King of The Monstrous

Right after we finished last week’s podcast about the new Godzilla movie (and had about seven drinks), I told Amanda, “You know, back in the late 70s, Marvel had a Godzilla comic where Godzilla teamed up with S.H.I.E.L.D. He might even have fought Doctor Doom.” Amanda responded to this news by putting on her sunglasses, leaning into me like Morpheus hearing about kung-fu lessons, and saying, “Show me.”

So when I went to my local comic store, where they know me by name and remind me that the real Godzilla is larger than I’m implying and that the “nuclear fire” he spits is normally less sticky, I showed her.

But the important part of that sentence is that we were at the local comic store, which means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

And there were a lot of good books this week, like a new Hellboy in Hell, a new Saga, and a new Daredevil… but lets face it: the money shots this week are gonna be the (long-delayed) Forever Evil #7 by Geoff Johns and David Finch, the latest Original Sin by Jason Aaron and Mike Deodato, and MPH by Mark Millar (which I already know will piss me off and force me to say the phrase, “Back in Mike Baron’s run on The Flash, he introduced a drug called Velocity 9 that caused the user to run at super speed…”). But there is, in fact, a bunch of other cool stuff!

But before we can talk about any of them, we need time to read them. So until that happens…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Nothing Wrong I Can’t Fix With My Hands: Kevin Smith On Zack Snyder’s Batman Suit

So recently, Batman Vs. Superman director Zack Snyder tweeted a photo of Ben Affleck in the Batman suit for the upcoming movie. And while some of us who are actual comics fans might have seen some similarities in the suit to some other earlier comics works, there were just as many people who said, “Meh; it’s just another one-color Batman suit, just like in the Christopher Nolan flicks. And the Tim Burton movies. And the ones by what’s-his-face, that nipple-obsessed pederast.”

And certainly, that single photo that most of us have seen points toward that kind of design… but most of us have only seen the one photo posted to the public Internets by Snyder, who is known to like fucking around with visuals, whether or not it’s actually a good idea.

But there is one man not involved with the actual production who has seen a photo of the costume: Kevin Smith, the director of Clerks, host of podcast Fatman on Batman, and the guy who cast Affleck in Chasing Amy, which led Hollywood producers to see him as something other than his character in Dazed And Confused, i.e.: a paddle-obsessed pederast (I’m detecting a common theme here).

Smith has been saying for months that he’s seen the Batman suit, and based on his descriptions, we weren’t expecting another one-color Batman costume. Well, Smith has made a few more comments about the costume he saw on his Hollywood Babble-On podcast (transcribed by ComicBook.com), and in doing so, confirmed some things that many long-time comic fans already suspected from the first black and white photo.

Crisis On Infinite Midlives Podcast Episode 15: Ladies’ Footwear And Murder

It is Sunday, which means it’s time for another episode of the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Show, or as we like to call it: that thing we do as an excuse to not write for one day so we can devote more time to drinking whiskey, watching Game of Thrones, and babying the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office Mascot, Parker The Kitten.

On today’s show, we tackle:

• Godzilla! We went into it thinking it would be a movie filled with Walter White battling a giant lizard, walked out of it thinking it was a pretty enjoyable reboot of the property… and then we talked about it. And sometimes, that’s the worst thing you can do to a movie…
• Wild-assed and variant covers – Marvel announced this week that the covers of each issue of The Death of Wolverine would be something called “Weapon Etched Holo Foil,” and DC is planning to release their Futures End (Mistakenly called Five Years Later in the show) September one-shots with another series of 3D covers. As a couple of people who lived through variant covers and how they helped kill comics in the mid-90s, we don’t have a lot to add about it, but man do we like to complain about them.
• Batgirl #31, written by Gail Simone with art by Fernando Pasarin
• The United States of Murder Inc., written by Brian Michael Bendis with art by Michael Avon Oeming
• The Walking Dead #127, written by Robert Kirkman with art by Charlie Adlard, and:
• Cat nutrition, or: taking care of a stray animal for only $47 a day

And one show note for the week:

• The Island of The Mushroom People is an actual movie, actually called Attack of The Mushroom People in America and Matango in its native Japan. I wish I was making that up.

And, our usual semi-legalese:

• This show was recorded live to tape, meaning that you might hear more than the normal number of “ums”, pregnant pauses, and references to Bukkake
• This show contains adult, profane language, and is not safe for work. That line just above about references to Bukkake? I didn’t pull that out of my ass. Be smart: listen with headphones.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:19:41 — 73.0MB)

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Enjoy the show, suckers!

Making School Spirits: Real Life Wolverine Claws

I obtained a classical liberal arts education from the late 80s to the early 90s. That education included writing, which led me to a stint in stand-up comedy. It included broadcasting, which led me to a short career as a rock and roll disc jockey. And it included a computer science minor, which has led me to a long and lucrative career in software engineering. It was four years that led me to an eclectic mix of jobs and experiences, and to a long-term gig on the cutting edge of computer security.

I have wasted my fucking life.

Flash Must Zoom: Extended Flash Trailer Teases 80’s Character Elements. Maybe.

So last night, during the Arrow season finale, they showed the first teaser trailer for The Flash, which will be starring this season’s Arrow guest star Grant Gustin reprising his role as Barry Allen, only with a much larger paycheck and a spiffy new red body condom.

What’s that? You were busy watching the Boston Bruins get knocked out of the NHL playoff last night, and therefore you were too busy crying to catch the Arrow finale? Well, here you go.

Not a bad job, as teasers go: it focuses on the character whose show you’re currently watching, it ties the two characters together into a shared universe, and it gives Flash a sense of fun that was missing from the pulpy, hard-boiled first season of Arrow.

But still, it doesn’t exactly do much besides show off the costume and give an idea of what Flash’s power effects might look like in action. It certainly doesn’t tell you anything about the show itself, beyond the fact that the lead guy seems to be having a blast with his superpowers. And that he has a taste in red leather that would make him very, very popular in certain niche adult Web communities.

Well, the good news is that The CW has released an extended trailer for the show… and there is a lot to be excited about. Particularly if you are a fan of old school, just post-Crisis, Mike Baron Flash.

Diversionary Tactics

It is a strange night here in Boston. For the sports geeks, there is the Boston Bruins battling against the Montreal Canadiens in game seven of a playoff series to see who goes on to play for the Stanley Cup. This is a series that has captured the imaginations of many Bostonians, whether they care about hockey or not… but I am not one of them. I have lived here long enough to understand the long-time rivalry, but my geography will not make me pretend to be a hockey fan. Unlike the Indian kid at the Dunkin’ Donuts I stopped at on the way home from the comic store, who responded to my report that “The Habs are up by one,” with rolled eyes and an exasperated, “I asked about the Bruins / Canadiens game!”

And for the standard geeks, there is the warm glow we are still operating under having seen Agent Coulson use that shoulder cannon to actually wipe out a bad guy in last night’s Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., mixed with the new glow of the season finale of Arrow, which will include the first trailer for the fall debut of The Flash, which we determined during last week’s podcast would be the most likely comic TV show to fail (The 1990 Flash show failed with no genre competition while the comic version was fresh off Mike Baron’s groundbreaking run that made The Flash compelling for the first time in my life, so I can’t imagine a superpowered version of CSI is gonna do much better).

The bottom line is that there is a lot of distracting shit going on this evening. But this is why we went to our local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to stop demanding that all sports be played by athletes with access to the Super Soldier Serum (and with katanas), early. Which means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

Still, there are some solid books in there. We’ve got the second issue of DC’s Future’s End, the first issue of Justice League United, the first issue of Powers: Bureau creative team of writer Brian Michael Bendis’s and artist Michael Avon Oeming’s The United States of Murder, Inc., a new issue of Robert Kirkman’s and Charlie Adlard’s The Walking Dead, and a bunch of other cool stuff!

But you know how it is: before we can address any of them, we need to pretend to know what icing is, that we have hope for The Flash, and still take time to read the books. So while that happens…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

I Shall Become A Wicked Pisser Bat: First Photo of Affleck as Batman in Batman Vs. Superman

So we’ve been hearing about Zack Snyder’s upcoming Batman Vs. Superman since last year’s San Diego Comic-Con, where director Zack Snyder announced the flick by having an actor read Batman’s internal dialogue from when he defeated Superman in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. And since then, we have been excited by reports that Snyder has met with Miller to discuss the movie, and, depending on your point of view, have been dismayed or excited about Ben Affleck being cast as Batman.

And other than some other casting news, there hasn’t been a ton of news about the movie (other than the fact that we’re apparently gonna see Wonder Woman and Cyborg at least in this flick). And that drought continued today, when Zack Snyder pissed away his bully pulpit on Twitter to talk about his new fucking digital camera.

Huh. Okay.

Once A Smoker: NBC’s Constantine Trailer Released

We talked a bunch about the upcoming Constantine TV show during this week’s podcast, but at the time we didn’t have a lot of information about the show, like what day it would be on and when it might debut.

Well, since we taped the show, site contributor Trebuchet brought to our attention that NBC has released a trailer for the show that answers a couple of questions about the show. Such as the fact that it looks like it will be debuting in the fall, and it will be airing on Fridays with Grimm (probably taking the place of Dracula).

Further, it seems that John’s first botched misadventure in Newcastle where he damned Astra’s soul to hell and got himself committed to Ravenscar will be part of continuity. However, it also seems that a big chunk of the show will be spent dealing with Americans, which were always the weakest issues of the comic book.

I have one or two other observations, but I’ll reserve them until you watch the trailer, which you can find right after the jump.

Crisis On Infinite Midlives Podcast Episode 14: Scooby Gang From Ikea

My God, it’s a miracle: we’re actually releasing a new podcast on our regularly-scheduled Sunday! Sure, we had to tape it on Saturday to get it done, and during a time when we were forced by circumstance to remain sober while we did it, but what the hell; it’s a small price to pay for being able to rant about comics and pop culture on a predictable schedule.

In this week’s episode, we discuss:

• Television! Particularly, the announcements this week that Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was renewed (and whether or not that is a good thing), and the announcements that various networks have picked up season orders of Agent Carter, Gotham, iZombie, Constantine, and Flash, and which shows we think might be good or horrible, depending on their direction
• Moon Knight #3, written by Warren Ellis with art by Declan Shalvey
• Miles Morales, The Ultimate Spider-Man #1, written by Brian Michael Bendis with art by David Marquez, and
• Why you should never allow a kitten into a recording studio when you are, you know, recording.

And, a few notes (and please let us know in the comments if we mentioned something obscure and forgot to include it here):

• The “Maurissa” whose name we were trying to remember was Maurissa Tancharoen, one of the showrunners for Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
• When we talk about Beacon Hill and Dorchester, you might not know that Beacon Hill is a Boston neighborhood populated almost exclusively by people who use the word “summer” as a verb, and Dorchester is a place where you go to witness or participate in a knife fight (it is the home neighborhood of Mark Wahlberg, so you know almost nothing good has come from there)

Finally, the nitty gritty pseudo-legalese:

• This show may contains spoilers, and it may spoil something with no warning whatsoever (although we make an effort to chuck a “spoiler alert!” in now and again)
• This show was recorded live to tape and is unedited, so there may be more “ums”, pregnant pauses, and vile, ill-advised humor than you are used to from your everyday comics / pop culture podcast
• This show includes the use of explicit and profane language, and is most decidedly not safe for work. Unless you have the kind of job that requires you to know what a “Tunguska Reacharound” is, in which case, listen away and feel free to tell your pimp that we think you deserve a larger cut of the take.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:08:18 — 62.6MB)

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Enjoy the show, suckers!

I Am Akira: Akira Project Releases Live Action Trailer

I went to my first comic book convention in 1990, when I was 19 years old. It in no way resembled the comic book conventions I currently attend; it was in a small function room on the second floor of a hotel in Boston’s Chinatown, and was packed with nothing but dealers from local comic stores, with big plywood backboards of rare and old comics that my college student ass wouldn’t be able to afford until he hit 40 years old (and by then, inflation would mean that I still wouldn’t be able to afford them).

There was one exception: there was, as there is at every comic convention in the free world, a table covered in bootleg videos. At the time they were all on hand-Sharpied VHS cassettes, but they had some cool shit. Like Die Hard 2, a couple of days before the movie even opened in theaters (the purchase of which got me so much high school girl tail that summer)…

And Akira, which at the time, I’d never heard of. It wasn’t released in my southeastern Massachusetts town, and it wasn’t really available on commercial video cassette at the time. The dude running the bootleg table was showing the movie on a TV in the background, and I’d never seen animation like that before.

I wound up buying the flick purely based on what I saw on that 19-inch TV screen, and fell in love with the movie. I am not what you’d call a big anime fan, but I have the original DVD special edition of Akira that came out in the early 2000s, in the aluminum clamshell case. I have the MacFarlane Toys Kaneda action figure and his motorcycle displayed on my living room book shelf. I have all six volumes of the Dark Horse Comics English reprint of the original manga (and a bunch of issues of the Epic Comics color reprint of the same series from the late 80s). And I have a print of the original movie poster framed and hanging in the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Podcast Studio.

These are all reasons why I, like many people, have been ambivalent at best and angry at worst about the repeating reports that studios are working on a live action adaptation of Akira. Particularly when those rumors included the casting of Keanu Reeves. Why? I will allow you to insert your own “Tetsu – whoa!” joke here, because I am a classy man.

When that version of the movie went down, no tears were shed here, and we hoped that no one would take on the task of a live action Akira movie again. However, while the studio project has been in turnaround, some people running something called The Akira Project raised some crowdfunding cash to put together a live action Akira trailer. Which they have completed. And for which I had no hope.

Until I saw it. And. Holy. Shit.