New solicits are up over at the Source blog - we have 8 Bat-Family titles announced. Gail Simone also has a clarifying piece that seems to indicate this is Barbara Gordon, actually physically swinging around Gotham again.
Batman, Batman and Robin, Batman : The Dark Knight, Detective, Birds of Prey, Catwoman, Batwoman, and Batgirl. A cover for a new Nightwing #1 has also been leaked, as well as a Swamp Thing title, but no official solicit yet.
Huh.
Did anyone else notice that Grant Morrison’s name isn’t anywhere on any of those new Batman family titles?
Rumor says he’s on Superman.
And we have confirmation on Nightwing, as well as ‘Red Hood and the Outlaws’ with Red Hood, Arsenal, and Starfire…
Huh again. So what happens to Tim Drake since Damien is Robin? (BOO! Unless Morrison is writing Damien, I can’t stand the kid)
I do like the red-on-black look for Nightwing as opposed to the blue-on-black.
Judging from the cover, the new Birds of Prey team is Poison Ivy, Black Canary, Renee Montoya (not in Question outfit - don’t know if that’s significant or just cover design) and some Japanese girl I’ve never seen before.
I think the Japanese woman is Katana in a new costume - it has a similar feel to hers, in any case. The fourth woman doesn’t seem to be Montoya - those tattoos are similar, if not identical, to the ones Thorn was wearing last we saw her (just before Gail left the last series).
I think it’s more than a little ironic that DC has gone to the trouble of re-designing Wonder Woman’s costume so that she has long pants, rather than a thong (in part because of concern that the costume was too revealing for some overseas markets) and then shrinks her bra in size to the point that it barely covers her nipples! I mean, why not just remove her shirt altogether, and just put some stripper tassles on her nips?
At this point, my thought is: DC announces new DCUniverse with more minorities represented… and immediately redacts out their primary handicapped character in the DCUniverse.
D’oh.
I just noticed Arsenal’s hat in the Outlaws cover.
I have to imagine the joke is deliberate, and it’s cracking me up.
I certainly take your point, but Barbara Gordon’s on-going wheelchair occupancy is something of a narrative problem in the DC universe.
This is a woman who’s on first-name terms with people who have access to advanced super-science (including advanced alien super-science and advanced future super-science), magic, and an eclectic mix of deities, demons and other supernatural beings. Most of these people owe her some serious favours – and yet she remains crippled. Meanwhile, other characters have been killed and resurrected and are happily getting on with their lives. It’s almost like a spinal injury is harder to fix than death.
Actually, that’s exactly what it’s like. Damian Wayne was paralysed by five close-range shots to the lower spine last year. His mother fixed him with advanced evil super-surgery, but he had to spend several days in a wheelchair and neck-brace.
While that was happening, Batwoman was made a quadriplegic by a rock fall, and persuaded Dick to kill her with an overdose of morphine and toss her in a Lazarus pit. She was up and about and kicking ass within minutes.
Add in Bruce’s own recovery from a broken back, and it really starts to look like Babs is just malingering.
The red-on-black Nightwing costume also suggests the Batman Beyond uniform. I like it.
The problem is that for all DC’s constant blather about diversity, I don’t buy it or trust them. Infinite Crisis brought us several diverse characters, and they’ve done everything they can to quash them after the fact. Batwoman’s series has been put on hold for so long it’s a running joke (she was supposed to get it right after 52 ended–about 2007ish–and has just hung out in limbo since then). The new Blue Beetle had his own book which (sadly) failed and rather than having him guest star everywhere, they essentially ignored him (other than that recent JL book).
And my personal favorite, Ryan (Atom) Choi died as part of DC’s “Let’s kill Asians!” month. (He got snuffed to prove some stupid super-villain team was real tough). They also killed Speedy’s half-Asian kid within a month or so of that and…IIRC someone else.
Combine that with de-handicapping Oracle, and the “Gosh! We really want diversity!” thing just disintegrates.
PS–Cyborg is not an “A”-list character. He just…isn’t. They can push him all they want, but just like they did with Doomsday (The ULTIMATE Superman villain) or Conduit (The earlier ULTIMATE Superman villain) or Bane (The ULTIMATE Batman villain), all they’ll do is annoy the audience. Like, say, Vision, Cyborg’s a great character as part of a group. But there’s no “there” there. I wish DC would learn that you can’t make a B-character into an A-Character by just wishing hard and gross overexposure. Mr Terrific, on the other hand, has every making of an A-Lister. An interesting origin (as opposed to being attacked by a space amoeba), solid, interesting characterization (he’s an athiest. How many other characters are?) and nifty powers. It’s weird they didn’t choose him.
Each female character has an exposure constant [Female Superbeing Exposure Constant = FSEC]. They’re costume can be redesigned as much as the editor wishes, but it must still equal the same FSEC. This is made up by an equation taking into account the amount of skin their showing, modified by the titillation factor [TF] of the skin being shown. The closer the skin is to the nipples or labia, the higher the TF, the more socially acceptable the skin, the lower the TF. A typical exposure factor calculation might look like this:
Wonder woman (classic) FSEF = 24
Costume covers nipple (TF 9 x 0 )
Covers peri-nipple breast (6 x 0)
Exposes cleavage (TF 6 x 2 )
Covers bum (TF 4 x 0)
Exposes legs and thighs (TF 6 x 2)
Wonder woman (redesign) FSEF = 24
Costume covers nipple (TF 9 x 0 )
Exposes peri-nipple breast (6 x 2)
Exposes cleavage (TF 6 x 2 )
Covers bum (TF 4 x 0)
Covers legs and thighs (TF 6 x 0)
So you can see you can tweak the costume however you like, as long as the constant remains the same.
Fenris, how do you figure Jaime has been “ignored” by DC? Aside from JL:GL, he had a backup feature in Booster Gold, and has been a member of Teen Titans.
Batwoman’s series has been delayed not due to any reluctance on DC’s part to use the character, but because J. H. Williams is so slow but so worth waiting for.
Tengu, you’re right that the dark-skinned lady in BoP probably isn’t Renee - somehow I didn’t notice the arm tatoos at first.
Mr. Terrific is on the new JLA, supposedly.
And DC pushed Blue Beetle HARD, Fenris. His own series, the Teen Titans, JL : Generation Lost, one of Batman’s most frequent guest stars on the Brave and the Bold show, Smallville. You can definitely lambaste DC for their treatment of Ryan Choi, but Jaime Reyes actually got pushed.
The Batwoman series had creative team delays, and then just as they got that together, they were less than a year from this reboot, so they decided to hold it to give her the most effective push possible.
We had one more reveal yesterday, and some news. Batman Inc is still in continuity, and though it is not part of the September relaunch, the book will be returning in early 2012 to finish Grant’s story.
Spinning out of Batman Inc, as a part of the relaunch, is Batwing, a series starring the Batman of Africa.
Only Doctor Thirteen that I can think of, and he’s an idiot. Which is irritating, but atheism makes no sense in the DC universe.
Mr Terrific’s own origin involves a meeting with the Spectre – the embodiment of the wrath of God – and he’s since died and been brought back to life by magic. What does he mean by “I’m an atheist” when he’s saying it to the reincarnation of an ancient egyptian, or a guy who collects the souls of evildoers in his costume?
Having said which, I’m a fan of Mr Terrific myself, and I think he’s a character I could stand to see a good deal more of.
He’s also seen the Spectre get whupped by a mere mortal, and met a Kryptonian who performs feats that seem as miraculous feats as any accomplished by – er, a green-clad guy with a high-tech lantern and a power ring; the DC universe is chock full of energy-manipulating folks in weird-looking costumes, and the allegedly divine ones don’t especially impress him.
Yeah, you and cmkeller are right. I misremembered (I just like Jamie. More Jamie now*, dammit!)
*Including his supporting cast. Paco rules.