DC Trade Solicits for January 2012: Batman Deluxe, DC Presents: New 52, and more

After a day of teasing out all of their January 2012 solicitations group by group on their blog (which I find a lot more fun than having to wait till 5 for everything), DC Comics has released their first 2012 offerings -- plus their collected editions. Here's what caught my eye:

* Batman vs. The Black Glove

You heard about this one first on Collected Editions, and now we know this joint collection of Batman and Son and Black Glove will be in stores March 28. All of you who speculated that this would be a deluxe edition, you were right -- my guess is DC will just skip over Batman: Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul, and we'll simply have a deluxe Batman and Son/Black Glove to put on our shelves next to Batman RIP (which will look thin, unfortunately, in comparison). Pity DC seems to have dropped the "and Son" from this boo's title -- I thought it paid good homage to both books inside.

* Batman Versus Bane

Unfortunately, this book doesn't collect everything I'd hoped. Looks like we just have the stories surrounding Batman: Legacy -- the Bane of the Demon miniseries preceding that crossover, and the Batman/Bane special following it -- and not the two great Vengeance of Bane specials nor any of Bane's other appearances in Batman.

* Batman: Gates of Gotham

Gates of Gotham has been Scott Snyder and Kyle Higgens's show, so it's surprising but certainly welcome that DC also includes the two part story from Batman Annual #28 and Detective Comics Annual #12 by David Hine. The solicitation here states outright what many of us already understood, that the barrier between pre- and post-Flashpoint Batman stories is largely permiable: "This miniseries spins out of recent events in the Batman titles and sets the stage for several exciting storylines in 2011," indeed.

* DC Comics Presents: The New 52 #1

Down among the trade collections is this solicitation for a DC Comics Presents issue that could've been called "New 52: The Dark, given that it includes Animal Man #1, Justice League Dark #1, I, Vampire #1 and Swamp Thing #1. So here we are in January, five issues into all of these series, and DC is releasing a mini-collection of issues four months old? I guess this would be a useful tool for new readers, but by January I imagine you're already hooked or you're not, and you can always get these digital -- I'd as soon see the first hardcovers of these titles arrive sooner than DC Comics Presents issues throughout the New 52 genres (see my Tumblr rant on DC Comics Presents issues).

* Hawk and Dove: Ghosts and Demons

I guess the original collection of the Karl Kesel/Rob Liefeld Hawk and Dove miniseries is well out of print, so that justifies simply re-issuing it, but I wish DC had gone bigger with this and included some material from the series itself, too, even if it no longer had Liefeld pencilling it.

* Justice Society of America: Monument Point
* Power Girl: Old Friends
* Titans: Broken Promises
* Xombi

All of these, thankfully, collect the final issues of their respective series before the DC Relaunch. Given we lost both the final Doom Patrol and JSA All-Stars collections (and the final Booster Gold collection is nowhere to be found), it's good to see these lower-tier titles with collections promised. Now, this doesn't ensure DC won't cancel them down the road, like the others I mentioned ... (The Titans solicitation, by the way, names issue #39, when the series ended with #38).

Meanwhile, John Rozum may have left the Static Shock title, but news of a collection of his most recent Xombi series should assuage some rumors of difficulties between he and DC. I'd be surprised to find DC was collecting this without plans to bring Xombi back in some form coming up.

* Flash Omnibus by Geoff Johns Vol. 2

As covered over at Speed Force, the second volume of the Flash by Geoff Johns omnibus will collect the Rogues, Crossfire, and Blitz trades (closing out artist Scott Kolins) plus a DC First special. This is one trade more than the first volume collected and more than we originally speculated when you heard about this series first on Collected Editions. DC's been doing a lot of this lately, pumping up the contents of books like the New Teen Titans Omnibus while leaving the price intact -- in this case, the second Flash volume has almost 200 pages more than the first, for the same price. More for your money is always better, of course, and I'm thrilled with a trend toward DC releasing collections with greater amounts of material.

That's my take -- what's on your pull list?