Are you a little tired and/or bleary eyed today?
Are you scratching your head, wondering what happened to your perceived reality?
It’s a brand new day today in America and, truthfully, throughout the world. If you’re like me (and I’m sure many of you out there are), you were glued to your CNN, your FOX or your CBC last night and into the wee hours of the morning waiting on the results of the craziest US Presidential election in many generations.
Whatever your desired outcome, the sun did rise this morning.
And, not to be glib, it being a Wednesday, new comic books came out.
So don’t panic.
Instead, let’s take a look at the first issue of a new monthly series in Mother Panic #1!
Mother Panic #1
Written by: Jody Houser
Illustrated by: Tommy Lee Edwards
Published by: DC Comics
So everyone knows that DC Comics has got a number of different publishing properties that release comic book on a regular basis.
Chiefly, these are: DC Comics proper, which publishes the mainstream superhero stuff: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Justice League, Harley Quinn and the like. Then there’s the Vertigo Comics imprint that, over two decades ago, published the obscure characters that DC wasn’t interested in. And they did it to some acclaim, actually. Just take a look at John Constantine: Hellblazer, Doom Patrol and Animal Man. It left DC proper feeling like it had missed a number of opportunities – especially as Marvel Comics became the dominant publisher of the “Big Two” publishers.
Under the New 52 reboot a few years ago, some of those Vertigo characters were wrapped back into DC, mingling with the other mainstream superheroes. Some initially succeeded, but generally they fizzled along with the rest of the New 52 initiative. Vertigo, meanwhile, had solidified itself as a small, niche publisher of creator-owned projects. And DC, it seemed, wanted to get back to the Vertigo glory days but still have its properties wrapped up in the mainstream banner.
Enter last month’s Young Animal imprint of DC Comics, curated by Gerard Way, he of the acclaimed comic book series, Umbrella Academy and of the rock group, My Chemical Romance.
Young Animal was a way of bringing that darker, weirder, more mature edge of the old Vertigo Comics to characters that were firmly established in present-day DC Comics publishing lore.
Mother Panic is a terrifying new vigilante for the twenty-first century. She’s a young and rich celebutante with a bad attitude. But inside a vacant and very modern-day exterior, she has a burning history that motivates her to extract vengeance on her privileged peers. And she openly operates in Gotham City.
Expect the extended Batman family to circle her outrageous exploits.
Today is a new world – both in reality and in fiction!
Make the run to your local comic book shop today and pick up Mother Panic #1. With the strangeness of Vertigo and the integrated characters and themes of parent DC Comics, Mother Panic, and indeed, all of the Young Animal comic book imprints, will surely be a wild, high-octane ride!
