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A day in the life of the newly-unemployed comic book president.
9am: Launch new blog: FormerDCPresident.blogspot.com.
9:15am: “Office of Paul Levitz. Paul speaking.” “Hi, it’s Paul.” “This is Paul.” Practice answering own phone.
9:30am: Conference call with Jemas, Alessi, Jeanette, Shooter and Rosenberg. Make plans for regular poker game.
9:45am: 3 emails from Mark Millar. Not my problem. Delete-delete-delete.
10:20am: How’s this iPhone thing work again?
11am: Drop by DC. Place Carlin in charge of E. Nelson Bridwell’s ashes.
11:15am: Talk to Bob Wayne. Get added to comp list.
11:30am: Human Resources…inhuman resources…could be title for new mini-series.
Noon: Lunch with Diane. Try to explain all the different Robins and Batgirls to her. She keeps getting Streaky the Supercat and Comet The Super-Horse mixed up. Should I even mention Beppo?
Click to continue reading PAUL LEVITZ’S DIARY
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DC Comics: Justice League: Cry for Justice #3
Posted by David Torres Categories: Reviews, DC Comics,
Rating: **
Here is another series that started off great, but is slowly going downhill. The one saving grace is the artwork. Mauro Cascioli is doing some great work here. I particularly like his work on Congorilla. In this issue we have two back-to-back splash pages that show Congorilla and Starman fighting off some bad guys and it looks absolutely awesome! When I heard Conogrilla was going to be a part of this team, I thought I wouldn’t like the character, but so far I like him and think he would be good on the Justice League for a while. Now to the story.
In our last issue, we saw Green Lantern’s pro-active Justice League taking shape. GL and Green Arrow met up with the Atom, Shazam, and Supergirl. In a weird scene, the issue opens up with GL questioning Supergirl on whether she’s here as a hero or a villain. He asks her this because of the recent events in the Superman books with New Krypton and some of the Kryptonians acting like bad guys. Instead of having Supergirl stand up to GL and say she’s a hero and her own person, she begins to cry! I know Kara is a teenager, but come on. It’s bad enough that female characters in comics have tough times being front and center of things, but to have her cry is just wrong and it makes her look weak.
Click to continue reading DC Comics: Justice League: Cry for Justice #3
I love looking at concept art, pencil drawings, and preliminary sketches. I find the best ones can make the gears in my overly-caffeinated brain go: Yeah, I’d totally buy something that looked like that.
I like Gray Morrow’s art a lot. I thought he was an excellent draftsman who never really got the credit that a lot of his contemporaries did. He also did a lot of work for relatively low-profile companies, which while it paid the bills probably didn’t contribute to his fanboy cred. You don’t hear fans going “Man, I loved that Morrow run on Superman/Conan/Avengers!” like you do about other artists of his generation because he didn’t have long runs on the bigger titles of his day. Since he was also an in-demand commercial artist who painted tons of book covers, worked on newspaper strips like Tarzan, and did other illustration work, I assume he was too busy to do three years on Thor.
Click to continue reading Gray Morrow’s Batman as James Bond
Weekend Reading: Disney, Marvel, Wolfman, Claremont, Starlin And The Lost Silver Surfer Novel!
Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials, DC Comics, Independent, Marvel Comics,
What a week, huh? Disney bought Marvel and everyone’s wondering how this will finally address their pet Marvel peeve. Before you get all fan-ish with what this means now and will mean in the future - they own the Ultraverse! They own Crossgen! They have to do this! They have to do that! They can hire Alan Moore! They’ll clean up Marvel! They’ll rollback prices! You should run over and read Steven Grant’s very perceptive take on the buyout in his Permanent Damage column. He’s a sharp guy and he makes excellent points.
In the meantime, there was other stuff for avid lurkers to check out and peruse in their spare time. Let’s take a look:
Rating: ** 1/2*
After a great first issue, this storyline continues to go downhill. When we last left Batman, Dick was cornered by Clayface and an unknown ex-army guy, who were hired by the Black Mask to help the Penguin. The army guy is given a name in this issue and it’s Lyle Blanco. Blanco is a serial killer whose spent time in Arkham Asylum. Our issue opens with Clayface and Blanco battling Batman. I didn’t like the way Judd Winick had been writing Dick as Batman. I felt that he portrayed Dick is kind of wimpy and unsure of himself, but I liked the way he portrayed Dick here in this fight with Blanco and Clayface. He was confident and sure of his abilities that he could take these guys down. This is the way Batman should be. Kicking butt.
We see also in this issue Two-Face recruiting a young girl who can perform magic whom he looks to recruit in his efforts to find out more about the new Batman. He shows her a batarang that he was able to get his hands on and asks her if she can use it to find out where it comes from. Sort of use it as a tracer to locate the new Batman’s hideout.
Click to continue reading DC Comics Review: Batman #690
DC Comics Review: Justice Society of America #30
Posted by David Torres Categories: Reviews, DC Comics,
Rating: ** 1/2*
We pick up from where we left off with last month’s issue with the Justice Society of America (JSA) all defeated except Stargirl and The Flash Jay Garrick. For whatever reason, Stargirl must not be harmed. The group of miscellaneous stand ready to take out Jay Garrick when he runs away. He runs to go get help in the form of the new Dr. Fate. A while back there were a series of one-shots called the Helmet of Fate as well as the mini-series Countdown to Mystery that saw the return of an all new Dr. Fate. This Dr. Fate is a legacy character named Kent V Nelson and he is the grandnephew of the original Dr. Fate, Kent Nelson. This was all new to me as I wasn’t aware that a new Dr. Fate was chosen. This Dr. Fate is able to fool the villains into thinking he’s the real deal as far being able to use his powers as well as his predecessor’s.
Fate, Stargirl, and Flash hold off the villains long enough as it gives the other JSAers enough time to recover and regroup. The villains see that the tide has turned on them and run off. Magog wants to run after them. Wildcat wants to retreat as Liberty Belle is hurt and they can’t seem to contact Mister Terrific. Power Girl agrees with Magog, but appeases Wildcat and splits the team up with some heading back to headquarters, while others head after the villains. Magog is portrayed as being more aggressive here. He’s looking at this from a military perspective and wants to stomp out the enemy for good. Something doesn’t seem right with him.
Click to continue reading DC Comics Review: Justice Society of America #30
Batman’s Catwoman: Is Megan Fox In…or Out?
Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials, Movies, DC Comics,
If they’re talking about a new Batman movie, you can bet that everyone’s talking about the new villain and that it’s Catwoman’s turn… and also Megan Fox’s. She’s the new “hot” girl, thanks to all those wonderful photos of her on the internet, plus appearances on shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live and also in the Transformers movies and the upcoming Jennifer’s Body.
She’s already shot Jonah Hex (the movie, I don’t think she actually shot the character), and she’s supposed to play Fathom should that actually come to pass. She was once rumored to play She-Hulk, so why not Catwoman? Plus, Salma Hayek is about 10 years too old for Catwoman now.
Click to continue reading Batman’s Catwoman: Is Megan Fox In…or Out?
Rating: ***
A pretty good issue here. Part three of the “Elegy” story arc as Kate Kane the Batwoman continues her fight against the Religion of Crime (ROC). In our last issue we saw the leader of the ROC, Alice, and her followers stand ready to take out Batwoman and her father, but a group of monsters show up. The monsters are there to help Batwoman and they attack the ROC. Their leader is a werewolf and he helps Kate and her dad get to safety. The werewolf changes back to human form and tells Kate’s dad that they are the true believers. I’m assuming these people were apart of the ROC before Alice took over. We learn that the werewolf is man named Abbot who was the “bodyman” for the last High Madame Whisper A’Daire.
What I enjoy most about the character of Kate Kane is not her activities as Batwoman, but more so the person behind the mask. Writer Greg Rucka writes a great scene with Kate and her father and follows it up with a dinner party they attend where Kate meets up with Maggie Sawyer. Sawyer was first introduced in the pages of Superman back in the 80s, but she has since been “transferred” to Gotham City and the Batman universe. Will we see a romance develop here?
Click to continue reading DC Comics Review: Detective Comics #856
Rating: ***
When we were first given information about the Blackest Night min-series, we were told that this story would involve all of the various Ring Corps that exist in the universe. So far, we haven’t seen much of them - only the Black Lantern rings racing across the universe and resurrecting the dead into Black Lanterns. That all changes with this month’s issue of Green Lantern. All of the various ring colors are represented here, but the major feature of this issue is the battle between yellow ring leader Sinestro of the Sinestro Corps and Carol Ferris of the violet colored Star Sapphires Corps.
I’ve mentioned before that I’m not a long-time Green Lantern reader so I didn’t know until recently that Carol Ferris was at one time a Star Sapphire. So the impact of her as a Star Sapphire again and her fighting Sinestro does have the same impact on me as a long-time reader would have. Still it’s very cool. You don’t normally have the girlfriend/wife of a super-hero becoming a hero herself and then fighting her boyfriend/husband’s archenemy all that often. Have we ever seen Mary Jane get powers and fight the Green Goblin? So this is very cool and it adds a whole dynamic to the relationship of Hal Jordan, Carol, and Sinestro.
Click to continue reading DC Comics Review: Green Lantern #45
Rating: ***
After almost three months, The Flash: Rebirth series continues. I’ve liked this series so far, but this issue was very confusing. It reminded me of some comic book stories I read in the 90s where the story was very exciting, but I had no idea what was going on. I kind of felt that way here with this issue as I had to go over and re-read certain things to get a better grasp of what was going on - and as of right now, I’m still not 100% sure what’s going on or how to explain it. However confusing the story may be, the action is intense and non-stop in this issue and with the action being presented by artist extraordinaire Ethan Van Sciver, you don’t mind it as page after page showcase some amazing artwork.
In our last issue, the main villain of our story stood revealed and to no surprise it was Eobard Thawne the Reverse Flash, Professor Zoom. Okay. So from what I can understand, Thawne is responsible for infecting Barry with his current affliction of hurting speedsters. According to Thawne, he has created a negative Speed Force. It seems that when Barry was hit by lightning he created the Speed Force at that moment and now Thawne has created the negative Speed Force and it’s the cause of Barry’s disorder.
Click to continue reading DC Comics Review: The Flash: Rebirth #4
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