Thursday Night At The Movies: Patton Oswalt on Star Wars and Kick-Ass 2

It is yet another eventful evening in the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office – tonight, we have a plumber in replacing the sink garbage disposal. You know, that thing mounted under your sink that is designed, meant and sold to grind small bits of kitchen detritus so it can be washed down the sink, thus leaving more room in the trash for beer cans? The device that has a big warning on it to keep your damn hands away from it unless you want to sharpen your wrist like a #2 pencil? Yeah, that shit the bed. On an egg shell. A bit of garbage so known for toughness and resiliency that they are sold in padded specialty containers, and if the bag kid at the grocery store puts them at the bottom of the bag, you’re allowed by Massachusetts law to bust him in the mouth with a sack full of canned goods.

So posting must be quick tonight, what with my needing to keep an eye on this guy in case he asks for assistance… and if he does, considering all I know about plumbing is its spelling, I will be forced to respond, “Sure… hows about I staple the back of your BVDs to your spine so I can stop seeing that stereotypical man-ass cleavage there, champ?”

So in the spirit of quick improvisation, we have a couple of videos for you, starting with Patton Oswalt on the set of Parks & Recreation, filibustering the city council by spending almost ten minutes explaining what the plot of Star Wars: Episode VII should be – including Marvel superheroes, the X-Men (yes, I know they are Marvel heroes, but tell movie rights holder 20th Century Fox that) and the homoerotic cast of Clash of The Titans. It’s some good, impressive and funny stuff – as you can tell by the poster Entertainment Weekly made based on selfsame improvised rant.

And if that’s not enough, well, someone leaked an extended, bloody battle scene from the climax of Kick-Ass 2. Both of which you can find after the jump.

The Heroes We Deserve

It has been an… eventful week so far here in Boston. We had the awful events at the finish line at the Boston Marathon on Monday, followed by an outpouring of support from around the country on Tuesday – the New York Yankees, a baseball team that, on a normal day, no Bostonian would admit is staffed by a single legitimate human being, played the Red Sox’s victory song, Sweet Caroline, during the third inning at Yankee Stadium last night – and all the late night comics were extremely supportive, despite carrying humiliating memories of being eaten alive at Nick’s Comedy Stop on Warrenton Street back in the 90s (and as someone who was a comedian back in the 90s, trust me: they were all eaten alive at Nick’s).

But now it is Wednesday, and as you might have read, Boston is not your normal American city. We’ve been here longer than almost any other city in this country, we were the first ones to chuck a hearty “fuck you” to out British overlords in the 1770s, and we were the setting of America’s greatest sitcom, where every single character drank in a bar all day and then went to work because even the most incredulous TV viewer had no doubt that not even hours of drinking could prevent a Bostonian from getting up and going about his fucking business.

Remain Calm And Carry Comics: Boston Comic Con Taking Place As Scheduled

After the wretched and depressing events at yesterday’s Boston Marathon in Boston’s Copley Square, there was some speculation about whether or not this weekend’s scheduled Boston Comic Con would still be held, what with the fact that it is being held at the Hynes Convention Center – roughly three blocks from the, as of this writing, still-active crime scene.

The question was up in the air until a few hours ago, when the convention emailed attendees with advance passes to tell us that not only is the convention still on, but that all scheduled guests are apparently confirmed to still be there.

You can check out the full release from Boston Comic Con, including the names of all the confirmed guests, after the jump.

We Will Soon Return To Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

If ever Boston needed a Batman, it was today.

— The Batman (@TheBatman) April 15, 2013

The Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office is based in Boston – miles away from the site of yesterday’s Boston Marathon bombings, but still, we’re here – so suffice it to say that we have been a little distracted for the past eighteen hours or so.

We, and everyone we know, including all our contributors, are all fine, although a bit shaken up as we had idly kicked around the idea of venturing downtown yesterday to try to score Red Sox tickets for the morning game, and the idea of getting hammered at the Cask And Flagon bar on Lansdowne Street and wandering toward Copley to drunkenly heckle the workaday, “This is my first marathon!” runners had been floated. Marking April 15th, 2013 as the first day we have ever been grateful for having made the decision to not day drink… although after the news started to come out, you can be damn sure that we made the decision to night drink in fairly short order.

So please bear with us as we shake this off and soon return to our regularly-scheduled comic book programming, probably later today… with that programming to include coverage from the Boston Comic Con, currently scheduled to take place this coming Saturday and Sunday.

Currently we expect #BostonCon to continue as planned. We will have more information in the days ahead. Thank you for your patience.

— Boston Comic Con (@BostonComicCon) April 15, 2013

Always A Bridesmaid: Batman #19 Review

Editor’s Note: Your have eaten Gotham’s wealth. Its spoilers. From now on, none of you are safe.

Is there anyone who saw the teaser for the WTF cover of Batman #19 and didn’t know pretty much automatically that it was probably Clayface impersonating Bruce Wayne? And more importantly, is there anyone in the comics reading world who really gives a tin shit about Clayface?

I mean, the concept of Clayface has been around 1940, and even after all that time, it’s not like Clayface is anybody’s idea of a classic character. Because even though there is clearly enough behind the concept of a shapeshifting supervillain to keep Clayface popping up now and again for the past 63 years, let’s face reality: there have been eight different Clayfaces since Detective Comics #40. The only reason to revamp a “classic” villain on an average of every eight years is if there is something fundamentally wrong with it.

The fact of the matter is “Clayface” is nothing but a set of powers behind a grotesque body, with next to no personality behind it. Hell, I’ve been reading Batman comics for 37 years, and I couldn’t tell you any of the Clayface’ origin stories, or what motivates them to crime as opposed to, say, looking at my dripping, earthy face and attempting suicide. Or maybe shifting into Brad Pitt and trying to impersonate myself into a better life (although if you’re old enough to remember Angelina Jolie back when she drank blood and was married to Billy Bob Thornton, you might think she’d be more into the whole monster thing).

My point is, I don’t think anyone really cares about Clayface. And Clayface is the antagonist of Batman #19. So the question is: does writer Scott Snyder finally do anything interesting with the character?

Short answer: nah. Not really.

Hawkguy Trouble: Hawkeye #9 Review

Hawkeye is one of the best superhero comic books that you can currently buy, and it is because it isn’t about superheroes. Oh sure: it has all the trappings of a standard superhero comic book: it stars an Avenger, it features The Black Widow and Spider-Woman, it has fistfights and a motorcycle chase and international crime and women of mystery, but those aren’t the things that Hawkeye, and in particular Hawkeye #9, is about. For all the action and the trappings, Hawkeye #9 is about a guy who has made some bad decisions  – some for good reasons and some not – and is dealing with the consequences of how those decisions have affected the women in his life, and by extension how those women’s reactions are affecting him.

So Hawkeye #9 is a story about some superheroes, but it is not a superhero story. It is, instead, a very human story that anyone with any regrets over how they have treated someone close to them, or anyone who has felt let down by someone close to them, can relate to. And it includes Russian mobsters getting the living shit kicked out of them on more than one occasion. Which means that this is an extraordinary issue of an extraordinary comic book, and one of the best books in the past several weeks.

Seriously: considering there’s another issue this week where Hawkeye fights Ultrons, it says a lot that Hawkeye’s most compelling conflict this week is with Spider-Woman over an old girlfriend. This is a good one, kids.

Space Cowboy Butttext, Or: First Second Printing

Based on the comics news of the past couple of days, there have been thousands of comic readers who have wondered, based on the initial indications that it would be impossible to get Saga #12 on the iPad or the iPhone because of Apple’s App Store policies, and the subsequent news that Comixology had never submitted the issue to Apple for sale, how they would get their hands on that particular comic book. For a while, it seemed like the rarest comic book in the world on sale this week.

However, based on this picture…

…that clearly isn’t the case.

But before we talk about the misstated rarity of Saga #12, or any of the rest of the comics in that photo, let’s talk about this one, which seems to be a genuine Goddamned rarity:

That is a copy of Invincible Universe #1, which was released for the first time today. Which means that it is an initial printing. And yet if you click that picture to enlarge it, and look under the issue number, it clearly says, “Second Printing.” And while it might be an apocryphal story, the owner of my local comic store, where they know me by name and often tell me, “Rob, you are a long-time and valued customer, so long as I can’t prove you’re the source of those awful stains,” told me that his is the only comic store in America who received first-print copies of the issue with the “second printing” indicia stamped on it. And if he is correct, and / or telling me the truth, that means that that photograph is of a comic book of which there are only eighteen copies in existence.

I just bought a 55-inch TV, which is being delivered tomorrow. If you’d like to pay for it in exchange for a weird issue of Invincible Universe, ping me in the comments.

But anyway, regardless of comics that are rare because of Space Cowboy Butttext, or because of misprinted print issuance indicia, its still a pretty decent week for comics. We’ve got a new issue of Scott Snyder’s Batman, the second issue of DC’s Constantine, the final issue of Mark Millar’s and Dave Gibbons’s The Secret Service, the issue of Batman & Robin that supposedly gives us Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns Carrie Kelly as Robin, and a bunch of other cool stuff!

But before we can address any of them, we need time to read them. Well, either that or read them and then slab them and slap them on eBay before a real second printing is issued, but one way or the other: until we can do that…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Fruit Forbidding: Apple App Store Refuses Sale of Saga #12

Update, 4/10/2013, 5:50 p.m.: As contributor Lance Manion pointed out in the comments, it turns out that Apple isn’t the party that censored Saga #12. It was Comixology themselves. Details at the end of the original story, after the jump.

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The Internet is an interesting place. It’s a place where, by simply closing your eyes, pounding on your keyboard with your fist and pressing the Enter key, you can see pictures, in living color, of a woman with a substance abuse problem blowing a horse.

It is also a place where you can obtain anything that can be turned into ones and zeroes that you want, completely for free, much to the consternation of major media producers. But thankfully, most of those media producers have embraced the possibilities of the Internet, making their content instantly available to anyone with a credit card – you know, adults – instantly, and at a reasonable price. And all across a medium that only fifteen years ago was best known as a delivery vector for animal pornography and autopsy photos.

Well, unless you’re trying to ply your wares through Apple’s App Store. A company and a store who have, in their infinite wisdom, decided not to accept Image Comics’s Saga #12 for sale via the iOS Comixology app due to two images of gay sex. Because God forbid that a consenting adult be allowed to decide to purchase a cartoon that includes two panels of sex acts on their iPad – a device widely used to make it possible to view and masturbate to high-definition pornography in a public toilet stall.

So, what with Apple acting in a manner similar to Wal-Mart and other prudish, yet powerful, corporate overlords who want to tell you what you can and can’t read or watch, I imagine Saga creators Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples, and their little publisher Image, have agreed to self-censor their book in order to gain access to iPads, yes?

Yeah, no.

Hulk And His Anonymous Friends: Indestructible Hulk #6 Review

Editor’s Note: Hulk spoil!

Let’s start off with this: that’s a great cover. But since I am emotionally no older than 12 years old, all I keep thinking is that if you obscure Thor’s hammer, what you’ve got is a spectacular pin-up of The Hulk after a horrific night of Taco Bell.

Second: I really wanted to like Indestructible Hulk #6. I am generally a fan comics that are written by Mark Waid, and as a dude who was reading comics back in the 80s, I will buy damn near anything pencilled by Walt Simonson, particularly an issue that you can tell based on the cover features Thor. For a generation of comic geeks, having Simonson draw Thor is appointment comic reading second only to maybe seeing Todd McFarlane draw Hulk.

And having read through the issue a couple of times, it turns out that seeing Simonson draw Thor again is one of two good reasons to read the book, the other being the final panel, which I’ll get to in a minute. But otherwise, this is a decompressed first issue of a longer arc that asks more questions than it answers, but in many cases not teasing the mysteries well enough to make them compelling rather than incomplete and confusion. And worse: while, again, it’s nice to see Simonson’s Thor again, his storytelling choices take characters that are meant to be enigmatic and instead makes them cannon fodder.

This one’s only okay, guys. On a good day.

Freedom Is Free Again: Comixology Ready To Deliver On Marvel’s SXSW Free Comics Offer

Once upon a time in a magical land known as Austin, during a festival known as South By Southwest where the peasants celebrate the coming of spring by paying nine bucks a beer to their corporate betters, the benevolent kings of Marvel Comics announced that they would bestow a boon upon the common folk: 700 classic and new tales of knights and heroes, delivered instantly into their homes, notebooks and even their pockets, all thanks to the magic of their House Wizards at Comixology, known far and wide as the most proficient magicians in the delivery of these tales (or at least amongst the last ones standing).

But alas, no sooner did the Day of Giving arrive than the secret magicks of the Wizards of Comics Delivery failed, leaving hundreds without their promised boon, and some wondering just what in the hell they had been paying the magicians for in the first place.

Which is a long and stupid way to go to say that, about a month after Comixology was forced, due to server load, to suspend Marvel’s offer of a few days of free comics, they have told those who emailed them to say that yes: they wanted the free comics, fer Christ’s sake, that they will soon see their patience rewarded.