cass is even more unfazed by him than Dick was. But while these two were my favourite, I just love the way Higgins has them all working together as a team. He writes these characters so well that it makes me wish he was working on a Bat Family title instead of Nightwing solo book in September. Although, based on this interview, it sounds like there'll be lots of guest appearances by the other kids in that book, so I'm hopeful. It's a shame that everyone's going to have super-ugly 90s retro costumes, though. Blargh.

GOOD

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Silver Surfer #5 (of 5)
Written by Greg Pak; pencils by Harvey Tolibao; inks by Sandu Florea; colours by Wil Quintana; Marvel.

This was a good, satisfying conclusion to a story that I've enjoyed tremendously, in spite of what I consider to be very ugly art. It's not technically incompetent art. It's just a style that I personally really dislike - way too busy for my tastes - and part of that might come from the colouring as well. Still worth reading for the story, though.

AWESOME (script) / POOR (art)

If I'd been in charge of the DC relaunch...

I've seen quite a few posts from bloggers trying to imagine what they would have done differently if they had been in charge of relaunching the entire DC line of books. In most of them, the author propose 52 titles they'd like to read (or think would sell well) with their dream creative teams.

I've give this a lot of thought myself, and I'd like to suggest something different. Had I been in charge of this relaunch, I wouldn't have done 52 new ongoings. Here's what I would have done:

1. Cancel every book except Action and Detective!

I still think it was a big mistake to renumber these two books. The appeal of these two classic titles is that they are a part of comic book history. There's something kind of magical about the fact that the book that featured the first-ever appearance of a superhero back in 1938 was still coming out on a monthly basis. The numbers approaching 1,000 was proof of that and a pretty big deal. The new #1s might boost the sales briefly, but not for long. In the end, it just doesn't seem worth it.

I would have kept Scott Snyder on Detective Comics. Snyder's current run is critically acclaimed and has just started, so it had the potential to build into an epic and classic run. I think he's actually the first writer to find the right tone for Dick as Batman, and his collaboration with artists Jock and Francesco Francavilla seemed like a match made in heaven, so I basically wouldn't have changed anything. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

And I would have gone with team of Morrison and Morales on Action Comics. If they have a bold new vision for the character, then let them go for it. I don't believe that the number on the cover makes that much of a difference - not with this creative team. People would've gone for it anyway.

2. Launch all the other new books as mini-series!

That's right. Every single new book would be a mini-series. With a beginning and an end. Similar to the way Hellboy or Atomic Robo get published. Hellboy doesn't follow any real pattern. Every issue is either a one-shot or a short mini-series. So new readers always know exactly where they can start picking it up. That's how I got on board. Atomic Robo does it a little differently. Each six-issue series is considered a "volume." You could also call it a "season" or whatever. Again, there's a sense of continuity from one mini-series to the next, but also a clear sense of where a story begins and ends, so new readers are always invited to come onboard.

The obvious advantage of this is the clear jump-on point for new readers, but the other more subtle advantage is that DC would NEVER HAVE TO CANCEL A BOOK AGAIN! If a series sells well, then they do another one with the same creative team or the same characters or whatever. If it doesn't sell, then they it just ends as planned and nobody ever speaks of it again. Cancelling books is bad publicity. It says: "We failed." It pisses off the fans who were buying it, because they feel like they made a commitment to a book that didn't go anywhere. None of this is even a consideration with mini-series.

3. Promise to stick to the same creative team for the duration of each mini-series!

There have been several reports that DC intends to keep the books on schedule and if necessary they plan to crack down on writers and artists who don't meet deadlines. THAT'S THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF WHAT I WANT TO HEAR! I know that late books are a pain in the ass. That's true for retailers and it's true for readers. But there's a very simple way to avoid delays: Give your creative teams enough lead time to get several issues in the can before you launch it.

This is another reason why the mini-series format makes sense, because for continuing books, it allows the team to take a break between "seasons." For example, if you solicit a six-issue mini-series, you simply wait for however many issues to be completed before it's safe to start putting them out monthly. Meanwhile, you either have the next creative team already planning the next mini-series, or you take a break after it's done until you have something ready for the next one. With enough mini-series being launched each month on a rotating basis, you'd always have enough books coming out. Everything would be on schedule and you wouldn't have to rely on fill-in artists.

Collecting these min-series in trades would also make more sense. People would know exactly which issues will end up in which collection. And in the end, you'd have collected books featuring self-contained stories, done by a single creative team, and which you can put in a bookstore for non-regular comics readers to pick up and feel like they're buying a "graphic novel." (Which is what most people think they're getting when they walk into a non-specialized comics store and head over to the "graphic novel" section.)

4. Don't launch 52 new title at the same time!

Yeah, I know it's a magic number in the DCU and it sounds impressive and radical and bold and important to launch all those books in the same month. But by doing so, DC is just setting up all the "little guys" to fail. It's great that characters like Mister Terrific and Static Shock are getting their own titles. A lot of us have been asking for this kind of diversity, and these are two characters who probably have enough of a fan following for a successful run. But when you're launching them in the same month as new Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman and Justice League #1's, these books have no chance of winning. Most readers - new and old - will go for the big titles, especially since those tend to be the ones that feature superstar artists and writers, and the rest will get cancelled due to disappointing sales. And then the next time someone asks, "Why don't you have more black superhero solo books?" DC will say, "Well, we tried, but nobody bought them." Stupid.

5. Fuck continuity!

You want to have a new Batgirl title with Barbara Gordon? Fine. Have one. It's only a mini-series, right? Just set it in the pre-Killing Joke days. Have it be self-contained. With Gail Simone writing it, fans of Barbara Gordon would have been ALL OVER THAT SHIT. Nobody would have felt like Oracle was being shelved. Everybody wins.

There's no reason why every series that comes out needs to be set in the present. We already have the Batman Beyond books that are set in the near future, and the Legion of Super-Hero books that are set in the distant future. Why not also have a line of books set in the recent past? Instead of replacing legacy heroes with the originals, why not just put out books that are set in the past and that feature the original characters? Are comic book fans so obsessed with the current status quo that they would refuse to buy books because they're set in a different time period? (Don't answer that. I don't want to know.)

*

I'm sure there are a million reasons why those suggestions don't make sense for DC's marketing point of view. Maybe none of my suggestions make any sense because they know something about the market that I don't know. Maybe I have too much faith in comic book fans in assuming that they'd be open to this different way of doing things.

I'd like to know what others think.

Is It Wednesday Yet?

My blog is experiencing a modest little boost in popularity right now, which I find very flattering and gratifying. Not that I'm reaching thousands of hits a day or anything (not even close), but it's nice to know that some people are reading, responding and linking to my posts.

So to all my new readers: welcome. And thank you. And please, keep posting comments. Also, consider following me on Twitter, where I also engage in a lot of comics-related discussions, with creators, fans and fellow bloggers alike. That's pretty much what the internet was made for, so you don't want to miss out, do you?

I wonder if it's going to be possible to keep the momentum when I shift my reading habits (and therefore also the focus of this blog) away from monthly superhero comics and toward indie and creator-owned comics in September. As a consumer, somehow who pays money for comic books, I'm pretty confident in my decision to jump off this bandwagon, but as a blogger/reviewer/writer-about-comics, I really wish that I could continue to be this involved in the serialized aspect of it all. Is this weekly  "Is It Wednesday Yet?" column even going to make sense anymore without all the super-hero comics on my pull list?

I also have to confess that I feel very intimidated by the idea of reviewing almost exclusively non-superhero comics. I keep wondering if I'll have anything smart to say about them. But that's probably just me being silly.

New comics this week!

• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Lost Adventures TPB (Dark Horse)
• Batman: Gates of Gotham #2 (of 5) (DC)
• Flashpoint: Kid Flash Lost #1 (of 3) (DC)
• Flashpoint: The Outsider #1 (of 3) (DC)
• All Nighter #1 (of 5) (Image)
• Sigil #4 (of 4) (Marvel)
• Silver Surfer #5 (of 5) (Marvel)

I'm a huge fan of the Avatar: The Last Airbender animated series, and aside from the free comic book in May, I haven't read any of the comics inspired by it, so I look forward to this collection. It might end up being a little too kid-oriented for my tastes, but I figure if that's the case I can probably just give it to my nephew in a few years when he's old enough to appreciate it.

I wasn't that excited by the first issue of the Gates of Gotham mini-series, and now that we know the DCU is going to implode in September, I have a hard time understanding how this is supposed to "set the stage for a bold new direction in the Bat books," as the August solicitation text claims. I know that most comic fans only seem to care about stories that "matter" in the overall continuity of the shared universe, but I'm the opposite: I want stories to be able to stand on their own and be satisfying without simply serving to "set the stage" for whatever comes next. (This is all part of my reasoning for why I'm dropping these books in September.) So now I don't really know if I should even bother reading this. I guess I'll give it another issue to convince me.

I wonder also why anybody would bother reading Brightest Day Aftermath: The Search for Swamp Thing, the first issue of which comes out on Wednesday. I didn't put it on my list, because it already seemed like pointless filler and even more so now that we know about the relaunch. I know DC keeps saying old stories are still in continuity, somehow, but I just can't wrap my head around how it's possible to have it both ways!

The two Flashpoint tie-ins I'm mostly just getting out of curiosity and because I decided to stick with this ridiculous event all the way to the end. Bart is one of my favourite characters, so that explains the Kid Flash book. I wasn't going to pick up the Outsider one at first, but based on Graeme McMillan's review at Savage Critics, it sounds like this is one of the better tie-ins, so I guess I'll give it a shot.

All Nighter #1 is available as a free PDF download on David Hahn's website. You should check it out, and then pick it up on Wednesday if you like it.

"You can't fire me because I quit"

In September, I'm going to stop buying monthly comic books from Marvel and DC. Yes, this decision was in part influenced by the DC relaunch. But there's more to it than that.

This is not a boycott

First, I want to make it clear that this is not a boycott. I'm not doing this out of spite or to punish DC or the direct market as a whole. I'm not angry or hurt or depressed about the recent announcements. I'm pretty sure that in September some of DC's new books will be good and some will be terrible. The majority of them will probably just be kind of mediocre. This is the way it has been since I started reading monthly comics (not that long ago) and I see no indication that it's about to change.

The one thing that is abundantly clear about the DC relaunch is that it's not all that it's cracked up to be. Underneath the superficial change (new costumes, younger characters, shuffled creative teams), it's going to be pretty much business as usual. There hasn't been a fundamental shift in the way DC approaches characters or stories. There's a lot of talk about attracting new readers, but I don't buy it. Putting Barbara Gordon in the Batgirl uniform, unmarrying Lois and Clark, putting a #1 on Action Comics, or trying to recreate the style and fashion sense of 1990s Image comics - nobody at DC (unless they are fucking idiots) can possibly believe that these things are going to attract new readers. Oh, sales might go up slightly, but it's going to be a blip on the radar as people who are already part of the Wednesday crowd decide to check things out, then quickly lose interest.

I think the problem with the way mainstream comics are conceived, produced and marketed is that DC and Marvel only ever seem to think about short-term sales boost. Everything they do, all their PR, all their event comics, all their big announcements, it's all designed to generate interest in what they are doing now, but there isn't really a sense that any thought going into building a long-term plan for that audience. And it also seems to rely on fans having a very short memory, because they keep using the same tricks over and over again and expect people to keep falling for them. But since the audience is shrinking rather than growing, one has to come to the conclusion that it's not working. People do, in fact, get tired of the same shit, and they move on to something else.

Existential crisis

This DC relaunch gave me a perfect opportunity for me to rethink my relationship with monthly comics. As a reader and as a consumer. And I came to the disturbing conclusion that I wasn't getting a lot of value for my money.

Think of it this way. I bought Chester Brown's graphic novel Paying for It last week. It's a nice little hardcover book, almost 300 pages, elegantly designed. It's written and drawn by a single author. It's about one thing. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. I knew exactly what I was getting when I decided to purchase it, and when I got home and sat down to read it, it was exactly what I expected.

I'm not saying anything about the quality of the book, whether I liked it or not, whether it was "good" or "bad." I'm just saying it is what it is. Nobody came to Chester Brown halfway through his book and said: "The next issue is going to be part of a crossover event with this and that comic. Try to fit that into your story somehow." The style of the drawings doesn't randomly change in the last chapters because they had to bring in a fill-in artist to finish it. No, this is the work of a single writer/artist, who had a vision, a story to tell, and he did it, and I bought it, and I read it.

This also happens with collaborations and books that are serialized. I have on my bookshelf Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth's Stumptown, for example, or Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson's Beasts of Burden. These books are satisfying to me. I don't get pissed off halfway through them because of stupid editorial decisions or unexpected shifts in creative teams. So it's not about having a single author, but about having a consistent creative team who share a vision and see it through to the end.

But superheroes are awesome!

On the other hand, superhero comics do have something that these other books don't have - namely, these characters that I know and love, who live in this vast shared universe and have been in publication for decades. That's true. And I do get something out of that that is different from what I get from other genres. But I never said I would stop reading superhero comics. I said I would stop buying monthly comic books from those companies.

There's a wealth of back issues available for me to explore. Some of them get collected in very nice hard cover editions and trade paperbacks. The ones that aren't are still usually available in back issues if you look for them hard enough. I have no intention to stop buying and reading those comics. I feel like it's easier to pick out the good stuff from the back catalogue. Because it's already finished and out there, so when you pick it up you know exactly what you're getting. No surprise, unsollicited fill-in artists.

Teen Titans #96 (consider this a review)

Consistency of creative teams is very important to me. Apparently, DC and Marvel think that this doesn't matter to most readers, and maybe they're right. But it matters to me and I just can't understand how people can put up with it. I've already complained about the train wreck that was the latest volume of Birds of Prey. Last week, I got another example of it when I picked up the latest issue of Teen Titans. I've been buying this book since the beginning of this creative team: J.T. Krul writing and Nicola Scott pencilling. I buy it for two reasons:

1. J.T. Krul has introduced a new character that I'm interested in - an Indian girl named Solstice.

2. Nicola Scott's art is beautiful.

We are currently right in the middle of a story arc. The Teen Titans are stuck in some kind of netherworld, trying to fight their way out of it. There are only two issues left (after last week's) and then not only does the story conclude but the series gets relaunched along with the rest of the DC Universe.

It's worth noting that Solstice, the character I am most interested in, and Nicola Scott, the artist whose art I love, are nowhere to be seen in September's relaunch. In spite of all the talk about diversity, somehow this young Indian woman who we were led to believe would be joining the Teen Titans got lost in the shuffle. And Nicola Scott's gorgeous art was replaced by the atrocious, painful-to-the-eyes ridiculousness of Brett Booth's 1990s Image-style craptacular costume redesigns, with all the superfluous straps, pouches, tattoos, and feathers you'd expect. How this makes ANY FUCKING SENSE WHATSOEVER is beyond me, but whatever. At least we have the last few issues of this story to look forward to, right?

Wrong.

Even though her name is on the cover of Teen Titans #96, Nicola Scott's art is absent from this comic book. I bought it thinking that I was going to get the next chapter in the story I've been following for several months by the same creative team, but that's not what I got. What I got was noticeably inferior art by a fill-in penciller and two fill-in inkers, whose names I won't bother mentioning because DC didn't even think they were worth putting on the cover.

Oh, was it a mistake? They forgot to update the cover? Was the cover already typeset by the time they realized that, in fact, Nicola Scott had not drawn and submited the 20 pages of art for this issue and they had to hire a new creative team and it all happened so fast nobody had time to change the cover? Or did they just let it slide knowing that a lot of people are buying this for Nicola Scott's art and that putting someone else's name on the cover might hurt the sales?

It doesn't matter. I don't care what the reasoning was. I don't care whose fault it is. The fact remains: I paid for something that I didn't want. I'm not interested in what they're doing with the Teen Titans in September. All I wanted was to get to the end of this story and have a few more issues of Nicola Scott's beautiful art to look at. Was that too much to ask?

Moving on

This kind of thing happens to me every week. Every single week, on Wednesday, I make my way over to the comic book store and I spend on average $30 on comic books. And every single time, at least one of those books pisses me off because of some unexpected fill-in artist or some other bullshit.

With that money, I could buy one or two graphic novels or collections. Wouldn't that make more sense? Wouldn't that be a better use of my money?

UPDATE/CLARIFICATION: Since I posted this, I've noticed a few people seemed to miss an important nuance. When I say I won't be buying monthly comics in September, I'm talking about mainline Marvel and DC only. I don't think the same problems apply to creator-owned works. Sweet Tooth, for example, doesn't get subjected to cross-over events or fill-in artists... unless Jeff Lemire specifically wants to let other people contribute to his story, as he did with the issues that featured Matt Kindt and others doing short stories. So with comics on Vertigo, Image, etc., there's less chances of being screwed over by editorial decisions.

Is It Wednesday Yet?

Okay, I have a lot of stuff I want to talk about right but very little time to get into any of it. So I'm just going to dump this list here and hopefully have time this evening to write a bit more about the DC relaunch and a few other things that have been on my mind lately.

New comics this week!

• Batgirl #22 (DC)
• Supergirl #65 (DC)
• Teen Titans #96 (DC)
• Northlanders #41 (Vertigo)
• Godzilla: Gangsters & Goliaths #1 (of 5) (IDW)
• Gladstone's School for World Conquerors #2 (Image)

These are the last few issues of Batgirl as we know it by Bryan Q. Miller. So sad.

Supergirl is the start of a three-issue arc written by Kelly Sue DeConnick. Like everything else at DC, this title gets rebooted in September, but that doesn't mean this can't be a good stand-alone arc worth reading.

Teen Titans is continuing J.T. Krul and Nicola Scott's story, and this is another title that will definitely become unreadable in September, so enjoy it while it lasts. I wonder what the point of introducing Solstice as a new character in this story was if she gets erased at the end of it.

Northlanders is getting cancelled with #50, so that's another "enjoy it while it lasts" recommendation.