When Exposition Is A Four Letter Word – Review Of Deathstroke #9

I must admit I’ve been dragging my heels on this review of Deathstroke #9 all week. I’ve been pretty clear about my feelings on the subject of Rob Liefeld’s take over of Deathstroke. Liefeld certainly has his fans and his detractors. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m in the “I Hate Rob Liefeld” club, we here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives home office have been more than willing to use Liefeld’s name as an easy punchline, the same way Tim Allen might make grunting noises into a microphone instead of telling an actual joke. But, honestly, in the 90s, if I was looking for ridiculously silly, overblown art, I read The Tick. At least the silly had a purpose in that. Liefeld has never done much for me art wise. However, I’ve never read his actual writing. I’m aware he’s created a number of characters for which such comics luminaries as Alan Moore have written spectacular stories. I mean, he must know what he’s doing if he keeps staying employed in the business and Alan Moore has played in his sandbox, right? Or does he just have some incriminating photos of Bob Harras somewhere?

After reading Deathstroke #9, I’m inclined to believe it’s the latter.

Read all about Deathstroke and his new playdate, Lobo, after the jump!

White People Problems: Mind The Gap #1 Review

I’ve read Mind The Gap #1 three times now, and I don’t yet know how I feel about it. From one angle, it’s a story populated by either thoroughly unlikeable rich-folk or entitled hipster children of privilege, with the only middle ground between the two occupied, literally, by the hired help. From another angle, it’s a competent whodunit with a dozen suspects, a solidly-plotted attention to detail, and a supernatural hook, albeit one that immediately made me think, “Huh… this guy’s read Midnight Nation.”

I’ll start with the single undeniable positive about this comic book: you get one hell of a lot of story for your money. This book is 46 pages of advertisement-free story for $2.99. And those pages introduce no less than twelve primary characters, establish that almost any of the eleven who aren’t the protagonist – slash – victim are possible suspects, and reinforces that if any of them winds up being the assailant and gets the needle for it, the only tragedy will be that the other ten will be allowed to live.

Seriously: these people suck just that much.

Big Dumb Fun. With Pussies: Avenging Spider-Man #7 Review

In a spring season loaded with Batman battling to save Gotham from the Court of Owls, and The Avengers trading punches with the X-Men with the fate of the world hanging in the balance, sometimes Event Fatigue sets in. And sometimes you want a change of pace from the ongoing Superhero Apocalypse, and as you look at your normal alternatives – the Zombie Apocalypse in The Walking Dead or the Zombie Apocalypse in Crossed: Badlands are normally pretty much it – you maybe start wishing for a nice, fun, and maybe a little goofy one-and-done to cleanse the palate as a change of pace.

Or maybe you just have a thing for cats. Maybe your house smells like cat litter and ammoniac urine, the Internet doesn’t give you enough other cats to fill in the gap, and where the rubber hits the road, you’re despondent that you just can’t hug all the cats, despite oodles of free time with which you can pursue this goal thanks to the aforementioned ammoniac smell. Either way, Avenging Spider-Man #7 is the book you’ve been looking for, and between it and Versus, it is living proof that, from the standpoint of just plain fun comics, Kathryn and Stuart Immonen should be allowed to do whatever the fuck they want, ever.

Finally Forward Thinking: Avengers Assemble #3 Review

Editor’s Note: There was an idea to bring together a group of remarkable people, so when we needed them, they could spoil the comics that we never could.

Put as mildly as a foul-mouthed, cynical, long-time drunken comic reader can put it, comic publishers almost never handle the release of a movie based on one of their properties well. Put less mildly and more baldly accurately, they generally seem to take the opportunity such a cross-media exposure provides for attracting new, enthusiastic readers to their comic books to grimly set their jaws, strap on their cleats, and stomp hard on their own dicks.

It happens over and over, so predictably that it might was well be a Cylon plot. The Dark Knight is poised to become the biggest movie of 2008, you say? What a perfect time for DC to kill Batman and put a new guy in the suit! Thor looking to open large? Awesome! Kill him! Iron Man breaking bigger than anyone thought in 2008? Sweet, let’s make him a government bureaucrat! It’s like the front offices of the Big Two, prior to the release of a comic book movie, go days without sleep, subsisting on amphetamines, trying to figure out how to convey to potential new readers, who wander into a comic store to learn more about the character they just fell in love with, that it would be in their best interests to fuck off and just keep right on walking.

So imagine my surprise when Marvel, not five days after the release of Avengers in American theaters, put out an issue of a comic book written and drawn by one of their A-list talent teams that looks like the movie, has the same characters as the movie, that is not only action-packed and imminently accessible to anyone who saw the movie, but also goes about answering one of the key unanswered questions from the movie that I have been asked repeatedly since last Friday: “So, that guy in the scene in the credits… who was that guy, exactly?”

Guess The Change In My Pocket Wasn’t Enough: Action Comics #9 Review

Editor’s Note: This is Lex Luthor. Only one thing alive with less than four legs can hear this spoiler, Superman, and it’s you.

Grant Morrison doesn’t do anything by half measures, but he outdoes even himself in Action Comics #9. In 20 short pages, he manages to level searing indictments against comic fans, comic publishers, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, possibly Zack Snyder, and definitely almost anyone who’s written Superman between 1986 and 2011.

At best, this book might – just might – be Morrison’s comment on the upcoming Before Watchmen series. However, at worst it is, for all intents and purposes, a giant and ringing “fuck you” to just about any human being anywhere who might touch it, with the possible exception of Morrison himself. But that’s okay, because that gives me something to do.

Further Adventures In Digital Comics – Review Of Hopeless, Maine: Personal Demons #1

Spent from a road trip to catch The Avengers with Rob, Trebuchet, and Pixiestyx, I found myself with barely enough energy to stare blankly at ladies in silly hats during the three hour coverage of the Kentucky Derby yesterday on the TV. Fun fact: only about 4 minutes of the race coverage is about the race. The rest is about women in silly hats, bemoaning how other women’s silly hats invade their “hatmosphere”. There is also a fair amount of bourbon and “My Old Kentucky Home” karaoke sing-a-long. I could have played along with the bourbon part at home, which would have helped with both the “hatmosphere” and the karaoke. Unfortunately, Rob is on antibiotics this week as he nurses a vicious stab wound obtained while refereeing “Bum Fights For A Week’s Worth Of Coors Light Empties”. What can I say? We live in an interesting neighborhood. So, anyway, I was trying to show solidarity by joining him in the not drinking.

Eager to find a diversion for my sobriety, I turned to the Comixology app for my smartphone. I worked my way down to the “Digital Firsts” section. I’ve really been trying to only use the app for books that are only available digitally, since I like to support our LCS, where the owner knows us by name and has asked Rob to stop hosting the bum fights on the sidewalk outside the store because it’s “bad for business”. Recently, Archaia has digitally released part one of a graphic novel called Hopeless, Maine, by Nimue and Tom Brown. Nimue is an author and Tom is an artist. Hopeless, Maine began its life as a Web comic, which is up to two booksworth of material on their site. The digital download of Hopeless, Maine: Personal Demons Part One contains chapters 1 and 2 of the first book in the series. So, what’s it about?

Hopeless, Maine is a little, forgotten island where many of the children have become orphaned through mysterious circumstances. There are magic and strange creatures. Chapters 1 and 2 center around orphan Salamandra, a young girl who greets the reader on the opening page of the story by informing us that “my mother wants to drink me”. Okay, Salamandra: you have my attention.

Can Salamandra’s tale distract me from my own strange world of silly hats and bum fights? Spoilers and more after the jump.

Wish Fulfillment: Dial H #1 Review

I always feels a certain level of excitement when I pick up a new comic by an established prose writer who’s never tackled the medium before. The kind of feeling that I imagine people get when they play Russian Roulette. You know that you’re holding something that is at least potentially very powerful; you know it has to at least be competently written, because book publishers rarely chuck money at any dingbat with a copy of MS Word… unless they’re using it to run a find / replace on some Twilight slashfic.

However, just because someone can write a book doesn’t mean they can write a comic book. Sometimes you get Neil Gaiman and Sandman (Yes, Gaiman wrote a book before he broke into comics). Unfortunately, other times you get more Brad Meltzer on Justice League of America; Brad spent so many issues showng Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman looking at pictures of potential League members that I began to suspect they were masturbating under the table while they were doing it.

All of which is a long way to go to say that China Miéville’s first issue of the rebooted Dial H is a well-plotted comic with a thoroughly weird, yet engaging, twist on the book’s original concept of a telephone that turns whoever uses it into a superhero. And it is well-written, in the sense that the pure language is entertaining and just damn fun to read. It’s not perfect, but for a dude who’s never written a comic book before, it’s a decent start.

Not-Quite Epic Kill: Epic Kill #1 Review

A couple months ago I read a preview blurb for a new Image book about a young female assassin, called Song, who had come down with a case of amnesia. The book was Epic Kill – created, written, & drawn by Raffaele Ienco.  It sounded fun, very Jason Bourne, so I threw it on my pull list & then proceeded to forget about it until the clerk handed it over this morning.  Though neither Trebuchet nor I could remember adding it, when the clerk asked if we still wanted it, we said “Sure!”

The storyline is alright, though I had to read through it a second time to realize this because on the first pass the art pulled me in multiple directions, one of which was straight out of the story. When it comes to the art, Ienco has a great, sketchy style and nice coloring. Present day panels have a warm toned color palette, and flashbacks a cool tone which provides an immediate reference as to which you are viewing.  However, there were several problems which made me immediately want to set this book aside without finishing it.  For everything that Ienco did right, he did something else very wrong or very strange.

Assembly Required: Marvel’s The Avengers Movie Review

Update, 5/7/2012: Our spoiler-laden and much more in-depth Avengers podcast is now available.

Editor’s Note: This review contains no spoilers. As such, it feels very sketchy and incomplete. For more in-depth analysis of the movie and drunken incoherent ranting about specific things about the movie that were awesome, we will be producing a podcast in the coming days.

Marvel Studios’ The Avengers (Or as it’s known in England, Avengers Assemble, and as I presume it’s known in Pakistan, Imperialist Great Satans With Devil Powers) is finally in theaters in the United States. And you should go see it. Because it is good. Damn good. Seriously fucking good. Arguably the best superhero movie of all time (Granted, for me personally it is knocking M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable out of the peak spot, so take that into account as you read my opinion. Your mileage may vary, is all I’m saying).

Fair And Balanced, Or: Wolverine Vs. Everybody: Avengers Vs. X-Men #3 Review

The biggest problem with the first two issues of Avengers Vs. X-Men was, to me, that in order for it to make any sense, the writers needed to make Cyclops into a monomaniacal zealot, vis a vis Hope-as-mutant-savior, so focused, rigid and intractable that he made Timothy McVeigh look like Winston Churchill with a quualude habit.

It is now the third issue, and it appears that the Marvel Architects in charge of this story have found a way to temper our perceptions of Cyclops’s fanatical tendencies: by making Captain America a focused, rigid and intractable monomaniacal zealot.

In short, Avengers Vs. X-Men #3 displays the first real and disappointing cracks in what has been a tight, if sometimes logic-stretching little tale (if you can call an event comic destined to cover all Marvel titles for the next four months “little”): and that is that it attempts to mask Cyclops’s believability-stretching reactionary behavior with similar, yet opposite,  behavior by Cap. And instead of balancing the scales, it shows the Man Behind The Curtain by making two characters do stupid and unbelievable things in the interest of advancing the plot.

With that plot apparently being to make it so Wolverine can fight anybody. Because that shit sells some comics, yo. But we’ll get there in a minute,