Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Martian Sightings for July, 2012



STORMWATCH #11
Written by PETER MILLIGAN
Art by IGNACIO CALERO and SEAN PARSONS
Cover by SCOTT CLARK and DAVID BEATY
On sale JULY 4 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T+
• THE ENGINEER takes center stage!
• There is a shadow organization as old as STORMWATCH…but who are they and what secrets do they hold?
It's appropriate that Scott Clark should provide a cover, even if it is the worst so far. Meanwhile, it's a bit too on-the-nose to pit a malevolent Illuminati against Stormwatch's benevolent one..

GREEN LANTERN CORPS VOL. 1: FEARSOME HC
Written by PETER J. TOMASI
Art by FERNANDO PASARIN, GERALDO BORGES and SCOTT HANNA
Cover by DOUG MAHNKE and CHRISTIAN ALAMY
On sale SEPTEMBER 19 • 160 pg, FC, $22.99 US

• The first collection of the new GREEN LANTERN CORPS series!
• GUY GARDNER and JOHN STEWART lead a squadron of GREEN LANTERNS to fight a mysterious force that is marching across the space sectors and devouring not only their natural resources but their entire populations!
• On a mission to rescue JOHN STEWART and VANDOR, GUY GARDNER assembles the nastiest Green Lanterns to ever put on a ring!
• Collecting GREEN LANTERN CORPS #1-7.
Two issues feature Martian Manhunter cameos, and his best rendition so far in the New 52.

Miss Martian
YOUNG JUSTICE #18
Written by GREG WEISMAN
Art and cover by CHRISTOPHER JONES
On sale JULY 18 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED E
• The team travels to GORILLA CITY!
• Someone is enhancing apes to create an army of warrior slaves!
• Don’t miss the origin of GORILLA CITY!

Vandal Savage
DC UNIVERSE PRESENTS #11
JAMES ROBINSON
Art by BERNARD CHANG
Cover by RYAN SOOK
On sale JULY 18 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T

• Vandal Savage unleashed!
• In the final chapter of this story, KASS is forced to make the ultimate choice between two killers – and her father may be the worse of them!
Vandal Savage in prison orange drives me nuts. I'm so not into this. New plan: No more New 52 versions of DCU rogues getting covered, no matter how much I want to openly ridicule Rob Liefeld's Lobo.

Manhunter 2070
THE JUDAS COIN HC
Written by WALTER SIMONSON
Art and cover by WALTER SIMONSON
On sale SEPTEMBER 12 • 96 pg, FC, $22.99 US

This centuries-spanning original graphic novel from legendary writer/artist WALTER SIMONSON shows how one of the silver coins Judas was paid to betray Jesus has had an impact on the DC Universe, with chapters starring THE GOLDEN GLADIATOR (73 A.D.), THE VIKING PRINCE (1000 A.D.), CAPTAIN FEAR (1720) and BAT LASH (1881). In the centerpiece of the book BATMAN faces TWO-FACE in an epic, present-day battle before the story blasts into the future for a final chapter set in the year 2087 starring MANHUNTER 2070!
Crap! I'd really like to read the Starker story, but that's it..

5 comments:

will_in_chicago said...

I really did not like the Stormwatch 11 cover, and I find it odd that J'Onn J'Onnz, Apollo and Midnighter could not handle a single Red Lantern. (Hmm, maybe someone at Stormwatch is a bad cook and the three of them caught food poisoning.)

I will check out the Green Lantern release, as it sounds like it has some good appearances by J'Onn. (Sadly, the JLI is now out of continuity, so no J'Onn playing straight man to the antics of others or Batman taking out Guy Gardner in one punch.)

Raye said...

"It's appropriate that Scott Clark should provide a cover, even if it is the worst so far. Meanwhile, it's a bit too on-the-nose to pit a malevolent Illuminati against Stormwatch's benevolent one.."

Uh, I'm not sure where you're getting this from? first of all, I don't think Stormatch's overseers are 'benevolent' by any stretch, they seem to be very manipulative and likely do not have the team's best interests at heart. And I don't think they are facing a DIFFERENT shadow organization, they are confronting the ones they answer to, the Shadow Lords. Milligan has teased that in issue 11, everyone dies (doubt it will stick) and it's already been established that in order to enter the Shadow Lords realm, you have to die, so...

Also, that's not the Scott Clark cover, that's the cover for Red Lanterns #10, and is by Miguel Sepulveda. The Clark cover is here: http://www.comicscontinuum.com/stories/1204/09/stormwatch11.jpg And no, it doesn't have Martian Manhunter, but it is the actual cover for Stormwatch #11. He might end up being on it in the end, I think they have left out the background for some reason, whether it's because it's unfinished or contains spoilers, I dunno.

Diabolu Frank said...

Jill, I think you have inside information that I don't. My comments are based solely on the solicit copy. I suppose the Shadow Lords could be the "shadow organization as old as STORMWATCH," but boy would that be an underhanded way of expressing it. So far though, the Stormwatch entity has been shown to be relatively benevolent, and if we're already on the "team versus their evil masters" trope, that's just a different thing for me to get snarky over.

I reran the Sepulveda image from last month in the header because the Martian Manhunter doesn't appear on any covers this month. If you click the link under "Stormwatch #11," it shows that hideous Clark cover. I hope you're right about all that negative space getting filled in, or DC will return to its pattern of the first half dozen issues of soliciting one cover and running an entirely different one. All that Chris Burnham art is still M.I.A.

Raye said...

Wow, no pleasing you at this point, I suspect. I really have no idea how anyone could see Stormwatch's masters as anything even close to benevolent at this point. Not the members of Stormwatch itself, they seem pretty allright for the most part, just their overseers. They killed (rather than simply demote) Adam for his lacklustre leadership, and then passed over obviously competent potential leaders and put the PROJECTIONIST of all people in charge, for crying out loud. It was like they were intentionally messing with them and trying to create drama within the ranks of the team. Why? beats me, but it made it pretty clear they aren't actually interested in the team running effectively at this point, even if they may have in the past. All the while it was made clear that most of the members of the team had no idea who the Shadow Lords were, or what their motives were, it had been kept a secret from them by Adam. It was a blatantly obvious setup for a future confrontation. I didn't much like Cornell's run, but I can't really fault Milligan for following up on this plot since it was so clearly laid out. Also, I should point out that while they were regular people rather than... whatever the shadow lords are, this is in keeping with the original Stormwatch who were overseen by the United Nations which, in the WSU, was incredibly corrupt, then throw in Bendix... it eventually led to the Authority when the Black team decided to go their own way and answer to no one but themselves.

And aside from a tease on his blog from Milligan about the team dying, no inside info.

And I actually like the cover, aside from the lack of a background, which, looking at the FX on Angie's gun blast and Apollo's halo, I think has simply been removed for one reason or another. Better than anything Miguel has done, for sure, especially issue 10. Now THAT was hideous.

Diabolu Frank said...

Nah, I actually liked #7 fairly well. I won't get #8 until next month, unfortunately. While I don't like what I've heard about Midnighter's turn toward homicidal logic, I suppose his sharing a universe with Batman necessitates such extremes.

I don't think we've seen enough of the Shadow Lords to call their alignment. They're clearly dicks, but not necessarily evil. The impression I got, which is what cooled J'Onn's heels, was that Adam was "dead," not dead-dead. He's only as dead as he needs to be to enter the shadow realm until he gets reactivated at the Lords' pleasure. As for the Projectionist's promotion, who's to say that wasn't just the calculated tumbling of a domino? They could have pulled the plug on the Engineer's "independence" at jump, and surely they would have if it ran counter to their agenda. The team seems to have improved dramatically in their efficacy without a lurking traitor, a junkie, and an incompetent. I'm not saying the Lords are cherubim, or even Kherubim, but we don't know enough to be sure about anything yet.

We'll have to agree to disagree on art taste. Despite wearing a white costume, Apollo is a blob of black angles too acute to represent the human body. Midnighter is a similarly lazy silhouette. The sloppily rendered arms look petrified as they emerge from a spilled inkwell the artist scraped up with a toothbrush and flecked for "effect." Only the Engineer looks decent, and she's been inked with such little regard for depth that she looks like a tattoo stencil. I used to think Clark was one of the better Wildstorm artists, but today he's like early Jae Lee as reimagined by Extreme Studios. Easily the worst member of the Brightest Day creative team.