Walking Into View, or: Boom! Headshot!

Robert Kirkman, creator of The Walking Dead comic book, has stepped up in the world. At our first SDCC in 2006, when Kirkman also hosted his first Spotlight panel, he told us in the crowd that he’d brought a deck of cards to play Solitaire in case no one showed up. I may also have seen a copy of Hustler and a sock stuck under the table, but that was a long time ago and it’s safe to say I was hung over at the time. Because God knows I’m hung over now.

Anyway, that was five and a half years ago. Now, Kirkman’s the writer and Executive Producer of The Walking Dead TV show – the biggest hit in the history of cable TV – with all the perks that entails. Big house? Sure… although the poor fucker lives in Kentucky, where you can live like a coke dealing hip hop star for about $12.75 American. Bling? Yeah, if he wanted it, but I’m guessing the poor man gets enough attention from Bear… enthusiasts as it is. Bitches? Well… kinda.

I say “kinda” because Kirkman’s gonna be a guest on The View later this morning.

Mork Calling Orson: Spaceman #1 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: Ground Control to Major Tom: commencing countdown, spoilers on. 

Here’s the thing about Brian Azzarello, which you already know if you’ve read 100 Bullets: he writes a great crime story. I think that’s why, no matter what he’s writing, he winds up shoehorning a crime story in there, the way Robin Williams ramfeeds schtick into every Goddamned role he ever does, or the way low-level Internet writers about comics cram uncomfortable jokes about their balls into their reviews.

And there are times when it’s a welcome addition, like the toy in the bottom of a cereal box – after all, nobody’s gonna bitch about a hard-boiled crime story stuck into in a Batman comic. Others, like when he made John Constantine a gay-trolling ex-convict in Hellblazer, it’s a less joyful little discovery, like scratching your balls and saying, “Huh… what’s that lump?”

It’s too early to tell how the crime story he’s stuck into Spaceman will come across: Cracker Jack prize? Or ball tumor?

…And Sometimes Chicks DRIVE The Car

The only people who would argue that Justin Bieber isn’t a destructive purveyor of  impending doom do not have penises, secondary sexual characteristics, or are trolling pederasts.

He turns music into sadness, the car radio’s scan button into a perverse game of auditory Russian Roulette, and legitimizes Rebecca Black. His ability to turn everything he touches into shit – apparently by sucking all the money out of it –  makes me wish I were dead, if only so I could, as an incorporeal ghost, slip into his mansion in the dark of night and wake him by whispering “Leeeeiiiiiiifff… Gaaaaarrretttttt…”

Ruining music is forgivable. Making CSI unwatchable is something I could skate past. But now Justin Bieber has done the indefensible.

He has ruined the fucking Batmobile.

Green Screen: The Incredible Hulk #1 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review is believed to be dead, and it must let the world think that it IS dead, until it can find a way to control the raging spoilers that dwell within it.

I’m probably not the best person to review Jason Aaron’s and Marc Silvestri’s The Incredible Hulk #1, because I am not the world’s greatest Hulk fan. Sure, I read Bill Mantlo’s stuff back when I was a kid, and I watched the Bill Bixby / Lou Ferrigno show religiously, because I HAD to. In the dark, pre-cable days of the late 70’s and early 80’s, if you wanted new genre TV you had two choices: The Incredible Hulk or Struck By Lightning. Well, I guess there was also Bosom Buddies, but technically that’s a whole different kind of genre.

Part of the problem was that, for a very long time, every Hulk story was the same: Banner gets agitated, turns into Hulk. Hulk reiterates a desire to “smash”. Hulk swings tank by gun barrel. Hulk jumps somewhere into Marlboro Country. Hulk relaxes and turns back into Banner. Banner avoids death by dehydration or copperhead bite to find more purple pants just in time to repeat it all again next month.

The last time I was excited by The Hulk was during Peter David’s 1988 Ground Zero arc, when Todd McFarlane was an exciting new artist and not comics’ most notorious ball cupper (What? The man collects baseballs). Because for the first time in my memory, someone was doing something different with The Hulk. He was cunning. He was gray. He LOOKED different. The book was exciting, because it felt new.

Problem is that David opened the floodgates on creative teams making Hulk whatever they wanted to serve whatever story they wanted to tell. In twenty-five years we’ve see Hulk as genius. Hulk as emperor. Hulk as medieval gladiator. Hulk as fucking Mafia enforcer (“Ever since Hulk can remember, Hulk wanted to be gangster. If we wanted something, we just SMASH it!”)

Hulk’s been green, gray and red, and at least one or two other people have been The Hulk. It’s like a stealth Clone Saga’s been going on in Hulk titles for a quarter century. For good or ill, there is no single “The Hulk” of which to be a fan, unless your only criteria for liking a story is “a big muscular dude of color”. In which case, I’m guessing that back in the 80s you were watching Bosom Buddies rather than The Incredible Hulk, but I digress.

This is a whole lot of words to spend on an individual issue of a comic book without addressing the book itself, but the preamble feels necessary, if only to make it clear that I don’t know if I can recommend The Incredible Hulk #1, because it is yet ANOTHER vector on the original story: The Hulk and Banner as separate entities.

Meet The New Boss…

So after a long morning complaining that money ruins comics…

…we must end our broadcast day with a pile of comics released today that prove that paid comics on proven properties can, in fact, pique the interest.

Just look at this take! We’ve got Astonishing X-Men with Art Adams art (Not a palindrome, no matter what Mr. Adams would like you to believe), Wolverine and the X-Men, new Walking Dead, Green Wake (Which, despite the fact that you just heard about it, you should be reading), Brian Azzarello’s and Eduardo Rizzo’s Spaceman, and a ton of other good shit that we will try like hell to read and review for you!

In the meantime, it’s beer o’clock, which means: see you tomorrow, suckers!

Hey, Kids! Sausage! or: (One Hundred) Thirty Pieces of Silver

It’s almost Halloween, comics fans! So you want to see something really scary?

That’s the check. The check that Jack Liebowitz , publisher of National Allied Publications, doing business as Detective Comics, Inc., cut to Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, for the rights to Superman. Forever. In perpetuity.

For a hundred and thirty clams. Or about two grand in today’s dollars. Which means that in Manhattan prices, they were paid about a case of beer, a carton of cigarettes and a week at the YMCA. In exchange for fucking Superman.

Crisis On Infinite Midlives Podcast Episode 5: The Stroke of Justice

Chest colds gone? Check! Big comics shit to talk about? Check! Clean, sober and ready to put on a professional Internet radio show? Fuck you!

It’s the fifth episode of the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Podcast, where we talk about:

• Marvel’s staffing decisions, or: With Great Responsibility Comes No Salary, or: Trabajará para el alimento!
• Tony Stark: Great Drunk or the Greatest Drunk?
• The killer of Batman’s parents: Great Drunk or the Greatest Drunk?
• Watchmen Sequels: Great Drunken Decision or Drunken Decision?
• Batman: Arkham City: S***faced Batman, and:
• Our sleeper picks of the week, or: Great Drunken Comic Reviews or Fuck You You Don’t Know Me!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:56 — 34.7MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Play | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS | More

Enjoy the show, suckers!

The Owls Are Not What They Seem: Batman #2 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review contains spoilers about Batman #2. Spoilers I wouldn’t have to reveal if the creative team had been a little more specific in Batman #1. You’ve been warned.

So there’s one theory down the shitter.

With one throwing knife from a dude in an owl costume, it appears we can bid a fond farewell to mayoral candidate Lincoln March and my prediction that he would become a supervillain named The March Hare. Which, I suppose, makes sense considering that DC has revealed that the villain in The Dark Knight #3 is going to be a chick called The White Rabbit (pictured here).

And while a crazed villain with the power of the mayor’s office behind him would normally seem somewhat more threatening than a top-heavy babe spilling out of a corset with two convenient handles on her head, considering since the New 52 started we’ve seen – literally, SEEN – Batman bone two different chicks with the same body type, I’m guessing we’ll see The White Rabbit be far more effective at making Batman go down. Er, taking Batman down. Whatever. I’m digressing again.

Batman #2, by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo, simultaneously continues the fine form shown in Batman #1 while showing the inherent weaknesses in writing comics for the trade, particulaly when that comic is a detective story.

For The Horde – I Mean The Sinestro Corps! DC Universe Online Legends #16 Review

If you’re one of those people who’s screaming self-righteously that there was no need for DC’s New 52 and that everything was fine in the old DC Universe and that your book Zombie Spaceship Wasteland will be available in paperback in November, you do still have an option available… kinda.

Since the launch of the DC Universe Online massive multiplayer online roleplaying game back in January, DC has been putting out what should amount to a three-dollar advertisement to the game: DC Universe Online Legends. It’s an old instinct for these MMORPG companies: people love the continuing stories in the game, so make some quick bank by putting out a comic based on the continuing stories in the game! It’s the kind of cross-media pollination to create market synergy that makes marketing people hard and other people want to set marketing people on fire.

Almost exclusively, these books fail on both a marketing and artistic level, because the publishers generally treat them like what they are: a financed, short-term cash-grab. Seriously: what talent are you going to put on a book with characters you don’t that’ll be canceled the day the game servers get shut down? Frank Miller? Yeah, try Francois Jean-Baptiste Charlemagne Milloirse, and even then only if he agrees to run his own script through Babelfish to save on translation costs.

So DC Universe Online Legends should suck… except DC owns these characters, they have a financial interest in how well the game does, and the marketing actually makes sense: if someone who never read comics tries the game (Let’s say his friends told him there were girls in there – there aren’t, by the way), there’s at least a CHANCE that they could wander into a comic store looking to learn more.

The upside to this for comic fans is that the development cycle of an MMORPG is significantly longer than it takes for Dan DiDio to say, “Fuck it! DO-OVER!”, which means that if you have a rage-on over the fact that Superman’s underpants aren’t on the outside anymore, this book has been a safe haven. In addition, since DC has a vested interest in making the book at least decent, they started out by putting A-List talent like Marv Wolfman on the book.

With that said, Marv’s arc on the book is over, and the game just put out an expansion pack containing a bunch of Green Lantern stuff, so DC Universe Online #16 is just a Green Lantern story. And since Green Lantern was hardly affected at all by the New 52 reboot, you’re not going to be able to tell the difference between this book and the DCnU proper.

Still, this is a pretty good book if you’re a Green Lantern fan.

Let’s Put These Jokers Through Some Changes

I don’t want to spend a lot of time on this, because I am neck-deep in Batman: Arkham City, I have beer that I need to render safe for children by using my superpower of turning beer into pee, and I wish to combine these two activities, culminating in an uberactivity of wandering the house, “controller” in hand, screaming, “Who wants to give Batman a handjob?”

That said, I feel compelled to at least comment on a rumor that’s been going around the comics world for the past couple of days. I can’t confirm or deny it because, well, I’m just a drunken comic fan who doesn’t know anyone in the industry to ask if it’s true and then stab if they tell me it is.

I’ll just start with asking you to remember the source. Rich Johnston at Bleeding Cool traffics in comics gossip. Sometimes it’s true, sometimes it’s not… but the last time this rumor came up, Alan Moore himself said there was some truth to it.

Two days ago, Bleeding Cool mentioned that Watchmen prequels at DC were back on the agenda, after the success of the New 52. That meetings were happening this week. That it had the code name “Panic Room”. That names mentioned included Dave Gibbons, John Higgins, Darwyn Cooke, JMS, JG Jones, Andy Kubert and more.

Indeed I am now told that there will be four Watchmen miniseries, all prequels. Working off an over-arching uber-plot by Darwyn, who will be writing and drawing on aa [sic] book or two.

I believe the phrase I’m looking for is “this shit just got real”.

My first reaction to this news was the same as it was when I first heard it two years ago:

No no no no no no no no