We Can Rebuild Him: The Bionic Man #2 Review

And, as is becoming a tradition, one final quick review from last week before the comic stores open for New Comics Day…

“I know Steve Austin is going away… but I’ll never forget him.” That, as my parents are fond of reminding me, is what I said about the cancellation of The Six Million Dollar Man. They also like to remind me that I was crying and cuddling my Steve Austin action figure when I said this. I was 24 years old.

Just kidding. If you were of an age and a type to be predisposed to liking comic books in the late 1970’s, The Six Million Dollar Man was required viewing. And I know that Time / Life’s released the entire four-year run of the show on DVD, but I’ve resisted dropping the cash or looking for rips online because no matter what nostalgia I feel for the show, I know that if I watch it now, it will suck out loud. It’s one thing to nostalgically go, “Bin-nin-nin-nin-nin-nin-nin-nin…” under your breath when you lift a heavy box. It’s quite another to sit down to watch a show where you know full well that you will see Steve Austin befriend Bigfoot, and worse: William Shatner.

And yet I’ve been picking up Dynamite Comics’ modernized adaptation of the story, The Bionic Man, written by Kevin Smith and Phil Hester and drawn by Jonathan Lau… and I am HOOKED.

Don’t misunderstand me: there is no objective reason for me to be into this comic. Smith is indulging in the worst form of decompressed storytelling, as he did in Batman: The Widening Gyre when he took six issues and 120ish pages to say “And one time? Batman peed in his pants.”

Doomed To Repeat It, Or: Lobdell On Teen Titans

Teen Titans writer Scott Lobdell, who made a splash in the DC New 52 last week by portraying pre-reboot Titan Starfire as an amoral, cock-hungry nymphomanic, gave an exclusive interview with USA Today yesterday where he described what other… brilliant… plans he had for the rest of the new Teen Titans… wait – old Teen Titans? old New Teen Titans? New new old New… I’ve had a lot of cold medicine, I’d better lie down and let Scott take this:

“It’s designed specifically so that as you’re sitting down to read this book, you’re learning about Kid Flash, Red Robin and Wonder Girl,” [Lobdell] says. “Pretty much what you see on the paper is what we know about them and what they know about each other.”

But… but… wait… so there’s never been a Teen Titans? Right, Scott? Um…

From Red Hood and The Outlaws. Written by Scott Lobdell. LAST. FUCKING. WEEK.

Tangled Up: Blue Beetle #1 Review

This is the story of Jaime Reyes, a normal teenager living in suburban New Mexico with his best friends Paco – a gangbanger with a sense of humor and a heart of gold – and Brenda – a redhead who happens to be the niece of La Dama – a female crime lord with a stable of superpowered minions. Jaime finds himself fused with the Scarab – a piece of alien technology from something called The Reach – that bestows upon him a suit of powered armor that he doesn’t know how to use and might be operating under its own agenda.

Sound interesting? It should: it’s the plot of Blue Beetle. Written by Keith Giffen and John Rogers. In 2006.

It’s ALSO the plot of Blue Beetle #1, written by Tony Bedard and penciled by Ig Guara, released last Wednesday. And that’s the problem.

Don’t get me wrong: Blue Beetle is a well-executed and entertaining origin issue. It lays out where the Scarab comes from, it introduces all the main players, gets the Scarab on Jaime, all in 20 pages. Of all the New 52 books from DC, it probably meets the stated goal of the reboot, to create an entry point for new, non-comic readers, most effectively. Sure, there’s still a writing-for-the-trade feel since Jaime doesn’t become Blue Beetle until the last page, but Bedard tells us what we need to know without requiring any knowledge of continuity. It’s somewhat refreshing… or it would be if Bedard DIDN’T require a fluency in a second Goddamned language.

There are at least ten or eleven panels in this book that include Spanish or Spanglish – to the point where Bedard puts the ol’ footnote asterix next to the phrase “La casa de Amparo Cardenas” to tell us in caption that it is “Translated from the Spanglish”… except he NEVER FUCKING TRANSLATES IT. He might as well have wasted panel real estate with “Translated into Spanglish from Klingon by way of Helen Keller’s homemade tappity language.” For all I know, Jaime spend half the book saying, “You, reader, are a racist, provincial dingus.”

Castles Over Kings

So now the both of us have caught this wretched head ebola, which means that posting may slow while we lie around looking for mindless entertainment to feed our middle brains while we slowly undergo the process of turning cold medicine into snot… but don’t worry about us, we have a tool for dealing with this. It’s called a screwdriver.

And a likely candidate for tonight’s distraction from our various aches, pains and uncomfortable viscous bubblings is Castle, starring Nathan Fillion, on ABC at 10 p.m. eastern time. It’s not a regular view for us, but ABC is owned by Disney, as is Marvel, and since, purely by coincidence, Marvel’s releasing a Castle graphic novel Wednesday, it seems that tonight’s episode has a distinctly Marvel Comics feel to it, which you can see in the preview after the jump:

Crisis On Infinite Midlives Podcast Episode 2: The Knockers Of Justice

We bought some more bourbon, which means here’s another exciting episode of the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Podcast!

Why “The Knockers Of Justice”? There’s actually a reason this time, and it’s Catwoman and Starfire. Plus, “The T*ts Of Justice” just sounded crass for a family site. F**k you; don’t look at us like that.

Other topics include Nightwing #1, Kevin Smith’s The Bionic Man, and Event Fatigue, or: If Wolverine Begins Fighting Cyclops in Schism at 6 a.m., Stops To Fight Juggernaut in Fear Itself  at 8 a.m. and Arrives To Fight With Spider-Man in Spider Island at noon, At What Time Does Marvel Start To Give a F**k About Continuity?

Plus, here are a few links to items we discussed in the show:

• Laura Hudson of Comics Alliances op-ed on Catwoman and Red Hood and The Outlaws
• Comics Reporter Week in Review, including Judd Winick’s quote on his Catwoman characterization
• Comics Alliance roundup of Catwoman parody cartoons

Enjoy! Or at least don’t complain too loudly!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:58 — 42.1MB)

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

Exclusive Pictures of Pussy!

Some celebrity gossip site called Just Jared got their hands on some more pictures of Anne Hathaway in the Catwoman costume she’s wearing for The Dark Knight Rises.

Here’s one; you can go here for the rest if you don’t mind that their second top story is about Justin Bieber going to Chik-Fil-A… and if you do mind (Please God, if you’re reading this Web site, tell me you fucking mind), Bleeding Cool has all the pictures plus a few more exclusives you can check out.

There seems to be a lot of negative buzz in the comics world about the new costume ever since the first official photo of Hathaway in the suit came out about a month and a half ago – not enough cat ear, too much cat ear but the mask is stupid, no tail, the high heels are dumb for a cat suit – all of which make comics people look less like they’re interested in a good Batman movie and more like petulant, disappointed furries losing their boners.

Go Ask Alice: Batman #1 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following review may contain spoilers. It definitely contains rank amateurish speculation. Tread lightly.

I never read Alice in Wonderland because I was born in the early 1970’s and therefore had Star Wars. I didn’t see the recent Johnny Depp Alice in Wonderland flick because it was a Tim Burton movie that didn’t have Batman in it. So I know next to nothing about Lewis Carroll’s story beyond the character names… but I know enough about Batman to know that the odds that a new character named Lincoln March who is running for mayor will eventually unmask himself as a new supervillain named The March Hare are approximately one in one.

I was – and remain – so sure that this is how this new character was going to turn out that I reread Batman #1 about four times, inspecting the art and rereading every word looking for clues. Meaning that Batman #1 is detective story worth reading repeatedly. It’s about fucking time.

Flying Man is Flying

Next week is the final 13-issue drop of first issues in DC Comics’ New 52, and they’re ending it in the last week in exactly the way they started it the first week: firmly in second place behind Marvel Comics, with women everywhere screaming that they’re nothing but a gaggle of adolescent, sexist pigs. They will also be releasing a Superman comic.

Whereas week one’s Action Comics #1 focused on Grant Morrison’s take on Superman’s first year as a superhero, the main Superman title, written by legendary penciller George Perez with breakdowns by Perez and finished pencils by Jesus Merino (Who did some issues of Justice Society of America a couple years ago), is gonna focus on Superman in the current DC continuity, including his new, underpantsless costume. By which I mean it has no underpants on the outside. I assume he wears underpants underneath his spandex pants, otherwise we will be learning the disturbing way whether or not Kryptonians are Jewish. But I digress.

Comic Book Resources has a five-page preview of Superman #1; go check it out then swing back…

Wow. Those pages sure are pretty, and I want to withhold final judgment until I read the entire book, but based on that sample, I’m guessing that in the new DC continuity, Superman’s fatal weakness is exposition.

Because Stiffman’s Power Is COMPLETELY Different: DC Universe Presents: Deadman #1 Review

Deadman is one of those characters created in the 60’s that, if he hadn’t been drawn extensively by Neal Adams, probably wouldn’t exist today except maybe in a background shot of a Grant Morrison story written on a day when Grant was feeling a nostalgia for Silver Age DC ephemera almost as powerful as the peyote that’s probably fueling that nostalgia.

The concept behind Deadman is pretty ridiculous at its core for a superhero comic: a famous circus trapeze artist not named Wallenda (which was apparently something you could earn a living at in the days before cable TV and home video pornography) is shot to death by a sniper with one hand. He is then sent back to Earth as an invisible, undetectable ghost with the power to possess people. And he uses that power in the pursuit of justice, rather than the pursuit of possessing whoever happens to be banging Lindsey Lohan at this particular moment, or making Linda Blair gack up pea soup. Possibly while banging Lindsey Lohan. But I digress.

Seriously: Deadman’s power is to possess people, giving those people the ability to… do whatever those people could already do, only with a carny sense of humor. Which is a great character to have in your deck if you happen to need a deus ex machina (“Being invisible, I saw that The Joker fled to the playing card factory!”), or for a familiar character to suddenly start spitting out douchey jokes, (“I saw that The Joker fled to the playing card factory! Now pull Superman’s finger, Batman!”). It has it’s uses, but it’s not like Deadman’s ever been the kind of character that could ever anchor his own title.

Which is why, when I found DC Comic Presents: Deadman #1 in this week’s books, I dealt it to the bottom of the read pile. And why I was surprised that, when I did read it, I found it to be the sleeper hit in this Week’s New 52.

Batman Year One: So Good Your Bladder Will Spasm

With all the controversy about the greater Batman reboot storyline going on after this week’s release of Catwoman, and all the cries of “sexist!” and “misogynist!” and “Draw more panels of Bat Doinking or I can’t come!”, you might be longing for a simpler time when a Batman reboot included about 90 percent fewer twitching boners.

Not to worry: Warner Home Video has you covered with a clip from the upcoming Batman: Year One DVD that you can check out after the jump: