Month: June 2026

Geek Punditry #180: Coming Comics

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Comic book announcements seem to come in fits and starts. Fans may go weeks without hearing any news that’s of particular interest, then all of a sudden somebody makes a big announcement and it seems like everybody else has to make a bunch of their own just to keep up. This week came several announcements from different publishers about upcoming projects, many of which have me very excited, and one of which…well, you’ll see. But before we even start I’m going to say that this is not a COMPREHENSIVE list of projects. These are just some of the things that were announced that interest ME, and that make me feel ways about things. Sorry, “release date for Midnight Marvel” – ya didn’t quite make the cut.

Marvel DID have one thing announced on Monday that I find pretty interesting, a one-shot special coming out this fall in which the Marvel superheroes will – for the first time – team up with some of my favorite corporate siblings of theirs. This fall, we’re going to get the crossover we never knew we needed: The Muppets Take the Marvel Universe.

The Muppets have appeared in comics before, even published by Marvel a few times. There have even been a few Marvel variant covers featuring the Muppets. But this will mark the first time that the Muppets and the Marvel heroes will actually meet in a story, and I’ve got to tell you, I couldn’t be more excited for it. In the main story, by Chip Zdarsky and Pete Woods, the X-Men’s old foe Mojo apparently kidnaps Rowlf the Dog, bringing Kermit the Frog and company in cahoots with some of Marvel’s all-stars in order to rescue him.

This is actually such a perfect set-up. Mojo is an interdimensional parody of a corporate media executive, obsessed with ratings and viewership. That’s what makes Rowlf the perfect central character for this story. As opposed to Fozzie’s cringe comedy or Gonzo’s stunts that are guaranteed to go wrong, Rowlf is simply a gifted piano player, one of the few Muppets that is unabashedly GOOD at what he’s trying to do, and thus he’s exactly the kind of character that would be on Mojo’s radar. Crossovers like this will be inherently silly, and that’s welcome, but they’re at their best when they play to the characters’ strengths this way. 

There will be back-up features in the book as well, similar to the recent Marvel/DC crossover comics. Hank Pym and Bruce Banner will visit Bunsen and Beaker at Muppet Labs, and Dr. Strange will star in a bizarre team-up with the Swedish Chef. As Disney proper struggles with what to do with the Muppets (despite the fact that the Muppet Show special earlier this year was both a critical and streaming smash hit, and any idiot would have greenlit a revival series by now) at least SOMEBODY out there has the wherewithal to celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Muppet Show the way it deserves. 

A few hours after Marvel’s big announcement, IDW came in with a project of their own that seems to have been aligned perfectly to intersect the venn diagrams of my personal obsessions. IDW has held the Godzilla comic book license for many years now, and for the last few years they’ve published miniseries and one-shots under the banner Godzilla’s Monsterpiece Theater. The first miniseries was a crossover mash-up in which Godzilla encountered public domain characters such as Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, the time traveller from H.G. Welles’ The Time Machine, and – most perplexingly – Jay Gatsby. Follow up one-shots have dropped him in Verona during the events of Romeo and Juliet and ancient Greece to further complicate Odysseus’s journey home during The Odyssey. But this September we’re getting a book that excites me like no other: The Kaiju of Oz.

I am, as people who’ve read this blog for a long time know, an unabashed fan of L. Frank Baum’s Oz books, as well as many of the expanded universe books, movies, and comics that have been published in the decades since Oz entered the public domain. And Oz crossovers aren’t a new thing – we’ve seen lots of stories about Dorothy and Alice (from Wonderland, obviously), stories where the characters interact with the DC Multiverse, the characters join the fairy tale kitchen sink of ABC’s Once Upon a Time, and plenty of other incarnations and crossovers. IDW, for their part, has also produced a series of one-shots in which Godzilla stomps on various American cities like New York, Boston, and Los Angeles. (Hey, IDW, if you ever want to go Godzilla Vs. New Orleans, give me a call. I’ve got a story for you.) Having Godzilla march in to crush the Emerald City sounds like a hell of a lot of fun. Hopefully the creative team of Mike Costa and Ryan Browne are familiar enough with the Oz mythology to use the characters to their true potential. I don’t care how good his brain is – the Scarecrow isn’t going to be much of a match for Godzilla. But if Glinda, Ozma, Professor Wogglebug and some of the other Oz luminaries step up to the plate, it could be a pretty exciting showdown.

DC Comics, meanwhile, announced the latest expansion of their excellent Compact Comics graphic novels line, the series of smaller-sized paperbacks with a smaller price point that have taken the comics world by storm. They STILL haven’t taken any of MY suggestions (philistines), but what they announced this week is perhaps the next best thing. Recognizing what a great series this is for introducing new readers to comics, DC announced four “Compact Comics Adventures” books for younger readers, specifically collections of the comics based on some of their most popular cartoons: Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series, Justice League, and Teen Titans. DC has a pretty deep bench of comics for young readers that they could draw from, but a lot of them wouldn’t quite be long enough to justify the Compact Comics format. These series are a nice compromise, with comics appropriate for young readers but that will appeal to the nostalgia factor of people who grew up with the cartoons. 

A lot of these comics have been out of print for decades, and some have never been collected at all, so this will be a great collection. Best of all, these will be even MORE bargain-priced than the main line, with each book collecting six issues for $7.99 (as opposed to $9.99 for the other books). My sister is always asking me for graphic novel suggestions for her 12-year-old son, and as soon as I heard about these, I texted her.

The next announcement is the one that I’ve got a little trepidation about. Earlier this year DC began a new line of titles called “Next Level,” bringing back characters that haven’t had a big spotlight in some time for new titles that – although part of the DC Universe – are largely self-contained. New books starring the likes of Batwoman, Lobo, Deathstroke, and Barbara Gordon (not as Batgirl or Oracle, but in an intriguing book where she’s going to prison as part of an undercover sting operation) have been well-received, and I’ve been especially impressed by the new takes on Firestorm and Deadman. This week DC announced three team books joining the Next Level lineup: Doom Patrol, Teen Titans, and most pertinently, Legion of Super-Heroes.

I am, of course, a Legion superfan. I’ve been itching for YEARS for DC to come back and give us a solid Legion series again. And the fact that it’s being written by Joshua Williamson, an excellent writer that’s just been killing it on Superman for the last few years, was very welcome news. But then I kept reading and…well, let me just give you the synopsis of the first issue that DC released:

One thousand years after the Last Son of Krypton’s rocket crashed on the Kent Farm comes a new future inspired by the Man of Tomorrow! But this new future is in danger! Superheroes are outlawed! Deadly enforcers known as the Persuaders keep the populace of the United Planets in check! Worlds are at war! And this dark tomorrow’s last glimmer of hope, R.J. Brande, has been brutally murdered. Can the mysterious Brainiac 1 of 5 solve Brande’s murder? To restore hope to the universe, he must assemble a legion of gifted young rebels from across the cosmos! 

…yeah. It’s another freaking reboot. 

This will be, by my count, the SIXTH incarnation of the Legion of Super-Heroes, and as much as I enjoy Williamson’s writing, that has SERIOUSLY diminished my enthusiasm. We’ve seen the Legion assembled countless times. There’s a reason James Gunn didn’t start his Superman movie with an origin – because nobody needs it anymore. What’s more, each reboot version of the Legion has proven to have a shorter lifespan than the one before it. The most recent one, by Brian Michael Bendis, lasted a mere 19 issues plus a two-issue prequel and a six-issue miniseries where they faced the Justice League. If this keeps up, the next Legion after Williamson’s will be a one-shot.

Mr. Williamson, should you be reading this, please don’t take my lack of enthusiasm personally. I like your work very much. I was VERY excited to hear that you were writing this team. But no matter how great the creative team is, it’s going to be an uphill battle to make me invested in Iteration Six when my heart still belongs mostly to One. (And, in large part, to Two.)

You know, I can’t end this on a down note. How about one more super-cool DC announcement? For a few years now Dan Mora – one of my favorite working comic artists – has been doing a series of variant covers of the World’s Finest comic with Superman and Batman meeting various celebrities like William Shatner and Nicolas Cage. Earlier this year DC released two at once, one with Weird Al Yankovic and then another, on a Bizzaro comic, where they encountered Al’s imperfect counterpart “Normal Al Yankovic.” As it turned out, that was just the beginning. Coming this fall World’s Finest writer Mark Waid is going to give us a one-shot where DC’s top heroes are going to encounter the universe’s greatest musical genius, Batman/Superman/Weird Al: World’s Weirdest. I haven’t read anything about the story, I don’t know what it’s going to be about. It doesn’t matter. This is going to be the greatest comic since…

…well, since Spider-Man met the Muppets. 

So call up your local comic shop and place your orders, friends. There’s lots of cool stuff coming soon.  

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. He means it, IDW. Think about Godzilla biting into a certain trademarked New Orleans beignet shop and then coming up with powdered sugar covering his enormous muzzle. That’s just the start. 

Superman Stuff #24: My Adventures With Superman is back for Season Three

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The Adult Swim animated series My Adventures With Superman is back for its third season, so this week I wanted to take a look at the season premiere. I only touched on this series briefly during the Year of Superman, so before I get into it, I wanted to talk about some of my overall feelings. These will include spoilers for the first two seasons, so if you haven’t watched it, you may want to skip this week.

It took me some time to get into this show, I admit. The characters are very young – Clark and Jimmy are straight out of college getting jobs at the Daily Planet, where Lois Lane is already employed. I didn’t mind the characters being young, but there’s an energy to this show (more prominent in the earlier episodes) that I can only describe as “anime-esque.” That is intentional, no doubt. The character designs evoke anime and there are bits where they zip around and have quick anime-style non sequiturs. This isn’t to say that it wasn’t done well, it’s just…I’m not much of an anime fan. If you are, hey, that’s cool. But not everything is for everybody and, with rare exceptions, I’ve found that anime is not for me. The good news is that sort of stuff has been downplayed after the first half of the first season, making the whole thing more palatable to me. 

That said, it took me a few episodes to really get into the show, and I think the exact moment it happened was the episode (episode four, I think, but I don’t remember for certain) where Lois figured out that Clark was Superman. There are a lot of continuities now where Lois is in on Clark’s secret, but in most of them either he revealed the truth to her or (such as in Man of Steel) she knew him before he “became” Superman and thus there was never any secret between them in the first place. I really like Lois solving the mystery on her own, though. She’s supposed to be the most brilliant investigative reporter in the world, after all – let her investigate this in a brilliant way. Once we hit that point, I grew an appreciation for the show and their portrayal of the characters and I enjoyed it much more. And the voice cast is wonderful too, particularly Jack Quaid as a young, inexperienced Superman.

If there’s one thing I’m NOT wild about, it’s the costume. They tweaked it in season two and it looks like it’s been tweaked again in season three, with more piping and unnecessary details. I’m a purist, I guess, the simpler the costume the better, but if that’s the biggest complaint about this show, I can live with it. 

The premiere of Season Three, “Into the New World,” begins with Superman taking Supergirl to the newly-upgraded Fortress of Solitude, where she’s interring the captured Brainiac module from last season, and Clark gets warnings from the Fortresses’s new robots about the many, many crises he’s going to face soon. I’m sure none of those are going to come back and be significant in the rest of the season. Back in Kansas, it’s Halloween, and the group heads to the Kent Farm to help set up the corn maze and hand out candy. While Jimmy and Kara bounce around their awkwardness surrounding their mutual attraction, Lois freaks out as she realizes that Clark is thinking about their future WAY more than she is. She escapes the uncomfortable conversation when her father gives her a tip about a nearby abandoned biotech facility. The group investigates and finds a project dedicated to cloning Kryptonians, including an entire arboretum full of Kryptonian plant life, several genetic monsters, robot guards, and a strange young man who seems to have lived his entire life there. 

I’m really glad that they’ve upgraded Kara to the main cast this season, adding her to the opening credits and integrating her into the (former) trio. She brings a different energy to the group – as bold and fearless as Lois, but with an added naivete stemming from her ignorance of Earth, and just a TINY air of superior arrogance that’s amusing. It’s a new angle to the dynamic that I really like.

If you’ve paid any attention to the casting announcements or pre-season buzz, you already know who the boy they find in the lab is destined to be, but even if you haven’t, it’s probably not too hard to figure out where they’re going with him. That said, I like the way they’re bringing in elements of the Superman mythos in different ways. This is a new version of Superboy, one who has elements of the Conner Kent version from the comics, but who isn’t EXACTLY the same. The same can be said for most of the main characters, both heroes and villains (including the villain teased in the final scene) – they’re familiar enough that you have the flavor of who they are, but different enough that the show feels like its own thing. It’s less an adaptation of the classic stories and more a new mythology that’s built on the DNA of the older one.

It’s a little thing, but the show does the usual comic book trope of dropping in references to the larger stories that inspired them – references to lesser-known characters, name-dropping Supergirl’s creator, and sneaking in Superman’s old-fashioned catch phrase. And I may be reading too much into it, but you can’t convince me that the guy wearing a Star Trek uniform in the middle of a Halloween crowd isn’t a tongue-in-cheek reference to Jack Quaid’s role on the best Trek series of the modern era, Lower Decks. 

Like most shows these days, My Adventures With Superman is episodic. The first episode of a season is less of a story on its own and more of the first chapter in a season-long arc. As such it’s successful, setting a lot of elements into play, introducing two new major characters, and establishing what appear to be the emotional arcs for our main characters for the next nine episodes. I enjoyed it, I’m glad the show is back, and I’m quite excited to see how they’re planning to set up Jessica Cruz for the My Adventures With Green Lantern spinoff before the end of the season. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. Don’t forget, you can check out earlier blogs in the Year of Superman/Superman Stuff Archive! Got a request for a future “Superman Stuff”? Drop it in the comments!

Geek Punditry #179: Robert Kirkman is a Bastard (and Why That’s a Good Thing)

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A few months ago, I blogged about the goofy fan theories that certain TV shows aren’t really over when their last episode airs, that the studios might be holding back a “secret” final episode. This was – and is – an idiotic supposition, because the world of entertainment in the modern age is utterly averse to surprising their audience in any conceivable way. Movie trailers guard no secrets, casting announcements clue us in to what could have been surprise character reveals YEARS before a TV show is released…it’s irritating as hell. But this week gave me a nice reminder that there is, thankfully, one exception to that rule, and his name is Robert Kirkman. This week, Kirkman did something vile, insidious, and totally cruel to his fans…and we love him for it.

The face of Evil.

Here’s a crash course for anybody who doesn’t know the name. Robert Kirkman is a comic book writer who came to mainstream prominence when his two most successful comic books were made into television shows, those being the hit zombie series The Walking Dead and the animated superhero show Invincible. Kirkman has since blown up from being a mere writer to being a serious player in the entertainment world, with those two properties still making waves and lots of other things in the works. He still writes comics, but he also manages his own studio, Skybound Entertainment, which produces (through Image Comics) not only his own work, but works of other creators and a host of licensed comics as well. 

Kirkman is one of the few people left in the world of entertainment who actually seems to value surprising his audience, as he has done several times. When issue 193 of The Walking Dead comic book came out, fans were stunned to realize that – unannounced – it was an extra-length issue. We were even MORE surprised when we reached the end and found the announcement that it was the LAST issue. Unlike most comics (or TV shows, for that matter) that make a big deal out of their finale, announcing it well ahead of time to build up hype, Kirkman floored all of us by not telling us the biggest thing in comics was ending. He even had released fake solicitations and covers for issues 194 and 195, knowing perfectly well that those issues would never be published, just to throw us off the scent. It was a zombie story, after all, and just like in a zombie story anyone can die at any time, the same was true for the series. 

“Oboy, I hope this sets up another epic, long-lasting story arc for one of my favorite comic books.” –Me in 2019, about to get a shock

This wouldn’t be the last time Kirkman did something like this. In 2020, while everybody was having an existential crisis in the midst of the pandemic, Kirkman decided he was going to have a little fun. Without warning he dropped issue 17 of a comic book called Solid Blood. This was surprising for a few reasons. Not only was it totally unannounced, but the previous 16 issues of the series did not exist. This was a reimagining of the character who eventually became Michonne of The Walking Dead, played up as if she’d been in a science fiction series that had been running for a few years. It was weird and wild, and it came at a time when weird and wild was particularly appreciated.

In 2023, Kirkman pulled off perhaps his biggest surprise coup when he announced a new ongoing science fiction series called Void Rivals. Even though I hadn’t ordered it, when the first issue dropped the manager at my local comic shop (BSI Comics in Metairie, Louisiana, and they deserve the shout out) reserved one for me because he knew I’d want it when the big secret of the book became public, which is another reason it’s important to find a good comic shop with a great staff. Void Rivals was a sort of space opera, with two protagonists from warring races trying to overcome the biases of their respective cultures. Interesting, but nothing world-changing.

Until the last few pages, when the two of them suddenly stumbled upon an enormous robot with a very familiar red symbol on his chest: it was Jetfire the Autobot. It was a Transformer. And Void Rivals, the text at the end of the comic book announced, was actually the beginning of a new publishing initiative Kirkman was calling the Energon Universe. It was part of a shared universe with rebooted versions of the Transformers and G.I. Joe, both of which launched new ongoing comics within the next year. The three titles (and assorted miniseries and one-shots) share a universe, and although each can be read on their own, reading all of them paints a more satisfying, complete picture of the universe. This wasn’t the first time that Hasbro, the toy company that owns the two franchises, had attempted to create a shared universe among their properties, but it has by far been the most successful. The Energon titles have become a sales juggernaut and are driving people into comics shops who haven’t read comics in years, decades, or in some cases, EVER. And plans are in the works for an animated series based on this universe, which will presumably incorporate all three titles, and more.

Only a true imp would dream of this.

Yes, more, because Transformers and G.I. Joe are not the only two toy lines Hasbro owns, and speculation began running rampant about which other Hasbro properties could potentially become part of the Energon Universe. And Kirkman did what Kirkman does better than anybody: he lied. He told us that there were no plans to add any of the other Hasbro lines. But then some of the books, specifically G.I. Joe, began to incorporate characters from Hasbro’s M.A.S.K. series. This wasn’t a huge surprise – M.A.S.K. (although never AS popular as G.I. Joe or the Transformers) has a pretty large following, and there have even been efforts in the past to reboot the Mobile Armored Strike Kommand as a subgroup of the G.I. Joe team, so nobody was TOO shocked when it was announced that M.A.S.K. would join the Energon Universe in June as the fourth series.

Or “Muh-Muh-Muh-M.A.S.K.”, as it’s pronounced in the original French.

This Wednesday, M.A.S.K. #1 came out, and it took part in a current comic book practice that, frankly, I kinda hate. They released it “Blind Bagged,” in sealed plastic, so that you don’t know which cover of the book you’re getting until you open it up. I’m not a huge fan of variant covers in the first place, so I just asked the friendly folks at BSI to put aside the standard, non-bagged cover for me. Alas, do I kind of regret that now. Because the Blind Bags, in addition to having M.A.S.K. #1, ALSO have one of three randomly-inserted BONUS comics in them. Some comics come with an early printing of M.A.S.K. #2. No big deal – I can wait for that issue to come out, since I’ve already got it ordered. Others came with a one-off book called M.A.S.K. Origins, which apparently collects all of the M.A.S.K.-related scenes from the previous Energon titles, for those who like to keep score. Neat, but I’ve already read all of those books, so it’s not really necessary.

But the third book. Oh, the third book. Robert Kirkman, you magnificent son of a bitch.

The third book you might randomly pull in a blind bag is ROM #1.

People who grew up reading this comic are too old to be shocked this way, Kirkman.

ROM is – like G.I. Joe and the Transformers – a toy line that was fleshed out in the 80s by a Marvel comic book series. UNlike G.I. Joe and the Transformers, the ROM toy line kind of fell flat and ended rather quickly. The comic book, however, was a smash hit, outlasting the toys by several years and still being a favorite of a lot of readers today. Unlike M.A.S.K., there had been no indication that ROM would be added to the Energon Universe, making this issue the biggest surprise since Jetfire showed up in Void Rivals #1.

Now, this is not to say I’m thrilled about how this came about. Making the book a blind bag exclusive is certainly going to drive up sales – but odds are most comic shops are ALREADY sold out of these by the time you read this. Copies of the issue are going for $50 on eBay and, much as I would like it, I have absolutely no intention of buying it for that price. (And if my wife is reading this thinking about Father’s Day, I am begging her NOT to spend that much money on this particular book.) If you’re the sort of person who, like me, just wants to READ all of the books in the Energon Universe, it’s somewhat frustrating to know this one is floating out there somewhat out of reach. As of this writing, Kirkman hasn’t announced any plans to reprint the book for a wider audience (although one would think it’d be foolish not to), nor has he said if there will be further issues of ROM, although he says that the character’s story is going to continue in the pages of Void Rivals. 

I’m hoping that there WILL be SOME edition of this book that I can get at a reasonable price sooner rather than later.

But even if there isn’t, I find I have to admire Kirkman’s desire to use surprise to create an event. He could have told people ahead of time that ROM was coming back. He could even have teased that it would be found ONLY in Blind Bagged copies of M.A.S.K. #1. But doing it the way he did got people talking in a way that no other announcement could have done. 

So now the question is, what’s next for the Energon Universe? There are still plenty of other Hasbro properties that could potentially show up. Another less-remembered toy line, Visionaries, has had its home planet of Prysmos name-dropped in an Energon book – is that a hint that those characters may turn up next? How about the fan-favorite Micronauts (like ROM, a well-regarded series better remembered for its comic book than the toy line), or the U.K.’s G.I. Joe-equivalent Action Man, both of which were part of previous efforts at a Hasbro universe? Honestly, at this point ANY toy line owned by Hasbro feels like it could potentially show up, from Battle Beasts to Jem and the Holograms. (And the only reason I’m not including My Little Pony or Dungeons and Dragons as possibilities is because, at the moment, both of those are licensed to other comic book publishers.)

And it’s not like Energon is the only trick Kirkman has up his sleeve, either. He’s publishing a pair of Invincible spin-offs right now and has a new superhero comic book called Terminal dropping in a few months. What surprises could await us there? Furthermore, his Skybound Entertainment also publishes licensed comics with properties as diverse as Creepshow, LEGO, and the Universal Monsters, and at this point I don’t know what to expect next from ANY of them.

This is why I admire Kirkman. Not because he’s a good writer, although he is that. Not because he’s a good businessman, although he has proven himself quite adept there as well. But because he actually has cultivated an environment in which even someone like me, who reads most of the stuff he produces, can be surprised at ANY MOMENT. That’s exciting. That’s thrilling. That’s the sort of thing that’s got me wondering if I should call up BSI and tell them to put aside a Blind Bag of Terminal #1, if they’re going to do that this time.

Because I don’t know what’s coming next.

And in a world where every movie trailer gives away the whole plot and comic book publishers are announcing the aftermath of their major crossover events before the major crossover event even begins (lookin’ at YOU, Marvel, with your Avengers: Armageddon series), the idea that there’s SOMEBODY out there who finds value in keeping his audience on their toes is actually pretty joyful. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. Seriously, Erin, get off eBay. $50 is too much. 

Superman Stuff #23: Peter David’s Supergirl

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With the Girl of Steel scheduled to make her return to the Screen of Silver in a couple of weeks, I wanted to go back to one of the items I most regret never getting around to during the original Year of Superman project: Peter David’s excellent Supergirl series. David launched this series in 1996, taking the “Matrix” version of Supergirl and pulling her out of Metropolis. He dropped her not only in the seemingly nondescript town of Leesburg, but also into a metaphysical conflict that was very different from most superhero comics at the time – or for that matter, even since then. 

The real question is where to READ the book in this day and age, if you weren’t lucky enough to have bought them month-to-month as they came out like I did. David’s run lasted 80 issues, along with a handful of annuals and spinoffs, and a few mini-crossovers with other books like Resurrection Man and Young Justice. A few years ago they started series of omnibus editions that went for four volumes, collecting roughly the first half of the series, which we can all agree isn’t enough. Last year, though, when the DC’s Finest line of paperbacks was launched, they included two hefty volumes that made it almost as deep into the run as the four omnibus editions combined. One could only hope that they’re selling well enough to justify collecting the rest of the run in that series.

That said, this week I had time to read the first five issues, as well as the prologue story that was published in Showcase ‘96 #8, so that’s what I’m going to focus on today. The prologue, written by David with art by Terry Dodson, is connected to the main series more thematically than in a story fashion. Supergirl – the shapeshifting protoplasmic Matrix that Superman first encountered in the pocket universe where he was forced to kill General Zod and his cronies – is called upon to help with a hurricane causing terrible destruction. In the midst of the storm, she desperately tries to save a pregnant woman who has gone into labor, and the chaos around her forces her to think about concepts of mortality – both the beginning and end of life – that she as an artificial life form has never really had to contend with before. 

In its own right, this would be a perfectly good short story, a sort of character piece in which a superhero wrestles with a very human existential crisis. However, knowing what David was going to do with this series in the years to come, it really does feel like a glimpse at the future. Is it necessary for understanding the main series? No. But it sure as hell gives you the flavor.

The series proper, with art by Gary Frank, begins not with Supergirl, but with Linda Danvers. Linda – at this point a total blank slate to the audience – is introduced to us in the shower, covered in minor injuries and washing off blood. When she gets out of the tub, there’s also an odd accumulation of pink sludge…and a glance in the mirror makes her realize that her injuries are mysteriously gone. She can’t remember what’s happened to her or how she was hurt, but she’s also got memories that don’t quite seem to be hers.

The first two issues introduce us to Linda and her world: her highly contentious relationship with her parents, a journalist and strange admirer named Cutter, and a demonic acquaintance of hers called Buzz among others. We also learn that Linda’s relationship with the people of Leesburg seems to be full of friction. A lot of them were under the impression that she was dead. OH YEAH – and when she was missing, Supergirl had tried to find her, and somehow the two of them became fused into a single being, one that has more limited versions of Supergirl’s powers and a memory that’s been Swiss Cheesed like Sam Beckett in Quantum Leap. Issues three and four push the book into a crossover with DC’s Final Night (which I wrote about last year) in which Grodd invades her little town and tries to make people embrace their bestial side while faced with the possibility of the death of the sun, and in issue five, Supergirl has a face off with Superman’s old enemy Chemo. 

The supervillain stuff is fine – Peter David was an excellent writer and handled that as well as anybody. But what really made this run (and his work in general for that matter) stand out from the pack was the way he handled characters. Forget the Pre-Crisis Linda Danvers you may remember – this Linda is by no means the paragon of virtue that one would assume to be that Supergirl’s secret identity. 90s Linda is a girl with a past that these first five issues only begin to dig into. Her parents start off as stereotypes: her cop father is an overbearing authority figure and her fundamentalist mother is…well…a fundamentalist mother. But as the series progresses, all three of the Danvers grow into fuller, rounder characters, moving past who you would assume them to be at the beginning. Cutter is an intriguing character as well, and while Buzz…there’s a lot to say about Buzz.

Buzz is a sort of portal for this story into the supernatural, something that Superman-family stories tend to shy away from most of the time. But over the course of this series (particularly the first half) David deals with a lot of metaphysical questions, battles between good and evil on a scale that’s more existential than physical, and questions about mortality and the afterlife. To put it bluntly, it’s a much deeper book than you would expect. 

I’m definitely going to continue reading this series again now that I’ve started. I won’t necessarily write about every issue, but I’ll probably come back with new blogs whenever I hit the high points. In the meantime, if you’ve never read the series, the whole thing is currently available on DC Universe Infinite and, as I mentioned, the two DC’s Finest paperbacks are in stores now. And with the news that Sophie Campbell is planning to bring Matrix back in the current Supergirl comic book, there’s no better time to move in and enjoy one of the most intriguing and most underrated parts of Superman lore. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. Don’t forget, you can check out earlier blogs in the Year of Superman/Superman Stuff Archive! Got a request for a future “Superman Stuff”? Drop it in the comments!

Geek Punditry #178: Compact These II-The Compactening

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Last year (in Geek Punditry #119) I told you guys about DC Comics’ new “Compact Comics” format – a line of bargain-priced paperback editions that collect seminal and popular DC Comics storylines in a smaller format. At $9.99 a pop, these books were quickly recognized as being some of the best deals in comic books, and to date they’ve released or announced no less than 45 volumes in this series. It’s become so popular that everybody else is copying them – Oni Press is doing their own “Compact Comics” in the same size and price point (as mentioned in Geek Punditry #164) and Marvel, Boom! Studios, and IDW have all launched lines of books only slightly larger and slightly more expensive ($14.99 instead of $9.99) which are clearly intended to appeal to the same market. 

With the books being so popular, I gave DC some helpful suggestions last year (in GP #124) of other comics and storylines that I thought were deserving of the Compact Comics treatment. To date, they have run with exactly zero of my suggestions. But that’s okay, I know they’re just playing hard to get.

With everybody else getting in on the fun, this year I’m going to offer more suggestions, but not just for DC. I’m going to throw out a suggestion or two for each of the five publishers (so far) that have gotten into this particular game. And as we know they’re all reading this, I assume you can expect to see these books on store shelves by next Tuesday. Obviously, I won’t suggest anything that’s already in the works, but if you’re interested in seeing what’s available, I’ve compiled a list of everything that’s been announced so far over at my League of Comic Geeks page.

DC Comics: Earth-789

A few years ago, during one of those periodic restructurings of the DC Multiverse, DC announced that the first two Christopher Reeve Superman movies and the Michael Keaton Batman films were canonically part of the same world in their multiverse, which they declared Earth-789. They followed this up with two miniseries under the banners Superman ‘78 and Batman ‘89. (The release years of the movies, obviously – get where the multiverse designation came from now?)

Although the Batman miniseries were egregiously delayed for reasons that were never adequately explained, they weren’t bad. And the two Superman miniseries were GREAT. For their Compact Comics volumes, I would include both miniseries (12 issues total) in one book. But I wouldn’t stop there. All of the movies in these series also received comic book adaptations, so I would begin the Superman volume with the DC adaptations of Superman: The Movie and Superman II, and the Batman book with their adaptations of Batman and Batman Returns.

The other two films in each series aren’t considered canon to Earth-798, but once these two books prove to be the sales colossus we all know they would be, there could be further collections that include the adaptations of those, as well as other ancillary books like the Supergirl adaptation, the Superman Returns prequels, or the spin-off books focusing on the villains from Batman and Robin. There are also sporadic comics set in the worlds of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy and the Snyderverse that could theoretically be included somewhere in there, but honestly, I’m most interested in the Earth-789 stuff. Not just because it’s good, but because DC seems to have cooled on the idea of doing more stories set in this universe, and that’s a dang shame. There’s so much potential to be had there, and I would love to see them bring those characters together officially for the first time along with the John Wesley Shipp Flash, Lynda Carter Wonder Woman, and Helen Slater Supergirl to create a Justice League for that universe. They even included Hal Jordan in the second Superman ‘78 miniseries (artist Gavin Guidry modeled him on Kurt Russell as a nice little bit of “casting”), giving them a chance to expand. 

Marvel Comics: Avengers Under Siege

Although most of the Marvel Premier Editions have focused on more recent storylines (by which I mean comics that were published in this century, as opposed to stuff from the era in which I grew up), there’s an Avengers storyline that has always been one of my favorites and deserves the deluxe treatment. In 1986, writer Roger Stern and artist John Buscema wove a nearly year-long story in which the Avengers were infiltrated in their own home, the Avengers mansion, by Baron Zemo’s Masters of Evil. Although the villains had fought – and been bested by – the Avengers time and time again, this attack on their home was a new level of evil, and was one of the first mainstream comics I ever read that showed true, harsh consequences to being a superhero. (It should be noted that I was nine years old when this came out and hadn’t read stuff like the Death of Gwen Stacy yet.)

The story ran through Avengers #270-277, beginning with a subplot in the first few issues as the Avengers went about other business. But things really hit a boiling point in issue #273 when the villains actually broke into the mansion and beat Jarvis, the Avengers’ butler, within an inch of his life. This wasn’t a case of a hero being wounded in battle (although that would happen later in the arc with Hercules), but one of their ancillary characters almost dying because of their proximity to the heroes. Stern used Jarvis to really raise the stakes, wiping away any confidence the reader might have that the Avengers would waltz in and have an easy victory. Over the next four issues, the villains completely destroyed the mansion and nearly killed several Avengers before the heroes finally came out on top, but at no point did their victory feel like a foregone conclusion. That’s a hard trick to pull off in a mainstream comic book, a legitimate feeling of MENACE, but Stern did it.

This story has been collected twice before, in a 1998 trade paperback and a 2010 hardcover, but neither is in print anymore. It’s a great story that should find a new audience. And a Premier edition book would give them a chance to correct an oversight they made with the first two collections, both of which omitted issue #280. This was a sort of epilogue featuring a hospital-laden Jarvis thinking about his years with the Avengers and pondering his future. It belongs in the collection too, folks. 

The three remaining companies that have gotten into this game – Oni Press, IDW, and Boom! Studios – each give me a bit of a quandary. You see, in all three cases, these are publishers that are built on a combination of licensed properties (things like Rick and Morty, Godzilla, or Power Rangers) and books that are owned or co-owned by their creators, rather than being the property of the publisher. There’s no “Oni Universe” like there is at Marvel or DC, and with licensing being what it is, it can sometimes be difficult to determine exactly what comics these publishers currently own the rights to, unless it’s something that’s been published recently. Let’s take them one at a time.

Oni Press

So far, Oni has published or scheduled six of their own “Compact Comics,” all of them connected to either their licenses for the cartoons Rick and Morty or Adventure Time. Earlier this year, however, they announced an upcoming partnership with Archie Comics, and they’re going to publish some of Archie’s “New Riverdale” era in the compact format as well. (This came up in the aforementioned Geek Punditry #164). So besides extending these existing licenses, which Oni comics are deserving of the Compact treatment?

EC Comics. In recent years, Oni has become the new home of the classic publisher EC Comics, the company that gave us the likes of Tales From the Crypt and Weird Science. Oddly, though, rather than continuing those brands (I don’t know why — I would guess some sort of licensing kerfuffle), Oni is using the EC label and style for new, original titles such as Cruel Universe, Catacomb of Torment, and Blood Type. These books – horror comics or a horror/sci-fi blend – have been in production long enough to have built a decent-sized back catalogue, and it would do well to release those in compact form. And if possible, I would also love to see them reprint the classic EC stuff as well, especially the original Tales From the Crypt and its sister comics Vault of Terror and Haunt of Fear.

Since Oni is going to be handling the Archie compacts as well, here’s a bonus suggestion for them: besides just reprinting the “new Riverdale” stuff, and beyond giving us reprints of the Archie classics, I’d like to see them use this format for some of the weirder books in Archie’s catalogue. Their various versions of the Red Circle/Mighty Crusaders superheroes over the years, for example. Or even better, let’s look at the 90s – that was an era when Archie experimented with a lot of new titles with weird hooks. Veronica. Jughead’s Time Police. Dilton’s Strange Science. Jughead’s Pal Hot Dog. Archie’s R/C Racers. Jughead’s Diner. There was a lot of Jughead in these books. And while sadly none of these lasted more than a year (except for Veronica, which started as a book about her travelling to a different country in each issue, then dropped that hook and just became a straightforward Veronica comic), I think they were ahead of their time. There were a lot of stories in those books that I remember fondly, and I’d love to see a Compact Comics edition of some of these. 

IDW Publishing

Of these three latecomers, IDW has already done the most with their line, with a book each for licensed properties Godzilla and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, two volumes of The Rocketeer, and a whopping five collections of their various Star Trek series. They’ve also got one book each for their original series The October Faction and D4VE, and two volumes of what is arguably their flagship original property, Joe Hill’s horror/fantasy epic Locke and Key. Assuming that these series will continue (as they should), let’s dip into their existing catalogue to see what could be added.

Before Locke and Key, the most famous original title published by IDW was probably Steve Niles’ vampire saga 30 Days of Night. The comic – about a town in Alaska where the sun sets for a solid month, making it a virtual buffet for a clan of hungry vampires – was really big in its day, spawning countless sequels, spin-offs, and a movie franchise. The Compact Com–I’m sorry, the “IDW Classic Collection” treatment would be a perfect place for the series to come back and find a whole new audience of readers that came up since the original series was in its heyday.

IDW is also home for the more recent hit Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees, a surrealistic serial killer saga by Patrick Horvath. The story, about a psychotic teddy bear whose careful cover is threatened when a second serial killer begins to strike victims in her home town, has garnered a legion of fans and there are most certainly more volumes in the works. A Classic Collection of the first two series seems like a no-brainer. 

As far as IDW’s many licensed properties, some of the ones that helped build the company in the early 00s and 10s have moved on to other publishers (things like G.I. Joe, Transformers, and Ghostbusters), so those are off the table. However, IDW snatched Sonic the Hedgehog from Archie almost 10 years ago and have had a very successful run, with the main title closing in on 100 issues and plenty of spin-offs to go around. A Classic Collection of that series would do very well. 

IDW was also the most recent publisher of Sam Kieth’s surrealistic superhero The Maxx. Kieth’s comic was originally published by Image, but a few years ago IDW published a remastered series (Maxximized, they called it) with more modern coloring. The book was lovely, and with Kieth sadly passing away a few months ago, I think a Classics Collection – three volumes should be enough for the entire main series – would be a good tribute to his work, much like their Rocketeer books stand sentinel for the late Dave Stevens.

Boom! Studios

The newest kid on the mini-comic block is Boom! Studios. None of their Compact Comics have even been released yet, with the first scheduled for September. Of those that have been announced, there are two volumes of their popular Mighty Morphin Power Rangers license and a one-volume collection of Victor LaVelle and Jo Mi-Gyeong’s post-apocalyptic fable Eve.

I would suggest for Boom! (and to be fair, odds are that SOMEBODY there has already brought this up) that they continue the line with James Tynion’s mega-hit Something is Killing the Children and its spin-off title House of Slaughter. SIKTC is about a small town where children are disappearing. Most aren’t found, and those that DO come back do so with tales of horrors beyond imagining. A stranger named Erica Slaughter appears in town, preparing to fight against the evil that’s engulfing it. The book is scheduled to hit its 50th issue later this year, so there’s plenty of story to share. House of Slaughter, meanwhile, is about the mysterious organization that turned Erica into a monster-hunter. This one lasted for 30 issues, with a new follow-up series, Fall of the House of Slaughter, currently in publication. This is probably Boom!’s crown jewel these days, and they’d be well-advised to Compact ‘em.

As far as their licensed properties go, Boom! has a similar problem as IDW, as many of the licenses they were built on have ended. However, they have a long-standing license to produce comics starring Jim Davis’ legendary fat cat Garfield, with a series that lasted for 36 issues and dozens of spin-off one-shots and miniseries, including a tie-in to last year’s movie and a Baby Garfield miniseries currently on the stands. There’s more than enough content for four or five Garfield collections. And let’s face it, Jim Davis has never met a licensing opportunity he didn’t like. Similarly to Garfield, Boom! also had a long run of comics based on Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts, including an ongoing, a few mini-series, and several original graphic novels. I’d love to have these collected as well, but the most recent Peanuts book from Boom! came out in 2021, and I’m not certain if they still own the license or not. If they do, they should get on it.

There you have it, folks, five publishers and tons of suggestions for books they should add to their rapidly-growing library of smaller-scale comic book collections. I obviously love this format, and I welcome any and all books that can be added to it, but these are some of the ones that I think are really deserving of the treatment.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. He’s going to go over there on the bench now and stare hard at Image, Dark Horse, and Dynamite Entertainment until they start doing their own Compact lines to go along with everybody else. 

Superman Stuff #22: The 1982 Superman Spectacular

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During the Year of Superman, I devoted about an entire month to the epic 90s saga of Superman Red and Superman Blue. After that, I went back and read the original one-off “imaginary story” that partially inspired it. A few months ago, though, I learned of the existence the 1982 Superman Spectacular, a treasury-sized one-shot reprinting a story originally published in Europe by the Egmont Group (the same company responsible for some of the greatest Disney comics of the post-Gold Key era), which was also a different take on that classic story. Had I known about this book last year, I would have tried to hunt it down and include it then. But since I didn’t, it gets a showcase this week in Superman Stuff. 

Superman Spectacular #1
Title: The Startling Saga of Superman-Red and Superman-Blue!
Plot: Bob Rozakis
Script: Paul Kupperberg
Pencils: Adrian Gonzales
Inks: Vince Colletta
Cover: Adrian Gonzales

Our titanic tale begins when Lex Luthor – this is in his fun and feisty Bronze Age mad scientist era – sends a hologram to a Daily Planet staff meeting to boast that he’s going to pull a heist at S.T.A.R. Labs in an hour. When Superman heads out to thwart him, Luthor attacks with synthetic magic energy (I know, I thought the same thing) generated by a S.T.A.R. experiment. Superman takes precautions, expecting a trap, and defeats Luthor, who turns out to be yet another duplicate – a robot this time.

In space, the real Luthor is approached by Terra-Man, a now-obscure villain that they were REALLY trying to push into the A-list at the time. The Pre-Crisis Terra-Man was literally a child abducted from the old west and raised by aliens. He grew up, killed the aliens, tamed another alien that resembled a pegasus, and came back to Earth in the modern day to be a supervillain for some reason. Why they were trying so hard to make him one of the big guns is beyond me. But having found a chunk of the one substance deadly to Superman, Terra-Man and Luthor decide to partner up and destroy him together. Terra is smart enough not to trust Lex, though, and only speaks to him via an 80s sci-fi Zoom meeting, which turns out to cause a problem, as we shall soon see.

Terra-Man attacks Metropolis with a meteor shower, interrupting a date between Superman and Lois (RIGHT before she was about to say the big L-word to him too), and the Man of Steel jumps into action only to fall right into their Kryptonite trap…but instead of killing him, the Kryptonite wave splits him into two, a red and a blue Superman. Lex and Terra-Man hadn’t met in PERSON to discuss their plans, you see, and on his black-and-white monitor, Lex didn’t realize that Terra-Man had a chunk of RED Kryptonite, not the fatal green variety. If you’re not up on your DCU science, red Kryptonite doesn’t kill a Kryptonian but rather has a different, random effect on them every time they’re exposed to it. (You may have seen classic covers with Superman having an ant head or turning into a giant or something – these were usually red K tales.) Anyway, as the Supermen stop the meteors, although one of them is briefly perplexed when his super-breath temporarily stops working as they’re trying to blow the meteors away. The villains escape and Luthor proceeds to activate his next plan, opening up a magical portal to another dimension, because that’s the kind of thing mad scientists do. 

The twin Supermen stumble over one another at the Planet offices, then discover that some of their powers seem to cut in and out whenever they go into action. Despite that, they charge into battle against the two villains. As Blue battles Terra-Man in space and Red fights Luthor on Earth, Blue finally cracks the secret that the reader figured out 20 pages earlier – the two of them are sharing their powers, and only one of them can use any given power at a time. The realization is a bit too late for Red – on Earth, Lex’s sudden magical expertise has him on the ropes. Fortunately for him, the red Kryptonite wears off at just that second and he fades away, re-fusing with Blue in space. The fully restored Superman makes short work of Terra-Man, but returns to Earth to find that Lex’s magical prowess has intensified. In the ensuing battle, Lois Lane is hurled into a wall and nearly killed. Superman rushes to her side and tries to think of a scientific way to save her, a magical way to save her…but ultimately he discards both of those choices and brings her back with…

Okay, I’m just gonna quote the book here.

“Superman knows…of a force mightier than science and magic…mightier even than himself! And though the world would likely go on anyway, he calls upon this greatest of powers – the deity the people of Krypton called Rao! We know that force by other names on Earth – across the dimensions, in every universe, it is also known…it is love.”

Yeah, Superman saves Lois from the brink of death with the Power of Love. Which is also evidently what the Kryptonian sun-god Rao is. I wonder if Huey Lewis had any idea when he wrote that song.

What an odd little book. So strange, so utterly Bronze Age Superman. There are a lot of fun ideas and some nice moments when Red and Blue butt heads a little bit, although unlike the later version of the story it’s because they’re TOO MUCH alike rather than too different from one another. Maybe it comes from growing up in an era where a story like this would have lasted at least three or four issues, but the whole thing feels somewhat rushed to me. It’s like the storytellers had the basic idea, then once they figured they’d gotten all the mileage they could out of the split Superman concept, they wrapped it up as quickly as possible. But it’s fun to read, despite all of that. I’m honestly quite surprised we haven’t seen it reprinted for over 40 years, and I wonder if Egmont technically owns it. I can’t think of any other reason it’s sitting in obscurity when so many other books show up again and again. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. Don’t forget, you can check out earlier blogs in the Year of Superman/Superman Stuff Archive! Got a request for a future “Superman Stuff”? Drop it in the comments!