Taking A Look At The July That's Coming

Time for our monthly trip through the solicits. I guess it's become a monthly thing.

- No Atomic Robo: Savage Sword of Dr. Dinosaur? That's a little annoying, but let's be honest; issue 1 probably wasn't going to show up in June, anyway. If they release #2 in August, and it actually ships, then things will be on track.

- I see X-Men is back. I did notice the first issue didn't ship this month. Did they decide to push it back to May so there wouldn't be a skip month once it had started? I guess that isn't a bad plan, though Marvel books miss month's and don't seem to get destroyed for it. Didn't Hawkeye just skip March?

- I see the Captain Marvel/Avengers Assemble crossover is wrapping up. I'll stick to buying the former title, but I wonder if this is a precursor to cancellation. They're doing this with X-Treme X-Men and Age of Apocalypse right now. I don't know if the crossover was already planned and they decided later it'd be the endpoint for both books, or if they thought it was a good way to wrap them up. I don't understand the latter, if that's the case. Captain Marvel isn't ending this month, but I imagine Marvel is at least looking to see if this gets people who are only reading one of the titles to read both, and buoy sales. I'm not a success in that regard, but I think we've established by now that I'm not entirely representative of the cape comic buying population.

- June's going to be the end for me and Batman Beyond Unlimited and Fearless Defenders. I've discussed my indifference to FD through 2 issues, though I suppose it has 3 issues left to change my mind. As for the other book, well, once DC announced the new creative, I had to accept that Dustin Nguyen and most critically, Norm Breyfogle, weren't coming back. That squelched my enthusiasm for the book considerably.

 - I'm going to try the Rocketeer/Spirit crossover. I don't have any experience with the latter, but Mark Waid's earned my trust at this stage. And I have fond memories of Paul Smith's art on Uncanny X-Men, though I have no idea how his style may have evolved over the last 30 years. I'm curious to see if Waid uses Ebony White. All I know about the character is that he was the Spirit's sidekick, and whatever Eisner's intentions, a racist caricature. I don't know whether Waid will use him, but try to write him in a way that isn't racist, or just avoid him altogether. I'd guess the former, but who knows?