This blog is very much like Marvel these days, we can't have too many Avengers.
The above cover (nicely rendered by Tom Grummett) is for something called Chaos War: Dead Avengers.
Genius.
You have your Avengers, your New Avengers, your Secret Avengers, your Young Avengers, your Pet Avengers, your Ultimate Avengers (not to mention Avengers Next running around, cartoon Avengers in the offing, and rumors of Cosmic Avengers)...how silly of me not to have considered the possibility of having your Dead Avengers shaking the old dust off to do some more Assemblin' for old times' sake...like I said, genius.
Both Marvel and DC have hit upon a formula that suits them well...why bother trying to come up with a bunch of new ideas that people won't care about or buy when you can just milk your existing franchises until you've sucked all of the life out of them? And, much more importantly, you can suck as much money out of the pockets of the fans of the franchises as you can (before those fans get fed up and starting spending that disposable income on hookers, blow, and iPhone apps instead of comic books.)
(Is it too early to put in a request for Black'n'Blue Avengers? Black Panther, Black Widow, Black Knight, Blue Marvel, and, if they could get the rights, Blue Man Group would make a kick-ass Avengers team...)
That Bruce Wayne was going to come back was absolutely assured even at the very moment he "died". It's all good. Grant Morrison has him coming back to franchise the Batman "brand" by training Caped Crusaders around the world in the aptly-titled Batman, Inc. book. I'm intrigued by that...we'll see how it turns out.
Hopefully Bruce will be returning with that stick up his butt finally removed...the post-Dark Knight Returns pompous, arrogant, condescending, inflexible, always "too cool for...and the smartest guy in... the room" Batman had gotten extremely tedious. (I don't mind the guy being driven and intense but dude get over yourself every once in a while.)
Dick Grayson is apparently going to continue as one of the Batmen...and that's cool too. I really like Dick as Batman...more than I expected to. I've even grown to like Damian Wayne, snot-nosed punk that he can be, as Robin (he is, despite all of his bitching and moaning, working hard to be a good soldier and partner...he may complain but more often than not he does what Batman tells him and he comes through when the chips are down.)
Dick shows that Batman can be good at his job and still be a person at the same time. Bruce Wayne will probably never be that kind of Batman again (he used to be before writers took Frank Miller's angry old Batman from the future and superimposed his worst traits onto his younger self)...but hopefully at least a little of it will creep back into him...hey, couldn't hurt :-)
This blog is very much like Marvel these days, we can't have too many Avengers.
