Supergirl has finally brought Reactron back to New Krypton so he can be held accountable for murdering her father, Zor-El. While the debate about what to do with him rages among the people of New Krypton, the planet’s ruler – and Supergirl’s mother – remains unsure. Should Alura have Reactron executed? And will Supergirl allow it to happen if her mother decides to go that route? We can’t spoil that for you here. But we can give you a glimpse at the issue, from writer Sterling Gates and guest artist Matt Camp.

SUPERGIRL #47 hits 11/18.

STREETS OF GOTHAM artist Dustin Nguyen gets downright pastoral on the variant cover to SUPERMAN: WORLD OF NEW KRYPTON #10, from writers James Robinson and Greg Rucka with artist Pete Woods. Nothing I write here can really do it much justice, beyond saying it’s a fine piece of work. So why not scroll down and see for yourself?

SUPERMAN: WORLD OF NEW KRYPTON #10 hits in December.

How about a little news with your coffee?

This August — ACTION COMICS #880, to be exact — will see Julian Lopez (ORACLE: THE CURE, BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS) step in as the regular series artist, just in time for a crossover with the other Super-books. I could summarize the plot of said crossover, or hint at stuff, like Superman maybe returning to Earth, or New Krypton/Earth relations hitting an all-new low, but that’ll just make you impatient for August, right? Not to fear. We have some sketches from Mr. Lopez to tide you over until then.

Hey everybody – Senior Story Editor Ian Sattler here.  It’s almost hard to put into words how excited I am right now.  I’m not talking about winning the championship in my fantasy basketball league — and that was pretty awesome.  I’m not talking about the huge sandwich I had for lunch that was totally killer.  I’m not even talking about my copy of Van Halen that I found last night, which is an all-time classic.  No, I’m excited because working at DC Comics right now is amazing!  We’re close to the end of Battle for the Cowl and a Batman event in June that’s going to change everything.  The events of New Krypton in the Superman books are spectacular.  Flash: Rebirth is setting yet another new standard.  JLA: Cry for Justice is FULL of surprises.  Wednesday Comics…co-features…I haven’t even gotten to Blackest Night yet and the list goes on and on!  And I’m not even allowed to tell you about a few of the big-ticket items we have coming.  So yeah – I’m a little bit excited.

It seems like every time I turn around the creative team on a book is blowing my mind.  Let’s take today for example.  Now it’s no secret that I think the Final Crisis Aftermath titles are something special.  After all I’m editing ¾ of the line so you’d expect some favoritism.  But I can seriously say that these books have taken off beyond my wildest dreams and today it was Final Crisis Aftermath: Ink that was in the spotlight.

When we started this line we wanted to make sure to do something special with all of the covers.  Since Ink starred The Tattooed Man we knew we wanted to focus on the tattoos, but we were having a hard time figuring out the exact angle to go for.  Enter DCU Art Director and style ninja Mark Chiarello.  Chi said that there was only one guy for the job and that he’d call Brian Stelfreeze.  Brian gave us the sketch you see below that not only offered a totally unique way to layout connecting covers, but also really tell the story of what the main character goes through in the book with his powers.

Each cover Brian turned in was superb, but it was only today that I had them put together for this blog entry.  Whoa.  As you can see when connected the covers to Ink are truly spectacular.  I just started pulling random people walking by my office in to see what I was yelling about.

As if this wasn’t enough I also finished the latest script from Eric Wallace who is the freaking man.  My notes on his scripts consist of me going “OK – you know that part where you came up with the totally epic plot twist?  Yeah, that was awesome.”  Eric and I wasted no time in getting talking about our artist Farbrizio Fiorentino.  Plain and simple – Fabrizio is putting it down on Ink.  He’s owning every inch of each page and he’s going to be one of your new favorites by the end of the summer.  But you’ll be able to see all of this for yourself when Final Crisis Aftermath: Ink #1 comes out May 27th.

So yeah – I’m a little bit excited to be at DC right now.  Speaking of which, I gotta go back to work now. But I hope you’re enjoying the books as much as we are.

Take care,

Ian.

David Betancourt, over at THE WASHINGTON POST’s “Comic Riffs” blog, spoke to Dan DiDio about some of the bigger storylines percolating in the DCU in 2009, including BATTLE FOR THE COWL, FLASH: REBIRTH and SUPERMAN: WORLD OF NEW KRYPTON:

DB: It seems like you’re making Superman choose between two worlds. Is this your way of showing that despite growing up on Earth he’ll never be human?

DD: Absolutely. One of the things we find interesting–and we did a lot of research on this as we were building the storyline–this is one of the first times we ever pushed a story where we brought all of the Kryptonians back, and really made them a part of the DC universe. And more importantly a part of Superman’s world. One of the things we like to see in this is showing how unique Superman is by putting him against people who are just as super powered as he is.