Samothrake

Le sigh...I was right

"Jim Lee: A lot of people still have fond memories of Rob Liefeld's run on Hawk & Dove, and it felt real fitting to bring him back. The guy has a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for what he does, and we really expect Hawk & Dove to benefit from that energy. He and Sterling have really brought the momentum that you need to launch a book."

Bleeding Cool has updated their list List.
Red Robin and the Outlaws has been corrected to Red Hood and the Outlaws, Adventure Comics is now DC Universe Presents. Some of the writers have been crossed out, and the whole list has a snazzy color coding. Red is still a Bleeding Cool rumour. Green is a confirmed Bleeding Cool rumour. Blue is a CBR rumour. Black is a straight confirmation.
Those six comics I listed above? They are on the list now, with all but Justice League Dark as confirmed. JLD is listed as a ‘confirmed Bleeding Cool rumor’.

Still six series to go. I’m not seeing a Booster Gold series listed yet. And I really hope they throw me a bone and gimme a Blue Beetle Jaime Reyes series. And I wouldn’t mind a Mark Shaw or Kate Spencer Manhunter series again, either.

I think we can add to that list a few titles:
Demon Knights #!
Voodoo #1
Resurrection Man #1
Justice League Dark #1

And possibly: I Vampire #1 and Frankenstein: Agent Of SHADE #1

Reading the article, I am not sure just how much of the recent Bar-family stuff is going to have an impact going forward. But it does seem like they are trying to keep at least some of it, sometimes in weird convoluted ways.

For instance: they announced that Batman Incorporated will be getting a new #1 in early 2012.
And also Batwing:

"Batwing #1 is a series that spins right out of Grant Morrison's Batman Incorporated storyline."

And under the Nightwing article we have: “In DC's official announcement, the publisher confirms that Dick's time as the Dark Knight is still relevant. It reads, "After a tenure as the Batman of Gotham, Dick Grayson resumes his mantle as Nightwing!”

Which makes it sound like Bruce was away for a while, and Dick took over the Bat. Speaking of Nightwing, I’m not sure what to think of the costume. It looks to me like they wanted to mix Red Robin in with the Nightwing. I understand that they wanted to redesign the costumes, but at no time since taking the Nightwing persona, has Greyson had red in his costume. Various shades of blue and gold/yellow, but never red. He hasn’t had red in us costume since his Robin days.

We also are going to have FOUR Batman books: Batman, Detective Comics, Batman & Robin, and Batman: The Dark Knight. And with Justice League having Batman, Bruce is going to be a busy man.

But that’s not the only action going on in Gotham City. We have Catwoman #1, Birds of Prey #1 (of which I recognize Black Canary, Poison Ivy, and Katana? not sure who the tattooed woman is), Batwoman #1, and Batgirl #1. Not sure what to think of Barbara being Batgirl again. It could be the did get shot by the Joker, but wasn’t paralyzed. Or not paralyzed long, or even that there’s some type of miracle technology that has her walking again. I’m willing to give it a chance to see which route they are going, but I will be peeved if they just throw away 20+ years of character growth, while keeping all the other stuff that it seems like they are keeping.

Something potentially worrisome: nowhere in these announcements do we see any mention of Tim Drake. Or any mention of a Robin or Red Robin series. So far. We do still have almost three full months until all this comes about. We also have no mention – yet – of Cassandra Caine, or Stephanie Brown. But as I pointed out above we DO have Kate Kane as Batwoman. Still no word on Renee as Question.

Embarrassing? Yes. For a while.

But many kids wish they had a dad that cool!

I'm kinda wondering when this takes place.
'cause I swear that at least one of those characters was dead by the end of the anime...

More thoughts:

What is this going to do to the Question? Will it be Rene Montoya or Vic Sage? Rene hasn’t been featured doing much since the changeover, that I know.

As others have said, what does this do to the Bat Family? Who’s under the cowl in that picture? I rather like the idea of keeping the Bat Family large. With Bruce Wayne as the bank roller and support. Have Batman be Dick, keep Stephanie as Batgirl and Kathy Kane as Batwoman. (I really like the Batwoman costume.) Tim or Damian as Robin, I don’t really. Though keeping Tim as Red Robin can keep his character growth. Heck, if we tie Bruce into the Justice Society, we can keep his as the mentor of the whole Batclan and keep him in his 40s. I rather like idea.

Who is under the Flash mask? For the past 25 years (post Crisis) I have preferred Wally. He has had the most growth as a character. But DC has recently been on a Barry kick, so I suspect that who we see here his Barry. The Flash family has both a bigger and smaller problem compared to the Bat-family, in that there are actually currently four generations of Flash active. Jay Garrick, the first Flash is still running around with the Justice Society. Barry, of course, was recently brought back from the dead/Sped Force. I haven’t followed his title since his return. But I now hear that Barry is supposed to ‘be’ the Speed Force. Which makes no sense with the speedsters from say the 1800s like Max Mercury having access to the force. I really like the legacy that the Flash family had going. Wally’s assumption of the Flash mantle was really the first time any side-kick had been able to step up and continue the legacy of their partner. This reboot makes all that history questionable.

Oh I forgot. There’s actually 2 news articles at Newsarama that I was going through in that post up there.
Some other thoughts:

I find it interesting that DC is also saying they are launching ‘52’ new books. DC really seems to like that number. Anybody know how many books they put out in a regular month? ‘Cause this number seems a bit inflated.

I’m really curious now what impact the events of Justice League Generation Lost will have now. We were promised a Justice League International later this year, and I am now very much wondering how that title will fit into the new universe.

The articles state that there are “more than 50 costume redesigns.” We can surmise that there are at least two team books, but with 52 new books, there could be considerably more than 50 costume redesigns. It would seem, then, that not every hero has gotten a costume revamp. (Please don’t change Hawk & Dove or Cyborg, they’re good as is.)

As for Detective Comics loosing 880+ issues of numbering, I just know that they will publish a special #900 issue when the time comes. What happens in that issue may or may not actually have something to do with ongoing storyline. Afterward, the issues will continue with the new numbering. Both companies have done this numerous times in the past, although if there is a large outcry, they might just continue with the old numbering ala Thor’s recent run. The same goes for any other high numbering comic.

I don’t want to lose Jaime Reyes and his alien-suit Blue Beetle in this semi-reboot. I really like his character. Though his costume, with its transforming nature goes well with costume tweaking. On the other hand, this semi-reboot is a good chance for the company to bring back Ted Kord in some fashion.

I forsee a whole lot of not so much as retcons, but a lot of flashbacks in order to tell us what has happened before. To inform us just what is in continuity now. Because they are not starting totally over, this almost has to happen in some fashion.

What worries me is all the talk of a “focus on the interpersonal relationships within DC's trademark superteam." "What's the human aspect behind all these costumes?" Interpersonal relationships are all well and good, and showcasing what makes them human is good, I will even read stories of how the powers of the hero or villain might make staying connected to humanity a challenge. But those things better not get in the way of the villains trying to take over the world, stealing as much money as possible, or there being a threat to the world and the heroes doing their best to thwart said plans and generally beating the crap out of the bad guys. My heroes don’t have to win every battle, and losing can make for some interesting character growth. But I’m not reading comics for “Young & the Restless with Superpowers.”

On the other hand, I’m willing to read stories “at a point where our characters are younger and the stories are being told for today's audience." As long as these heroes stay grounded in the ‘legend’ of the characters like they say, I’m willing to give these things a try. Superman and Batman shouldn’t be killing the bad guys left and right. In fact, they shouldn’t be killing bad guys. Goes against the characters’, well, character. Wonder Woman and Hal Jordan, on the other hand I see using more deadly force. After all, Wonder Woman is a warrior, and Hal is a military man. I look forward to the discussions here about these stories. And I hope we can get back to the weekly threads. I’ve really missed those.

Moving on then.

I’m interested in the “50 costume redesigns” (anybody smell a game influence here?), however. Especially with the little glimpse we are shown here:

Please correct me if I am wrong in thinking that this is the first glimpse we have for the new universe’s costumes, because if it’s not the following statements will not make much sense.

Wonder Woman’s costume – what we can see of it – looks very much like the current one, minus the arm straps and jacket, and with a few tweaks here and there. The bottom is hard to tell if it is supposed to be black, or dark navy blue. I am leaning towards black, because her hair has the traditional ‘so black it’s blue’ highlights, but I rather hope that part is a dark blue. I also see elements from the failed television show in there. To me, it looks interesting.

Superman’s costume seems to be mostly the classic design. I rather like the high collar, but I’m not sold on the “S” shield design. It also looks like they ditched the “underwear on the outside” part as well. This Superman looks to be in his mid 20s instead of the early-mid 30's we have nowadays.

Green Lantern looks to be Hal Jordan (of course) and his costume looks to be mostly classic, with some armor pieces here and there, and the same high collar that we see on Supes’ uniform. I like what I can see. Also note that this is a much younger Hal Jordan.

Aquaman has the most recent scale mail top, and looks to be very much the Brightest Day suit, with the high collar of Superman and Green Lantern. Not really that much different.

Overall, I look forward to DC revealing the updated looks of more of its heroes in next three months. And you know they will. And hopefully, we can have some lively discussion here with those new costumes.

For a moment I thought this was a steampunk Dalek...

Well, they got the LOOK of the Smurf correct. But there's something about Smurfette and Papa Smurf's beard that doesn't look right.

See, the thing is, an animated series can do things that a live action cannot for a fraction of the price.
People kept expecting blockbuster quality special effects on a secondary television network budget.

Of course, that's no excuse for why they had Clark mope about Lana for seven seasons...

When somebody breaches Walmart's servers and makes it know, THATS when we really need to worry.
Many people don't know that Walmart has some serious computing power and data at their disposal. And hundreds of millions of credit card numbers and names to go along with them.

Speaking of the TARDIS, I loved it when the Doctor saw it and said "What are you doing down there?"

Yeah, formats of e-books, and the proprietary-ness of them are one of the biggest problems right now.

Every reader out there will read .txt documents and with very few exceptions PDF format as well. The problem with .txt is that it is just that, text. No way to bold or italicize any text. And being able to do those two things is actually quite important for stories because it lets the reader know when to emphasize things. Take for instance the following example: “You don’t deliver? Am I hearing you correctly…?” versus “You don’t deliver? Am I hearing you correctly…?” One can clearly tell in the second set of sentences just how irritated this person is, while in the former sentences one cannot. One has to run the first set of sentences through one’s mind several times, each time getting a different level of irritation, depending on which words one puts the emphasis on. But with the latter set, the author has clearly shown which is the way he wanted it to be read.

PDF format does a great job of making a e-book look like a book, no matter what screen you open the file on. However this is also it’s great downfall. PDF doesn’t scale well, and if the publisher went to the trouble of making the PDF of, say, Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters, look exactly like the print version, we have page numbers and headings and whatnot on every page. That looks very nice on a computer screen, and perhaps also on a 9” e-reader, but on anything smaller, the text of the book becomes very small. If a person adjusts the text size for better reading, we clearly see the downside of PFD, as the page numbers and heading (title and author on top of every page) get thrown into the rest of the text at strange places. PDF also doesn’t word-wrap correctly, if at all, so sentences which would be on a new line get thrown onto the same line as sentences which come before them. This can make conversations a bit hard to follow. And then theres the fact that when a person adjusts the text size of a PDF on a reader, pages can break at strange places. Since the PDF has defined pages, you might get a screen with only two lines at the top of a screen, while the next page fills the screen fully – but with the header and page number at the top.

.RTF files seem to be the easiest and best way to go. At least as far as having Calibre convert to other formats. RTF lets a person indent at paragraph beginnings, bold, italicize, change font size and all of that. And they convert nicely. However, very few e-readers can actually read this format, so having a converter is essential.

Word files are a bit trickier. Since MS changed the format of Word files in 2007 from .doc to .docx, pulling them up on a reader can be a bit tricky. While Word files have the same advantages of RTF files with word-wrapping, indenting, and such, there’s also not as many converters for these files.

Truly, the e-pub file seems to be the format that is slowly pulling ahead of other file formats. It has support for images, tables, sound, interactivity, word-wrap, embedded annotation, bookmarking, and is an open standard.
With the exception of the Kindle, every actual e-reader can view e-pub files, some only unDRMed and some with DRM, depending on the DRM.

However, the few formats that the Kindle can view (.mobi, .prc, .txt, .ptz and .azw) are easily convertible to other formats. And the .azw format is actually based on .mobi wrapped in Amazon’s DRM. The Mobipocket format (which Amazon bought in 2005) is based on the Open eBook standard, of which .epub is the evolution. So, in many ways the Kindle books are slightly different .epub books, which makes them easily convertible.

Barnes & Nobles’ Nook uses the .pbd format and appears to be the only device to do so. Fortunately, the Nook also reads e-pub and PDF files, with or without DRM (but only one version of DRM).

Borders seems to have thrown most of their support behind the Kobo brand e-reader. The Kobo reader supports epub and PDF files for e-books. However, the Kobo seems to be having problems of its own.

But with the plethora of formats, and the e-book hardware makers propensity to make another format just for their machine, consumers have little choice but to either do a lot of research before buying one, or make a choice of hardware and try to stick with it. At the moment the two giants in the industry, B&N and Amazon, have readers and choices that seem to be working for them and many consumers. Sony and Borders also have seem to have solutions for themselves, though they seem to have a few more problems.

When doing research for my e-reader purchase last year, I almost went with a BeBook product because it would read the most formats of books. However, being a company based in the Netherlands, support for the BeBook wasn’t what I would like it to be, and the price was a bit much. I finally went with the Sony PRS-650. A nice touch screen, with a stylus for highlighting and note taking, and a product that I could find locally (and actually take back to a store for a refund if I disliked the product). I also liked that it supports the e-pub format, which is now my format of choice. E-pub files look wonderful on my Sony.

Finally, you probably noticed me mention e-book conversion up there several times. After choosing e-reader, I did some more research and found the Calibre software. I now no longer have to worry about where I buy my e-books. If Borders has a book on sale I want, versus Amazon or Barnes & Noble, I buy it from Borders. If only Barnes & Noble has a book I am looking for, I get it from them. I then run these books through Calibre and its plug-ins and the book can then be placed on my reader and read at my leisure. The Calibre software is a wonderful piece of programming and I highly recommend it.

Well, e-books also have a problem that mp3s never did, and that is format. Mp3 services pretty much sell them in mp3 format because that will play on any player. With the noticible exception of iTunes, but that's Apple doing a Sony and thinking their format is so superior to anything else. Still, conversion software is abundant.
E-books, on the other hand come in apparently 28 different formats. And most readers out there only support perhaps 3 of those formats. And each format has its own way to encrypt with DRM. It's a mess, and at the moment there's nobody selling them talking to anybody else that's selling them about any form of compatability. Luckily, there's Calibre and some wonderful plug-ins that can solve the problems for a person.