Delayed Gratification: The Boys #63 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: Crisis On Infinite Midlives is proud to provide you with one final review from last week’s books before the comic store opens up with the new books. You, however, will have to provide your own shitty Thin Lizzy joke.

If you’ve been reading Garth Ennis’s The Boys for a while, this is the stuff you’ve been waiting for almost since the book started at Wildstorm Comics back in 2006. If you haven’t been reading it, well, you’re kinda screwed. There aren’t enough pixels on this page to bring you up to speed on what the hell is going on, so yeah: you’re boned. If it helps, there are at least two dismemberments and three decapitations. Superhero comics, everybody!

The Boys is almost a prototypical comic written for the trade. Comprised almost exclusively of six-issue, reprint-friendly arcs, it is truly a long form novel in comic form… to the point where when I almost have to recommend that you don’t buy the individual issues – and I’m a fan. I initially bought in when the book was announced, and as an old Preacher fan, I told my local comic store owner, who knows me by name and asks me to remember that the Voice Of God usually smells less of garlic and bourbon, to add it to my pulls as soon as issue one was solicited.

And I didn’t like it. The build was slow, the plot was talky, and it seemed like to took forever for it to get going. In retrospect, for me the best thing that could have happened to this book was its cancellation by Wildstorm after the sixth issue, apparently over the miniscule and ridiculous concern that the Homelander, the Superman analogue of The Boys, orally raped a superheroine with a couple of his buddies. Superhero comics, everybody!

Hauntingly Familiar: Batwing #6 Review

Batwing has been one of the weirder and more interesting books of the New 52. It leverages Grant Morrison’s Batman Incorporated concept – Bruce Wayne finances local Batman franchises around the world, possibly because Batman believes that Starbucks are a superstitious, cowardly lot – and uses it to answer a question that only a few comics have tried to address: if there are superheroes, why don’t they go after real scumbags in places that make Gotham City look like Metropolis after a massive federal grant to finance free beer for the sad?

In a nutshell, Batwing puts a version of Batman in the Congo, smack in the middle of one of those hellholes that have been at civil war for so long they call it Tuesday. Batwing didn’t lose his parents to a killer, he lost them to AIDS and was drafted by one of those tinpot shitsplat warlords who whip up armies of children because children haven’t learned to say “no,” or, “that’s wrong”, or “tinpot shitsplat dictator.” Or at least that haven’t learned to say that last one with the level of derision it deserves.

So instead of a Batman moved to fight crime based on seeing a murder during his childhood, we have one who is moved to fight crime after being a murderer during his childhood. And he’s doing it in a country so loaded with corruption and casual daily horrible crime that it really feels like it needs a Batman. Which is a cool concept, and it generally works… but for a book that packs an extra punch by being based in a truly horrible place in real life, it doesn’t meet the level of realism I’ve come to expect from a Batman comic… which sounds stupid, but bear with me.

Flagsmasher Is A Stupid Name: Amazing Spider-Man #679 Review

God knows that The Amazing Spider-Man isn’t perfect – it gets sucked into events like most Big Two publisher books, and sometimes it uses valuable page real estate setting up the next event – whatever the hell that winds up being. But when it’s not being co-opted and fucked with by higher Marvel editorial for whatever crossover event the Architects bake up at their retreats (“I’ve got it! X-Men kick the Fantastic Four in the groin! Let’s try it on new guy Hickman! Hold him down, Aaron, or you’re next!”), it is one of the best, old-school comics you can get.

Amazing Spider-Man #679 is the second part of a two-and-out that at face value has no place in a book about a guy who, in his best stories, fights more street-level crime than cosmic stuff. If you’d told me that writer Dan Slott was going to do a story about Spider-Man that included time travel, continuity paradoxes and Madame Fucking Web, I’d have said that was stupid, and you were stupid for saying it.

But Slott takes those elements and does the smart thing with them: use them as simply a catalyst for the rest of the story. The entirety of the time travel involvement is to show the stakes  – the destruction of New York by a certain time – if Spider-Man can’t figure out what to do… and he does those things where Spidey should: on the streets.And after months and months of seeing Spidey battling Thor knockoffs in the Avengers, and traveling to other dimensions in FF, it’s nice to see Spider-Man just stomping dudes in an alley with a wisecrack for a change.

Double Entendre: Invincible #88 Review

In the latest issue of Invincible, our all-American boy hero is attacked by a raging one-eyed monster and gets a load sprayed in his face causing him to be infected with a deadly virus. I am not kidding. Superhero comics, everybody!

Invincible is a strange book for me to review because unlike any miniseries or most standard superhero comics, there is no jumping-on point. It’s an excellent comic book that does really interesting and unexpected things with standard superhero tropes – and has since the very first issue – but while this book has arcs, it is very much a long-form superhero novel, and it assumes that you’ve been reading from the first chapter. So even if I recommend this issue – and I will – it’s pointless, because if you haven’t read it from the beginning, it’ll be three years and about twelve trade paperbacks before you get here.

And, in fact, this book is an even worse place than usual for new readers to get started because it’s a mid arc story. The one-eyed monster in question is named Allen, and he is threatening to release a virus into Earth’s atmosphere to kill a race of superpowered aliens living secretly among us, all of whom can be identified by their universal big, Johnny Wadd Holmes 70s gay porno moustaches. I recognize that this sounds ridiculous, but it’s better than it sounds… frankly, it pretty much has to be.

Raider of the Last Arc: Voodoo Who?

EDITORS’ NOTE: Trebuchet has been a regular commenter here (“Regular” being a relative term) since we started in September, sticking with us as we spun off into writing about odd tangents with which he was unfamiliar: namely, comic books. However, Trebuchet has been sending us interesting private emails asking about what books we recommended and then commenting on them after he read them. He had the idea of picking up longer recent story arcs and reviewing the entire thing in one shot, which sounded cool. This is his first submission, and well: damn. 

So Crisis On Infinite Midlives is proud to introduce our latest contributor: Trebuchet! Please tell him it doesn’t suck so he’ll write some more!

Thanks Rob, now get off my lawn.

I was a casual comics collector back in the late 80s and early 90s, until other interests gradually overshadowed my weekly pilgrimages to the local comics shop. Since then, I’ve picked up a few things here and there at Rob’s suggestion, but generally speaking, I’ve been out of the game for almost 20 years.  I missed the advent of “event” stories, massive crossovers and “point one releases”.  I’ve missed the tragic deaths and resurrections of countless heroes and the births of others, so at the moment, I have no idea what the hell is going on in any of the superhero universes.

The New 52 seemed like a great opportunity to jump back on the train and start fresh. So shortly after the launch, I was perusing the shelves of my local comic store, where they have no idea who the hell I am and keep telling me that the Bingo hall is across the street, and anyhoo, the cover of Voodoo issue 4 jumped off the shelf at me, so I decided to take a chance on something I didn’t recognize.

It’s important to mention this because, I had absolutely no idea that Voodoo was an existing property, or that it was recently folded into DC from an Image / Wildstorm universe.  Hell, McFarlane and Liefeld were still working for scale when I got out of the game.  So yeah, I never heard of “Wild C.A.T.S.” (Lawn; off now!)

Monkey With A Machine Gun: Winter Soldier #1 Review

EDITORS’ NOTE: This review, should you choose to accept it, contains spoilers. If read, the Web site will disavow any knowledge of how we fucked up the book for you. This message will self-destruct in five seconds. Assuming your browser has been hijacked by a virus. Get that looked at.

Dammit.

I was really looking forward to Winter Soldier by Ed Brubaker with Butch Guice on art. This is the team that brought us the aftermath of the Death of Captain America arc back in 2008, which, gimmick death doomed to reboot or not, hooked me into Captain America for the first time since I was a kid. And it kept me hooked in because it was damn good comics: interesting characters with a darker turn than many superhero comics – almost a spy story set in the Marvel Universe, although with 72% fewer Howling Commandos than most Marvel spy stories (Seriously: if a kid hides a porno mag in a Marvel book, you can count on Nick Fury and Dum Dum Dugan skulking in his closet to pick up the dead drop).

So I was psyched about Winter Soldier, because it put the creative band back together, in a story about a couple of powered-up secret agents working on the fringes of the 616. But ultimately, I found this first issue disappointing. Not enough to give up on it, but for a book produced by A-List talent that promised to live in the shadows, it has two things terribly wrong with it:

• Butch Guice’s storytelling, and:
• Gorilla with a machine gun.

That Fine Line Between “Partner” And “Accomplice” – Review Of The Punisher #8

Happy Wednesday! Despite being the first of February, it hit 60 degrees Fahrenheit, with sunny skies and a warm breeze. I can’t possibly be expected to work on a day like today. So, I made it to our local comic book store before my typical 5pm drunk set in – and you, fine readers, you reap all the benefits!

While we are dealing with unnaturally spring like weather here, Frank Castle is knee deep in The Dead Winter. As the police are beginning to tighten their own investigation of Frank’s connection to The Exchange murders, he and Rachel Cole-Alves begin a tentative, if brief, partnership as they search the remains of The Starbucks Staff Retreat The Exchange’s ski chalet for further information they can use to put more nails in the company’s shiny corporate coffin. Meanwhile, Managers-Of-Year, Stephanie Gerard and Christian Poulsen break into a S.H.I.E.L.D. safehouse – because they’ve had so many good ideas that have helped The Exchange out, already.

Greg Rucka continues to slowly unwind this tale, as he has over the past seven issues. Seven months in and Glee The Exchange is still breathing despite Frank’s efforts. So, should you continue to invest your time in this series?

Answers and spoilers after the jump.

Forward Into The Past: Faith & Angel #6 Review

Remember that episode of Buffy where Willow got all twisted on dark magic and couldn’t leave the house? And she was willing to ignore anything else that was going on in the Buffyverse because she was just too willing to roll around in the darkness in exchange for a free taste for a load of evil across her naked chest (Perhaps I’m misremembering the episode… but if I am, don’t you fucking dare tell me)? Yeah, that’s what Angel & Faith #6 is: the crack of the Buffyverse.

Whereas the actual Buffy The Vampire Slayer comic feels committed to advancing the Buffyverse and showing the Scooby Gang pushing forward into adulthood, Angel & Faith as written by Christos Gage, particularly in this issue, feels committed to beefing up and filling out previously mentioned areas of the Buffy mythos. On its face, this can be dangerous; any storyline that is less concerned with advancement and more concerned with its own continuity runs a serious danger of crawling up its own ass and dying (hello, Grant Morrison’s run on Batman!).

The High Price of Nostalgia: Creepy #7 Review

While on one level it’s admirable that Dark Horse Comics has resurrected Creepy Magazine as a comic book, it’s playing to a sense of nostalgia that simply can’t exist. With its mascot Uncle Creepy and short horror vignettes, it clearly calls back to the old EC Comics horror books, which went under thanks to a conservative panic about them in the 1950s. Considering the median age of comics readers is roughly Generation X, we have no frame of reference for comics like this. The people who do have that reference are my dad’s age, who won’t ever find this book, because they’re too busy having a conservative panic about comics.

So the audience for a book like Creepy is questionable at best, but that’s okay, because the book’s not all that good anyway. It’s something different, and some of the art is fairly impressive, which might be enough reasons to pick it up, but there’s only one story of the five contained in this book that feels like the old EC ironic twist stories… and that’s because it’s a reprint from the original Creepy in 1962. Which honestly is the best reason to consider paying five clams for this book, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

The book opens with a story by Joe R. Lonsdale about a kid who hatefully creates a vengeful mud monster that Should Not Be… which easily describes every Saturday morning in my bathroom since 1990. The story is just light and simplistic, containing a child delivering dialogue like – honestly – “If I was bigger and stronger, they’d pay… if I was big, I’d show them.” Really? If an actual nine-year-old had written that dialogue he’d backspace it out while muttering, “No nine-year-old actually talks like that.” It was particularly disappointing because I generally like Joe Lansdale’s stuff; I’ve got his entire Hap and Leonard series of novels on my Nook Color, and his stuff on Jonah Hex back in the 90s still holds up for me. This story felt like Joe sneezed with the pen still on the page after writing “By Joe R. Lansdale” and sent it in. If you’re buying this book because of Lansdale’s name, skip it and look for The Dunwich Horror instead.

Taking The Bullet: Secret Avengers #21.1 Review

In the world of stand-up comedy, one of the biggest nightmares you can have as a comic is for a legend of the medium to show up unannounced to do a guest spot. Entertaining people on your own merits is hard enough without suddenly discovering that one of the best in the business has shown up… and now you have to follow them. It leads some acts to tweak around their own styles to better match the person they have to go up after. It can fuck your own rythyms and take you off your game.

In Secret Avengers #21.1, writer Rick Remender is taking over from Warren Ellis’s title-redefining four-issue run. And while it’s too early to really tell, it feels like Remender might have fallen into that old comedy trap.

Please don’t misunderstand me; this is not a bad book. And it doesn’t feel like any kind of slavish imitation, just that it was influenced and steered by the fact that Remender is being forced to follow a modern legend. When you see lines like, “When you see your yankee doodle deity in his chicken-fried heaven — tell him you died molesting the world!” come out of the mouths of characters not written by Ellis, I can’t help but picture some pimply-faced yeoman comic taking the mike and saying, “Jeff Foxworthy, everyone! Hey, you know when you might be a redneck?”