#newish comics

[zahri-melitor]

Also I am completely OBSESSED with Kelly Thompson’s explanation of WHY Diana’s narrative position at DC as someone who characters fall in love with but she doesn’t necessarily reciprocate in a romantic way is written into Absolute Wonder Woman.

The way this from Aphrodite in Absolute Wonder Woman #19 engages with the fact that we cannot get a Diana appearance in a Valentine’s anthology that is about anything other than friendship and people crushing on her, that Diana has women obsessed with her in the text in ways she cannot fully return (see Barbara Minerva’s entire history and particularly Rucka’s explanations of how he sees Cheetah’s emotions towards Diana, see main universe Circe, etc etc).

It’s playing with a fundamental Doylist problem with Diana where she’s simultaneously always been an icon of women loving women (all the way back to exactly how the William Marston origins function) and yet she’s also simultaneously expected to be written as almost above the messiness of romantic attachments much of the time, particularly to women.

Diana’s been cursed/blessed to inspire and compel love from others, and like Aphrodite, because that love is induced she cannot fully tell whether it’s something she deserves or is involved in.

Now, she will never know whether someone loves her because they love her, or because they have no choice.

It’s so JUICY! So entangled in the shape of her storytelling! I adore this.

[zahri-melitor]

…oh Jeremy Adams, you’re testing me now.

Emperor Aquaman (sigh) is now crossed over with Green Lantern AND Lobo?

This might be the point I just leave off the current title for a while.

[zahri-melitor]

(Absolute Wonder Woman #7)

I am screaming, crying, throwing up. Kelly Thompson! Just taking an axe to the current popular and fashionable interpretation of Persephone and returning it to the mother-daughter axis.

A diabolical pomegranate seed.

I believe in your vision, Thompson.

[zahri-melitor]

(Deadman #1 2026)

So this is almost CERTAINLY not the specific reference being made (a moon-skull is just atmospheric creepy for Boston Brand), but my own immediate reaction was ‘is this an Esteban Maroto reference to The Atlantis Chronicles meteor?’

[zahri-melitor]

Barbara Gordon: Breakout #2: honestly, I’m having fun with this as a mini. The sources it’s pulling from are interesting (I enjoyed Two-Face’s mini so getting Die again is fun), I’ve seen DC do far worse prison arcs, and the framing puts Babs into a very cerebral place because she can’t use computers as a crutch or an out.

I will say that this issue was giving me strong The Reaper vibes (which, given he was in Two-Face, isn’t the stretch it seems), but is still kinda a wild pull here.

[zahri-melitor]

Have been off the weekly reviews because my spare time up to them has been eaten up by other things.

That said, I do want to check in about The Flash #31, Ryan North’s first issue.

It’s very North, and maps well to his approach with Fantastic Four.

For this first issue we are again very West-household focused, and I’m interested to see if that persists, as I am hoping that North can do more with the wider Flash cast.

Felt a bit goofy. Felt a bit sci-fi. Felt like North’s preferred Flash stories are round about in the ballpark I enjoy, which is a positive for me enjoying the run.

Of recent runs, this is definitely more Adams than Spurrier, but it’s distinct and as I said, very North.

Status quo is decent and this is a nice introductory issue of hop into/back onto The Flash if you’re not reading the book.

[zahri-melitor]

New Comics:

Given I’ve hit the empty 5th week from new year, let’s just look at the Valentine’s Day special out now.

DC’s Supergirl Next Door #1:

It appears the general theme of the entire anthology is ‘first meetings’.

A Dream of Different Stars: Linda Danvers/Kara has cute rooftop stargazing dates with a nobody called Allen.

It’s cute. I guess I would care more if I thought we were ever going to see Allen again, but Kara talking about Flamebird and Nightwing as constellations she misses (as she misses her parents) is sweet.

Rated: M/F implied dating

(Also rated ‘I will be unshocked if WoG says Allen is trans’, but there’s nothing explicit here, just an outsider kid)

Running on Love: Jay/Joan love story reflecting on their history together.

Pretty gracefully navigated the huge part of their story that was ‘they can’t have kids’ and then the Judy retcon, honestly.

However…has Joan as dead? What? Did this happen over in JSA or something? I’m confused and suddenly hurt.

Rated: M/F married couple

Harlivy Rehabilitated: one version of ‘how did Harley and Ivy first get together’.

Look, I think they’re overrated AND I don’t think Maines’ voice for Ivy here is particularly good, but I did appreciate seeing ‘Harley getting inoculated against Ivy’s poison touch’, which is a trope I haven’t seen nearly as much recently as it used to pop up back in the day.

Rated: F/F couple

Guy Gardner: Warrior Lover: way too over the top for Guy. Getting his characterisation in the ballpark can be hard, and this mostly feels like it didn’t even try: it’s all crude extremely straight misogynistic walking stereotype Guy.

I’m guessing this one was supposed to be humorous.

Rated: no dates for Guy, just a presumably female alien he hits on (also rated ‘go read Fantastic Four #25 2022 instead’)

Runaway Romantasy: and once again, welcome to ‘let’s put Diana in the Valentine’s Day anthology while refusing to give her a love interest for the issue’, because let’s repeat all together, DC are cowards (and refuse to let anyone with a decent handle on Wondy lore write these).

Anyway this is Diana isekai-ing into a Romantasy novel of extreme stereotyping and everyone falling in love with her in Mary-Sue fashion.

On the upside everyone, male, female and undefined is flirting with Diana. On the downside, we once again have a story where it treats the concept of Diana having a romantic interest personally, rather than just people having crushes on her, as if Diana’s too gracious for it.

This is not me rubbishing folk who are aro. This is me pointing out that Diana, canonically, has multiple ex boy- and girl-friends and yet if I had a coin for every time this has happened in a Valentine’s anthology to Diana, I’d have two coins (DC’s How to Lose a Guy Gardner in 10 Days).

Rated: multiple genders of people forced by the narrative to crush on Diana, but Diana’s still single

So Long & Good Night: Abby/Swampy. Supposedly a retelling of when they met; in actuality it’s got absolutely no resemblance to that, but works as Swampy having a daydream about ‘their first meeting in the swamp’ and then getting intrusive annoyed thoughts about his erstwhile rival. Also completely works as the two of them roleplaying a first meeting for…reasons (that mostly consist of ‘hey what if we met somewhere other than your father’s mutant castle of horrors’).

It’s cute! It’s way way WAY too conventional for these two, but I reckon their idea of kink and ‘let’s add some spice to our love life’ involves play acting being extremely tame, as opposed to more everyday events for them like drug fuelled threesomes facilitated by hallucinogenic fruit grown by Swampy himself.

Rated: M/F couple (for various levels of ‘plant monster who thinks he’s male’)

Like Home: J’onn meeting and becoming a caretaker for M’gann.

Again very cute and very updated pretend first meeting. I love how J’onn takes M’gann to hang out in all sorts of shapes.

Rated: Storge/familial love counts for a Valentine’s Day anthology right? RIGHT?

(Also rated: J’onn/Chocos)

I Love You, Too: Ollie/Dinah. Set back in the 70s-80s As You Do, it is indeed quite a classic Ollie/Dinah story in that it’s all focused on Ollie’s struggle to get to Dinah, and dumps Dinah into practically damselling.

Lots of JLA fun fight scene moments.

Rated: M/F couple

In summary: we have once again had an overwhelmingly heterosexual anthology, the ONLY explicitly queer relationship was Harley/Ivy (though as said, I will be entirely unsurprised if CRC Payne decides to claim ‘actually Allen is a trans boy’), and Diana once again was dumped into the weird Galentines/she’s a Girl liking Girly Things story choice.

Best of the lot would be the Jay/Joan story if it wasn’t for the surprise ‘Joan’s dead’ of it all (seriously, none of the wikis seem to know anything)

[zahri-melitor]

Newish Comics: 28 May 2026

Yes, it’s been a while. A bunch of personal factors have been interfering with me doing weekly reviews, but I really wanted to talk about these two.

Swamp Thing 1989 #1: the capstone of Rick Veitch’s run finally getting published.

This is an odd one for me, because on one hand, this mini is something entirely aimed at audiences like me. On the other? The final arc of Veitch’s run is actually my least favourite storyline of his.

I understand why this got pulled. I think it stoked the controversy higher than it needed to, but in the annals of ‘insert my timetravelling/immortal character into the Crucifixion’ stories, this one feels really blatant and in your face.

There’s a level of balancing realism and transformation required whenever you pull real people (and religious figures) into fictional storytelling. It can change the tone of the writing. And I don’t think the balance worked for me here - it was a bit TOO written by someone deeply religious who wanted his character present but also wanted narrative causality to prevent any interference beyond observation.

And look, this whole arc has been about Swampy observing things. (That’s part of what made it quite dull in places). But binding both Swampy and Etrigan closer to the narrative of the Crucifixion felt somewhat unnecessary and dependent on reflected sanctity.

It’s the flip side of why ‘everyone was at Camelot’ does work to for me for storytelling. Inserting extra characters into Camelot is a long storied tradition in a collective mythology that everyone is happy to treat as a collective enterprise with no central ‘original truth’. (Lancelot is a Mary Sue! We know who added him and when! etc)

Given that real world religions have very strong views over the accuracy and order of events at the Crucifixion and Christianity in particular has plenty of sects who are fully unwilling to get involved in discussions of historiography of what texts are and are not included in that narrative? It’s just a more fraught alteration more likely to upset people as it ties into belief rather than fact.

I enjoy adaption! But this one either needed to go harder and far more heavily into altering things, or it needed to back off more. The exact point it exists at feels like a ‘nobody’s happy’ tension point to me.

Glad it’s being published however, in terms of correcting historic wrongs and overreactions.

Zatanna #1: so I think this feels like more of my vibe than Campbell’s mini. Which makes me excited.

What I really liked here? We’re leaning hard into some beloved aspects of DC lore (The original format of The Books of Magic vol 1). I think the handle on Zee’s personality feels more balanced between her different appearances and aspects. It felt a bit less navel-gazing and backwards-looking.

And on a personal note I’m staring at that ibis-headed…Lord of Order? I think? Embodiment of Thoth? And feeling that I want to reread War of the Gods and get back to the Inza-run Doctor Fate stuff as I think this is tied into that or picking up a bunch of Doctor Fate and Lords of Order mythology into this.

And I know saying the words ‘I want to reread War of the Gods’ makes me sound like a crazy person. However.

Really solid week. Enjoyed both.