justice_league_23_cover_2013Editor’s Note: But evil hasn’t been imprisoned, Pandora, only spoiled!

So here we are: with Justice League #23, and the final chapter of The Trinity War. Now, let’s take a minute and look back at how we got here.

Two years ago next week, DC Comic released the final issue of Flashpoint, which closed out the DC Universe as it had been since Crisis On Infinite Earths back in 1986, and ushering in the New 52 era. And in both books – and in every new first issue that DC released in September, 2011 – DC Editorial made sure that we were shown the mysterious hooded woman (who was eventually identified as Pandora), with the implication being that she had some major part in the implosion of the pre-rebooted (Pre-booted? The Old 52? Pre-52? Post-Crisis Trapped In The Body Of A – ah, fuck it) DC Universe, and that her story would give us the real skinny behind the whole shakeup.

Over the intervening two years, we learned that Pandora was part of a troika of supernatural beings, including The Question and The Phantom Stranger, and that she was trying to dispose of her box (this is the space where I deleted seven different childish jokes) to eliminate evil. Which led us to The Trinity War, where all the members of the various Justice Leagues (which means basically every hero in the DC Universe minus O.M.A.C.) came together with Pandora as a major player, and the hopes that we might finally get an answer about Pandora’s role in the reboot, once the story ended.

So did we? Nah! Turns out Geoff Johns had a surprise up his sleeve for the ending of The Trinity War! He didn’t write one!

Somewhere, Joss Whedon is thanking God he cast his lot with Marvel Comics.

justice_league_dark_23_cover_2013Comic crossover events are built on a tight timeline. Because of all the various comic titles that are involved in any big event, everything needs to go off like clockwork. Because when it doesn’t, it throws all the other titles involved into a scheduling nightmare, and that could really fuck up their ability to tell a coherent story… not to mention fuck up their ability to get their shit together in time for the next event story that is inevitably hammering down the pike.

So sometimes an issue needs to move a lot of plot and characters around quickly, to make sure everything is in place for the next issue in the story pipeline. And Justice League Dark #23, the penultimate chapter of DC’s Trinity War crossover, is one of those books. Writer Jeff Lemire and artist Mikel Janin have just 24 pages to get characters from the House of Mystery, Washington D. C., New York City and other parts unknown all together to deal with Pandora’s Box and face down whoever the dapper gentleman running the Secret Society happens to be, all so the players and pieces are in place for the finale in next week’s Justice League.

The good news is that they do it with a fair amount of action, pitting heavy hitters against lower-level heroes, with everyone in sight being affected by the corrupting influence of Pandora’s Box. The bad news is that they make a lot of these moves based on forced coincidences, characters popping up from out of nowhere at just the right time, and a serious over-reliance on Zatanna and her backwards Pig Latin magic.

The result is an exciting story, but as befitting a story with magic at its core, one where you can see The Man Behind The Curtain. Characters don’t move in this comic. They are pushed.

lee_didio_meet_publishers_sdcc_2013616921976We are coming up on the final bits and pieces of coverage we took from this year’s San Diego Comic-Con – yes, I know the convention ended eight days ago, but it turns out we had a lot of video to sort through, and a significant percentage of that video needed extensive processing on an actual computer in order to make it into something that YouTube would recognize as a video file, as opposed to some form of data wad, or perhaps a Word file detailing our manifesto and list of demands.

But the computer has done its work and dinged like a toaster oven (as we all know computers do), so we are finally proud to present a series of videos from DC Comics’s Meet The Publishers panel, held on Sunday, July 21st and featuring Co-Publishers Jim Lee and Dan DiDio. And you can say what you want about, say, DiDio (God knows we do, repeatedly), but there is no denying that the guy runs an entertaining panel with an infectious enthusiasm, which even Lee gets caught up in.

This was a fun panel, and we’re happy to bring you, a day late and a buck short, a small piece of it, along with some art that was shown to crowd at the panel. You can check them out after the jump.

constantine_5_cover_2013160553189Editor’s Note: With a magic word… SPOILERS!

Okay: can we all start out by admitting that, simply on paper, the idea of taking cynical con-man and master magician John Constantine – you know, the guy who once performed surgery on a succubus, who once was pregnant with the child of an angel, with a lit cigarette and the snarl, “this’ll hurt” – and turning him into Shazam is a stupid fucking idea?

Seriously, there are some characters that you just do not give powers to. If someone came up to you in a bar during San Diego Comic-Con and told you that The Comedian should get the powers of Doctor Manhattan, or that Deathstroke The Terminator should be given the abilities of Brainiac, you would either finish your beer and back away slowly, or ask him what the hell he was thinking when he characterized Starfire that way in Red Hood And The Outlaws #1.

Without any context, the idea of taking John Constantine and imbuing him with the powerset of a 12-year-old American child historically best known for having a talking tiger and responding to the worst of human tragedy with a heartily shouted “holy moley,” is ridiculous. Which is how I responded to the idea when it was dropped during DC’s Trinity War panel last week, and how I was prepared to view it when I opened Constantine #5 last night.

Well the bad news is that the idea of Captain Constantine is still kinda stupid. But the good news is that writer Ray Fawkes gives the move some reasonable context within the scope of the Trinity War crossover, adds consequences to the action that I wasn’t expecting, and most importantly: keeps the whole thing short.

Because no matter what, seeing John Constantine in a spandex suit shouting, “Shazam!” is still really kinda silly.

trinity_war_panel_sdcc_2013883375167I have been hearing about DC Comics’s The Trinity War crossover for what feels like every week since DC launched the New 52 Reboot. God knows that DC wanted to tease the Goddamned thing right out of the gate, what with sticking Pandora (or, as we knew her at the time, “The Hooded Woman,” or perhaps, “The Obvious McGuffin,” and sometimes, “The Stalking Chick With Psoriasis Seriously What’s With The Hood Is She Hiding A Third Eye Or Some Kind Of Suppurating Nipple On Her Forehead” (at least in our Home Office).

Well, we are almost two years into the DC reboot, and now we finally have our war. It started in last week’s Justice League #22, with Shazam (nee: Captain Marvel) tossing half a beating on Superman before Superman apparently wiped out Doctor Light’s head with a stern gaze, and it will continue through just about all the main Justice League related titles, including the upcoming miniseries Trinity of Sin and then dealing with the fallout in September, during Villains’ Month, in the Forever Evil miniseries. That’s a lot of story considering how long its taken to kick the damn thing off.

But kicked off it has, and since it started one week before the San Diego Comic-Con, that means that DC was ready to talk about it. And talk about it they did, in a dedicated panel discussion yesterday, moderated by VP of Marketing John Cunningham, with writers Geoff Johns, Jeff Lemire, and Ray Fawkes, and Group Editor Brian Cunningham. And quite a panel it was, teasing that the Trinity War might tear the various Justice Leagues apart, allowing the villains to win, and for John Constantine to gain the powers, and costume, of Shazam.

Wait, what?

justice_league_22_cover_2013-136196065Look: I am never gonna hate too much on a comic book that gives me Superman fighting with Captain Marvel. And yes, I know that DC wants me to call him Shazam now. But I am old and crochety, and frankly? I am proud of the self-education I gave myself, back in the days of the 1970s Shazam! Saturday morning TV show, to call the character “Captain Marvel” rather than “Shazam.” Because I didn’t want to look stupid to the older comic book fans who lived on my block. And they did call me stupid when I called that guy “Shazam.” You hearing me, DC Comics? You listening me to digress like a sonofabitch?

Anyway. Justice League #22, the opening of the long-teased The Trinity War crossover event, gives me a good couple of pages of Superman and Captain Marvel tuning each other up. And as someone who remembers, as a young kid, waiting feverishly for Justice League of America #137 to show up in the spinner rack of my local corner grocery store (where they knew me by name and asked me to stop pretending the lime Ring Pops were Green Lantern power rings if I wasn’t gonna pay for one), seeing that makes me remember my youth and makes me predisposed to like a comic book.

And I did like Justice League #22… up to a point. As a kickoff point for a big crossover, it gives us a few examples of solid and believable characterization (and a few that aren’t – would someone at DC decide what kind of person Superman really is in the New 52?), it drops enough groundwork to let us believe that we’ll finally get the full story on Pandora – the mystery woman from all the initial first issues of the New 52, remember? – and if gives some good, solid, hot, sweet, superhero-on-superhero action.

If it has an Achilles’ Heel, it is that it is currently 2013. Which means that any continuity-wide story that features half of its superheros kicking the crap out of the other half is doomed to feel kinda like a lift from Marvel’s Civil War, or last year’s Avengers Vs. X-Men.