DC Comics News from Baltimore Comic Con

Newsarama and other comic news sites have been covering the announcements from the DC Comics panels at Baltimore Comic Con this weekend, and some of these announcements are pretty exciting. Two announcements in particular are truly surprising.

--Sergio Aragones as the new writer on The Spirit. Of all the names that went through my head as suitable replacements for Darwyn Cooke on this series, Sergio was not one of them. However, I can't think of a choice now that would make me happier, other than re-animating the corpse of Will Eisner. This choice does show a certain dedication to this book by DC: getting someone of Sergio's talent and pedigree indicates that DC sees this as a kind of boutique property for comic aficionados. I'll be curious to see who DC signs on for the art, though.

--John Milius and Billy Tucci on a Sgt. Rock miniseries. I'm neither here nor there on Billy Tucci's art, but having the director of Conan the Barbarian and Red Dawn and the inspiration for Walter Sobchak write Sgt. Rock is totally awesome. I just hope there are scenes where characters drink deer blood; where Bulldozer refuses to fight because, as he told that Kraut a thousand fucking times, he doesn't roll on Shabbas; and where Easy Company teams up with Nazis to fight Nihilists because, as Ice Cream Soldier says, "Say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Rock, but at least it's an ethos."

I'm also pretty excited about Sergio Aragones's Bat Lash miniseries, especially because of the announcement that classic Western artist John Severin would be pencilling. Here's one of my favorite John Severin Western covers from Frontier Western 4, featuring the Ringo Kid:


I'm also curious about Jim Shooter's return to The Legion of Super-Heroes. I grew up on his Legion stories, so I'm tempted to try this out, though I've been pretty unenthused by this current iteration of the Legion as revamped by Mark Waid. I like Waid as a writer, and the stories are pretty good, but I don't feel the same sense of connection to the characters in earlier versions. Perhaps Shooter will help build that connection better.

An announcement that I'm on the fence about is the new Vigilante series written by Marv Wolfman. I'm a proud owner of an entire run of the 80s series (one issue containing a letter written by a young Dr. K), but I've never been able to read it all--I tend to get bogged down in the Paul Kupperberg issues where the Vigilante mantle keeps changing hands. I may try this out for a bit, but the more likely scenario is that this will get lost amid too many other books that I'm interested in coming out at the same time.