You Are Entering A Dimension, Not Of Sight And… Buffering…: The Twilight Zone #1 Review

I am not the world’s biggest fan of The Twilight Zone. I recognize that that is a hell of a thing to say for a self-avowed sci-fi fan on the day after SyFy’s (God, remember when it was called The SciFi Channel? And they showed science fiction programming as opposed to wrestling specials and movies about animals mixed with monsters and / or weather events?) two-day marathon of the show, but that’s just the way it is.

I understand the show’s contribution to televised science fiction and horror, but the shows tended to follow a formula: there’s someone with some kind of internal flaw, be it venial (wants more time to read) or mortal (the vanity to get surgery to be as attractive as everyone else). Something happens that seems to give them what they want, and then there’s a twist at the end that makes them pay for their sins. Except for when there are cookbooks and gremlins on the wing, but for a large part, that description covers the show’s formula. It’s a morality play in one act, and it’s a formula that’s never really hooked me in.

And writer J. Michael Straczynski also understands the formula… for the most part. In his first issue of The Twilight Zone series from Dynamite Comics, Straczynski gives us a deeply flawed “protagonist,” who has a powerful wish that is seemingly answered with a mild twist. But Straczynski forgets one part of the formula. And it might not seem like the most important part, but by ignoring it, it really took the experience down a notch for me.

Hey, True Believers – Stan The Man Introduces New Amazing Spider-Man 2 Trailer

Happy New Year, everyone! While I am still in the midst of composing my list of favorite, and least favorite, comics for 2013, I wanted to share with you the brand new trailer for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 that was released last night while the rest of us were getting shitfaced celebrating. In this one, Stan Lee, possibly fresh from his 91st birthday, gives us True Believers a quick intro. Then, we get another shot of the Rhino’s armor and lots of looks at Jamie Foxx’s Electro, in various action poses. Also, we see Spidey do what he does best when up to his neck in danger from his enemies – sling quips (and webs!).

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 will be released in the US on May 2, 2014.

Dropping Balls 2013: Rob’s Favorite Comics Of 2013

So it is New Year’s Eve, which means that I am are literally down to the wire to address my favorite comics (and comic moments) of 2013.

I had a bit of a hard time pulling this together this year. Last year, I started this process off by actually drafting a list of my least favorite comics of the year. And while it was published later than my list of favorite moments, starting that way was just too much to contemplate this year. Sure, I haven’t ruled out putting together a similar list maybe tomorrow, but between the conclusion of Before Watchmen, the weird and arbitrary firings and replacements of creative teams at DC, and the overall lackluster nature of each of the Big Two’s event comics this year, I’d hate to tear down a road that makes me bummed out about the year in comics.

Because there was a bunch of good stuff that happened in comics in 2013. So what I did was go back through each review I wrote this year, starting with January, to refresh my memory about the truly good stuff. So in mostly chronological order, here’s what I think is the best stuff of the passing year:

Morbius, The Living Vampire: This one was a pleasant surprise, mostly because I wasn’t expecting anything out of it. Maybe that was naive, considering what writer Joe Keatinge was able to accomplish in Image’s Glory in 2011 and 2012, but Keatinge took a vampire character and tacked away from the recent trend of making vampires tortured, sparkling fuck machines with an unrealistic attraction toward teenaged girls (seriously: have you ever tried to talk to a teenaged girl? It’s like talking to a stroke victim who can only access the parts of their brains that remember the dullest of autotuned popular music. Either the vampires in young adult fiction have a terrible taste in women, or they have the relentless sperm count of a 13-year-old boy with nanny software on his computer and no lock on his door). Instead, we got an entertaining tale about a guy with a bad medical condition trying to handle it, and a neighborhood where no cop, let alone, superhero, would ever go.

Robots, Dragons and Sandworms, or: Stephen Colbert in The Hobbit

Yeah, I’m not gonna lie to you: not only is there still a baffling lack of comics news today with it being two days before New Year’s, but today I had to bring the Crisis On Infinite Midlives mascot, Parker The Kitten, to the vet, and not only that, but I took delivery on, installed and configured a top-of-the-line robotic vacuum to clean up after Crisis On Infinite Midlives mascot, Parker The Kitten. And those activities in and of themselves would have led to a busy day even if making the robot chase Parker around the house while I shrieked, “Exterminate! Exterminate!” didn’t lead to hours of hilarity.

But they did lead to hours of hilarity, and I am still working on my Best of 2013 piece, which means that there is fuck-all of genre news to report today. But there is one nifty little thing that I found today: anyone who watches The Colbert Report on Comedy Central knows that Stephen Colbert is a world class J.R.R. Tolkien fan. The man can argue the vital nature of Tom Bombadil the same way I can argue what a shame it is that Frank Herbert dropped dead halfway through writing Children of Dune, making that half-book the final word written about the Atreides family.

However, it is unlikely, despite my fandom, that I will be cast in the Dune movie, since it was released when I was 13 years old and, in the way I can argue that Children of Dune was the final book, I can argue that there was actually no Dune movie.

Colbert, however, was cast in a Tolkien movie, specifically the most recent Hobbit movie, The Desolation of Smaug. He wasn’t cast as one of the major players (not even one of the major players that director Peter Jackson and his writers made up – hi, Kate from Lost!), but as some dude in the background, easily missed. But we have found some screen grabs of Colbert’s appearance, which you can see in more detail after the jump.

Because Monkeys, That’s Why: Joe Quesada Draws Fitz From Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.

There is a dearth of comics news between Christmas and New Year’s, for the same reason there is a dearth of anything else going on other than liquor sales during that same time: everyone is on vacation.

So on days like these, while we are trying to get our heads around our inevitable Best of 2013 posts to appear later this week, we’ll take what comics-related news we can get. And what we got is the birthday of Iain De Caestecker, the dude who plays Fitz on Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Which normally would be about as comics-newsworthy as The Crow: Wicked Prayer star Edward Furlong picking up yet another drug-related arrest, but in the case of De Caestecker’s birthday, he got himself a gift from Marvel’s Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada. A present in the form of a Quesada drawing of his character. With a monkey.

You can check the image out after the jump. Or not. Look, this is as good as it’s gonna get today, folks. You’re just lucky you didn’t get 500 words about Reb Brown approaching a stranger and asking if they want their groceries bagged in paper or plastic.

Talking ‘Bout Regeneration: Deleted Scene, Bonus Footage From Time of The Doctor Released

The Time of The Doctor, where Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor got old, got his regenerations back (Hmm, that’s a promising title to a chick flick), and eventually sucked the pipe (and there goes my chick flick) and regenerated as Peter Capaldi aired on Christmas Day – go figure.

And while we were unable to find a way to watch and live Tweet the original American airing – we were visiting our respective parents on Christmas, who to a one responded to our request to watch the show with, “You mean that show with the cardboard spaceships and the plastic Artoo-Deetoo knockoffs that scream, ‘Terminate?’ Yeah, I think there’s another Christmas movie starring Dean Cain on Lifetime right now…” – But we have not only caught up with the episode on TiVo, but the BBC has released a deleted scene from the episode that has forced me to contemplate the genitals of an alien, who already as at least one set of doubled organs, more than I would like.

And not only that, but they have also released a communique from Strax, that bullet-headed Sontaran douchebag, with his opinion on The Doctor’s new regeneration. And you can check them both out after the jump.

Brain Bleach: Spider-Man Takes On Batman And Robin In A MMA Match. Seriously.

So, apparently there is a mixed martial arts league in the United Kingdom that formed last summer to search for the “UK’s Hardest Man”. Per MixedMartialArts.com :

The event is a single-elimination tournament held over a period of some weeks, with modified MMA rules:
•No weight division.
•Contest is held on a 12×12 mat, with no ring or cage enclosure.
•1st round is ten minutes duration.
•There is a one minute time limit on the ground.
•Standing guillotines are prohibited.
•6 oz amateur MMA gloves are worn.
•Winner of the tournament gets £3000 (aprox US $4,500)

The bouts will be held at Southampton, England’s Exile Gym, a respected MMA facility.

Which is all well and good, but the most recent fight the league uploaded to its Facebook page is Spider-Man…taking on Batman and Robin. Yes, sounds like a very serious competition indeed.

Check it out, after the jump.

Invasion of The Comic Snatchers: The Saviors #1 Review

Jack Finney’s 1955 novel The Body Snatchers has, in my lifetime, been adapted about every ten years, whether we need a new version or not.

Putting aside the original novel and the 1956 movie Invasion of The Body Snatchers, we had the Donal Sutherland shrieking version in 1978, the one with Gabrielle Anwar in the early 90s, and then the Nicole Kidman version (which was inspired casting. After all, if Nicole Kidman was taken over by an unfeeling alien spore, who could tell?) in 2007.

And on one level, why not? The idea that the people that you love aren’t who you think they are, combined with the concept that your own individuality is not only an ephemeral thing, but something that, if wiped away, other people might not even notice it was gone, is powerful. But it’s a powerful concept with diminishing returns; the novel, first and second movies are rightly considered genre classics, while the 90s version is pretty much just a decent sci-fi flick, and the latest being kinda useless, since by then it was an old story told better, and besides: Kidman shows off her whole magilla in Eyes Wide Shut.

All of which brings us to The Saviors #1, a new comic by Starman writer James Robinson and cartoonist J. Bone, which gives us what so far seems to be yet another version of Invasion of The Body Snatchers, wrapped in the unlimited special effects budget that only a comic can bring, but saddled with some real storytelling difficulties and forced characterizations that simultaneously amp the excitement visually while bogging the whole thing down in writerly bits of business and force-fed pacing.

This one’s got some problems, guys.

He’s Seen Christmases You People Wouldn’t Believe – Blade Runner Holiday Special

Good morning! Happy Christmas, for those of you that subscribe. For the rest of you, I hope you are at least getting the day off to get up to whatever debauchery you get up to on the days you typically take off. Me? I’m at my mother’s. My day has/will consist of an hour and half train ride, quiche, the opening of presents, the installation of a new TV, roast beast, and another hour and a half train ride back to the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office. Then I will start drinking. I hope your day will be at least as exciting as mine.

One thing we will also have today, that I am sharing with you all, is this spoof by the Nerdist Channel of a Blade Runner Holiday Special, in the spirit of the Star Wars Christmas Special. Go grab yourself a cup of whatever libation you use to start your day (I suggest whiskey, because I always suggest whiskey), pull up a chair and enjoy!

Small Offering Of Gifts Before The Fat Man Arrives

As I type this, NORAD tells me that Santa is rounding the edges of Senegal. Rob is off visiting his parents in Central Florida. I hear he narrowly survived a trip to a local Walmart. Narrowly. Did you know that Super Walmarts have a whole grocery store section? Did you know those grocery stores sell produce? Kumquats, for example. Rob learned this today. His parents also learned not to take him to a Super Walmart that sells kumquats because, in the fatigue hysteria that follows him after air travel, Rob will run around the produce section shrieking, “Look, Ma! Kumquats!” until he causes all the other Rascal Scooter bound patrons to begin to reach for their nitroglycerin pills and Jitterbugs, with their big red 911 button. So, basically, once. I hear that he and his family are out riding around “looking at Christmas lights in the neighborhood”, but I think that’s code for “finding proper sedation”.

This leaves me to tell you that this…

…is the end of our broadcast day. As you can see it’s a small take this week, as there were not many releases. But, there are a couple interesting things there. The Doctor Who Special 2013 is out, just in time for the Doctor Who Christmas episode tomorrow. Kieron Gillen and Adam Kubert’s Origin II, the next chapter in the the Wolverine backstory is out. Avengers: Rogue Planet #1 from Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribic and Justice League #26 from Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis round out the take.

I had thought to put up a review of Origin II #1 up tonight, but, after reading the issue, I want to give it at least another issue to see where it’s going to go. I’m in the camp that was underwhelmed by Paul Jenkins’s much hyped Origin. I get that the character is wildly popular and will move a lot of units, regardless of the what story they actually come up with, and I’m sure Marvel is happy to capitalize on that, but with every new marketing opportunity story, you run the risk of over exposure. However, Gillen is a very talented writer, who has done great things with B list titles like Journey Into Mystery, so I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for now. Issue #1 is not a bad read and Kubert’s art is solid, so, go ahead and grab the issue if you were interested in the series, but on the fence.

Anyway, even with that one issue down, you all know the rest of the drill. Before we can review them, we have to read the rest of them. Merry Christmas to those of you that are celebrating tomorrow. I’m off to give myself a hangover in preparation for the upcoming day’s festivities.