Kill Your Heroes: Deadpool Killustrated #1 Review

So Deadpool goes around killing every major hero in the history of literature. Fuck it, why not?

Deadpool Killustrated #1 is the first issue of what is supposed to be the sequel to Deadpool Kills The Marvel Universe, but if you haven’t read it it’s not like it really matters. The theory behind the whole thing is that, in a non-616 version of the Marvel Universe, Deadpool has become aware that he is a fictional character, and he has killed all the other Marvel heroes to set them free from the tyranny of fandom, and yet he is still looking for a way to escape the world of fiction, and blah, blah, blah. Does you really give a shit?

The point is that this book is an excuse to have Deadpool use some truly impressive firepower to kill heroic characters from classic literature. So to say that Deadpool Kills The Marvel Universe is the origin of Deadpool Killustrated is arbitrary. You might as well say that the origin of Deadpool Killustrated was writer Cullen Bunn, a six pack of Sam Adams and a pinner joint.

And I really don’t care. Because no matter why it is here, while it is not quite as well-thought as its predecessor (which is like saying that cotton candy isn’t quite as nutritious as Peanut M&Ms), it is big, stupid, goofy fun.

J. J. Abrams To Direct Star Wars, Says Some Unknown Dude

As of this writing, this is a one-source story based on comments from “an individual with knowledge,” with no confirmation from anyone actually named in the story… but this is, after all, the Internet, where things like confirmation and reputable, on-the-record sources happen to other media. Dying media. Media with the budget to make phone calls to people who know things. And besides, if I waited for “confirmation” for everything I saw on the Internet, I’d still be waiting for a call back vis-a-vis whether that girl in the schoolgirl suit was, in fact, a schoolgirl, and I’d never ejaculate again.

What was I talking about again?

Oh yeah: The Wrap is reporting that J. J. Abrams has signed to direct Star Wars: Episode VII.

Overkill: Nightwing #16 Review

I now know where Walter White got all the cash he’s keeping in that storage unit in Breaking Bad: from The Joker. Because the only possible explanation for how Joker could not only take over and gin up Arkham Asylum the way he did in Batman #16, but set up the amusement park in the intricate way he did in Nightwing #16, is with a pile of azure crank so big it would make Tony Montana reconsider his life choices.

Nightwing #16 continues this month’s series of individual penultimate chapters of the Death of The Family event, which means that Joker is finally springing his trap against Nightwing. And, as in the beginning of this month of stories as established in Batman #16, Joker’s trap is so elaborate, hideous and wide-ranging that you will have a moment, while reading the story, where you say to yourself, “Um… Joker would have to have a team of trained engineers, including outsourced talent, to be able to pull this off. How does one find a demolitions engineer in another city? Do you go on Monster.com and search on ‘explosives,’ ‘9-11 hoax,’ and ‘Lyndon LaRouche’?”

So what writer Kyle Higgins has done here is to create a deathtrap so wide-ranging and intricate that it almost beggars belief. We have elements here that would require significant travel, transportation and varied expertise to pull off, not to mention days and days without sleep to do it in less than a few months. And on top of it, it almost requires Joker to know that Dick Grayson is Nightwing, so if DC decides to back off that plot point when the series is over, they’re gonna have a real problem unless someone along the line gives Joker some kind of meatball lobotomy, or maybe bring in Superman under the assumption that New 52 Supes has the same power set as Christopher Reeve in Superman II.

It’s almost an insurmountable challenge… but Higgins redeems himself by making Joker’s motivations and explanations for taking action against Nightwing somewhat compelling, even as the scope of what his motivations have led him to do simply beggar belief.

Well, he mostly redeems himself.

Don’t Know What You’ve Got Til It’s Gone: Winter Soldier #14 Review

I’ve been reading, and to varying degrees, enjoying, the books of the Marvel Now relaunch (but not a reboot! Because Marvel doesn’t reboot! And there have always been enough readers who give a tinker’s shit about Havok to put him on an Avengers team!), but the more I read, the more I am beginning to believe that we have just come off the back side of one hell of an era of Marvel comics. I mean, look back to, say, Civil War. Since then, and up until the Marvel Now books, we had Spider-Man’s Brand New Day and Dan Slott’s run of stories on that title. We’ve had Bendis’s Avengers and New Avengers arcs. Matt Fraction’s Invincible Iron Man, and Christos Gage’s Avengers Academy. And while not all of the crossover events have been great shakes (everyone gets a hammer? Really?), you gotta admit that Marvel, in general, put out one hell of a run of comics in that period between 2006 and 2011.

And through it all has been Ed Brubaker on the Captain America titles. From the reincarnation of Bucky to the death of Captain America to his rebirth to the launch of Winter Soldier, Brubaker has delivered some damn good action / espionage stories through the years, and have singlehandedly put Captain America on my pull list for the first time, well, ever.

Well, Brubaker is already off of Captain America in favor of Rick Remender, but he has remained on Winter Soldier… until now. Brubaker says goodbye to Bucky and Captain America, at least for now, with Winter Soldier #14. And while I had some issues with the early issues of the title (somewhere along the line, we went from Captain America being martyred in the aftermath of Civil War to a filthy Commie monkey with a machine gun), as a swan song for Brubaker’s run in Cap and Bucky’s world, it is true to form, a fitting conclusion for his work with the character… and a reminder that we are in a whole new world with Marvel Now… for good or ill.

Delayed Gratification: New Trailer For The Walking Dead Season 3, Part 2

The television industry is guilty of many egregious and terrible sins – glaring examples include the premature cancellation of WKRP In Cincinatti, the continuing employment of any member of the Kardashian family, and the premature creation of The New WKRP In Cincinatti – but the worst in recent memory is the split cable television series season.

There is nothing worse in the world than waiting for months and months for one of your favorite television programs to premiere – say, around Halloween – and then ramping up and ramping up to a climax… only to be cut short without ceremony or even a kind word, and then told to sit on your hands and wait until they’re Goddamned good and ready to deliver the back few episodes. It is like frequenting a house of ill repute that employs the use of an accurate time clock and an angry bouncer with anger management issues; it remains fun… but circumstances make the entire experience far less fun than it really should be.

And amongst the worst perpetrators of this scheduling crime is The Walking Dead, which is pure hell, as it is about my favorite show currently going. We left it at the mid-season break with Merle reunited with Daryl, The Governor short an eye and everyone generally pissed off at each other, and then boom! It’s December and we get to take a cold shower, limp painfully home and wait until February to see what happens in the back eight episodes.

However, while being the cause of our pain, AMC at least recognizes it and takes a small amount of responsibility for easing the blue balls they themselves created by releasing some teaser trailers to let us know what we’re in for… which, the more I think about it, is actually more like that angry whorehouse bouncer showing you a Hustler as he kicks your pantsless ass out the door.

Ah, well. Be it cruelty or kindness, the latest trailer for the second half of the third season of The Walking Dead is available for your viewing… whatever… after the jump.

Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used To Be: The Bionic Man Vs. The Bionic Woman #1 Review

As someone who was young enough to have the battery of Six Million Dollar Man toys as a kid – somewhere there exists an eight-track recording of me squealing with glee over my Maskatron Christmas gift that would earn me a scornful beating at my local dive bar – I reacted enthusiastically over the original, Kevin Smith plotted The Bionic Man series from Dynamite. As a modernization of Steve Austin’s origin story, which I still maintain is one of the classics of the sci-fi superhero genre, it was exciting and interesting while hitting all the old notes from the TV show that I loved so much as a your child.

The problems has been that you only get to tell an origin story once, unless you’re DC Comics. Since the opening arc, I’ve found that The Bionic Man has floundered by, well, trying to modernize more of the old Six Million Dollar Man story elements. Specifically, Bigfoot. Yes, there has been a lot of Bionic Bigfoot in The Bionic Man in recent months, and I’m sorry, but it’s not 1977 anymore. If you’re gonna have a Bigfoot in a story and it doesn’t pop the head off that hick in the “Gone Squatchin'” hat that I cackle at every week on The Soup, you’re missing the only opportunity that makes any sense for Bigfoot in 2013.

Because the problem endemic to any superhero story is that, eventually, that hero needs a superpowered villain to fight. And if it’s 1978 and you only have a TV-level special effects budget, sure: why not Bigfoot? He’s a gorilla suit with some wires sticking out of it. But these are comic books, with an unlimited special effects slush fund, so to force these characters to battle the bad guys whipped up by people who thought that wide polyester lapels and disco were good ideas has just left me cold.

So enter Dynamite’s The Bionic Man Vs. The Bionic Woman miniseries, where writer Keith Champagne takes the obvious choice for a superpowered antagonist and apparently embraces the old superhero comic trope of heroes fighting before joining forces… maybe. It’s too early to tell how the two characters, who never meet in the first issue, will interact, but at least there’s no arbitrary threat with bionics slapped into it for them to fight, right?

Right?

Scatter What Now?: Warren Ellis Announces New Comic Project

Warren Ellis is a legend in the world of comic books who hasn’t written a comic book in Goddamned forever. Sure, he did a short run on Marvel’s Secret Avengers toward the end of 2011, but while he released a novel and started a weekly column for Vice in 2012, he’s been pretty much absent from comics for well over a year at this point. And hey, those things were entertaining, but he did these things while there’s a fandom out there waiting for the conclusion of Fell and hoping for another dose of Desolation Jones.

Well, there’s some good news – no, not new Fell or Desolation Jones; we live in a human world, filled not with miracles, but with mundane and crippling disappointment – Ellis has announced a new comics project.

Of some kind.

The Gun’s The Thing: The Black Beetle #1 Review

I’ve always believed that the difference between a superhero comic book and a pulp hero story is a gun, and the willingness to use it for its intended purpose. Sure, they have costumes and gadgets and secret headquarters in common, but in the end, the gun’s the thing. Batman has a batarang, The Shadow has a gun. Iron Man has repulsor rays, The Spider has a gun. Everything else is just setting, antagonist and motivation.

If you accept that fine, bright line – and there’s no reason you necessarily should, since my own acceptance of it varies depending on what I’m reading and how much whiskey was involved beforehand – then writer / artist Francesco Francavilla’s The Black Beetle, despite having the word “pulp” on the cover, is very much a superhero comic. The hero has a Beetlemobile, a gyrocopter backpack, and a secret headquarters… but he also defines himself as not being a killer, and he uses tranquilizer darts instead of bullets.

But he has a gun. Two of them, actually. Sweet-looking Colt M1911s that he wields and shoots two handed, like, well, The Shadow. So while this doesn’t technically meet my definition of “pulp,” it’s close enough. And it is one hell of a lot of fun… if a little light on some of the details.

Bullseye: Francesco Francavilla To Pencil Hawkeye

This is about the best news from Marvel Comics in a while: artist Francesco Francavilla, who did such good, pulp-inspired work on 2011’s Black Panther: The Most Dangerous Man Alive (which came about a week too early to make my list of the best of 2012) and on this week’s Dark Horse The Black Beetle (which is really pretty good, and which we will be reviewing sometime in the next few days), will be taking over art duties on Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye for two issues.

“On Hawkeye, we’ve been blessed with not only one of the biggest writers in comics with Matt Fraction, but also some of the best artists like David Aja, Javier Pulido and now Francesco Francavilla,” said the book’s editor Stephen Wacker in a statement accompanying Marvel’s announcement of Francavilla’s addition to the team. “Though he’s only on the series for issues #10 and #12, Francesco is going to leave his mark on Clint with some of the most beautiful art you’ll see all year!”

Hawkeye is about the best match for Francavilla’s art style that I can currently think of at Marvel. The book has a healthy mix of street level crime and weird, S.H.I.E.L.D. superspy action that are pulpy and grimy, with enough big, overblown action, to really pop under Francavilla’s pencils. The dude gives solid, old-school action-adventure illustrations, and is probably my favorite artist discovery since we started Crisis On Infinite Midlives in 2011. Francavilla will be drawing Hawkeye #10 and #12, and you can check out his cover to issue 10 after the jump.

Major Distractions: Captain Marvel #9 Review

I generally read superhero comics for a momentary escape from the horrific tedium of work and errands and appointments and the horror – the absolute savage and crippling fucking horror – of having to talk to people. After a day of interacting with humans in unpleasant scenarios, there’s nothing more fun than watching people with otherworldly powers stomp the living shit out of super villains, giant monsters, and during summer crossover event season, each other.

I’ve always found it relaxing and empowering, after a long day, to turn off the phone, turn off the brain with some strong drink, and imagine that I could be one of those people in costume, flying around and kicking ass – no one else wishes this of me, due to how my bloated, middle-aged ass would look in one of those costumes, but to hell with them – because generally those superheroes don’t have to slog through the same repetitive, boring shit that the rest of us do.

Unless you’re Captain Marvel. Who spends a surprising amount of Captain Marvel #9 having to put up with exactly the kind of rotten, irritating, day-to-day shit that we do, only with some distractions thrown in… provided you consider an unexpected dinosaur attack to be distracting. I probably wouldn’t, thanks to my previously-mentioned propensity for strong drink, but that’s not the point. The point is that we spend a lot of Captain Marvel #9 watching Carol Danvers keeping appointments… and yet it is actually a fairly compelling and entertaining book to read.

Not to look at, but we’ll get to that.