Riding the Rails

The Green Lantern continuity will continue into The New 52. That means that everything that’s ever happened to Hal Jordan - becoming Earth’s first Green Lantern, being possessed by Parallax, killing most of the Corps, dying, being resurrected, the Sinestro Corp Wars, Rise of the Red Lanterns, Blackest Night, Brightest Day, and the War of the Green Lanterns - all happened in the space of approximately five years. When Green Lantern #1 ships in September, Hal will no longer be a Green Lantern. Instead, he’ll have another occupation.

The November DC solicitations have been released. This is now the third month of solicitations for The New 52 that have come out before The New 52 even begins. Solicitations have to walk that fine line between being ambiguous and spoil-free but enticing enough to make a reader want to buy the issue. Since The New 52 has yet to start, we have no context by which to interpret these tantalizing tidbits to really determine what’s worthwhile. As a result, I also think these solicitations are vaguer than normal. Hopefully, things will start to make more sense once the first round of The New 52 books comes out in September.

Three issues in and we’ve already had a change of writers on Batman: The Dark Knight. David Finch is gone, replaced with Paul Jenkins, who is also the writer of the Deadman story in DC Universe Presents. Finch is still on art duty for BDK but he has two other artists working with him as well as a second artist helping on the cover. Finch has been jerking DC around for a while with both the original run of BDK and this new run. I guess they finally got sick of it.

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents makes its return to the DCU with a new six issue mini-series. Every new book that’s been announced beyond the original 52 books has been a six issue mini. The three mini-series announced last month (Huntress, Penguin, and Legion of Super-Heroes Secret Origin) make sense as a mini-series as they will easily tie into other books within the original 52. T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents however could easily be its own ongoing book. I wonder if DC plans to gauge sales numbers of the mini and if they are good enough, turn it into an ongoing book, either adding it to the 52 or having it replace another lower-selling title. Kris was a big fan of the current Agents book, so we’re definitely going to check this one out.