Well, the San Diego Comic Con International (CCI) has long since overtaken my hometown con as the world’s largest (even though we still get Joss, Jeph, and Kevin Smith), so it’s the preferred forum for publishers big and small to make announcements.

Two things irritated me about DC Comics’ Batman panel:

The first is that everyone, including the normally astute Comic Book Resources, seems totally oblivious that Sin Tzu, the master of military strategy and tactics, is almost certainly the Batman villian behind the events of the upcoming “War Games” crossover. I mean, this was obvious (to me, at least) as soon as I heard the title of the story. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so hard on the guys at CBR, since I was probably one of three people who played Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu AND actually paid attention when the developers said the Jim Lee-created villain would eventually be introduced into the comic book continuity - explaining the panel’s “yeah, kind of” response to questions about whether or not the crossover would introduce new characters. (He’s new to the books, but not new to the Batman metamythology.)

The second is the announcement that Judd Winick has been named as the “permanent” writer on Batman. As I’m sure is obvious to even the most casual reader of this weblog, Batman is my favorite comic, and I thoroughly dislike Winick’s writing. I didn’t like it on Green Arrow, I never read it on Exiles or Green Lantern, and I don’t like it on Batman. I also dislike the fact that he took a mediocre cartooning gig at our alma mater’s student newspaper (Judd and I spent overlapping stints at the same university) combined with pseudo-fame from being on MTV’s The Real World and used it to get his break in comics. For me, that - plus the fact that I just don’t like his writing - makes his assignment to Batman unearned. I know that it’s self-defeating of me to let a writer’s background distract me from what should be my favorite comic, but what can I say? I’m protective of my favorite character.