Last Chance Pass: Single-Day Tickets For San Diego Comic-Con 2013 Going Up For Sale

Yesterday, we here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office were out celebrating a birthday – not that I could testify in court that that’s actually what happened, except for the evidence of the calendar and the credit card slip reading only “Jagermeister” with a ridiculous number of digits next to it – so several emails we received went unnoticed until this morning, when I caught up on our correspondence to distract myself from praying for a merciful and quick death to stop the relentless thrumming in my head.

Which is a shame, because one of those emails was definitely noteworthy, at least to those people desperately praying for some ray of hope that they could find a way to attend this year’s San Diego Comic-Con next month.

Well, that ray of hope has blinked on: Comic-Con International has announced that several thousand people have returned a variety of single-day passes for this year’s convention, and that they have yanked some previously-reserved badges held for some professional departments… and that they will be holding a lottery for those laminates that you can be a part of.

You know, provided you meet a certain limited set of conditions.

Comic-Con International’s complete message and instructions are after the jump.

Anti-Heroes: Kick-Ass 3 #1 Review

As a guy who grew up – and, arguably, grew old – reading superhero comics, it can be hard sometimes to read Mark Millar’s Kick-Ass stories. Because it is all too easy to see myself in pieces of every “superhero” in this book… and every “superhero” in this book is a pretty Goddamned pathetic excuse for a human being.

We’ve got The Juicer: a couch-surfing leech who spends money he should be using to get his shit together on comic books, Blu-Rays and beer. There’s Ass-Kicker, who’s using his low-level of fame (and we’re talking low, citizen superhero makes middle market overnight disc jockey look like Jon Bon Jovi in 1988) to troll for MILFs to bang on the Internet. And then there’s Kick-Ass himself, who uses his father’s death at the hands of supervillains as an excuse to get his own place and to utterly fail to break Hit-Girl out of jail in favor of “training”: working at a fast food joint and arguing about pop-culture ephemera at his local comic store, where they know him by name because he never fucking leaves.

These characters make reading Kick-Ass 3 #1 difficult for its target audience: me, an inveterate comic book geek. And while I have never worn a superhero costume (not even for the purposes of weird sex), I can see bits of myself in all of these losers (I have, in fact, been a middle market overnight disc jockey), and it can make the story a hard go. It is never easy to find yourself faced with your own flaws in a story, particularly when those flaws are embodied by generally ineffective and irritating no-accounts.

That, however, does not mean the story is bad.

Brain Drain: Paul Jenkins Leaves DC, Writes Open Letter And Gives Interview Guaranteeing He Will Never Return

I’m about a week late to the party on this one, but the parade of talent walking away from DC Comics has added Paul Jenkins, who did the opening Deadman arc on DC Universe Presents, as well as a pretty decent fill-in on Stormwatch, and until recently was writing Batman: The Dark Knight.

Jenkins apparently has made the decision to walk away from both DC and Marvel to work exclusively for Boom Studios, currently writing Deathmatch for them. Which is fine; creators sometimes make the move to creator-owned comics from the Big Two – if I wrote comics, I’d be pounding on every indie publisher’s doors with creator owned ideas in the hopes of getting a TV contract and the keys to the Rich Guy’s Pissoir where Robert Kirkman currently pisses into Perrier.

Jenkins, however, rather than simply walking away to pursue his own projects, took a page from well-known people person Rob Liefeld and dynamited all his bridges by publishing an open letter regarding his reasons for leaving DC at Comic Book Resources:

I hope those reading this will agree the discussion will be worth their time. I feel that we are once again moving in the wrong direction, creatively. I’ve been down this road before, and it’s a road we can and should avoid. I don’t need to tell you what Greg Rucka and numerous other respected creators have already told you – that the Big Two have removed their focus away from the creators and towards the maintenance of the characters…

I know when it was a lot easier, and that was back in the days of Marvel Knights. In those times, Marvel had been in bankruptcy, and they had little choice but to allow the creators the freedom and trust that so many of us deserve… I look back on “Inhumans” and “Sentry,” on my Spidey runs with Bucky [Mark Buckingham] and Humberto [Ramos], and on various successes with “Wolverine: Origin” and others, and I know – because I was there – that they succeeded in large part because I was given freedom to create without being handicapped by editorial mandates. It just hasn’t been that way for a while. In recent years, I have watched, helpless, as editors made pointless and destructive changes to scripts and artwork that they had previously left alone. It bugs me that the creators were a primary focus when the mainstream publishers needed them, and now that the corporations are driving the boat, creative decisions are being made once again by shareholders.

Wow. Okay, there’s certainly an discussion to be had about the state of both Marvel and DC in the age of the blockbuster superhero movie, and after each publisher has either been bought up by a huge multinational corporation, or more closely folded into the huge multinational corporation who already owned them. God knows that, as a reader in the early 2000s, I felt like there was a sense of experimentation and a focus on new kinds of stories that I hadn’t felt from almost anyone outside of Vertigo Comics since the early 90s.

But I thought that DC’s New 52 was supposed to replicate that feeling by blowing continuity out of the water and starting over with A-List creators and allowing them to run wild with these long-running properties, right, Paul?

Right?

Choose Your Own Adventure: Astro City #1 Review

Astro City is good. It has always been good.

For 17 years, across multiple miniseries and a variety of publishers, writer Kurt Busiek and artist Brent Anderson have come up with a generally can’t-miss formula: create a city that has neighborhoods that match up to the Marvel, DC, and even EC horror comics universes and populate them with a mix of existing superhero and villain pastiches and some original characters. Then throw in a general population of people more fully realized than the average running, screaming, goggle-eyed cannon fodder that’s normally trampled underfoot in a world of superpowers. And then not only turn them loose, but tell us what some of them, from the strongest hero to the worst villain to the average schmuck on the street, are thinking about the whole experience.

That formula has allowed the creators to examine some of the biggest eras and characters in comics, from DC’s Justice League (Samaritan, Winged Victory and the rest of The Honor Guard) to Spider-Man (If Jack-In-The-Box isn’t supposed to be Spidey, then please call 911, because this massive stroke is impinging upon my critical faculties) to the 80s darkening of comics in The Dark Age. And the use of pastiches has allowed Busiek and Anderson to really dig into some of these old stories and eras without having to worry about servicing any trademarks, or pesky editorial interference like being fired from the book after it’s solicited.

And now Astro City is at Vertigo, and Busiek seems to have decided to take that opportunity to, well riff on Vertigo comics. Specifically those early, proto-Vertigo books, where the characters still lived in the DC Universe and bumped into superheroes every now and again. Because this time around, the pastiche is pretty clearly Psycho-Pirate from Grant Morrison’s 80s run on Animal Man (with what seems to be a Galactus story brewing), and while that parallel all but screams from the page and colors your expectations, it is actually very, very compelling.

Because Busiek isn’t just acknowledging the reader… he’s involving us.

Rosebud: Daredevil: End of Days #8 Review

Editor’s Note: I’ve been there for a lot of people’s last words. And every time it’s the one thing they spoiled about the most.

Mapone is not a thing.

I have, as I’m sure a lot of people have since Daredevil: End of Days began several months ago, Googled the living shit out of the word “Mapone.” And there is nothing there; there is some family out of Italy, a Fleetwood Mac fan on YouTube, some promotional trinkets company in South Africa… and since October, a bunch of reviews of Daredevil: End of Days. If you look for the definition of “Mapone,” there isn’t one. If you try contextual searches, you wind up with articles about Halo battle maps, mapping values in computer programs, and MAPI interfaces.

In short, “Mapone” is not, by any real definition, a word. It is, rather, a sound you make with your mouth. So as a mystery, writers Brian Michael Bendis and David Mack picked a good mysterious word to act as a throughline for the story… but Daredevil: End of Days #8 is the last issue of the miniseries, meaning that it is time for them to put up or shut up.

And they have put up. We learn the meaning of the word “Mapone” on the very last page of the issue, Citizen Kane-style. And the reveal is, in fact, a surprise, and it is, in fact, generally satisfying… until you close the book and stop and think about it for more than ten seconds.

So it is a really fortunate thing that this issue accomplishes so much beyond the silly little mystery, closing out a story that turns the legacy of Daredevil into a tragedy that is almost Shakespearean in scope, and which is implied to doom everyone it touches. Daredevil: End of Days #8 is a truly weighty and satisfying speculative end to the story of Matt Murdock, regardless of the whole “Mapone” mystery that has kept us going through this story. And that is a good thing.

Because Mapone is not a thing.

Transitions

This is a decidedly strange-feeling week in the world of new comics. We’ve got some long-time favorites either ending (Daredevil: End of Days) or moving into their final days (Locke & Key only has two more issues left, and both Age of Ultron and X-Factor and entering into their last arcs)… while other books are either just ramping up (Kurt Busiek’s Astro City is making its debut as a monthly comic), or are getting new beginnings (this week gives us the first issue of Robert Venditti’s writing stint on Green Lantern, and Kick-Ass is back in Kick-Ass 3… making Dave Lizewski the first guy to make it three rounds wearing a green rubber suit who didn’t spend rounds one and two kneeling in front of a hole in a men’s room wall).

So while there’s a big feeling of change in this week’s books, one thing that has remained the same: it is Wednesday, which means new comics. Which further means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But it is not just a week of big hellos and goodbyes. We’ve also got the latest issue of Dan Slott’s The Superior Spider-Man (which, almost six months into this arc, if proving still generally and surprisingly fun to read), a new Jim Starlin Stormwatch, the second issue of J. Michael Straczynski’s Ten Grand, and a bunch of other cool stuff!

But you know how this all works: before we can talk about them, we need time to read them. So until we can accomplish that goal…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Leather Pants In Cleveland No Longer Exclusively A Sign Of Terrible Desperation: Captain America: The Winter Soldier Location Photos

The original plan for today’s post was to comment on DC Comics’s upcoming Villains Month, and how it is not only a lead-in to DC’s first great crossover event since the New 52 reboot, but to implicit bankruptcy – seriously, DC is shipping 16 different Batman Family titles in September, and multiple shipping almost every other title, meaning that I will be surviving on bricks of ramen noodles in September, while the owner of my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me if I have their money – not some of their money; all their motherfucking money – makes the down payment on the new 911 Targa.

However, as sometimes happens, circumstances got in the way… those circumstances being fatigue hysteria. So an in-depth analysis over the troubling recent tendency of comics publishers to ship multiple copies of their books in a single month, and therefore effectively getting eight clams out of every reader every month while pretending that they haven’t increased their cover price, will have to wait for a day or two.

But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t anything cool going on in the world of comics and superheroes. For example, Captain America: The Winter Soldier is currently shooting in Ohio. And while it is a superhero movie, from a visual standpoint, it is a movie about a guy in a spandex suit with a painted hubcap fighting a guy in a leather suit with a machine gun. Which, fortunately, means that directors Anthony and Joe Russo can actually shoot some of it in the real world… and they have. Which means that Cleveland.com has some location photos of a gunfight scene, that includes some of the first photos of The Winter Soldier, so we can see if they’re keeping the same look from Ed Brubaker’s comics.

And you can check some of those pictures out after the jump.

The Rains of Smallville: New Man of Steel Featurette Released

We are in a strange form of angry detente today at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office, based on the fact that I have read George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice And Fire. Because of this, I knew the term “Red Wedding,” and all its ramifications for certain characters on last night’s episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones adaptation of that series… while my co-Editor Amanda, who has not read any of the books, did not. Therefore, things have been tense here, beginning with the moment when Amanda asked, “Why is Roose Bolton wearing chain mail?” moving through cries of, “You could have warned me, you insensitive douche!” and continuing through this evening’s, “Here’s a surprise for you: you’re getting your own Goddamned beer.”

So after almost 24 hours of being face-to-face with bleak nihilism in a world where honor fails, justice is dead and the most fortunate member of an idealistic  family is the one who watched both her parents die in front of her, the only cure is some good, old-fashioned, American superheroics, free of senseless murders, gratuitous dismemberments, and where the phrase, “Winter is coming” only means that we’re in a break from big summer event crossovers.

And to get that pure experience, that means Superman. And thankfully, Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel opens in just a couple of weeks, which means that we can distract ourselves from the fall of the House of Stark with some solid studio hype over the rise of the House of El.

And in that spirit: a ten-plus minute featurettte about the making of Man of Steel, including some new stills and video footage from the flick. So if you’re still reeling from seeing Ma Stark get a Westeros Necktie, you can check out Pa Kent tell the last survivor of House El how he’ll always be his dad after the jump.

Regeneration All Over Again: Matt Smith Leaving Doctor Who, Continuity Is Doomed

It is official now: Matt Smith will be leaving Doctor Who after the upcoming 50th anniversary special and the annual Christmas special.

This is weird and potentially unsettling news for a couple of reasons. The first reason being that Matt Smith has been the face of Doctor Who as it has exploded in worldwide popularity over the past few years. Sure, Christopher Eccleston brought the franchise back to life, and David Tennant ramped its popularity way up, but it wasn’t until Smith that the show graduated to Hall H panels at San Diego Comic-Con and to mainstream press coverage. It’s easy to forget these days that, back in the 90s, Doctor Who was a niche property; back then I belonged to a local private social club (I wasn’t a member of the local Polish-American community, but I was trying to lay into a girl who was. Plus they had dollar beers. But I digress), and they had a Doctor Who pinball machine not because they were fans, but because it was the cheapest and least in-demand machine available at the time.

But not only is showrunner Steven Moffat losing (or firing, because frankly the story and statement aren’t totally clear as to who pulled the trigger on this decision) the guy who fronted the move from niche cheapie show with cardboard sets that you might catch on PBS at 4 a.m. if your cable had gone out, to the forefront of televised sci-fi, but he is opening up a potential can of continuity worms that is sure to turn this year’s Doctor Who panel at SDCC into a geekstorm so intense that it will make the members of the 501st Stormtrooper Legion mutter “nerds” under their breath.

Unexpected Milestones: Unbreakable 2 News, And Our 1,000th Post

This one’s about a bit of an obscure subject, considering that it concerns genre director M. Night Shyamalan, about whom the joke is now either, “The twist is that it turned out he sucked all along,” or perhaps, “I see dead careers,” if you’ve had a few drinks and you’re feeling mean… which I often am.

But I am going to indulge myself a little bit today, for the reasons that this very article constitutes Crisis On Infinite Midlives’s 1,000th post since our founding in September, 2011, and because Shyamalan’s 2000 movie Unbreakable is a movie with great personal significance to me, by reporting that Shyamalan is once again claiming that he might have a sequel or two to that movie in the works.

First, the facts: Shyamalan is doing publicity for the upcoming film After Earth, a movie about which, as was ably reported by Fox News’s Andy Levy on Twitter, Columbia Pictures has done yeoman’s work in not telling people Shyamalan directed it. And in the course of this press junket, Shyamalan (note to self: it’s “Shya,” like Shia LeBeouf only with a “y,” and then “malan.” Remember that and maybe you can type the guy’s name instead of pasting it over and over again) is consistently asked about the long-rumored sequel to Unbreakable, since asking after a sequel to Lady In The Water would be like asking the poor bastard if he has another suppurating chancre popping up in an uncomfortable place.

For years Shyamalan (Got it! And I didn’t have to backspace or nothing!) has teased that Unbreakable was actually just the first act of his original three-act screenplay, and that sequels might be coming. However, back in 2010, when Shyamalan was hyping The Night Chronicles – a series of urban horror movies that started with 2010’s Devil and then, well, kinda hasn’t gone anywhere beyond promises that the second will start shooting someday soon – he said that he had cannibalized the plot to one of the Unbreakable sequels for one of those horror flicks.

So that seemed like the end of that… but that was 2010, when the tone of the “What the fuck was that?” that people uttered leaving Shyamalan’s movies was still more impressed excitement than befuddled disappointment. With his last couple of movies being apparently work-for-hire projects servicing franchises or a megastar’s dream of his child’s movie stardom, Shyamalan’s tune about a second Unbreakable has changed a little bit.