It's that time again! As we reach the end of summer, we're also passing DC's established trade paperback solicitations, so let the hints and guessing begin. Here's some tidbits:
The big headline is a book called
Aquaman: Death of the Prince with art by Jim Aparo. Indeed, Aparo drew
Adventure Comics #452 where Aquaman's son died, and given the attention that event received in
Blackest Night, at least, it's probably overdue to be collected. This is listed as a paperback, but the price suggests we might see a hardcover.
It may be somewhat ghastly, but if DC's publishing this, I dare say another story deserving of collection is the issues around the death of Green Lantern Katma Tui ...
Additionally, there's some Bat-books to report. David Hine's four-part
Detective Comics story (collecting #867-870) arrives in
Batman: Imposters (with art by Scott McDaniel);
Batgirl: The Flood picks up with issue #9 after
Red Robin: Collision and goes at least to issue #12 (though I'm hoping it's #14). The next Paul Dini
Streets of Gotham trade is
House of Hush, starting with issue #12 (is Paul Dini rocking this series? Should I be reading it?); also, if you've been waiting for the paperback, Judd Winick's
Batman: Long Shadows makes its debut in May.
That's all for now, but my guess is that it's the start of plenty more to follow.
Streets of Gotham is terrible.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad they are looking into Aquaman again. Hopefully they'll collect the short Dan Jurgens run into a nice hardcover, but I'm not getting my hopes up. I'm guessing this is another hint that Aquaman will be returning to Adventure Comics in the near future.
Yes, Paul Dini is rocking it. The first two volumes are amazing, and House of Hush is shaping up to be defining.
ReplyDeleteOne vote for Streets of Gotham, one vote against; on the Facebook page, Zach and Greg are both singing Streets' praises. Anyone else following that series?
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad DC is bringing relevant old storylines like the death of Aquaman's son back into print. There's more that deserves this: the death of Katma Tui, Infinity Inc., the last days of the Justice Society, the new post-Crisis origin of Jason Todd ...
Death of the Prince is probably a hardcover in that line of classics like Viking Prince, The Creeper, Kirby stuff, and Adventures of Superboy. I love those things. I really want to see Kamandi and Hercules Unbound in that format.
ReplyDeleteWhere are you seeing these solicitations?
Also, don't look for consistency in Streets of Gotham. Dini is in and out, not sure why. The problem is that he's usually solicited for the issues, and it ends up being written by someone else.
ReplyDeleteI have liked those classic hardcovers (though I believe there was some controversy over the paper quality). The over-sized Legion: Great Darkness Saga (including previously uncollected issues) is another good examples.
ReplyDeleteYou should see these books listed with all the major retail sites by now.
(on The Great Darkness Saga)
ReplyDeleteGrand of them to get to reprinting that. It's a crime that that was EVER out of print.
DC confounds me all the time with their collected editions. There are so many glaring omissions from their collections, some of their best runs ever are not collected in any format, others out of print for years. Levitz/Giffen's Legion of Super-Heroes run; Wolfman/Perez's New Teen Titans is only in that expensive Archives format, and I'm pretty sure it's out of print; Suicide Squad took over twenty years to be reprinted, and we might not even see the entire volume get done; Ostrander's Spectre; I could go on forever! DC, put out the good stuff! I want to buy it!
Absolutely. We could go on even just about Legion collections alone -- the entire five-year later run, for one, and Legion Lost for another.
ReplyDeleteIt would seem to me the release of Teen Titans: Games would be the perfect time for a New Titans omnibus series ...
For a while it seemed the only older Legion storyarcs that were collected, other than the ones in the Showcase Presents edition, were those written by Paul Levitz. I guess it pays to be the publisher.
ReplyDeleteEven though we are two version of the LSH removed, I would love to see a collection of the Abbett/Lanning run.
Ok so Batman imposters HC/TPB will collect dectective comics 867 to 870, but any word on a collection of 861 to 866 which are the issues BETWEEN batwoman elergy and imposters??
ReplyDeleteFrom my side Streets of gotham is good, but actually also really enjoying gotham city sirens which i didnt think i would. My biggest worry is the sheer number of batman books that will be on the shelf by the end of the year.. its too much.
Till now I have very much liked streets of gotham though it is very disturbing that dini does not write all the issues.
ReplyDeleteI have a question concerning another subject:
I am a fan of the Justice League International and I am thinking about buying the trades: Formerly Known as the justice league AND I Can't Believe It's Not the Justice League.
However I would first like to know what kind of paper is used in these trades. I hope its not newsprint! Thanks in advance for the answer.
Re: Streets of Gotham
ReplyDeleteIt's a bit, meh, to be honest. I was really looking forward to it, but the problem was the trade got off to a slow start. Hopefully the second volume is somewhat stronger. As noted above, Dini drifts in and out and I'm not sure what it's meant to be. Is it a series of vignettes from Gotham, or just an impersonal Batman story that doesn't focus on the life outside the cowl?
I am looking forward to House of Hush, though.
I have both of those "post-JLI" trades and they are not on newsprint, it's the same paper as all of the other DC trade paperbacks from the last few years.
ReplyDelete@ D.Mark Simms: thanks alot for the quick answer. I'll be buying those then.
ReplyDeleteDetective Comics #861-863 was the last Greg Rucka/Batwoman story, "Cutter," and I'm sincerely hoping we'll see it collected in the next Batwoman trade (with issues of JH Williams's new series); it'll be sad if those issues don't make the cut.
ReplyDeleteDetective #864-865 by David Hine are in his Batman: Arkham Reborn collection with the miniseries of the same name.
Detective #866 was a one-shot issue by Dennis O'Neil published at the same time as Batman #700; my hope is that it makes it into the Batman: Time and the Batman collection.
Dini's Streets of Gotham has been uneven; fill-in writer after fill-in writer has hurt the book, but he's setting up Hush's plan for an interesting turn in the next few months.
ReplyDeleteI think James echoes what I'm hearing to be a general consensus: Dini's doing A-OK, it's just the bevvy of fill-ins and delays in returning to Dini's main plot that's the drag. I wonder if that's helped by the collections, where one gets a dose of Dini with the others.
ReplyDeleteRegarding Streets of Gotham:
ReplyDeleteThese fill-ins aren't that bad. The two parter by Chris Yost was okay and I liked the two parter by Mike Benson. And up until issue #14, all the main stories were drawn by Dustin Nguyen, so that helped the consistency.
I think the problem is the timing of this fill-ins (disrupting Dini's stories) and the frequency of them, most notably when they aren't even announced (like #15).
That said, even Dini's last story, the carpenter's tale, didn't knock my socks off. But I'm still looking forward for him to finish his story about Hush, hopefully soon.
Also I find it a little disturbing, that all the Batman titles are getting so much attention right now with the creative changes in November, but DC always seem to forget to mention Streets of Gotham. Have I missed a cancellation announcement or something?
Another new book listed on Amazon is Joe the Barbarian deluxe edition. Even new Vertigo books are doing it now, dammit.
ReplyDeleteI do seem to remember that after the Batman issues penned by Morrison,there was a 2 part "Last days of Gotham" arc by O'Neil in both 'Tec & Batman,same as the Dini/Nguyen 2 parter featuring Catwoman & hush after Heart of Hush. I'm hoping the issue you mention concurrent to Batman 700 would be collected with the "Last Days of Gotham" arc, and with all the Dini HCs around,have the 2 Dini issues been collected in any of the Streets of Gotham or Gotham City Sirens HCs?
ReplyDeleteDini's TEC #852 and Bat #685 have been collected in the Treets of Gotham HC #1 Hush Money. See http://comicbookdb.com/issue.php?ID=200371
ReplyDelete"Last Days of Gotham" was a post-Batman RIP story by Dennis O'Neil in Batman #684 and Detective Comics #851, which I don't believe has been collected nor am I expecting it will be; the two-part story that immediately following in Detective #852 and Batman #685 was by Paul Dini as Spooky said, and is in the first Streets of Gotham collection.
ReplyDeleteThe issue I'm hoping will be in Time and the Batman was Detective #866, also by O'Neil, published about the same time as Batman #700.
I remember that one. That was a nice story with Joker & inventive art by Nguyen. I hope it gets collected somewhere. At least the Solicit for Time and the Batman doesn't say so. I'm HOPING it doesn't appear there, rather with THE LAST DAYS OF GOTHAM in another collection. I don't know how high O'Neil popularity is now, because if it is,I'm again hoping we see a reprint of his original classics like SHAMAN & VENOM.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, in another solicit post you had said that it seemed, Dc has skipped the Joe Casey arc in SUPERMAN/BATMAN & decided to go ahead with Levitz WORSHIP,I see something called BIG NOISE with Joe Casey & Ardian Syaf due Dec 14
Big Noise is apparently a collection of the Casey story. From what I heard, it wasn't exactly good though. I cherry pick S/B collections based on what interests me or sounds good - which is why I skipped everything between the end of Loebs run and Search for Kryptonite - and as such Big Noise is the first collection in a while I'm just going to straight up skip. It'll probably be the only one for a while though, thankfully. The Levitz stuff sounds cool and the stuff from #76 on is looking even cooler.
ReplyDeleteSo they're not going out of order -- Big Noise will come out, then Worship; but starting with Big Noise, Superman/Batman goes to paperback. Hmm ... I have all the S/B hardcovers from the beginning, but I'm not too keen on picking up Big Noise, either, and as long as they're breaking up the set format-wise anyway, I might just cherry-pick too.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised they stuck with the hardcovers as long as they did. On the other hand, I'm also surprised t the relatively consistent quality of the series. Out of all the trades of material from the series put out, there aren't a lot of stinkers. Superman/Batman seems to be pretty dependable.
ReplyDeleteReally looking forward to Worship; #75 sounds great and they included the damn annual for once.