Toy Fair is in full swing. So while you feast on all the toy info pouring out of New York, I’m going to take a brief break from toys to talk about another geeky topic: comics.

I’ve been catching up on some DCU comics recently. I’ve never really followed comics, outside of a brief fad with Marvel around the X-Men #1 era of the early 1990s and, of course, Hellboy. But as of late I’ve been perusing DC’s more recent offerings, inspired by my interest in the DCUC toys. Here are my thoughts on a few of them.

Gotham Central: In the Line of Duty > I realize I’m way behind on this one, but this is easily my favorite comic I’ve read in years. It’s like Law & Order and CSI set in Gotham, with only brief appearances from the big boys like Batman and James Gordon. Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka do an amazing job presenting a very real-world police force attempting to do their jobs in a city rife with supervillains. The plot of this first volume revolves around the death of an officer at the hands of Mr. Freeze. Michael Lark’s stark, shadowed artwork captures the realistic feel Brubaker and Rucka were going for.

I’m a big advocate of the notion that fantasy and science fiction is better the more it’s grounded in reality, and I found Gotham Central an even better example of this than Batman Begins (which still had a typical over-the-top superhero climax). If you have ever wondered what it would be like to be an average police officer in Batman’s city, this is it. I even recommend it if you’re not necessarily a comics fan, but like shows like Law and Order and CSI.

Salvation Run > For the most part, I’m waiting for Final Crisis to really jump on the DCU bandwagon. But the concept of Salvation Run (originally pitched by author George R.R. Martin over a decade ago) was too interesting to pass up. (Warning: spoilers ahead.)

In the story, almost all of the villains in the DCU have been rounded up and exiled to a planet far from earth. The Joker, Lex Luthor, Catwoman, Gorilla Grodd, Mr. Freeze, and dozens of others are all there. Despite their captors’ promise that the planet was a paradise, they are under almost constant siege by bizarre monstrosities. Predictably, the villains can’t work together and are soon fighting amongst themselves.

I loved the initial set-up, and with Bill Willingham and Matt Sturges doing the writing, I couldn’t see how it could go wrong. I love comic book villains, and this seemed like a great set-up.

I thought the series started off well, focusing on some lesser-known villains and their efforts to work together and deal with their current predicament. I just picked up issue #4 (of eight). Unfortunately, like so many DC comics these days, I’m starting to think the series is being used to kill off as many second- or third-tier characters as possible. The second issue featured an injured character being thrown to wolves (or wolf-like things) which graphically tear him apart, while the Joker violently bashed in the brain of another villain. The fourth issue was basically just an ape-fight between Gorilla Grodd and Monsieur Mallah, ending with the (apparent) death of both of them. Lots of blood and gore in these confrontations.

I realize that the average age of the DC comics reader is probably somewhere in the mid-twenties these days, but I just don’t think the graphic violence is warranted. The bright, clean artwork of Sean Chen and Walden Wong brings to mind a world from a Saturday morning cartoon, contrasting sharply with all the brain-bashing and limb-tearing.

I came into Salvation Run with an open mind, and I plan to buy the rest of the series, but I sincerely hope Sturges can get past all this killing and get back to telling a story. I had assumed the story would have the villains finally uniting and then returning to Earth to wreak a terrible vengeance upon their enemies (shades of World War Hulk); and it may still come to that. But I’m beginning to worry the series may be, at least partially, an excuse to get the villains out of the way while the heroes resolve all the Countdown stuff before getting down to the Final Crisis. That’s fine as an editorial dictate, but the comic is starting to read like that’s what it is.

Death of the New Gods > I decided to try the original New Gods collection out of respect for Jack Kirby. Initially, I was one of those people who, in the words of Sean T. Collins, didn’t really like the New Gods “because Granny Goodness is a silly-sounding name.” I’ve come to appreciate the series, though. I think Kirby was trying to do something similar to what George Lucas wanted to do with Star Wars–create modern-day fairy tales rooted in mythology.

DOTNG is written and drawn by Jim Starlin, who specializes in these cosmic epics. The story is something of a mystery, as Orion and his fellow New Gods attempt to figure out who is killing them off. Main characters include Orion, Mr. Miracle, Darkseid, and Superman, whose presence feels a bit superfluous to me. Supes is probably the only DC superhero who is powerful enough to hang with the New Gods, but he seems to be just hanging around for most of the story–at least so far.

I’m really curious to see what DC intends to do with the New Gods and the “Fifth World” Dan Didio has been referring to. The New Gods always seemed like their own independent world to me–their presence in the DC universe never quite fit. For instance, what’s their relationship to the Guardians of the Universe? If Jack Kirby hadn’t tied in Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen to the New Gods series, it could have remained its own separate world.

Perhaps that’s what DC intends to do–spin off the New Gods into an independent title (maybe in Vertigo?) and develop it as a separate science fiction/fantasy series.

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One thing that bugs me: in Death of the New Gods and Salvation Run, at least two characters who have recently been released as DCUC figures have died, or will presumably soon die.

Even as a kid, it always bothered me when a toy line released a character who was dead, like Bob the Goon in Toy Biz’s 1989 Batman line. The guy was shot and killed by his own boss in the movie!

It’s one thing when it’s the Joker. Supervillains always come back. That’s the case with many movie-based toy lines; if they didn’t make figures of characters who had died, most of those lines wouldn’t have any villains at all.

But Bob the Goon? What are kids supposed to do, pretend to have adventures that take place in Gotham before Bob got killed? Make up previous confrontations between Batman and the Joker that never happened, just to explain Bob’s presence? Then there were kids like me, who would pretend Bob had a twin brother or was cloned or didn’t actually die from the bullet or something.

On the other hand, this is comics, so chances are all these “dead” characters will appear in another comic before the year’s out.