A Whimpering Bang: Age of Ultron #10 Review / Postmortem

Editor’s Note: The trick of it was, when Ultron tried to defend himself, it triggered a self replicating spoiler…

A few weeks ago, I asked what the point of Age of Ultron was, and now we know: it was to sell more comics.

Seriously: the best thing I can figure is that we comic readers spent a minimum of several months and 40 dollars to entice us to see Miles Morales fight Galactus, and to see Neil Gaiman’s Angela character from Spawn join the Guardians of The Galaxy. Not to see these things in Age of Ultron, mind you, but to tease you to buy them in other upcoming comic books. Seriously: both the Galactus and the Angela reveals in this issue were immediately followed by full page ads telling you in which future comic books you could find those parts of the ongoing story.

So the mission statement of Age of Ultron seems, ultimately, to have been: “set up a way to do weird shit that will sell comic books in the third financial quarter.” Because now that it is all said and done, we are left with a story that had no identifiable protagonist, no identifiable antagonist, no real character motivations other than “make stuff normal again,” and no consequences beyond the fact that Marvel can do weird, dimensional crossover shit now that will likely sell more comics. It’s like there was a Marvel Creator’s Retreat where someone said, “Okay, everyone yell out the weirdest crap you’d write if time, space, dimension or publisher trademark were no object! Okay, Bendis: you’re only writing 76 titles right now, so go off and make this happen! You’ve got ten issues, so take this methamphetamine extract, this DVD of Primer, and get it done!”

Well, it is done. And all I can say is that if big, weird reveals were the point of this big mess? That last reveal should Goddamned well have been Marvelman.

Creamy Filling

It is one of those weird weeks for comics. There are a lot of books – and doesn’t it seem like one week every month, there’s a week with about 50 percent more books than all the others? A week where you look at your stack of books and look at your wallet and you thank God you have a cheap and shitty taste in beer? Just me? – but not a lot of big books. Sure, there’s one or two, but for the most part, we’ve got us a big pile of catalog titles here.

And sometimes that’s a good thing. Considering it’s summertime and that normally means a pile of big event comics and crossover books and one-shot crossover event comics, it’s kinda nice to have a week to just catch up on the regular old comics once in a while.

But the good news is, event comics or standard monthly titles, comics are comics. And since it is Wednesday, it means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But there’s some bright spots in there, huh? We’ve got the final issue of Age of Ultron (and unless it ends more strongly than it has been up until now, the ending might just wind up being the brightest spot), the first issue of Brian Azzarello’s Brother Lono – the return of that nice man from 100 Bullets – a couple of new Avengers and Batman family titles, and, most heartbreakingly, one of Peter David’s last issues of X-Factor. Plus a bunch of other cool stuff.

But you know how this works: before we can review any of them, we need a little time to read them. So while we tackle that task…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Historical Anomalies: Batman Zero Year Crossovers

DC Comics just wrapped up an event called the DC Retailer Roadshow in New York, which is not an event to which I was invited, due to the fact that I am not a comics retailer, and thanks to ugly rumors spread by the owner of my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to stop including the word “taser” in sentences that also include the phrase, “If I ever get face-to-face with Dan DiDio.”

A gentleman named Roderick Ruth, however, was there, and filed a report on the proceedings. Which included the normal stuff you would expect from a meeting with retailers – hype about the upcoming Trinity War event, addressing concerns that DC isn’t giving retailers enough information to appropriately order high-demand books like the one where Robin died, what have you – but it also included an interesting tidbit about Scott Snyder’s Batman origin story Zero Year, which just started last week.

That tidbit being that there will be crossover stories with Zero Year appearing not only in some of the Bat titles, but also in Action Comics, Flash, Green Arrow and Green Lantern Corps.

Wait, what?

You’re Just A Guy In A Suit: Man of Steel Review / Observations

Editor’s Note: I was born in spoilers, Colonel; you can’t get more ruinous than that.

Man of Steel is a pretty decent superhero movie, if not necessarily the best Superman movie if you’re a purist about the character… but if you are, you’re probably off in a dark room somewhere writing hate messages to Dan DiDio about the New 52 reboot and scoffing at the sheep running to movie theaters when there’s a perfectly good Superman DVD with Christopher Reeve’s picture on it on your shelf, and you don’t give a fuck what I think about Man of Steel anyway.

Which is a shame (not that you don’t care what I think; hell, before I’ve had at least three beers, even I think I’m an idiot), because in most of the ways that matter, director Zack Snyder gets the character right. Snyder’s Superman is a man of two worlds who has made the conscious decision to favor and protect humanity over anything else. He’s generally humble and patient and wants only to be trusted to help us. And Man of Steel screenwriter David S. Goyer, probably remembering the shitstorm he himself created in Action Comics #900 when he implied Superman would be renouncing his United States citizenship, makes it abundantly clear that the Superman of Man of Steel is all about The American Way.

But Snyder and Goyer chuck a certain amount of what your average guy on the street would consider to be Superman canon. Superman never really is the Last Son of Krypton here, and the whole secret identity conceit is kinda thrown out in all the ways that most people would consider to really matter to the character. And it’s a little odd that our first introduction to Superman is at gunpoint in the desert so that he can turn himself in to American authorities; I’ll tell you this: Batman wouldn’t put up with that kind of happy horseshit.

So when it comes to reviewing Man of Steel, I’m gonna pretty much leave it at: yeah, it was pretty good. Because I’ve only seen the movie once, and by the time I’m finishing this article up It’s been three days since I saw it, so some of the details aren’t going to be as clear as they could be in my mind. But I am going to make some observations about some things about the movie that I noticed, and a couple of things that have driven some people who saw the movie apeshit, but which instead make a lot of sense to me having had a few days to give them some thought.

The first of those observations being: the greatest accomplishment that Man of Steel makes is that it puts on the big screen the first relatively true adaptation of Miracleman #15.

Summer Weather, Winter Soldier: New Captain America: The Winter Solder Set Pictures

We were without power here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office for the past several hours up until about fifteen minutes ago thanks to some truly impressive thunderstorms, and there is more thunder rumbling on the horizon. So for good or ill, my review / observations of Man of Steel will need to wait a while longer (although for a sneak peek, Google “Miracleman #15”) while I frantically try to get a post up before we’re reduced to drinking warm beer in the dark and watching Amanda’s four-year-old bootleg copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine on her five-year-old Zune.

So in that spirit of quick, yet entertaining and informative: The Cleveland Plains Dealer has been doing a daily liveblog of the filming of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and recently released some more pictures of that movie’s principal photography. And several days ago they broke (and we rebroke) some of the earliest pictures of Bucky as The Winter Soldier… and now they have released some of the earliest pictures of Cap. And Cap’s new costume.

And you can check those out after the jump.

Take A Chance, Win Some Crap: World War Z Screening Wednesday For 50 Bucks

World War Z is a movie about the zombie apocalypse. It started its life as a spectacular zombie novel by Max Brooks, the guy who wrote The Zombie Survival Guide. The first few drafts of original movie screenplay were written by comics stalwart J. Michael Straczynski . That movie, starring Brad Pitt, who played Jeffrey in Twelve Monkeys and who millions of genre fans saw in Meet Joe Black (as it was the movie that the first, pre-broadband Internet trailer for Star Wars: The Phantom Menace premiered in front of), opens widely next Friday, June 21st. This movie is, for lack of a better term, geek bait.

So what if I told you that there was a way that you could go see that movie on June 19th: two whole days before the rest of the drooling, release date-shackled masses? And no, this is not me with some press-related advance passes trolling for a blowjob… but make no mistake: somebody wants to fuck you.

Paramount Pictures has announced that they will, in Houston, San Diego, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Los Angeles, be screening World War Z on Wednesday in premium theaters. And you can be a part of one of those limited screenings for the low, low price of 50 bucks! A piece! To see a movie! A movie that has been through reshoots, a handful of screenwriters after Straczynski, and enough release delays to make a dominatrix weep with professional jealousy!

But that’s not all! You also get some crap!

Year One Two: Batman #21 Review

I bought Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One, back when it was just Batman #404 through #407, from the spinner rack at my local supermarket for 75 cents a piece.

That story was a stone classic from the word go, right from the first issue, which opened with James Gordon telling us what a hell on Earth Gotham City was, and ending with Bruce Wayne not only bleeding out, but willing to bleed out unless he found some inspiration to make his war on crime more sustainable and effective than just trying to stomp out local goons. You know the images; we all know the images: the giant bat crashing violently through the window, the smile on Bruce’s face, and the bloody hand on the bell to call Alfred, with the caption, “Yes, Father… I shall become a bat…”

I can spin that sequence of panels off from memory because Batman: Year One is Frank Miller, in 88 tight pages, telling one of the greatest Batman stories ever told (on the tails of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, which is the greatest Batman story ever told, and I’ll fight any man what says different), and cementing his position as one of the greatest comic storytellers ever, regardless of any future paranoid writings or rantings.

That was in 1987. It is now 2013, and we have the first issue of Zero Year, written by Scott Snyder, on the tails of Death of The Family, one of the best Batman / Joker stories in recent memory. Just based on the title, Zero Year is meant to elicit in us memories of Year One. And based on the events of this first issue of Zero Year, it covers some, if not all, of the same period of Batman’s career that Year One did.

Look, don’t get your hopes up here. Zero Year #1 / Batman #21 isn’t on the same level as Batman: Year One #1 / Batman #404, and I think we all knew that it wasn’t gonna be. After all, there is only one first love of your life, and when it comes to Batman stories, Frank Miller and Batman: Year One got to anyone old enough to buy comic books with their own money long before Scott Snyder ever put a word in Batman’s mouth. So I could sit here all day and compare the new book – or pretty much any other modern comic book – negatively to the old one, but that really doesn’t matter.

What matters is: does Zero Year #1 hold up on its own as a good Batman story?

Unfolded: Superman Unchained #1 Review

I’ve had some issues with Superman ever since his New 52 reboot. Because frankly, through the eyes of hindsight, Superman’s reboot was kind of a schizo mess.

On one hand, we had Grant Morrison on Action Comics, showing Superman as a kid in a t-shirt with a reduced powerset punching out millionaires. At the same time, Superman was going full blast in his own title, separated from Lois Lane and having big adventures, all while the original writer was screeching about editorial interference and jumping off midstream, leaving the title in the capable hands of the man who rebooted Starfire to be an amnesiac cockmonger. In the meantime, Morrison made Superman’s invulnerability partially contingent on some weird Kryptonian battle armor, and then Geoff Johns had Superman start chucking the meat to Wonder Woman. And that’s all if you ignore what’s happening in the out-of-continuity, video game tie-in title Injustice: Gods Among Us, where Superman is following “The American Way,” if by that you mean, “Ruthlessly enforcing order through the use of constant pervasive surveillance.”

That’s all gone on in just 21 months, and while it might be all well and good for your average rabid comics fan, there’s not much that screams, “It’s Superman!” to Joe Blow on the street… and that is a problem when DC’s last, best hope for creating a Marvel-style movie empire is Man of Steel – a Superman movie opening, well, tomorrow. And imagine that one-in-a-thousand moviegoer who is lucky enough to live in a neighborhood like mine, where there is a movie theater a block away from a comic store, and who leaves Man of Steel, wanders to that comic store and buys everything he sees with Superman on the cover… only to find a dude in armor making out with Wonder Woman when he isn’t incinerating banana republics for disobeying his orders.

Enter Scott Snyder, Jim Lee and Superman Unchained: a Superman story that uses the new costume and Superman’s New 52 status quo, but is still identifiably an old-school Superman story with an identifiable Big Blue Boy Scout, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and everything else that that mythical Some Dude Walking Into A Comic Store After Man of Steel might expect. And it should act as a pretty solid entry point for any non-comic readers that Man of Steel might attract…

…except for that fucking poster, which is an abominable choice.

All Work And No Play

Goddamn, Scott Snyder is one busy sonofabitch this week. Not only is the first issue of the latest miniseries spinoff from his home title, American Vampire, out, but the first issue of his version of Batman’s origin, Zero Year dropped as well. And on top of both of those giant-sized issue, his first issue of the Jim Lee-drawn Superman Unchained is out, just two days before Man of Steel hits theaters and drives scores of new comic readers to comic stores (yeah, we all know that that’s not a thing that happens. If superhero movies really drove lots of new people to buy comic books, I’d have to elbow people out of the way when I go to my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to stop drawing red underpants on Superman. And Batman. And the city Health Inspector.

But regardless of any big superhero movie, that’s still a lot of comics from one writer… and those are far from the only interesting-looking comic books that were released today. And, since they were released today, you know what that means: it means that this…

…is the end of our broadcast day.

This week gave us kind of a light take, but there is still some good-looking stuff in that pile. We’ve got a new issue of The Walking Dead (and maybe… maybe… someone will finally do something about Negan after a full fucking year of stories about that douchebag), the first issue of a new miniseries of The Crow that’s written by series creator James O’Barr, the latest Guardians of The Galaxy by Brian Michael Bendis, Thumbprint by Locke And Key writer Joe Hill, a new issue of Brian Wood’s killer Star Wars, 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 read them (and in the case of Superman Unchained, to figure out how to detach and read the poster insert without destroying the entire fucking comic book). So while we tackle that task…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

The Head of The Giant Magic Lizard: Trailer For The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Released

We are in the height of summer movie season, which means that the movie studios, flush with cash and sucking in more every big weekend, are busily humping the beginnings of their holiday movie offerings. Because after all, three or four billion dollars between May and August is nice, but Christmas is in December, and every good movie executive knows that Paco, their pool cleaner, is relying on their holiday tip to make the down payment on the Porsche.

And if you’re gonna tease a future movie in the time of the massive explodo picture, it had better be a big one… and it surely is. The rumor is that, opening up for screenings of Man of Steel, will be the first trailer for the second Hobbit movie, The Desolation of Smaug. And considering that the title of the movie contains the name of a fucking dragon, that trailer had really deliver some giant fire lizard goodness (That’s what she said! …yeah, sorry; even I feel guilty about that gag. Moving on…).

What’s that? You simply can’t wait until the day after tomorrow to lay your eyes on that massive, slithering heat-spitter (Jesus, now even I feel dirty)? Well, I have good news for you: you can check the trailer out right here, after the jump.