DC gets out to a strong start, despite their curious silence about Batwoman disappearing from Detective Comics.

First up, is a long over-due reprint of Howard Cruse’s graphic novel about coming out in the South during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Stuck Rubber Baby. It’s one of those books that you really should be ashamed of yourself if you don’t own it.

And then Vertigo continues to dip into their back catalog with gay author Robert Rodi’s comic spy series Codename: Knockout, featuring gay side-kick Go-go Fiasco.

It was a fun series, but I don’t recall it being either greatly critically lauded or a big seller, so it’s a surprise to see it back in print. A pleasant surprise, but a surprise all the same.

DC is also soliciting a new line of Dragon Age action figures, but bisexual nun-thief Liliana, bisexual assassin Zevran and clearly gay despite the game creator’s apparently not realizing it warrior Alistair are not included in the first series.

If I were still a retailer, I’d probably be pretty annoyed that Marvel has six titles solicited this month for which there is no creator information available. As a reader, I’m annoyed because one of the titles is Young Avengers, home to Marvel’s only gay male super-hero couple. If the book is being written by a gay-friendly creator, that’s fine. If not, it would be good to know that before the damn thing shows up in shops.
I also can’t help but feel that if Marvel really was trying to do right by retailers, it’s these blind-solicited books that they’d offer variants in exchange for stripped covers.
But, you know, that’s how people acting like real businesspeople would treat their primary customers, and this is comics we’re talking about.

Torchwood is the latest sci-fi show to get a scholarly book of essays devoted to it with Illuminating Torchwood: Essays on Narrative, Character and Sexuality in the BBC Series. It looks a bit drier than these things usually go. As if the authors are actually series about doing a critical analysis of the show. I’ll probably end up picking it up, I’ve already got more books on sexuality in pop culture films and tv shows than anyone not teaching an American Studies course should.

I see Graphitti has finally noticed that nerd-friendly tv show Big Bang Theory regularly features t-shirts only nerds are not embarrassed to be seen in public in, and are advertising this fact in their advertorial section. Sadly, this information is already covered, and more usefully, elsewhere.

I’m going to go ahead and declare this Dr. Horrible animated-style statue the Gayest Thing in Previews for this month, if only because I’m racking my brains and this is the first time I can think of a situation where nerds and toy collectors are going to be putting a little statuette of a gay man in their homes.

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