Geoff Johns should totally write Solomon Kane for Dark Horse.

Why's he always trying to sneak gore and ultra-violence into superhero comics Green Lantern and Aquaman when he could be writing comics where that stuff not only belongs, but can even be commonplace...?

The latest news from the Oh My God Geoff Johns Comics Are Crazy Violent! beat

Here's a scene from DC Comics' Green Lantern #7, written by Geoff Johns, penciled by Doug Mahnke and inked by Mahnke or one of the other three guys who inked this particular issue.

For context, Green Lantern Sinestro has been imprisoned by the mysterious, purple energy-wielding band of aliens known as the Indigo Tribe. One of their members attempts to "cleanse" Sinestro of his green energy by generating some purple, glowing tentacles to grow all over Sinestro, which is the "violation" Sinestro is shouting about (not the other kind of violation that is sometimes screamed about in prison cells before, after or during acts of violence).

Sinestro responds by fighting off the tentacles, laser-beaming the Indigo Tribesman and then...

...repeatedly ramming his head against the metal bars of the prison cell until his skull caves in with a  "KRATCH" and gore showers Sinestro's face.

Green Lantern is rated "T/Teen," which, in DC's rating guidelines, means “Appropriate for readers age 12 and older. May contain mild violence, language and/or suggestive themes.”

That, then, is mild violence. Can you imagine regular violence, let alone extreme or hardcore violence? I'm at a bit of a loss myself, trying to think of a way that scene could have been made more violent.

I guess it could have gone on for another four to eight panels, and I suppose Mahnke could have drawn the final, head-collapsing panel in a slightly longer shot, so we could the victim's face and thus better assess the extent of the damage. 

DC has two ratings higher than "T." There's "T+/Teen Plus," which is "appropriate for readers age 16 and older" and "may contain moderate violence, mild profanity, graphic imagery and/or suggestive themes, and "M/Mature," which is appropriate for readers age 18 and older," and "may containe intense violence, extensive profanity, nudity, sexual themes and other content suitable only for older readers."

I realize that the system is set up mostly for cover, and that each book is assigned a particular rating that never changes from issue to issue ("Johnny DC" books are E, Vertigo are M, and DCU books are either T or T+), and that it is highly unlikely that anyone edits the books along those guidelines and forces changes to script or art based on whether or not the amount of violence exceeds that which the rating says is acceptable (and, if they do, cheif creative officer Geoff Johns is probably exempt).

Nevertheless, it's strange to read a scene like the one above and see how it's classified as "mild violence" instead of "moderate violence" or "intense violence." Maybe moderate and/or intense violence in superhero comics is as hard to define as pornography, a sort of "I'll know it when I see it" thing that different readers judge differently, but if DC really thinks the above scene is merely mild violence, I shudder to think of what their idea of intense violence might look like.

This concludes this the 456th installment of a 9,000,000-part series about how remarkably violent Geoff Johns' DC superhero comics are.

If this is Brightest Day, can you imagine what a dark one might look like?

Comic shop comics (April 7th-14th)

Batman and Robin #11 (DC Comics) The last page reveal of the classic DC villain that Talia has brought in to “steer” her son Damian in deadly combat against Batman Dick Grayson via remote control was a real shock. Not because the character hasn’t been seen in so long, but because he’s become so ubiquitous and over-used in almost every DCU book (Hell, he even regularly appears in Tiny Titans!) that I was honestly flabbergasted to see Grant Morrison use him at all.

Given how few and far between the Bat-villains that Morrison didn’t personally make up have appeared during this run, it’s honestly awfully weird to see that guy here.

This is the middle issue of the current three-issue arc, and as such, it’s fairly uneventful. Dick Grayson continues to explore the mysterious caves beneath the Batcave while puzzling out the secret history of The Waynes and bat-men, while Damian and Sexton beat up some dudes in the grave yard.

The Andy Clarke/Scott Hanna art team remains quite competent, if never quite jaw-dropping. They’re head and shoulders above Philip Tan and Tony Daniel, but not quite up there with Frank Quitely or Cameron Stewart.


Brightest Day #0 (DC) Well this is a very unusual strategy to pursue for a zero issue that kicks off both a 26-issue biweekly series and story arcs in seven different ongoing titles: Trying to talk readers out of reading any of those comics.

Here’s the very first page, which includes a recreation of one of the saddest things most children experience, a sad thing that often constitutes a child’s first experience with death:
Aw, a baby bird falling out of its nest! And because this is a DC comic book, and because it’s a Geoff Johns-written DC comic book, the baby bird just can’t fall to its death, it must also be a bloody death.
That there is a lot of baby bird blood.

Sure, the newly resurrected Boston Brand uses the white lantern ring he’s still wearing to bring the bird back to life, so there’s not reason to, like, mourn the fictional baby bird or anything, but jeez, who wants to to read page two of a comic book like that?

The next 46-pages aren’t a whole lot better.

Writers Johns and Peter J. Tomasi spend a few pages with Boston Brand narrating in a grave yard before he embarks on his new role, which instead of floating around invisible to the world at the behest of a mysterious but benevolent god-like being now involves him, um, floating around invisible to the world at the behest of a different mysterious but benevolent god-like being. (So far, anyway).

From there, the pair check in with each of the 12 resurectees from Blackest Night #8, essentially just setting up plot lines that will be followed in Brightest Day and the other six books given full-page house ads at the end of this issue (This is a pretty great value though; 47, ad-free story pages, followed by hosue ads after the story ends).

Some of these look more intriguing and entertaining to me than others, and I suppose a lot of that will depend on one’s affection for the characters. The fact that Martian Manhunter J’onn J’onnz is planning to bring life back to Mars, for example, sounds interesting to me, perhaps partially because I like the character so much and partially because I haven’t read that story before, but the ‘90s Hawk and Dove having the same conversation they always have for three pages? Hawkman and Hawkwoman talking about how much they love each other? Osiris, who is essentially Black Adam Jr., promising to do the same thing Black Adam’s done in a couple of storylines already?

I’m having a hard time working up any enthusiasm, and I found myself much more curious about how Captain Boomerang got put in prison for crimes he committed in a past life (Surely a good lawyer could have got him off?) or what kind of paperwork the Justice League anted Ronnie Raymond to fill out to prove he was still alive.

It doesn’t help that the book is entirely set-up, which in most cases involves a lot of sitting around (Or standing or flying around) talking, and however great Johns’ plotting abilities may be, he writes simply awful dialogue.

The art by pencil artist Fernando Pasarin and other inkers is serviceable but unremarkable, and it sure shames that of ballyhooed cover artist David Finch. Why was DC so excited about singing an exculsive contract with the cover artist? He can’t even give Maxwell Lord two arms or roughly similar sizes.

Despite the fact that I don’t think this was a very good comic, it’s a better one than the comprable event/branding kick-offs of Countdown to Infinite Crisis #1 or Brave New World #1, and it’s made pretty clear that at least half fo the plot lines introduced here will continue in books other than the Brightest Day series, with the ads and a stiched together splash page showing different characters by different artists indicating what characters will appear where.

This may not be a very good comic, but it’s not so horrible one that it’s convinced me not to read Brightest Day #1. I could swear Johns and Tomasi were trying to do just that, though.


King City #7 (Image Comics) This, on the other hand, is a very good comic. Writer/artist Brandon Graham finally has new material from his planned King City epic published, after Image spent the last six issue re-releasing material from the Tokyopop-published King City Vol. 1 trade digest as extra-tall, extra-wide, more Golden Age-dimensioned serial comic books.

We get a flashback to Joe the Cat Master’s training we see his cat Earthling as a kitten (Kawaii!) and we watch the pair on their latest weird job, which includes several strange uses for a weaponized cat and lot of fun word image puns.

I love this comic.

Hey Kids! Com--Aw, nevermind, that joke's not even funny any more, is it?

So this is probably the goriest image I saw this week's new super-books (at least the ones I read).

I know I often complain about how incredibly gory Marvel and DC books can be these days, but I don't necessarily think this panel from Green Lantern #37 is that bad. At least in context.

Sure, it's hard to imagine every parent who found their kid reading a book like this being pleased about it, but not any harder than it is to imagine a kid reading a book like this in the first place (I could be completely wrong about this, since I know so few actual children, but it seems to be that kids regard John Stewart as Green Lantern, whereas only us old people know/like/care about Hal Jordan...those four or five episodes of The Batman notwithstanding).

This is part of the "Rage of the Red Lanterns" story arc, and the Red Lanterns are men, women and weird aliens who wear special magic rings which take over their bodies, forcing them to vomit up all of their own blood, and then replaces it with new blood that the ring itself creates and pumps. The Red Lanterns projectile vomit this magic hate blood, which burns like napalm.

This issue, about the blood-vomiting Red Lanterns, takes place on their home planet, a world covered in oceans of blood. So a panel of a Red Lantern getting blasted open by an energy beam? Not all that out of place. Complaining about it seems a little like complaining about all the stabbings in a slasher flick (Although I suppose a historic argument could be made that perhaps Green Lantern shouldn't have reached a point where it can even be compared to a slasher flick, but I'm not going to make it).

But I do have a bone to pick with this image, which was drawn by Ivan Reis, Oclair Albert and our Julio Ferreira, and colored by Nei Ruffino.

As I stated before, the Red Lanterns' rings completely purge their wielders/hosts of their own blood, and replace it with this viscous, red, napalm-y stuff they puke out (See this issue's charming cover, for an example).

So this poor purple lady getting killed in this image, the only blood she should have in her body would be the red stuff, not whatever color purple space lady blood is. (Is that fuchsia? Hot pink? Puce?)

And yet, in this very gory panel, in which we see a veritable geyser of gore gushing from her wound, her blood is very clearly this pinkish-purplish colored stuff, not the same red stuff that is spewing from her mouth.

Did DC decide to color her blood purplish because the panel looked just way too over the top violent with red blood, as everyone knows alien blood isn't as gross as human blood? Does the yellow light of Sinestro's power ring shining on her blood make it look a lighter, brighter color? Or did Sinestro's ring beam, rather than simply exploding through her like a missile, liquefy her purple body as it passed through and HOLY SHIT WHY AM I EVEN THINKING ABOUT THIS STUFF?!

From the Pages of 52

Ready for the second round of the Official EDILW 52 Post-Game Armchair Editing? You know I am!

In this installment, we're going to take a look at how DC could best capitalize on the success of 52, both creatively and commercially. So we'll be breaking spin-offs into three categories: The comics that DC has already announced, the ones they should announce, and the ones they shouldn't announce.

Each series, be it imminent or hypothetical, will be followed by two scores, with the first number designating the project's creative potential on a scale of one to ten (with one being World War III and ten being All-Star Superman), and the second number designating the project's commercial potential (with a one being Manhunter and a 10 being Justice).



Comics That DC Has Already Announced:







BLACK ADAM

There's no question that 52 (and Geoff Johns' JSA run before it) made a star out of Captain Marvel's evil double, so finally giving him a book of his own to star in was a no-brainer. It's somewhat odd to see it coming so soon after the end of 52 though, since he was given a rather elegant send-off into limbo (not the bit with the boots, but the end of #50, where he's left wandering the world guessing his new magic word).

Re-powering him in the near future should probve problematic (dude is up there with Hitler in terms of bodycount now, right?), although his series could very well focus on his past, or, even more interestingly, as his presnet stuck in Teth-Adam form. Can DC resist temptation and keep him a powerless human being throughout an entire series? It will be interesting to see. Writer Peter Tomasi's Light Brigade was a very good series, penciller Dough Mahnke is an incredible talent, able to handle quiet emotion even better than big supehero brawls (which he does quite well, as his run on JLA proved), and inker Christian Alamy rules the school, on both pencils and inks. 7/10









BOOSTER GOLD

Now this is something of a surprise, even though I didn't really believe that Booster had died way back in Week 15, and he was long my prime suspect for Supernova. But on the list entitled DC Characters That Are Capable of Carrying Their Own Monthly In Today's Market, I'd suspect Booster Gold to be somewhere between Martian Manhunter and Space Cabby (Fercrisakes, I can barely take his name as the name of a superhero seriously, let alone as a title of a good comic book, and I love the lug). Nevertheless, the very last issue of 52 seems to have given his book a neat premise, even neater than the time-travel focus that was mentioned when it was first announced (which would have made it like the ill-fated but excellent series Chronos), since it now seems he'll be exploring the new, economy sized multiverse (which would make it more like Exiles, I guess).

Plus, he's got a cast including Supernova, Rip Hunter and Skeets, so that's something (now just add a Ted Kord to the mix—shouldn't be too hard to save him from death using time travel a la Marvel's Captain Marvel and a few dozen other super-characters I can think of—and we're really cooking). Based on the cover, the first storyline will involve Booster journeying to an earth where pre-invasion Iraq was run by a Baathist regime consisting of characters throughout the old DC multiverse, and he's hunting them down for the U.S. marines.

The announced creators are, at the outset, Johns and Jeff Katz. As an architect of the new multiverse, Johns is obviously a perfect choice. I'm less sure about this Katz character, mainly because DC hasn't had much luck (creatively or commercially) with recruiting professional writers from other media to handle their characters of late (Think those knuckleheads who wrote Flash: The Fastest Man Alive, Jodi Picoult, Tad Williams, John Rogers and Richard Donner*).

Art comes courtesy of penciller Dan Jurgens. I really like seeing an artist of his caliber drawing characters primarily known by other talents (on that cover above, for example, we get to see a Jurgens version of Frank MIller character and a C.C. Beck character). The cheif (okay, only) pleasure of that ill-considered ten-part "History of The DCU" that ran in the back of the first ten issues of 52 was seeing Jurgens "covering" other artists throughout this series. 8/10







52 AFTERMATH: THE FOUR HORSEMEN

Now this is weird, on just about every level. The Four Horsemen? They only appeared in a few issues of 52, and were all killed in thier last appearances (one is even currently a pair of boots, which should be showing up in Black Adam at some point). Weirder still is that DC is calling this book 52 Aftermath—it weakens what is currently a pretty strong brand (in the same way that putting "from the pages of 52" atop the World War III books did), and how is it that those five words are somehow deemed more likely to move books off the shelves than the names of DC's top three icons?

I've got next to nothing to go on here, but I suppose it's nice to see DC's "Trinity" actually doing something together. I've said before that I think the concept is more than a little forced (Sure, Wonder Woman is the third most well-known DC character, but there's as big a gap between her overall Q-rating and that of Superman and Batman's, and a much, much smaller gap between hers and, say, Robin, Aquaman, Supergirl or even the Flash). Superman and Batman seem to team up a couple times a week—they even share an ongoing title devoted to their team-ups—but how often does Wonder Woman get included in their adventures unless there's a whole Justice League involved? Rarely, to the point of hardly ever.

On the positive side, it's written by Keith Giffen, who should reeaallly be doing some more writing at DC these days, and drawn by 52 pencil army veteran Patrick Olliffe, whose art I look forward to seeing in a less deadline pressurized book. 5/5




INFINITY INC.

No cover image of this book yet, nor has an artist been announced (or, if there has, I totally forgot who it was), but this was actually one of the earliest 52 spin-offs announced. It's also one that perplexes me. I really dig Steel; I have since "Reign of the Superman." Morrison and Waid used him quite brilliantly in JLA (though I was more than a little irritated that Waid dumped him from the line-up when he inherited the title), his own monthly had some ups and downs (with the Preist/Cowan run that ended it consisting of the most consistent up**), and I've often found myself unreasonably concerned about his well-being (Our Worlds At War) and character design (I don't know who designed that bug helmet, but it sucks).

Now, what Steel has to do with Infinity Inc., other than the fact that Natasha/Steel II (Or Steel III, if we count Commander Steel's grandson as Steel I?) joined the a team which co-opted that name, and that he himself kicked a few of their asses, I don't know. The pitch for this book is that John Henry and Natasha would be leading a new team of Infinitors, forging the loser leftovers from the Everyman Project into real heroes.

All of which strikes me as a pretty shrug-inducing idea for a monthly, particularly from writer Peter Milligan, who already wrote the hell out of the concept of shallow, fame-hungry heroes-as-celebrities once with X-Force/X-Statix. I'd much prefer a more flexible Steel solo title (even if it begins by dealing with Everyman Project/52 fall-out) and/or Steel back in the League (even if mainly/only in a building-stuff for the knuckleheads on the team capacity—outside the Trinity, it's not exactly a group that has any rocket scientists, and steel is both a literal and metaphorical rocket scientist).

Finally, this book uses the tried-and-false tactic of taking a DC brand name of next-to-no-value (Blue Beetle, Atom, Firestorm, Aquaman, Manhunter) and giving it to different characters, thus successfully alienating the only people who actually are attracted to that brand name. 4/2




Comics DC Should Announce:



DOC MAGNUS AND THE METAL MEN

I've mentioned this one before, but I'll mention it again because, goddamit, this would be awesome. Seriously, close your eyes and think about what the best part of 52 was—why yes, that's right, the Oolong Island bits. And who was the star of those? Doc Magnus. Paired with Waid's mission statement for the team, setting Magnus and his inventions up against the very mad-scientists he co-starred with in 52 seems like an easy continuation of the series (as well as a natural and organic one).

When one considers that Metal Men film is apparently currently in development, this really, really has to happen.

Unfortunatley, DC has screwed this pooch almost immediately, with the Metal Men's post-52 appearances consisting of cameos in "The Tornado's Path" and a horribly drawn, completely nonsensical story in Superman/Batman. While Waid and Morrison would be perfect (as would Darwyn Cooke or Michael Allred or Evan Dorkin or Kyle Baker, none of whom seem terribly likely), so too would Tom Peyer, Scott Beatty, Ty Templeton, Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis and...that's all I got off the top of my head, actually. After reading the first issue of Mark Verheiden and "Pat Lee"'s story in Superman/Batman, I'm tempted to say anyone but them, but I'm sure there are actually all sorts of people who could fuck a series like this up. 10/10




GHOST DETECTIVES

And speaking of things that just have to happen, there's the incredibly happy ending that the Four Horseman of 52 managed to give the Dibneys in #52. On one hand, this seems like a nice set-up for future Dibny stories, but on the other, it seems like a perfect place to end their story, doesn't it? It is, after all, Ralph's version of heaven, and why muck it up by having us watch them? I say put this book off until Mark Waid has the time and inclination to write it. (In the meantime, we can always see the Dibnys and Sat. Era or JLI Era stories in JLA: Classified, or a Croaton Society mini set in the past). 7/7



CAPTAIN MARVEL

This is another one I'm repeating myself on, but if there's one thing we pride ourselves on here at EDILW, it's consistency (Which is a nicer way to say redundancy). Now that the villain behind Skeets (or, in this case, inside him) has been revealed, it's clear that on one level, 52 boils down to a story of Captain Marvel villains Black Adam, Dr. Sivana and Mr. Mind fighting one another and much of the DC Universe.

It was unqeustionably DC's biggest hit of the year, and the largest swathes of it's stars came from Captain Marvel's cast...and not even any of the heroes, just some of his villains. Surely if Black Adam and company can carry a friggin' weekly, they could (help) carry a monthly, no?

Of course, one could argue that the success of the Marvel character in 52 owed more to the people writing them than the characters themselves, and one could point to the cancelled Power of Shazam! series as evidence of this. It's true that Cap isn't an easy character to "get," as Judd Winick's body of work so readily shows. Those that seem to get him the best—Morrison, Waid, Johns, Alex Ross, Jim Krueger, Kurt Busiek, Jeff Smith—are all pretty busy dudes, with a lot on their plates (and the stature to work on pretty much whatever they want). And I'd personally prefer no Captain Marvel DCU comic to a wretched Captain Marvel DCU comic (a la Trials of Shazam). So maybe the time isn't right for a new Shazam! monthly, but don't sleep on it too long DC—if that Shazam movie ever gets made, you're gonna want to have a comic book on the stands by then. 10/8



MISCELLANEOUS MISSING YEAR MADNESS

Again, these are all series I've mentioned before, but here goes anyway: Batman, Robin and Nightwing sailing around the world traning, something that I'm actually surprised we haven't seen more flashbacks to yet; it's certainly a thousand times more interesting than Royal McGraw's weird continuations of '70s storylines, John Ostrander's inventorty-tastic tale of Grotesk and Johnny Karaoeke and whatever the hell's been going on in Robin and Nightwing OYL); what went down in Gotham City (they could even reuse the name Gotham Nights, from those early '90s miniseries about Gotham citizens who weren't sueprheroes or supervillains); the Teen Titans' nutty year (we saw some of it alluded to in "Titans Around the World," 52 and we got to see Terra II's heart get punched out for no reason in World War III, but I'd kinda like to see those 50 teens coming and going through the tower, as well as see how Wendy and Marvin hooked up with the gang and...hey, where the hell did they disappear to in the last story arc, anyway?); and the further adventures of Firestorm II's shortlived JLA (C'mon DC, the world needs more Ambush Bug and Super Cheif team-ups, and you're not really using JLA: Classified for anything right now anyway!) 10/10




Comics DC Shouldn't Announce:



ANIMAL MAN

I like Animal Man, and always have. He was pretty cool before Grant Morrison got his hands on him, and, obviously, he was much cooler afterwards (I have a soft-spot for vegan activists superheroes). I even dug a lot of the post-Morrison Vertigo stories, particularly those written by Jamie Delano, many of which would have fit into the DCU just as easily as the VU (with a few minor alterations).

In his just-ended weekly debriefs with Matt Brady at Newsarama.com, Michael Siglain asked Newsaramites whether or not they'd want an Animal Man mini or ongoing. Some apparently did.

Well, they're wrong.

We don't need or want an Animal Man mini or ongoing, at least not at this point. Now, I always enjoy seeing Buddy Baker whenever he shows up, even if the stories aren't all that great, and am certainly in favor of him showing up in DC books a lot (even on a regular basis, in, say, JLoA or, possibly, a Forgotten Heroes book; though the former already has an animal-powered hero and the latter doesn't seem like a good publishing move at this point), but I don't think we need him in his own book.

It basically boils down to the fact that Morrison handled his last solo, ongoing DCU adventures so consumately in Animal Man that there doesn't seem to be a whole lot in the way of new story to tell...at least not new story capable of living up to what Morrison and several of his followers managed. A new Animal Man series seems predestined to suffer in comparison (A similarly effected character is Swamp Thing; I know there have been good Swampy stories since Alan Moore's run ended but, at the same time, most of seemed perfectly superfluous).

Sure, he worked fairly well here in 52, but then, he was part of an ensemble through most of it, and was partially written by Morrison throughout. as well A new Animal Man series would have to be able to be at least as good as (or at least not too much worse than) Morrison's Animal Man, and there are precious few writers capable of following Morrison in any successful fashion. Waid and Millar (sometimes), Tom Peyer and Jamie Delano have all done it successfully, but I have trouble thinking of any others.

So I vote no on Animal Man in his own new comic, but yes on more Animal Man in any (and everybody) else's comic. 3/7



THE QUESTION

I like Renee Montoya. I like The Question. But I don't like Montoya as The Question II. (Just like I like Aquaman and like Batman, but wouldn't like Aquaman as Batman...at least not permanently***). Granted, Montoya-as-Question would probably be a lot less grating in a title of her own than as part of a huge story involving an ensemble cast (As I've complained about somewhere in then neighborhood of 50 times previously, Montoya's scenes were the only first-person narrated ones in 52), but her storyline was one of the least popular in 52 (along with Steel's) and thus she doesn't seem to be a great character to be given her own title. Also, the forced-legacy rule is in full effect here. Fans of the the Question are the only people who are going to be attracted to the name "The Question" on a comic book, but they're going to be more interested in one starring the Question, not a different character with the Question's name (This one strikes me as particularly tragic since Vic Sage is such an incredibly unique character, and that JLU recently raised his profile in mainstream consciousness more than it's ever been, and because Sage more closely resembles the Watchmen character he inspired than Montoya). I suppose one of the other 51 Sages could enter into the DCU at any moment now and resume Question-ing, so it's not as tragic as it was a few week's ago. 3/1


BATWOMAN

This is an ongoing title that has been rumored for a long time—even the swell-looking logo design has been leaked onto the Internet—although it hasn't been announced. I couldn't possibly be less interested. Kate Kane is a terribly uninteresting character, whose defining characteristics seems to be that she's a lesbian (albeit a man's fantasy of a lesbian, a "buxom lipstick lesbian" as the New York Times put it), is Jewish, and used to sleep with the new Question. Strike two is that her costume draws attention to her long flowing, easy-to-pull-in-a-fight hair and her lips.

The female version of Batman she'd be replacing in DC's publishing line if she does get her own ongoing is Cassandra "Batgirl" Cain, who was a much more complex and unique character (just grabbing randomly at elements of her character, she was illiterate, shy, quiet and thus far pretty much completely uninterested in the opposite sex), and had a much less male-fantasy gratifying costume (No matter what Johanna Draper Carlson says).

On the plus side, it would be cool to have a female super-person with the word "woman" instead of "girl" have her own comic book (Is Wonder Woman the only DC superhero with the word Woman in her name that hasn't been killed or erased from the timeline somehow at the moment?), but that could have been accomplished just as easily by changing Cassandra Cain's name, now that it's "One Year Later" and I think she's 18 now.

Personally, I'd likely pass on this book, unless they assemble a dynamite creative team. The one storyline that would interest me would be the one dealing with her origin, or the missing year in Gotham, during which a lot of pretty exciting things happened that we haven't seen (Harvey Dent, Kite-Man, Nightwing flirting, Commissioner Gordon returning, Apokalyptian firepit-making). Oh, and I suppose a meeting with Cassandra Cain and/or Oracle would get me to pick an issue up. 5/7


*I don't mean they're all creative failures; I really dug Williams' Helmet of Fate and first issue of Aquaman (his run already seems to be falling apart as of his second issue, however), I haven't read much of Rogers, and I haven't read enough from Donner to sum up his run. But none of them have been able to tell good stories and sell as well, say, Johns, David Goyer, Greg Rucka, Kevin Smith and Brad Meltzer.


**Hey, 52 fans! Check out Steel #38 , which features a Steel/Question team-up!


***EDILW readers who have been taking their ginseng will remember I made a similar comment before; however, since I forgot when and where, I assume you all have too, so there, I've used it again.

Hey Kids! Comics!

(Panel from 52 #43, illustrated by Keith Giffen, Dan Jurgens and Norm Rapmund)