The Essentials: Supertboy by Kesel & Grummett

In talks with my comic book-reading chums, they’ve pointed out—mostly Kiel pointed out—that whereas many young fans tend to gravitate towards characters whom they could relate to or empathize with such as Spider-Man or the Tim Drake incarnation of Robin, I seemed to go the opposite way as a kid and adopt alpha male types who were definitely cooler than me and whom through I liked to somewhat live vicariously through like New Warriors era Nova or Guy Gardner.

In no case do I think this was truer than with the Superboy of the 90’s in his original iteration.

From the minute “The Kid” showed up courtesy of writer Karl Kesel and artist Tom Grummett in the closing pages of Adventures of Superman #500, I was hooked on the character. The leather jacket, the shades, the fade cut, the earring and every one of his two dozen unnecessary belts—loved it all. But more than that, I dug his brash attitude, his insistence that nobody call him Superboy his uncontrollable flirting with every woman he saw and underneath it all the naiveté of a young man literally bred to be a hero but who had no idea of sacrifice. That was the dude I wanted to be.

Following Reign of the Supermen, Kesel and Grummett took The Kid out of Adventures and into his own series, titled Superboy as he finally consented to that name. Over the next two or so years, they would create some of the more enjoyable comics of my youth and stories I still remember fondly and hold dear to this day.

Kesel has always been pretty open about his devoted fandom to Jack Kirby, and I believe it shines through in very positive ways through those first 30 issues of Superboy. With the rich Superman mythos to mine and cherry pick villains and supporting cast from, Kesel and Grummett instead elected to relocate Superboy to the uncharted-in-the-DC Universe waters of Hawaii, giving them the chance to create from scratch their own world in which their character could play, much as “The King” had done so many times during his decades forging his legend.

And make no mistake, the surrogate family Kesel and Grummett would build around Superboy was a major component in what made the series stand out from the pack. The Kid’s primary love interest Tana Moon seemed to start out as merely a multicultural Lois Lane for a new generation, but her Hawaiian roots and moreover her complex feelings towards dating somebody a few years younger than her physically but who was quite honestly a newborn in terms of emotional experiences provided her significant depth. Hawaiian police chief Sam Makoa was a young Jim Gordon with far more orientation towards action, but his duality of annoyance that Superboy brought so many super-powered threats to an area that had gone years without any balanced with a subtle enjoyment over his now-interesting job was gold. Slimeball manager with a heart of gold Rex Leech and his bombshell daughter Roxy—the third point of the Superboy-Tana love triangle who was always lagging way behind—were tremendous fun. And the DNAlien Dubbilex, a telepathic demon-looking fellow with a demeanor more befitting Mr. Miyagi and a Kirby creation himself, provided both guidance and additional comic relief, particularly when he started wearing Hawaiian shirts and board shorts on the regular.

The villains Kesel and Grummett created for Superboy were a mixed bag, but the point again is the effort they put forth in dreaming up new threats for their hero to face, only peppering in familiar foes like Parasite, Killer Frost or Black Manta and making those appearances seem all the more like events as a result.

Of the new baddies, King Shark has probably gone onto the most longevity—though not much—as a general DC Universe villain, appearing regularly in Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis and more recently Secret Six. However, whereas he’s become chattier and a bit of a Killer Croc knock-off of late, King Shark originated as a silent savage who only Makoa had taken down in the past and who presented a genuinely creepy threat in his original appearances guest-illustrated by Humberto Ramos; he also had a pretty cool and grisly origin as the son of a shark god and regular woman who allowed him to feed off her own freaking arm!

Scavenger was an intriguing recurring foe if only because a cranky old man seemed a natural opponent for Superboy and his crazy paranoia and never-revealed motivations provided a bit of mystery. Silversword had some promise as the native Hawaiian who resented Superboy becoming the hero of the islands and ended up a villain despite his best intentions, but his design was cooler than any of his actual appearances. And good ol’ Sidearm, Superboy’s first villain from back when he was still going by Superman, was fun for the occasional comic relief appearance before his untimely demise during the too-serious-for-him “Watery Grave” arc.

None of them, however, had anything on Knockout.

While fans of a more recent vintage probably best remember Knockout as Scandal of the Secret Six’s recently-deceased lover, she got her start as the super-strong serial sexpot who drove Superboy nuts during his early years. A stripper named Kay with a mysterious past teased out over the better part of two years, Knockout was the only woman who truly flustered The Kid, alternating between ultra-aggressive sexual advances that put his boyish flirting to shame and brutal physical attacks in which she proved more than his equal.

Knockout would prove to be a huge part of Superboy’s development in the larger arc Kesel and Grummett were building over the course of her tenure. She’d show up often and baffle our hero with both her skewed morality as well as her not-at-all overtures towards the libidinous Boy of Steel. Whereas Tana represented Superboy’s innocent first love, he thought Knockout stood for the wild and unrestrained type of romance he saw as being truly “grown up” and had to learn that sometimes a bad girl is just that in the hardest lesson of his young life.

Because the heart of what Kesel and Grummett were doing with their first run on Superboy was telling a story of growing up and how it can be both the most you’ve ever had the most terrifying thing you have to do. The colorfully carefree standalone stories of Superboy’s early issues would give way and give weight to more serious sagas like the aforementioned “Watery Grave” and the creative team’s swan song, “Losin’ It,” in which The Kid finally succumbs to Knockout’s charms and ends up alienating the people he cares about in the process, destroying the life he’s built for himself, and then having to earn it all back.

When Superboy first came to prominence during Reign of the Supermen, he was the idealized teenager living all his dreams with incredible powers and no parental guidance to speak of. Shipping off to a tropical paradise only served to amplify this as suddenly The Kid lived in a world where hot girls in bikinis were lining up to meet him and the only threats he ever faced were easy enough to dispatch because no real bad guys ever come to Hawaii. He had friends, he had a great girl and he had awesome adventures with nary a consequence to fear—being Superboy was the coolest gig in the world.

But that was only the first part of the story Kesel and Grummett were telling.

It was masterful the way things slowly got tougher for Superboy bit-by-bit as opposed to all at once. A kid wearing his costume for a personal appearance he couldn’t make ends up getting killed by a villain aiming for him. He goes on a mission with the Suicide Squad as a favor to Makoa and learns about shades of gray. He’s unable to save Valor’s life and has to ship him off to the future. The pressure continues to build because he was really only built to handle success and is expected to shoulder the responsibility of a seasoned hero despite only having lived for a couple of years. And all the while Knockout is in his ear telling him to ditch the shackles of a life filled with duty and go off with her to just have a good time.

People scan the covers of those early Superboy issues and they see the earring and the shades and a lot of goofy fun—and the book had all that, but it was also telling a pretty damn powerful story about growing into adulthood whether you’re ready or not.

Up to this point, I’ve mentioned Grummett’s story contributions, as while Kesel was certainly the driving force behind the narrative from all I’ve heard it was a true collaboration, but I’d be remiss in not emphasizing how much his skill as an artist brought to the series. I’ve always loved Tom Grummett’s work as he is very much the ideal for a super hero artist, able to draw ladies who run the gamut from cute to gorgeous as well as dudes who look ready to do damage, but it’s his design sense and knack for having fun that really shined in the Superboy series. No villain’s costume ever looked bland, no supporting cast member ever faded visually into the background, and no battle lacked a tangible energy with Tom Grummett guiding the art chores on Superboy.

And speaking of energy, I think that’s the best topic to close this little essay on.

A buddy of mine and I were speaking just today about how the 90’s get derided a lot—and often with good reason—but it was also a period of incredible creative energy. So much of that period was throwing wild new ideas at the wall and seeing what stuck; not everything or even a lot did, but the stuff that succeeded was really something special. Nowadays that energy is still present in a lot of comic book work, but there’s also an increased emphasis on mining what worked in the past with reverence and trying to find a way to retool it for a modern time; I’m not saying that’s a bad approach or trying to praise one over the other, but there’s certainly something about that unbridled race to break away from what came before that I miss.

Karl Kesel and Tom Grummett’s Superboy was all about that wild energy and forging forward with new ideas, tossing them out rapid-fire in the spirit of Kirby and seeing what worked. From the main character to the unique setting to the quirky supporting cast to the bizarre array of villains, Superboy was all about taking a name that was familiar and building something completely new around it. The love those two guys and their collaborators put into the book really showed through the page and gave me a sense of consistent enjoyment I still cherish.

Six for Smallville

Despite the fact that I regularly watch Melrose Place and Gossip Girl (one I even blog about regularly), I would still label Smallville as my guiltiest television pleasure. It’s corny, it’s generally over-acted and not about to be nominated for any Emmys any time soon, but I’ve still got a soft spot for the adventures of Superman when he was a boy (or late-20-something at this point).

I actually didn’t watch the first few seasons of Smallville on any regular basis, but became a regular viewer while working at Wizard as I became the magazine’s semi-regular correspondent on the show, available whenever interviews needed to be conducted or articles written. I was fortunate enough to speak with the show’s various producers and writers on numerous occasions and conduct interviews with Clark Kent himself, Tom Welling (one of the nicest Hollywood types I’ve ever chatted with) as well as the likes of James Marsters, Dean Cain, Kane and others when they appeared on the series.

Over the past few years, Smallville has inched away from its roots as a more realistic (or as realistic as you can get) chronicle of a young alien learning about his powers in a rural area and embraced its comics roots as almost a live-action tween-friendly version of Justice League Unlimited, with Green Arrow, The Flash, Aquaman, Cyborg, The Martian Manhunter, Black Canary, the Legion of Super-Heroes, Zatanna, the Wonder Twins and more showing up in color-coordinated casual wear. This week, the show hits a milestone, as my boy Geoff Johns pens an extra-length episode that brings the Justice Society of America to town.

To celebrate that and because I thought it would be fun, here are five more hero types I’d like to see done up Smallville style before the show wraps (and to make things a bit more interesting, I took the obvious Batman and Wonder Woman picks off the table since I believe it’s already been stated numerous times there are legal entanglements preventing either from happening besides).

STEEL
It’s not a stretch at all to imagine that a younger John Henry Irons is already hard at work in Smallville’s version of Metropolis, probably for either Oliver Queen or whoever is running Luthorcorp this week. I’d actually go with the classic Steel origin of John Henry getting his weapons poached by some nefarious corporation (be it Luthorcorp or Intergang), then have him whip up his Steel armor to try and police the matter. Given the cool effects Smallville has done on the relatively cheap, I’m thinking they could create a fairly dope-looking Steel that would wipe at least a bit of the Shaq stink of the character’s mainstream cred.

JOHN CONSTANTINE
How sweet would it be to see a smooth-talking, chain-smoking British conman sweep on into Smallville (or Metropolis), charm Lois Lane, piss Clark off, and then bring some hellish mystic nightmare in his wake that he needs Super-help to deal with? Smallville hasn’t had many occult-tinged episodes (at least not while I’ve been watching) so this would be a neat change of pace, and the contrast between Clark and Constantine is just too delicious for me. Besides, The CW already has the perfect teen Hellblazer in the form of Ed Westwick, Gossip Girl’s own Chuck Bass (and that may be the most inspired casting choice I’ve made in a blue moon).

BIG BARDA
While I think it would be nigh impossible to fully feature Jack Kirby’s Fourth World with Smallville’s budgets and other constraints, they’ve certainly proven me wrong on scores like that before. Nonetheless, the alternative is to just have a New God or two guest star and make allusions to Darkseid, etc. that you can either pay off later or leave as fun Easter eggs. The prospect of Orion on Earth just doesn’t grab me here, so I’d go with Mister Miracle’s arc of escaping Apokolips and seeking salvation in Smallville, but give it to Barda, not just because she and Superman have done porn together before, but because, again, this is The CW and if they can cast some pretty young thing as an Amazonian alien, they’re gonna.

DICK GRAYSON
If you can’t get Batman, let’s get the next best thing. Since there rumors that The CW was actually going to make a series about Dick Grayson and his carnival family their Smallville follow-up at some point, I say grab those prelim designs and go to town. The Haley Circus comes to town, some nefarious fellow runs an extortion scam or whatnot perhaps with a little extra muscle, and Clark needs the help of a 15-or-so acrobat with a fondness for red, green and yellow to save the day. I’d make this one light-hearted and upbeat, just like the Robin/Nightwing-Superman team-up dynamic in comics I’ve always enjoyed always is. And of course you can have some additional fun tossing in allusions to the Dark Knight and perhaps even why they can’t get him on the show.

GREEN LANTERN
This one seems like a no-brainer, as you can pretty easily bring in a GL similarly to how Flash, Aquaman or any of the other major DC players came and cover his origin in about five minutes (“A dying alien gave me a ring, now I’m a space cop”), then get to the slam-bang action with Clark and whomever teaming against Sinestro or perhaps a less-known interstellar Green Lantern opponent like Evil Star or somebody. Commercially, this would be a pretty guaranteed hit with the movie coming down the pike as well as the franchise’s current high standing in comics, while from a character standpoint Clark meeting an Earth native who patrols the stars is a neat bit of role reversal. As for who should be filling the role, I’d take Hal off the table since Ryan Reynolds has that sewn up, and probably John Stewart and even Kyle Rayner as well, since they could logically make the big screen jump as buddy and successor respectively; that leaves Guy Gardner, who if they stick with his traditional persona could be an even more interesting guest.

SUPERBOY
There’s no easier Smallville episode to write than some crazy scientist getting a hold of Clark’s DNA via a strand of hair or whatever he leaves behind at a crime scene then cloning him and then something going wrong with the process, leaving us with a high school-age Conner ready to kick ass and take names. Me being me, I’d of course play Superboy exactly how they did when he was first introduced, with cockiness and girl-craziness in full effect. This is actually a character who could have some real legs if they have him find Clark by the end of the first episode, and then the cast has to spend part of a season basically raising this kid and keeping him out of trouble; yeah, it’s kind of like the Supergirl story, but I think the idea that the character actually is Clark in some sense but nothing like him when it comes to personality would make for a lot more entertaining situations, plus the bulk of the supporting cast consists of attractive ladies who are already into soon-to-be-Superman anyways, so there you go. It would also be a neat bit of symmetry for the final season (which has to be coming up), as you’ve got Clark passing the torch to a kid who is the age he was when the show started while he “graduates” into true adulthood.

The Definitives: Superboy

Back when I was a kid (well, depending on how far your definition of “kid” extends) and still didn’t know much about the DC Universe, I did know one thing: I really dug Superboy. And no, I don’t mean Clark Kent when he was a boy, I mean the dude who would go on to become Kon-El and later Conner Kent, the guy who rocked a zillion belts in the strangest places before moving to a t-shirt and jeans—that Superboy. Before I knew that Wally West was the guy wearing the Flash outfit or that Dick Grayson wasn’t Robin anymore, Superboy was far and away my favorite DC character.

With the all-too-short run by Geoff Johns and Francis Manapul on Adventure Comics coming to an end recently, it made me reflect back on how much I dig Superboy, who may not be my favorite character in the DCU anymore, but he still sits comfortably in the top three.

I may have said as much in earlier posts (we’ve written quite a few of them at this point, folks), but Superboy just came along at the perfect time for me, as I was hitting my semi-rebellious (or more wannabe rebellious) early teen years and a wiseass kid with a fade haircut, leather jacket and earring who hit on chicks was the avatar of all I found cool in the early 90’s. It wasn’t a case of image being everything though, as Superboy’s creators Karl Kesel and Tom Grummett really infused him with a feel-good, “this is fun” energy that the grim and gritty years were sorely lacking and that I didn’t even realize I was missing.

As I grew up and came back to comics, it was nice to see that Superboy had matured a bit too under the pen of writers like Peter David and Geoff, but not too much. Here are some of the Superboy stories from over the years that have always kept the character on my list of faves.

Reign of the Supermen
I’ve heard in read in various interviews and accounts (including a Wizard Retrospective I helped edit) that Superboy’s creators weren’t completely shocked by his almost-immediate popularity, but at least somewhat surprised he caught on the way he did. I know hindsight is 20/20 and all that, but even at the time of “Reign of the Supermen,” I had a good feeling Superboy would stick around if only because in one of the most epic of epic storylines, he still stood out brightly among a cast of dozens. Fashion sense aside, Superboy was the breath of fresh air fans such as myself were looking for in a story where you had a Cyborg Superman blowing up Coast City, the shades-wearing Eradicator frying criminals while wearing an “S” on his chest and the real Man of Steel sporting a Fabio mullet; amidst the doom and gloom (that, don’t get me wrong, was still a killer story), Superboy hearkened back to comics being fun. I also always dug that while the other three would-be Supermen were being positioned as possible replacements, it was always up front that Superboy (or then “don’t call me Superboy!”) was a clone and not trying to convince anybody of anything. Kesel and the other Superman writers of the day did a nice job using the “The Kid” as comic relief, but also as a hero from the word go, anxious to prove himself if somewhat lacking in attention span.

Superboy #1-5
In the first half-dozen issues of Superboy’s first solo series, Karl Kesel and Tom Grummett did an exemplary bit of world-building that many creators today could learn a nice lesson from. Right off, they dropped The Kid in a totally exotic (in more ways than one) locale, Hawaii, to set him apart from anybody else in the DC Universe and then set about populating this new frontier. Superboy carried over his ambitious girlfriend Tana Moon as well as sleazy agent with a heart of gold Rex Leech and his bombshell daughter Roxy from his Adventures of Superman run, but then also added sage advisor (and Jack Kirby creation) Dubbilex and sober cop Sam Makoa (Hawaii’s Commissioner Gordon) to round out a solid supporting cast. Within five issues, Kesel and Grummett provided their protagonist with the start of a unique rogues gallery in the hapless Sidearm, bad girl Knockout, crazed Scavenger, and noble yet misguided Silversword. Of all these new creations, Knockout would prove the most enduring and intriguing, taking The Kid’s propensity for ogling beautiful women and turning it against him in the worst of ways (it’s also kinda cool that she’d go on to venture outside Superboy’s world thanks mostly to Gail Simone, though I wish the two of them had been able to have one last tangle before her untimely demise). In under six months, Hawaii was nearly as fleshed out a DCU locale as at least Midway or Star City and ready to contend with the Gothams of the world (though how so many super villains ended up in the islands I’ll never understand). Oh, and I can’t conclude this section without throwing particular props to the awesome Superboy #4, featuring Rex Leech’s skewed “Superboy: The Animated Series,” as illustrated brilliantly by the late Mike Parobeck).

“Watery Grave” (Superboy #13-15)
This three-parter from 1995 was actually my very first exposure to the Suicide Squad back before I was aware of much beyond that there had at one time been a team and book with that name. It’s pretty neat stuff as it places the happy go-lucky Kid in way over his head amongst a group of unrepentant thugs and murderers who stand in stark contrast to his bluster and general optimism. The story itself has Superboy and the Squad going after perennial string-pullers the Silicon Dragons in the culmination to much of what Kesel had been laying down over the book’s first year; Kesel also does a great job playing out the intrigue of a traitor within the group, a common theme, but one he nicely misdirects more than once. The action is top-notch as expertly done by Grummett and by the end of the story Superboy has definitely grown up a little following his first real solo epic—but not too much.

Sins of Youth
Superboy Definitives or not, I heartily recommend Sins of Youth just because it’s a fantastic and wonderfully entertaining story with more actually funny humor than just about any comics event ever plus Todd Nauck outdoing himself again and again, but it is cool that at its heart, this is a DCU-wide story that centers around Young Justice and, more specifically, Superboy. The gimmick of adult super heroes becoming teens and the young good guys getting older is a neat hook, but it’s also central to the through line of Superboy’s big character arc: that he can never grow up even if he wants to. Amidst the laughs and visual hilarity of this adventure, Karl Kesel and Peter David in particular give Kon some incredible pathos as well as one major turning point event that made the 11-year-old in me shed a tear for certain.

Superboy #83
It seems like I do nary a list for this blog without mentioning how perpetually skilled and underrated Joe Kelly is as a writer, but hey, you can’t fight truth. Back at the turn of the century, Kelly had another one of his too-short oddball runs on a book when he took on Superboy with artist Pascual Ferry and had a good ol’ time mixing smart comedy with straight up weirdness involving gorillas, robots and the like. His first issue was a particularly witty bit of meta-textual storytelling, as Superboy realized that he had somehow become considered “uncool” within the confines of the DC Universe and sets about giving himself a makeover that dragged him visually beyond 1993 and into 2001. As Kon muses on how he lost his hipness and chats with guest stars over how to regain it, Kelly does nice work picking apart the character and explaining why he is in fact timeless regardless of whether or not he needs a new costume.

Teen Titans Annual #1
If Karl Kesel, Peter David and Joe Kelly were Superboy’s principal stewards as he got to enjoy his early teen years, Geoff Johns was the guy who stepped in and started prepping him for real world responsibilities and an adulthood that may never come (this is comics), but never lost sight of the youthful exuberance that made the character stick to begin with. Nowhere does Johns’ “growing up” Superboy ring more true than in his Conner’s relationship with Wonder Girl, one of my favorite comic book romances of the past decade. While The Kid has always had a lady on his arm, what he had/has with Cassie feels more “real,” both in the way it’s been portrayed and in the sense you get that this is the first romance of his that could really go somewhere; in that latter regard, Geoff has always done a nice job making the relationship reflect the more heartfelt ones we have in our late teens or early 20’s as opposed to the flirtations of youth. This issue is maybe the best and most heartstring-tugging Conner/Cassie story in a pretty impressive pantheon that includes not only everything Geoff did with them on Teen Titans, but also the adorable “will they or won’t they?” routine Peter David had going for years in Young Justice. In the midst of Infinite Crisis and coming off Conner getting his ass kicked by Superboy Prime, he and Cassie share their feelings and memories, recalling all they’ve been through together and ultimately consummating their relationship before the world ends; it’s touching, poignant, and yet not too dire, as this is still a Teen Titans story starring Superboy after all.

Rise Up: DC titles to revive for Blackest Night

So coming in January as part of Blackest Night, DC will be skipping publication of that events main limited series as well as a bunch of its tie-ins and instead releasing new issues of previously-cancelled titles tying into the story. It's a pretty neat idea if you ask me, and given that the crop of resurrected series include personal favorites of mine like Suicide Squad, Catwoman and Starman, I'm quite intrigued and excited.

However, me being me, I immediately thought not just of the opportunities seized, but those missed as well; here are five of them.

JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL
This just seems like a no-brainer to me, as the "systematic killing of the JLI" has been a popular conspiracy theory for the past five years or so and has also provided plenty of fodder for Black Lanterns, from the Martian Manhunter to Blue Beetle to Maxwell Lord to Rocket Red to Mister Miracle and so on. I know J'onn is in the main book, Beetle is showing up in Booster Gold while Max is going to be in the Wonder Woman tie-in mini, but as of yet there is nothing with everybody reunited. Also, Ice is on the cover of Blackest Night #5, so I'm guessing she has a bigger role to play in the event. Most importantly, Keith Giffen, J.M. DeMatteis and Kevin Maguire are all currently working at DC--together no less--so reuniting the quinessential JLI creative team for one last JLI yarn (until the next one) is money in the bank and dark comedy gold.

AZTEK: THE ULTIMATE MAN
Once upon a time, Grant Morrison and Mark Millar linked up on a super hero book that was probably a bit ahead of its time, but which has become something of a cult classic since its demise. Since Morrison killed Aztek off in JLA, there's your entry point to bringing the book back for a Blackest Night tie-in. How much mileage do you think Grant could get out of a revived Curt Falconer trying to find his place in a world where his mission is accomplished and the universe has moved on to other threats? Perhaps to make this work Aztek would have to be a different kind of Black Lantern (less zombie, more self-aware), but he was a different type of character to begin with so it's not an impossible leap; I'd like to see Vanity again.

INFINITY INC.
While some alumni of Infinity, Inc. have gone on to prominent roles in the DC Universe--Power Girl, Atom Smasher, Hourman and Obsidian--the bulk are dead, including original team leader Star-Spangled Kid as well as Jade, Fury, Hector Hall (the last Doctor Fate), Wildcat and Doctor Midnight. The Kid's murderer, Mister Bones, is still out there, ostensibly as a good guy, albeit a shady one running the DEO. The typical civil war between the still-living Infinitors and the dead ones could be spiced up by the "good guys" having to defend somebody they're not that fond of in Bones and also having to reach out to their fellow surviving teammates Brainwave and Northwind, not the most stable fellas and guys we haven't seen in a few years to boot. Atom Smasher could get a real standout story here, as his guilt over his old pals' deaths has never really been explored, he's not a huge fan of Bones, and he was mixed up with Brainwave and Northwind in that whole Black Adam fiasco.

AQUAMAN: SWORD OF ATLANTIS
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Kurt Busiek's "Sword of Atlantis" Aquaman is still kicking, right? If so, you have to imagine that the real deal original Aquaman, who is one of the more prominent and creepy Black Lanterns at the moment, isn't thrilled that a kid is running around with his name and played a fairly large role in getting him killed not too long ago. The Firestorm vs Firestorm fight in Blackest Night #3 was a kick, but I think a war of the Aquamen has even more potential. Plus, the extended Aquaman family has played a prominent role in BN to date, but could Tempest, Aquagirl and Dolphin could certainly use a book beyond Blackest Night: Titans to strut their stuff. Have Mera seek out the younger Arthur Curry looking for help then enjoy the blood in the water (heh heh).

THE BOOK OF FATE
I'm not asking for the solo adventures of Black Lantern Jared Stevens here (though he should be involved--and have a BL symbol in place of his ankh eye tattoo), but rather an exploration of what Blackest Night means for the mystic side of the DCU beyond what we'll no doubt get in the Phantom Stranger one-shot already planned. Since at least two guys to call themselves Doctor Fate have moved beyond this state of existence, this would be an in to find out where they are, where guys like the aforementioned Mr. Stevens are, and also draw in characters like the Shadowpact, Zatanna, etc. Also, The Book of Fate is just a cool title for a comic.

SUPERBOY AND THE RAVERS
The final fate of Half-Life! But seriously...ok, there's nothing serious about this idea, I just want to see a Superboy and the Ravers reunion.

What do you guys think? What titles would you bring back? And who should write/draw them (and these)?