The Sweet Tooth and Animal Man writer goes big, crazy action in this New 52 reinvention of Frankenstein (the gun and sword-toting monster, that is), the Creature Commandos, and an updated version of the mysterious mad science organization S.H.A.D.E. (think S.H.I.E.L.D. if Nick Fury was a domino mask wearing school girl). Lemire spoke to MTV Geek by e-mail recently about making such an abrupt shift pivot away from the more sensitive, character-driven work with which he's normally associated to Frankenstein totally wrecking stuff. We also learn a little about the pleasures of working with Unknown Soldier artist Alberto Ponticelli, and what went into creating a new version of the Creature Commandos for the New 52.

****Spoilers below!****
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Tags Alberto Ponticelli, Creator's Commentary, DC Comics, Frankenstein Agent of Shade, Jeff Lemire, New 52

Batman and Robin #1, Peter J. Tomasi (w), Patrick Gleason (a) [Print Edition]

THE PITCH: Batman and his son are generally jerks to each other.

HOW WAS IT? There’s nothing wrong with this book, persay. Tomasi and Gleason are a good team, and know how to tell a story. Unfortunately, this suffers from a lot of expectations: it’s a number one issue; it’s part of the relaunch; and it has to live up to the high level Grant Morrison set on the title.

This book does a better job of introing who Batman is, and who he’s about than Detective Comics, sure – but at the same time, it just continues where we left off in the previous issue. It’s also nowhere near as wildly creative (read: insane) as Morrison was when he launched the title. And particularly as Robin(s) appear in a few other DC books, I continue to question why this title was necessary given the relaunch.

BEST BIT: The villain is good and creepy.

WORST BIT: Batman standing in the sewers under where his parents were killed, being a total douche to his own son.

EASTER EGGS: None that I noticed.

ACCESSIBLE TO NEW READERS? I guess? That they continued the idea of Batman having a ten year old son is definitely going to make a few heads scratched.

WILL YOU BE PICKING UP ISSUE 2? Probably not.

RATING: 35/52

Deathstroke #1, Kyle Higgins (w), Joe Bennett (a) [Print Edition]

THE PITCH: The biggest bad-ass in the world is hired to take on a new job… And might be in for more than he bargained for.

HOW WAS IT? Beyond the busy new costume which I assume is supposed to make Deathstroke the Terminator – an impossibly old metahuman with insane reflexes, a healing factor, and super strength – more realistic, there’s the matter of the also rather busy plot. I’m all for a down and dirty revenge tale, or the story of an over-the-hill assassin proving he’s still the bad-ass we think he is. Read more...

Tags Batman and Robin, DC Comics, Deathstroke, New 52

Suicide Squad #1, Adam Glass (w), Marco Rudy (a) [Print Edition]

THE PITCH: What if the worst villains in the DCU were forced to protect us by the government? And explosives in their brains?

HOW WAS IT? Waaaay better than I expected. I think, like most people, I was pretty turned off by the cheesecake cover featuring Harley Quinn in her slightly ridiculous new outfit. First of all, it’s been de-sexified a bit inside, and made more in line with her video game/Arkham City costume… Which makes sense. Like most of the New 52, this is a chance to reach out to a wider audience, and if Suicide Squad looks like a video game tie-in, all the better for the casual reader.

And perhaps more than any other New 52 title, this is completely, squarely aimed at new readers. It’s an origin issue – not just for the Suicide Squad, but also individually for each member of the squad. And though it spends most of its running time on recapping in one page segments who everybody is, there’s still time for a neat (though not entirely unpredictable) twist, and a last page that promises some over the top villain action in issue two.

Here’s the deal: for most of the running time, I wasn’t sure what to think of this. It wasn’t bad, persay, but it seemed to be spending a lot of time getting us up to speed, rather than giving us any plot… Particularly as you’re thrown into the middle of the action already in progress. However, by the end of the issue, writers Adam Glass’ reasoning for this is sound (avoiding spoilers here), and it certainly helps set up who, say, Deadshot or King Shark are in the new DCU, characters who might not be as familiar as Harley Quinn to a casual audience.

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Tags DC Comics, New 52, Suicide Squad

Superboy #1, Scott Lobdell (w), R.B. Silva (a), [PRINT]

THE PITCH: In a secret lab, a shady organization is attempting to build a living WMD: Superboy.

HOW WAS IT: Man, there's not a single book in the New 52 relaunch that doesn't have at least one dead body in it? Even with a title like Superboy or Batgirl, there's going to be a two corpse minimum somewhere in there. Well, okay, fact check: Action Comics didn't have any dead people in it, but that's one out of 26, which is a pretty off ratio.

Dead bodies notwithstanding, this is still the most youth-oriented book of the recent crop in a way that I kind of wish more of the New 52 titles were. In this issue, we're introduced to the vat-grown Superboy--that's the only name the techs give him--who informs us through captions that he's only about three months old and is as clueless as we are as to what's going on. There's something different about this version of the character's physical composition though, as we learn that his consciousness is "spread equally throughout [his] body, to [his] every atom," and this is all seemingly part of the plan on the part of Lobdell's script to make the character far more alien than Conner Kent was (in fact, there are shades of the Young Justice version of the character here). Where the cyborg-esque visual from the Eric Canete cover comes from is anyone's guess, but it has nothing to do with the contents of this book.

First off, it's a pretty clean break from the previous iteration of the title, working as a hard reset of the Superboy concept from the mid-90's. However, in that book, which spun out of the "Death of Superman," Superboy was a sort of ready-made hero developed by Cadmus, this incarnation of the character is a little more alien and lacking in anything close to a moral center. The only real human connection he has is with a scientist called "Red" (everyone in the lab has a color for a name) thanks to some kind of psychic power that Superboy appears to be developing.
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Tags Alberto Ponticelli, Cafu, Fabian Nicieza, Frankenstein Agent of Shade, Grifter, Jeff Lemire, Legion Lost, Nathan Edmonson, Pete Woods, R.B.Silva, Scott Lobdell, Superboy

Batman: The Brave & The Bold is going out with a bang! With the final episodes are airing on Cartoon Network, a superhero-shaped void will be left in our hearts and our eyes will no longer be able to take in the antics of Batman and his cohorts-- fighting crime and singing songs! MTV Geek was lucky enough to talk with James Tucker, producer and lead character designer on Batman: B&B, about the past and future of our favorite bat-centric cartoon!

MTV Geek: Besides Batman, who's been your favorite character to work on for the show?

James Tucker: Aquaman would be the obvious choice, but the Spectre is one I'm really glad we got the chance to put in, because we never got to do it when I was on Justice League. Typically, the characters we wanted to use but could never figure out how to use on Justice League are the ones that I tend to gravitate towards. But, Aquaman is my favorite character to really answer your question. [Laughs] I'm also glad we finally put Wonder Woman on the show and she'll be in the teaser for this upcoming episode "Scorn of the Star Sapphire".

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Tags Aquaman, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Cartoon Network, Equinox, Interview, James Tucker, mtv, MTV Geek, Warner Bros. Animation, Wonder Woman

Batwoman #1, J.H. Williams III (w/a), W. Haden Blackman (w) (Writer, Artist) [PRINT]

THE PITCH: In Gotham City, Kate Kane is one of the many people to take up the mantle of the Bat.

HOW WAS IT: A solid to very damned good effort out of the gate for Williams and Blackman, hampered slightly by the need to hammer what appears to be an existing plot into the New 52. When I initially began this review, it was with something along the lines of "pretty good, needs a little work," but as I revisited it (about three or four times at this point) to discuss some of the finer points of the issue, I realized that it's a much stronger book that I initially thought, inviting multiple readings and analysis to sift through all of its finer detail. This is kind of advanced comics, and I think the visual complexity of it, its richness of detail, might be just the thing to put off some new readers.

But let me back up. First off, this book is pretty dense--both in the context of the narrative and visually. I'm not sure how much of this book was put together before the New 52, but all indications are that a lot of it was probably intended for Batmwoman's originally-planned February, then April release, before getting shuffled into the relaunch. Williams and Blackman provide two pretty content-heavy pages in in the issue that detail some of Kate Kane's recent history (particularly the "Elegy" arc with Rucka) as well as folding in call-outs to the new shape of the universe.

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Tags Batwoman, DC Comics, J.H. Williams III, New 52, W. Haden Blackman

Mister Terrific #1, Eric Wallace (w), Gianluca Gugliotta (w) [Print]

THE PITCH: Billionaire superhero Michael Holt is the third smartest man on the planet and plans to use his wealth, smarts, and super science to stop evil.

HOW WAS IT? ... And between this book and Static Shock, DC has created a universe that no longer needs Black Lightning. I wonder how this reads to someone who picks up this book and that book last week--two black characters who speak a lot of science-y gobbledygook who seem to have electricity-based powers. Would you assume the two characters are related or something? And with the weird timeline of the DCNu (some stuff happening in the present, some five years or so ago), would anyone possibly think maybe they're the same character? That would be weird.

Of course--and this is in spite of some of my quibbles with that first issue--Static Shock is a much better book than the one we have here. Because Mister Terrific is a title that slides quickly from "kind of interesting, if a little rough" to awful mess with bad art, and by the final page you start hoping that maybe it's not too late to get a new creative team here. I know this comes off as very harsh towards the new series by Wallace and Gugliotta, but this is not at all a good showcase for the character, the dialog is clunky and on-the-nose, the staging of conversation and action is hard to follow to simply nonsensical, and the "third smartest man in the world," stuff needed to die with the old DC. Oh, and that costume still doesn't work.
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Tags DC Comics, Eric Wallace, Gianluca Gugliotta, Mister Terrific, New 52

Green Lantern #1, Geoff Johns (w), Ivan Reis (a) [Print Edition]

THE PITCH: The greatest villain in the history of the Green Lantern Corps, Sinestro… Is the newest member of the Green Lantern Corps? Plus: Hal Jordan is a jerk.

HOW WAS IT? This is, quite simply, the best issue of Green Lantern since The Sinestro Corps War crossover in 2008. I realize that some fans are going to take exception that, but I’ll make it even worse before I make it better: other than the Sinestro Corps War, and Green Lantern Rebirth, this is the best Green Lantern comic in decades… Mainly because I haven’t really liked the Green Lantern book in a while.

And here’s why, if you’re still with me: with very few exceptions, Hal Jordan – the center of the Green Lantern universe since Rebirth – hasn’t been much of a character at all. Sure, things happen, but they happen around him, people tell him he’s the greatest Green Lantern ever, he looks pissed off, and then some more things happen… Usually involving lots of different colors.

I’m not totally trying to be glib, but for a while now, I’ve been wondering where the Geoff Johns who wrote the best single issue of 2007 – the kick-off to SCW – was. And where was that same writer who literally made me whoop out loud at the end of that same crossover? He wasn’t there during Blackest Night, and he hasn’t been there for dozens of issues of the book.

Well, I’m extremely pleased to say, Geoff Johns is back. I don’t know if it’s the energy of this relaunch or what, but right now the writer is two for two in my book, first delivering a hilarious and exciting first issue of Justice League, and now a perfect synthesis of new reader friendly and deep continuity in Green Lantern #1. I’ll get to Ivan Reis’ art in a second, but without getting too over the top (“too late!” said everybody), it gives me a huge sigh of relief to know that the Geoff Johns who got me back into comics is… Back into comics.

So what’s happening in this issue? Basically what I said in the pitch: Sinestro is pissed he’s a Green Lantern; the Green Lanterns are pissed he’s a Green Lantern; the Sinestro Corps is pissed he’s a Green Lantern; and Hal Jordan is so happy to be human, he’s back to being a delightful a-hole. To say more is to ruin the surprises of the book, but like I said before, if you’ve never read Green Lantern before, you’ll have a great time reading this, and have no trouble keeping up. If you’re an old reader though, what Johns has done is streamline the whole storyline so that it’s fun again.

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Tags DC Comics, green lantern, New 52

Cartoon Network's kitchy, cooky series, Batman: The Brave and the Bold returns at the Bat-time of Friday, September 16 at 6:30 p.m. ET/PT and to Bat-herald its Bat-return we're giving away a great set of Mattel Bat-toys on Twitter!

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Tags Batman, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, DC Comics, Mattel, Twitter Giveaway

Cartoon Network's awesome teen superhero series, Young Justice is back on Friday, September 16 at 6:30 p.m. ET/PT and to celebrate its return we're giving away a sweet set of Mattel toys on Twitter!

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Tags Cartoon Network, DC Comics, Mattel, Twitter Giveaway, Young Justice