February Comics Solicitations Preview

Man, and I thought January’s solicitations were spoiler heavy. February practically announces spoilers for both Blackest Night and Siege.

DC Comics

Blackest Night heads up the solicitations once more. For once, the solicitation for the issue of the miniseries itself seems to reveal nothing unexpected, and the cover has not yet been released. However, the crossover into Green Lantern #51 reveals the identity of the same Black Lantern revealed in previous solicitations but not in the issues. Green Lantern Corps #45 also seems safe, partly because it (like BN#7 and GL#51) also has an unrevealed cover. Blackest Night: The Flash #3 reveals something about the end of The Flash: Rebirth that we didn’t know yet, as that series is running behind. It has one of the three crossover covers revealed this month (on nine issues involved). Similarly, Blackest Night: JSA #2 has a revealed cover and unrevealing text. Blackest Night: Wonder Woman #3 also has safe text and a secret cover. The next one solicited (Adventure Comics Starring Black Lantern Superboy #7) has a spoiler right in the freakin’ title, although the solicitation text (“TOP SECRET!”) and cover are both spoilerless. Green Arrow/Black Canary #30 has a secret cover, a secret solicitation, and a title that announces another soon-to-be Black Lantern character. The final crossover issue, Secret Six #18, has a safe enough cover and solicitation text.

Meanwhile, over in the Batman corner of the DCU, we’ve got parts two and three of the seemingly unrelated “Blackest Knight” story arc with Batman and Robin #8-9. Solictations for Batman #696, Detective #862, Batman: Streets of Gotham #9 and Batman: The Widening Gyre seem similarly safe, revealing only guest stars and general premise information. In the Superman corner of the Universe, Superman: Secret Origin #5 is a bit spoilery, but as it’s a retelling of the origin, the spoilers are not particularly revealing. Solicitations for Superman #697, Action Comics #886, Supergirl #50 and Superman: World of New Krypton #12 seem relatively safe to this writer, who isn’t currently following those titles and doesn’t really know if current story arcs are going to be spoiled therein. On the Justice League end, we get the last issue of Justice League: Cry for Justice which the title has already been reacting to for months. We’ll expect a few more details, but parts of that story have already been spoiled. The JSA end of the Universe continues its expansion, as the tie-in series are announced to impact the main series, and a giant sized annual is solicited.

Marvel Comics

As mentioned earlier, there are some major spoilers for Siege and other portions of the Avengers universe. It’s at the point where I can’t even name the affected titles without revealing what the spoilers even are! If you really want to go in blind, all you need is a list of the tie-ins, so here it is:
Issues that appear to be strongly tied to Siege (usually written by Brian Michael Bendis or Brian Reed):

  • Siege #2
  • Siege: Embedded #2
  • Dark Avengers #14
  • Ms. Marvel #50
  • New Avengers #62
  • Thor #607

Issues that appear to be moderately tied to Siege:

  • Avengers: The Initiative
  • Dark Wolverine #83
  • Mighty Avengers #34
  • Thunderbolts #141

If you want the specific spoilers, here they are (highlight to read): The solicitation for Siege #2 announces the death of an Avenger. Not only is Ms. Marvel #50 solicited as the final issue of the title, it’s coming out with a variant cover clearly inspired by the Death of Captain Marvel graphic novel’s cover. It doesn’t look like Carol Danvers is going to survive the Siege. If you aren’t familiar with the Death of Captain Marvel cover, don’t worry; the collected edition is being rereleased this month as well. End spoiler section. There’s also a new miniseries involving Doom titled Doomwar. I haven’t seen any official press about it, but it looks like something on the order of last year’s Ghost Rider: Danny Ketch series, where they realized that some other story (in this case, I suspect Siege) had all the information readers needed, but not all of the information they wanted, so they took a creative team they wanted to give more attention to and asked them to spearhead a miniseries that offers more details. That’s entirely speculation, but that’s how it comes across to me.

In the Deadpool corner of the Universe (which is now big enough to be its own corner), most solicitations seem safe. We also know that Marvel’s pushing the new Hitman Monkey series launching after the title character appears for the first time in Deadpool #20. Both series are written by Daniel Way, who is one of the most irritatingly inconsistent writers out there. In the Ultimate corner of the universe, we’ve got solicitations that are a bit spoilery. The solicitation for the new Ultimate Comics X #1 reveals a bit about how the current Ultimate Comics Avengers story arc will end, though it reveals next to nothing about itself. The Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #7 solicitation reveals that it’ll be picking up a loose thread from Ultimate Origins that’s been dangling for over a year, while also alluding to possible connections to Ultimate Comics Enemy #2. In the regular MU continuity, Spider-Man continues the Gauntlet, facing Mysterio, Mr. Negative, Morbius, and possibly the Lizard. On other fronts, the return of a villain is announced in Captain America #603. Spider-Woman spoils some guest appearances, but given that this is the end of the story arc that’s already ended in motion comic form, that’s going to be as spoiled as you want it to be.

The Hulk corner will be in all out Fall of the Hulks mode as the MU’s strongest heroes face its smartest villains. It doesn’t seem like a traditional event, but more like the “Dark Reign: The List” titles, which work fine independently although they read better as a set. In the cosmic corner, we’ve got Realm of Kings continuing. Again, the cover to Guardians of the Galaxy spoils the return of a significant character, though it’s a different character than last time, and it’s also revealed in the text. We also have Nova #34, which reveals a character in the text thus far revealed only on cover solicitations I’ve previously warned you about. The rest of the solicitations for the month seem safe, with one possible exception: the cover of the Ghost Riders: Heaven’s on Fire collected edition has art that seems to reveal a change of alliance for one of the characters in the series that hasn’t ended yet. If you’re reading it, you may want to ignore that cover. I also find it amusing that the first 18 issues of “Cable and Deadpool” are being collected once more, but this time it’s titled as “Deadpool and Cable Ultimate Collection Book 1.” Deadpool is selling like hotcakes right now, so they adjusted the title to keep this collection on the same part of an alphabetical shelf. It makes sense, anyway. I’ve got the full 50 issue run of the title in TP or monthly form, and it always felt like Cable was a frequent guest star in Deadpool’s title anyway.

8 replies on “February Comics Solicitations Preview”

  1. So what are you particularly looking forward to? Anything that should be more or less ignored? (Or did you just not bother discussing the spoilery-ness of the stuff you don’t care about?)

    • Based on what has been revealed thus far, I’m most excited about Siege. However, I’m expecting Blackest Night #7 to be huge. Given the magnitude of the spoilers we’ve had in solicitation texts and cover images to date, suddenly marking so much as “Top Secret!” seems to me like an indication that the “big” spoilers we’ve already had will not seem “big” in comparison.

  2. I like the spoiler tags, but having them be empty space is kind of confusing. Is there any way you could make it something like dark gray on dark gray instead of black on black? If you did it that way, then it would be obvious that something’s filling the space.

    • I’ll look into it. I’m just using normal font tags, so it’s a matter of googling the appropriate color names and background tags. Remembering to do it that way will be harder; I write this HTML by hand and can tend to forget.

      • That hides the word “this”, but the text colour is very close to the colour Firefox (at least) uses for highlighting, so highlighting doesn’t really reveal it. Can you make both text and background darker?

      • That works great for me, although it might be better if it was a bit darker (say “dimgray” instead of “silver”). I use Firefox and don’t have the highlighting problems that Erf mentioned. I suggest, however, that you consider using the <span> element instead of the <font> element.

Comments are closed.