Everybody Dies: Afterlife With Archie #4 Review

This isn’t going to be a long review, because it really doesn’t have to be… but I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that I originally picked up the first issue of Afterlife With Archie as a goof. It looked like a zombie movie for slightly older kids, with art by one of my current favorite artists, and it turned out to be more fun than I anticipated from an Archie book.

I picked up the second issue because I liked the first, and I liked it a lot more than the first, because it seemed that writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa was using the pretext of a zombie apocalypse to peel back the all-American veneer of Riverdale and examine a suburb with some dark secrets, kinda like the way David Lynch did in Twin Peaks.

We are now at the fourth issue. And this little book that I initially assumed would be a moderately dark and PG-13 violent horror-ish story for kids has gone completely and totally off the fucking rails. In a good way.

This Archie comic features, along with the ongoing zombie apocalypse, a family pet dying, incest and parricide. Let me repeat that: dead pet, brother / sister love, and parental murder. In Riverdale. From the Archie comics. In an Archie comic.

This makes Ed Brubaker’s Archie riff in Criminal: The Last of The Innocents, where the Archie analogue was a degenerate gambler and the Jughead analogue was a junkie, look damn near quaint.

Seven Feet Plus of Muscle And Mayhem: Sin City: A Dame To Kill For Trailer Released

Making a movie adaptation of a comic book is tricky business, because there’s always the question as to how slavish a remake you should go with. You go too far off the reservation, you wind up with a Muppet threatening to “chuck the duck” to Marty McFly’s mom, and you set back the cause of comics-based movies about a half a decade. You hew too close to the source material, and you might find yourself publicly arguing that you saved the original comics property from being ruined in adaptation… not six months after defending yourself from charges that you ruined another original comics property in adaptation.

But the one thing most people agree on is that there needs to be at least some modifications to bring a comic book to the screen. Most people, that is, except for Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller, whose Sin City movie in 2005 mirrored the original The Hard Goodbye, The Big Fat Kill and That Yellow Bastard series so closely that I was able to literally sit down in front of a bootleg DVD of the flick and follow along with the trade paperbacks, like I was listening to the world’s most expensive Power Record.

And yet somehow, it worked for that movie, which I liked enough to have owned in bootleg DVD, original release DVD, special edition DVD and Blu-Ray formats. And we are coming up fast on the release of the sequel, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, which not only looks to follow the same the-comic-is-the-storyboard format of the original flick, but features the return of Bruce Willis as Hartigan, Jessica Alba as Nancy, and Mickey Rourke as Violent Marv. And it also has Lady Gaga for some reason!

The movie drops on August 22nd, and with only five months to go, it means the first trailer should drop any time. By which I mean it has just come out. And you can check it out after the jump.

I, Too, Am The Night. And Sometimes A Chicken

Can we be honest here, you and me? No matter what anyone at Marvel says, be they editorial or creative, no one really gives a shit about Moon Knight.

Sure, the character looks cool, and a lot of people like drawing him, but nobody really knows what the hell to do with him. Over the years, he’s been a mercenary turned crimefighter, the reincarnation of some Egyptian god of vengeance, and a stone-crazy lunatic who hallucinates a close and personal relationship with Spider-Man and Wolverine like any common 11-year-old.

For a character who was designed to be the Marvel version of Batman, it seems like the character instead can be all things to all people… which can, sometimes, be good news. For example, a couple of years ago, Brian Michael Bendis did a really fun Moon Knight title a couple of years ago by examining the batshit crazy version of the character… and now we have a new version by Crisis On Infinite Midlives favorite writer Warren Ellis. Will Ellis have an insane Marc Spector? A hallucinating Steven Grant? A drunken Jake Lockley? My guess is that the answer is: yes.

But a new Moon Knight means new comics, and that means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But beyond Ellis’s new comic, there’s a reasonable amount of cool-looking books here. There’s the first issue of Cullen Bunn’s Magneto, the fourth issue of Afterlife With Archie, the first issue of Mark Millar’s Starlight, and a bunch of other cool stuff!

But things are the way things are, which means that before we can talk about them, we need time to read them. So until then…

..see you tomorrow, suckers!

Yes, Father – I Shall Become A Sprite: Batman: Arkham Knight Trailer Released

I’m not gonna lie to you: I haven’t played the third Batman XBox game, Batman: Arkham Origins yet.

I haven’t played it for a few reasons, the first of which being that the property’s license was taken away from Rocksteady Studios, who did Arkham Asylum and Arkham City and which were simply the two best superhero video games I’ve ever played. And being someone who loved playing Spider-Man 2 and being disgusted by Spider-Man 3 by a different group of people, I have learned to be… cautious about sequels by different development houses.

The second reason being that I bought a plasma TV last year and I am afraid that, if Batman: Arkham Origins happens to be good, and I play it the way I did Arkham City, I will wind up watching episodes of The Walking Dead through a burnt-in image of Batman gliding in the middle of my screen.

However, I have made the snap decision that not only will I risk playing video games on (and possibly destroying) the new TV, but I will be obtaining either an XBox One or a Playstation 4. Or at least I will be obtaining one by early October. Because not only is a new Batman game coming out, but it reportedly will be by Rocksteady Studios again.

And not only that, but a new trailer for the game has been released… and it looks awesome. And you can check it out after the jump.

Rob Liefeld Loses Shit For No Good Reason; Day Ends In “Y”: DiDio And Giffen NOT Doing Kamandi Reboot

Twitter is a strange and terrible beast at times. Sometimes it allows people to feel close to celebrities, luminaries and people one might otherwise be unable to interact with. Other times, it is a direct pipeline from your subconscious to the outside world, laying your darkest impulses and secret opinions bare to a cold and misunderstanding populace. This is why, every Saturday morning, the first thing I do after waking up on the couch where I passed out is check my own outgoing feed to see if it is safe for me to venture out my own front door, or if it is time for me to finally implement Project Miguel Sanchez. But I don’t want to make this about me.

Instead, lets start with a case of the first use of Twitter. Yesterday, DC Comics Co-Publisher Dan DiDio Tweeted this:

@MDesaad @nathanfairbairn @DocShaner Keith and I are about to come at you with an old cult favorite. Hope it meets you're expectations.

— dan didio (@dandidio1) March 2, 2014

At first glance, this is good news to me. Sure, DiDio isn’t the best comic writer in the world, but he and Giffen really captured lightning in a bottle with O.M.A.C. at the start of the New 52 reboot, so I am actually very interesting in seeing new work on an obscure-ish cult favorite to see if they can do it a second time.

Of course, a teaser like this begs for speculation, and Bleeding Cool, apparently based on the fact that DiDio’s and Giffen’s last work was on a Jack Kirby creation for DC, speculated today that the book would be a reboot of Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth. Okay, fine. Why not?

Because Rob Liefeld, that’s why not!

Spin-Offs And Spin-Outs: Skottie Young To Write And Draw Rocket Raccoon

It has been a ridiculously busy weekend here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office. Yesterday, I thought I’d get tricky and get my car inspected the first day of the month after last year’s inspection expired, so I could go 13 months without having to worry about it. Well, I drive a performance car and – funny story – it turns out that the reason they replace tires so often in auto races is that performance tires wear out faster than normal all-weather radials you see on regular cars. Which means that my tires, which only have 18,500 miles on them, don’t have enough tread to pass the inspection. So not only do I have a big, arrest-me-yellow “REJECTED” sticker (literally – the cops are supposed to arrest you if they see you driving with that sticker), but – another funny story – it turns out that my car needs two different-sized tires, and neither are of the size or type that one finds in a local purveyor of automobile tires.

So I have been frantically trying to find someone who can put tires on this fucking car sometime tomorrow, because while I admit that I bought my car because it was fun to drive – there are perks to being middle aged without kids – it is also something I use to drive to the job that pays for the fucking thing. So it has been a busy day on the phone, not to mention the time required by yesterday’s “story conference” with contributors Trebuchet and PixieStyx, which basically consisted of heavy drinking and alternating shouts of, “No, you should write more stuff!”

So while we are late to the party on this one, it has been announced that Skottie Young will be writing and drawing a Rocket Raccoon comic to be released in July, just in time for the Guardians of The Galaxy movie release on July 31st. And not only that, but a few pages of the book’s art have been released, which you can check out after the jump.

Eggs And Chickens: Image Publisher Eric Stephenson On Licensed Comics

ComicsPRO, a meeting of comic book direct market retailers (you know, like the owner of my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to understand that they know better than to attend ComicsPRO and thus leave the store undefended against my feeble burglary attempts) is occurring right now in Atlanta. And yesterday, Image Comics Publisher Eric Stephenson gave a speech to the attendees.

This speech is the kind of thing that keynote speakers give to make the owners feel proud, strong, and less likely to be plowed under by ComiXology the way your local record store, where they knew you were irritating and asked you to understand that vinyl sounds warmer than digital or get the fuck out, was decimated by iTunes. And it certainly did that, with references to how graphic novels are the one type of paper-printed book that is apparently in a growth mode, and how in a world seemingly enamored by comics, it is still the local comic store that is the best place to obtain a wide variety of books.

This is a good message. I like this message. I think I’ve established over the years that I don’t like trying to navigate comics even on a tablet, and that I like my paper comics, and that about the best part of my week is on Wednesday nights at the store, shooting the shit with the other regulars and the owner, who knows me by name and asks me not to threaten to fire feces in front of the paying clientele. We picked the location of the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office in no small part based on its proximity to the comic book store. That and its proximity to dive bars that accept questionable behavior, but that’s not the point.

The point is that Stephenson also used his speech to shit on Star Wars, Transformers and G.I.-Joe comics. Which has a lot of fans whipped into a screeching hate frenzy.

And I am kind of one of them

Comin’ At Ya… Again: DC To Use 3D Covers In September

Septembers have been a big deal for DC Comics ever since they staged the New 52 reboot in September, 2011. In 2012, DC released issues numbered zero for each of their titles. Last year, they published a lot of 23 and 24 “point” issues, focused on the main villains of each title… including a few that they just made up. I mean, seriously: Relic? That guy just got beat down like six months ago and I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup of old Charlton Comics villains or creepy circus clowns.

But last year, not only did we get a ton of villain comics, but we got a bunch of actually pretty sweet 3D lenticular covers for those books. Or at least some of us did. When word started going around that the available stock of 3D covers might not cover the orders, we told the owner of our local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to stop offering to show the paying customers if they want to check out 1D, that we were willing to accept copies with standard 2D covers if he ran short. He initially said that he didn’t think it would be an issue. And then we got about three of the 3D covers, and his heartfelt thanks for being willing to compromise.

So what does DC have in store for this coming September, the third anniversary of the big reboot?

Yeah, more 3D covers.

Unexpected Reunions

My co-Editor Amanda and I have a routine that we follow when we go to our local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to remember that the Missionary Position might indeed be “routine,” but less so if it happens next to the spinner rack of new trade paperbacks.

The routine is that, after we get our pulls and make small talk with the owner and the other Wednesday regulars, we step off to the side and show each other the week’s take of subscribed books. This might sound redundant, since one would think that we’re aware of what subscriptions we have and what new titles are coming out. However, our local comic store owner has a, shall we say, broad definition of what our subscriptions actually are. For example, I told him that I was interested in Pete Milligan’s and Mike Allred’s X-Force back in the early 2000s (before it became X-Statix), and to this day, more than a decade later, I still get any comic with the letter “X” and the word “Force” in the title.

So there is always a surprise or two when I go through my pulls, and this week I found myself saying, “Holy shit! Look at this!”

“What?” Amanda said, “It’s Beware The Batman. You told the guy you wanted Batman pulled for you back in 2001. You’re lucky he’s not tossing in shitty copies of 90s Detective Comics in with your pulls.”

“No, this is really surprising!”

“What is? The fact that there’s a comic version of a cartoon that Cartoon Network cancelled months ago? Remember that DC Comics is the company that is still dumping out Batman: Arkham City comics three years after the game came out. And when are you gonna tell him that you’re sick of getting those comics?”

“It’s not the title, it’s the writer. Mike W. Barr wrote this!”

“…I know that name.”

“Damn right you do! He’s the guy who wrote the Son of The Demon graphic novel that introduced Damian Wayne back in the 80s. He wrote Batman And The Outsiders, which was the first new Batman title in years when it debuted. He wrote Batman: Year Two!”

“Batman: Year Two? I don’t remember that one.”

“DC Comics doesn’t want you to,” I said. “The point is that this guy was huge back when we were in high school! I haven’t seen his name on a DC comic in years! God help me, this makes we want to read an adaptation of a cancelled children’s cartoon that was snuck into my pulls to dump otherwise unsellable inventory!”

All of this is a long way to go to explain that it is Wednesday, and that there are many new comics, which means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But there are plenty of other good comics in there beyond a new Mike W. Barr Batman (or at least Batman-ish) comic. We’ve got the first issue of James Robinson’s Fantastic Four, the latest Miracleman reprint, the second issue of Serenity: Leaves on The Wind, a new issue of The Walking Dead (prediction: Negan will say “fuck” and fail to die), and a bunch of other cool stuff!

But you know how these things work; before we can talk about any of them, we need time to read them. So while we do that (and dig through longboxes for my Batman: Year Two issues so Amanda knows that I’m not hallucinating)…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

The One Who Knocks: Godzilla Trailer Released

I honestly haven’t given too much of a damn about the upcoming Godzilla reboot coming out this summer, despite a misspent youth spending Saturday afternoons watching Creature Double Feature on Boston’s channel 56. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against giant monsters, but as a child of the 80s who saw The Day After, I knew full well that nuclear radiation wasn’t gonna create a giant lizard, unless you counted the throbbing tumor growing off its neck.

My enthusiasm didn’t grow for Godzilla even as I grew older. By the time I was a teenager, if I wanted to see Tokyo take it in the shitter, I had my VHS dub of Akira. And by the time I hit my 20s in the early 90s, well, the less said about Godzilla in the 90s, the better off we’re all gonna be.

So even when I saw the big off-site Godzilla exhibit with roars coming out of it that you could hear on 4th Avenue outside last year’s San Diego Comic-Con, I didn’t have enough interest to stand in line to see what the fuss was about. So yeah: long story short, I’ve paid so little attention to this movie that I didn’t even know who was in it. Until I saw the trailer that Warner Bros. released today to hype the movie.

And saw that Bryan Cranston is in the movie.

You can check the trailer out after the jump.