DC

As many have noted, DC rolled out its brand spanking new website yesterday, with a whole new look, new logo and new commenting system. Among the many improvements, new sections for major characters, and subsections for videos, live social media updating and the like. (What, no Pinterest?) The site seems to be the work of the West Coast branding/web team, and although useful and streamlined, it does match the corporate vibe of a lot of DC rollouts of late.

DC has updated their website design. Their Source blog doesn't seem to have any March content on it yet, figure that will be taken care of soon and this week will be reloaded. It also has a subscription page link that seems a bit more visible to me.

Over at Newsarama, James Robinson is finally talking -- sort of -- about Earth 2. But more dramatically, the cover for the second issue of Earth 2, featuring the redesigned Jay Garrick Flash is revealed.

This interview with Young Justice Lead Character Designer Phil Bourassa has a few clues if you want to connect the dots. Early in he explains his intro to the world of animation:

While they haven't reached Marvel's level of reformatting their trades, DC does release a dizzying array of formats for their classics, from the Absolutes to the omnibus to the deluxe and...even more. (We're actually starting a column on reprints this week to make some sense of it all.) But it seems an upcoming new edition of BATMAN: YEAR ONE, the Frank Miller/David Mazzucchelli classic, isn't the one you should be giving permanent home to on your shelf. The Comics Journal has the scoop.

The DCU is getting a new look for Shazam, and the New York Post has the first glimpse. Once known as Captain Marvel and The Big Red Cheese, he's now officially Shazam, and a backup strip in JUSTICE LEAGUE by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank debuts in JL #7 later this month. Based on the new art and focus, this Shazam seems to be trading in his old crew of a talking tiger and cute bunny for a different crowd—say, Hellblazer and the Phantom Stranger.

According to this posting on the Source, DC collections are adding LoC information and will be added to the library's holdings. The Library of Congress has a few other comics connections of late, including an SPX collection, so the place of comics in the nation's greatest library is clearly growing.

With all the chaos and hype going on today, it sometimes comes to pass that not all good books get the attention they deserve. Here's a quick rundown of things you might not be picking up that are worthwhile. (I'm assuming you've already had someone nagging you to pick up Mark Waid's Daredevil run, so we won't get into that here.)

Last time out, I was only half-right. We got the Superman redesign today (and another priceless editorial quote), but DC went back to Worlds' Finest yesterday for the Supergirl/Power Girl redesign. Which is to say, we've yet to see an Official redesign sketch of anything that wasn't already on a previously released cover.

This interview with Scott Lobdell from ComicVine was sent to us with the idea that maybe he wasn't up on the news that Static was joining the Teen Titans, which was announced at MegaCon:

Looks like this really is Earth 2's "New Costume Week." I'm going to go out on a limb and guess Superman and Alan Scott/Green Lantern are going to appear in the next two days, although Jay Garrick/The Flash was mentioned in the solicitation.

Beyond sweeping a perfect 10 out of the month's Top 10 comic books, DC's "New 52" titles are also starting to show first signs of stabilization in January. The average "New 52" title dropped 7.4% in sales, down from 17.4% in December and 19.6% in November. This gives reason to be cautiously optimistic on the longer-term prospects of DC's relaunched line. The trend should be taken with a grain of salt, however, as DC made a number of changes to its various retailer incentives in January that may be affecting sales one way or another. On Detective Comics, Batman: The Dark Knight, Superman and Aquaman, the returnability incentive was replaced with 1:25 variant-cover incentives. Batwoman, Green Lantern: New Guardians and Swamp Thing, which were promoted with a special-discount incentive from September through December, also switched to 1:25 variant-cover incentives in January. Finally, the threshold retailers were required to meet in January to qualify for returnability on the 37 titles that weren't promoted through variant-cover or discount incentives changed from 125% of retailers' May 2011 orders to 100% of November 2011 orders. With this in mind, let's wait for the February figures to see if the trend holds when incentives are equal from one month to the next.