Comic News Wrapup

Things have been a little slow on the VS tip. Didn't get to play last week due to my Boston trip, so I've been a little out of sorts for the past couple of days trying to get myself back into the VS frame of mind. What did not help this was the crazy amount of comic news that seemed to come out of nowhere from Wizard World LA over the weekend. That con never seemed like a big announcement con, but that sure was the case this year. Some highlights.

~ Matt Fraction announced that he is officially a Marvel exclusive now. This will not be getting in the way of Casanova, as all his exclusive really does is block him from DC (and presumably Dark Horse), and his creator owned stuff would not be affected. I honestly expected them to simply move Cas over to the Icon line, which could still happen, but for now it's staying at Image. Fraction's celebrating this by adding even more to his prodigious workload. It has been announced that his is going to start co-writing duties with Ed Brubaker on Uncanny X-Men beginning with issue 500. All I can say is goddamnit. I really didn't want to start buying an X book, but I go where Fraction goes. The June solicits have come out, and Fraction's all over the place on the Marvel side, which makes me happy.

~ Some artists are on the move, as Tim Sale is returning to Marvel comics to work with Jeph Loeb on their fourth "color" book, with Captain America: White. Terry Dodson also signed an exclusive for Marvel, and he will be joining Matt Fraction as he jumps on to art duties on Uncanny X-Men. Loeb does his best stuff when working with Tim Sale, and Dodson just adds to the excitement of Uncanny post 500.

~ The first issue of DC Trinity is going to be an extra sized issue, and the price point for the weekly series is going to be $2.99. For those that do not know, the major creative team is Kurk Busiek and Mark Bagley, with backups written by Fabian Nicieza. After the disaster that was Countdown, I wasn't planning to buy this one anyway, and I definitely don't like the idea of buying 52 $3 books in a year beyond my standard pull list. It could be good, and the creative team is good, but Dini is a great writer and he couldn't save Countdown. I think what will make the difference is how tied to continuity this book is planning to be. 52 worked because it was its own little corner of the universe and didn't have to worry about anything else. Countdown was too tied into continuity to the point that it either got repetitive (the Karate Kid/Batman fight) or gave away things that hadn't happened yet (the non-Parallax infused Kyle Rayner showing up prior to the end of Sinestro Corps). Either way, it didn't work. So if Trinity is out of continuity, that would be better, but do we really need any more Superman, Batman or Wonder Woman? Wonder Woman maybe, but the other two have plenty of books to fall back on.

~ Joe Pokasi, a writer on Heroes will be joining the Secret Invasion fray, writing the tie in miniseries "Secret Invasion: Inhumans" dealing with the reveal of Black Bolt's skrully nature and how the Inhuman Royal Family must deal with the fallout of their king not actually being their king. Now, I love the Inhumans as characters. Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee's 12 issue Marvel Knights series was fantastic in every sense of the word. I really loved Son of M. I haven't actually read Silent War because I'm missing the first issue, and while I've heard it wasn't very good, I'm still looking forward to reading it at some point. I'm jazzed like crazy for this. New Avengers: Illuminati #5 was my favorite issue of last year, and I'll be loving some crazy Inhumans skrully goodness.

That's all for now.