No One Can Hear You Thwip: Amazing Spider-Man #680 Review

The Amazing Spider-Man #680 is a buddy flick set in a zombie apocalypse occurring in space. If you walked into a movie studio executive’s office with that pitch, you’d be thrown out on your ass. Unless that executive worked for the Sy-Fy channel. In which case you’d be given their largest production budget to date: 75 bucks. Although they might go up to an even hundred, assuming Tiffany and / or Lorenzo Lamas was available.

My point is that this comic book is a big, glorious mess where I’m sure that the one “splorch” sound effect in tne book represents the sound of writers Dan Slott and Chris Yost throwing absolutely every plot idea they can think of at the wall… and it all sticks. I can almost picture those two guys saying, “Spider-Man… we bring in The Human Torch… and put them on a space station… what can they fight, what can they fight, what can they – space zombies! Now let’s write, but first: let’s take this TV apart!”

In My Tommy Hilfiger Hoodie: DC Debuts Rebooted Shazam

DC Comics debuted a teaser image of the Gary Frank-redesigned Shazam (née Captain Marvel) in this morning’s New York Post. I’m guessing that writer / DC Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns decided that the redesign of a niche character who’s been unable to carry his own book for around 20 years, and who’s appearing as a backup feature in Justice League, was news too earthshattering to relegate to the ghetto of the comics-related press… and further guessing that the Post ran with it due to a need to fill column inches thanks to a sudden unexpected dearth of Lindsay Lohan candid upskirt vagina pictures.

Broad Stroking: Lord of The Jungle #2 Review

It’s kinda hard to review Lord of The Jungle because, like much of Generation X, I don’t have much of a relationship with the character of Tarzan. The Johnny Weismuller flicks were well before my time. Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of The Apes opened just before (and was doomed to lose my eyeballs to) Ghostbusters and Gremlins. And 1981’s Tarzan, The Ape Man was something you taped off of HBO late at night to fast forward to the Bo Derek nude scenes for to see if your dinkle would do that spiffy trick again.

So, having more of a history with Captain Caveman than with Tarzan, I can only rate this book on its individual merits, of which it has several. Unfortunately, pacing doesn’t seem to be one of them. But we’ll get back to that in a minute.

Last month’s first issue was pure setup, putting Tarzan’s parents into the jungle to set up Tarzan’s apparent orphaning and adoption by apes. We start issue 2 twenty-one years later, with mutineers landing on the coast of the Congo jungle with their prisoners: an English Indiana Jones-looking guy named Cecil Clayton, one Professor Porter, and his daughter Jane… and even I know who Jane is, despite being half-convinced that if Tarzan was raised by apes, by 21 years old, he’d be fucking one, based purely on my complete lack of background in biology and observations of friends’ dogs who seem utterly willing to marry my leg.

Nerdpocalypse Begins: San Diego Comic-Con 2012 Passes Sold Out

Let me tell you a story: in March 2006, hotel sales began for that year’s San Diego Comic-Con at noon eastern time. I logged into the sales Web site, picked a few likely hotels, went out to lunch, called Amanda to get her opinions on where we might like to stay, returned to the day job and attended an hour-long meeting, and booked the room at about 3 p.m. Flip ahead about two months, when I realized, “Huh… if we’re gonna actually do this, I should book a flight and get, you know, passes to the actual Goddamned convention…” and I logged in and got four-day passes without a hitch.

That was 2006, and our first SDCC. It is now 2012. Passes for this year’s SDCC went on sale yesterday at 11 a.m. eastern time. By 11:30 a.m., all four-day passes were sold out. By straight-up noon? Tough luck, Charlie; yer either in or yer out.

Impending Doom: The Walking Dead #94 Review

Well, Andrea’s dead.

Oh, not literally; at the end of The Walking Dead #94, she’s still walking around, hovering around Rick now that they’ve hooked up, vowing that she won’t leave his side and leaving him filled with apprehension for her safety and us filled a feeling that Andrea must have a hair trigger to be this involved with a man with no dominantly coordinated hand. Either that, or that Colt pistol isn’t the only Python that Rick’s packing. But I’m digressing already.

The point is that early in this issue, Andrea says something that feels so much like the kind of line someone says in a horror movie right before they’re run through by Jason Voorhees that I immediately thought that she might was well be wearing an “Eat Me (Not You Rick)” t-shirt. It’s the kind of thing that any savvy horror movie fan would take to mean that it’s time to butch up on your bladder control, because someone’s about to get butchered. In other hands, it would be an amateur’s move… but in writer Robert Kirkman’s, it feels like it serves an important purpose. That purpose being that these characters feel indestructible. And, considering they are still living in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, they should probably stop doing that.

Innocence By Association: New Avengers #22 Review

UPDATE, 3/3/2012, 9 a.m.: Via Twitter exchange with Mike Deodato on the division of art labor between him and Will Conrad:

@mikedeodato – FYI: @willconrad didn’t ink me on NA#22. He drew these awesome pages: 5,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17 and I did the rest. Thanks, buddy!:)

@InfiniteMidlife – Thanks, @mikedeodato. I’m curious: did @willconrad pencil those pages with a common inker for the book? I couldn’t see a difference in style

@mikedeodato –@InfiniteMidlife We ink our own stuff.

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Here’s the ugly and sad truth that DC Comics will not want to hear and will ignore even if they do: when it comes to superhero team books, The New Avengers is, bar none, the most consistently good one you can currently put your hands on. From the plot to the characters to the dialogue to the art, this book blows Justice League out of the water… and I say this despite the fact that New Avengers #22 continues the Dark Avengers 2 storyline, which just by existing makes me so crazy with rage that I want to catch a flight so I can chloroform writer Brian Michael Bendis and draw a misshapen Norman Osborn wavy haircut on his lumpy bald noggin.

This issue continues the aftermath of Osborn’s and his Dark Avengers’ public relations assault on our heroes, which has led to a bunch of very expensive power-armored New York SWAT cops (Hey, it’s New York in the 616; let’s assume Mayor Jameson’s reduction of the Moustache Tax hit the sweet spot on the Laffer Curve) waiting outside Avengers Mansion to arrest the crew. Luke Cage, however, has some obvious and understandable issues with police authority, so fisticuffs ensue. Meanwhile, various members of the Dark Avengers are engaged in a race to see who can sneakfuck Osborn the fastest, and some members of the New Avengers have realized that S.H.I.E.L.D. liason Victoria Hand – former right-hand woman for Osborn in the Dark Reign days – might have been giving the team a Victoria Job. Wait, that’s not right…

Denouement: Justice League #6 Review

Justice League #6 is the most memorable and remarkable of the title’s relaunch for two reasons, the first being that it is packed with the kind of cover-to-cover superhero action that you want from a team comic book. The second is that it contains a splash page depicting Cyborg with a stance and facial expression that, minus any context, looks like he’s taking a savage and angry dump so terrible it might alter his religious beliefs. Which is as good an example of the schizo feeling this book has instilled in me for the past six months.

Let’s start off for a change on a positive note: this is one hell of a superhero fight. Writer Geoff Johns establishes the stakes early, showing a desperate family trying to escape the Armageddon that is occurring as Green Lantern, Flash, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Cyborg battle Darkseid in the middle of a city. The battle is visceral, the feeling that the heroes are throwing every Goddamned thing they can think of at Darkseid, who is drawn by Jim Lee as solid, giant and implacable. This is the kind of epic throwdown that I’ve been wanting from Justice League from the word go… which is a damn good thing because many of the characters still act as if they’re recovering from a partial lobotomy.

Johns’s characterizations have been problematic throughout this arc. Yes, I understand this is a reboot, but the youngest character in this book, in terms of creation date, is Cyborg, who has almost a third of a century of previous characterization history behind him. And sometimes we get glimmers of the long-established behaviors of the characters, but other times they act like they were created by Rob Liefeld in a 1990 cocaine twitch. Sometimes within two panels.

Familiar Justice, Or: Happy Semi-Annimaversary!

Our weekly visit to our local comic book store, where they know me by name and ask me, “Jesus Christ, you’re still alive?” brought us an unexpected reminder of the week before DC’s New 52 debuted. You remember – back on the last day of August 2011, when the only main line book DC released was Justice League #1… and Crisis On Infinite Midlives was in the late planning stages before our September 4th launch… and by “late planning stages,” I mean that Amanda and I were alternately asking each other, “Were we talking about starting a comics Web site? And do you have my pants?”

Well, this week’s visit reminded that we are six months old this week, because there is only one DC New 52 book – Justice League, I’m sure purely by coincidence – and regardless of how many DC books are available this week, for the 25th time, this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But what a week it is! We have Justice League #6, a new issue of both Avengers and New Avengers, a new The Walking Dead, and, most impressively… Ralph Wiggum #1!

But, as is has been for the past six months: before we can review them, first we need time to read them. So until then and as always: see you tomorrow, suckers!

Crossdressing: I, Vampire #6 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: And one last review before the comic stores open…

I tuned out of I, Vampire after protagonist Andrew Bennett left Boston for Gotham City. I figured that we just in for yet another meeting of a vampire and Batman, and besides: being from Boston, I was getting a charge out of seeing a major comic set in my town. Maybe I was being unrealistic, but I sort of hoped that we’d see Mary, Queen of The Vampires, take a bite out of David Ortiz and grow about three horse testicles in her armpits.

So robbed of the chance to see some Boston University knuckleheads get bled out on Lansdowne Street, I checked out for a little while, and I clearly shouldn’t have. Because sometime between then and now, all the shit has hit the fan.

The book opens in some kind of gothic building (A subway station? A church? Being Gotham, maybe a 7-Eleven?) with Bennett, some allies and yes, Batman, fighting about a scrillion vampires. And it is an impressive scene… and it says something about the state of the modern vampire story that I’ve written and deleted about seven different “sparkling vampires” jokes just now.

Premature Evacuation: Justice League Dark #6 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review contains spoilers, and saying that backwards won’t make them go away.

We’re six issues into Justice League Dark now, and Peter Milligan is finally putting the actual team (mostly) together after an interminable rampup of what seemed like dozens of tiny solo adventures of the DC Universe’s most Vertigo-like heroes… just in time for a forced crossover with I, Vampire and Milligan leaving the book. Thanks a lot, Pete. Your timing sucks.

At the end of the last issue, we finally had Constantine, Deadman, Shade, Zatanna et al in one place… just in time for each of them to say, “Fuck you, Charlie” (Or in Zatanna’s case, “Eilrahc, uoy kcuf”) and disperse to the four winds. And now they’re all having nightmares; Constantine dreams of London on fire and it being his fault. Zatanna dreams of monsters putting fingers in her mouth (Meaning that, based on finger placement, her definition of nightmare has a lower threshold than mine). Deadman dreams that Dove is dead, unlike most comic fans who have been praying that Hawk would also take the dirtnap.