Eight Ball, Corner Pocket

Kyle’s pool shark career has gotten off to a rocky start.

As part of DC’s focus on heroes for 2011, they are releasing three one-shots in January focusing on different “lesser used” characters from the DCU: Shazam!, Steel, and Wonder Girl.

The last time we saw Freddie Freeman he had been captured by Prometheus who impersonated Freddie to infiltrate the JLA in Justice League: Cry for Justice. While Freddie is an interesting character, I’m more intrigued by the fact that Billy Batson and his sister Mary are going to make appearances in this one-shot. To me and Kris both there is only one Captain Marvel, and that’s Billy Batson. We’ve been hoping for a while now that Billy will get his powers back and retake his rightful place wearing the white cape and this could be it. Eric Wallace, who is currently writing the Titans storyline which include Black Marvel Family member Osiris has said that the Titans story plus this one shot is part of his larger plans for the Marvel family. Please bring Billy back, we beg you!

After Superman was killed by Doomsday, four “Supermen” appeared in Metropolis to fill the void. Reading those early Return of Superman stories, the character that sticks out in my mind for being the coolest was John Henry Irons. To me there was something so cool about a common construction worker who built himself a super-suit and stepped in to fill the void. Of course, we’ve since learned that Irons was much more than a common construction worker, but that hasn’t decreased my like for the character. We saw Irons briefly during the War of the Supermen event when he helped rescue his kidnapped niece Natasha Irons. I’m not sure what they’re going to do in this story, but I’m hoping for something pretty awesome.

Of these specials, the Wonder Girl special is the one that I’m least excited about. Cassandra Sandsmark has been getting a lot more “page time” then the other two characters being focused on as she’s the current leader of the Teen Titans. It might be just the poor writing from the current Teen Titans run that’s put me off the character, but I don’t feel like there’s something more to her story that I’m missing. Hopefully, this one-shot will give me something that makes the character more interesting to me.

I don’t know if these character one-shots are only happening in January or if it’s something DC plans to continue all year long. It’s an interesting concept and something we’ll definitely be watching closely.