That’s The Power of Love: All-New X-Men #1 Review

As I have stated repeatedly throughout this history of this Web site, I am not the world’s biggest X-Men fan, despite my long time reading comic books. I’m not sure why they never hooked me in, but my guess is that it’s because those titles were the poster child for extensive, convoluted continuity that thrills longtime readers but is simply impenetrable to new ones.

Go ahead and pick a random issue of any X-Men title from, say, the late 1990s. You’ll see Wolverine; okay, everyone knows Wolverine. Then there will also be some dude from the future with a bionic arm, a gun as big as a Buick Skylark, and no feet – he’s the elderly son of one of the other 20-something X-Men. From the future. Yeah.

And then there will be seven guys you’ve never seen in any other Marvel comic, with names that sound like discarded names from failed 80s Sunset Strip hair metal bands (Shatterstar? Tracy X? Fucking X-Treme?). There might also be an alien, and a couple of coin tosses will tell you if Professor X can walk, or if Magento is a bad guy. And each one of them is fucking, once fucked, or is trying to fuck, each of the others. It’s an inscrutable mess that makes General Hospital look like Dick and Jane.

Besides: through it all, Cyclops was a real dick.

But thanks to Avengers Vs. X-Men, even people who aggressively don’t follow the X-Men have been exposed to the characters, and there is no doubt that that event has seriously mucked around with the mutant status quo. So when you combine that with the fact that Brian Michael Bendis has left the Avengers books he did such a good job rebooting and renovating over the past several years by shaking up the status quo and introducing new characters, and started a new book, All-New X-Men, it would seem that this would be a perfect time to jump into the mutants’ story without being bogged down in years of history and relationships. Right?

Yeah, not so much. However, that doesn’t mean it’s bad.

Playing With Adults: This Week’s Cosplay Riots

If you’re not old enough to have seen Star Wars in its original 1977 theatrical release, you are not a true Star Wars fan, and arguably not even truly a human being.

If the first time you saw Star Wars was on home video or, may God forbid, as a “Special Edition” DVD or Blu-Ray, you were not part of the original wave of excitement that occurred when the movie first broke, and therefore, are unworthy to call yourself a real fan. You were a kid who never had to live in a world where there was a Star Wars movie, but where there were no Star Wars toys. You never dealt with the crippling discomfort that came from pretending you were Luke Skywalker and getting a proto-boner over Princess Leia. The first time you saw Boba Fett was in a major motion picture, and not during a holiday special that made your sainted mother say, “With God himself as my witness, Diahann Carroll and Harvey Korman will die by my fucking hand. And if this program makes my eldest son say he wishes he had a Goddamned Lumpy Wookie… that’s it! Time for bed, you!”

My point is: to me, these experiences were integral to being a Star Wars fan. So when it comes to you little bastards whose Star Wars experience started with slapping in the VHS tape whenever you felt like it? You’re not real fans. Seriously: fuck you wretched, hipster poseurs.

So… anyone about ready to scroll to the comments and call me a shortsighted, ageist, elitist motherfucker yet? You ready to really rip into me and ask me how I dare to define your fandom based on my experiences?

Great! Now maybe we can all quit whoring around and whimpering about female cosplayers for a minute.

Colorful Turns of Phrase

It is one hell of a thing to put up a post advertising the end of our broadcast day when we haven’t published anything since yesterday at just after midnight, but I have a good excuse: over the past couple of days, the comics Internet has blown up (again) over the concept of female cosplayers and “fake geek girls” at comic conventions. Which is nothing new; this kind of thing pops up every six or eight weeks these days… only this time, it happened during the two to six hour window on a Tuesday when I was sober, which meant I was able to have an opinion. Which has been written, and which is in the process of being reviewed by my co-Editor Amanda to make sure it makes sense and doesn’t contain words like, “bonerjonesers,” or phrases like, “you reactionary, unfuckable, drippy-dicked misogynists,” and it will hopefully be ready to publish once I finish going through notes like: “Rob: watch your capitalization. Example: Cameltoe is not a superhero. Neither is The Whimpering Boy-Virgin.”

Anyway, while that piece is being whipped into shape, it is still Wednesday, and that means new comics. Which means that, continued spellchecking on words like, “taintgrovelers,” or no, this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But lets put phrases like, “jizz-dribbling Raven snivelers” aside and acknowledge that this is one hell of a week for new comic books. We’ve got the lamented final issue of Garth Ennis’s The Boys, the start of Dan Slott’s runup to Superior Spider-Man with the first part of the final story of The Amazing Spider-Man, the first Matt Fraction issue of Fantastic Four, the second Batman issue of Death Of The Family, and the book I’m most excited about: Locke & Key: Omega #1. Plus a shit-ton of other cool stuff!

But before we can review them, we need time to read them… and to decide where to put the hyphens in phrases like, “woman-hating spunk-dumpers.” So until that time…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Kick To The Eye: The Goon Movie Story Reel Kickstarter Funded

Some readers have privately wondered, after we reported earlier this year that there was still hope to see a movie version of The Goon by creator Eric Powell, Producer David Fincher, and Blur Studios, why we hadn’t made any mention of the Kickstarter project started by Blur in October to fund the $400,000 creation of a story reel to shop the project around again to investors in the hopes of getting the full movie (estimated to cost tens of millions of dollars) made.

Well, the answer to that is simple: we like to at least pretend that there is some kernel of journalism behind what we do here, and it would be impossible for us to be objective about the Goon Kickstarter because, in short, I contributed to it.

At greater explanatory length, I contributed a lot to it.

At even greater explanatory length, my pledge was enough to obtain one of the higher-end rewards offered for the project, which didn’t go for what you’d call short money. And it would have felt wrong to skew opinions on a story that, depending on how it went, would lead to me either obtaining something for which I have lusted for since I started reading The Goon, or to my ability to have the pledge be returned upon failure of the Kickstarter and therefore making me able to afford heat for the winter.*

However, it is now safe to discuss this story, because Sunday morning at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Daylight Saving Time, The Goon Kickstarter surpassed its goals by more than ten percent, meaning that a full length, animated storyboard, with Clancy Brown voicing The Goon and Paul Giamatti as Franky, will be produced.

Does this mean the movie’s been greenlit? Well, not exactly.

Ensign Wesley Crusher Blues: Action Comics #14 Review

Editor’s Note: Well, I certainly hope this little incident hasn’t put you off spoilers, miss. Statistically speaking, of course, it’s still the safest way to review.

Before I forget: there’s one astronaut in Action Comics #14 who is the primary candidate to be that astronaut who’s pulled over by the state police with a bottle of pharmaceutical amphetamines, a box of Depends, a roll of duct tape and a switchblade. See if you can guess which one! But that’s not important right now.

Action Comics #14 is going to work for you, or not work, depending on how you feel about Silver Age Superman stories, because this is one. From unlikely astronauts on a truly improbable mission that has never been mentioned before (and probably never will be again) to unlikely pseudoscience that can only be accomplished because Superman’s there to accomplish it, to a familiar yet faintly ridiculous antagonist, to a Fifth-Dimensional Imp, the only difference between this and any Superman comic book from, say, 1965 is the actual danger the astronauts are put in an the big, goofy Curt Swan Superman smile… which artist Rags Morales actually apes in one panel.

So this is a tough issue to be objective about because it is ridiculous… but it is kinda supposed to be ridiculous. It features people in distress who can only be saved by Superman – including a kid who clearly idolizes Superman – even though it requires you to believe that these pussies (and children!) are the hardy sort who would be the first to terraform another planet. It needs you to be okay with the idea that ten thousand Christian angels would have a hard-on to tear Mars a new asshole, and that a human distress call from the surface of Mars would attract less attention from the citizens of Earth than the landing of a remote controlled Tonka truck that made this dude the jack fantasy for every female XKCD reader in the English speaking world.

So this story has some logical issue, but the logical issues seem to be there on purpose. So the overriding question is: does it work?

When There Is No More Room In Development Hell: World War Z Trailer Released

Between our choice to cover the Hellblazer cancellation yesterday and our decision afterwards to pour out a couple in memorium of the book (and if we filtered the pours through our kidneys, well, we didn’t come here for a semantics argument, and it’s the thought that counts, and fuck you, anyway), we missed the release of the first trailer for the upcoming movie World War Z, based on the Max Brooks novel.

If you read the original book, you know the conceit is that it’s an oral history of an old-school, Romero-style slow zombie apocalypse, told years after the world pulled together, changed the nature of military tactics to deal with shambling ghouls who can only be killed by a bullet to the head, and won the war.

And if you watch this trailer, you’ll see that, well, this is none of those things.

Rake At The Gates Of Hell: DC Cancels Hellblazer

I studied journalism when I was in college in the late 1980s / early 1990s, and one of the things I learned was the inverted pyramid lead, which means to open your story with the most important hard information. So, since it was one of the most important things I learned back then, I’ll go with it here.

DC Comics has cancelled John Constantine: Hellblazer. The comic, published under DC’s Vertigo Comics imprint, will conclude in February with its 300th issue, written by Peter Milligan with art by Giuseppe Camuncoli. The long-running comic, written for a mature, adult audience, will be replaced with a new comic series, Constantine, written by Robert Venditti with pencils by Renato Guedes. The new series, which will be published under the standard DC Comics bullet, will take place in DC’s superhero-filled New 52 Universe, and will be reportedly feature the younger, more action-oriented version of the John Constantine character as currently seen in Justice League Dark.

About the cancellation, DC Comics co-publisher Dan DiDio said:

We’re supremely proud of Vertigo’s HELLBLAZER, one of the most critically-acclaimed series we’ve published. Issue #300 concludes this chapter of Constantine’s epic, smoke-filled story in style and with the energy, talent and creativity fans have come to expect from Peter Milligan, Giuseppe Camuncoli and Stefano Landini. And no one should worry that John is going to hang-up his trenchcoat – he lives on in March, in the pages of the all-new DC Comics New 52 ongoing series, CONSTANTINE, by writer Robert Venditti and artist Renato Guedes.

The series, which expanded the story of the John Constantine character created by comics legend Alan Moore during his classic run on Swamp Thing, debuted as a DC Comic in 1988 and was written by Jamie Delano and drawn by John Ridgeway. Moving to DC’s more mature Vertigo imprint in 1993, the book featured work by comic legends Garth Ennis, Warren Ellis, Paul Jenkins and Brian Azzarello, as well as many others, throughout its nearly quarter-century history.

Constantine is expected to debut in February, 2013.

Okay, that’s the classic news version. My journalism professors, one of whom once looked me in the face and said, “You smell like a three-day dead dog in the dump tank of a whiskey distillery. Sit in the back, please,” would, for once, be proud. However, like the one, older professor who once slipped me a copy of Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on The Campaign Trail after defending me in a meeting to determine if I should be ejected from the journalism department after writing a story about the college’s president that included the term, “goatfucker” taught me: classic journalism isn’t always properly equipped to capture the whole truth.

Lost In The Shadows: Shadowman #1 Review

Editor’s Note: My name is Spoiler, for we are many.

I’ve said a few times recently that the number of comic titles I was buying back in the early to mid-90s totalled about three or four, with most of them being Vertigo books. There was some reasons for that, one of them being that I was stone broke, and where the rubber hits the road, you can’t go out, drink a comic book and try to get laid.

But the primary reason was that, in the immediate post-Image Comics era, a lot of comics were simply and truly hammered shit. And they were crap for a lot of reasons, but most of them boiled down to the simultaneous rises of the Age of The Artist-Driven Comic, and the Swelling of The Speculator Who Didn’t Give A Shit About Comics Beyond Using Them To Pay For Little Austin’s College Education. So as far as I was concerned, I was seeing a fuckton of books with heavily-stylized covers, new publisher names I’d never heard of, a big ol’ “First Issue! Collector’s Item!” splashed in chromium… and, having read a bunch of these books before tuning out, no story inside whatsoever.

The point is that, when Shadowman debuted back in 1992, I had already begun my early 20s snobbish migration away from stylized superhero comics, and probably turned up my nose at it. Throw on top of that that I didn’t ever have the money for a videogame console until the first XBox came out, it means that I never played the Shadowman videogames by Acclaim, the company that bought Valiant to mine their intellectual properties for games and promptly ran the comics division into the ground. So I have no background whatsoever in the character of Shadowman.

This is kind of a problem when it comes to reading Shadowman #1

Meet The New Bosses

As you are more than likely aware, there was an election for the Presidency of The United States last night, which means that we at Crisis On Infinite Midlives put down our comic books for a single evening, turned on our television, flipped back and forth between whichever channel was most likely to be displaying inordinate amounts of results-driven hysteria for the current maximum entertainment value (basically we started with Rachel Maddow screeching about hacked voting machines, and switched to Karl Rove apparently sending Megyn Kelly down to the poll office for a slice of pizza), and then waited around to hear if one guy or another called uncle. That took until about 1 a.m., which means that we are exhausted.

Combine those circumstances with the first Boston snowstorm of the year and the fact that it is Wednesday, and it means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

However, befitting an election week, we have a comics week of new beginnings and ending. Including the first Kieron Gillen / Greg Land  Iron Man #1, Brian Posehn’s Deadpool #1, Justin Jordan’s Shadowman #1 for Valiant Comics… as well as the lamented final twelfth issue of Matt Fraction’s Defenders.

But you know the drill: before we can review any of them, we need time to sleep off the electoral (read: Jack Daniels) hangover, as well as time to read them. So until that time…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Spoonful of Sugar: The Tick #101 Review

It takes a bold man to introduce any form of pathos to The Tick, a character that two generations of comic readers automatically associate with the battle cry of “Spoon!” or perhaps with being trapped in a dinosaur’s wild moustache hair.

The concept of introducing any kind of sorrow to a character who has battled a man-eating cow and a dude with a chair for a face takes a lot of balls, because if you do it wrong, you’re running the risk of seriously fucking up a character that has worked for a quarter century on a very simple level: be a goofy, naive superhero parody who says silly shit while battling ridiculous villains with his fat, incompetent sidekick. Get your giggles, get out, and hope that some kind television suit forgets that underrated live action TV show so The Tick gets another chance on television somewhere.

The Tick #101 opens with Arthur having been killed. The issue deals, in large part, with how The Tick deals with that loss. And we get emotional internal monologue of how the loss affects The Tick, including how, without Arthur or someone to help guide him, he is simply muscle pointed in no particular direction. These are issues and character points that could go wrong on a light-hearted character like The Tick in a real fucking hurry; watching The Tick contemplate mortality and is own shortcomings could very quickly go the way of watching Honey Boo Boo try to redefine Pi while her mother’s held at gunpoint: morbidly entertaining, but out of place and uncomfortable if done incorrectly.

Well, not to worry, because writer Benito Cerino strikes one hell of a balance between addressing the relationship between The Tick and Arthur, while still commenting on the innate ephemeral nature of any superhero’s death in comics these days, and chucking in plenty of jokes about mimes. Douchebag, douchebag mimes. And he uses the guest appearance of Mike Allred’s Madman as a catalyst to get into the more emotional, touching elements of the story, while never forgetting that this is a Tick story, which means that we get plenty of bombastic catchphrases and liberal use of words like “dink.”