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Welcome aboard and have fun catching up. There's fun to be had a plenty. If you looking for bulk lots keep an eye on the classifieds as there's often stuff there.

Kerrin my sympathy at this tough time. Good luck hope when your ready you'll be back.

I'd also keep an eye out for what DnA and Paul Cornell get assigned to as well, plus there might be some more exclusives in the pipeline as they give their writing pool a bit more depth and breadth.

Yeah I think (hope) we'll see a host of new writers going to DC. Either that or the writers assigned to the Flashpoint minis might earn a run out. We'll see but I'm hoping for some exciting exclusives to back up this aggressive move.

That isn't an example of a lack of variety - that just shows superhero comics just sell well, largely thanks to a historical accident.

I often wonder about this, with no real insight I have to admit. I think (guess) that while 'historical accident' certainly has a part to play I also think that the superhero genre is one that happens to be something that comics do better than any other medium. Hence there longevity. Comics help detach from reality unlike any other medium and provide a visual medium that makes melodrama work wonderfully. Both things that superheroes need more than most genre. I think that has a large part to play in it. For me most superhero movies, even in this time of astonishing special effects just don't look convincing. The fact that they are too 'real' makes the leap required, to paraphrase Jim, to believe that really is an alien flying powered by the colour of the sun still too far. The hyper-reality of comics enables the Kirby crackle to make perfect sense.

This new relaunch just seems to be an excuse to recycle decades of old stories in shiny contemporary packaging, like Hollywood, bereft of new ideas.

With apologies to DDD for this as I'm citing this example when I could have chosen many, no doubt some from myself. We're all making a lot of assumptions about something that to date is based solely on a few press releases and a heck of a lot of speculation. Fans always seem to react this way and I'm sure DC love it as they'll just be chuffed that for the last couple of days 'Fear Itself' has barely had a mention on the Internet. I'm confident (though of course speculating) some of the stuff will be wonderful and reinvigorate old ideas and some will be tosh that offers nothing new. I'll wait to see before predicting too much however.

Fuck that. In superhero time now=now; tomorrow=tomorrow; yesterday=yesterday; ten years ago=yesterday; forty years ago=the day before yesterday. If you have a problem with this, remember that you're reading a book about an alien who looks just like us but can fly and wears his pants outside his trousers.

Bob Haney now there was a man that produced great comics by never once letting logic get in the way of telling a good story AND man could he tell a good story!

Grrr. Desperation. Who even cares any more anyway?

Adopt best meek Mark Hamill pose

"I care..."

I'm a massive DC fan and while I understand why there's a lot of nashin' of teeth about this, I personally couldn't really care as long as the stories they come out with are good. There's a lot of very good creative teams on a lot of very good titles at the moment and as long as they are positioned well, on titles that they will do a good job on and DC continue to produce good comics with good stories, about the wealth of fantastic characters they have, I couldn't care if its issue 1 or 900. I've emptied my pull list spreadsheet from September and I'm really looking forward to seeing what gets put back in when details of the new titles and relaunch creative teams start to come out.

Anyway there's plenty of time for them to reset it all again before the big titles hit the big numbers. Indeed if they are changing we don't yet have it confirmed whether they'll be a new Action Comics 1?

As for timing 13 new titles a week is exactly the same number (a little less apparently) than they produce now so no issue. It'll dilute the impact of the weaker titles having relaunches but across the line will hopefully spark a lot of interest in the DCU amongst comics fans. The challenge they face doing it on one hit is they might get a massive single impact but how they will sustain that is open to debate. Hopefully the creative teams will be so good people will stick with the books. September's solicitations in a couple of weeks will make mighty interesting reading.

Hope Jonah Hex survives but I have my doubts.

As for the digital release thing it seems like an inevitability and all DC are doing is beating Marvel to the punch and therefore getting the headlines for it. Doing it when they hope to get massive coverage of a line wide change makes perfect sense with my limited understanding of these things.

I actively avoid the movie threads in an attempt to avoid spoilers (though by the sound of it there really aren't any real ones about... well aside from the script that is!) but reading this type of things makes me incredibly curious as to what goes on in them.

Are they really that crazy?

Over at Arthur Ranson's blog there's a new cover design. Thouhg clearly not yet fine if you look at the text across the top!

http://www.arthurranson.com/content/cover-charge

Ohhhh good cake. Belated Happy Birthday Lee.

I'm going to get there for 12, early if I can. See you there.

We've also had it confirmed that the Daleks are being given a rest this series. Which judging by the last effort is overdue.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-13594932

What others do in a poster Alex does in a panel.

Magnificent!

Yeah can only really echo whats already been said but its worth repeating. The Denise Droid is a shining example of customer service always a delight to speak too. Hope she does get to see this so she realises how she makes a bunch of nerds very happy.

Thats great news looking forward to it.

Okay so this is happening this weekend. People still up for it or should I take a book (well comic) with me?

All kinds of interesting