Task Force Z by Matthew Rosenberg and Eddy Barrows

[Hypo]

DC Comics announces ‘DC vs. Vampires’ & ‘Task Force Z’ for October 2021

On A-Day, hundreds of Gotham City’s most dangerous and deranged criminals were left dead after an attack on Arkham Asylum and now, they’re getting a second chance at life. A mysterious benefactor is bringing together a new Task Force and has recruited the only person who could lead them, someone who knows what it’s like to come back from a brutal death: Red Hood. Now Jason Todd has to unravel the mystery surrounding this team of the recently deceased while leading a line-up of some of Gotham City’s worst criminals who’ve ever lived: Bane. Man-Bat. The Arkham Knight. Sundowner. Mr. Bloom.

[Hypo]

This is spinning out of the August and September backups in Detective Comics:

Backup: Countdown to Task Force Z: Part One! Deb Donovan is on the trail of some weird happenings in Gotham...missing bodies from the morgue...tales of shady criminal activity the likes of which Gotham has never seen...and the person trying to keep her quiet is...Batman?

Backup: Countdown to Task Force Z: Part Two! When Red Hood shows up in your apartment, you know you've done something drastically wrong. Jason Todd teams up with Deb Donovan to uncover the mysterious disappearances in Gotham, and their search brings them to the missing body of Bane! Look alive because death seems to be knocking at the door...

Backup: Wait, how did Red Hood end up in Deb Donovan's apartment? And what the hell gives him the right to eat all her frosted cereal? As Gotham's troubled son and the city's toughest reporter set out to uncover the mystery of the missing A-Day corpses, they run into more answers than they bargained for culminating in a deadly shoot out that renders Red Hood down for the count! Can Deb Donovan make it out alive to tell the tale of her harrowing adventure? And what will Red Hood's capture mean for the Bat-Family? It all leads to next month's terrifying new chapter in Gotham history: TASK FORCE Z!

[Restingvoice]

Oh I thought that's Katana

[sifighter]

Jason right now: "They put me in another zombie book huh"

[Frontier]

Well, I guess I'm glad Jason's leading another book even if this feels kind of random.

Also he no longer looks like he's repping for Mortal Kombat, so that's something.

[the1&onlyE.]

I'm very curious about this comic, I'm definitely going to check out the first issue!

[Morgoth]

I guess it's going to be pretty weird for Jason to work alongside Bane, even if he's zombie.
Feels pretty random idea, but we'll see how it will work out.

[Godlike13]

Hmm, seems weird. Im in.

[Dark_Tzitzimine]

I think the premise is stupid and I don't see it having enough lasting power to last more than 12 issues, maybe 24 if they go nuts with decompression but they finally dropped the Woods costume and dumb logo so I'm bound for honor to give it a shot.

[K. Jones]

These should be dumb and fun. They're interesting novel concepts. More Red Hood push via a strange team book and some of that running-in-the-background stuff we've seen set up. But I'm far less interested in Task Force Z than I am DC vs. Vampires. Vampires in the DCU aren't anything new but they're certainly something that is so spread out in various things and not unified as a concept (which is fine) that bringing aspects together will be hard to actually execute on in a way that feels clever or satisfying.

The obvious route is to have Bennett be the main player and have a lot of Justice League Dark (OG run) callbacks, since he's been seen in the intervening years since that N52 I Vampire and crossover stuff up through Forever Evil and such. But rather than build on that, maybe put together a new angle and just have him be the "entry point" into the kind of back-alley world of DC Vampiring. The most recent example of specific vampire stuff I can recall is the out there Starbreaker (and daughter) stuff in Morrison's Green Lantern, picking up on the sun-eaters and vampire planets and such ... and that might be a bit too far out from a more classical vampire story, so we'll see, we'll see. But "vampire ... conspiracy" type story does feel like it'll be trying to pull everyone from the Mad Monk to Whomever into a crossover that tries to connect all the toys in the sandbox, so who knows how it'll go.

[Rac7d*]

I think the premise is stupid and I don't see it having enough lasting power to last more than 12 issues, maybe 24 if they go nuts with decompression but they finally dropped the Woods costume and dumb logo so I'm bound for honor to give it a shot.

He’s the star of the next season of Titans he will never have more mainstream visibility then now

[Dark_Tzitzimine]

The most baffling thing is that is meant to be an ongoing and not a gimmicky mini-series in time for Halloween. In a lot of ways, this feels like a lost Frankenstein and SHADE pitch that got tacked in a Batfamily member to ensure sales.

[Godlike13]

With Jason being one of the biggest deaths, if not the biggest, in the mythos. He was probably always part of the centerpiece of the pitch.

[ZeroBG82]

Love Jason, but have absolutely zero interest in this. Sad to be passing, but no thank you very much.

[Dark_Tzitzimine]

He's not a zombie so I don't see the correlation here. Hell, Black Lanterns are back in the menu so you could've used any dead character to lead this.