Shocking: Spider-Man 2099 By Peter David And Will Sliney Confirmed

I didn’t read Spider-Man 2099 when it first came out in 1992, for a few reasons. 1992 was the year Image Comics debuted and when The Death of Superman was released, so an alternate universe packed with what looked, at face value, like “X-Treme!” gimmick knockoffs meant to get us to buy two books with the same character every months, and God knows that only a savage would double-ship a character to make some extra bank. Besides, in 1992 I was a junior an college and only had money for six comics a week, or one comic a week and beer. I think we all know that I made the prudent and wise choice.

By the time I graduated and started having a few bucks in my pocket to buy more comics, Marvel was playing peek-a-boo with crippling bankruptcy, firing editors left and right, Peter David had left the book, and it seemed like my money would be better used on Vertigo books, or perhaps by chucking it into an open gutter.

So I wasn’t particularly familiar with the character beyond the knowledge that his alter ego was Miguel O’Hara and he said “Shock!” a shitload for reasons I could never fucking understand. He’s been an intriguing presence in the modern Marvel Universe by way of his appearances in The Superior Spider-Man, but not a big enough presence that I’ve really felt like I’ve gotten to know the character. Although he still says “shock!” an awful Goddamned fucking lot.

Well, that’s gonna change come July, when Marvel is publishing a new Spider-Man 2099 standalone title, written by Peter David with art by Fearless Defenders artist Will Sliney.

Performance Review And Action Items

Wait – it’s been how long since we posted a comic book review? Jesus, we suck.

Well, we do suck, but there are a few reasons for that… none of which we are ready to tell you about at this time. All we are prepared to discuss is that our plans require a certain amount of capital improvements to the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office, which recently has been taking about eight hours a week in just raw animal labor, not counting planning and researching for when that raw animal labor is finally done in a few weeks. And when you combine that effort and planning with a couple of 40 hour a week day jobs, plus care and feeding of Home Office Mascot Parker the Kitten, it makes it hard to sit down for the two to three hours it normally takes us to spit out the 1,000 words it usually takes us to say, “That was terrible!”

But with all that said, we are not prepared to announce, make, or intimate anything different about the Web site at this time. And this is one of those weeks where there is a metric assload of new comics, so I swear to you: we will try like hell to review at least one or two of them.

But the big takeaway of that statement is that there are new comics. Because it is, after all, Wednesday, which means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But there are some really killer books in this week’s take. There is the obvious second issue of Neil Gaiman’s and J. H. Williams III’s The Sandman Overture (only about four months late!), the fifth issue of Brian Michael Bendis’s and Mark Bagley’s Brilliant (only about so late I can’t remember when the last issue came out!), a one-shot about Amanda Waller by Skullkickers writer Jim Zub, the fourth reprint issue of Miracleman, and a bunch of other cool stuff!

But before we can talk about any of them (and with God as my witness, we will try to talk about some of them), we need time to read them. So until that time…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Not Kosher: Marvel Announces Spider-Verse

We’re a little late to the party on this one, but Marvel is already starting to hype the first big event of the soon-to-be freshly Peter Parker-centric reboot of The Amazing Spider-Man… because God knows that you need to market the living shit out of a book where you completely blow up the status quo to, well, return to the status quo. Jesus, Marvel and writer Dan Slott threw a pudgy, nearsighted, vainglorious motormouth into the Spider-Man suit for the past 15 months and have set sales records; I doubt you need to set the world alight to get people to read a Spider-Man book featuring the original dude.

Frankly, just seeing Peter Parker back in the saddle is enough of an event to get me excited… and yet this one sounds ambitious and kinda interesting. It’s called Spider-Verse, it’s gonna be written by Dan Slott with art by Olivier Coipel, it’ll be coming out in November starting in The Amazing Spider-Man #9, and it’s gonna feature Spider-Man.

Whaddya mean, “which Spider-Man?” Spider-Man! You know… all of them. Ever.

Seriously: check it out:

Danzig-Free: New X-Men: Days of Future Past Trailer Released

Ever since 2000, when the first X-Men movie was released in theaters, April has been an exciting time to be a comic book geek. Because it seems like every year since then, there has been at least one summer comic book movie to get psyched up about. Sure, in that summer there was just the one flick, but by 2002 we had Blade II and Spider-Man, by 2003 we had Daredevil, X2: X-Men United, Hulk and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and just this summer, we have Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Guardians of The Galaxy, and yet another Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for some reason.

And we also have X-Men: Days of Future Past, directed by X-Men and X-2: X-Men United director Bryan Singer, who is, if any one person can be credited as responsible for the superhero movie explosion, that one person. Let us remember that, back in 1998 and 1999, there was widespread speculation that Wolverine would be played by Glenn Danzig. Who I’m sure would be a delight for any kind of fan to meet at a convention, but who I frankly prefer working in small suburban rock clubs, shrieking “MOTHER!” at increasingly aging punk chicks who know that Glenn is checking out their tits when he appears to be ogling their knees.

But the depressing circumstances of being Glenn Danzig are neither here nor there. The important thing is that X-Men: Days of Future Past is opening in American theaters on May 21st, which means that it’s time for a new trailer to come out to whet our appetites. And that is a thing that happened today, along with the release of the latest one-sheet poster for the flick, which you can check out at the top left of this piece.

The trailer? Well, you can check that out after the jump. Spoiler alert: it does not feature Glenn Danzig. To see Glenn, you’ll need to follow him on Twitter to see either where he’s playing, or where he’s jingling a Dunkin Donuts cup for spare change, and will likely call Wolverine a homo for you in exchange for a Marlboro Light.

Attention, True Believers And Lovers Of Free Merch – Stan Lee Promotes Free Comic Book Day!

Free Comic Book Day is officially the first Saturday of May. This year, in an effort to promote the day, the organizers of the event have tapped the legendary Stan Lee to get the word out. Check it out below!

And he’s not the only one helping with the promotion. Brian Michael Bendis also has a promotional video. Last year, the event attracted the assistance of Hugh Jackman, Steven T. Seagle, and Joe Kelly, so perhaps we can expect to see other videos as we count down to the day. But even, if we don’t, damn – they got Stan The Man this year! How do you top that?

So, head on over to your local comic book store on May 3, 2014 and check out what they have to offer. Not sure where your LCS is? Log on to FreeComicBookDay.com to search for stores near you. Perhaps you too can begin to develop the kind of relationship that Rob has now with our store, where they know him by name and continue to ask him to stop asking the other patrons if they’d like to check out what’s else is free in his pants. And it all begins with free merch! Yay!

Let’s Go Exploring: Interview With Bill Watterson Released

We don’t talk a lot about comic strips here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives – we are, after all, generally comic book people, and we live in the 21st century. This means that we don’t exactly have access to, or much of a desire for, a daily newspaper comics page. The last time we saw a newspaper here at the Home Office, it was when Office Mascot Parker The Kitten had been here less than 24 hours and we were unsure if he knew a litter box from an Ultimate Nullifier.

We are, however, middle aged, which means that we were around in the days when, not only were newspapers a viable business with a future perceived to be brighter than being mentioned in the same breath as buggy whips, leaded gasoline and kitten urine sponges, but when the newspaper comic strip was in it’s probable final golden age. Here at the Home Office, we have huge collections of the favorite classic comic strips of our adolescence. Bloom County. Doonesbury. And, of course, Calvin & Hobbes.

Calvin & Hobbes occupies it’s own rarefied space in that pantheon, because of all the strips, it exists in and of itself, and that’s it. I personally have a stuffed Bill The Cat and an Uncle Duke action figure. I have seen Garry Trudeau hang around so long he has put Doonesbury on hiatus to produce TV shows and Broadway musicals. I have attended Comic-Con panels where Berkeley Breathed has talked about the history of Bloom County, and I even got to meet the guy and have him sign my first volume of the Bloom County collection by IDW… but Calvin & Hobbes creator Bill Watterson did the strip, wrapped the strip up, and then went off into almost complete retirement, leaving behind almost no comment. And unless you had a taste for decals of Calvin pissing on the Ford logo or t-shirts of Calvin and Hobbes dancing around a beer keg (if you happened to attend college in the late 80s or early 90s, of course), the only merchandise was the strip itself.

And thus it has remained. However, if you happen to live anywhere near Ohio State in Columbus, specifically near the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, an exhibition of some of Watterson’s original art from Calvin & Hobbes is starting today. And in a effort to hype the event, Watterson actually gave a brief interview discussing how he became involved with the library, a little about his process on Calvin & Hobbes, and his thoughts on the current state of cartooning.

Video Game Cops: Powers Picked Up By Playstation Network

Here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives, we are on the fence as to what next gen gaming console we will eventually and inevitably purchase. We have been XBox people since the first generation of that console – a first-gen XBox is still jacked into the big TV tube upstairs, just in case I get the urge to widen my point of view on the undead apocalypse by playing Stubbs The Zombie (although given a couple of the prices for that game I’ve seen on eBay, I can be persuaded to abandon my philosophical pursuits) – so we are leaning toward picking up an XBox One. Especially considering that I’ve got me a hankering for some Titanfall.

With that said, I have certain reservations about purchasing a console that, by all initial reports, has a camera with which to watch me and a microphone with which to listen to me, no matter what I’m doing on my living room couch. I’m the kinda guy who sticks a piece of electrical tape over his Webcam when he’s not using it, and if a grown taxpaying man gets the occasional urge to watch childrens’ cartoons while in a state of undress outside of societal norms while scratching himself like an ape in a cage, it ain’t nobody’s business, and it certainly isn’t Bill Gates’s business.

So I have been toying with unilaterally buying a Playstation 4, because not only have I long wanted to play some Nathan Drake Uncharted games, but it seems less likely to take photos of me that will be laughed at in Sony’s customer service department. And there is now another possible reason to lean toward the Sony side: the television adaptation of Brian Michael Bendis’s and Michael Avon Oeming’s Powers has been picked up for broadcast on the Playstation Network.

Be Desireless. Be Excellent. Be Too Old For This Shit: Donal Logue As Gotham’s Harvey Bullock

I’m not gonna lie to you: I am a flat-out Donal Logue fan. From The Tao of Steve (which namechecks Steve Austin, which is always a way to make me sit up and pay attention) to Grounded For Life to Knights of Prosperity (which, if you’ve never seen it, you should really make an effort. The damn show was originally named Let’s Rob Mick Jagger, for Christ’s sake; how could you not give that a day in court?) to the much lamented Terriers, the guy is just someone I like watching on TV.

He’s just seems like a dude, you know? A regular guy who you could have a beer or ten with, shoot the shit about the Red Sox (sure, he actually seems to like soccer, but he’s Canadian, which means he’s probably polite and will try to talk baseball with you), and have a few laughs with. Because the guy is funny, in that kind of ironic, Generation X way that speaks to a generation who learned what was funny from Bill Murray and David Letterman.

But to be fair: the man is also concentrated death when it comes to television shows. Knight of Prosperity and Terriers each lasted only a season. He was on Life, which was also excellent, but that only lasted two seasons. Hell, even his “hit”, Grounded For Life, lasted five seasons… but it was cancelled by Fox  – Fox! – after two and a half seasons, and only survived another two and a half by being picked up by WB, who, in the parlance of Chris Rock, needed a hit like a crackhead needed a hit.

It’s a real conundrum: I’ve learned that when Donal Logue is cast in a show, it is likely to be good, and yet go away soon, like a common nitrous oxide high. So when I heard that he was cast as Detective Harvey Bullock on the upcoming pilot for Gotham, a series about life in Gotham City back when Bruce Wayne was training to be a detective using Blue’s Clues, I had mixed feelings. Because Logue’s involvement was anecdotal evidence that the show would probably be good… but it was also anecdotal evidence that it might not get past the pilot phase.

Which would be a shame, because the Warner Bros. has released the first promotional photo of Logue as Bullock, and I gotta tell you: the guy looks right. And you can see what I mean after the jump.

Fear Leads To Hate, Hate Leads To Anger, Anger Leads To Windows…

We have received our tax refunds here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office – when you have the kind of comic book habits that we have and you can write off your comics as a legitimate operating expense, you tend to get a big old refund – which means that we are starting some capital and equipment upgrades here. The first being the spiffy new laptop upon which I am trying to write this.

On one hand, it’s pretty cool – the machine is an Asus, replacing the Asus Transformer tablet I’ve been using for 90 percent of my writing for the past two years, and Asus chicklet keyboards are pretty spry and responsive to type on – but on the other hand, unlike the Transformer, it is a computer rather than a tablet… and in this year of our Lord 2014, that means Windows 8. Which is a truly hateful and counterintuitive operating system for someone who’s been using Microsoft operating systems since the first Batman movie was just a beautiful dream.

I mean seriously: for the past 19 years, the Start button has opened a Start menu with a hierarchical list of available programs, and now it suddenly defaults to a page of a bunch of fucking animated tiles? This is a computer, not a Goddamned iPod! Where’s the command shell? How can I group similar programs so I can find them? Sure, this thing is optimized for a touch screen, but if I can’t find and modify the list of running services in about three minutes, it had better be ready to become a fucking kick screen.

But this is neither here nor there; it is new equipment that must be learned, with a lot of new stuff coming in the near future, and none of it is showing us dudes in spandex getting kicked in the face. That’s what comics are for, and being Wednesday, that means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But there’s some good stuff there to distract us some of us from the fact that there is something on my start page promising me “Sensational Sandwiches” for some reason. We’ve got the first issue of the new Mark Waid and Chris Samnee’s Daredevil, the final issue of Jeff Lemire’s Animal Man, a new issue of Amanda Conner’s and Jimmy Palmiotti’s Harley Quinn, the first issue of Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 10, and a bunch of other cool stuff!

But you know how it is: before we can even think about talking about any of them, we need time to read them, and to figure out what the hell an “Asus USB Charging Service” is, and why it’s taking 25 percent of my available RAM. So until then…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Don’t Start None; Won’t Be None – Hey, Kids! First 10 Minutes Of Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Ok, here’s the thing – I maintain, and will continue to maintain, that Chris Evans has never been, nor will ever be, better in a comic book movie than his turn as Jensen in 2010’s The Losers. Now, while I might have been in the minority in that respect, check out the infamous Don’t Stop Believing scene from that movie and then get back to me.

I’ll wait.

No, seriously. I’ll wait.

Ok, so, now that you’ve seen that…HOLY SHIT THE FIRST TEN MINUTES OF THE NEW CAPTAIN AMERICA MOVIE…HOLY FUCK!!!!!!!!!111!!!!!!11!!!!!!1

Ok, then. So.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier opens April 4, 2014 here in the good ol’ US of A, where, if you are very good in life, you can be repeatedly lapped by Steve Rogers and then given cybernetic weaponized flight armor for your troubles.

Now, more importantly, bonus material.