Parents And Children: Justice League #25, Justice League of America #10 and Cataclysm: Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #2 Quick Hit Reviews

Editor’s Note: It’s The End Of The World As We Know It, And I Feel Spoiled.

So between spending the week helping the new cat get used to a life where the searing agony of a shot to the nuts happens to stupid humans, and dealing with the first ice and snow falls of the winter (Three times in eight days! I love New England! And I am apparently alone in this affection, since clearly God has forsaken us!), so I am well behind in reading this week’s comics. You’d be surprised how hard it is to concentrate on a simple piece of graphic literature when the cat is yowling and my co-Editor Amanda is asking if I think it would help if she plunked his sack in a snowbank.

It’s hard being a parent, even to a lower beast who shits in a box, loves the taste of network cable, and thinks a laser pointer is the best thing ever despite not being a seven-year-old boy in 1977. So I found it interesting that the first three books I peeled off my stack this evening – Justice League #25, Justice League of America #10 and Cataclysm: Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #2 – all were about, on some level, the relationships between heroes (or anti-heroes) and their parents.

And all three books range from pretty good to excellent, but while I would normally review each of them in depth, well, it is Monday, and to compose my usual type of review for each comic would take me three hours and about 1,200 words to review, meaning there is no way in hell I could get them done before the new comics drop on Wednesday. So for a change, I’ll just write a couple of paragraphs about each, in ascending order of my opinion of them.

Assuming, of course, that this cat doesn’t decide to use my leg to sharpen his claws to remind me that I should be spending my money on scratching posts rather than silly things like neutering. Or comic books.

Descending Again Into Sin: Teaser Poster For Sin City: A Dame To Kill For Released

We are battening down for our first winter storm here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office. These preparations are not really rigorous – as a wiser man than me once said, all a man needs to weather a blizzard is beer and toilet paper – but we need to get to it while the getting’s good.

So in the meantime, let’s all reflect on a place where it never snows (although it always rains when you need to take a long walk to ponder the priest you just shot), which is a good thing because the cars are all convertibles and the babes are all wearing exactly enough to avoid arrest… although it doesn’t really matter because the cops are all dirty anyway.

I’m talking about Basin City, or Sin City to the locals. And Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez are taking us back there in the sequel to 2005’s Sin City, Sin City: A Dame To Kill For, which is due out on August 22, 2014. And Dimension Films has released a new teaser poster for the flick, which you can check out after the jump.

And Another One Down, And Another One Down: Animal Man, Batman: The Dark Knight Coming To A Close

It’s been a little more than two years since DC launched their New 52 reboot, and while DC still puts a big, “The New 52!” bullet on almost every cover of every book each month, there sure as hell aren’t 52 of those original release titles from September, 2011 still kicking around.

And now there will be two fewer. DC and book creators Jeff Lemire and Gregg Hurwitz have announced the cancellation of two original New 52 books, one surprising, one not (and yet still disappointing).

To wit: Animal Man and Batman: The Dark Knight will be concluding their runs in a few months, each with issue #29.

Forward Into The Past: Justice League 3000 #1 Review

People who know me know that I loves me some 80s-era Justice League International. In a lot of ways, it was the true breakout revelation coming out of Crisis On Infinite Earths: the premier super team of the DC Universe packed with 90 percent B-listers who often didn’t like each other, spent as much time bantering as they did fighting crime, and who seemed to spend about half their time wondering what they hell they were doing there (when they weren’t wondering how to turn a buck from being on the team).

It was groundbreaking, even though it shouldn’t have been – Keith Giffen’s, J. M. DeMatteis’s and Kevin Maguire’s Justice League came right after the horror and debacle of Justice League Detroit, which was also packed with B-listers, wanna-bes and spastics , but was missing little things like entertainment value, or characters you might give a shit about. Seriously: the only person who remotely cares about Vibe is Geoff Johns, and I am still reasonably convinced that he only brought the character back to settle a bar bet with Dan DiDio.

But eventually, all good things must pass. By the mid to late 90s, people began to tire of the humor of the Justice League International books (and to be honest, the balance between humor and action did seem to tilt firmly toward the Bwah-hah-ha-ha side of the scale), and DC rebooted the Justice League with JLA and Grant Morrison’s and Howard Porter’s vision of DC’s Big Five (plus Aquaman, who is only considered a DC A-lister when DiDio asks Johns, “Double or nothing?”).

And it has been with the Big Boys we have stayed for lo, these more than fifteen years. After all, DC launched their New 52 with a Justice League lineup that could have come straight from 1965 but for the inclusion of Cyborg and about 10,000 Jim Lee seams and fine detail lines. And a lineup like that leaves little room for Giffen’s and DeMatteis’s humor and infighting; after all, having Earth’s (Original) Mightiest Heroes sniping at each other as pussies and jackasses would be unseemly to those legendary character and to their owner’s parent company, who is struggling desperately to get a Justice League movie off the ground.

However, you should never count Giffen and DeMatteis out. Because with Justice League 3000, they have found a way to get some conflict and humor out of the Big Five by cloning them, dumping them 987 years into the future, and ripping all the history you think you know about the characters away… kinda like right after Crisis On Infinite Earths.

So the question is: can these guys catch lightning in a bottle twice? Particularly considering they’ve got Howard Porter, who helped revitalized the JLA after they left Justice League International, doing the art?

Well, kinda.

Sack Full of Surprises

It has been a hectic week here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office. Our new mascot, Parker The Kitten, has taken a lot of our attention this week after his elective surgery – the type of elective surgery of which no man likes to contemplate. So my co-editor Amanda and I were looking forward to a nice relaxing visit to our local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to not discuss elective surgery of the type no man likes to contemplate, to check out some new comics without having to think about Parker.

Yeah, that didn’t work out.

Yes, that is the latest volume of Darwyn Cooke’s adaptation of Richard Stark’s Parker novels, Slayground. Which, other than being the namesake of our new mascot, is some damn good comics based on some damn good books.

But more importantly than being good, that book is new. And that means that it, and these…

…mean the end of our broadcast day.

But there are some good-looking books in that pile. The one I’m most excited for is Justice League 3000 – a new Justice League book by 80s Justice League writers Keith Giffen and J. M. DeMatteis – but there’s also Justin Jordan’s new Dead Body Road, new issues of Justice League, Justice League of America and Batman, and a bunch of other cool stuff!

But you know how this works: before we can talk about any of them, we need time to examine Parker’s scrotum for leakage (God, this has been a weird week), and time to read them. So while we’re doing that…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Behold The Superman: Remastered Miracleman #1 Art Released

The first issue of Marvel’s reprint of Miracleman, drawn by Garry Leach and written by someone Marvel is referring to as “The Original Writer” in order to avoid litigation, but who we will refer to as “The Cranky Old Bastard,” will be released on January 15th, 2014, which, purely by coincidence, will be the same day that my original Eclipse Comics copy of Miracleman #1 plummets to a value where it will be less expensive to use as attic insulation than fiberglass.

While I have been excited for these reprints, it has only been in that they are precursors for Neil Gaiman’s and Mark Buckingham’s completion of their The Silver Age and The Dark Age stories that were scuttled in the 1990s when Eclipse went under. After all, I do own the complete original Eclipse run (including Miracleman: Apocrypha, Miracleman 3D and one or two of the trade paperback reprints of the original issues), so it’s not like I need the reprints for the story. And sure, Marvel has announced that they’re completely digitally remastering the artwork, but really: how much of a difference could that make?

A reasonable amount, it turns out. Marvel has released a few pages from that first issue to show off some of that remastered original Leach art… and it’s looking pretty good. And you can check them out after the jump.

Delayed And Limited Gratification: SDCC 2014 Pre-Registration Delayed Until Early 2014

Very little time here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office today. I am here alone with Parker, a cat who was neutered earlier today. And Parker is treating me in exactly the manner one would expect to be treated by a creature whose testicles I had removed by fiat. So I need to keep an eye on this little fella, who is currently only seemingly motivated by contempt towards me and the urge to lick his Hot Zone, in violation of doctor’s orders, to try and grok what terrible thing has happened to him.

However, there is one tidbit of San Diego Comic-Con news I’d like to report: pre-registration for next year’s convention for people who attended this year has been pushed back until after the new year.

Some Of The Usual Suspects: Judge Dredd #14 Review

A couple of months ago, recognizing a gap in my comics history education and having a 20 percent off coupon from Barnes & Noble burning a hole in my pocket, I started reading 2000AD’s Judge Dredd from the beginning. I picked up the first five volumes of Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files, and have been picking up volumes one at a time since, getting up to volume eight so far.

So while I am by no means an expert on Judge Dredd, I have soaked up enough to have formed the opinions that Ron Smith is my favorite artist on the title other than Brian Bolland so far, that Walter The Wobot is a fucking stupid character, that Dredd should have ventilated The Judge Child as soon as he found him, and that based on the apparently constant appearances of The Fatties, those British comics creators have a fairly solid handle on American culture.

So while we have had IDW’s adaptation of Judge Dredd by writer Duane Swierczynski in the house, it’s been Amanda who’s been picking it up. I haven’t been reading it, because I figured they would hew closer to the recent Dredd movie than the original comics, and that they would go along the lines of DC’s 1990s version of Judge Dredd, that took place in an entirely different continuity from the original 2000AD comics.

But I finally knucked and checked out Judge Dredd #14, and, well, I was half right. The IDW version of the book seems to take place in the 2000AD continuity, with at least a couple of familiar characters who won’t necessarily mean anything to anyone who hasn’t read some of the original books. And it gives us two stories that are pretty solid crime stories with sci-fi elements like body switching and psychic predictions that fit well into the overall Dredd universe.

It’s a good comic, but it’s only an okay Judge Dredd comic. Because it is missing something.

Dissecting Spiders: Commentary Track For The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Trailer

I know I’ve been writing a lot about The Amazing Spider-Man 2 this week, but that’s because there’s a lot to write about it. Between the poster teasing the appearance of Green Goblin to yesterday’s teaser trailer, it’s been a big week for the movie… and if I’m honest, after a year of watching Doc Ock pretend to to Spider-Man, it’s nice to see good ol’ Peter Parker again for a few minutes… although considering it’s a British guy pretending to be all-American, wheatcake-eating Peter Parker, you could argue that Otto is a more authentic imposter.

But anyway, yes, there is still more to talk about the movie. Total Film has put together a commentary track for yesterday’s trailer, including comments from director Marc Webb, Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone and Jamie Foxx. Which turns the three-minute trailer into a nine-minute video, but it does contain a few tidbits about the flick.

And you can check the video out after the jump. But if you don’t have time to watch the whole thing, fear not: I took a few bullet-point notes while watching it that I’ll include after the video.

Teasing Evil: The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Trailer Released

Jesus Christ, was that Doc Ock’s arms and The Vulture’s wings on the wall at Oscorp?

Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Anyway, last week the first big promotional poster for next summer’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was released, and it showed not only Rhino and Electro as antagonists, but possibly the Green Goblin. Well, today the first full official trailer for the movie dropped, and it looks like we should be getting at least some ol’ Gobby – or more accurately, probably young Gobby – and at least a teaser for two more villains for the inevitable The Amazing Spider-Man 3.

And that “the inevitable” isn’t weary sarcasm over a perceived future money grab, it’s literally inevitable – movies three and four have already been greenlit and have release dates… but once again, I’m getting ahead of myself. How about that trailer, huh?

Well, you can check it out after the jump.