Man (on the street) and Superman

So it's been a crazy couple of days for big comic book news. While none of these may be "cracking the internet in half" big, put 'em all together and it's been a heck of busy time for the old refresh button. To get a better handle on the big picture, let's check in with the man on the street and get his reaction.

Sitting in for the average man on the street tonight is none other than yours truly, so let's get to analyzing...

First up is an item reported on Bleeding Cool, and while it's still a rumor I haven't seen much denial from the Marvel camp. According to the report, Marvel is going to be embracing the $2.99/20 page format for at least some of their books. Now I knew that with DC holding the line at $2.99 that that was far from the last word on the topic of pricing. My prediction was backwards, however, as I just figured that DC would lose patience waiting for the sales figures to justify the new price/page count and their prices would go back up to $3.99 before the end of the year.

So color me pleasantly surprised, but Marvel has a long way to go to win me and my comic book dollars back. As always, the devil's in the details as to how many and how prevalent the move is going to be remains to be seen, and I don't trust them as far as I can throw my Uncanny X-Men Omnibus. I can't imagine them going line-wide with this, so my default position will be to leave their titles on the shelves. I like a line-wide continuity in my super-hero books, and if I have to pick and choose what i read based on the whims of how much they think they can get away with, I'd just rather not be bothered. But if they did move just one book to the lower price/page count, let it be Ultimate Spider-Man, as I sure do miss that book.

Next up on the news ticker is an item that comes from a more reliable source, DC themselves. On their company blog, they announced that accompanying the Flashpoint mini-series will be fifteen (count 'em 15) mini-series running concurrently with the main one. This looks to be a bit of an Age of Apocalypse type set-up, with altered histories and timelines being explored in three issue mini-series. What remains to be seen is whether these are fifteen new titles, or if they are taking the place of existing titles for three months, or a combination of the two.

Now me? I'm a hardcore DCU enthusiast, so I'm on board for most (if not all) of these, but one definitely made the Superman fan in me gasp in excitement.

Flashpoint: Lois Lane And The Resistance #1-3

Hell yeah, I'm all over that title.

Finally, and while we're on the topic of Superman, there was a bit of late-breaking news on Sunday that the role of Clark Kent/Superman for the new 2012 reboot was cast. The lucky actor is none other than Henry Cavill. Now I have no idea who he is, but I guess he looks the part.

While being a die-hard Superman comic-book fan, I have a bit of love/hate (mostly hate) relationship with movie and t.v. adaptations of the man of steel. So far, however, I've not seen anything official announced concerning the latest movie that has yet to make me groan.

And with that, let's get to the job at hand and get the next random book to review picked from the longboxes. Take it away, Randomizer...

...and that book is Action Comics #393 from October 1970, published by DC Comics!

Wow, everything's coming up Superman today! In fact, if you could see behind the scenes here at RL headquarters, it's even moreso.

And on that cryptic note I'll take my leave, promising to see you in a day or two the review.

(But seriously, if you're a Superman fan make sure you check back here on Tuesday!)