Kris and I started Ret-Conned because we were bored and looking for something fun and distracting. While it has been fun and a great distraction, a lot has changed in a year and a half and we find that there’s a bunch of other stuff going on that’s equally fun and distracting we want to try. Now that we’re moving on from Ret-Conned, we’re not sure what we’ll do next but if it’s something interesting that we think is worth sharing with the world, we’ll be sure to let you know. We will be keeping the comic archives up for everybody to enjoy, although probably hosted a little bit differently. Thanks for reading and we hope you enjoyed Kyle, Al, and Gnome’s adventures. Now, head over to the comic shop and find something new to read!

When the Amazon Kindle Fire was announced, one of the additional announcements was the exclusive release of DC digital trades to the Amazon Kindle Fire store. I haven’t gotten to play with a Kindle Fire first hand, but from what I’ve heard the compression on the comic pages to fit them onto the Fire’s seven inch screen makes them hard to read. In addition to this, DC also announced their very own Amazon page for old media trades. DC’s blog post made this sound like it was a big deal that Amazon created this page for them, but in looking at it, I don’t see anything that this page does that you can’t setup with one of the Amazon Affiliate Stores, but with Amazon’s default markings as a template. Even if that’s all it is, it is neat that there is one centralized place that you can go to find all of the DC trades that are available.

After Smallville ended and neither the Locke & Key and Wonder Woman pilots were picked up, there’s been a dearth of TV shows based on comic books currently on the air. Marvel is working on several options, including a new Incredible Hulk series and other indie titles like Powers are getting treatments, but there hasn’t been any explorations of a series based on a DC character. The wait is over as Syfy has ordered a pilot for a Booster Gold TV series. I think Booster is a great character to try to turn into a TV series. His origin is extremely approachable and the character’s personality would be easy to capture on film. Also, if they decide to work in his later work as being a protector of the time stream, there’s a lot of really cool stories they can do. The order is for a one-hour drama, but hopefully they’ll keep it a drama in the sense that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a drama because without some of Booster’s more light-hearted elements he fails to be Booster.

Empire magazine has some new pictures from The Dark Knight Rises as well as an interview with Christopher Nolan that reveals DKR takes place eight years after The Dark Knight. Nolan talks about how this makes for a much darker Bruce Wayne that’s “not in a great state,” but it leaves me to wonder how much information will we get about those intervening eight years. Is Batman still being hunted by the police? Will there be mention of other villains who showed up in those eight years? One of the pictures from Empire shows Bane holding what looks like a picture of Harvey Dent, so I wonder if eight years later the death of Harvey Dent is still the most “important” aspect of Batman’s life. I’m sure that none of these questions will be revealed in the first trailer for the movie, but we’ll get to see it anyway December 16 before the new Sherlock Holmes movie.

Joss Whedon did a brief interview about The Avengers movie, doing his normal good job of talking a lot and saying little. I did find it interesting that this new version of Bruce Banner and the Hulk will not tie into the previous Hulk movies. Instead, this Bruce will have more inspiration from the TV series than the movies. Robert Downey, Jr appeared in the post-credits sequence of The Incredible Hulk, so I’m wondering if the events of the two movies are still part of the shared universe, but they’re just changing the characterization. If so, I think it’ll work out well. I’ve enjoyed Ruffalo’s work previously and think he can have an interesting take on the character.

They’ve announced the first DCL expansion pack for DC Universe Online since it went free to play. Sometime before the end of the year, there will be a Flash pack that will include a map of Central City as well as new electrical super powers. It looks like that Black Lightening and Static Shock will be some of the new heroes added to the game. The Flash’s rogues like Professor Zoom, Trickster, and The Top will also be added. Flash Fact: It looks really cool.

Marvel has released some cool character posters for The Avengers that show off the seven main protagonists and primary villain. I think that this is going to be a really fun movie and every promotional piece they release excites me even more. Kris is interested to see what they do with Hawkeye and Black Widow, the “normals” of the bunch. I hadn’t heard of the previously attempted solo Black Widow movie. I’m kind of glad that it didn’t work out then so we have the character now because Scarlett Johansson has done a great job with it.

Wednesday I speculate there would be some book cancellations in DC’s March solicitations next month, but Marvel’s decided not to wait and has cancelled a bunch of books for February. I’m disappointed that X-23 got the axe. The couple of (early) issues that I read were well written, but not having been involved in the Marvel universe for years I wasn’t that interested in the character. I knew that there was a new Ghost Rider, but I’d never heard who it was or that it was a woman, which is an indication for the minimal traction that book was getting. It’ll be interesting to see what they do with the Ghost Rider character. Will the new Ghost Rider show up in other books or will they try to return the Spirit of Vengeance to Johnny Blaze?

I really like the design of The New 52’s Darkseid, mainly other than putting him in armor he’s very much the same Darkseid that we’ve had for forty years. Justice League #3 comes out this week, but the above image is from next month’s Justice League #4, which makes me wonder what will transpire in issue 3 that warranted releasing this image early. It’s also interesting that this image was used as a placeholder to the cover of Justice League #6 from the February solicitations. Clearly, there’s something even bigger than Darkseid that would be revealed on the February cover, but the Lord of Apokolips will have to appease us for now.

Speaking of the February Solicitations, if Kris and my hypothesis is correct, this will be the last set of solicitations of the “old guard” of The New 52. February will be issue 6 of the fifty-two issues of the reboot marks the end of the first story arc for most of the books. We suspect that if any books will get cancelled or major creative team changes occur, it will be in the March books. There have been some changes for creative teams already, but for relatively few books all things considered. If there’s a big overhaul of books that “just aren’t working”, it’ll be issue 7. How big of a change there will be remains to be seen.

As part of the February solicitations, DC has announced that the Beyond universe will be coming back in a new monthly book called Batman Beyond Unlimited. Both Batman Beyond and Justice League Beyond will be starting in February released weekly as digital chapters. At the end of the month, those digital-first chapters will be printed in the Batman Beyond Unlimited book. It’s an interesting concept that allows DC to experiment with the digital publishing medium while still allowing print die-hards access to the same stories. Testing this concept with the Beyond line is a nice idea. The Beyond books are set in the future so why not publish them first in the medium of the future?

I was familiar with the basic premise of Locke & Key, that a family lived in a house that had magical doors that would do different things once they were unlocked, when the TV pilot had been produced and was shopped around. I’d also read the FCBD L&K issue and while I enjoyed that single issue, I was afraid that the concept would be gimmicky in a longer story. While the magical key concept is definitely important for the story, and is the catalyst for the overarching conflict, it does not drive the story as I was hoping it would. Instead, the story is strongly character driven as it focuses on the three Locke children: Tyler, Kinsey, and Bode.

The story is well written and Joe Hill did a remarkable job of cramming a lot of story into a six issue arc. Of course, that is unsurprising once you realize that he’s the son of Stephen King). Hill is also a novel and short story writer, and writers of other print media tend to have problems adapting to the visual nature of comics. Hill clearly had no problems here as there are many of scenes that are presented with little or no dialog, but still do a great job of moving the story forward. These are not action sequences or fight scenes, these are quiet scenes of character development that work to prove the adage that a picture is worth a 1000 words. Of course, these scenes wouldn’t have succeeded without the artwork of Gabriel Rodriguez who rivals Amanda Connor as my favorite artist for facial expressions.

Like Atomic Robo, the story of Locke & Key is told as stand alone mini-series. There are collected in trades and the fifth series is currently appearing in monthly issues. Locke & Key is very violent and incredibly dark, so it’s definitely for a mature audience, but if you’re interested in something dark with some interesting twists, I definitely recommend checking it out.

We mentioned earlier how Marvel was including digital download codes in issues of The Avenging Spider-man and had equated a lot of positive pre-order response to that initiative. They’ve now announced that they will expand that initiative and provide a digital download code for every issue in their Ultimate line. It’s an interesting deal considering that the Ultimate books recently got revamped and every series has been pretty stellar. One caveat of these digital codes is that they will only work in the Marvel branded ComiXology app and their reader in Chrome, but will not work or sync with the generic Comics by ComiXology app. I guess the reasoning is that this will keep you in the Marvel store and theoretically means you’ll buy only Marvel books since you’re tied to their app. I think it’s a short-sighted decision though because the whole point is to get people reading more comics. If everybody is reading more comics, then every comic publisher wins in the long run as sales numbers since The New 52 launch have shown. Yes, DC is bringing in more readers just as they had hoped the initiative would, but because of the attention to the industry that DC has brought, the comic market as a whole has gone up. I’d hope that this digital initiative from Marvel would have the same general effect, but I’m afraid it will be hampered by Marvel’s forced segregation.

Tonight is the premiere of Green Lantern: The Animated Series on Cartoon Network. There will be a one hour special with the Green Lanterns facing off against the Red Lanterns that will basically set the stage for the new series when it starts its regular time “soon”. Cartoon Network is doing a complete DC Nation programming block showing a bunch of DC shows, but only GL:TAS has been announced so far. I like the look of Bruce Timm’s style interpreted in CGI. Hopefully, the series will live up to the hype. I’ll just be happy if they make Atrocitus a cool character again instead of Emocitrus that is starring in the Red Lanterns book now.