Family Reunion: The Sandman Overture #1 Review

Editor’s Note: Since my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me why anyone would consider a digital publication of any kind when he’s sure he probably has a slightly used yet still perfectly good Juggs Magazine he could sell me floating around somewhere, was sold out of The Sandman Overture #1 when we visited yesterday, this review is based on the digital version available on Comixology and read on a seven-inch Android tablet.

So. A prequel to a beloved genre series that is widely considered to be a classic, released about 16 or so years after the original series ended. That almost always ends well.

Seriously: I’ve read through The Sandman Overture, written by Neil Gaiman with art by J. H. Williams III and purported to tell the story of what Morpheus was up to just before that dink Roderick Burgess trapped him in a snow globe, and I’m not sure what I think about it. Because it’s a comic book that’s almost impossible to consider on its own merits… not that that’s a bad thing. After all, if The Phantom Menace hadn’t been tagged with the words Star Wars, it would be best remembered as a Twitter hashtag whenever it aired on the SyFy Channel after Sharknado.

But if you take The Sandman Overture #1 as part of the epic tale of Sandman, that means that you’re not only tacking onto a mythology that took 16 or so years for Gaiman to write, but one that spans thousands of years and just about the entire universe. Gaiman took the long view with Sandman, and there’s no reason to think he’s not doing the same with this miniseries.

But the trouble is that we don’t have the entire miniseries yet. We just have this one issue. And while the sum of the parts might wind up being spectacular, I just can’t say that about this single issue. What we have here is, well, a prequel. And one that shows some disturbing signs of succumbing to the same pitfall that all-too-many prequels to genre properties have fallen over the years.

Fan service.

Another Series To Follow

And with that, we are staring down the barrel of another Wednesday of failure. Between heavy commitments in the morning and at the day jobs for Amanda and myself, we barely had time to accomplish the stuff that pays the bills, let alone write that last-minute review of last week’s Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #28 (Short answer: it was good). Combine that with the fact that we live in Boston, and not only are the Red Sox are back at Fenway hoping to wrap up the World Series tonight, but President Obama is in town to distract us from the problems with the health care Web site (of course, he came to the wrong place: we’ve had one for years, so we’re good, yo), and we were barely able to get the cars through the crippling traffic in time to get to my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to remember that the closing time on the door isn’t just a fucking suggestion.

And combine all those factors with the fact that the World Series has been going on for a week now, meaning that we have spent five of those days grappling with the terminal exhaustion that only comes on the back side of three-plus hour games, and we’re lucky either one of us can write our own names, let alone any kind of in-depth comic book news or reviews. I mean Jesus, DC Comics just announced that they’re moving their entire operation from New York to Burbank, California, and the best analysis I’ve been able to muster up is, “Um, that’s wicked far away.”

And alas, the Red Sox game starts in just a few minutes, which means my only comic book related thoughts will be my suspicion that David Ortiz might have superpowers. However, the big takeaway from this tale of missed deadlines is that we made it to the comic store, which means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But even with the distractions of October baseball at Fenway Park, that’s a good haul of comics. We have a bunch of DC Comics annuals, the first issue of Andy Kubert’s Damian: Son of Batman (But I watched him die!), the Point One introduction to the Ultimate Universe (ending?) crossover Cataclysm, and, most anticipated – the new issue of Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples! Plus there’s a bunch of other cool stuff!

But before we can talk about any of them, we need to watch the Sox win the World Series (please God, I need to sleep!). So until then…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Days of Future Aging: X-Men: Days of Future Past Trailer Released

A lot of the geek excitement for movies in the next year is focused on Marvel Studios, what with Thor: The Dark World opening next weekend, Captain America: The Winter Soldier dropping in April, 2014, and Guardians of The Galaxy (and if you’re not excited for that one, go see director James Gunn’s earlier flicks Slither and Super and tell me how you feel then) coming out next summer.

And once upon a time, that slate in and of itself would be enough to blow the heart of any self-respecting comics fan right out the back of his or her underpants. But we live in a charmed time, where we have even more comic flicks on the way, like The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and X-Men: Days of Future Past, which features the return of Bryan Singer, the director of X-Men and X-Men: United, the two films that started the whole superhero movie renaissance.

Twentieth Century Fox brough some footage from the film to this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, but none of it has made it to the general public… until today, when the first official trailer from the movie was released. And you can check it out right after the jump.

Marvel’s Mighty Avengers Mystery Spoiled By Spoiling Jerks At Marvel: Identity of Spider Hero Revealed

Editor’s Note: This story contains spoilers for upcoming issues of Mighty Avengers. So if you’re digging the mysteries that were presented in the first issue last month, please feel free to pretend that we are still upgrading our Web server, and that I am still shrieking impotently at our Web caching software, which apparently only accepts upgrading when it is convinced that you are who you say you are, and that game four of the World Series is safely past the third inning.

We really enjoyed the first issue of Mighty Avengers, written by Al Ewing with art by Greg Land. It was, unlike many recent Avengers titles, a more human, character-based story, with an interesting mystery at the code: who is the “muscular” and “intense” dude who has a history with Monica Rambeau and wears, at least for now, a rotten “Spider Hero” costume into battle?

There was a lot of speculation that it might turn out to be Miles Morales behind that mask, giving that character a place to go if the upcoming Ultimate Universe Cataclysm event does, as it appears it will, fuck all that Universe’s holes and leave it for dead. But regardless, it was meant to be a fun little guessing game for a few months before Ewing pulled back the curtain sometime in the next few issues.

Yeah, I said that it was “meant to” be a mystery. Past tense. Because Marvel went and gave the whole thing away.

Another Editor’s Note: Spoilers will follow after the jump. Last chance to bail, turn on the TV and watch the Red Sox show St. Louis how we do things in Boston…

Cut The Green Wire With Yellow Stripes? Or The Yellow Wire With Green Stripes?

We are in the process of performing a series of pretty significant Web site upgrades today, which will take a while to complete. So if you see anything weird happening, please be patient; we’re working on it.

We will return to our regularly scheduled programming as soon as possible.

Throw Your Hat At Her And Die: Velvet #1 Review

When reading the first issue of Velvet, the new spy comic written by Ed Brubaker and drawn by Steve Epting, you can almost hear the creators saying, “You know what would be fucking awesome? If Miss Moneypenny was actually the baddest motherfucker who ever walked in or out of M’s office. Now pass that thing over here before it goes out, willya?”

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Velvet is a spy comic set back in 1973, when the Cold War was running full blast, men were men, women were secretaries, and spies were dapper motherfuckers with laser wristwatches and cars that turned into submarines.

Which is, of course, utter bullshit. Everybody knows that there’s no such thing as James Bond – hell, even James Bond knows it, based on the relatively gadgetless Daniel Craig version we’ve had for the past few years. At this point, we can be pretty confident that real spies are either faceless geeks sucking up Internet traffic (Hi, NSA!) or large-jugged Russians with crappy Facebook cover identities. And besides: real spies work for real governments, which means hierarchy, bureaucracy and internal politics… and they know that you never fuck around with sharks with frikkin’ lasers when you can just blow your enemy’s head off with a shotgun.

So James Bond sure is fun, but he doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense in the real world if you stop to think about it longer that a minute or two. And Ed Brubaker clearly has stopped to think about it, because Velvet takes the world of James Bond, plugs it somewhat realistically into the real world of 1973, and turns things on their head by making Moneypenny the one that you really need to be concerned about.

And it gives us a meaty mystery: who killed X-14… and just who the hell is Velvet Templeton?

Batman Down: Cartoon Network Puts Beware The Batman On Hiatus

God knows that we have had our issues with some of the decisions that have come from the DC Nation partnership between DC Comics and Cartoon Network – we still bemoan the cancellation of Young Justice and Green Lantern: The Animated Series, and when it comes to replacing one of those shows with Teen Titans Go!, well, you know how we feel about that decision.

One bright spot to come out of last year’s cancellation turmoil, when both Young Justice and Green Lantern: The Animated Series were initially pulled from Cartoon Network’s schedule without notice toward the end of 2011 before running off their inventory of both shows, was the launch of Beware The Batman, the latest Batman animated show from Warner Bros. And while the new show really couldn’t hold a candle to the Bruce Timm / Paul Dini Batman: The Animated Series from the 90s, it’s certainly been entertaining enough to make a spot on our TiVo, and to catch at least half of the DC Nation shorts on a weekly basis. We try to catch the other shorts online, since there isn’t a force on Earth, including the marijuana that apparently allows most people to sit through it.

Well, that is we had Beware The Batman. Because in a case of history repeating itself, Cartoon Network has, without prior notice, pulled the show from their schedule with episodes still in reserve.

So… what the fuck, Cartoon Network?

Good Times Never Seemed So Good

My sincere apologies, since I haven’t resorted to one of these kinds of posts for a while on a Wednesday night, but as you may or may not know, Crisis On Infinite Midlives is based in Boston. And the Boston Red Sox will be taking the field at Fenway Park in literally minutes to play in game one of the World Series. And being native Bostonians, and because being a comic book geek does not necessarily preclude being a baseball fan, that means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But there’s quite a take to dig into and review in the coming days – you know, provided that the inevitably late-running ballgames and the inevitable extra beers that that will mean don’t land us in the hospital by the end of the week.

We’ve got the first issue of former Captain America creators Ed Brubaker’s and Steve Epting’s spy comic Velvet, a new issue of Matt Fraction’s Sex Criminals and Satellite Sam, a metric buttload of new chapters of Marvel’s Infinity crossover and DC’s Forever Evil event, plus a ton of other cool stuff!

But you know how this works: before we can review them, we need time to read them… and with the first pitch imminent, that won’t be until later. So until the Sox take game one…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Eat The Rich: The Extinction Parade #3 Review

Editor’s Note: One last review of last week’s comics before the comic store opens…

There is an entire generation of Twilight fans who, after eight years of mooning over broody prettyboys who sparkle in the sunlight and chuck around pledges of eternal love like they’re trying to bubble to the top of a Ponzi Scheme based on the hard fucking of teenage girls, should be kneecapped and forced to read the third issue of The Extinction Parade, written by Max Brooks and drawn by Raulo Caceres.

There is also an entire generation of Keeping Up With The Kardashians fans who, after six years of squealing over the adventures of a yammering pack of B-grade starfucking sisters and their step-something who started life as an Olympic champion and is now visually indistinguishable from a C-List Batman villain, should be kneecapped and forced to read the third issue of The Extinction Parade.

This is because, even though the hook to get people on board with The Extinction Parade was that it was another angle on a zombie apocalypse by the guy who wrote the novel World War Z, it is instead really about vampires, who by dint of their eternal lives, are also the idle rich. And since Brooks is, as I am, a little too old to be a fan of either Twilight or the Kardashians, that means that he knows that vampires are irredeemable and detestable dicks.

The only downside is that this comic series places the vampires still in the Kardashians-on-the-news, Twilight’s-ruining-Comic-Con era of the zombie apocalypse. But the cracks in their perfect little lives are starting to show… and it is sweet.

Giant Naked Guy: Avengers Assemble #20 Review

Avengers Assemble #20 does a lot in 20 pages. First of all, it’s a rare one-and-done, which is refreshing in the middle of the Infinity event that has been going on for a couple of months but which sometimes makes me feel like we have always been at war with The Builders. Second, it gives a spotlight to Wonder Man, Wasp and Scarlet Witch, who have been inveterate second stringers recently (when one character has become a pacifist and another who just about a  year ago was valiantly fighting to remain dead. Third, it gives us a taste of what we can expect from the Great Terrigen Mist Release of 2013 (the fact that what we can expect is a bunch of people with new superpowers all reliving the first season of Heroes is beside the point). And finally, it wraps all of this in a relatable story about side characters who were damaged long before they were affected by the Terrigen Mist.

But this is not a perfect story. In order to fit everything into a single issue, writer Al Ewing has Wasp make a couple of quick and significant leaps in logic to get the story from Point A to Point B. Further, in order to balance Wonder Man’s out-front and obvious pacifism, Ewing contrasts it with a child gleefully stomping bad guys to death.

So there’s a lot here, some of which works and some of which doesn’t. But is does it work as a coherent whole?