The comics section of Batman-News continues to be ridiculously busy as even more graphic novels come out and 3 regular issues hit shelves. This week, Batwing fights someone called Sky Pirate, Batman confronts the League of Smiles, and Black Mask makes an appearance in Legends of the Dark Knight! Here’s a list of all the Batman comics coming out this week, February 6th graded on a scale of my own anticipation.
Hell no! – I’d rather not – Ambivalent – Interested – TAKE MY MONEY
Scroll to the bottom of the page and post in the comments section what books you’re most looking forward to this week!
February 6th
DETECTIVE COMICS #17
Written by JOHN LAYMAN
Art and cover by JASON FABOK
On sale FEBRUARY 6 • 40 pg, FC, $3.99 US • RATED T
Anticipation Level: Interested
Batman is tracking down the League of Smiles, a criminal group that worships the Joker. There’s no mention in the preview about Emperor Penguin so I don’t know what’s going on there. Even the backup is supposed to deal with the origins of The the League of Smiles. Honestly, I’d rather see that plotline play out rather than deal with Batman fighting a few Joker wannabes, but Layman and Fabok have been delivering a solid book so far so I have faith that this will be yet another entertaining work.
BATWING #17
Written by FABIAN NICIEZA
Art and cover by FABRIZIO FIORENTINO
On sale FEBRUARY 6 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
Anticipation Level: Ambivalent
I was on the verge of dropping this title last month but new series writer Fabian Nicieza dove into some ideas that I think make Batwing a more interesting and unique figure in the DC universe. However, after seeing the cover for this one I’m nervous again. We had a gritty drama in issue #16 about police corruption and by the end of that David’s relationship with his city’s authority figures was forever changed both in his role as a cop himself and as the hero Batwing. This comic on the other hand shows Batwing fighting a guy called “Sky Pirate” a weird butterfly looking dude. So…I’m not sure what to think.
LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT #5
Written by JOSHUA HALE FIALKOV
Art and cover by PHIL HESTER & ERIC GAPSTUR
On sale FEBRUARY 6 • 40 pg, FC, $3.99 US • RATED T
ANTICIPATION LEVEL: Interested
I can’t guarantee that every comic from this series is going to be good but it’s always worth flipping through an issue of Legends of the Dark Knight because you never know what you’re going to get. It’s a different artist and author delivering a complete story in every 40 page issue and that to me has an incredibly high potential of being worth your $3.99. This month the story revolves around a private eye and The Black Mask. Seeing as how the Black Mask is an utter travesty in the New 52, it’ll be good to see him in an out-of-continuity tale where hopefully he’s back to being a gangster and not a hypnotist– seriously, what was that all about?
Graphic Novel WATCH!
So I didn’t get to write as many graphic novel reviews as I wanted last week. Sue me! I still managed to do 6 comics, a Break from Batman piece, an audio title review that came out of left field, and an article about the petition for Cartoon Network to revive Youn Justice (by the way, if you really want CN to bring back your show a petition isn’t the best way to go. What you need to do is buy the DVDs. That’s how Family Guy came back and that’s how Firefly got a movie. Why didn’t I say that in the article? Well, hindsight’s 20/20). So it was a pretty productive week around here but alas I still have a lot of books left to talk about– plus a movie!
The Good news is that I did finish No Man’s Land Volume 4 last week and I also received my copy of The Dark Knight Returns Part 2. Those two reviews will definitely go up this week. After that I’ll be doing the Black Mirror, Batwoman Vol. 2, Justice League Vol. 2, and whatever else crops up this week.
The brand new Batman graphic novels going on sale this week are:
Batgirl, Vol. 2: Knightfall Descends, collecting #7-13 + #0
and
Legends of the Dark Knight: Alan Davis, which collects about 9 comics written by Alan Davis for $39.99.
I’ll likely only get the Batgirl Vol. 2 book and it’ll be a long shot if I have time to review that one this week in addition to all of this other stuff.
What are you picking up this week?
