Batman of the Ages

At WonderCon this weekend, DC announced a series of retro-active one shots, which is completely different than what we interpreted them to be. However, I think our version is much cooler.

I honestly don’t understand the point of these Retro-Active one-shots. If they have old tales from the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s that they want to reprint, then that’s fine: print them. What I don’t get is why they will have new content written in the character’s style from that time period. I honestly don’t get the point of that. The only value I could see in any of this is using the Batman in the 90s book to re-introduce Bane’s original appearance in preparation for his inclusion in Dark Knight Rises. However, that seems a little bit of a stretch and a year too early. Maybe there’s something else that I’m missing that’s gotten lost in translation from the original WonderCon announcement.

DC and Warner Brothers said they were going to start the major press for Green Lantern at WonderCon and they definitely did. Among multiple panels and announcements, they also showed off four minutes of new footage. The tone of the clips has definitely changed from the original trailer. Gone is the sort of campy, irreverent feeling to be replaced with a sense of epicness. Being a Green Lantern is Serious Business and they’re going to show you that it’s Serious Business by the epic score and lots of shots of Lanterns standing around while Sinestro tells them how Serious the Business has become. I thought the new footage did a good job and kind of renewed my faith in the movie. Kris isn’t as convinced. He’s trying hard not to be That Guy who is too overcritical of it to sit back and enjoy the movie, but he still has reservations. As he puts it, the new footage should have given him chills and it didn’t. The movie comes out in June, so hopefully we’ll see more trailers between now and then.

Dark Horse announced at WonderCon both a new Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic as well as an Angel series. Joss and company had already indicated that there would be a Season 9, so that announcement hadn’t been much of a surprise. We had also known that Dark Horse now had the comic rights to Angel and the IDW Angel comics have ended as a result. The new Angel comic isn’t just Angel, but Angel and Faith working together in London. If you read the final issue of Buffy Season 8, this pairing isn’t too surprising. Both series are supposed to last 25 issues and I’m assuming they will ultimately be linked in some fashion. Georges Jeanty is returning as artist on Buffy, which is disappointing as I thought Season 8 suffered towards the end because of Jeanty’s art. They’ve released the covers for both the first issues and while the Buffy cover continues the gorgeous painted covers of the previous season, the Angel & Faith cover is completely unrecognizable. It’s a guy in a trench coat standing next to a brunette, but there’s nothing in their tiny scrunched up faces that look like Angel or Faith to me. A&F launch in August with Buffy following the next month.