Slugfest is a roundup of cool announcements about projects coming to a shelf near you. This edition focuses on DC’s August 2025 solicitations. Hit the links for more information.
The Justice League family of titles will continue to grow in August with Justice League Red by Saladin Ahmed and Clayton Henry.
(I guess the number of Justice League titles you can have is truly Unlimited, isn’t it? Bwahaha …)
The new title will feature a team run by Red Tornado that’s “so covert, the founders can’t know it exists.” It’ll include Power Girl, Huntress, Deadman, Green Lantern Simon Baz and Cyborg.
Henry drew the main cover, with variants by Carmine Di Giandomenico and Christian Ward (shown above).
You can already see some potential tension here, with the disembodied Red Tornado making some calls that could conflict with the bigger JLU:
The Justice League has a new spec-ops team so covert, the founders can’t know it exists. And its leader is the only hero who could keep JLR off its radar…because he is the radar. Red Tornado is the heart and mind of the Watchtower—watching, projecting into the future, and his projections point to apocalypse as a direct result of the concentrated power of the JLU. When your Justice League ID card lights up red, Reddy needs you. For the fate of humanity, and for yourself, because you don’t want to find out what Red can do with what he knows about you. Join a best-in-the-biz creative team—Saladin Ahmed (Wolverine, Daredevil) and Clayton Henry (Action Comics, We Are Yesterday)—and an all-star team of heroes, and find out how far they’ll go to keep the peace and keep Red Tornado’s secrets.
The first issue will arrive Aug. 20.
The Summer of Superman gets very interesting in August as the Ice Cream Man team bring their unique approach to comics to the Man of Steel. W. Maxwell Prince, Martín Morazzo and Chris O’Halloran are the creative team for Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum, a five-issue Black Label miniseries.
“We’ve developed a reputation for pretty left-of-center experimentation, with respect to comics storytelling,” said Prince, “and this is basically what we’re doing over the five issues of Superman: The Kryptonite Spectrum: using our unique voice in comics to tell a Supes yarn that’s both strange and timeless—out there and also totally grounded. You might know what Green, Red and Black Kryptonite does to Superman, but what about Purple? Or Cobalt? Or Speckled?”
The miniseries will feature four new kinds of Kryptonite, which Batman and Superman will investigate:
In the upcoming comic book series, four new Kryptonites have been discovered in deep space, and Superman needs to know just what, exactly, they do to him—lest the colorful rocks of his home planet fall into evil hands! With Batman at his side, this DC Black Label Superman five-issue event explores the consequences of each never-before-seen variety of Kryptonite—all in the formal, and boundary-pushing fashion, that Prince, Morazzo, and O’Halloran are celebrated for.
Here’s a preview of the first issue:
Look for the first issue on Aug. 13.
While the Ice Cream Man team delivers in Metropolis, the Massive-verse team is putting their stakes down in Gotham. The creators of Inferno Girl Red, including Kyle Higgins, Mat Groom, Erica D’Urso, Igor Monti and Becca Carey, are working on Immortal Legend Batman.
They’re joined by Dan Mora, who is doing the character designs:
“This project is a perfect example of art driving story,” Higgins said in his newsletter. “Immortal Legend Batman started over five years ago when Mat and I first saw Dan’s sketches for Tokusatsu Batman. He’d been posting new pieces every day, interpreting the Bat family though a Kamen Rider and Sentai lens. At a certain point, I messaged Mat and flagged that we should just work with Dan on a pitch—the designs were too cool to not have a story.”
It took awhile, but that story is finally coming to print in August, with the first issue featuring a cover by Mora and variant covers by Homare and Matt Taylor. Look for it on Aug. 27.
Speaking of Batman, two ongoing Bat titles will reach milestones in August. First Detective Comics will reach issue #1100. The oversized issue will feature multiple stories:
- Tom Taylor and Mikel Janín tell a heartfelt and action-packed story of Batman rescuing a young boy’s best friend.
- Greg Rucka and Álvaro Martínez Bueno team up for a tale that asks the question: was Gotham better off before Batman?
- Mariko Tamaki reunites with Amancay Nahuelpan to explore Bruce Wayne’s world outside of the cowl and how his double life as Batman intersects with his alter ego’s actions.
- Dan Watters and Bill Sienkiewicz will illustrate just how similar Batman’s motivations are to the criminals he has sworn to fight and how he fights against his own darkness.
The milestone issue will feature a cover by Janin and variants by Jock, Bruno Redondo and Sienkiewicz.
Then Batman #163 brings the end of “part one” of the “Hush 2” storyline — or H2sh, as the cool kids say. Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee answer the question, “Will Batman survive Hush’s revenge when his only allies are his greatest enemies?’ The “part one” part is interesting, as it suggests we’ll see a continuation by Loeb and lee at some point. Matt Fraction and Jorge Jimenez are relaunching Batman in September, so who knows when another chapter of H2sh will arrive. And can we call that next one H3sh?
We’ll wrap up this edition of “DC in August” with a comic that’s not technically a DC book, even if it features one of their characters. The previously announced Harley Quinn X Elvira will arrive in August from Dynamite Comics. It’s by Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti, so it should be pretty fun. They’ll be joined by artist Juan Samu, who has worked on previous Elvira comics.
Here’s the synopsis:
As the scintillating story begins, readers will meet a bored Harley Quinn — this is very bad news for everyone else! While Elvira is faced with an uncertain future as her TV show is under siege by suits and corporate cuts. When these two peerless pariahs cross paths, what follows will be the most ridiculous Halloween party ever seen — and never wanted!
“What I remember about first discovering Elvira is wanting to be like her,” said Conner. “She’s got that sense of humor, that love of horror and comedy, and that hair and boobs and gorgeousness, all dialed up to eleven. I think she was (and still is) a great role model for all us weird girls.”
The first issue features a main cover by Conner, along with variants by Joseph Michael Linsner, Ben Caldwell, Mark Spears, Chad Hardin and (again) Conner.