God Help Us, Twin Peaks Might Come Back After All

Late last week, there was a rumor going around the Internet that David Lynch had had a meeting with NBC executives to relaunch Twin Peaks. The rumor was that Lynch was planning to set the new series twenty-something years after the original series final episode (which aired on June 10, 1991), with Bob still trapped in Dale Cooper’s body, with as many actors and actresses from the original series that he possibly could… and despite the fact that I am about the biggest Twin Peaks fan you’ve ever met, up to and including being one of the only two people I know who paid to see Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me in the theater (the other being the poor girl who had never seen Twin Peaks that I dragged to the flick), I didn’t mention it here because the story was obviously bullshit. Because it looks like the original rumor came from a 4Chan posting, and therefore without attached pictures of Lynch and his proposal, it must be considered suspect since it does not involve cats.

And that was a good choice, since it turns out that original rumor was, in fact, bullshit. Twin Peaks Co-Producer Mark Frost debunked the whole story on Twitter:

Dear Internet: You are very good at spreading rumors. Truth is more valuable and much harder to come by. Sincerely yours, @mfrost11

— Mark Frost (@mfrost11) January 2, 2013

So that’s it. Game over. Nothing to see here. Right?

Well, kinda.

Five In One, Or: No One Here Gets Out Alive: Fatale #11 Review

Most of the time, there’s only really two reasons that I can give people to pick up Fatale, written by Ed Brubaker with art by Sean Phillips, on an issue-by-issue basis rather than the trades. The first is that, even though up until now the stories in Fatale have been hugely decompressed, and arguably best read in one sitting as in a trade paperback reprint, buying individuals comics helps keep titles going and give you the chance to actually get a trade. But the second is the backmatter: essays by Jess Nevens- the guy who does the annotations for Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen volumes – about the pulp horror stories, authors and magazines that form the influence of Fatale.

Yeah, well, forget all that shit, because neither one of them is true about Fatale #11. There is no backmatter in this issue, due to the vagaries of the holiday publishing schedule, and this issue isn’t really part of a long arc. Oh sure, the story features Josephine, the haunted femme fatale who makes men do anything she wants for some as-yet unknown reasons (although that rack probably helps, am I right, fellas? Hello? Is this thing on?), and we get to see Alfred Ravenscroft, the H. P. Lovecraft-inspired author of Elder Gods-style tales who has been a presence throughout the book until now, but for the most part, this issue is a one-and-done about how those two characters meet for the first time. And while it helps to know who these characters in order to fully enjoy the story, for once, it’s not utterly necessary. If you’ve been missing Fatale, this issue is a reasonable place to jump in for short money and get to know Josephine, her power and how she effects people, and some of the underpinnings of the greater story at large.

So if you’ve had any interest in checking out Fatale but haven’t gotten in on the ground floor, this is as good a place to give it a shot as any… but does that mean it’s any good?

Daily Bummer: Steve Gerber on Simon And Shuster, And How To Help Peter David

It will be a quiet day here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives, as most of our contributors will be meeting us shortly to participate in a team building exercise. This will involve being at the bar next to our local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to stop building my own teams by cutting and pasting panels from different new releases, meaning that, if all goes well, our local SWAT Team will have the chance to learn to work together as a closer unit.

So just a couple of quick things today: first off, 20th Century Danny Boy has just republished an article, initially written for Rolling Stone by Howard The Duck creator Steve Gerber back in the mid-70s, about the fall into destitution of Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster prior to Warner Bros. making the deal to pay them an annual pension for life… not for any legal reasons, but to try and win a PR victory despite making millions off a character that Siegel and Shuster created back in the 30s and sold for $130.

Rolling Stone never published the article, but Gerber updated it in the mid-80s and published it in Wap, a fanzine run at the time by Gerber, Frank Miller and Steven Grant, and this is the first time it’s seen the light of day since then. It’s a pretty harrowing story about how the big comic publishers routinely fucked and burned most of the creators who invented the characters we still read and love to this day, and how many of them died penniless, despite publishers making millions off of their creations (and don’t think it doesn’t still happen on some level; ask Ed Brubaker how much input he had over the movie script for The Winter Soldier). It’s one hell of an article, somewhat disturbing, and yet another reason why I’m perfectly happy to be sitting on the sidelines writing about comics rather than actually writing them. Well, that and my utter lack of talent in writing plot, story or characterization.

And in the spirit of helping out comic creators going through a bad patch: we reported earlier this week that X-Factor, Captain Marvel, Incredible Hulk and Star Trek writer Peter David had suffered a stroke while on vacation in Florida. David’s wife Kathleen has been posting daily updates on his condition on David’s Web site, and yesterday she posted a way for fans to help him out with, despite his having health insurance, what will probably be some not insubstantial co-payments:

Snide Commentary

The issue with site comments I mentioned the other day has finally been fixed, tested and implemented (thanks to Trebuchet for the assist). We appreciate your patience. We only have a few regular commenters here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives, but they all complained to a one when things went tits up, so thanks for hanging in while we found a solution.

One upside of our new anti-spam solution? You shouldn’t have to deal with CAPTCHAs when commenting anymore. First-time commenters will still go into moderation as they always have, but the only time you will be forced to read something to prove your humanity will be if, in your comment, you really want to address the parallels between Doctor Octopus’s newfound youth and, say, the benefits of h3rb@l v1@gr@. And if that’s the case, I don’t think even a successful CAPTCHA is real evidence that you are human.

So thanks again for your patience. We know that you have a choice when it comes to drunkards spouting off about comic books, and we thank you for choosing Crisis On Infinite Midlives.

Doesn’t Suck: Morbius The Living Vampire #1 Review

When I was a kid in the early, mid 1970s, I had an unreasonable phobia of vampires. During the mid 1990s, I had grown sick of watching Superman die and Spider-Man get cloned, so I tuned out of mainstream superhero fare in favor of Vertigo comics, and therefore missed Marvel’s era of Midnight Sons. In the mid 2000s, I never got caught up in the whole Twilight, sparkly vampire craze because I am a grown man who prefers the company of women.

The point is that, despite years of reading comics, I have no real personal history with the character of Morbius, The Living Vampire. Sure, I came across him a few times in Marvel Tales reprints and (I think) in one of those giant-sized The Spectacular Spider-Man Treasury Editions, but for the most part, for me, Morbius was one of those dingbats who showed up in Spider-Man now and again, wearing that stupid circus jumpsuit with the batwing armpits and lapels that would make John Travolta circa Saturday Night Fever weep like someone gave him a peek at his career between 1983 and 1994.

So I didn’t have a hell of a lot of anticipation for Morbius The Living Vampire #1, written by Joe Keatinge and drawn by Richard Elson; in fact, Amanda grabbed it as part of her pulls at our local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me not to query the playing customers if they have anyone into whom they’d like me to drive my stake.  But she left it in the bathroom, so I gave it a shot, expecting what I vaguely remembered from the character back in the day (having, honestly, missed his star turn in The Amazing Spider-Man #699.1 last month due to holiday hecticness (Rob: You misspelled “drunken blackout.” –Amanda)): a mopey dipshit living in a sewer lab, howling at the walls at how tortured he is, punctuated by a fight with some supervillain whose head would, by law of averages, be on fire.

But it turns out it’s not like that at all. Instead, it’s a book about a vampire, but one that isn’t obsessed with vampires. Instead, it’s a surprisingly light – and not in a bad way – story about a guy who’s down on his luck and trying to navigate a rough situation. And that guy happens to be a vampire. And he, and the book as a whole, have a surprising sense of humor for a dude who used to run with Ghost Rider and eat rats. It’s a 21st century vampire story that is less The Vampire Diaries and more Zombieland, and it is a hell of a lot more fun than you’d think.

Find The Nerve Is Not As Pleasant As It Sounds: New The Dark Knight Returns: Part 2 Teaser Video

Over the New Year’s holiday, we here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office spent an entire day drinking whiskey and watching DC animated movies on streaming Netflix. We went through Justice League: Doom, Batman: Under The Red Hood, Superman Vs. The Elite, and All-Star Superman, all in one big throwdown. Because you can say what you want about Warner Bros. and DC and their inability so far to make a decent major motion picture that doesn’t star Batman, but they are light years ahead of anything that Marvel’s been doing in the animation space, and they have been for years. They just make good animated series and direct-to-video features, so clear and fun you can follow them despite, by the time All-Star Superman started bubbling down the magical pornography wire into the XBox, being so drunk we couldn’t make our desires known to an establishment that only sells pizza.

But the one film we didn’t stream was The Dark Knight Returns: Part 1, despite being excited by the teaser trailers that were released for that release back in July and August, because we are huge fans of Frank Miller’s original comic series, and if we’re going to watch it, we want it all in one whack.

And soon, our wait will be over; The Dark Knight Returns: Part 2 is scheduled to be released on DVD, Blu-Ray and video on demand on January 29th… and Warner Bros. has released another teaser trailer for the second part. This particular clip presents Batman stomping the living shit out of a heavily-armed SWAT team. Hang on while I get my Jack Daniel’s, and let’s meet up after the jump.

In A World…: New Avengers #1 Review

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. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself here.

So let me start with a personal note to Jonathan Hickman: Hi, Jon? There is a difference between an action movie and a comic book. An action flick costs ten bucks and usually lasts between 100 and 140 minutes. A comic book costs just about half as much as a movie, but is 20 to 24 pages, and lasts about 15 minutes, or maybe 20 if you’ve eaten a lot of cheese and let yourself become dehydrated.

A full-screen title card in a movie usually takes maybe 10 seconds, or fifteen if the director is a bombastic prick – about 0.002 percent of a movie, or about 2 cents worth of screen time in a best-case scenario. In a comic? it’s two pages out of 22 – about nine percent of a comic, or about 36 cents worth of the book. And yes: I sat down with a calculator and did the math.

My point is: the big, movie-style title cards you insist on chucking into the first issue of each Avengers book you’ve taken over? Save that shit for the movies. Reading comics is more expensive than going the movies. If you want to write a movie? Call Avi Arad. If you’re writing comics? We’re paying by the page, champ. Don’t waste those pages on your James Cameron fantasies.

Okay, now that my pet peeve is out of the way, we can talk about New Avengers #1.

Peanuts From The Comment Gallery

First of all: we are aware that there are problems with submitting comments. We upgraded the Web site last week, doing so for the first time without announcing that we were making changes, and sure enough: things went tits up without our regulars there to test for free while we busily made whiskey safe for children by turning it into pee. We are working on the problem, and hope to have it resolved shortly. For the time being: please try pressing the refresh button next to the CAPTCHA and using the new code just before posting; we’ve had some luck with that here.

But further work will need to wait until the morning. Because it is Wednesday – the first Wednesday after a long holiday vacations – and that means that we have spent the evening at the bar, counting the days until our time off for San Diego Comic-Con (202 days, by the way).

But is also means new comics – the first substantial take in two weeks – and that means that this…

…is the end of our broadcast day.

Kind of a strange take this week. We have a huge pile of DC issue #15s (including Firestorm, the first issue of which we’ve checked out since the seriously disappointing first one), but there’s also the sixth issue of Batman Incorporated (which, as a series, has been hit or miss… but the last issue made my top ten of 2012), along with Hellboy In Hell #2, the latest Marvel Now entries of New Avengers and Morbius: The Living Vampire (plus the lastest Brian Michael Bendis All-New X-Men #5, and Scott Snyder’s last pre-hiatus issue of American Vampire, and a bunch of other cool-looking stuff!

But you know the drill (even if it’s difficult currently to comment on it): before we can review them, we need time to read them. So until we can do that…

See you tomorrow, suckers!

Dead Inside: New Teaser Trailer For The Walking Dead

So New Year’s Day has come and gone, the roads are covered in watery slush where they aren’t rendered into luge tracks by black ice, and the holidays are ended, with each and every one of us having, at best, exactly 0.0403226 vacation days accrued for the year to date. So God, am I ready for society to fall.

Thankfully, the people at AMC know this, so they have released a teaser for the upcoming second half of the third season of The Walking Dead, which returns in early February. And you can check that video out after the jump.

We Are The Walking Dead: Crossed: Badlands #20 Review

Editor’s Note: And one last review of the (few) comics of 12/26/2012 before the comic store opens with this week’s new books…

In the annals of zombie fiction, each imprint or subgenre meets a particular literary need. The Walking Dead allows Robert Kirkman to address the long-term effects of constant stress with no civilization on individuals of different types. George Romero uses his Night of The Living Dead stories to satire human pack behavior, such as mass consumerism, blind obedience to the military / industrial complex, and the compulsion to record life rather than living it.

And Avatar Comics’s Crossed: Badlands is generally here so comic creators can write and draw the most depraved and twisted shit they can possibly imagine.

I’m not kidding. Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows created, in their initial run of Crossed, a world where the “zombies” want to eat you, sure… but only after they fuck your holes, stab a few new holes and then fuck them, and then do the same to your friends, family, vague acquaintances and household pets, all in front of you if possible. And subsequent creators playing in the Crossed world have generally embraced this concept with both hands; David Lapham’s last two arcs in Crossed: Badlands revolved around a cowardly teenager who only finds his courage after mistakenly blowing away a teenaged girl he believed to be a zombie (and then fucking her), and then a literary salon that models itself on the old Hellfire Club… until they meet the Crossed, who show them what sexual adventurism really means, by way of the Zombie Cleveland Steamer (where you lie under a glass coffee table while a Crossed rips out your colon, takes it to Cleveland and then dorks it).

Crossed: Badlands is historically the place to go to produce the kind of stories that would get you a no-questions-asked Thorazine prescription if you told it to a psychiatric professional: fun if you like that sort of thing (and I usually do), but not where you look for social commentary or characterization beyond, “people sure do suck, don’t they?” So imagine my surprise when writer Si Spurrier and artist Raulo Caceres turned in a two-part arc about two damaged people, together for the wrong reasons and separated by the Crossed outbreak and their own selfishness, doomed to repeat their destructive cycle. This is a good one. Gross and intense, but good.