The Hulk On TV? That Almost Never Happens: ABC Reportedly Picks Up S.H.I.E.L.D. Series

We’ve known for months now that Marvel has been, with the help of Joss Whedon, putting together a television pilot about S.H.I.E.L.D. to tie into the Avengers and other Marvel movies, because hey: a billion or so dollars is nice, but who doesn’t want an extra 20 or so million dollars every yer between September and May?

And, beyond the reported resurrection of Agent Phil Coulson in the series, that’s pretty much all we’ve known. After all, a lot of TV pilots are shot every year that never make the cut (Powers, anyone?)… although you’d think that a series based on a series of movies that have made more money than Greece would be the kind of easy money bet that any network would take, let alone ABC, who’s one bad Dancing With The Stars cast away from having to offer to blow CBS for nickels.

And it looks like they’re ready to take that bet – Entertainment Weekly is reporting that ABC is ready to pull the trigger and order a full season of the S.H.I.E.L.D. series.

Personality Crisis, or: Skype Is Free: Batman #20 Review

Dear creators working in DC’s Batman office: there is a product available on the Internet called Skype. It is free. And it allows you create a virtual conference room, where you can invite any number of people to join, and then, you know, talk to each other.

I say this because there is obviously no communication happening about how Bruce Wayne is handling the death of his son. The writer of that death, Grant Morrison, has Bruce sucking down Man-Bat serum and going on a revenge rampage over in Batman Incorporated. Peter Tomasi has Batman scouring the world looking for a way to bring Damian back to life, including the psychological torture of the last Robin to get killed on his watch this month, and making an attack on fucking Frankenstein for answers last month.

And Scott Snyder, the writer of the main Batman title? Well, as a guy who has to turn in a comic book during this whole, sudden, “Damian’s-Dead” shitstorm, he has Batman affected by the event in the margins, while making the meat of the story a decent, if workmanlike, two-and-done featuring an antagonist no one really cares about, and a big Easter Egg in this week’s Batman #20 to delight the rubes (I was certainly delighted). However, as a guy who has reached A-List status at DC in the past year and a half, with arguably as much pull as Morrison, Snyder has clearly said, “Um, yeah: I’ll give you a couple issues mentioning this death, but this is Grant’s problem. I think I’m gonna scrap my Riddler plans and do a year-long story set in the past while you guys deal with the fallout from the whims of that crazy Scottish fucker.”

So if it seems every Batman writer has picked a different stage of grief to stick Bruce Wayne into over the death of his son, Snyder has clearly chosen “Acceptance.” Which means, at the very least, that it is the less histrionic of the two Batman titles on the stands this week. But the question is: is that enough to make it any good?

Bros Before… Ah, Nevermind: Batman And Red Hood #20 Review

Batman And Red Hood (previously named Batman & Robin but recently renamed due to Robin being occupied by a previous engagement with a dirtnap) #20 is finally proof – to me, at least – that when Grant Morrison killed Robin in Batman Incorporated, he really didn’t tell anyone what he was planning to do ahead of time. Because the only possible explanation I can think of for a comic like Batman And Red Hood #20 to exist is that the creative team had to come up something – any damn thing – to fill the pages that was at least somewhat on point with this dead kid they suddenly found themselves saddled with.

Seriously: sudden, blinding panic is the only explanation for some of the things we’re seeing in this issue. Trying to introduce some version of Carrie Kelley that we’ve never seen before is a bad enough flailing grasp from a creative team realizing that they’re buying groceries with the money made from a book with the name “Robin” in the title. But it also is the only explanation for, hell, almost the remainder of the book. There are so many problems with this issue, from off character moments to weird methods of attack that make no sense to a couple of legitimate “what the fuck?” panels that I have to believe the issue was whipped together at the last minute in a pants-shitting panic.

Because otherwise, I need to believe that a writer of a Batman comic book would think that Batman would engage in a drive-by shooting in the interest of resurrecting the dead.

Yeah, you heard me.

The Walking Dead: Set Pictures From The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Include Possible Major Spoiler

We’re a bit late to the party on this, but The Daily Mail, over in England, debuted some set pictures of Emma Stone on the set of The Amazing Spider-Man 2. And being an English, tabloidy, general news kind of site, they used their scoop to gush that Stone was dressing more maturely than she did in last year’s original movie, and how damn stylish she looked in a lime-green coat and a purplish mini dress, with some high boots.

The Daily Mail focused on this because they are an English, tabloidy, general news site, and are therefore catering to middle-aged women who want to see how celebrities are dressed, and young men who want to see tits on Page 2 (at least I think it’s Page 2. I am unsure because I am an American, and therefore get my pictures of tits the way God intended: from the Internet, within the context of hard core pornography).

Comic fans, however, looked at these pictures and saw something more. And that something more was a potential serious spoiler for the events of The Amazing Spider-Man 2. And if you are a long-time comic reader like I am, you have already figured out the potential spoiler just from the picture above… but in case you’re unsure and want to remain pristine for the debut next May, you can see what I’m talking about after the jump.

Demon In A Bottle In A Paper Sack: Iron Man 3 IS Tony Stark’s Alcoholism Story

Editor’s Note: It’s pretty much impossible to discuss the plot of the movie without, you know, spoiling it. So if you want to remain pristine on this, give this editorial a pass until you’ve seen Iron Man 3.

Ever since the news that Iron Man director Jon Favreau had hired Robert Downey Jr. to play Tony Stark in that first movie, there has been an implied promise that, at some point, we would see an adaptation of the classic Demon In A Bottle story arc in one of the Iron Man movies. Sure, Downey was an Academy Award winning actor, but in the early 2000s, he was better known as a reckless drug addict who spent as much time in front of a judge as he did in front of a camera. For good or ill, that history was part of why comic fans got so excited about Downey’s casting as Tony: when the time came to touch on the alcoholism story, it would be fronted by a guy who knew what it was like to lose damn near everything he cared about to substance abuse.

Well, Iron Man 3 is out. It is, as of this writing, the final turn as Tony Stark that Downey is contracted for (although if Kevin Feige has a brain in his Goddamned head, he will offer Downey anything he wants to do Avengers 2, up to and including Stan Lee’s left testicle), and from all advance reports, it was not going to be the Demon In A Bottle story that we’ve been hoping for since 2008 – hell, considering the very first thing we ever see of Tony Stark in any movie is his hand with a Goddamned drink in it, they might as well have promised it to us.

Well, having seen the flick, I can tell you that director Shane Black has excised almost all references to Tony’s drinking… and yet you should make no mistake: this is Tony’s long-awaited alcoholism story. The story fairly reeks of being a first-draft Demon In A Bottle story, with all the overt references to actual, you know, drinking, removed. But if you look for the signs, they’re there… like being around a dude in a nice suit and clean hair, but whose sweat smells faintly of Jack Daniels.

Sensory Overload

Okay, between Free Comic Book Day, Star Wars Day (May The Fourth Be With You! Get it? Is this thing on? Bueller?), the viewing of Iron Man 3, and the celebration of the birthday of one of our contributors (Happy Birthday, Trebuchet! Here’s to being one year closer to death!), we have been flat out all day and likely will be through the remainder of the evening. Thus, this is the end of today’s broadcast day… being as this is being written and published from a two-year-old cell phone.

However, we plan to see Iron Man 3 one more time tomorrow to better be able to review the film here, so watch for that in this space tomorrow. In the meantime, get yourself to a theater and check it out (one-line preliminary review: well worth seeing, but not nearly as exciting as last year’s The Avengers, and the whole thing kinda stinks of where they removed the Demon In A Bottle references that, by rights, should have been there. But a damn fun movie nonetheless), and we will regroup on the morrow.

But until then: see you tomorrow, suckers!

Crowdsourced Batman: The Movement #1 Review

Somewhere, the kids from Anonymous are shitting themselves with glee, because with The Movement, they’ve got their own comic book. And they’re superheroes and everything. Except they have custom facemasks instead of the omnipresent V For Vendetta masks, because not even those guys want to face the wrath of Alan Moore.

Okay, lemme take a step back. I was not a part of 2011’s Occupy movement, because I have one of those job things, but I walked past the Boston incarnation at Davis Square every day because they were between the job thing and one of those bar things. And while you can argue about that movement’s (Movement! Get it?) motivations, success or failure, it was pretty clear to a daily passer-by that, at face value, it was a group of people who were committed to battling corruption, policing themselves and providing their own version of social services. Also marijuana, but mostly those three things.

Write Gail Simone’s The Movement #1 takes those three concepts, throws in the social crowdsourced vigilante justice of Anonymous, mixes them up with a healthy dollop of superpowers, drops them into a DC Universe city so filthy and populated by killers, filth and dirty cops that it makes Gotham look like the city from Logan’s Run, and tries to show us what Occupy and Anonymous might look like in a place where something like that might not only be needed, but where no one can stop them.

Which is an interesting concept, but is it any good?

The Octopus Strikes Back: The Superior Spider-Man #9 Review

Editor’s Note: Sorry, but this has to be. The spoilers of an old life must make way for the new.

At the end of 2012, Spider-Man writer Dan Slott got a lot of attention boosting attention to his long run on The Amazing Spider-Man by, well, killing The Amazing Spider-Man.

The move caused an uproar amongst long-time Spider-Man fans, who acted like Slott stole Grandma’s Thanksgiving turkey and then beat her with it about the nead and neck. It was interesting to watch: hundreds upon hundreds of long-time comic fans – fans who have seen almost every damn character of any prominence die and come back to life over the years – acting like they were incapable of understanding that Spider-Man’s death was obviously temporary. Of course Spider-Man’s gonna come back to life; Marvel would no more kill its flagship character than it would hand over the keys to the shop to slashfic writers for whom English is a second language.

However, the move got a lot of press and led to a lot of printings of The Amazing Spider-Man #700, so from a business standpoint, the move to kill Peter Parker was a success. So four months later, what does Dan Slott do for an encore?

Double Murder

I knew I knew you, I knew I knew you. But you ain’t you. You can’t be you… There ain’t no coming back. This is the really real world, there ain’t no coming back. We killed you dead, there ain’t no coming back! There ain’t no coming back! There ain’t no coming back!

– T-Bird, The Crow

Man, Dan Slott isn’t interested in making any friends these days.

Slott’s Twitter feed has been lighting up all day from people who are, shall we say, miffed at Slott over the events of The Superior Spider-Man #9. In the way that Simon Weisenthal was miffed at Josef Mengele. Or the way Alan Moore is miffed at Dan DiDio. Or Joe Quesada. Or Dave Gibbons. Or pretty much anybody.

So as soon as I got to my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to stop making frivilous references to Mengele, the first thing I did was read The Superior Spider-Man #9. And while I don’t want to spoil anything (at least not until I review the issue), I can safely say that the reason so many people are affected is that, well, Slott’s done it again… which actually is a spoiler, but fuck it. If you actually figure it out, my defense will be that my brain has been taken over by an evil scientist: Dr. Jack Daniels.

So there’s that big Octopus-scented shot coming across the bow this New Comics Day, but that’s certainly not it for new comics. There’s plenty of other books just out, which means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

There’s some good stuff in there, huh? There’s the new book by J. Michael Straczynski and Ben Templesmith, Ten Grand, the new Gail Simone book The Movement, Brian Buccellato’s new pulp superhero book The Black Bat, a new Hawkeye and Age of Ultron, plus a bunch of other cool-looking stuff!

But you know how it is: before we can review any of them, we need time to read them. So until we can get that done…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Release Your Anger, And Mix Your Metaphors: Wil Wheaton Tells Infant Why Geekdom Is Awesome

Unless you are a geek of a certain age, say about 35 and older, it is hard to understand the hatred that fandom had, during Star Trek: The Next Generation’s original run, for Ensign Wesley Crusher.

If you were of an age to grow up on original Star Trek reruns, with the Vulcan Nerve Pinch and “Dammit Jim!” and green alien chicks getting the Captain Kirk Slam (definition: railing someone to the rhythm of that “dun dun DUN! DUN! DUN! DUN! DUN! dun dun dun!” song from when Kirk fought Spock in the ring during Amok Time), the debut of The Next Generation, with its calm and measured captain and its Klingon on the bridge and its actual adherence to the Prime Directive, was hard to get used to on its face… without having a precocious teenager on the bridge doing particle physics and rewiring the warp core and generally acting like, well, anyone else on the bridge except with (presumably) wispier pubes.

Fandom’s hatred of that character was palpable, most obviously and continually evidenced by the late 90s Usenet discussion group. At the time, it seemed that nothing could redeem the character, or Wil Wheaton, the actor who portrayed him.

That, of course, was then. Now, in 2013, Wheaton is a widely-respected geek genre actor, writer and icon, and the reaction many people had to Wesley Crusher seems as silly as it should, considering he was a character in a franchise that also gave us Tribbles and “Double dumb ass on you!”

But nevertheless: that negative passion was there in the 80s… but Wheaton doesn’t dwell on that, even though he’d pretty much have every right. And here’s the proof: at this weekend’s Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo, a fan asked Wheaton to record a message to her infant daughter explaining why being a nerd is a good thing. And Wheaton, who took such a beating from fandom once upon a time that even Jake Lloyd sometimes pities him, recorded a four-minute message to this child emphasizes everything good and cool and awesome about being a geek of any stripe. And you can check that out after the jump.