So after going through this book and Day of Vengeance this week, yeah, I'm interested to see what happens. The last big event, Identity Crisis, had a hook: who killed Sue Dibny? This event also has a hook, albeit a more mechanical one: which of the four special miniseries (Villains, Vengeance, Rann-Thanagar War, OMAC Project) will contain the event that breaks open the DCU and directly causes the INFINITE CRISIS. And which three will, uh, fizzle out and not lead to anything, I guess.

I can't believe they've already trotted out Jean Loring, so soon after the limp ending to Identity Crisis. It makes me think this was the plan all along, which maybe that was the plan all along: to make you think that. Identity Crisis had a crappy, out-of-nowhere ending. And it was so great at first! A minor character killed a couple other minor characters. (And the current Rogue War in The Flash hasn't even let Boomerang's body grow cold; he's already being reanimated!) So Identity Crisis has been reduced to a warm up to a warm up for another big event, and that annoys me. As weak as it was to twist up forgotten Atom ex Jean Loring, it would have granted her some level of dramatic import had they at least let her rot in Arkham for a couple years before the inevitable return. But no, she's already been Eclipsed, thus combining someone you never heard of with a villain you never cared much for anyway.

Hey, I remember when DC tried to turn Eclipso into the next big anti-hero book after that dopey summer annual event "Eclipso: The Darkness Within." The first bookend issue of that had a life size plastic purple diamond on the cover... which I thought was awesome at the time but now is just putting a dent in the back of whatever comic is stacked in front of it. Ol' Eclipso even got the big Bart Sears makeover, so you were forced to respect his costuming, if not his silly 60s-era name. I guess his return is supposed to excite the fanboy in me, but my reaction was more like "Oh great, he's back."

His return wasn't even in one of these Crisis crossovers, but in a three-parter in the Superman books... where he, predictably, eclipses Superman. He also gets inside Lois for a time, which made me wonder just how many times this kind of crap happens to her and what a miserable life she leads because of it. To break Eclipso out of Superman's body, Captain Marvel and the wizard Shazam have to call in the Spectre (now Jordan-less) and he does the old fickle finger of fate thing... but then everyone fails to care where the disembodied Eclipso spirit goes. Straight to Jean Loring's cell in Arkham, where, in comics time, she has been for about five hours. Sigh.

So anyway, Villains United. Besides having a surprise Ambush Bug ref, there's a surprise duality of villain groups. You have the major power brokers - your Luthor / Deathstroke / Talia types - who are steadily recruiting other villains to join up with them, Legion of Doom style. The impetus being to stand against the heroes after the hushed-up lobotomy trick they pulled on Dr. Light all those years ago. Most of the book, however, is about a smaller group of villains - Scandal, Deadshot, Cheshire, Parademon, Ragdoll, Fiddler - who has an agenda against everyone.

The best part is what happens to Fiddler.

This group's plan is to take over entire continents. They haven't said exactly how yet. But each one of the six gets their own continent... and after Fiddler (a old white man with a violin) is replaced with Catman (a Tarzan-type character who hangs out with lions), they show Catman as inheriting Africa. That makes sense for Catman, but did they really intend to orginally give Fiddler rule of Africa?

They're referring to this team as the new Secret Six, which was once used for a team of heroes back in the day. Each member of the original Six had a different bionic body part... and a TERRIBLE SECRET, as I recall. Best left unremembered, although DC clearly still holds the copyright on the name, so why not use it again. Batman is somehow recycling the OMAC character, so all that's left is a new version of Ultra the Multi-Alien and DC will have the hat trick. What are the Omega Men up to these days?

Speaking of old names being made new again, Day of Vengeance has a corker: Detective Chimp is back! Something makes me think he was already Vertigo-ized a while back, but I rarely read Vertigo books so I wouldn't know. Still, he is awesome. In this book he is wearing a t-shirt that says "Everybody Sucks But Me."

One last thing, this week DC unveiled a new logo. I like it. The previous logo (which has been in place for just under my entire lifespan) was getting dusty. But, it's stupid that they time it now, after their big summer event has already started. Just a month or so prior, and the entirety of the Infinite Crisis could have unveiled under the auspices of the new logo.