Red-Headed Stepchild: The Star Wars #1 Review

Reading Dark Horse Comics’ The Star Wars, the adaptation of George Lucas’s first draft of the Star Wars screenplay from back in 1974, is, if nothing else, a strange experience.

And it is strange on a couple of levels; first, there’s the simple cognitive dissonance that occurs seeing an old dude with a white beard named Luke Skywalker, a dude with a greasy Guy Gardner haircut named Darth Vader, and small two-man fighter ships called Star Destroyers. Second, it is strange because this comic is coming out about 18 years into the Internet age, and any movie fan worth a damn has already long ago downloaded one of the early drafts of the Star Wars script from Drew’s Script-O-Rama (at one time or another, the first four drafts were out there for the taking), and already knows at least some of what’s coming in this comic.

And third, having glanced at those early drafts, we know that what is coming really isn’t all that great, at least compared to the real Star Wars. After all, this is a story originally written by George Lucas, who based on the prequels, clearly caught lightning in a bottle with that final revision of the shooting draft for Star Wars, and if this was a just universe, he then would have immediately had the language center of his brain scraped away in a lobotomy-like procedure.

And you will see a lot of elements of the prequels in this comic book, with some of Lucas’s worst instincts in Star Wars storytelling on display… including a little blond moppet shouting, “Yippee!”

But on the positive side, unlike in the prequels, you will also see that little blond moppet die like a pig in a chute.

Zombiebusters: The Mocking Dead #1 Review

Mahatma Gandhi once said about fighting The Man: ” First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” And that’s a fine addage to remember when you’re being hosed down with pepper spray by some armored riot cop due to your belief that everyone should eat tofurkey or something, but it doesn’t really apply to big genre trends. In fact, the opposite is true: first some nifty geek thing takes the world by storm (hi, Twilight!). Then people start actively complaining that they’re sick of hearing about that trend. Then come the parodies, and finally the thing goes back underground, never to be mentioned again except on obscure fan and slashfic sites.

And I can hear what you’re saying: “Rob,” you’re saying, “How dare you sully the good name of Mahatma Gandhi by mentioning it on this Web site? You’re not fit to carry this great man’s diaper!” Well, I’ll concede that you have a point, or at least I will if it gets me out of carrying a giant diaper, but I do have a point. And that point is that zombies have been front and center of the geek consciousness arguably since Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later was released in 2002, penetrating into movies, comic books and television like few recent monsters that don’t sparkle. And for the past couple of years, more and more people have been grumbling that they’re sick of zombie stories – not me; I don’t think I’ll ever get sick of seeing people being eaten while society crumbles around them, but a lot of people.

And now come the parodies, specifically, this week’s The Mocking Dead, by writer of a bunch of the Marvel Zombies miniseries Fred Van Lente and artist Max Dunbar, which not only pokes fun at the public’s zombie apocalypse fascination, but at the people who are fascinated by zombies. And if this is, in fact, a sign that zombies are that far along on the Reverse-Gandhi Geek Continuum (Trademark me! I own that phrase, and al the subsidiary rights!), well, Robert Kirkman better open a savings account and hose off his diaper bucket.

Cleansing The Palate Of A Disappointing Climax: Forever Evil #1 Review

Editor’s Note: Today is the second anniversary of the launch of Crisis On Infinite Midlives, and as such, I am going to give myself the gift of one review where I don’t try to be clever and / or funny to warn you that spoilers will follow. Plus, cocks.

It is the roughly second anniversary of the launch of DC’s New 52, and DC is celebrating by releasing the first issue of their crossover Forever Evil, also known as the seventh issue of their crossover The Trinity War. And DC is celebrating the complete and utter dismissal of their entire 1986 through 2011 continuity and the subsequent triumphant relaunch of the Justice League by bringing back a part of that 1986 through 2011 continuity and implying that the triumphantly relaunched Justice League is dead.

Well, that’s one way of celebrating your anniversary, I guess. Some of us like champagne and… well, champagne. Other people like leather, rails of drugs and savage whippings. This story features the Crime Syndicate. So I’m gonna let you guess which column this one falls into.

Look, I’m not gonna lie to you: I wasn’t particularly psyched to see this issue when I walked into my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to stop offering to show the paying clientele “something else that’s Forever Evil, and also in 3D, and it’ll only cost you three bucks!” The whole way that The Trinity War ended by not ending, implying that the readers of that series would need to tune back in this week to see what seemed to be the inevitable Justice League / Crime Syndicate battle that should have concluded that miniseries, was really a bummer for me to read, and it shaded my anticipation of Forever Evil. It’s hard to get excited about an event when the last one really had no climax. An anniversary with no climax is nothing but a champagne drunk. And is usually followed by divorce proceedings. Or at least an angry, furtive yank in the morning.

Well, we don’t get that fight in Forever Evil #1. We don’t find out what really happened after the last panel of The Trinity War beyond the word of a pack of degenerate liars. But what we do get in its stead is a pretty decent little mystery of what exactly happened to the Justice League after the Crime Syndicate broke through Pandora’s Box, the implication that a couple of members of the Secret Society are gonna wind up being unpredictable flies in the ointment, the foreshadowing of involvement by the Teen Titans and Amanda Waller… and one fuck of a bad day for Nightwing.

Gardner & Dex-Starr: Red Lanterns #23 Review

I had stopped following Red Lanterns all that closely because, well, it wasn’t ever all that good.

I’m sure original writer Peter Milligan had some kind of message he wanted to convey about the destructive nature of hate, and a little something about violence toward women maybe, but I always felt like whatever he was trying to say was being gently masked by ugly monsters puking blood on each other while Bleez shook her ass at people while simultaneously denigrating them. And while I’m sure that description just lit up someone’s hidden and deeply shameful fetish buttons – you know who your are, pervert who found us by Googling “chemotherapy submissive S&M porn” – it really never did a lot for me, and I categorically deny that I’m just saying that as an excuse to click-whore for that lucrative chemotherapy submissive S&M porn dollar.

But I decided to give Red Lanterns #23, written by Charles Soule with art by Alessandro Vitti and Jim Calafiore, a try mostly based on this cover, which, after a couple of beers, seemed to me to depict Atrocitus losing a Declared Thumb War with some kind of energy demon, despite that demon’s obvious distraction from being skullfucked by Dexstarr.

(And before you ask, yes, I take my comics seriously. But after a week that brought us an event without an ending and a stack of comics so generally weak I felt the need to praise Scott Lobdell for writing a nearly actionless teenaged soap opera because it might be friendly to new readers, I think I might be suffering from a bit of disappointment hysteria).

So I cracked the book expecting more of the same weird action and musing about rage and tits… and make no mistake, some of that stuff is still here. But Soule has wrapped the whole thing up in a pretty believable and relatable tale about an undercover cop who’s in too deep and losing his moral compass fast.

Granted, it is a pretty believable and relatable tale that includes a talking cat, but what the hell.

Entry Level: Teen Titans #23 Review

I’ve had a lot of fun at Scott Lobdell’s expense over the past couple of years, mostly due to his tendency to turn any comic book he puts his hands on into an adolescent soap opera. After all, one doesn’t turn Starfire into a takes-all-comers fuckpot with the memory and morals of a goldfish because he likes writing tales of adult sexuality. He does it because nobody reads Penthouse Forum anymore. Jesus Christ, I’m three sentences in and I’m already getting off point here.

The one title Lobdell has been working on that I still read and enjoy on a semi-regular basis is Teen Titans, and I think it’s because it’s right in Lobdell’s wheelhouse: it’s supposed to be an adolescent soap opera. There’s nothing remarkable about a bunch of good-looking teenagers trying like hell to bone each other and treating every little misstep like it’s the biggest dramatic affront in the world; that’s just high school. So Teen Titans has been a particular place where Lobdell’s weaknesses have actually been a virtue… but still, it’s not been for everybody. As a soap opera, it has a ton of characters, it has featured longer-term stories, and it has, almost more than any other New 52 title, embraced the fact that all the characters are different than they’ve ever been. So we’ve got a book with new and unfamiliar versions of old characters, with constantly-shifting and volatile relationships, and that doesn’t really equal a title that’s friendly to new readers jumping in at any random point.

Well, there’s good news and bad news. The good news, at least for potential new readers, is that Teen Titans #23 is a perfect entry point for new readers, specifically and carefully introducing every character, their relationships with each other, and, as befits a long-running team book like Teen Titans, even features a fairly significant personnel change.

The bad news, at least for long-time readers, is that not a hell of a lot actually happens in this issue.

Your Move, Creep: Robocop Statue In Detroit

The Crisis On Infinite Midlives main staff has a prior commitment today, and as such can’t spend as much time as we would like today producing the fine content enjoyed by all three of our regular readers, plus the untold thousands who find us via such scintillating Google searches as “Wonder Woman boob grope,” “Joker fucking Harley Quinn,” and “midlevel comic book Web site featuring more than the average number of dick jokes.”

However, we don’t want to leave you emptyhanded on this opening day of Labor Day weekend, so take a look that this account of Detroit’s greatest hope in the face of impending bankruptcy and the shame of being the hometown of Eminem: its own statue of hometown hero Robocop.

An idea that started as a sarcastic tweet in reply to the mayor’s request for ideas to beautify the city, two years and a Kickstarter campaign have conspired to create a giant brass statue of Robocop, which is now in Detroit and just awaiting a site to be finally placed.

So check it out, thanks for your patience, and we should return to our regularly-scheduled programming tomorrow.

Unspeakable Horror, Now In Color!: H. P. Lovecraft’s Drawings of The Elder Things

Ever wonder what the Elder Things from H. P. Lovecraft’s At The Mountains of Madness really looked like? Well, you’ve come to the right place.

The Elder Things looked kinda like giant pteridophytes: about six feet tall, barrel-shaped, with a main body that was leathery and dark-grey, with four-foot long tentacles ending in greenish eight-inch fins on the posterior side, with a yellowish mouth / breathing apparatus at the anterior end, surrounded by more reddish tentacles. And when those tentacles aren’t reaching out for your sanity, they’re folded down to its body.

And I know what you’re thinking: “Rob,” you’re thinking, “How do you have such an accurate knowledge of what these horrible creatures looked like? It’s almost like you have a picture!” Well, funny story: I do. Straight from the man himself.

Lovecraft made at least seven pages of notes in preparation for the writing of At The Mountains of Madness, including one scribbled on the back of an envelope (the only thing more appropriate would be if it was scrawled on a cocktail napkin) that included Lovescraft’s original drawing of an Elder Thing, with a bunch of descriptive notes about the beast. And those notes don’t just include dimensions, but the effects that seeing the thing would have on normal Earthlings, like: “Utter mystery + horror,” “DOGS DISTURBED… DOGS FRANTIC,” and the particularly cryptic (and creepy) isolated note: “mouths & eyes.”

All these pages are currently on public display at an exhibit named The Shadow Over College Street: H. P. Lovecraft in Providence at the Providence Athenaeum in Lovecraft’s home town of Providence, Rhode Island until September 22nd, and what with Providence being less than an hour from the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office, we might be taking this exhibit in sometime this month.

But if you’re not local to New England, there’s no need to book a flight to get a look at Lovecraft’s official visual version of the Elder Things; you can check it out for yourself right after the jump.

Just crate your dogs before you click the link.

Exterminate Humanity (Starting With Duckie): James Spader Cast As Ultron In Avengers 2

So the big geek news today was that James Spader has been cast to play Ultron in Joss Whedon’s upcoming Avengers: Age of Ultron, to which my initial reaction was, “Huh. Whatever.”

Seriously, I didn’t have much of an initial positive reaction to the news, firstly because early this morning, I read a wild-assed rumor on Ain’t It Cool News that the plan for Ultron was to make Tony Stark’s JARVIS artificial intelligence go rogue and start tearing shit up for, I don’t know, being forced to spend four movies as part of the programming for Stark’s jockstrap or something. And while I didn’t know whether there was any truth to the rumor or not (clearly, there was not), the idea made a lot of sense to me. It utilized an existing character, it completely cut around the inclusion of Hank Pym in Ultron’s creation, and most importantly: it would have eliminated the need for probably at least 20 minutes of story setup to get Ultron off his ass, on his feet, and whimpering about his daddy issues in ways that would embarrass Lena Dunham.

But James Spader? Who really gives all that much of a damn about James Spader?

The Neverending Story: Justice League #23 Review

Editor’s Note: But evil hasn’t been imprisoned, Pandora, only spoiled!

So here we are: with Justice League #23, and the final chapter of The Trinity War. Now, let’s take a minute and look back at how we got here.

Two years ago next week, DC Comic released the final issue of Flashpoint, which closed out the DC Universe as it had been since Crisis On Infinite Earths back in 1986, and ushering in the New 52 era. And in both books – and in every new first issue that DC released in September, 2011 – DC Editorial made sure that we were shown the mysterious hooded woman (who was eventually identified as Pandora), with the implication being that she had some major part in the implosion of the pre-rebooted (Pre-booted? The Old 52? Pre-52? Post-Crisis Trapped In The Body Of A – ah, fuck it) DC Universe, and that her story would give us the real skinny behind the whole shakeup.

Over the intervening two years, we learned that Pandora was part of a troika of supernatural beings, including The Question and The Phantom Stranger, and that she was trying to dispose of her box (this is the space where I deleted seven different childish jokes) to eliminate evil. Which led us to The Trinity War, where all the members of the various Justice Leagues (which means basically every hero in the DC Universe minus O.M.A.C.) came together with Pandora as a major player, and the hopes that we might finally get an answer about Pandora’s role in the reboot, once the story ended.

So did we? Nah! Turns out Geoff Johns had a surprise up his sleeve for the ending of The Trinity War! He didn’t write one!

Somewhere, Joss Whedon is thanking God he cast his lot with Marvel Comics.

Alternate Realities: Unused Animatics From Iron Man 3, The Avengers Released

Here’s the thing about making movies: there isn’t a screenplay out there that doesn’t go through a half a dozen revisions and rewrites before they get locked down. Sometimes they’re not locked until after principal photography begins.

Which is all well and good for some indie flick made on a Flip Cam, but when it comes to big special effects extravaganzas, the visual effects guys can’t wait for the Suits in Corporate to get tired of giving notes like, “More edgy,” and “Can we get anyone on the planet other than Edward Norton?” They need to start planning stuff out quick, usual with animatics: little flipbook animations of the SFX sequences, done in varying degrees of detail, to give a movie storyboard of what the finished effects shots are gonna look like. And if they do an animatic for a sequence that winds up getting cut or altered? Well, that’s tough luck, Charlie; go to whatever bar Edward Norton’s drinking his sorrows away in so you can whimper to someone who gives a fuck.

But those animatics don’t just disappear… and sometimes, they make their way onto the Internet. Case in point: animator Federico D’Alessandro, who has done work on more than a dozen movies – including, most pertinent to readers of this site, every Marvel Studios movie since Thor, did a bunch of animatics of scenes from Iron Man 3 and The Avengers that didn’t make the final movie… and some of those animatics have made their way to the Web.

Now, I’ve seen plenty of animatics that are, at best, mild curiosities showing only some raw visuals. But these, however, are a little different. All of them include background music and sound effects, some of them have dialogue subtitles laid in, and all of them are just damn cool to watch, to get a sense of what we might have gotten from those two movies… including if The Wasp were part of The Avengers. And you can check them out after the jump.