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 Written by John Ostrander
Penciled by Luke McDonnell
Inked by Bob Lewis, Karl Kesel, and Dave Hunt
232 pages, color
Published by DC Comics
Once a year or so, when I’m looking at comics, I’ll find myself wondering why there currently isn’t an ongoing (and wildly successful) Suicide Squad series, preferably written by John Ostrander. It’s a simple but easy to understand premise (a government black ops team, partially staffed by criminals in exchange for lesser sentences), and the possibility for different characters to appear left and right is fairly limitless. Hopefully this long-awaited first volume of Suicide Squad reprints will drum up some interest, because a strong revival is long overdue.
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 By Sarah Glidden
208 pages, color
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics
It’s hard (although not impossible) to find someone who doesn’t have a strong opinion on Israel and Palestine. Sarah Glidden is no exception to that rule, so when she got the chance to go on a Birthright tour of the country, she was skeptical even as she signed up for the experience. Her opinions of Israel and Zionism were well constructed by this point in her life, and she figured nothing that she saw or experienced in Israel could change her mind. What she found? Well, it was meaty enough to result in her graphic novel How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less.
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 Written by Scott Snyder
Art by Francesco Francavilla
32 pages, color
Published by DC Comics
One of the creepiest comics published by DC right now is not, in fact, part of its Vertigo imprint, best known for hosting many horror and dark-fantasy tinged titles intended for mature readers. No, the book I’m talking about is Detective Comics, written by Scott Snyder and with art by the two regular artists Jock and Francesco Francavilla. Between this and Greg Rucka’s run on the book a little over a year ago with J.H. Williams III, Cully Hamner, and Jock, it been a veritable golden age for one of DC’s flagship comics.
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 Written by Chris Roberson
Art by Michael Allred
32 pages, color
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics
With iZombie on the verge of wrapping up its first year (and with its first collection due this month), it seemed like a good at time as any to check back in with Chris Roberson and Michael Allred’s zombie series. Of course, it’s not really a zombie series. In fact, Roberson and Allred seem to be delighted in taking everyone’s expectations for iZombie and then throwing them out the window. Do I approve? Of course.
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 Written by Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen
Penciled by Keith Giffen, Pat Broderick, Carmine Infantino, and Howard Bender
Inked by Larry Mahlstedt, Bruce Patterson, and Dave Hunt
416 pages, color
Published by DC Comics
When friends got me hooked on the Legion of Super-Heroes back in the early ’90s with Keith Giffen, Tom and Mary Bierbaum, and Al Gordon’s infamous "Five Years Later" run, I eventually started moving backwards through the team’s history, reading all of the previous Legion of Super-Heroes comic that began in 1984. I never went any further back at that time, though, and in doing so I missed what remains one of the most well-known stories involving the characters: The Great Darkness Saga. With the softcover collection having gone out of print years ago, this new deluxe hardcover seemed to be a perfect time to see if it still holds up to all the praise heaped on it over the years.
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 Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Francis Manapul
32 pages, color
Published by DC Comics
One of the things I’ve been quietly impressed with, over the past few years, was how Geoff Johns uses one of his regular titles to slowly lead into a big event. The most recent was, of course, Green Lantern bringing us toward Blackest Night, but the comic just as easily did so a couple of years earlier with The Sinestro Corps War, or for that matter Action Comics kicking off Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds. In the case of The Flash, we’ve been told by editorial ever since the new series began that it’s going to bring us into Flashpoint, this year’s big mini-series. And so far? Well, regardless of how Flashpoint turns out, this is an entertaining way to get there.
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 Written by Bill Finger, Edmond Hamilton, David Vern Reed, and France Herron
Penciled by Dick Sprang, Sheldon Moldoff, and Lew Sayre Schwartz
Inked by Stan Kaye and Charles Paris
264 pages, color
Published by DC Comics
There’s something disarmingly charming about the general silliness of Batman comics from the 1960s. I’ve often joked that some of the comics from that time period are clearly pointing towards illegal drugs in the water coolers, but the fact of the matter is that for whatever reason, no one seemed to be taking themselves too seriously. In many ways, the culmination of this is in the early Batman Annuals, reprinting each year some of the stranger, and crazier stories from earlier times.
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 Written by Brian Wood
Art by Becky Cloonan
32 pages, color
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics
With the temperature well below freezing in the DC area, it’s nice to pull on some blankets, eat a hot bowl of homemade soup, and get down to an afternoon of reading. But ironically, the idea of reading about warm, sunny destinations gets old before long, so it seemed like the perfect time to give the latest Northlanders story, the two-part "The Girl in the Ice," a whirl. If nothing else, it’s a good reminder that while it may be cold in my neck of the woods, it could just as easily be distinctly worse out, and not just because of the advent of modern heating.
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 Written by Kevin VanHook, Aaron Lopresti, and Kevin Maguire
Penciled by Jerry Ordway, Aaron Lopresti, and Kevin Maguire
Inked by Jerry Ordway, Matt Ryan, and Kevin Maguire
32 pages, color
Published by DC Comics
When done right, I like anthology comics a great deal. There’s a nice hook to having multiple stories to read in a comic, so even if there’s one part which might not be clicking quite for you, there are still others waiting to be read. (Of course, that means there needs to be more hits than misses.) So I found myself a little curious about Weird Worlds, DC’s new anthology mini-series promising some strange settings and characters. What I got? Well, a mixed bag is a good way to describe it as any.
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 Written by Andersen Gabrych
Art by Brad Rader
176 pages, black and white
Published by Vertigo Comics
After several initial disappointing releases from the Vertigo Crime line of books, I pinned a lot of hopes on Fogtown by Andersen Gabrych and Brad Rader. I’ve loved what little art of Rader’s I’ve seen in the past (most notably on an early Catwoman story written by Ed Brubaker), and his animation pedigree has shown him to be an expressive and inventive artist. And while I’d never read any of Gabrych’s stories for DC Comics, having two openly gay men working on a crime thriller in 1953 San Francisco certainly held a lot of potential. What I actually found with Fogtown, though, is a book where some parts of the greater whole fail, while others try and pick up the slack.
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