July Brings Questions

So, looking over the July solicitations, not a lot of good news. None of DC's new offerings that month appeal, and practically everything at Marvel is doing Civil War II tie-ins. Even Patsy Walker, aka Hellcat is doing a tie-in. I don't see how that's going to work, frankly. Marvel is, as usual, trying to make the Big Event seem like a big, serious deal, but the general tone of Hellcat so far hasn't been anything I think can convey "big, serious deal". Maybe if Leth and Williams goal is to take the piss with the whole thing, but I don't get the impression that's what they're going for.

At least Black Widow and Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (which is another book I couldn't see keeping a straight face if it tried tying in to Civil War II) are avoiding it so far. Please, please, continue to avoid it.

Also, I meant to ask this last month but forgot: I want to know which one of you is responsible for Deadpool vs. Gambit. Come on, fess up. One of you must have given them the impression this is a book people wanted, which is a damn lie. Just cop to it.

Let's see, outside those companies, there wasn't much I got excited about. Wynonna Earp will be wrapping up. There'll be a new issue of Henchgirl, that's good news, at least. It'll probably be another month or two for the next Atomic Robo mini-series to be released in print. July does bring issue #1 of IDW's new ROM series. I'm curious to see how that works with ROM divorced from the Marvel Universe setting the original series was placed in. Bill Mantlo came up with a lot of stuff for that series - though I don't know how much of that Christos Gage will get to use here. Does Marvel own Galador and the SpaceKnights as a concept? - but the fact the series took place in a setting somewhat familiar to us from other Marvel comics probably helped.

I'm also curious to see how Gage writes Rom. Is he going to try and mimic Mantlo's style, or stick to his own. Because Rom launched into soliloquies more often than he banished Wraiths to Limbo, and he banished those guys to Limbo a lot. And again, I'm guessing at least some of the people who buy the series are going to have a specific idea in their mind of how Rom talks, and if he doesn't match that, then what? I've liked Gage's writing fairly well in the past, myself. He's never written anything I can recall just loving, that really got me going, but he's a solid, smart writer. He knows how to work with preexisting characters, so he'll probably do OK.