The return of Conner Kent?

Word out of NYCC (what word has managed to escape over the sound of Marvel failing so badly at everything) included a little snippet of James Tynion IV saying that the questions surrounding Conner Kent in the rebirth continuity would be answered in Detective Comics #966.

That's this week.

Okay, so I'm invested in this because Young Justice was a big part of how I became a comics fan. That particular generation of the sidekicks are contain some of my favourite characters in some of my favourite comics. The fact that everyone from that group got completely jobbed in the New 52 is something of a lingering wound and if we're getting a return for anything approaching the proper version of Conner, I am all in.

I mean, with only one issue of A Lonely Place of Living out we've already for Tim's original origin restored and the Tim!Batman from Geoff Johns' Teen Titans has made an appearance as well.

Now, is it likely that the “proper” version of Conner is coming back.

Well, for one thing I don't imagine anyone's terribly attached to the New 52 version and, on a more pragmatic side, Conner is going to be in the third season of Young Justice when it returns so there's a marketing angle. Also, if they have big plans for Tim spinning out of this (and I hope those rumours that he'll be leading the Outsiders are true) then bringing Conner back to be the perfect foil he always was to Tim would be a good move.

After that its just a matter of bringing Bart back from wherever in the timestream he's been hanging out since Flashpoint and then just a little selective amnesia so that Cassie isn't a horrible bad girl parody anymore.

A guy can dream. 

For serious, Marvel...

I don't usually believe in karma but Marvel's NYCC this year is starting to make me wonder. Now, I'm writing this Saturday evening so if I don't mention something obvious here like a Marvel panel causing the venue to spontaneously burn to the ground that's why.

The news started off bad when I read that another of those retailer meet-ups (like the one where a Marvel executive dropped the line about nostalgia selling better than diversity) seemingly devolved into a near-lynching because some old white comicshop owners were angry about (what else...) diversity. That was bad. I thought that was as bad as a major industry/fan expo could possibly go.

And then it got worse.

They announced that they were publishing an all-ages Avengers comic in association with defense contractor and gun manufacturer Northrop Grumman. You read that sentence exactly right, a comic pitched to children sponsored by and advertising a government defense contractor. Apparently this was meant to interest children in STEM careers but, well, you can imagine that the thing people concentrated on was “children's comic sponsored by and advertising an arms dealer a week after a gun massacre”.

How did that get past anyone in management? How was it that in a company owned by one of the most obsessively PR-oriented entertainment corporations in existence a partnership like this was floated for more than a second?

I cannot imagine a single PR professional in this world looking at this idea and not raising concerns.

At this point the only logical conclusion is that the publishing wing of Marvel Entertainment is literally trying to commit suicide. No professional organisation could want this much bad publicity. It has actually reached the point where I was actually surprised when they canned the project given how bloodyminded they've been about sticking to bad decisions the past year or so.

An arms dealer, guys, seriously?

That's the literal baddie in Iron Man 1.