Now into its ninth and penultimate season, belated showing on E4 in the UK, ‘Smallville’ is definitely not fresh produce.

The iPad makes e-comics a more viable proposition, but print comics aren’t dead just yet.

‘Detective Comics’ #866 marks the return of Denny O’Neil to Batman comics, and it’s cracking stuff.

‘Superman’ #700 marks the launch of a new direction for Superman, under the aegis of J. Michael Straczynski, who’s kept himself busy, but is probably still best known as the creator of Babylon 5.

Superhero team books are a big part of Marvel and DC’s publishing schedules, but does their style of storytelling stand up when taken out of the weekly churn of periodical publishing?

Paul Levitz’s first issue of ‘Adventure Comics’ invokes the Silver Age and has a charm, directness and clarity that most DCU books simply don’t.

Writer Paul Levitz revisits the future of ‘Batman Beyond’ in a story that, in spite of being set in a dystopia, provides an upbeat and refreshing alternative to most of DC’s current books.

‘King Tut’s Tomb’ collects three issues of ‘Batman: Confidential’, smartly re-inventing a villain from the 1960s ‘Batman’ TV show as a far more serious threat in a story well-served by the gorgeous pencils of José Luis García-López.

If Grant Morrison’s introduction is to be believed, the comics chosen for DC’s ‘The Black Casebook’ – a collection of Batman issues from the 50s and 60s which influenced Morrison’s run – are generally unpopular among Batman fans, owing to their supernatural and sci-fi content.

The latest animated incarnation of Batman has been running in the States for a while and is, I believe, shown in the UK at an hour in the morning that I refuse to acknowledge the existence of. Thankfully, it’s being very slowly released on DVD, four episodes at a time.
With ‘The Dark Knight’ providing a [...]