Scrounging For Mangers: San Diego Comic-Con Hotel Booking Aftermath

The mad dash for discounted downtown hotel rooms for the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con is all over, bar the cancellations. Registration opened – and closed – last Thursday, and yesterday – April Fools’ Day, purely by coincidence – confirmation emails went to people lucky enough to snag them, leaving many disappointed. Not us, however… at least not completely.

Let’s start with the positives about the experience; unlike other years, the Web server for submitting reservations appeared to be more robust than a Vic-20. Thursday at the stroke of noon eastern time, I was able to get the Web page with the Magic Green Button to bring me to the registration page to load almost immediately, with only a couple of presses of the F5 (or: “Goddammit!”) key.

The registration form page opened immediately, and I was able to get my form submitted in its entirety by about 12:03. It was painless, at least compared to the last time I tried to obtain a room through the convention (2008), when it took me about two hours to get the page to load and by the time it did, the Hyatt, Sheraton and Hilton – Holy Grails of many convention goers – were a distant memory, like the dodo bird, or times when it was easy and hassle-free to attend SDCC.

Involuntary Reposession: Alpha Girl #2 Review

Alpha Girl #2 is what would happen if Night of The Comet and Maximum Overdrive had ill-advised drunk sex, and the prom dumpster infant was a comic book. Depending on your taste in 80’s movies, this is either a spectacularly good or a wretchedly bad idea, and as a child of the 80s who sometimes likes to get hammered and cruise the dusty parts of the Netflix streaming catalog, I am inclined to get on board with a book like that. However, there is idea and then there is execution, and in the same way there are 80’s horror movies like The Stepfather and others like Motel Hell, it’s the execution where this comic falls down.

The plot concept behind this book is that a cosmetic company has created a pheromone that has the unfortunate effect of turning women into fast zombies. Which is a simple and interesting little concept as comic horror comic books (Or is it comic comic horror books? Horror comic comic books? Ray Jay Johnson? Christ, I need a drink) go, but the problem is I had to learn that from the Image Comics solicitation for the first issue. The concept behind what’s happening here isn’t anywhere in this issue. The closest we get to an explanation is on page 24 (of 27), and even that only tells us that whatever’s going on is only happening to women. So if you’re like me and this is the first issue you’ve seen, you’re not going to have a Goddamned clue as to what’s happening and why.

Them Bones: Daredevil #10 Review

If you’d told me even five years ago that I would enjoy a Daredevil comic wherein Daredevil battles a giant underground Sarlacc monster and gets into an acrobatic battle with the Mole Man – of all people – I would call you either a deluded scumbag, a shameless huckster or D. G. Chichester… all of which amount to almost the same thing, but I don’t want to digress this early.

My point is that, despite the innate ridiculousness, for an old comic reader raised on Miller, Nocenti and Bendis, of the plot of a Daredevil story like this one, it is in reality a spectacular comic book with great action, stellar art and actual humanity behind both the hero and the villain. This issue is akin to Hamlet’s soliloquy to Yorick’s skull on the nature of death and mourning, only with groin kicking… which actually might get me out to watch some Shakespere. Simply put: this comic is the good shit.

Nostalgia: The Twelve #11

I’m gonna start with a sad, yet probably obvious revelation: I have no idea what is going on in The Twelve. I bought the first eight issues in 2007 and 2008 before it went on hiatus so that writer J. Michael Straczynski could take up writing duties on Superman and Wonder Woman and also not finish. And while I remembered enjoying it, it never clicked enough with me to add to my pull list at my local comics store, where they know me by name and ask me to stop telling the paying customers, “You looking for The Twelve? Well, you came to the right guy!”

So I missed issues 9 and 10 when they dropped last month because, well, this is an in-demand book, and it was sold out when I got to the store each week; frankly, the copy I have in my lap was the last copy of #11 in stock yesterday. And since I’m two issues behind, and haven’t bothered to re-read the first eight issues, I’m kind of in the dark here, so I’m reviewing this based solely on the merits of this individual comic book. And it is a very good comic book… which shouldn’t be surprising. Because Straczynski is an excellent writer… and because it includes riffs that I’ve seen in at least three other classic comic books.

…When The Comics Began To Take Hold

It has been a strange and interesting day here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office, what with full and distracting days at the day job, combined with a stop at the local bar and a visit from contributor Lance Manion, whose pitch for his next article boiled down to, “Gobble me. You got a Bass Ale or not, fuckface?”

But for good or ill, we have made our visit to our local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to remind Lance that the appropriate response to finding classic Howard The Duck issues isn’t “I can dook right here, right, Mommy?”

And we have obtained our new comic books, which means that this…

…is the end of our broadcast day.

But what a fine day it is, huh? There’s a new Garth Ennis Crossed in there, plus a Geoff Johns Aquaman, a new James Robinson Shade, and a graphic biography of Hunter S. Thompson (like I don’t already own Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas, or Rango)… not to mention Avengers Vs. X-Men’s issue 0 shot across the bow!

But before we can talk about ’em, we gotta read them. So until that day….

See you tomorrow, suckers!

Deductive Reasoning: Batman #7 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: It’s New Comics day, and we didn’t get to review nearly as many books last week as we’d hoped. So before the comic stores open: one more review for the road. The Spoiler Highway, that is.

When the New 52 Batman arc started, I raved about how it felt like a real detective story, with clues being slowly uncovered to make it feel like we were learning what was happening along with The Batman. We’re now seven months in, and suddenly this feels like a regular superhero story… meaning that Batman not only suddenly has the Godlike ability to solve crimes without anything that a normal human being would consider to be a clue, but that he also no longer needs a utility belt. Because he can clearly pull whatever he needs to solve the crime straight out of his ass.

This is the first issue of writer Scott Snyder’s run where I just about threw up my hands and said, “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.” Over the previous six issues, we’ve been introduced to a relentless and emotionless Batman, who was then broken about as badly as he’s ever been in the modern history of the character. The character and plot arc was logical, progressive, and was laid down a piece at a time. In this issue, however, the Snyder has Batman make ridiculous leaps in logic, imagine chemistry that doesn’t pass the sniff test, and mixes historical mythologies up like Don Draper with an industrial drink blender and a methamphetamine habit.

Save The Date: Morgan Spurlock’s Comic-Con Documentary Featurette

Some days move faster than others, and it has been a speedy one here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office… and not necessarily in a good way. Any day that starts with waking up upright on the couch stinking of IPA with a copy of Wolverine spot-pasted to your forehead and ends with an emergency call to the dentist for a busted tooth is one best put to your back as quickly and quietly as humanly possible.

So let us move past today and look forward to better days… namely, San Diego Comic-Con. Which is still 107 days away (108 for you poor rubes without Preview Night passes, but either way: who’s counting, right?), but you can get an early taste from Morgan Spurlock’s upcoming documentary Comic-Con Episode 4: A Fan’s Hope. Which will be available in a limited theater release and via video on demand on April 6th. Which, given the day we’ve had, still seems too Goddamned far away, so to whet your (and our) appetite, here’s a short behind-the-scenes featurette on the flick, right after the jump.

Premature Action: Ragemoor #1 Review

Ragemoor is an ambitious book that tries to capture the feeling of a classic haunted house tale mated with an H. P. Lovecraft feeling of cosmic dread, jacked off over by a morality tale from an EC Comics book. However, in trying to introduce several characters, 3,000 years of history (evil history!) and deliver a concrete payoff, all in 24 pages, it trades dread and suspense one expects from a haunted house / elder gods story in favor of quickie violence, making the whole thing feel less like The Colour Out Of Space than Jason X. It is a misfire, but thanks to Richard Corben’s art, it is a good-looking misfire.

We are introduced to Herbert, the current owner of Ragemoor Castle who declares the property to be evil down to its core because he sometimes becomes lost in its halls, and because he believes that it has caused his father Machlan to go insane because Machlan dances around naked and pisses in hallways. Which makes Ragemoor sound less like a haunted house than it does every college dormitory in America. These are signs of substance abuse, not insanity, to which my current writing of this outside of a straitjacket will testify. But I digress.

This Is Not The Greatest Song In The World: Rocketeer Adventures Vol. 2 #1 Review

When I was a working comedian, some inconsiderate dickface sent some True Believers (and if Stan Lee hasn’t sued the Christ out of that dickface’s estate for trademark infringement, then comics’ lawyers are spending too much Goddamned time keeping me from reading new Miracleman stories) onto flying machines to do something unspeakable. And in the face of this tragedy, we working professionals needed to figure out how to be effective in addressing the scenario in a way that didn’t feel disrespectful to the people affected it. What we did was to write material about the fringes of the tragedy. We didn’t write about the guts of it, we wrote about what people were doing in the face of it. We wrote about how people were reacting to it, and how it affected our understanding of American myths and legends.

Dave Stevens, the creator of The Rocketeer, died of leukemia in 2008 after having written and drawn only a very few stories about a character so compelling it spawned a movie – sure, a movie that John Cartered, but what the hell; it’s still more than Wonder Woman got. IDW Comics is now publishing a Rocketeer Adventures series, and they’re doing what we comedians did right after 9/11: they’re telling stories about The Rocketeer by telling stories around The Rocketeer. And those stories are generally pretty Goddamned cool.

No Was All He Said: SDCC Hotel Sales Start 3/29

Considering we here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives are still waiting with bated breath to book the room of our choice for San Diego Comic-Con 2012, I would like to inform you that there is, as of yet, no word on when convention hotel sales will start, and that you shouldn’t bother looking, and to go fuck yourselves besides.

However, Amanda reminded me that we at least pretend towards things like “journalistic integrity” and “simple human compassion,” so I guess I need to tell you that it all starts Thursday, March 29th, at noon Eastern time. You can book your room via the Comic-Con hotel page, or via  phone at 1-877-55-COMIC. Although if you love me, you won’t.