DC Comics returns from its two-month Convergence break with a reinvigorated line, including more than 20 new series, new directions for existing titles, a new "DC You" promotional campaign, and a brief commercial message from Nick Lachey.

Among the most notable changes evidenced this week is the wildly increased diversity of the publisher's offerings. Over the past 43 months or so of the New 52, DC was particularly daring in the oddball titles, characters and concepts launched, likely the result of having a set goal of 52 books (and the knowledge that they had some 75 years' worth of IP to exploit). But while the publisher toyed with twists of the superhero genre (superhero war comics, superhero horror comics, superhero Western comics, etc.) and went surprisingly deep into its character catalog (Dial H, The Green Team, Infinity Man and The Forever People), there wasn't much diversity in terms of tone or visual style.

That's no longer the case. This week's new releases include comedy miniseries starring Bat-Mite and Bizarro -- two particularly fun Silver Age characters – and featuring intentionally cartoony styles that are as far removed from Jim Lee-derived New 52 house style as one can imagine.

While it's obviously too early to tell if or how well the market will reward the publisher for trying different things – although the surprise success of Harley Quinn has shown there's an appetite for primarily comedic takes on some characters – it's not too early to start assessing the quality of these two comics.

So far? So good. Were I a teacher and these comics my students, I'd award them letter grades matching their initials: They're both solid B efforts.



Let's start with Bat-Mite. A 1959 creation of Bill Finger and Sheldon Moldoff, Bat-Mite was originally a diminutive, magical being in an ill-fitting, homemade Batman costume who professed to be Batman's biggest fan, although his various attempts to help his hero generally resulted in mischief. He was more or less retired during Batman's 1960s revamp, and his in-continuity appearances have actually been few and far between (post-Crisis, he appeared as a drug-induced hallucination of a street criminal, a stress and post-hypnotic hallucination of Batman's and as a manifestation of Mr. Mxyzptlk's power that was trapped within The Joker's brain).

This marks not only the first time we've seen him since the post-Flashpoint reboot, but also possibly the first time we've seen a "real" Bat-Mite in continuity since Crisis. The premise of this six-issue series is actually more apparent from DC's solicitation, its eight-page preview story and the book's "regular" cover than the actual interior of the first issue: Bat-Mite plans to do for other characters in the DC Universe what he's done for Batman. That is, make them as awesome, popular and, presumably, high-selling as the Caped Crusader.

It's the work of writer Dan Jurgens, a veteran creator who needs no introduction to anyone who's read DC comics for any amount of time, and artist Corin Howell, an up-and-coming artist making her DC debut (Andres Ponce co-inks Howell's pencils, while Mike Atiyeh handles colors).

The book opens with Bat-Mite, dressed in a pretty out-of-date Batman costume (blue and gray rather than black and gray, yellow oval on the bat-symbol, briefs over the tights). He's being tried for unspecified crimes by hooded judges that, intentionally or not, echoes the scenes of Pandora and the so-called Trinity of Sin. Bat-Mite is exiled ... into the DC Universe proper.

There he's changed into a costume more closely resembling Batman's current threads, armored gauntlets included. ("Like the new look?" he asks Batman. "Easier for people to see you're my sidekick if I go gray.") He and Batman are independently working the same kidnapping case, but after the Dark Knight saves the victim, the little imp falls prey to a nurse with knock-out gas, and ends up in the clutches of Dr. Trauma, a villain devoted to the ol' brain-transplant scheme so popular in B-movies of around the time of Bat-Mite's creation.

Thrown in a dungeon, he finds a captured and drugged Hawkman, the perfect subject for him to not only save but also "fix."

So while certainly a comedy, Jurgens still gives it a basic superhero-adventure structure, even if the stakes seem particularly low and the specific elements more cliched than usual. His Bat-Mite doesn't seem as powerful as previous versions, perhaps due to his "exile," and his only magical powers here seem to be the ability to float.

He still acts and talks like a cartoon character in a real (well, real-er) world, though, even if he lacks the "powers" he usually has. Jurgens writes him as a particularly cocky but incompetent would-be superhero, whom Batman basically ignores during their brief encounter. (While Bat-Mite chats away, offering advice and asking questions, Batman's only words to him are "You" and "Mmrr...") For the most part, the prattling dialogue seems dated and not particularly funny, but the source of comedy here is Bat-Mite's juxtaposition rather than sense of humor.

Howell's artwork, on the other hand, is a pretty perfect fit, as she draws the DC Universe proper perfectly well straight – if smoother and cleaner than many New 52-era artists – but exaggerates Bat-Mite himself to the point that he looks as if he floated over from DC's Looney Tunes comic.



Otto Binder and George Papp's Bizarro is only a year older than Bat-Mite – debuting in a 1958 issue of Superboy – but he's been much better integrated into the DC Universe, having never really gone away for long. A backward or reverse Superman, the character's portrayal has see-sawed between serious and funny regularly since his post-Crisis reintroduction as an imperfect duplicate of the Man of Steel.

In fact, Bizarro already made his New 52 debut during Forever Evil, where Lex Luthor's attempts to clone Superman lead to the failed experiment designated "B-Zero," a Frankenstein's monster-like being simply called "Creature."

The character appearing in Bizarro seems to be of no relation, and his costume is essentially a more streamlined version of Superman's shorts-less New 52 costume, save for a backward "S" on his shield (physically, he most closely resembles Eric Powell's version of Bizarro No. 1 from the Action Comics arc "Escape From Bizarro World").

Heath Corson, who has written direct-to-DVD animated adaptations of some DC comics, teams with Brazilian cartoonist Gustavo Duarte (and, for most of a single page, Bill Sienkiewicz) for an even more straightforwardly comedic setup than that of Bat-Mite: Jimmy Olsen and Bizarro on a road trip. And that ... is basically it, really.

We join the unlikely duo two hours outside Metropolis, their trip already in progress, with Jimmy narrating in neat little green boxes dressed up with his red bow tie. Apparently the trip was undertaken at the half-serious suggestion of Clark Kent as a way to get rid of Bizarro, and as an idea for a book by Jimmy. "You and Bizarro on a road trip to Canada?" Clark jokes. "That's a James B. Olsen coffee table book." Panels later, Olsen is fantasizing about Bizarrish: A Journey Into the Bizarre.

Corson and Duarte jump from gag to gag, eventually settling into a plot in which Olsen's car breaks down in Smallville, and he and Bizarro visit King Tut's Slightly Used Car Oasis, where the Batman '66 villain is reimagined as a colorful used-car salesman who, when granted superpowers, uses them to attempt to sell automobiles.

Plot is really pretty secondary, of course, as the skips from gag to gag serve just as well as any of the jokes involving Tut. And Bizarro is such a strong character, one of the few that's so perfectly suited to the comics medium that he doesn't quite work as well outside of it; his dialogue needs to be read rather than heard, so one can pore over it.

While the "rules" of Bizarro's language seem simple in theory -- he talks in opposites – it's kind of remarkable how each writer has his or her own take on what exactly that means. Corson's Bizarro talks in opposites, responding, for example, "Yes, very close," when asked if he's from out of town," but he also uses "am" in contractions ("Am you or amn't you not Bizarro's worstest friend?!"), confused references to facts ("You break cars? Tree dive right into this one") and his own slang ("Boo-ray!").

I'm having trouble thinking of the last place I've seen art as unique as Duarte's in a mainline DCU book; it's so highly stylized that it's of the sort that generally only appears in the publisher's digital-first anthology series, closer to something you might see in MAD. Bizarro and Clark look more or less like "themselves," albeit with tiny waists and legs supporting their massive torsos and arms, but the other characters have the bobble-headed, expressive faces of comic strip characters or caricatures.

It's not a style that would necessarily work in most superhero universe comics, but, well, this is a Bizarro comic, and it works just fine here.

Next week, the old Hitman creative team of Garth Ennis and John McCrea returns to DC with a series starring a group of Hitman's comedy-relief characters, plus the Harley Quinn writing team of Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner will be launching a new ongoing series in Starfire and a new miniseries in Harley Quinn and Power Girl, so DC should have a whole handful of funny funnybooks. Let's hope they're all as good, if not better, than these two.