Welcome to Comic Rack! My pick of the top five comic news stories in no particular order.
The Return of Shazam!
Announced recently along with the rest of DC’s Second Wave of the New 52, a mainstay hero finally makes his appearance, with a little tweak. Shazam (formerly Captain Marvel) will be arriving in a backup feature in Justice League #7, with a modified costume and a “new” name. While the character was always known as Captain Marvel, due to legal issues with Marvel Comics DC was restricted from licensing a comic using the name and published his adventures as Shazam or some variation. Now the character will finally be going by Shazam, which I thinks make the most sense. Geoff Johns explains:
“Well, there are a lot of reasons for the change. One is that everybody thinks he’s called Shazam already, outside of comics. It’s also, for all sorts of reasons, calling him Shazam just made sense for us. And, you know, every comic book he’s in right now has Shazam on the cover. So I think just by embracing that and calling him Shazam.”
Here’s a look at his new hooded threads, and knowing the look of the New 52 he probably has a collar underneath it as well:
The Return of Captain Marvel!
Now we aren’t talking about Shazam anymore. Marvel also had a number of Captain Marvel’s the first being the Kree Captain Mar-Vell. He died famously of cancer back in the 80’s, and despite a few characters going by that name he was always the honred original. Well, it seems now that DC has relinquished all use of the name the time has come for Captain marvel to return. But it may not be who you would expect. At WonderCon, Marvel announced that Carol Danvers (formerly Ms. Marvel) will be taking on the role of Captain Marvel in a new ongoing series by Kelly Sue DeConnick with art by Dexter Soy.
DeConnick spoke about her take on the character:
My pitch was called ‘Pilot’ and the take can pretty much be summed up with ‘Carol Danvers as Chuck Yeager. Carol’s the virtual definition of a Type A personality. She’s a competitor and a control freak. At the start of our series, we see Carol pre-Captain Marvel, pre-NASA even, back when she was a fiercely competitive pilot. We’ll see her meeting one of her aviation heroes and we’ll see her youthful bravado, her swagger. Then over the course of the first arc we’re going to watch her find her way back to that hungry place. She’ll have to figure out how to be both Captain Marvel and Chuck Yeager—to marry the responsibility of that legacy with the sheer joy being nearly invulnerable and flying really [expletive] fast.
My playlist for this series is heavy on AC/DC, Heart and Pat Benatar.
You can check here for an interesting interview with the designer of Carol’s new costume, which I think is great.
Spider-Men Coming In June!
Not much is known about the upcoming series by Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli. This is the same team that launched Miles Morales, the new Ultimate Spider-Man, which leads me to believe that it will include Miles Morales. But what could it be about? Here is the first teaser:
Clearly the teaser seems to refer to separate logos meeting up, which would lead me to believe we might see a meeting between miles Morales and another Spider-Man. But what does that mean? You’d think if Miles was going to meet the Mainstream Peter Parker, it would be more of a one-shot then a continuing series. Maybe this next teaser will clear things up.
Or not. But could that possibly mean the return of the Ultimate Peter Parker? I am skeptical of Bendis bringing Ultimate Parker back to life since he was pretty adamant about the end of the character. Then this teaser was released:
So it looks like one of the Spider-Men will be Amazing Spider-Man (Mainstream 616 universe) if I know my Spider-Men like I think I do. Which would lead me to believe the remaining Spidey will be none other than Miles Morales, given who the creators are and the sheer awesomeness of not only a meeting but a series featuring the two. Written by Bendis. Stay tuned…
The New 52’s Second Wave!
The Second Wave is the next round of series coming from DC Comics and their revamped universe. These series will be replacing some set to be cancelled and the choices are quite surprising but still pretty exciting. io9 reports with covers from TFAW:
* BATMAN INCORPORATED – Writer: Grant Morrison. Artist: Chris Burnham. The acclaimed ongoing writer of ACTION COMICS, Grant Morrison, presents a fresh take on BATMAN INCORPORATED, in which the Batman brand is franchised globally in preparation for a major international threat.
* EARTH 2 – Writer: James Robinson. Artist: Nicola Scott. The greatest heroes on a parallel Earth, the Justice Society combats threats that will set them on a collision course with other worlds.
* WORLDS’ FINEST – Writer: Paul Levitz. Artists: George Perez and Kevin Maguire. Stranded on our world from a parallel reality, Huntress and Power Girl struggle to find their way back to Earth 2. Perez and Maguire will be the artists on alternating story arcs.
* DIAL H – Writer: China Miéville. Artist: Mateus Santoluoco. The first ongoing series from acclaimed novelist China Miéville, this is a bold new take on a cult classic concept about the psychological effects on an everyman who accidentally gains powers to become a hero.
* G.I. COMBAT – Writer: J.T. Krul. Artist: Ariel Olivetti. Featuring the return of a classic DC Comics series, THE WAR THAT TIME FORGOT, along with rotating back-up stories and creative teams – including THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER, with writers Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti and artist Dan Panosian; and THE HAUNTED TANK, with writer John Arcudi and artist Scott Kolins.
* THE RAVAGERS – Writer: Howard Mackie. Artist: Ian Churchill. Spinning off from TEEN TITANS and SUPERBOY, this series finds four superpowered teens on the run and fighting against the organization that wants to turn them into supervillains.
The six new series will replace BLACKHAWKS, HAWK AND DOVE, MEN OF WAR, MISTER TERRIFIC, O.M.A.C. and STATIC SHOCK, all of which will conclude with their eighth issues in April.
The New 52 keeps on rolling with the return of Batman, Inc. and the emergence of Earth 2 in the New 52. That pretty much means that a new Crisis is on hand. You can read more on Power Girl and Huntress and some Earth 2 goodies here, here, and a cool look at Earth 2’s Flash below:
Space Punisher!
Wow. Not only is this cool because its the Punisher in freaking space, but it could be the start of a new alternate reality series that can’t possibly go wrong. Anything in space is infinitely cooler, obviously disregarding Jason X and Leprechaun In Space. Frank Tieri and Mark Texiera bring us the awesomely ridiculous premise of Frank Castle cruising the stars fighting intergalactic mobsters. CBR Reports:
“If you want to blame someone, blame Rick Remender,” the writer said of the book’s origin. “My pitch was originally for the the main ‘Punisher’ book. After ‘Frankencastle,’ I was asking myself what you could do next with the character. And the one thing that struck me was that the Marvel Universe never had an intergalactic mafia — just like ‘Star Trek’ had the Alliance and ‘Star Wars’ had the Hutts. How come it doesn’t? Why wouldn’t we have that? So my initial story was that there is such a group, and they set their sites on earth. Then our Frank Castle says ‘Not on my planet!’ and he’d go out to fight monsters and cosmic mobster, and that’s what the book would be. But Marvel saw it as something bigger than that. They saw the potential to do something where they could spin off projects from it.”
As with past Marvel series detailing alternate Marvel Us, the take Tieri and Texeira have planned for the four-issue “Space: Punisher” when it debuts in July will strike a few familiar chords with readers. “This is a version of Frank Castle just like ‘Punisher Noir’ was a version of Frank,” the writer said. “And he’ll be interacting with versions of other Marvel characters. But as crazy as it sounds with him off in space shooting and killing all sorts of crazy monsters, at the heart it’s still a Punisher story. All the elements that make a great Punisher story are there. He’s still the guy who lost his family, went nuts and started killing a ton of people. He’s still that guy with the obsessive quest for revenge. And he’s still going to be killing mobsters — they’re just not human mobsters! So it’s still very much a Punisher story, and I think that’s the most important thing for people to understand.”
I’m so totally behind this idea. There’s a lot more at the link regarding other Marvel characters that populate this reality of Space heroes. And Newsarama has a cool list of 10 Marvel heroes they want to see get the Space treatment.
That’s it for this edition.You can check out more Comic Rack here!
Let us know what you think about any of the top stories in the comments section below!
Grizzly Bomb 