You can almost hear DC patting itself on the back.

It looks like DC’s “Blackest Night” is taking a month off in January. To make up for it, they’re releasing new issues for several canceled titles from the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. Here’s the full list, from DC,

- POWER OF SHAZAM #48 Eric Wallace tells the tale in which Osiris returns from the dead to “chew the fat” with a very powerless Billy and Mary Batson.
- CATWOMAN #83 Fabian Nicieza has the original Black mask explaining to Selina why shooting him in the head was a bad idea.
- SUICIDE SQUAD #67 Gail Simone and John Ostrander are ringside for the epic fight between a very dead Suicide Squad and a possibly soon-to-be dead Secret Six.
- QUESTION #37 Greg Rucka has the one answer for when two Questions meet.
- PHANTOM STRANGER #42 Pete Tomasi reveals what Blackest Night means to the Phantom Stranger.
- WEIRD WESTERN TALES #71 Dan DiDio (weirdly talking about myself in the third person) lets you know what all the dead old west characters are doing in the new west today.
- ATOM AND HAWKMAN #46 Geoff brings you the double date from Hell, The Black Lantern Hawks work to reunite Atom with his long dead love, Jean Loring.
- STARMAN #81 James Robinson returns to the book he made great and visits some old haunts.

I’m tempted to talk a lot of shit about this move. As usual, DC is unable to cope with a large event and has to take a month off. But at least they’re being honest about it. From Dan Didio,

And in case you are wondering why we skipped a month BLACKEST NIGHT, well, that’s just to give the immensely talented, and immensely overworked Ivan Reis a chance to prepare the over-sized final issue of this series out this March.

And at least they’re not replacing the artist mid-series. Anyway, this is clearly a gimmick, but I’m willing to bet most of them will sell pretty well. James Robinson doing another issue of Starman is bound to pull in some readers, among others. And it’s nice that they’re doing SOMETHING to make up for the fact that they fail.

But you do fail DC. You fail so hard!