Batman Beyond 2.0 #39 Review

Written by: Kyle Higgins and Alec Siegel
Art by: Thony Silas
Cover Price: $0.99
Release Date: October 25, 2014

You Outta Know by Now

Here we are, the penultimate issue of Kyle Higgins' run on Batman Beyond 2.0 and one things clear, he wants to go out with a bang.  Of course, I could have been cheesy and said it's "shocking" or "electric", but I'm not doing it.  For those not in the know, this final Alternating Currents story involves Davis Dusk (aka Rewire) holding Dick Grayson until he is given Bruce Wayne's portal to the Justice Lords' timeline.  It seems that he didn't think the whole killing his Father thing through and like Terry, doesn't care which version he gets.  Yes, this book is filled with Daddy issues.  While Batman and Rewire duke it out, Dick is on the verge of a heart attack thanks to an electrical device attached to his chest.  It's a fight against the clock with two timelines and my favorite hero at stake and it's been awesome.  This issue is no different and ended with me begging for the next issue right now.

Red Lanterns #35 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Charles Soule
Art By: J. Calafiore
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: October 22, 2014

Rage Against The New Gods

Last issue of Red Lanterns, you know the one before we went to Five Years From Now, we saw the conclusion to the Atrocitus War.  If you don't remember, a lot of our favorite Reds lost their lives during the war......... I cried a little, but Guy Gardner came out victorious and from what I've heard a bunch of people are really upset with Atrocitus dying so easily...... Well not easily, but by the hand of Guy Gardner, who went all Red Lantern Super Saiyan and drew all the rings off of Atrocitus and his army and then used them to recreate the magic blood lake and the Red Power Battery.  Even though Guy was victorious, I guess he's had enough of leading his friends to death, so he tells Bleez that she's in charge now and goes home to Earth.  I guess his little hiatus from Lanterning is going to be put on hold now that the New Gods are getting all bling happy and going around collecting rings from what they deem "Lesser Beings".  Let's see what happens when the New Gods go to Earth and meet the raging Red Lantern, Guy Gardner.  Let's check out GODHEAD Act 1, Part 5.

Justice League Dark Annual #2 Preview

Written By: J.M. DeMatteis
Art By: Klaus Janson
Cover Price: $4.99
Release Date: October 29, 2014



The JLD team struggles to contain the House of Mystery and the House of Secrets when both take human form!


If you've all read Justice League Dark #35, then you'll want to read this because this is the story that led to Zatanna in Wonder Land and after seeing the beautiful hell she created for herself, I sure has hell want to read how we got there.  I'm personally not a fan of Andrew Bennett, who is now a part of the JLD team, but I guess I can put my vampire bias aside when a book is as strong as Justice League Dark is.  You're not going to want to miss this one.......... Especially since it's the fifth week of a month and not a lot of books come out.  

Justice League United Annual #1 Preview

Written By: Jeff Lemire
Art By: Neil Edwards, Jay Leisten
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: October 29, 2014




The Infinitus Saga begins as the Legion of Super-Heroes arrive with the shocking news that the 31st century has been destroyed! Now it’s up to the Justice League United to save the future!


I can't tell you how much I love the idea of having a Legion of Superheroes story beginning in this Annual.  My only concern is man, do we have a lot going on in this book.  As much as I enjoy all the characters involved in the JLU, I find myself getting bored with the issues each month.  It just seems like there's too much going on and since there is so much going on, that means a lot more exposition than normal and that makes me a sleepy boy.  So dig this, we've got Supergirl, Stargirl, Animal Man and Green Arrow out in space trying to recover the body of Hawkman because they think somebody's up to no good with it and back on Earth we have Martian Manhunter, Alanna Strange, The Ultra Baby and Equinox now taking on the fight for the future.  I don't know about you but going toe to toe with Mon-El sounds like a recipe for a bad day.  Can you see why I'm concerned with the amount of story going on here?  I really hope that this comic picks up the pace, so I can escape snoozeville every time I read about these wonderful characters.  

Smallville: Continuity #9 Review

Written by: Bryan Q. Miller
Art by: Ig Guara
Cover Price: $0.99
Release Date: October 24, 2014

Nightwing and Sundance

Maybe it's because Smallville has been canceled, but since the announcement, the book has really suffered.  It may not be anyone's fault, maybe it's just a "book has been canceled" hangover doing it.  Whatever the cause, a book that I loved for it's great characterizations suddenly has more out of character moments than you can shake a stick at. Don't get me started on the story.  For such a great book, this final arc has been less than lackluster.  It pains me to say it, but one of my favorite books is ending with a whimper instead of the roar it deserves.  I won't abandon ship though.  Nope, I will be here to the bitter end and I'm holding out hope that Bryan Q. Miller will right the ship, avoid the iceberg and get us all home safe and sound. After reading this issue, I still have a sliver of hope.

Top 5 Fridays: My Favorite Superheroes In The New 52

So I bet all of you out there are saying to yourself, "Who the fuck gives a shit about who your favorite superheroes are?  I've got favorite superheroes and you don't see me forcing them down people's throats".  Well while the lot of you are very vocal and vulgar with your opinion here, I guess you have a point, but the whole reason that I'm doing this besides for the chronic laziness that I suffer from, is because somebody out there actually did look up "your favorite DC heroes" and got to the site, so I'm figuring that somebody out there cares about what big pecs I look up to when I lean my head back and daydream about what heroes I could pal around with Jimmy Olsen style.  Now for this list I'm restricting myself a little because two of my all time favorite superheroes are Green Lantern and Batman, but who's isn't?  So for this list I'll be doing heroes that aren't Justice Leaguers and ones who live somewhere in the second tier of hero-dom or the B listers if you want to go with that.  Also for a larf and to include Jim in this week's Top 5, I'll be letting him list the order that these characters go in because if there's anyone who hears me talk about my favorite heroes and would know who I don't shut up about the most, it would be him.  So without further adieu I give to you my personal favorite heroes because the interwebs are clamoring to know.

The New 52: Futures End #26 Preview

Written By: Brian Azzarello, Jeff Lemire, Dan Jurgens, Keith Giffen
Art By: Scot Eaton, Drew Geraci
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: October 29, 2014




BATMAN of five years later appears for the first time in Futures End as he reveals a truth that will unravel Firestorm’s world.

Now I'm calling shenanigans right off the bat here because the solicits from like two weeks ago told me that we'd be seeing Bruce Wayne and do you know who we didn't see?  The Don of Dark himself, Bruce Wayne.  I don't know about all of you out there in interwebs land, but I'm getting tired of solicits lying to me all the time.  Now I understand that the solicits have been lying to us for so long now that it'll be hard for it to stop, you know like kicking a bad habit, it doesn't happen right away, but if we all band together I think we can have an intervention for the solicits and we can all be brighter better people.    But let's just say on the off chance that the solicit is legit this time and we have Bruce Wayne solving the Firestorm problem.  You know the problem where Jason doesn't want to be inside Ronnie anymore.  Is Bruce going to coach Jason?  Is he going to ease Jason into the idea of being inside Ronnie?  Whatever Bruce might do to get the Firestorm problem solved, it sounds sexy and I'm in.

Deathstroke #1 Review

Written and Art by: Tony S. Daniel
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: October 22, 2014

Extreme to the Max

Like Hansel, Deathstroke is so hot right now.  New Suicide Squad, Arrow and now (or again), his own monthly.  You can't seem to walk downtown nowadays without running into the anti-hero and his guns and swords and healing factor.  Tony S. Daniel  gets the job of bringing him to the comic book masses and while I love his art, this is my first time reading a monthly by him.  I was worried how I would feel about it and my fears were realized.  The art is as great as expected, but the story itself is straight forward to a fault and really does nothing to impress or surprise.  If you are a fan of Slade, you will probably find something here to like.  If you aren't already, I don't think this issue will do anything to change your mind.

The New 52: Futures End #25 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Brian Azzarello, Jeff Lemire, Dan Jurgens, Keith Giffen
Art By: Patrick Zircher, Jesus Merino
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: October 22, 2014

"I Should Have Stayed In The Phantom Zone"

It's that time again, where we jump in our DC Tardis and take a quick trip to Five Years From Now to check in on the awful future our heroes face.  For your quick recap this week, you'll need to know that Frankenstein, Amethyst, Ray Palmer, Black Adam, Hawkman and The Engineer got back to "The Carrier" but were being chased down by robot minions of Brainiac.  In Africa Superman went searching for the robot Brainiac monster, but it seems that the monster decided to doubleback and Constantine found himself staring at his friends being slaughtered.  It's a good thing our Man of Steel came back to lay a little smack down.  Back on Cadmus Island, Brother Eye has taken over all the systems and has even taken over all the locked up Earth 2 heroes.  If someone ever wants to give you an implant, tell them no.  Anyway Fifty Sue, Lana Lang, King Faraday, Grifter and Deathstroke go and hide in Fifty Sue's super secret bunker while they try to figure out how to take down the psychotic satellite.  Tim Drake's ex-girlfriend Madison Payne has been spending a lot of time with Ronnie Raymond and Jason Rusch and Dr. Yamazake have made a breakthrough in developing teleportation technology, that the steadily getting crazier Dr. feels is being kept from the people by the superheroes he despises.  That should do you for this issue, so strap in and let's go.

Superman #35 Review

Written by: Geoff Johns
Art by: John Romita Jr.
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: October 22, 2014

The Quest for Something

When it was announced that Johns and Romita Jr were jumping on Superman, I jumped for joy.  After suffering through years of sub par stories, one of my favorite superheroes was finally going to get the creative team he deserved.  This book along with Action Comics and Superman/Wonder Woman  was the beginning of a new Golden Age of Superman.  Yea, I am a bit of a drama queen.  Now that I've had a few issues of Johns and Romita Jr under my belt I am a little less enthusiastic.  Don't get me wrong, what we're getting here is way better than what came before it, it's just not as mind blowing as I'd hoped.  Johns' Men of Tomorrow story is good enough, it just is going at a snails pace and Romita Jr's art has been more inconsistent than stellar.  Unfortunately, this issue didn't change my mind on either front.

He-Man and The Masters of The Universe #18 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Dan Abnett
Art By: Pop Mhan, Mark Roberts
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: October 22, 2014

Taking On The Family Business

Last issue of He-Man and The Masters of The Universe we saw that Teela is a bit of a dick because she led Adora to slice her brother, He-Man's throat.  You See Teela set in motion a bunch of events that she saw as leading to Adora finding the Sword of Protection and technically she's still on that path, but there's still He-Man's throat to think about.  Back in the day about thousand years ago, King Grayskull's handmaiden, Saryn slit his throat and was then forever cursed, but she's also the one who first found the Sword of Protection and has kept it in a cave on Anwat-Gar ever since as she got more and more deadite looking.  So it's a thousand years later and now the sword is Adora's only chance in healing He-Man and this girl plans on recovering her birthright.  Let's check out this issue as we see Adora go up against the evil dead Saryn for the ultimate prize.  

Harley Quinn #11 Review

Written by: Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti
Art by: Chad Hardin
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: October 22, 2014

Montage

I'd love to say that Harley Quinn is a thought provoking book that points out the problems in our society in a way...oh the hell with it, I don't want that at all.  I like this book for what it is, a laugh out loud romp that makes me smile every time I read it.  I'm smiling right now because this issue starts the Harley Quinn/Power Girl teamup that I didn't even know I wanted until today.  Even though it ends up being more setup than fans of this book are probably used to, everything it sets up is hilarious.

The Multiversity: The Just #1 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Grant Morrison
Art By: Ben Oliver
Cover Price: $4.99
Release Date: October 22, 2014

You Think Teenagers Are Bad Now?  Imagine Them With Superpowers

Now we journey to what Grant Morrison likes to call Earth-Me.  The strange world where the world's superheroes that we know have saved the world and apparently have come up with a way to keep it safe and their super offspring are really bored because of it.  So let's look this month's strange Earth and see if we can make out what it wants to tell us........... You know about cursed comics and doomed worlds and the such.  Okay let's go.

The Flash #35 Review

Written by: Robert Venditti and Van Jensen
Art by: Brett Booth
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: October 22, 2014

Tearing a New One

Like John "Hannibal" Smith, I love it when a plan comes together.  I guess that explains why I have enjoyed Venditti and Jensen's Flash run so far.  They've been on a mission since taking over the book and not even a company wide September event was going to distract them.  Nope, it's all about their story and it all leads to this issue.

Arkham Manor #1 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Gerry Duggan
Art By: Shawn Crystal
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: October 22, 2014

Home Is Where The Insane Asylum Is.

Welcome to Arkham Manor, a strange new idea about where to put the crazies after Arkham is destroyed from a earthquake in Batman Eternal, that may or may not have happened yet.  Give me a break, I don't review that book.  This being the first issue, I don't have a lot to say before the story other than, man is this a weird idea for a story.  If you would of asked me the chances of Wayne Manor becoming the new Arkham ten years ago, I'd have told you, you were crazy.  Crazy as an Arkham inmate.  Let's check out this story and see if it will be something we'll talk about for years to come or if it's relegated to whispered talks in back alleys at the dead of night.

Injustice: Year Three #4 Review

Written by: Tom Taylor
Art by: Bruno Redondo
Cover Price: $0.99
Release Date: October 21, 2014

I'll Say This For Batman...

I have really been enjoying the magical side of things so far in Year Three of Injustice.  It hasn't hurt that Tom Taylor has also returned to the crazy action of Year One, but hasn't abandoned the character moments of Year Two.  I guess what I'm saying is that early on, Year Three is the best of every world.  After last week's crazy ending, we get a bit of a setup issue this week , but also an homage to my all-time favorite moment in DC Comic history.  Where's Blue Beetle when we need him?

Green Lantern: New Guardians #35 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Justin Jordan
Art By: Brad Walker, Andrew Hennessy, Robin Riggs
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: October 15, 2014

Come Here Kyle, Highfather Will Make It All Better

I don't know if you've been rocketing through space for some ever important mission for the government or if you just haven't been keeping up, personally I'd go with the outer space option.  Nonetheless I'm going to catch you up to GODHEAD the best I can with the fewest amount of typing I can possibly do.  Since Kyle pierced the Source Wall and returned it seems that the Prime-Universe has gained the attention of the New Gods and Highfather himself wanted to use the seven rings of the emotional spectrum to gain the life equation himself.  Well this didn't work out, I don't mean that he didn't get the rings, no he did that and whooped the asses of all the Corps' so far, but the device that was created to hold all the rings didn't really work out the way he wanted and then decided that no one in this universe should be able to wield such power so the Corps' have that going against them right now.  Anyway Metron discovered the location of the mythic White Lantern and now Highfather has his sights set for Kyle.  Alright so now you're caught up for the most part and we can get on to seeing what Kyle's up to and see how this whole GODHEAD thing will affect him.  Let's check it out.

Red Hood and The Outlaws #35 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: Scott Lobdell
Art By: Geraldo Borges, Paul Neary
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: October 15, 2014


Roy Has A Burning Sensation

It's funny, since we were horribly interrupted by September's Futures End event I had no idea where we left off in this story.  I literally picked up this book and started reading, put it down and said to myself "What the hell is going on?"  So after I went back and read my review, I'm currently on the trolley and will catch you guys up in case you completely forgot about what was going on in the world of Red Hood and The Outlaws as well.  If you remember SHADE found a spaceship that was sending out a distress call to Starfire and when she looked inside she found a bunch of dead bodies.  They were a bunch of freed slaves and after seeing their bodies, Starfire kind of lost it and tracked down a former slave master of hers, who'd been living on Earth and planned on killing him.  Well Roy and Jason showed up and talked her out of the whole murder thing and after she took off we saw that the once slave master apparently hates what he did too and killed himself.  In the end of the issue I was completely confused about what was going on because Starfire went back to the trio's island and grabbed a vile of orange liquid in a tube and looked like she killed herself out on the beach.  Well I can assure you that isn't what happened, but what is going on isn't any less confusing for me.  So let's get to it and see what's going on with our pseudo heroes.

Justice League Dark #35 Preview

Written By: J.M. DeMatteis
Art By: Mark Irwin, Andres Guinaldo, Norm Rapmund, Neil Edwards
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: October 22, 2014




Time is broken – and so is the Justice League Dark! The team may have welcomed Andrew Bennett, Frankenstein, and its others back into the fold, but the reunion will be short-lived when the JLD finds itself scattered across the timestream! They’re lost in a blasted, apocalyptic wasteland at the end of time… an incomprehensible dimension beyond all existence…and at the dawn of a dark civilization lost to recorded history – the place where magic was first harnessed! They can barely work together under the best of circumstances…how will they ever find their way home from this?


Now while I love the fact that Frankenstein is back in the Justice League Dark, I could really care less that Andrew Bennett is back on the team.  I don't know what to tell you, I just don't like the guy or his jerk off face and I really wish he'd be lost in time and we could just be done with the character permanently.  Now it might seem pretty presumptuous of me, but I did an entire Top 5 list about what characters DC could use when adding characters to the JLD roster and it's unthinkable that nobody listened to me.  Check that list out HERE so you can understand how spot on I was and also add to the list of things that I'm always right about.  Okay enough with the douchefest, Yay Frankenstein, Nay Andrew Bennett.

Red Lanterns #35 Preview

Written By: Charles Soule
Art By: Jim Calafiore, Scott Hepburn
Cover Price  $2.99
Release Date: October 22, 2014




"GODHEAD," Act 1 Part 5: Guy Gardner's at his lowest point in the horrific aftermath of "The Atrocitus War," consumed with rage towards himself for the many lives lost and he's taking it out on whomever he can!  His actions have caught the attention of Earth's sole Green Lantern, Simon Baz!  Unfortunately, Earth itself has caught the attention of the New God, Malhedron!?  But unlike his green compatriot, Guy's on a rage-filled suicide mission and he's just looking for a target!

I've been really digging this crossover so far even though I've done nothing but bitch about the constant Lantern crossovers before this story began.  So call me a hypocrite or whatever you will, it won't take away the enjoyment I've had in reading this story.  It looks like we'll get to see what's up with Guy Gardner since he left the Red Lantern Corps, but more importantly to me we finally see the triumphant return of Simon Baz and that's always a good thing in my mind.  Now I don't want to hear about how he was just in Green Lantern, because he didn't do shit there and I'm not counting it.  So bring on my Simon Baz and listen to me squeal like a little girl.

Just For The Hell Of It Mondays: Throne of Atlantis

For this awful Monday....... Sorry this is supposed to be a positive bit for the beginning of the work week, but goddamn and I tired as all hell.  Anyway for this Just For The Hell of It Monday, I figured we'd talk about and look at the trailer for the next DC animated movie, even though the trailer has been out for awhile, Justice League: Throne of Atlantis.  Now I don't know if you all read the Throne of Atlantis story that crossed between the Justice League and Aquaman titles, but this was at the point that Aquaman was still becoming cool and blowing our minds by the concept.

Trinity of Sin #1 Review and *SPOILERS*

Written By: J.M. DeMatteis
Art By: Yvel Guichet, Jason Gorder
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: October 15, 2014

The Darkness Is Nigh and It May or May Not Believe In A Thing Called Love

Welcome back to some DC Dark character fun as we take two characters from cancelled books and put them together with the mysterious Question and see how it all works out.  While I was a fan of both Phantom Stranger and Pandora's solo books I don't understand the point to try them again but all together, other than that DC and the writers might have a few more things to say before they can close the door on these characters or maybe they didn't have enough time before their books were cancelled to do a proper crossover.  So we don't know shit about the Question or why this Trinity of Sin were judged by the Council of Eternity at the same time and what their connection might be beyond that.  Hopefully I'm wrong though and we're simply getting a Trinity of Sin book because the characters are awesome and they might be more popular together than apart.  I will miss my Phantom Stranger book though.  Okay let's check out Trinity of Sin and see what this book has in store for us.

Batman: Eternal #28 Review

Written by: Tim Seeley
Art by: Meghan Hetrick
Cover Price: $2.99
Release Date: October 15, 2014

Crashing the Party

Baternal has been a good book plagued by the problems of being a weekly book. Constantly changing creative teams, uneven pacing and dangling plot lines are the order of the day.  However, when the book buckles down and concentrates on one or two storylines, it can really shine.  This week is one of those issues.  Tim Seeley gives us a good story featuring Catwoman that has been in the making since before this book even started.  As an added bonus, it's a great setup for next week's regular Catwoman book.

Infinite Crisis: Fight for the Multiverse #23 Review

Written by: Dan Abnett
Art by: Szymon Kudranski
Cover Price: $0.99
Release Date: October 19, 2014

The Key to it All

I didn't like last week's Infinite Crisis one bit.  I said so in my review and got called out by a reader who commented that I wasn't the intended audience.  It made me wonder, who is the intended audience of this book?  I want to think that DC is not just targeting players of the game it's based on, but also comic fans in general.  In fact, isn't the point of any book to get the widest audience possible?  I would hope so.  I'm no rocket surgeon, but I would think that the best way to reach a wide audience is to make a great story with great characters.  Infinite Crisis has the characters, but the story hasn't been there.  I don't care if you play the game, don't own a computer or have a crazy middle name like Lee, a good story is a good story and this book has been mostly devoid of them.  Now that I got that off my chest, let's get on to this week's issue.  Surprise, I really liked it.  You know why? Great story and great characters.  Mix in great art and we have a winner.

DC Comics Best Covers of the Week 10/18/14

It's getting colder and the leaves are turning colors and that can only mean...nothing when it comes to Comic Book Covers.  This week we got a bunch of really cool Justice League covers, another Monster Variant I liked and a cover that I loved and Eric hated. However, this is my article and I'll pick what I want to, pick what I want to.  You'd pick it too if it happened to you?!?!  I'm sorry, I had a Lesley Gore moment there.  It happens more than I'd like to admit.  Let's just get on with the covers before I chanel the Shangri-Las.  I met him at the candy store...

Five Questions With...Van Jensen

Whether he knows it or not, we here at Weird Science have an interesting history with Van Jensen.  The fact that he started on Green Lantern Corps the same week wecstarted our site is a coincidence. ..or is it.  Now he's a big shot at DC, still writing Corps and also on The Flash.  I also just recently read his awesome first book, Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer which you should read if you haven't already.  Back to our history with Van, besides the usual responses from reviews, I have talked now and again with Van on Twitter and it always ended with an epic fail on my part. The best time was when he tweeted that he took an online survey about which Green Lantern he was and I responded that I just took an online survey about which member of One Direction I was and of course I was Harry Styles.  This started a little back-and-forth about One Direction, the State of Music and possibly why a guy my age knew of such things.  To this day, Eric here at Weird Science busts on me about it.  This incident was followed by fails regarding basketball (I'm a Sixers fan so I'm used to Basketball fails) and The Flash.  So, I'd like to thank Van for his patience on Twitter and for doing this 5 Questions With...  Go and follow Van on Tumblr  HERE and on Twitter HERE. Then you can see my next fail!

Batman Beyond 2.0 #38 Review

Written by: Kyle Higgins and Alec Siegel
Art by Thony Silas
Cover Price: $0.99
Release Date: October 18, 2014

Pattern Opposition

Batman Beyond 2.0 has been the most consistently great book that DC has put out.  It is my favorite book and I use it,along with Injustice and Smallville, as an example of how great the DC Digital line is.  And now it's ending.  I won't claim to know the backroom dealings at DC, but I wish that something could have been done on either side (if there are only two sides?!?) to make this book continue.  Oh well, everything must come to an end eventually and at least Kyle Higgins and the fans of this book can look back at a great run knowing it went out on top...kind of.  The Mark of the Phantasm was so epic and satisfying that this Alternating Currents arc seems a bit anticlimactic.  Kyle Higgins himself said the the Phantasm story was the one he originally pitched for the book and HAD to tell.  Now he is left to cross the t's and dot the i's and here we are...with Dick Grayson near death.  Some things will never change!