Funnybook Babylon

From Superboy #26

And they say Geoff Johns doesn’t do long-range planning.

Batman and Robin continues, beginning the “Batman and Robin Must Die!” arc, which Morrison has stated is “R.I.P. as farce.” Each issue is named after a classic gothic painting; this one is “The Garden of Death” by Hugo Simberg, pictured above. Many shots and events in this book are deliberate evocations of events in “R.I.P.”, [...]

For those of you who missed it, I already annotated Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #1 over at Comics Alliance. You’ll continue to find those annotations there, while Batman and Robin will remain here.
It’s been a while and there’ s a lot to talk about, so let’s get into it.

Batman and Robin #8

Batman and Robin #9

After the extensive infodump of last issue, these two issues are FAR more streamlined as we ramp up to “Batman vs. Batman” and the return of Bruce Wayne. In this installment: The Bug Black Voice of Gotham City! The Bible of Crime! And… Batwoman! Come back soon for Batman [...]

Batman and Robin #6

Batman and Robin #7

The #6 annotations are so late partly because the issue seemed rather sparse to me and partly because Gavok over at 4thletter! just completely demolished the landscape of any of my commentary, so what’s below regarding that issue is heavily indebted to his realization about the nature of the [...]

DC Comics creative changes on stories from solicitation to publication for the month of January 2010, not including material released tomorrow morning (January 27) that has not had the credits page released in preview form.
Let me know if I missed any announcements that weren’t postings of preview pages.
Catwoman #83 - Fabian Nicieza & Julian Lopez [...]

Yeah, this is incredibly anal, but after the ridiculous amount of time I spent studying this book, I’d be remiss not to cap this off with a look at the collected edition.
But first, since I don’t think I’ve ever linked them at once like this: here are all of the original annotations/articles I wrote upon [...]

What if there were an ultimate villain out there, unseen? An absolute mastermind, closing in for the kill? What if there existed an invisible, implacable foe who’d calculated my every weakness? Who had access to allies, weapons and tactics I couldn’t imagine. An adversary whose plots and grand designs were so vast, so elaborate, that [...]

Batman and Robin #5

As suspected by a few people in last month’s comment thread, the Red Hood is in fact the obvious option, Jason Todd. So that entire mystery’s away from us, although the domino killer and Man-On-Gargoyle are still milling around, not to mention Oberon Sexton.
Philip Tan’s art in this issue is rather confusing [...]

From this week’s Incredible Hulk #602, by Greg Pak and Ariel Olivetti:

Incredible Hulk #602

versus

Legends Comics & Books

You know, if they just had Greg Land doing Ariel Olivetti’s backgrounds and Olivetti doing Land’s, at least then we’d get one readable comic and one hilariously horrific piece of shit rather than two painful comics.

Dark Reign: The List - Daredevil
by Andy Diggle & Billy Tan
Bad art can ruin even the best of stories, but lesser known is its ability to obscure mediocre writing. Billy Tan’s art in this issue is bad: it’s static during action sequences featuring ninjas, masked superhero gymnastics and government agents rappelling from the roof. [...]

The Shield #1
“Kicking Down the Door pt. 1″
by Eric Trautmann & Marco Rudy
“Burning Inside pt. 1″
by Brandon Jerwa & Greg Scott
The first thing that struck me about this was how much it differed - in a good way - from J. Michael Straczynski’s lead-in that capped off his Red Circle series of one-shots. Where Straczynski [...]

Batman and Robin #4

Again, a link to what’s come before.
The immediate interpretation of the issue title is the Nick Cave song of the same name, but its use within the issue makes it pretty clear that while that may have been an inspirational source, the context in which it’s used in the issue relates more [...]

First off, a link to what’s come before.
With #4 hitting this Wednesday, I figured it was high time to get back into the game and take a look at the latest two issues of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s Batman and Robin. I just reread Morrison’s entire Batman run to refresh my memory, so I’m [...]

The title speaks for itself. I’m here, and I’m going to be trying my hand at Newsrama/CBR-style liveblogging of all of the Big Two’s panels I can make it to. Wish me luck!
DC Editorial Presentation