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.