Archive for December, 2009

Return of Bruce Wayne Official!

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

from Newsarama and DC’s Source:
http://www.newsarama.com/comics/091209-Batman-Return-Bruce-Wayne.html

The week of DC 2010 announcements continued this morning with one fans have quite simply been waiting for. On the official DCU Blog The Source (dcu.blog.dccomics.com) and in USA Today, the anticipated Return of Bruce Wayne was made official.

Written by current Batman and Robin scribe, and now long-established helmsman of Batman’s flagship comics Grant Morrison, the story will see where Bruce Wayne has been since being hit with Darkseid’s Omega Sanction eyebeams in Final Crisis #6 (also by Morrison). The character was pronounced dead by the characters of the DCU, with only his protegé and adopted son Tim Drake Wayne, now Red Robin, believing him to still be alive, searching for clues to lead to his return.

The six issue mini-series, beginning in April 2010, will follow Bruce Wayne in a journey through time, trying to find his way back to the present-day Gotham City he calls home. Each issue will feature art by a different art team, with Chris Sprouse handling the first issue (featuring Caveman/Viking Batman), and Frazer Irving handling the second (featuring Witch-hunter Batman). Superstar artist Andy Kubert is doing character designs on the series, as shown here.

In an interview with USA Today (USAToday.com), Morrison said of the series, “[it's] the latest chapter in the long-running, “definitive” Batman epic I’ve been trying to pull off since 2005, [but] Return has been structured and written to read as a complete story on its own.” So readers who haven’t been reading Morrison’s run with the character for the last several years should still be able to keep up with this series.

He also revealed some of the settings of the series, including the Late-Paleolithic Era (Caveman/Viking Batman), a Pilgrim-era Gotham (Witch-hunter Batman), a Pirate Batman, a “western” style Gotham with Cowboy Batman, and a Noir Private Investigator Batman. Morrison, agian to USAToday.com, calls this story ” Bruce Wayne’s ultimate challenge — Batman vs. history itself!”

The other artists on the series will be announced soon.

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Modern Comics Publishing

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
The story behind these Charlton reprints has never been fully revealed or at the very least there are conflicting stories behind their origin.

I’m sure of a few things… back in 1977 Charlton was on its last legs and had severe financial problems. They were approached (I assume) by a company who wanted to reprint some of Charlton’s comics to distribute in Department, Grocery and Drugstores. They only reprinted comics in which Charlton had all the original plates or Silver Prints available.

Apparently quite of few of the originals had been lost, destroyed or damaged because there are some inexplicable gaps in the titles published. The titles printed varied widely as some are from the early 60s and others from the mid 70’s. The reprints were short-lived and only lasted into 1978.

As far as the comics themselves I can tell you that the quality of production is very poor. Almost every one I have has one of several defects found throughout the line.

  • Browning and/or brittle covers
  • Untrimmed interior pages
  • Splotchy or smudged coloring
  • Almost illegible lettering

I have some that look new inside… very supple crisp pages but the cover is brittle like some 1940’s comics I have. None of the Marvels or DCs I have seen have this level of cover brittleness. Most of the interior pages look like they were trimmed off with a saw of some sort and you can see the serated edges especially on the bottom of the pages. Some of the coloring/art/lettering is so smudged you really can’t tell what is going on in the page.

As far as the quality of the stories… overall they are pretty bad. The E-man comics are pretty funny and Byrne’s Doomsday+1 is quite good. Yang has some good plot elements as well but other than that I did not enjoy them very much. The only good thing for us completists is that the set is small and very cheap as you can pick them up out of 25 cent boxes with no problem.

It has just come to my attention that the Modern reprints were indeed marketed to stores in polybagged 3-Paks like the Whitmans from DC, Marvel and Gold Key. The 3-Paks are quite rare but Gifflefunk found a Captain Atom/Blue Beetle combo. I also found another 3-Pak with an E-Man and Yang issue and both are pictured at the bottom of the gallery.

Additionally, there are two more Modern publications that are not part of the original Charlton reprint set. The first is a 1978 oversized treasury-size version of Marvel Super Special #8 from Modern Promotions. It can be easily distinquished from the regular Marvel version by the publisher information in the upper left hand corner of the cover. The other and apparently last publication by Modern is the 3-issue mini-series of Voltron in 1985. Unlike all the other Modern issues these appear to be original material.

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It’s Coming!

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

_ironman2poster500May 7th it’s here! Iron Man 2… and now the only question remains are Iron Man and War Machine allies… or foes?

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