All About The Dixon: Robert Kirkman On Daryl In The Comics

One of the most interesting, and occasionally infuriating, things about the AMC television version of The Walking Dead is how it had followed certain plot arcs from the original comic book, while in others it wildly deviates from those books. For example, Rick’s crew met The Governor in the original comics, but he sure as hell didn’t have a second act after Michonne got through with him (nor a second kidney, and the less said about his testicles, the better), and unlike in the comics, Andrea is still wandering about picking off bad guys almost at will.

Those deviations started early in the first season of the show – in the comic, if Rick ever visited the Center For Disease Control, it was to get a nasty rash he crossed back over the Mexican border with looked at – and at the time, many of us just figured that someone made a conscious decision to make changes over a period of time. Maybe because of something original showrunner Frank Darabont decided, or because of the whim of some focus group-armed network suit.

Well, it turns out, based on a panel that The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman have at this past weekend’s Arizona Comic Con, the decision did come from a guy in a suit. That suit being mostly denim and leather. And that guy being Daryl Dixon.

No Laundry On The TARDIS: Capaldi’s Doctor Who Costume Revealed

The BBC is trying like hell to keep fan interest in Doctor Who up now that the 50th Anniversary festivities are over, as if for some reason the idea of a brand new Doctor portrayed by an actor with a completely different look and style wasn’t enough to keep people intrigued. But then again, maybe they’ve got a point; after all, on some level the franchise has reached its current level of popularity partially on the back of a quirky pretty boy who’s made two companions and a large percentage of the viewing audience all twitchy in the shorts for him, so I imagine it takes a certain leap of faith to hand everything over to a late middle-aged dude best known for creative profanity.

Part of the mystery has been exactly what Capaldi’s new Doctor will be wearing. Many of the Doctors have distinctive costume elements – Tom Baker’s scarf, Matt Smith’s bowtie, Christopher Eccleston’s big, swinging dick (Yeah, Eccleston’s my Doctor. What’s your point?) – that define the character, since apparently “Time And Relative Dimension Through Space” leaves no room for a fucking washing machine or a closet, or the ability to groan itself into existence anywhere near an Urban Outfitters.

Well, that part of the mystery is over, as the BBC revealed Capaldi’s Doctor costume today. So you might be asking: what’s the gimmick? Purple socks? A pocket watch? Hipster douchebag fedora?

Nah. It’s dressing mostly like a fucking adult.

You Broke My Heart: Joss Whedon Talks Avengers 2 Inspiration

There’s been a lot of news about Edgar Wright’s Ant-Man recently (including the recent revelation that, in the face of the delay of Batman Vs. Superman until 2016, Ant-Man’s release has been moved up two weeks to take Batman Vs. Superman’s original July 17, 2015 date), to the point where it might be easy to forget that, about two months before that movie’s release, we’ll be getting Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Which means that Age of Ultron is firmly into pre-production, and director Joss Whedon is beginning to talk about what we can expect in the movie. Not in the sense of any actual spoiled plot points or anything – Whedon is a professional, after all, and even rank amateurs know better than to say something that would set Kevin Feige gnawing on their doorknobs and hissing for revenge – but more in the sense of story and plot structure and inspiration.

But Whedon, being no fool, explained his general inspirations to a French publication, probably knowing that they would roll over and surrender the instant Avi Arad hurled himself out of a tree at them, screeching like a rabid were-wombat.

Which, honestly, would be overkill in this case. Because Whedon’s great revelation is that he’s modeling Avengers: Age of Ultron after another classic sequel.

No, not The Empire Strikes Back; Whedon hates that (maybe there’s a little rank amateur still left in the man). I’m talking The Godfather: Part 2.

I Want To Believe Who You’re Going To Call: The X-Files / Ghostbusters: Conspiracy #1 Review

On Wednesday I mentioned that I was as sick as an animal, and that under the influence of three types of antihistamine and some form of Polish pig virus, the new The X-Files / Ghostbusters: Conspiracy crossover sounded like just about my level of fun given my reduced cognitive capacity.

On paper, this kind of crossover is a gimme for big fun. You’ve got Scully the skeptic and Mulder the believer in the supernatural hiding in the shadows, both serious as a bowel prolapse on taco night, confronted face-to-face with big technicolor slime-spitting ghosts and four guys who treat the whole thing like an irritating plumbing problem with a wicked, ironic sense of humor about the experience. Sure, the thing could never be canon – if Mulder and Scully really met Dr. Venkman and company, they’d be able to wave 1080p scan video in Skinner’s face every time he tried to rein him in… or more likely, Smoking Man would have Peter, Ray, Winston and Egon quietly shot in the back of the head in a New York alleyway.

Well, The X-Files / Ghostbusters: Conspiracy #1 doesn’t give us that meeting. It gives us The Lone Gunmen meeting the Ghostbusters – which is a smart way to go in its own way, as it puts comic relief alongside just plain comedy – as the Gunmen investigate the guys as probably frauds and charlatans. And while the Gunmen wind up spending most of the issue as bystanders – what’s Frohike gonna do against a Class Five Full-Roaming Vapor, grump it into submission? – there’s still a reasonable amount of fun to be had in this one-and-done…

Except this issue is part of a great, IDW-wide crossover. Which means a there’s some exposition here that will only matter to you if you intend to follow the remainder of Conspiracy. And considering the next part crosses over with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, well, your mileage may vary.

Cards Against Humanity-Wamanity: Doctor Who Cards Against Humanity

We are still animal sick here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office. We are on so many antihistamines, if our doctor were to centrifuge our blood, he would fondly touch his lab equipment and then die while Badfinger’s Baby Blue played in the background. I personally verbally communicate via sneezing now, and once I can figure out how to tag the obvious “you” at the end of my currently-mastered explosively sneezed, “Fuck!”, I can let the rest of my language mastery go the way of the Pog.

So we have whiled away the past 24 or so hours by playing rousing games of the bafflingly entertaining party game Cards Against Humanity, which is like a game of Trivial Pursuit as played by the attendees of The Cereal Convention in volume two of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. It is one of our favorite games, although when it comes to the geek front, it is a little anemic.

Or at least, it used to be. Since Cards Against Humanity is published under a Creative Commons license, anyone can, under the right circumstances, create their own cards for the game. And Crisis On Infinite Midlives contributor Lance Manion has pointed out to us that an improv comedy outfit called Conventional Improv has come up with a card set based on Doctor Who. And some of those cards are pretty solid and funny.

Not, you know, “Bigger, blacker cocks” funny, but very, very decent. And you can check a few of them out after the jump.

Touch Me I’m Sick

Guatemalan Snot Plague has descended upon the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office. I consider this to be my own fault. I went out of my way to obtain a flu vaccine at the beginning of autumn, and feeling somewhat protected from the ravages of winter illness, I spent weeks licking doorknobs after stealthily finishing the beers of strangers in bars. It seemed like a good idea while I was… actually, no it didn’t. I feel shame. Terrible aching, chills and shame. But that’s not the point.

The point is that, between the Plague and having to wander out into yet another Polar Vortex-fuelled frigid night in Boston, neither Amanda nor I have the energy to do much more than lean back on the couch with a stack of new comics, without thinking about any of them in much more depth than it takes to mutter, “It’s fun to watch dudes get kicked. Kicked right in the face. Hee.”

But that stack is one of new comics, which means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But there are some cool looking books in there with which to while away the invasion of my precious bodily fluids by Godless commie bugs who want to seize the means of mucous production. There’s the first issue of All-New Invaders by James Robinson (who has been known to breathe new life into Golden Age-era heroes for DC), a new issue of Batman, a new Walking Dead, and even an X-Files crossover with Ghostbusters by IDW, which is a no-brainer for a cool crossover that I can’t believe I never thought of as far as I’m concerned and sounds like about the right level of pure fun for a night when my brain would like to vacation away the sea of goop in which it is currently wallowing.

But you know how this works: before we can talk about any of them, we need to stop wishing for the sweet release of death and start reading them. So assuming we don’t die…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Super: EGOs #1 Review

I’ve been having a hell of a time trying to figure out how to start a review of EGOs, the new creator-owned comic by Stuart Moore and Gus Storms, because it’s hard to figure out how to even describe the thing.

It has a lot of science fiction elements, with the intimation that a lot of world building of a galaxy with years of history, including wars, colonization, disasters and technology all considered… but that’s not quite it. It also has superheroes, including an old superhero team, a new one, and a few fringe players who might wind up being heroes, villains, spoilers, or even disinterested observers… but it isn’t really a superhero story. There are signs of a future dystopian kinda tale, with intimations of friction between different parts of the galaxy, spoiled worlds and a main government that might just not give a damn about any of its subjects… but that doesn’t really make the nut, either.

So clearly there’s a hell of a lot going on in EGOs #1, and it might sound like a book that’s trying hard to figure out an identity in a short 24 pages, running the risk of being a mish-mash. Like when Grant Morrison gets some of the good mescaline, or when Alan Moore tries to carry on a conversation longer than three minutes that doesn’t reference his own genius. But that’s really not the case. Instead, it’s a story about a few deeply flawed characters with questionable motivations and backstories in a universe that is filled in enough to give the whole thing a feeling of being a part of a long-running epic sci-fi space opera.

This isn’t the simplest, most forgiving read of the week, but it’s pretty damn intriguing.

Faster Than A Speeding Coma: Batman Vs. Superman Delayed Until 2016

Warner Bros. has been pinning a lot of hopes on the upcoming Batman Vs. Superman movie (which won’t be it’s real name. They’re still working on the actual title. If I had to guess? Given how director Zack Snyder used a Frank Miller quote to announce the movie at last year’s San Diego Comic-Con, I’m putting my money on: “Man of Steel: The Dark Knight Returns.” Jesus, I’ve already lost the plot here) being a big enough event movie to take a dent of of Marvel Studios and its billion or so dollar stranglehold on superhero movies. And with the announcement that not only has Snyder cast Batman, but a Wonder Woman (with maybe another one or two heroes to be thrown in for good measure), people were getting pretty excited for the movie’s July 17, 2015 release date.

Yeah, except it’s not coming out on that day. It’s been mildly delayed.

For about a year.

The Beginning Of The End: The Superior Spider-Man #25 Review

Editor’s Note: Ah, but my dear Spider-Woman… I so want to spoil you. And I can no longer think of a reason not to.

Now we’re getting somewhere.

I’ve been pretty vocal recently that, while I’m generally enjoying Dan Slott’s tale of Doc Ock as Spider-Man in The Superior Spider-Man, it’s felt like it’s been dragging along for a while to me. With the foregone conclusion that Peter Parker would eventually be returning as Spider-Man – a foregone conclusion that has been bourne out by recent news (spoilers at that link, by the way) – I had passed the point where I was fully engaged in seeing how Doc Ock would operate as Spider-Man and had reached the point where I wanted to see how things turned out to put Peter back into the suit. Picture it like sex: foreplay is fun and all, but as a wise man once said, eventually you gotta go into the trenches and bump uglies. So to speak.

Well, we are now on the 25th issue of The Superior Spider-Man – an impressive feat, considering the first issue was only a year ago – and now we’ve got some solid rising action moving toward a denouement of this whole Otto situation. Writers Dan Slott and Christos Gage take a solid step in this issue toward yanking the rug out from under Otto, showing cracks in his public image, suspicion from Spider-Man’s allies, and some real opposition from someone who can actually get to the bottom of this whole Ock / Spider-Man situation.

After months of foreplay, characters are finally starting to bump Editor’s Note: Rob, this metaphor is a dicey pile of shit. Move along. -Amanda

Ahem. Anyway.

A Dream Of Snow And Fireballs And Bourbon

Once upon a time, early in the Year of Our Lord 2001, back when a man could get on an airplane with a Zippo lighter, Marvel Comics was just coming off of bankruptcy, and the only geek and comic subculture crossover into the mainstream happened in niche rooms of progressive Reno brothels, this particular longtime comics stalwart decided it was time to catch up on Alan Moore’s Miracleman.

At that time, it was easier said than done. To accomplish it, I had to visit five different new comic stores – including the store that would eventually become my local comic store, where they now know me by name, but at the time asked me if I understood that licking the back issues would make the Overstreet guide price look like a wino’s desperate compromise – and participate in a drunken Friday night eBay auction (“Click to overbid best current bid by $.01 dollars to a maximum bid of $43,000,000 dollars“) to make it happen.

The process took months, but eventually I wound up with every issue of Eclipse Comics’ Miracleman,, plus all three issues of Miracleman: Apocrypha, and Miracleman 3D, along with the second trade paperback: The Red King Syndrome. That idle decision to real all of Miracleman took about a year and cost me hundreds and hundreds of dollars.

But that was a decision made in 2001. It is now 2014. And if you want to catch up with Miracleman? You just go to my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to remember that I’m a sucker.

Which is to say that Alan Moore’s Miracleman is back in print for the first time in about 20 years, and that this…

…means the end of out broadcast day.

And yes, Miracleman #1 is the big take of the week. But there’s also a new issue of Gravel by Mike Wolper, a new Ed Brubaker / Steve Epting Velvet, the latest Dan Slott The Superior Spider-Man, and a bunch of other cool stuff!

But before we can even consider talking about any of them, we need time to read them. So while I go through the restored Miracleman #1 to see if someone has made it less obvious that some other person whited-out “Marvelman” and hand-wrote “Miracleman” in all the word balloons…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!