A Comics Odyssey - Issue 2

By Wayne Hall Mar 18, 2011, 5:01 GMT

One video game fans are already excited about is the sequel to Batman: Arkham Asylum, which is titled Arkham City and due out in October. The game takes all the action to the streets of Gotham, which has been overrun with escaped criminals from Arkham Asylum.

Hats off to those fans who recognized that the title of this column was an homage to the DC Comics event “Cosmic Odyssey.” It’s one of my favorite mini-series of all time, so it made sense to me!
 
Let’s get into this week’s “comics in the headlines” news stories, all taken from the revamped scifipulse.net website:
 
Ryan Reynolds Scripted Prologue To ‘GL: Secret Origin’ Re-Release

Recently, a DVD exploring the background of DC Comics called Secret Origin was released, and it was narrated by Ryan Reynolds, who will play Green Lantern/Hal Jordan in the upcoming feature film.
 
Now word has come that Reynolds has written about the character for the introduction to Green Lantern: Secret Origin, a re-release of the 2008 series that examined the start of GL’s superhero career, according to MTV.com.
 
“About a year and a half ago, I first sat down with Martin Campbell, Donald DeLine, and a man whom I consider responsible for the resurgent interest in Green Lantern, Geoff Johns,” wrote Reynolds. “They were all eager to build a big screen superhero who would both live up to his lengthy legacy, yet simultaneously find a foothold with a whole new audience–young and old alike.”
 
“Hal Jordan was about to become a living, breathing person. And I was going to be the guy to do it,” he said. “No pressure…”
 
‘Batman: Arkham City’ Gets Previewed

One video game fans are already excited about is the sequel to Batman: Arkham Asylum, which is titled Arkham City and due out in October.
The game takes all the action to the streets of Gotham, which has been overrun with escaped criminals from Arkham Asylum.

The game has big shoes to fill after the amazing success of the first game in the series, but as you will see in the video preview, which we’ve embedded below things are looking really good so far.

Why Darkchylde Is The Next Big YA Novel Franchise

Often Young Adult (YA) novels will contain elements of science fiction or the supernatural; but this isn’t what makes them successful.  What makes any Young Adult novel series successful is that the stories tap into the perpetual zeitgeist of teenagers: the feeling of not belonging and the desire to fit in.  It is this element of the Young Adult novel market that will allow Randy Queen’s Darkchylde to be a hugely popular.

A short time ago Randy Queen announced that his comic book, Darkchylde, would be adapted into a series of Young Adult novels through Andrea Brown Literary Agency – the press release can be found here.

For those unfamiliar with Ariel, “Darkchylde is the story of Ariel Chylde, a good hearted southern teen cursed to become the creatures from her many recurring nightmares.”  More importantly, it is the story of a teenage girl struggling to find her place in the world because her curse has forced her to become an outsider.
This week, I want to focus on reviewing a comic that has quite literally returned from the dead, just as its lead character can do.
 
1. ‘Xombi’ #1. Here’s the description:

“You can’t keep a good Xombi down! The immortal David Kim – kept ‘alive’ by nanotech enhancements – returns to the DC Universe in a new ongoing series! Creator John Rozum and hot ‘Batman and Robin’ artist Frazer Irving team up to deliver the finest in contemporary urban horror – with a Super Hero twist! As an undying, unchanging Xombi, David Kim must watch the world consume itself and burn while humanity grows more distant from each other due to the rise of technology. What would a Xombi do just to feel change again? And where will he ever be able to find a kindred soul?”

Xombi was one of the titles under the diverse Milestone group of comics that came out in conjunction with DC Comics several years back. As cool as the other heroes were, Xombi was one of the most creative for its time–nanotech hadn’t really come into its own quite yet.

Clearly, Rozum and company have given Xombi a lot of thought and tender loving care. His powers have matured with the passing of time, and he now has some really interesting abitlities. Of course, it’s not required to read the trade paperback collecting his previous adventures that also came out this week, but they are well worth it, in my opinion.

Irving’s art compliments the story very well, and the use of color is quite eye-catching. It gives Xombi quite a special look that fits his world very well.
Xombi’s off to a great start! Fans should pick up this innovative read right at the beginning to get the most out of this DC “milestone!”

And to conclude this column this week, I thought I’d talk a little about digital comics.
 
Just like novels and other books, more and more comics are doing digital. You can buy issues for your cellphones to your home computers, for instance.

Recently, I did just that for an IDW Comic called “Dragon Age.” I had bought the second and third issues locally, but I had missed the first issue. Since I’m in the habit of reading comic stories in sequence, I wouldn’t touch the comics I had bought until I could read the first issue. And no one had it or could order it by the time I was looking for it.
 
Frustrated, I turned to my iPhone. Guess what? I found a digital version of the comic--for free! (I think most companies offer the first issue for free in hopes that you’ll like it enough to spend the $.99 they ask for each issue after that.) Once I downloaded and read the comic, I could catch up on the story, which got me into a comic I really enjoy and still buy.
 
The problem with digital comics is that most of us who buy these books like the experience of holding the comic in our hands and reading them that way. We haven’t adjusted to the notion of reading the books on a computer screen.
 
I used to think that eventually we wouldn’t go to the comics shop any more. We would log in to an FTP site and download the books we had previously ordered and read them on our PCs or MACs, not to mention our smartphones. I think that will eventually happen, but I think it will take a generation or two to become commonplace.
 
In upcoming columns, I’ll look at just who are the hot writers and the hot artists in comics these days, so keep reading!
 
Wayne Hall is co-editor and a news writer for the newly revamped SciFiPulse.Net. He also serves as a host for the SFP-Now podcast and also the Wayne’s Comics podcast. You can check both of them out at http://www.sfp-now.com.