DC Comics Outsiders #1 brings back a classic Wildstorm series, Planetary. Skybound’s Creepshow comic is adapting a classic Joe Hill story, Wolverton Station. A Godzilla-sized omnibus is coming from Marvel. All on Comic Book Club News for November 14, 2023.
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Episode Transcript:
Outsiders is a stealth Wildstorm reboot.
Creepshow adapting classic Joe Hill story.
Godzilla omnibus coming from Marvel.
This is Comic Book Club News for November 14, 2023.
DC Comics Outsiders Is A Surprise Reboot Of Planetary:
If you thought DC Comics Outsiders #1 was yet another take on Batman’s non-Justice League team… Well, you’d be wrong. Massive spoilers past this point. In the new issue by Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly, with art by Robert Carey, we meet a new team put together by Luke Fox. Their goal? Explore weird multiversal mysteries and catalog them. And if that concept sounds close to the classic Wildstorm series Planetary… Well, that’s because Outsiders is a stealth reboot of the title.
Created by writer Warren Ellis and artist John Cassady, the original series ran 27 issues over more than a decade, starting in 1998 and ending in 2009. Featuring three Wildstorm characters — Jakita Wagner, the muscle; The Drummer, the tech guy; and Elijah Snow, the leader — their job was to be archeologists of the impossible. They investigated mysteries issue by issue that paralleled everything from Frankenstein to Godzilla to log their existence in The Planetary Guide. All the while they were trying to stay ahead of The Four, a group paralleling Marvel’s The Fantastic Four, who were trying to capture these mysteries to enhance their power.
In this new title, Luke Fox is taking the Elijah Snow role, down to the latter character’s iconic white suit and coat. Batwoman stands in for Jakita Wagner. And The Drummer is replaced by… Drummer, a gender-flipped version of the character. Throughout the first issue, they explore the remains of The Carrier, the ship that housed another Wildstorm team, The Authority. They also discover the corpses of Century Babies, a major plotline throughout the Wildstorm books. And at the end of the issue, a mysterious figure shows up with a Planetary Guide to drive the point home.
Why Is It Titled Outsiders, And Not Planetary?
So why is this Outsiders, and not Planetary? At least part of the reason, most likely, is that Ellis was accused of multiple counts of sexual coercion and manipulation in 2020, and has since been essentially excommunicated from comics, TV, and animation. While Comic Book Club News isn’t aware of any financial ownership Ellis has on the property or Planetary name, any explicit connection between the writer and this new title would assuredly be a detriment.
John Cassaday, on the other hand, gets a shout-out in a key character named after him in the issue.
Creepshow Is Adapting Joe Hills’ Wolverton Station:
Writer Joe Hill is no stranger to Creepshow. Not only were the original movies written by his father, Stephen King, but the recent Shudder series has adapted three of Hill’s stories. Oh, and also he appeared in the original 1982 film at age 9.
And now, Skybound’s comic book series of the same name is getting in on the act, adapting Hill’s Wolverton Station into a one-shot comic.
Said Hill via press release: “I’m always glad to renew my acquaintance with The Creep and reconnect with the gleeful gross-outs that are the hallmark of Creepshow in all its manifestations, from film to TV to comics. I wrote ‘Wolverton Station’ over a decade ago, working longhand while I traveled the UK by train for a book tour, and right from the start I knew I was writing a Creepshow kind of thing.
“It’s the story of a cut-throat dealmaker, someone who thinks of himself as quite a wolf, running afoul of creatures whose fangs are in no way metaphorical. At its dark heart, it’s a fairy tale — not one of the modern fairy tales, the sort safely sanitized by Disney for mass consumption, but the older kind of fable, the sort with teeth. That kind of story is The Creep’s stock-and-trade and so it feels exactly right that the story should be adapted for Creepshow‘s pestilent pages.”
The new comic is co-written by Jason Ciaramella and art by Michael Walsh. It also features a variant cover by Hill’s Locke & Key co-creator Gabriel Rodriguez. The issue will hit stores on March 27, 2024.
Godzilla Omnibus Coming From Marvel:
A big monster needs a big book. So good thing Marvel is releasing a new omnibus called Godzilla: The Original Marvel Years.
Written by Doug Moench with art by Herb Trimpe and Tom Sutton, the book spans over 24 issues and finds the king of the monsters fighting the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, the Champions, Nick Fury, and more. It also includes what the press release calls “one of Spider-Man’s most gratuitous guest-shots ever.”
The Omnibus won’t be released for a while. Currently, it’s scheduled to hit stores in October 2024. The announcement was tied to Godzilla Day, the 69th anniversary of the release of the original Godzilla movie. Happily, the omnibus will be out in time for the 70th anniversary. Not as nice, but still, pretty nice.
For Comic Book Club News, I’m Alex Zalben. Nice.
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