Plans Within Plans: Batman #17 Review

In the history of Batman and The Joker, there are only a couple of iconic story endings that I can think of. There’s the end of the third issue of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, where Batman pursues Joker with the intent to kill him, finds himself unable to pull the trigger, and Joker takes one final shot at Batman by killing himself to frame Batman for his murder. And there’s the end of Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke, where Joker and Batman share a laugh when Batman finally understands how connected he is to Joker… and really, that’s about it. Sure, you’ve got Jim Starlin’s Death in The Family, but I really don’t remember how that actually ends; all I remember is Joker swinging the crowbar and Batman carrying Robin’s body. And yeah, there’s the Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers Joker Fish story, but all that easily comes to mind on that one is Joker with the fish.

When it comes to endings, there aren’t a whole hell of a lot that you can really point to as classic. Most Joker stories wind up one of a couple or three ways: Batman stops Joker in the middle of whatever his plan is in the nick of time and slaps him into Arkham, Batman stops Joker in the middle of whatever his plan is in the nick of time and Joker escapes, or Batman stops Joker in the middle of whatever his plan is in the nick of time and Joker appears to die and disappear. Some combination of these endings have been popping up in Batman / Joker stories literally since the first one, and none of them are particularly memorable… particularly since there are rarely any lasting consequences to the story. That’s part of why The Dark Knight Returns and The Killing Joke stand out – as, for the most part, standalone stories, the ending is, you know, the ending. In the regular monthly comics however, it’s hard to have one of these conclusions stand out since the events of the story are never permanent; hell, the most “permanent” Joker effects have been the killing of Jason Todd and the crippling of Barbara Gordon, and both of those have since been retconned.

All of which is a long way to go to start talking about Batman #17, and the conclusion of Scott Snyder’s Death of The Family crossover. In some ways, this ending isn’t really particularly special, in the sense that the actual mechanics of it are as familiar as color superhero comics to anyone who’s been reading them for longer than a month. However, Snyder does one thing that some of the best Batman stories do: create a lasting set of consequences for Batman as a result of Joker’s actions. But Snyder also does something that normally doesn’t happen in a Batman / Joker story, and it’s something that not only confirms something that most of us who have been reading these stories for years have always suspected, but it creates a situation in the Batman / Joker dynamic that I don’t recall ever having seen before… and while it is all doomed to be reconned and forgotten, right now, it makes it one of the best conclusions to a Joker story in recent memory.

A Flanking Maneuver Into The Killbox: A Valentine’s Tactical Assessment of The Battle of Hoth

It is Valentine’s Day, which means that couples everywhere are discussing matters of the heart. They are having heart-to-hearts about their relationships. Their futures. Their dreams. And, if that couple has been together for a while and know each other in a truly intimate manner, they discuss things that truly matter. Things such as the shortsighted and deeply flawed attack plan that Darth Vader launched following Admiral Ozzel’s clumsy and stupid drop from hyperspace into Hoth orbit, where he used overwhelming armored forces to achieve exactly fuckall, due to his apparent belief that a “flanking maneuver” is a Correllian sexual position, and that a “killbox” is a derogatory euphemism for a skilled laboress who trades in the Correllian Flanking Maneuver.

Well, it’s a good thing that, earlier this week, Wired Magazine published a lengthy article by defense blogger Spencer Ackerman discussing, in fairly low-level detail, the tactics used by Darth Vader and his attack fleet during the Battle of Hoth, a battle that only a week ago I would have sworn under oath that I knew more about than not only any American military battle, but also knew better than any of my childhood fistfights.

Turns out? Yeah, not so much. It turns out that the heroic escape of the Rebels in the face of overwhelming evil and incredible odds was, instead, the military equivalent of suckerpunching a kid in a helmet who drew up his battle plan with Crayolas.

What Once Were Vices

So far in 2013, we have always posted a new comic review on Wednesday night, since we here at Crisis On Infinite MIdlives have generally eschewed our regular post-comics purchase stop at the local bar on Wednesdays.

With that said: have you ever been through a New England blizzard? We’ve been stuck here in the Home Office for most of the past five days – the roads weren’t passable from Friday morning until late yesterday, with all schools closed, meaning we’ve been cooped up hearing happily shrieking children sledding into the street, with us unable to get our cars out to run them down.

Which means that, hell yes, we took our first chance in days to hit our favorite bar, which further means that we are currently unable to write any review longer than, “good,” even for Batman #17, which we have read, and which will make our Best of 2013 list.

tl;dr: We are drinking, and yet it is Wednesday, both of which mean that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But we are looking at one hell of a take here. Clearly, the biggest excitement of the week falls to Batman #17, and the conclusion of Death of The Family, and again: while I won’t review it until sometime tomorrow, I can tell you this: it is one of the best Batman / Joker one-on-one confrontations I have ever read. But there is also a new issue of The Walking Dead, the first issue of Ann Nocenti’s Katana, the first issue of Brian Michael Bendis’s Powers: Bureau (and his first issue of Uncanny X-Men with Shade: The Changing Man artist Chris Bachalo), Jonathan Ross’s and Bryan Hitch’s America’s Got Powers, and a bunch of other fun-looking stuff!

But you know (or at least remember) the drill: before we can review them, we need time to sober up, curse the inventor of the cheap plastic sled, and then read them. So until those planets line up…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

You’ve Gotta Keep The Devil Way Down In The Hole: Red Team #1 Review

When it comes to comic books by Garth Ennis, sometimes it feels like a coin toss as to which writer you’re gonna get: the writer with a laser focus on the behaviors and traditions of regimented subcultures, or the writer who’s over the top, balls out nuts. When it comes to Garth Ennis, it seems like it’s either heavily researched war comics, or sci-fi western pilgrims with a rifle and a hard-on for Jesus. Battlefields versus Crossed. Max Punisher or Marvel Knights Punisher.

When Ennis goes serious, he goes serious; his war comics – even the ones where he goes more toward the fucked up, like Stitched, a story about some soldiers stranded in Afghanistan being hunted by zombies – feel like he spent some serious time hanging out with soldiers, learning a lot about tactics, weapons, and their relationships and ways of talking. Now, I’ll grant that I’ve never spent any time around people with a serious military background, but those stories feel like Ennis spent some time with real people who have really done the things that he’s writing about.

Ennis’s latest series, Red Team, similarly feels heavily researched. However, it feels like it was researched by way of some things I have spent a lot of time around… those things being The Shield, The Wire, and Homicide: Life On The Street. In short: Red Team feels more like Ennis’s take on some of the better American cop shows (by way of Dirty Harry’s Magnum Force) than it feels like an authentic police story.

But with that said, I like all those shows. So does Red Team stand up to them?

Blackest Night: Everyone Quits Green Lantern

DC’s been releasing their May solicits over the past few days… with one exception: they’ve been holding back their Green Lantern solicitations. Which has led to a certain amount of anticipation, at least here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office, because some of the best crossovers and events in DC Comics over the past several years have come from Green Lantern writer Geoff Johns in those books.

So we’ve been waiting for what Johns had planned starting in May with bated breath, with images and memories of classics like The Sinestro Corps War, Blackest Night and Brightest Day dancing in our heads. What would it be? Another big crossover? Rainbow Lanterns? A new Lantern oath involving the prominent use of the word “sack”?

Turns out, not so much. It seems that Geoff John’s next big plan for Green Lantern is to, well, quit the book.

And apparently it was such a good idea that every other writer on the Green Lantern books has made the same plan. That’s right: everyone is leaving the Green Lantern books.

Um… what the hell, Geoff?

The Captain Kirk Slam: Iron Man #6 Review

Editor’s Note: My old man had a philosophy: peace means having a bigger spoiler than the other guy.

If I had to hazard a guess, writing Iron Man has to be an interesting and somewhat difficult task for Kieron Gillen. He’s following an Eisner-winning run by writer Matt Fraction on Invincible Iron Man, and not only is he taking the peak seat writing a character who is now mired in the popular culture not only as the star of his own movies, but the star of The Avengers and, if reports are correct, soon to be part of the Guardians of The Galaxy movie. So imagine not only that heavy responsibility that Gillen must feel, but throw on top of it that he is working with artist Greg Land, which means that no matter what Gillen wants to write for Tony Stark, he needs to make sure he includes a coterie of hot chicks for Land to lightbox.

Well, Gillen tries to rise to the task in Iron Man #6, the first part of the three-part arc The Godkiller. First, Land picks up the story gauntlet thrown down by Fraction at the conclusion of Invincible Iron Man, where Fraction set up Stark as preparing to spend an extended period of time in deep space. Gillen picks up story elements from last year’s Avengers Vs. X-Men to put Stark at odds with an entire spacegoing civilization, in a way that could easily put Iron Man into contact with the Guardians before all is said and done. And I can almost see Gillen finishing the first draft of his script and leaning back in his his seat with satisfaction… only to see a handwritten note pinned to his wall reading, “DON’T FORGET THE SPACE BITCHES!” and then sighing, cracking his knuckles and leaning forward to perform draft two.

I say that Gillen “tries” to rise to the task, because while Iron Man #6 lays the groundwork for a high-tension story putting Iron Man into direct conflict with an entire spacefaring civilization… but it is, in fact, all groundwork. This is a somewhat talky, exposition-laden issue with precious little action, instead focusing on explaining the civilization to set the groundwork for future conflict, and on Stark’s daddy issues and senses of aging and mortality. It is mostly foreplay with very little climax.

And, as with most good foreplay, there are hot chicks. So at least Land has something to do.

Apocalypses For Everyone! Age of Ultron Motion Comic Trailer Released

I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there has been a minor snow event that has affected the Greater Boston area over the past day and a half or so. Some refer to this event as Nemo, but the locals have taken to calling it a minor apocalypse.

As such, we are engaged with the normal activities of digging out from more than two feet of snow. Those activities being comprised of mainly cursing the Home Office building management for taking a whole two hours during blizzard conditions to come dig us out, while frantically compulsively our beers to make sure we can survive for 24 more hours, and finding to our horror that the count seems to drop by one every ten to fifteen minutes.

Therefore we don’t have a lot of time for comics writing today, but we do have one item: Marvel has released a motion comics trailer for their spring event crossover, Age of Ultron, the main ten-issue series of which is being written by Brian Michael Bendis and drawn by Bryan Hitch, Brandon Peterson and Carlos Pacheco. Supposedly Hitch has done the bulk of the art for the project, and he swears that his pencils are all completed and submitted… and we will know if he is telling the truth if issue 10 comes out sometime in 2015.

Either way, you can check out the trailer after the jump… and if you’ll excuse me, I need to put together a “Free snow, just haul away” ad on Craig’s List, and make some more beer safe for the neighbor kids by turning it into pee.

Casualties of Reboot: DC Cancels More Books, Shifts More Creative Teams

It has been 17 months since DC blew up their entire line of comics, shuffled all their creators around to different books, and blew up their entire history of continuity. You know, for everyone except Grant Morrison, who has been allowed to continue his Batman saga that started several years ago in Batman Incorporated like it’s still 2009… or sometimes, considering all the Silver Age characters Morrison’s shoveled into that storyline, like it’s still 1959.

And the New 52 reboot was an unqualified success. It put DC over Marvel, in both sales numbers and dollar earnings, for the first time. It refreshed the classic characters of the DC Universe for a new generation. Truly, those 52 books signalled the start of a thousand-year uncontested reign. Nothing could stop them. They would march to victory on a road of bones. They would drive their enemies before them, see them broken, and hear the lamentations of…

What’s that? DC’s cancelling six more books?

Whoops.

Eight Angry Men: New Avengers #3 Review

It’s hard to believe that it’s only been a month since Jonathan Hickman debuted his Marvel Now reboot of New Avengers, to generally good reviews, and, well, this one:

Christ, he thinks he’s making movies. That’s why I wasn’t completely satisfied by Avengers #1, and was actually kinda pissed off by New Avengers #1: they’re not really stories.

Yeah, it didn’t do a hell of a lot for me. Hickman started New Avengers in a way that felt like a movie trailer: a tease of a terrible, world-shattering apocalypse to occur at some point in the future, with a final assembly of heroes to combat this purely theoretical threat in heroic establishing shots with explanatory and expository slogans, followed by a team shot… all without a hell of a lot actually, you know, happening. All it was missing was some deep baritone growling, “In a world…” and an immediately-following commercial for Doritos. It was such a blatant setup for story versus actual story that it actually made me kind of angry.

That, however, was a month ago. This week, we have New Avengers #3, and the Illuminati is actually in a position to face the terrible, world-shattering apocalypse. So now that it’s here, how was it? Well, the downside is that the actual confrontation is, on the scale of action sequences, less the last ten minutes of the Avengers movie and closer to the last time I was shitfaced and tried to get the TV remote to jump to my hand using telekenisis. The good news is that, despite the somewhat anticlimactic action sequence, it features a hell of a lot of damn fine character work. And while there isn’t a lot of action, there is plenty of conflict. Some damned entertaining conflict, as a matter of fact.

Resignation: Minutemen #6 Review

“Such sad music. The saddest thing I can imagine…

Ironically, I’d spent the last week editing my book for the sake of my old friends…I gave everyone what they wanted: a sunny remembrance. I realized that carrying all that horror inside me was a small price to pay…

The book was a smash and because it was the only real accounting of our careers, it became the truth…

…’It’ll never be like it was when it was new, but there’s still plenty of life in this old baby.'”

-Hollis Mason, Minutemen #6

Sometimes I wonder what it must be like to work at DC Comics in 2013.

There you are, at one of the inarguable pinnacles of the comic book industry. You’re working for one of the Big Two, making the best page rates available in the American comics industry, working on some of the highest profile books there are. You never have to buy your own drinks at any comic convention in the civilized world, and thousands upon thousands of aspiring creators envy you your day-to-day existence… and yet it is, where the rubber hits the road, a job. You have a boss, and you call him and he or she tells you what you are going to be working on, and you have a choice: you either do it, regardless of how inane or Sisyphean your assigned task is… or you don’t, and hope that you can keep working in your little niche without being singled out and fired.

Put on top of that the particular an individual realities of DC Comics today: you work for a company that, less than 18 months ago, blew up the underpinnings of all their books in the interest of saving them, despite being only a year or so out of Blackest Night, which put more asses in DC Comics’s panels at San Diego Comic-Con than I’d ever seen before. And since that demolition, the company has busily spent its time examining every element of those new books under a microscope, reportedly making last-minute changes and nitpicks every step of the way, causing several high-profile creators to defect to Marvel. Management has mandated new directions and has then apparently fired people when the new directions are seemingly not the right new directions, with boss-favorite creators being given the assignments in the aftermath… and all of it under the daily direction of Bob Harras, the Editor In Chief who was Marvel’s Editor In Chief during the late 1990s. So you’re working under the sure and steady hand of a man committed to raising sales at any cost – and if that cost is cancelling a book, revamping any character, or demanding a crossover, character rape or supporting character murder, so be it… all while in the back of your head, you’re hearing things like, “Clooonnnneeeee Sagaaa…. Chrooooommmiummmm covvverrrrss…”

Now let’s imagine you are one of the creators assigned to the Before Watchmen project: a project that almost no one in comics fandom wanted, if they weren’t actively opposed to it. A project that, by its very existence, implied a comic publisher that was willing to actively and enthusiastically fuck over one of its (former) A-List creators in the interest of making a little money right fucking now, long term consequences be damned. And let’s say you are asked to work on one of these Before Watchmen books while employed by a company where you can see your fellow creators being fired by email, or having their books yanked to make an opening so that one of the Golden Boys can write a book starring fucking Vibe: what do you do?

Well, if you’re Darwyn Cooke, you write a final issue of Minutemen where the narrator makes a terrible mistake, writes the truth about it as best he can while allowing himself to be bullied into severely editing himself for the good of the people around him, and makes the decision to walk away from the whole mess, so that the people foolish enough to follow him can have their chance at things.

I might be – hell, I probably am – reading too much into Minutemen #6, but as a comic book? It could make one hell of a resignation letter.