And on the separation. JMS did that story 5 years ago. Quesada is showing how little he knows about the Marvel Universe and how unoriginal he is on top of it.

Good christ, I thought you were joking 'till I clicked on that link. Who exactly is the market for this revamp? Readers who want Plastic Man expect the sight-gag-laden comic character that's shown up in just about every Plastic Man appearance; readers who want grim 'n' gritty street-level vigilantism can get it from Batman, Daredevil, Punisher, or a dozen other books where that concept actually fits the character. Who's looking for a dark and serious book about a guy who turns his hands into giant cartoon mallets?

Nah, they're not killing off Plastic Man. According to the new Wizard, they're revamping him into a grim and gritty mob-related character. Clearly that's more "kewl" and "badass." I bet Woozy Winks is a hitman, now.

It's one of the main reasons that all the companies jumped so hard onto the glossy paper in the early 90's

I've never read an issue of any Nightwing solo comic; I read maybe the first six or seven issues of the Wolfman/Perez Teen Titans and none since then. I don't know a damn thing about the character or his development over the years. But I do know that an astonishingly large percentage of the world's population knows who Batman and Robin are, and that a considerable subgroup of same knows that they're Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson. If you said to these people "Robin grew up to work on his own, apart from Batman, and now calls himself Nightwing" that premise is totally accessible and immediately understandable. A comic publisher that wanted to hook an audience -- instead of servicing the continuity-based minutiae known only to an ever-diminishing of insiders -- would be complete and utter fools to throw away something with that level of audience recognition.

If there were a Nightwing movie or television show, all the reviews and listings would have to say is "the adventures of Batman's former partner Robin, now grown up and on his own," and boom! -- everyone would be on the same page. Do comics fans really not see how valuable that is? To say "Oh, but the character is broken, we have no way to tell a good story about him anymore" is completely missing how the act of writing fiction works.

Also I have to admit that the All-Star Superman is really growing on me too. I really hated the first issue, but since then the sucker's been gold.

I always thought Robin was lame (as I spent half a thread moaning and groaning about last week), but clearly enough people disagree with me to keep buying his book. Similarly, there's a ton of Dick Grayson fans out there - enough to keep buying even through the dreck that his book's turned into over the last year or so - and his comic was pretty entertaining under Chuck Dixon, so it's clearly possible to do something good with the character that'll also make money. So why would you kill the character off unless you were motivated by an almost Quesadalike fixation?

I thought the most interesting thing to come from Didio was the admission that, to the extent that the DCU's tone was supposed to change with Infinite Crisis, it was actually supposed to get darker:

"Asked by a female fan why there aren’t more light-hearted titles in the DCU such as Impulse or Young Justice, in a broad reply, Didio said that they’ve found that people respond better to angst... Didio later added that he doesn’t want to sacrifice characters for a joke, and prefers it when humor comes from within a character, rather than applied on them from outside."

Of course we don't want to sacrifice characters for a joke. We need to sacrifice them for a crossover. Now the fatwa against the JLE characters makes perfect sense: it's not a grudge against Keith Giffen, it's a cold-blooded purge of light-hearted characters. Once they kill off Booster, though, who's going to be left? At that point you're just down to Detective Chimp and Plastic Man - and I think Eel O'Brien better start watching his back.

And Jesse Quick (if that is her) seems to be in a Liberty Belle costume. If so...y'know, I'm all for respecting the past and all, but that's a really horrid name.

Spider-Man is the same whether he's married or not, so just leave it alone, you dumbasses, and work on writing good stories for once instead of coming up with half-assed events.

I figured Joey Q meant Get Kraven and that other one. Whatever Zimmerman did.

The high point of WizardWorld Philly for me was buying 80 or so comics. Mmm. Joy on paper.

And you know, between that JSA cover and the JLA #1 preview I saw the other day, I now understand why all super-heroes and -heroines are so good-looking. It's because every time somebody decides who gets to be on a team, they break out the 8x10 glossies. It's like they're casting for a modelling shoot.

However the brighter colours are rice (azn for nice!).

Robin looks kinda twisted on the cover.

Wasn't Erik Larsen still doing stuff for Marvel when Joe took over as EIC? Maybe it's Defenders and that Fantastic Four mini, unless I have my time table off. He did use those series as his examples of why "retro doesn't work" for a while.

Or maybe it's the stuff Jemas wrote, that would be funny.