So, it’s been a couple of months now and Seb and I have (mostly) kept our heads down, dutifully reviewing a comic a day for a fair few weeks with very little industry sarcasm and speculation. Well, not much anyway. Still, it’s not enough for us. We want a place where we can talk about the latest news and rumours, poke some fun, and generally talk about wider industry issues without the pretense of reviewing a comic to do so. And thus, The Sunday Pages is born, allowing us to indulge in editorials and commentary just once a week, giving us somewhere to put all those nuggets we think of which would otherwise end up unsaid.

For the inaugural column, you’ll be getting some news about the long-awaited reprint of Sam ‘n’ Max: Surfin’ the Highway, some information about a possible comics-based movie from Guillermo Del Toro that’s NOT Hellboy-related, a look at Marvel’s latest “Phoenix Rising” teaser, and some speculation about what DC’s forthcoming Trinity and Final Crisis might mean for the future of the shared DC universe…

NEWS: After an obscene amount of time out of print, the highly-sought collection featuring Steve Purcell’s manic creations, Sam ‘n’ Max, entitled Surfin’ the Highway, is being re-released by Telltale Games, current publishers of the Sam ‘n’ Max (and Bone) episodic games. There’s a certain generation of people - Seb and I included - who remember the Lucasarts Sam ‘n’ Max game, Hit the Road, as being one of the adventure genre’s high points, so this is something of a holy grail for me, having never seen a copy for much under £100 before. The re-released version features all the Sam ‘n’ Max material from the original, as well as some additional stuff released since. You can order Surfin’ the Highway in hardcover ($49.99) or paperback ($19.99) and by “can” I mean “should.” Expect a review as soon as the hardcover starts hitting doormats. JH

RUMOUR: Just a brief tidbit from an Empire interview, but… Guillermo del Toro to direct a Neil Gaiman-scripted Doctor Strange movie? I’m hardly the biggest fan of the character, but count me front row centre for that one. Keep your eyes on this - it’s true that del Toro has approximately 1xmillion fantastic-sounding projects on the slate at the moment (I’m quite excited by the prospect of a Champions movie), but this one sounds too good not to happen. SP

SPECULATION: Marvel has released a promotional image, entitled Phoenix Rising, which appears to be Finch’s latest cover for X-Men: Legacy…

It features an odd mix of characters - for a start, that appears to be Cassandra Nova in the bottom left, a pair of Brood aliens on the right, Phoenix (Dark?) in the centre, and Proteus in the top left. I’m still not sure what to make of it, but it seems to be highlighting some of Xavier’s greatest failures, and the deaths on his conscience because of that. Whether it’ll lead to more, it’s hard to say. To be honest, I’d like to see Jean back and alive, particularly if Scott stayed with Emma. It would give Jean a chance to flourish as a character in her own right without Cyclops or Phoenix to hog the limelight. Or, if that’s too hard, they could at least finally pair her up with Wolverine and resolve that nagging plot thread that’s never gone anywhere… JH

NEWS: Oh, this is exciting. Alright, so James Robinson wrote the (first draft) script for the League of Extreme Gentlemen. And his One Year Later Batman arc, “Face the Face”, was solid rather than spectacular. But when the man who wrote Starman, one of the single greatest comics series of the last couple of decades, makes his full-on return to comics by taking the reins on Superman… then you sit up and take notice. It’s a shame that the wonderful “Up, Up and Away” arc that began Kurt Busiek and Geoff Johns’ run on the titles turned out to be such a false dawn, but it would be awesome if we could get a truly great run going on one of the books once more. I’m pleased, too, that Renato Guedes is down as artist - I’ve seen some excellent work from him on the character over the last year or so. This one’s definitely going straight on the pull list. SP

SPECULATION: So DC have officially announced Trinity, the new weekly series by Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley (speaking of whom - lovely promo piece, but doesn’t it just feel wrong having him draw those characters?) to follow the really-quite-good 52 and the really-quite-awful Countdown. But rather than clear up the confusion surrounding the next year or more of DCU stories, all Didio has managed to do is add to it. The existence of a series about Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman would seem to scotch any rumours of universe-shattering changes brought about by Final Crisis (and, indeed, the lingering suggestion that Bruce Wayne is due to be killed off in his own title soon) - but on the other hand, Didio has stated that “Final Crisis will be contained to the primary series and a couple of spin-off series and a couple of one shots, but doesn’t crossover throughout the rest of the line. And Trinity will be its own story amid all of that, because it explores not just the history of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, but their impact on the DCU in the past years and for the future.”

So we can’t draw any clues about future stories from the existence of the title - but what’s even more curious is the later statement that “my feeling is to tell the best stories possible right now. The main thing that I’m worried about is not contradicting the actions and behaviors of the characters from story to story. Batman should act and behave the same way in his Batman series as he will in Final Crisis and as he will in Trinity.” Could Final Crisis herald the start of an era where inter-title continuity is kept to a minimum, where characters might be able to interact and crossover with each other, but without the inherent head-screwing worry of just how they all fit in with one-another and the past decade’s-worth of stories? The suggestion would appear to be completely at odds with the way the comic industry has worked for about thirty or forty years - but frankly, I’m of a mind that it could be a good time for a drastic rethink. Shared universe continuity is fine… if it works. But both DC and Marvel have dropped the ball in a major fashion on this score in recent years, and the success (and indeed quality) of such titles as All-Star Superman and Ultimate Spider-Man suggests that the standalone, continuity-free, classic-elements story is perhaps the way forward. Let’s wait and see. SP

Tags: batman, Dr. Strange, Guillermo Del Toro, James Robinson, Kurt Busiek, Mark Bagley, Neil Gaiman, op/ed, Sam and Max, Superman, Trinity, Wonder Woman, X-Men
Publisher: The Sunday Pages