PUBLIC MARKS with tags dc & comics

Ah, “Last Son”. The much-ballyhooed, much-criticized, much-excoriated story arc that was to be one of DC’s big draws for 2007, only to get shot in the foot pretty much the second it got out of the gate.

These include the deaths of Kara (the original Supergirl) and Barry Allen (the silver age Flash, who was the main Flash character for almost 30 years). These are some of the best deaths ever written in comics, especially the Flash’s horific death against the story’s antagonist the Anti-Monitor.

“The Hunt For Oracle” is volume five in the Nightwing Series that collects the original monthly comics (it’s volume six if you count “Ties That Bind” but that one collects the miniseries). This volume continues from the previous one, “A Darker Shade of Justice” and it collects issues 41-45 of the monthly Nightwing and the two issues of Birds of Prey that it crosses-over with.

Grant Morrison may be the most polarizing of comic book writers out there today. Depending on who you ask, he’s can be either revered as the savior of X-Men comics (with his early 00s New X-Men run), or demonized as the destroyer of quality X-Men comics. His stories are always deep, complex, psychedelic, and sometimes too smart for their own good. And that was before Grant admittedly totally changed the way he writes his comics’ narratives.

Sometimes in the comic books world, a major story that embodies the word ‘epic’ – in all the best senses of the word – comes along and flies under the radar of much of the comic-reading public, simply because it wasn’t accompanied by the requisite hype blitz.

Superman Earth One has polarized fans of the Man of Steel, with some finding it a worthy “rebooting” of the venerable character, and others believing it is little more than pandering to today’s Twilight-obsessed tweens and teens.

“The Killing Joke” is widely considered to be the be-all-end-all of Joker stories, so what better way to pay homage to the greatest comic book villain of all time near the eve of his re-unveiling in The Dark Knight than by reviewing his definitive story? This is the comic that (sort of) revealed the origin of The Clown Prince of Crime, humanizing him to an extent never before, and truly examined -with pictures rather than words- the antagonistic symbiosis that exists between Joker and his arch nemesis, The Batman. A beloved Gotham regular will never be the same and another will be put through hell before this story is done. Oh, and there are creepy little henchmidgets as well. Gotta love the henchmidgets.

Up until recently I’ve been a very casual comic book reader. After reading various comics published by DC that mentioned “Identity Crisis” and finding it hard to avoid “spoilers” everywhere on the web I picked this up the day it was released to get caught up and find out what all the fuss was about. After closing the book, I was shocked about how much a “superhero book” could affect me emotionally. I had lost a very beloved family member a few days before reading this, and I’ll admit it did affect the way I viewed this book. But in looking back at it “cold”, I believe it stands incredibly well as a graphic novel, a tragic love story and a mystery.

With the coming of the new JSA spin-off title, JSA ALL-STARS, we all knew which way the wind was blowing. And I guess it was an obvious move, what with the JSA ranks having risen to such ridiculous numbers that even Legionnaires are now passing judgment. Factor in too that new scribes Bill Willingham and Matthew Sturges want to make an instant mark, and so we get the splintering.

Superman: War of the Supermen collects Superman: War of the Supermen #0-4 and Superman #700, all originally published in 2010. Despite the lack of a volume number, this completes the seven-volume series of graphic novels that began with Superman: New Krypton, Vol. 1 and extended through Superman: Last Stand of New Krypton Vol. 1 and Superman: The Last Stand of New Krypton Vol. 2.

Grant Morrison is the most frustrating comic book writer I have ever read. On the one hand he is CLEARLY capable of writing some of the most fabulous stories ever. Problem is he is also capable of producing some unholy messes but with the way the professional reviewers have gushed over The Return of Bruce Wayne it surely falls in the category of Morrison’s masterpieces. “Ain’t it Cool News” is quoted on the back cover saying, “If you don’t pick up this book, you hate comics”. Um, ok. If you haven’t figured it out by now I was not bowled over by The Return of Bruce Wayne.

Kingdom Come is a tough book to rate. On the one hand, it does possess level of depth that sets it far above most “comic books” on the newsstand. On the other, such depths as you will find are, to be brutally honest, entirely – yes, entirely – derivative of what Alan Moore had already given us in Watchmen more than a decade earlier.

In 2000, Geoff Johns succeeded Mark Waid as the writer for the “Flash” monthly book. Over the next 5 years, he would receive acclaim for his focus on characterization and for adding depth to Keystone City and the Rogues.

DC Comics will release a couple Blackest Night hardcovers every week for the next three weeks. Here’s the tentative schedule:

Comic