Spoilers Incorporated: DC, New York Post Spoil Events of Batman Incorporated #8

Editor’s Note: While I will try to avoid including any spoilers for Batman Incorporated #8 in this piece, it is a story about DC and The New York Post spoiling Batman Incorporated #8. It is a difficult task, like trying to defuse a bomb while looking at a green wire with a yellow stripe, and a yellow stripe with a green stripe.

Yesterday, my co-Editor Amanda asked me idly why there wasn’t the same kind of mainstream press coverage of the events of last week’s Batwoman #17 as there was last May when Northstar did something similar in Astonishing X-Men. She had theories about the public perceptions of lesbians versus gay men, or the widening public acceptance of gay marriage in even the last nine months, but my theory? “Dan DiDio didn’t bother to pick up the phone and call a newspaper to tell them about it. Period. Full stop. It’s not like mainstream newspaper reporters make the comic store part of their local beat, hoping for a page four feature story.”

Well, this morning, it looks like my theory was proved correct. Because DiDio, or someone at DC Editorial, has called The New York Post and spoiled the living shit out of Batman Incorporated #8.

And, while I promised not to spoil the events of the book as reported by The Post, more detailed information that could spoil the book, including the link to the original Post story, will appear after the jump.

Southern Trespass: Captain America #4 Review

The unique thing about comic books, at least comic books from the Big Two that are owned by the publisher and have been around for a while (of course, whether those kind of comic books are the best thing for the industry or for readers is a whole different argument) is that writers and artists come and go, while the character remains. This dichotomy brings comic fans one of their favorite things – a continuity across years that can give some characters and titles an epic, historic feeling that supercedes the often simple adventure stories at their core – and one of their least favorite things – a continuity across years that the new douchebag creative team on a book are clearly fucking with with no regard for the character’s epic history and they’ve ruined the character and now I will Tweet a death threat and hello, Officer, no handcuffs are necessary, if you’d just read this issue, you’d see that I was right to threaten to set fire to the writer’s cat, and is that a Taser, and…

…well, you get the point.

The point being that creative teams change, and each new set of people has their own stamp that they want to put on these long-running books. And a lot of times these creators want to pay homage to a particular era from the character, which can be pretty damned varied; keep in mind that, at various times, Spider-Man has been a high school student battling street-level crime, a college student fighting more mid-level threats, an Avenger, a widely-reviled public menace, a member of the Fantastic Four, and a fucking clone… and now he’s Doctor Octopus. So if a writer wants to revisit any particular era, the story could be almost any kind, and if they want to do something new with the character, they’d need to make him a gay cowboy eating pudding or something (and I’m pretty sure if I dug far enough into the Marvel Team-Up back catalogue, I might even find that’s already been done).

All of which brings up to Rick Remender, and his reboot of Captain America following Ed Brubaker’s long run on the title. Brubaker’s reign on the title was categorized by S.H.I.E.L.D.-based espionage stories, and while God knows that he took his share of chances on the title – he killed Cap and brought Bucky back to life, for Christ’s sake – they were generally grounded, somewhat realistic stories with a classic Steranko-era feel. However, that’s not the only kind of Captain America story there is; Cap has a legacy of science fiction-style stories in his history, written and drawn by no less than Jack Kirby and Gene Colan – let’s remember that before MODOK became a comic reader’s punchline, he was created to fuck around with Cap.

Remender has clearly chosen to focus on the science fiction history of Captain America in his initial reboot story, which continues through this weeks issue #4. This is a full-blast sci-fi story, including alternate universes, alien races, spaceships, and one of the classic Captain America sci-fi villains: the Kirby-created Armin Zola. The question is: how does all this weirdness – weirdness supported by various eras in Captain America’s history, mind you – go down immediately following years and years of cold war-style spy stories?

Honestly? It’s going down hard.

When There Is No More Room In Hell, The Dead Will Wait In Line For Marvel’s One Men’s Room: New Marvel Teaser Poster Released

It’s been a little while since Marvel dumped out one of their recently ubiquitous, one-word teaser posters to hype an upcoming new title, but a new one entered the wild yesterday, following a tease at a retailer’s breakfast yesterday… and as an aside: why does Marvel seem to have so many breakfasts for retailers? It was a retailer’s breakfast at New York Comic Con where Marvel teased The Superior Spider-Man, and it just seems… weird. I know that the owner of my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to consider making their establishment the first stop on my comic store / local bar routine, would much prefer a retailer’s cocktail hour. Or at least I presume that he would, considering that every time I leave his store, I hear him mutter, “Christ, I need a drink.” But I’m getting a little off point here.

The point is that there is another intriguing teaser poster for some new Marvel book coming this fall. And the bad news is that, like all the other teasers preceding it, it gives almost no information on the actual book – including no creator names.

But the good news is that Marvel apparently got Ike Perlmutter to sign off on the budget for a couple of additional words for the teaser! Which you can check out after the jump.

Pulling The Pin: Justice League of America #1 Review

Editor’s Note: Gathered together from the cosmic reaches of the universe – here in this great Hall of Justice – are the most powerful forces of spoilers ever assembled.

This isn’t like The Suicide Squad.

– Steve Trevor

Actually, Justice League of America #1, written by Geoff Johns and drawn by David Finch, is a lot like Suicide Squad, in that it’s got Amanda Waller making unique and intriguing personal offers to fringe people with super powers to join a team controlled by the government to perform missions for the government’s purposes. It’s also a lot like Keith Giffen’s and J. M. DeMatteis’s early issues of their late 80’s Justice League, in that it is attempting to lay the groundwork for and justify a Justice League packed with second-stringers and also-rans. It’s also a lot like Brad Meltzer’s post-Identity Crisis run on Justice League of America, in that it’s got as many sequences of people looking at pictures of, and talking about, superheroes as it does sequences of people actually, you know, doing stuff.

Two of these similarities are good things.

Look, as an opening issue of a book trying to justify the creation of a second Justice League when there’s a perfectly good one that’s only a year and a half old, this is a perfectly acceptable story that delivers the necessary exposition required to justify the concept and to introduce characters who are either relatively new since the New 52 reboot, or who have been around in their own titles, albeit with sales numbers low enough to warrant a whole new introduction (I’m looking at you, Hawkman). And it does it with enough mysterious teases and interesting secrets to justify their willingness to join this team to keep things intriguing… with one exception. In one case, using a single word balloon, Johns shows himself to be playing with some serious fire. Fire that, if he handles it well, will thrill anyone who read comics through the 1990… and that conversely, if he screws it up, will make a fairly significant niche fanbase turn on him like he insulted their mothers, and make the attempted rehabilitation of Vibe seem like a low-risk venture.

…Move Zig

9:30 a.m., February 20th, 2013:

“…Okay, I’m heading to the day job, Amanda. We’ll head to the comic store when I get home, okay?”

“Cool! I’m bummed that Hellblazer‘s closing out, but at least Geoff Johns has a couple of books coming out today!”

“Um… he has one new book. Justice League of America. Which looks pretty interesting, except for… Vibe.”

“Actually, Johns also has the first issue of Vibe’s solo comic coming – ”

“NO! There is no Vibe solo book!”

“But Rob,” Amanda said, “Geoff Johns is a pro at rebooting characters that people have forgotten. And – ”

“I have never forgotten Vibe,” I hissed, “I bought issues of Justice League Detroit when I was 15 years old. And I don’t need Geoff Johns to reboot Vibe, because Vibe already made me reboot. In the sense that once I read those issues, I booted. And when I reread them, I rebooted.”

“Rob,” she said, “It’s been 28 years. Don’t you think it’s time you gave the character, and more importantly, Geoff Johns, a chance?”

“Never!” I cried. “With God as my witness, Vibe will not be a part of my weekly take tonight!”

——–

…and I was right. In the sense that, since Amanda, having a day off her day gig when I didn’t, went to my local comic store, where they know me by name, and ask me to stop telling the female paying clientele that their vibrators cause cancer because they are “part Vibe,” picked up the issue on her own and wrote it a damn fine review. But I am as good as my word, which means that I have obtained this week’s take – sans Vibe – and which further means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But even putting Vibe aside, this is a pretty solid-looking take, no? We’ve got Johns’s Justice League of America, the final issue of Vertigo’s Hellblazer (which I think Amanda and I will both have comments about in the near future), a new issue of Dan Slott’s The Superior Spider-Man, Joe Hill’s and Gabriel Rodriguez’s Locke & Key: Omega, a new Saga, Matt Wagner’s The Shadow: Year One, and a bunch of other good stuff! Good stuff that’s (mostly) Vibe-free!

But in order to discuss any of them, we need time to read them (and to sober up after our drunken, Vibe-related argument). So until those things happen…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

And You Sir, Are No… Comedian #5 Review

Editor’s Note: And one last review of the comics of 2/13/2013 before the comic stores open with the new books…

I had sworn to myself that I was gonna stop reviewing Comedian by writer Brian Azzarello and artist J. G. Jones, because after just two issues I knew it wasn’t working for me, and even that damnation with faint disappointment was only possible when the book wasn’t actively pissing me off.

From the beginning, Azzarello has made Comedian a story where Watchmen continuity is optional on a good day, where consistency of character with any prior depiction of Edward Blake was problematic, and where Azzarello seemed less interested in telling a story about The Comedian than he did in telling a story about shit that happened in the 1960s where The Comedian happened to be. Sure, The Comedian was an active part of the story, but it wasn’t so much about him; imagine Mad Men if Don Draper was selling anti-Kennedy ads to Donald Segretti, or if he was running a pro-segregation focus group with James Earl Ray as a member: all of Mad Men‘s elements are there, but it ain’t really a story about a conflicted advertising executive anymore, is it?

That tendency continues in Comedian #5, which, as per this book’s norm, is less a story about The Comedian than it is a story about Vietnam and My Lai, where The Comedian just happens to be. Which, again, I’ve learned to expect from this comic book, and which is something that I didn’t think needed further reviewing. However, Azzarello added one thing to this books that boiled my blood. It’s not much – just two words – but to my mind, it put a stamp on the book stating Azzarello’s intentions toward the book, and it’s a check that the series just doesn’t cash. And while there’s a possibility that I’m wrong, and that those two words might just be a simple Easter Egg to observant readers or maybe a nod to placing Comedian into a Wold Newton-style shared universe, it blew me out of the book as effectively as would have seeing Blake throwing the meat to Trudy Campbell. Or even Pete Campbell.

One-Two Punch: SDCC Hotels On Sale 2/26

Now that was fast: just a few days after selling out passes to San Diego Comic-Con 2013, the convention has announced that hotels in the downtown area will be going on sale Tuesday, February 26th at noon Eastern Time. This is fully a month earlier on the calendar than last year, when there was almost a month in between when passes went on sale and the opening of hotel reservations. So I don’t know if the people at SDCC are hoping that forcing people to fork out for passes and a couple of days worth of hotels all at once will help deter the bubblegummers who aren’t really serious about attending Comic-Con… or if they’re treating the preliminaries like a Band-Aid: just rip the damn thing off all at once and just get the pain over with.

Well, whatever the reason, here’s the deal. At some point in the 72 hours before Magic Hour, SDCC will be sending an email with a link to the sales site to badge holders. The site won’t go live until noon Eastern Time on the dot, and when it does, once you get in, you will need to pick six hotels from the list: no more and no less. This is different from previous years, when you could pick one hotel or all of them. And it is certainly different from, say, 2006, when I read the list, thought it over, went to lunch, came back, thought it over some more, and then booked a room with no trouble at about 4 p.m.

First Step Into Scatterlands: Warren Ellis Debuts Daily Webcomic

A few weeks ago, Warren Ellis teased some kind of a new comics project, named Scatterlands, with Super Dinosaur artist Jason Howard… and he did it without mentioning any further detail about what it was. Oh sure, he had previously Tweeted that he missed doing a free Web-based project like FreakAngels, but as a teaser, that really didn’t mean anything. After all, the man has also Tweeted about the gastronomic delights of the common infant, occasionally combined with the pastime refreshment value of Col. Werner Von Braun’s Old No. Nein! Stuttgart Slurpin’ Partially Gelatinous Booster Fuel. So it’s best to take Ellis’s 140-character pronouncements with a grain of salt. At least, I sincerely hope it is.

However, in this case, those announcements were at least semi-accurate, because Ellis has announced the nature of the Scatterlands project: it will be a Web-based, daily, single-panel comic strip, with new panels every weekday.

And by “it will be,” I mean that “it is.” The first panel debuted today on Ellis’s Web site.

So whaddya got in store for us, Warren?

A Better Bullet To The Head: Suicide Squad #17 Review

Am I the only one having fun here, boys?

– Harley Quinn

That’s the first line of Suicide Squad #17, and it’s pretty much a complete review in and of itself.

This is not the smartest comic you will read this week. It is not the finest attempt at visual narrative aspiring toward classic literature that you are ever going to see. It doesn’t have the most intricate plot – hell, it doesn’t have much plot, period. And with the exception of two panels for Harley and some backstory for Yo-Yo, the closest thing this comic has to character development is the establishment that Harley’ll let you suck her toes if you kill someone for her. So if you’re looking for some kind of high-falutin’ example of comics as the entertainment of choice for the discerning sophisticate, this is not the book for you.

However, if you are looking for non-stop, balls-out violent and gory super villain action, with entertaining repartee and a few damn good jokes? Suicide Squad #17 is about the best three bucks you can spend this week.

Bodies On The Road To San Diego: SDCC 2013 Tickets Sell Out In About 90 Minutes

So, you thinking about going to San Diego Comic-Con this year? Yeah, well, you can stop. Because it’s sold out.

Tickets went on sale via a specific Comic-Con Web site that they only publicized to those with Comic-Con member IDs who were eligible to take part in the general sales – those who got tickets via the early sale open to those who attended SDCC 2012, for example, were unable to get in on this to maybe get tickets for friends, loved ones, or anyone they’d like to drive into a forced geek march for four to five days.

Now, as we tried to establish in our report on how we proceeded in the early sale back in August, it is best to approach any Web-based sales event related to Comic-Con as if you are attempting to use the Internet to complete a transaction required to ransom your child, and that you are doing it from a location prone to network outages, power failures, and pre-nuclear electromagnetic pulse attacks. Comic-Con makes it a point to learn lessons from where their online sales and registration procedures fall down each year and plug those holes… only to find brand new holes that need plugging the next year.

Long story short: not everyone can get tickets, and sometimes the system to sell the tickets that are available falls down.

The sales Web site opened at noon. And we soon started seeing Tweets expressing… shall we say, displeasure. Apparently the waiting room went into overflow within a minute or so, and, unlike prior years when people complained that the URL to the sales site was bad and the server threw rampant 500 errors, this time around, it was complaints that the waiting room didn’t refresh,

I’ve seen reports from the well-prepared that the waiting room “line” hit over 6,000 people within three minutes. As for the less prepared and / or lucky?

Well…