Not Offal

Remember last May, when Amanda issued a mea culpa that she had missed the month-old news that guts-‘n-taint cook Chris Cosentino –

Rob, he is a chef, who cooks offal. -Amanda

Amanda, he cooks testicles. Which means I agree on “offal” so far as it is pronounced, but I think you got the spelling wrong. -Rob

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah – we reported back in May, 2012 that Cosentino was gonna do a Wolverine one-shot. It is now that last day of July, 2013. That book has finally come out. You know, like Anthony Bourdain’s Get Jiro! graphic novel from last year! Except this is a simple standard comic book, and nobody from Marvel invited Cosentino to the San Diego Comic-Con this year, despite living in the same state!

My point is that, two weeks separated from SDCC and just before the Boston Comic Con, we have a comic book that spent roughly a third as much time in editorial as it took Michaelangelo to paint the fucking Sistine Chapel. Except I think in the long run, it will turn out that the only person who took a picture of this comic book will have been me.

Let’s just say that Amanda will be the one reviewing this book… but the fact that there is a new book means that there is a new comic, and new comics means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But off-week or not, there’s still some pretty cool stuff there, huh? There’s a new issue of Scott Snyder’s The Wake, the final issue of Grant Morrison’s Batman Incorporated, a new issue of Injustice: Gods Among Us by writer Tom Taylor and Justice League International artist Kevin Maguire, a new issue of Kieron Gillen’s Uber, and a bunch of other cool stuff! And there is also Cosentino’s Wolverine!

But you know how this works: before we can talk about them, we need some time to read them. So while that happens (and while Amanda presumably reads about Wolverine being The Best There Is At What He Does, And What He Does Is Shank And Apply Heat To Horse Nipples)…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

You’re Trapped In Here With Me: All-Star Western #22 Review

When I reviewed the first issue of All-Star Western almost two years ago now, I was semi-enthusiastic, but bemoaned the fact that the creative team of writers Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray, and artist Moritat, had taken Jonah Hex off of the western frontier and dumped him into Gotham City. As I recall, I referred to the book as “Crocodile Dundee with dead hookers,” because dropping Hex into an urban setting, even in the late 1800s, felt like a well-trod fish-out-of-water story.

So you would think that All-Star Western #22, which features Hex being stuck in modern, 21st century Gotham City, would drive me absolutely fucking apeshit. Because on paper, if All-Star Western #1 was Crocodile Dundee, All-Star Western #22 should be Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles. Seriously, this book has all the elements that should drive me up the Goddamned wall: Hex baffled by a radio? Yup! Hex shocked and offended by the forward nature of modern conversation? Uh-huh! Hex amazed by an automobile? Hell, yes! If you go down the list of the classic fish-out-of-water stories, the only thing that’s missing is Hex trying to take a shit in a phone booth!

So case closed, right? I wasn’t thrilled with Hex in old Gotham, so I must hate Hex in modern Gotham, correct? Well, you’d think so… but it’s really the opposite. I enjoyed the hell out of this issue, not in spite of the fact that it was a fish-out-of-water story, but because of it. Because All-Star Western #22 isn’t a fish-out-of-water comedy; after all, Jonah Hex isn’t funny. He is a very dangerous man… and other than Batman and one or two other guys and girls, there are very few truly dangerous people in Gotham City.

You know… other than Jonah Hex.

…One For Each Of You: 2 Guns Red Band Trailer Released

Hey, didja know that 2 Guns, that movie you’ve seen advertised on TV with Mark Wahlberg and Denzel Washington where they obviously cough up the ending by showing Denzel saying “Make it rain,” and blowing up the car full of money, was based on a comic book? Yeah, neither did I until I came across the recently reprinted trade paperback of writer Steven Grant’s 2007 original at the Boom Studios booth at SDCC. And frankly, I didn’t even make the connection between the comic and the movie when I bought the book, because the title of the movie had never stuck to my brain, since 30 seconds of trailer was all it took for me to think, “Yeah, this is the movie that Denzel takes to pay the mortgage in between his semiannual Oscar bait flicks, and that Marky Mark takes when he’s, well, being Marky Mark. Pass.”

The comic itself is a pretty decent read – an undercover DEA agent and an undercover Naval Intelligence officer are manipulated into trying to sting each other into robbing a bank, before finding out that the bank belongs to someone who doesn’t rely on the FDIC to recover their losses, and that some other parties have plans for this off-the-books stolen money, requiring the two guys to go rogue – and was certainly entertaining enough to get me through an hour of the flight home last week. So the trade is certainly well worth picking up this Wednesday if you’re a light action crime comic fan (hard-boiled noir it ain’t, but it has a decent enough edge to keep you in suspense) and you have an extra 15 bucks to burn.

Grant apparently made a decent chunk of change for himself and Boom Studios for doing the flick, and Grant has not only been doing a series of columns for Comic Book Resources under the name Temporary Madness that could serve as a crash course for comic creators hoping to someday make that mad Robert Kirkman money off of their idea, but has announced that he’s working on sequel Three Guns (because Grant’s not a dope, fer Chrissake)… but none of that addresses whether the movie, which is being released in the United States this Friday, August 2nd, is to par with the comic, or worth what will cost you, after popcorn and a Coke at a 10:30 a.m. bargain matinee, more than the trade paperback.

Well, to help you make up your mind, a final red band trailer for the movie has been released, featuring more violence, profanity and nudity than we’ve seen to date. And while to me, even knowing that the film is based on the work of a comic writer I like, it still screams “Wait for cable!”, and I suspect the director might have spent a large percentage of the shoot saying, “Denzel, Mark: banter like dudes. You know, bros! Aaannnd, action!”, your mileage may vary. So check it out after the jump.

SDCC 2013 Odds And Sods, Part 2: The Avengers, X-Men, Dr. Strange and Sgt. Fury 50th Anniversary Panel

And finally, here is the last of it. The last panel we attended at San Diego Comic-Con on Sunday, July 21st, before the convention-closing screening of Buffy The Vampire Slayer‘s musical episode, Once More With Feeling: The Avengers, X-Men, Dr. Strange and Sgt. Fury 50th Anniversary panel, featuring classic Marvel writer Roy Thomas, current writer Brian Michael Bendis, and artist John Romita, Jr.

There wasn’t anything revealed that you could particularly call “news” at this panel. Hell, there wasn’t even a hell of a lot of information about the creations of The Avengers, The X-Men, or any of the rest (although we did learn that Thomas made The Vision an android because hey! Stan Lee says stuff sometimes!). But what we did get were some cool and inspirational stories of what it was like to be at Marvel right around the time when Fantastic Four was breaking, what it was like to grow up around one of the premier Spider-Man artists of the late 60s, early 70s, and what it was like to grow up in Brian Michael Bendis’s broken home! Well, I guess some stories are inspirational only in their aftermath.

But even if the panel didn’t have anything new to say about the modern world of comics, I can think of worse ways to close out the convention than to hear about what the world of comics was like when legends were being created every month, when characters who would literally change some of our lives were being spitballed to meet a deadline on a Sunday afternoon, and when a man could get a gig writing some of the most legendary books in Marvel history by filling out a workbook on his lunch break.

And even if you weren’t there, you can check some of it out right here. We have a few videos of some of the cooler stories – not the best videos we’ve ever shot, but you can see who’s talking and get the whole stories – right here after the jump.

SDCC 2013 Odds And Sods, Part One: DC’s Meet The Publishers Panel

We are coming up on the final bits and pieces of coverage we took from this year’s San Diego Comic-Con – yes, I know the convention ended eight days ago, but it turns out we had a lot of video to sort through, and a significant percentage of that video needed extensive processing on an actual computer in order to make it into something that YouTube would recognize as a video file, as opposed to some form of data wad, or perhaps a Word file detailing our manifesto and list of demands.

But the computer has done its work and dinged like a toaster oven (as we all know computers do), so we are finally proud to present a series of videos from DC Comics’s Meet The Publishers panel, held on Sunday, July 21st and featuring Co-Publishers Jim Lee and Dan DiDio. And you can say what you want about, say, DiDio (God knows we do, repeatedly), but there is no denying that the guy runs an entertaining panel with an infectious enthusiasm, which even Lee gets caught up in.

This was a fun panel, and we’re happy to bring you, a day late and a buck short, a small piece of it, along with some art that was shown to crowd at the panel. You can check them out after the jump.

Monkeys Are Funny: New Pinocchio: Vampire Slayer Story Forthcoming

Editor’s Note, 7/29/2013, 8:30 a.m.: Article updated with quotes from Pinocchio: Vampire Slayer writer Van Jensen, and we thank him for his comments.

In addition, we originally reported that original Pinocchio: Vampire Slayer publisher Slave Labor Graphics was publishing the omnibus. Instead, the publisher is Top Shelf Productions. We regret the error, and have updated the piece to reflect the changes.

It’s been a little under about a year since the final chapter of Pinocchio: Vampire Slayer by writer Van Jensen and artist Dusty Higgins, Of Wood And Blood, was released in trade paperback and digital comics formats. And while that book was a blast, that seemed to be pretty much it. Trilogy completed, Jensen moved on to write Green Lantern Corps for DC Comics, and Higgins seems to be working on a children’s book based on stories told to him by his daughter.

So that’s it, right? All Jensen’s and Higgins’s Pinocchio stories told, correct?

Yeah, no. Apparently they have at least one more story left in them, if not more. Robot 6 is reporting that Slave Labor Graphics has announced that Jensen and Higgins are planning to release a short story prequel to the trilogy, based on that one panel in the original where they talk about Pinocchio fighting a vampire gorilla. Remember that?

Yeah, me neither (What do you want from me? I read it ten months ago). So here’s the panel:

No Extinction: Avatar Press SDCC 2013 Panel

And here we are: our final article covering San Diego Comic-Con 2013 (except for a bunch of video that my high-toned, dedicated video camera seems to have mangled, unless my actual computer here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office can do anything to salvage them), five days after the convention ended and more than a week after the actual panel occurred. But what the hell; given my crippling hangover and intestinal issues born from the fried chicken sandwich and fries I washed down with five black IPAs at a bar last night, it feels like I’m still at SDCC. So let’s just plow ahead, shall we?

The Avatar Press panel on Thursday morning, July 18th, with Avatar Founder and Editor-In-Chief William Christensen and World War Z and Extinction Parade writer Max Brooks, was the first panel we hit during SDCC 2013, and in some ways it set the tone for the whole convention. The room wasn’t full, but there was a healthy crowd for a comic book related panel on the most off day of the convention. Not that there are any off days at SDCC anymore, but if there is a day that qualifies, it’s this mid-week opening to the full-blown festivities. Unlike Preview Night, the whole convention center is open, and cosplayers are more plentiful, all of which draws people off the floor and makes it at least tolerable to move around; there’s nothing like a set of jugs in a spandex Power Girl suit to peel off the rubes so you can get where you’re going.

But where we were going was a panel, and we were going there later than we should. Which meant we could get a seat up front and to the side… right in front of the projector many panels use to put up new art for display. Which meant that, as a six foot tall gentleman, I spent the panel hunched over like Frankenstein’s delivery boy to stay out of the projector light, scribbling notes almost on my side as if trying to write “I am having a stroke” for the paramedics, just in case Christensen and Brooks put some new art up on the screen.

Which they did not. Every table at every panel at Comic-Con has a posted sign for presenters, reminding them that members of the crowd might be younger than 18. And every fan of Avatar comics knows that there is very little art that they could project that would be appropriate for children. There is very little Avatar art that would not make children long for the sweet release of death, or at least blindness, to tell you the truth. Avatar books are for adults, and that is on purpose.

“I just do books I want to read,” Christensen said. “It will always be intense work for adults.”

Beautiful Disaster: Constantine #5 Review

Editor’s Note: With a magic word… SPOILERS!

Okay: can we all start out by admitting that, simply on paper, the idea of taking cynical con-man and master magician John Constantine – you know, the guy who once performed surgery on a succubus, who once was pregnant with the child of an angel, with a lit cigarette and the snarl, “this’ll hurt” – and turning him into Shazam is a stupid fucking idea?

Seriously, there are some characters that you just do not give powers to. If someone came up to you in a bar during San Diego Comic-Con and told you that The Comedian should get the powers of Doctor Manhattan, or that Deathstroke The Terminator should be given the abilities of Brainiac, you would either finish your beer and back away slowly, or ask him what the hell he was thinking when he characterized Starfire that way in Red Hood And The Outlaws #1.

Without any context, the idea of taking John Constantine and imbuing him with the powerset of a 12-year-old American child historically best known for having a talking tiger and responding to the worst of human tragedy with a heartily shouted “holy moley,” is ridiculous. Which is how I responded to the idea when it was dropped during DC’s Trinity War panel last week, and how I was prepared to view it when I opened Constantine #5 last night.

Well the bad news is that the idea of Captain Constantine is still kinda stupid. But the good news is that writer Ray Fawkes gives the move some reasonable context within the scope of the Trinity War crossover, adds consequences to the action that I wasn’t expecting, and most importantly: keeps the whole thing short.

Because no matter what, seeing John Constantine in a spandex suit shouting, “Shazam!” is still really kinda silly.

Riches Beyond Imagination

There is exactly one week a year I don’t visit my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me, if I want to show them photos, to bring the memory card labelled “SDCC” and not “SCAT,” and that is the week of San Diego Comic-Con.

And during that week, my new books don’t go anywhere. They sit in my pull box, patiently waiting for me to return from the West Coast, only to be joined by the following week’s new comics on that following Wednesday.

And today is that following Wednesday. Which means that this… oh God in heaven, this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

And I’m not gonna lie to you; I have simply almost no Goddamned idea which of those books are from last week, and which are new books. I know that that’s a new Hawkeye annual there, and a new issue of Constantine where John apparently becomes (groan) Captain Marvel, plus a new release of Clone, which I discovered at the Skybound panel at SDCC, and a ton (almost literally) of other cool stuff!

But you know how this works: before we can review them, we need time to read them. So while that happens…

See you tomorrow, suckers!

It’s The End Of The World As We Know It: Marvel’s SDCC 2013 Ultimate Universe Panel

So yes: the Marvel Ultimate Universe panel, held on Friday, July 19th at the San Diego Comic-Con. I’ve mentioned it a few times over the past few days, not because there were any Earth-shattering revelations at the panel (you know, beyond the question as to whether the Ultimate Universe has any future at all beyond the next few months), but as an example of how difficult it can be to truly cover any of these panels direct from the convention. When you get back to the hotel from a long day on the floor, and you’re staring at four pages of handwritten notes, one bar of $15-a-night WiFi, and your eyes look like you’ve been on a three-day meth jag in a smoke-filled room, it’s hard to sit in front a a keyboard and whip together anything that makes any sense at all.

But from the comfort of the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office, it seems, in my opinion, like the subtext of the panel is that Marvel intends to kick the living shit out of the Ultimate Universe for a while, blowing some stuff up really good, before either spiking the concept of the Ultimate Universe as a whole and somehow folding it into the 616, or at least finally and officially turning it into some kind of a defacto Earth 2 for the Marvel Universe, with people traveling back and forth just as often as they did in the DC Universe back in the 60s and 70s.

So in short: it looks like Marvel intends to totally fuck up the Ultimate Universe. Must be a year with a San Diego Comic-Con.