A Reflection on a Big Week of Comic Book News

The past week has been a very busy one in the world of comic book news, especially as it is still a full week before San Diego Comic-Con. Both DC and Marvel have made announcements in advance of or with the release of their October solicits. Let’s look at some of those announcements and what they might mean.

Batgirl Gets a New Lease On Life  – DC Comics announced that come October, long-time writer Gail Simone will be off the book Batgirl and a whole new creative team will take over. Cameron Stewart and Brandon Fletcher will be on writing duties with the art by relative newcomer Babs Tarr (great name for a Batgirl artist). The announcement was released with some images that show a new costume and descriptions that seem to show a new lease on life for Batgirl and a fun angle on the comic. Comic book artists across twitter have been releasing their own versions of the new Batgirl costume and seem very supportive.  It was also announced that Gail Simone will be working on a new project for DC. My friend Jerry believes that the book will be Secret Six – a big time fan favorite from Simone in the pre- New 52 universe. He usually has a pretty good feel for these things so I didn’t place a wager against him.

I personally like the possibilities presented by the new Batgirl and I love the design and attitude from Babs Tarr, who seems to be contributing a great deal to the flavor of the new direction. I have read that some people don’t like this change, frequently saying that it looks too young for Barbara Gordon. I certainly agree that a better plan would have been to leave Barbara Gordon as Oracle and make Stephanie Brown this new young and fun Batgirl but that water went under the bridge when the New 52 launched.

I am looking forward to the change so simmer down, internet.

Marvel’s “Big Three” Change to Various Degrees – So Marvel came out with announcements this week regarding changes to characters that they referred to as their “Big Three” (sorry Spider-Man and Wolverine). Let me tackle these changes in order from seemingly largest to smallest.

1) Thor – So if you missed this (and shame on you if you did because we talked about it here and here), Thor is now going to be a woman.  I mean Thor will be found unworthy to carry Mjolnir and someone new will carry Mjolnir but that person won’t just have the power of Thor, they will now be Thor and Thor will now be a woman (the new Thor that is) even though Thor is totally a boy’s name. So what happens to the old Thor? Does he still have power and not just the hammer? What name will he have if Thor is taken or is that just a title?  We will find out more come October with the premiere of Thor #1 by Jason Aaron and drawn by Russell Dauterman. I think that Aaron has been killing it with Thor and his independent comic Southern Bastards has been amazing so hopefully this new character will rock as well.

Oh, and this is not the first time someone else has used Mjolnir, nor the first time we have seen a female version of Thor so simmer down, internet.

2) Captain America – Marvel’s chief creative officer Joe Quesada joined the all powerful Steven Colbert to announce that someone besides Steve Rogers will be holding the star spangled shield come October and issue # 25 of Captain America. The super soldier serum that has kept Rogers alive and very well all these years will cease to function and he will get old and shrivel up to more like his actual age. Nevertheless, America needs her hero and so Cap’s longtime crime fighting partner Sam Wilson will put on the red, white and blue and become the new Captain America. Sam Wilson has been the crime fighter The Falcon since 1969 so he is no spring chicken (see what I did there .. Falcon … chicken).  Did I totally forgot to mention that Sam is black?  Whoops.

Marvel will launch a new book called All-New Captain America  in November with current Cap writer Rick Remender and featuring artist Stuart Immonen.

Oh and about a dozen other dudes have been Captain America and Sam isn’t even the first black man to do it so simmer down internet.

3) Iron Man – You may have missed that Iron Man is getting a new silvery armor. Tony Stark will still be wearing the armor and will still be a male and white. He is moving to San Francisco and is getting a new lease on life (it actually sounds like he is going to become a jerk) and a new title. Superior Iron Man will be penned by Tom Taylor and drawn by Yidiray Cinar (both recently working for DC) and will premiere in November.

Changing the color of his armor? The dude has like 100 different armors in his basement so simmer down, internet.

Powers casting – Powers is one of my all-time favorite series. The police procedural set in a super hero world was created by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming and is currently published by Icon Comics, an imprint of Marvel (Image was the original publisher). Sony is currently casting for a live-action television series adapted from the comic for their PlayStation Network. The show is supposed to start in December and for fans of the comic some big news came out yesterday.

The role of one of the primary leads, Deena Pilgrim, has been cast and the actress hired to portray her is Susan Heyward. What makes this interesting is that while the character is white, the actress is black. After this announcement, I read on message boards that some people were upset that this means being unfaithful to the original source material.

First of all, Bendis and Oeming are the executive producers! I am pretty sure that means they are okay with this. Secondly, on CBR’s comments for an article with this announcement, Oeming himself commented with the following:

The creators are creating this show Nothing unfaithful to to [sic] the show is happening here, trust me, Susan is amazing. No one else came close.

So simmer down and have a great weekend, internet!