DC Comics August 2020 Solicitations

[lordultimus]

source: newsarama.com




DARK NIGHTS: DEATH METAL #3
written by SCOTT SNYDER
art by GREG CAPULLO and JONATHAN GLAPION
card stock foil cover by GREG CAPULLO and JONATHAN GLAPION
card stock variant cover by DAVID FINCH
card stock variant cover by JEROME OPEÑA
card stock variant cover by STANLEY “ARTGERM” LAU
1:25 card stock variant cover by DOUG MAHNKE
1:100 black and white card stock variant cover by GREG CAPULLO and JONATHAN GLAPION
All aboard! When the Justice League launches its assault on New Apokolips, the team’s goal is to free Superman from his solar prison. But it’s all going off the rails when they learn that the Man of Steel is gone for good thanks to the Anti-Life Equation. Plus, the deep secret of the Darkest Knight is revealed—but how much darker could the Batman Who Laughs possibly get? And don’t miss the surprise return of everyone’s favorite wanna be Robin!
ON SALE 08.11.20
$4.99 US | 32 PAGES | 3 OF 7
CARD STOCK COVERS
FC | DC



DARK NIGHTS: DEATH METAL LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHTS #1
written by SCOTT SNYDER, JAMES TYNION IV, JOSHUA WILLIAMSON, PETER J. TOMASI, WARREN ELLIS, GARTH ENNIS, DANIEL WARREN JOHNSON, and FRANK TIERI
art by TONY S. DANIEL, JIM CHEUNG, JOËLLE JONES, DANIEL WARREN JOHNSON, RILEY ROSSMO, and FRANCESCO FRANCAVILLA
cover by TONY S. DANIEL
1:25 variant cover by KAARE ANDREWS
The DC Universe has become engulfed by the Dark Multiverse, where demons dwell and reality is overrun by monstrous versions of the Dark Knight, all ruled by the Batman Who Laughs. In this collection of short tales, learn the terrifying secrets of these new Bats out of hell and other creatures of the night like Robin King, whose origin is just the worst! Plus, read about the secret buried beneath Castle Bat, the sentient Batmobile, and…how did Batman turn into a dinosaur?
ONE-SHOT | ON SALE 08.04.20
CARD STOCK COVER
$5.99 US | 48 PAGES
FC | DC
This issue will ship with two covers.



DARK NIGHTS: DEATH METAL GUIDEBOOK #1
written by SCOTT SNYDER, JAMES TYNION IV, JOSHUA WILLIAMSON, BECKY CLOONAN, VITA AYALA, CHIP ZDARSKY, and CHRISTOPHER PRIEST
art by DOUG MAHNKE, BECKY CLOONAN, EDUARDO RISSO, KHARY RANDOLPH, and DAN PANOSIAN
cover by YASMINE PUTRI
1:25 variant cover by TERRY DODSON and RACHEL DODSON
Earth is turned upside down, shrouded in a realm of darkness after the Justice League’s defeat by the cosmic goddess Perpetua. Now the Batman Who Laughs and his army of Dark Knights rule the planet, wreaking havoc on humanity and raining destruction on the world. As Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman, and other heroes fight to survive in this strange new landscape, one cloaked figure has been observing from the sidelines, creating a guidebook to this new world and its evil leaders in the hope of forming a plan of justice…and penance.
This issue showcases the new factions of Earth and explores the mystery of what happened to our heroes after their battle with Perpetua. How does Wonder Woman, the new queen of Hell, reign over her prisoners? What is Batman doing with the Black Lantern Ring? And what happens when Harley Quinn takes charge of the Wasteland, and finds love in the process? All this and more in this jam-issue exploring the new world order.
ONE-SHOT | ON SALE 08.18.20
CARD STOCK COVER
$5.99 US | 48 PAGES
FC | DC
This issue will ship with two covers.



GREEN LANTERN EARTH ONE VOL. 2 HC
written by GABRIEL HARDMAN and CORINNA BECHKO
art and cover by GABRIEL HARDMAN
In this sequel to the bestselling 2018 original graphic novel, Hal Jordan and John Stewart must team up to save the galaxy from an invading force!
Manhunters, alien races, rings of power—it’s a lot for the people of Earth to absorb. Especially when an interplanetary incident forces their protector, Hal Jordan, to leave on a rescue mission that results in the discovery that there’s a new player in the galaxy: Yellow Lanterns!



WONDER WOMAN #761
written by MARIKO TAMAKI
art by CARLO BARBERI and MATT SANTORELLI
cover by DAVID MARQUEZ
card stock variant cover by JOSHUA MIDDLETON
Wonder Woman 1984 movie poster variant cover
It’s the team-up no one saw coming: Wonder Woman and Maxwell Lord! This evil jerk has returned to Diana’s life, but is Max here to save the day? With a new psychic phenomenon affecting more and more people, Wonder Woman is going to need all the help she can get to contain this frightening new warping of the mind...
ON SALE 08.25.20
$3.99 US | 32 PAGES
CARD STOCK VARIANT COVER $4.99 US
FC | DC
This issue will ship with two covers.



LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #8
written by BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS
art by EVAN “DOC” SHANER, JEFF LEMIRE, DUSTIN NGUYEN, JOËLLE JONES, MICHAEL AVON OEMING, LIAM SHARP, ANDRÉ LIMA, SANFORD GREENE, CULLY HAMNER, YANICK PAQUETTE, DAN HIPP, DAVID MACK, DARICK ROBERTSON, DAN JURGENS, BILQUIS EVELY, FABIO MOON, MICHAEL ALLRED, RYAN SOOK, ALEX MALEEV, JOHN TIMMS, DUNCAN ROULEAU, and NORM RAPMUND
cover by RYAN SOOK
variant cover by DUSTIN NGUYEN
Beginning a special two-part comics storytelling event! Over the course of two spectacular issues, 44 artists will dive into the 31st century—with each page starring a different Legionnaire! It starts when the team is arrested by a galactic authority that does not approve of the Legion—and it leads into an intergalactic showdown that will affect every member of the team!
RESOLICIT | ON SALE 08.25.20
$3.99 US | 32 PAGES
FC | DC



WONDER WOMAN: DEAD EARTH #4
written by DANIEL WARREN JOHNSON
art and cover by DANIEL WARREN JOHNSON
variant cover by DANIEL WARREN JOHNSON
As the biggest and deadliest Haedra converge on the final fortress of humankind, Wonder Woman prepares to make the ultimate sacrifice to save humanity from the fury of Themyscira. Don’t miss the conclusion to this critically acclaimed DC Black Label series!
ON SALE 08.18.20
$6.99 US | 48 PAGES | 4 OF 4
FC | BIMONTHLY
APPROX. 8.5” x 10.875”
DC BLACK LABEL | AGES 17+
This issue will ship with two covers.

Comments

[alicemacher]

Um... that Wonder Woman #761 cover with Maxwell Lord... yeeks. O_O Wertham would've had a field day with that.

[crinos]

I'm reminded of that poor taste Batgirl cover that had Joker painting a smile on a frightened Batgirl's face, which ended up being pulled by the artist who did it

[deh_tommy]

Y’know, I actually rather liked that cover. I get why that got the backlash that did, but still.

[cyberghostface]

The outrage got pretty ridiculous in some areas. People were saying “you’d never see Batman in that position on a cover” and then someone else showed there were numerous covers that did. A lot of it’s just people upset that the Killing Joke still exists and is (somewhat) in continuity.

[silverhammerman]

I mean, without having seen this person's rebuttal, I really feel like that's comparing apples to oranges. There are surely many, many covers showing Batman in various states of peril and anguish, but Albuquerque's cover showed a young woman weeping in terror, evoking sexual violence both in its content (a grinning man stroking a terrified woman's face and throwing his arm around her) and in its reference to her assault in TKJ. There is no parallel for Batman, unless perhaps I've missed a cover depicting a lurid homage to the no largely ignored Morrison era retcon that Talia al Ghul had drugged Batman when Damian Wayne was conceived.

Really though, the cover's greatest sin is that it was a terrible match for the Batgirl of Burnside era and Albuquerque should have known that. As you point out, TKJ is (or was) no longer entirely canon in part because the Burnside era moved to decanonize it. Know your audience, Albuquerque!

[cyberghostface]

There’s no sexual violence implied on the cover. The show Gotham utilized that same exact imagery with a Joker proxy and an underage Bruce Wayne and no one said said boo.

[silverhammerman]

I don't think they are the exact same, the expressions and the context are completely different. Little Bruce Wayne up there looks far from happy, but he's pretty visibly defiant, which goes to my earlier point about depictions of Batman in peril/anguish. Compare that to the expressions on Albuquerque's cover and the context of TKJ (which he's specifically invoking), where we have Batgirl weeping in abject terror in the hands of a man who (TKJ implies) sexually assaulted her. Plus, the above is a screenshot from an episode which eventually sees Bruce beat the tar out of Jerome, whereas Albuquerque's cover has no narrative and is meant to be appreciated as an independent pinup, so it lacks the emotional payoff of seeing Bruce pay Jerome back.

There's no world in which Albuquerque's cover wasn't 1) ghoulish (not always a bad thing) and 2) inappropriate for the series. Maybe it would have been fine for a darker Batgirl book, like Gail Simone's run, but for the Burnside era it was an obvious mismatch. I actually think that tonal mismatch was the real reason for people being upset. If the cover had been proposed for a different series it might have still been distasteful (imo), but it wouldn't have felt as wholly inappropriate.

[laughing_tree]

On top of everything you said, that's a kid Bruce Wayne before he became all bad-ass and superheroic. Find a similar depiction of *Batman* and it'd be a more appropriate comparison.

[bruinsfan]

Oh good, it's not just me.

Captive, terrified chibi-eyed Diana at the mercy of big strong scary man Maxwell Lord does absolutely nothing to interest me in buying that issue, and in fact makes it far less likely that I'll pick up any of the current team's run on the book. It may not have been the artist's intent, but I can't avoid getting the feel of it being a Take That! for how Lord ended at Diana's hand a couple of continuities ago.

[tcampbell1000]

It's an old complaint, but is it too much to ask that the cover designs coordinate with the solicits a little bit? According to the text, Max is an uneasy ally; according to the cover, he's a deeply creepy monster about to reenact that "injury to the eye" motif that helped get comics almost banned in the Fifties.

I salute the gleeful abandon of the sentence "How did Batman become a dinosaur?" [Kronkwellyagotmebyallaccountsitdoesntmakesense.gif]

[leahandillyana]

Is Generations still happening?

[lordultimus]

Hard to say, this is the second time it's slipped from solicits, but then again, Coronavirus.

[scorntx]

"How did Batman become a dinosaur?"
Well, I'm guessing the answer probably isn't that his brain got shucked out by an evil undead Victorian super-villain.

And they're probably not going to go with the idea of Batman being a dinosaur and literally no-one else commenting on it.
Like, that's the only difference in that universe.

(The idea is these Dark Universes are born out of Bruce's fears and worries. Does that mean he has nightmares about turning into a T-Rex?)

[trooper924]

Oh for god's sake DC, stop trying to make the Batman Who Laughs a thing. You're the only one who cares about him.

[silverhammerman]

I'm endlessly amused by the almost immediate shift in fan reaction from "Oh, neat!" to "This fucking guy!" about the Batman Who Laughs. And it's even funnier that DC has steadfastly ignored this reaction, I guess because Snyder was always planning to bring him back as the villain of Death Metal.

[scorntx]

DC have lots of practice with ignoring fan reactions.

[trooper924]

Of course, since I was never fond of the character in the first place, my reaction has shifted from "That's dumb" to "You're still here?!"

[mastermahan]

I liked The Batman Who Laughs in Metal - because I thought the absurdist grimdark was meant as a joke. He was dressed like Judge Death, an in-universe parody of Dredd who was first defeated by being trapped in bouncy plastic. He's seemingly invincible from combining Batman and Joker's over the top Plan God and Chaos God tendencies, but the two team up to stop him. Villain defeated, event over. Great one-shot villain, but only worth one story.

But then he didn't go away. Apparently Snyder meant for us to take this nonsense seriously. He's just two characters smashed together in the least interesting fusion since Sonichu, and he's become the new Darkseid.

[bradygirl_12]

Diana knows how to take care of Maxwell Lord!

[stubbleupdate]

I am moderately interested in Wonder Woman as the Queen of Hell.

More interested than I am in the Wonder Woman/Max Lord story

[deh_tommy]

I still have very little idea on what exactly Year of the Villain was supposed to have been, but I’m down for Scott Snyder and co.’s brand of cracky insanity.

[silverhammerman]

Very pleased to see they're doing a sequel to the Green Lantern: Earth One GN. I read the first a couple of weeks ago and was pleasantly surprised by how good it was. One thing I really enjoyed about the book was that for once I actually found Earth itself to be as interesting as all of the space stuff, since it was a near future setting vaguely reminiscent of something like Ad Astra, so the prospect of getting some more Earthbound action in a Green Lantern story excites me for once.

Wonder Woman: Dead Earth continues to be the least interested I've ever been in a Daniel Warren Johnson joint. Maybe I'll check it out down the line if the reviews are positive, but nothing I've seen suggests that it's anything more than relitigation of themes he's already dealt with extensively elsewhere.

A bunch of Metal stuff, neat. Weird that it's a big Secret Wars riff, but whatever. Calling it now, the "Robin King, whose origin is just the worst" is like a rat king, but for Robins. A bunch of Robins fused together into a shambling grotesque.

[palgrave_goldenrod]

Reading those Dark Metal solicits kind of makes me think that DC Comics have succumbed to 90s nostalgia in the worst possible way, but maybe that's just me.

[deathcrist2000]

Ok, so apparently Garth Ennis is doing evil Bat Baby while Warren's doing Bat T-Rex. How did Scott Snyder get them to do it?

[lordultimus]

Warren Ellis: This is lockdown psychosis in full effect. “Hey, Warren, Scott Snyder invented an evil Batman who is also a T-Rex. Can you do me a two-page origin story of The Evil Batman Who Is Also A T-Rex?” And I say yes. Obviously.

[deathcrist2000]

Garth was probably told he could have Baby Batman kill Green Lantern in the most humiliating way imaginable.

[lizard_of_aus]

...The original Dark Knights was a bit of a let down for me but...mrrrmnnn...god dammit I love worldbuilding and parallel universe shit, FINE, Snyder, I'll play your little game.