Our comps have been arriving late — but WAR TOYS #1 is on its way to you via Priority Mail in time, hopefully, for Christmas!

I hope you enjoy it!

Rich!

No retcon, but I don’t think they’re *necessarily* intended to be permanent fixtures of the DCU either.

Anyway, more interesting are some rumors I’m hearing that have the Blue Lanterns as an allusion to something that’s a part of the Authority’s backstory– which seemed to involve a blue-tinted “merciful” Green Lantern knockoff. Has anyone else who’s read more Authority than me heard anything about this?

Also, bets on how long it is before the Rainbow Corps is retconned? Kyle lasted a surprise ten years, so who knows how long the Red Lanterns are going to hang around before someone else decides the status needs to be more quo?

I suspect what is going on with the Amazon hard-liners reviling motherhood in Wonder Woman is going to end up being an allegory to dropping birthrates among female professionals. It seems to be playing with the idea that a society of female warriors, scholars, and other ueberfrauleins could end up viewing motherhood as a sort of “death” of that culture and inevitable servitude, while also helplessly yearning for children as a result of their biology. Could just be me, though.

Finally, regarding Wonder Woman being willing to pledge allegiance to a Hawaiian god: post-Rucka, the Greek gods have been complete bastards as far as the Amazons are concerned. It wouldn’t surprise me that Diana wouldn’t feel all that attached to them anymore, though it’d probably feel weird coming off of a concept of the character that, ah, ignored the continuity generated by her recent crap stories. I’m kind of impressed and pleased Simone is acknowledging so much of it, to be honest.

Ahh yes, excellent point. And of course, Johns has already made it clear that green energy (and therefore the Green Lantern Corps) occupies the center of the spectrum. They’re the balance point. He couldn’t do that if he only had six colors to work with.

But “Indigo Lanterns”? No matter how you slice it, that’s just extra dopey.

“Humans do not tend to recognize indigo as a separate hue category between blue and violet.”

Who’s talking about HUMANS? Maybe Rannians or Korugarians perceive indigo better?

I’m guessing, nah, probably not, though I’m curious how color works in a xenobiological sense (and what would, say, G’nort’s race of possibly-colorblind canines make of all this?) But Johns’ stuff is, IMO, actually *full* of modified Silver Age stuff, and seven colors works as *comic book* science for precisely the same reasons Newton put indigo there in the first place.

MarkAndrew has a low opinion of comic shoppes out here in the desert, and he’s right.

See, I’ve BEEN to Arizona.

I did not like the only issue of Apocalypse Nerd I read, though, so I’m a bit wary.

I really liked it, but I’m the only person I’ve ever met who did. And Hate is much better – Although you do have to start at the beginning to get the full effect.

Bat Lash I liked a lot. You’re right that it’s not a really unique book, though. Still, there was a lot of story in 22 pages, and some great lines.

“Such a trophy would impress the squaws…”

That’s pretty dark and pretty funny, with Severin selling the gag absolutely perfectly through Lash and Two-Moon’s body language.

The Sinestro Corps special was perhaps one of the most immediately accessible things from the mainstream DCU I’ve read in years, so I’m somewhat disappointed by the turn towards insularity the conclusion of the storyline took by comparison. Aside from that, the whole thing felt fairly inconclusive in the fates of every major antagonist and didn’t do nearly enough to get me invested in reading the next year’s worth of GL comics to get to the Blackest Night.

That said, the stuff with Henshaw in the latter half and the Superboy Prime one shot were honestly pretty awesome. I’m more interested in either of them than I am in Hal Jordan at this point.

Greg said…
“On the other hand, those folks doing unpretentious superhero stories are dismissed as ‘generic, conventional, nothing new here.’”
I don’t think that’s it. I think the problem is that nothing interesting happens in the first issue of Bat Lash. Regardless of whether or not the story is ‘new’, it’s just not that compelling, and it’s a bit much to expect fans to shell out cash for a story devoid of a gripping plot or memorable dialogue. I love westerns and Aragones, but I probably won’t be back for the second issue.

Thanks for bringing this up, Michael. I was wondering about it myself as I read GL#25, which I really enjoyed … although I think the seven corps of different-colored light is a really wacky idea. Like, Silver Age-wacky. Which, honestly, doesn’t otherwise groove with the vibe Johns otherwise establishes in his work. And beyond the absurdity of a “love” corps or “hope” corps fighting each other (I mean, Red Lanterns who “hate” or Yellow Lanterns (Sinestros) who “fear,” sure, but Love Lanterns?), l can’t get past that indigo thing.

I mean, it never made sense why the spectrum would contain three primary and three secondary colors, and then one tertiary color. Is there really this separate band of indigo light? But then it turns it, no, not really, there isn’t. It’s sort of like how humans of the past, working with less information, declared Pluto to be a planet, but the more we began to learn about it, the more we realized: Wow, in most ways, Pluto is completely unlike any of the other celestial beings we call planets. So we must’ve been wrong before … but of course after many decades of saying “Pluto’s a planet” or “indigo’s a distinct part of the spectrum,” lay people (and some scientists) get attached to the idea.

Anyway, it’s a shame Johns felt the need to mash it into his ever-expanding Lantern mythos. It’s just dopey. (And, I imagine, vexing to the colorist.)

I’ve probably gone on for far too long about this already, but in case anyone else is interested, here’s a bit of interesting history about the concept of indigo (taken from Wikipedia, so feel free to add that grain of salt):

“Indigo is neither an additive primary color nor a subtractive primary color. It was named and defined by Isaac Newton when he divided up the optical spectrum (which is a continuum of frequencies). He specifically named seven colors primarily to match the seven notes of a western major scale, because he believed sound and light were physically similar, but also to link colors with the (known) planets, days of the week, and other lists that had seven items.
Humans do not tend to recognize indigo as a separate hue category between blue and violet. For this reason, some commentators, including Isaac Asimov, have suggested that indigo should not be regarded as a color in its own right but merely as a shade of blue or violet. Color scientists typically divide the spectrum at about 450 nm between violet and blue, with no indigo.”

Do pick up Green Lantern Corps. It is worth it just for the pages with Ice, but there are some nice scenes with Guy and Kyle and Kilowog in there as well.

well, it is written nicely, even when the stories do not feel all the innovative to you, the art is nice, and Matty goes through changes and grows as a person as the series continues.

It is not a “fun” comic, but there is a lot of exploration of what a war does to people, both the fighters and the civilians.

I think it is very relevant to what is happening in reality in many places in the world, but without depressing you about the reality of our world.

My other problem with the series was that I felt that the galactic scope that made the earlier issues so impressive was all but lost once the whole thing became yet another invasion of earth, which kind of feels done to death at this point.

It’s not that this was a bad crossover by any means, but I didn’t find it anywhere near as impressive as the earlier issues led me to believe it would be, and personally I feel that Giffen did a more impressive galactic war in 6 issues of Annihilation than Johns and company did in nearly twice as many issues of Sinestro Corps, many of which had a greatly increased page count.

That’s what their discussion is about, right?