Where’s Waldo: Wally West Returns In Flash Annual #3

I have been to two San Diego Comic-Cons and one Boston Comic Con since DC kicked off their New 52 reboot (and one just before, when most of DC’s plans for the characters after the reboot had become public), and there has been one question asked almost more than any other: “Excuse me, sir? You, the middle aged guy with the ponytail? Where the hell are your pants?”

But that is not the most asked question. It is vastly surpassed by, “If you see a woman in a Batgirl costume, can you give me a quick heads-up? And also pretend to be me, Dan DiDio?”

But even more asked than those everyday questions is: “What happened to Wally West, and are when we going to see him again?” It seems like you can’t swing a dead cat at SDCC without hitting a pissed-off Wally West fan, or being screamed at by outraged furries.

And the answer has always been something along the lines of, “Barry Allen is The Flash now, and that’s that.”  Despite the fact that Wally West was The Flash for just about as long as Barry Allen ever was, and that there were two generations of comic book fans who only knew Barry as Flash if they’d read Crisis On Infinite Earths, it has seemed for about two and a half years that Wally West had been consigned to the quarter bin of history.

Except, yeah: apparently he’s coming back in The Flash Annual #3.

Double Booked: Michael Douglas Cast As Hank Pym In Ant-Man

Okay, so we’ve known for a few weeks that Edgar Wright, who is directing the upcoming Marvel Studios version of Ant-Man, had cast Paul Rudd as, well, Ant-Man. But what we didn’t know what exactly which Ant-Man Rudd would be playing. After all, we’ve got the original Hank Pym (wife-beater with an inferiority and occasional persecution complex), we’ve got Scott Lang (sneak-thief with a daughter complex who died as a C-Lister so that Brian Michael Bendis could put Spider-Man on The Avengers), and Eric O’Grady (goofy, weaselly thief who uses the Ant-Man suit to get himself laid and eventually dies a self-sacrificing hero)… and given that Wright is a comedy director, O’Grady seemed like the most likely choice to me.

So yeah: turns out that years of reading and writing about comics doesn’t mean that I know a Goddamned thing. Because Marvel Studios has announced that Rudd will be playing Scott Lang.

And that Michael Douglas will be playing Hank Pym.

Wait, what?

Known Unknown Knowns: Marvel, Dan Slott Announce Changes To Spider-Man

Editor’s Note: Look, this entire article is loaded with spoilers about upcoming events related to Spider-Man and Marvel’s and Dan Slott’s plans for the character in the coming months. And while none of those events are particularly hard to guess, if you want to remain pure and unspoiled about things, you should probably move along. And try not to think about the most likely actions a corporation might take to maximize profit via cross-platform synergy. And if you don’t have to think about what “cross-platform synergy” means because it is a part of your job, you should move along before I call you something I can’t take back. 

I wrote not too long ago that, despite generally enjoying Dan Slott’s The Superior Spider-Man, that I was ready for the whole Doc Ock as Spider-Man storyline to start coming in for a landing. While it’s been an interesting storytelling experiment, in the sense that it explores a different and darker angle on the concept of “with great power comes great responsibility” that’s at the core of Spider-Man’s character, it’s grown a little long in the tooth for me, since I knew full Goddamned well that eventually, Peter Parker was gonna come back. When? Well, sometime before The Amazing Spider-Man 2 opens in theaters in May, at the very least… no matter what Dan Slott said about Peter Parker staying dead.

Well, Slott and Marvel have finally gone on record about their long-term plans for Peter Parker. And while the broad strokes might be pretty much what one would expect, they amount to pretty big spoilers, so if you want to know what’s up, you can find out after the jump.

Imminent Doom: Arrow Mid-Season Premiere Promo Released

Here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office, we literally have about five minutes to spare today – we’re running a lot of background operations to prepare for some Web site maintenance this weekend, plus it’s snowing again and we have an appointment with our Home Office property managers to test our walls to make sure that our neighbor’s unit, where the pipes burst on Saturday (the last time it went above freezing here), isn’t spewing black mold spores into this place. And while there was a time where I would have welcomed that concept, I then turned 12 years old, and learned that alien mold was less likely to give you superpowers than a little something I like to call emphysema.

So instead of my half-finished review of X-Factor #1, I will give you this extended promo for the mid-season premiere of Arrow, which has slowly turned into one of the best superhero television shows in recent memory (Sorry Smallville, but you should have taken the lesson from The Dukes of Hazzard and understood that when John Schnieder leaves? You cut your losses and pull the plug, Plus, you sucked).

The episode, which airs on The CW this coming Wednesday at 8 p.m. Eastern Time, features the debut of supervillain Shrapnel and, just based on his name, means that stuff should get blowed up real good. And you can check the promo out after the jump.

Meanwhile, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to visit the common wall, breathe deeply, and see if I get superpowers. You know, beyond the powers of a Red Lantern: spitting up blood while my heart stops.

I Will Show You Fear In A Handful Of Boogers: All-New Doop Coming In April

There are two constant givens that I can tell you about Marvel Comics at this particular moment in time: Peter Parker will somehow return as Spider-Man before The Amazing Spider-Man 2 comes out in theaters in May (yes, I’ve been saying that since Doc Ock took over, but clearly I’m not the only one thinking that), and that Doop is awesome.

Yes, Doop. That floating green spud that acted as camera man for X-Force and X-Statix during Peter Milligan’s and Mike Allred’s run on those books in the early 00s, and who has been a stalwart faculty member of the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning in Jason Aaron’s Wolverine And The X-Men. In fact, the Doop-centric 17th issue of that series was one of my favorite single issues of 2012. The little (literal) booger is just cool; an enigma wrapped in a riddle shrouded in mucous. It’s just an interesting character that can move from fringe comic relief to an international snot of mystery. While remaining funny as hell.

And for anyone who feels like me, there’s good news: Marvel has announced that Doop will be getting a star turn in All-New Doop, a miniseries by Milligan with art by David Lafuente with covers by Doop co-creator Mike Allred.

New Beginnings of The End All Over Again

Now this is a strange week of new comics. On one hand, we have the standard stack of new, expected books – your new Swamp Thing, your new The Walking Dead, and your new Dark Horse published and Brian Wood written Star Wars (which you should enjoy for the next 346 days while you can). And while these all look like good books, there is nothing unexpected or odd about them.

But on the other hand, there are a few books that are simultaneously new, and yet old. For example, my recent back issue cataloging shows that, over the past three or so years, I have more consecutive issues of Peter David’s X-Factor than almost any other comic. And yet even though that series ended a few months ago, this week we have a brand-new X-Factor #1 by David like that previous conclusion never happened. And while we are moving into Batman’s 75th anniversary (we determined this by counting months from the original Detective Comics #27 publication date this evening at my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to avoid doing math in the store whether I call myself Heisenberg or not), it seems odd to be able to buy a copy of Detective Comics #27 for only eight clams. And even odder to see Frank Miller’s art on the cover and to find myself saying, “Huh… how old is Frank? Yeah, remind me to quit drinking before then.”

However, while it seems that there is a strange mix of the normal new and the forced nostalgic this week, they are all new comics, and that means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But regardless of the weird new stuff that seems to have been here for years, there is some new stuff that also means the end. In particular a couple of new issues of Cataclysm, the possible end of Marvel’s Ultimate Universe, as well as one of the final issues of Hurwitz’s Batman: The Dark Knight. Plus a bunch of other cool stuff!

But you know the drill: before we can talk about any of them, we need time to read them. So…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Who Watches The Watcher? Anyone, Because He Is Dead: Marvel Announces Original Sin by Jason Aaron and Mike Deodato, Jr.

We are well and truly into a new year, which is a downer on a few fronts. All the holiday vacation time is burned away, which means we will be forced to go to work in this shitty weather (it is currently eight balmy degrees outside the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office, and that’s degrees Fahrenheit, not those wussy degrees Centigrade that you whimpering pleaders overseas use to try to convince people you’re not wandering blithely through simple sweater weather). And further, it means that the Big Two are gonna start announcing their big summer crossover events.

And, since we have been publishing over the last two and a half years or so, this has not necessarily been great news. Just in the last year, we have been hyped for, and then had to all but suffer through, Age of Ultron and Infinity from Marvel and The Trinity War and Forever Evil from DC, and they have not particularly grabbed us when they weren’t busy actively irritating us with arbitrary epic plots that often seemed more interested in involving everyone in the universe than making it clear why we should give a fuck about anyone involved (With God as my witness, I began pulling for Thanos about 2/3rds of the way through Infinity because at least I knew what he was trying to accomplish and why).

So I have been waiting without any particular enthusiasm to start hearing announcements about the upcoming big events that will change everything… so imagine my surprise when I heard about Marvel’s first big plans for 2014, and actually got a little excited, in spite of myself. Because while yes, the upcoming Original Sin four-month event involves a huge cast and some cosmic elements, at its heart, it’s a simple murder mystery.

A simple murder mystery written by Jason Aaron, who has been writing some of the most fun and character-driven books at Marvel over the last couple of years, and drawn by Mike Deodato, Jr., who is one of my favorite artists working for Marvel today.

Working With Vertigo: All-Star Western #26 Review

Editor’s Note: None a’ this is real. It is a twisted spoiler.

I have always had a soft spot for westerns, which is why I’ve always read Jimmy Palmiotti’s and Justin Gray’s Jonah Hex stories. Back in the pre New 52 days, Jonah Hex was a solid, straight-ahead western in the Sergio Leone vein, with real scumbag villains out on the frontier and plenty of gunfire to keep things interesting. There were no supervillains, monsters or alien invaders, and dammit, I liked it that way.

Because I always thought that the worst thing that ever happened to the character was when, back in the 80s, they took away Hex’s Colt, replaced it with a laser pistol, and had him fight space aliens or some Goddamned thing. As a guy who likes westerns, it was an abominable idea on its face, like dropping The Man With No Name onto the bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise. It might sound like a good idea, but it’s all fun and games until poor Mr. Sulu is left confusedly looking back and forth from his fencing foil to the giant hole in his chest.

So I should be going apeshit nuts over the recent direction of All-Star Western, which has dropped Hex into the modern DC Universe. And I should be going particularly apeshit over All-Star Western #26, which gives us Jonah Hex, relentless bounty hunter and former Confederate soldier, interacting with Swamp Thing, alien plant life, The House of Mystery and a superhero just to round out the trifecta (Quadrifecta? I don’t know a lot about horse racing. I’m not allowed back at the racetrack since I asked the nice lady at the betting window for a quart of fresh glue).

I should be going apeshit. But Goddamn if this issue isn’t one hell of a lot of fun.

You’re Far Too Trusting: Marvel Reclaiming Star Wars Comics License From Dark Horse In 2015

Remember a little more than a year ago, when The Walt Disney Company bought the license to Star Wars from George Lucas? Who had owned the rights since its creation as a concept in 1974 through 2012, and had spent years made sure that the people creating stories in that universe were of the finest possible calibre? You know, except when he forgot to vet that rotten hack who wrote and directed Episodes 1 through 3, which nearly steered the entire franchise into a ditch? Yeah, Lucas should’ve eviscerated that rotten bastard… but I digress.

Anyway. At the time, there was a lot of speculation that Disney would take the Star Wars comic book publishing license away from Dark Horse Comics (who has held the license since the very early 1990s, when they published Dark Empire and when the only people who gave a shit about Star Wars were unfuckable members of Generation X – Hi, Kevin Smith and me in college!) and return it to Marvel Comics, who had the original license back in 1977 and held it until the late 1980s, when it was no longer cool or needed to save the company when it was in danger of going down the shitter in 1976.

However, that was all speculation, and year-old speculation at that. And it would be laughable to revisit that speculation if it hadn’t turned out to be completely and utterly true: Marvel will be the sole comic book publisher of Star Wars as of 2015.

You Are Entering A Dimension, Not Of Sight And… Buffering…: The Twilight Zone #1 Review

I am not the world’s biggest fan of The Twilight Zone. I recognize that that is a hell of a thing to say for a self-avowed sci-fi fan on the day after SyFy’s (God, remember when it was called The SciFi Channel? And they showed science fiction programming as opposed to wrestling specials and movies about animals mixed with monsters and / or weather events?) two-day marathon of the show, but that’s just the way it is.

I understand the show’s contribution to televised science fiction and horror, but the shows tended to follow a formula: there’s someone with some kind of internal flaw, be it venial (wants more time to read) or mortal (the vanity to get surgery to be as attractive as everyone else). Something happens that seems to give them what they want, and then there’s a twist at the end that makes them pay for their sins. Except for when there are cookbooks and gremlins on the wing, but for a large part, that description covers the show’s formula. It’s a morality play in one act, and it’s a formula that’s never really hooked me in.

And writer J. Michael Straczynski also understands the formula… for the most part. In his first issue of The Twilight Zone series from Dynamite Comics, Straczynski gives us a deeply flawed “protagonist,” who has a powerful wish that is seemingly answered with a mild twist. But Straczynski forgets one part of the formula. And it might not seem like the most important part, but by ignoring it, it really took the experience down a notch for me.