Something For Everyone – Review Of Grimm #8

Comic series that are adaptations of other properties can be hit or miss. One of the first comic books I remember getting as a kid was the four issue mini-series based on Raiders Of The Lost Ark. I read the shit out of those books. On the other hand, I’ve been reading the comic adaptation of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files books and been somewhat less enraptured. Now, you can make the argument that there is about a 30 year age difference between those reading experiences. However, I think it might come down to the fact that I hadn’t seen Raiders yet when I got those comics, whereas I had read all of the Dresden books before I read the adaptations. So, while the Dresden adaptation isn’t bad per se, it just visually doesn’t match up to how I have already played those scenes out in my head when I read the stories the first time. Still a perfectly good comic book series, just I’m probably not the designated audience.^*

^*This is also the part where I somewhat shamefacedly admit to enjoying the comic adaptation of Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, which is vampire mommy porn of the first order. Never read any of the actual novels; don’t ever intend to. However, if I had read them, I’d imagine I’d have similar dissonance issues as I do with Dresden.

Which brings me to the comic series based on the NBC TV series Grimm, published by Dynamite Comics. The television show is in its third season. How successfully does its comic fare?

Vin is Groot: Vin Diesel’s Role In Guardians of The Galaxy Made Official

So when I saw my comic news wire blowing up earlier today with the news that Vin Diesel was portraying Groot in the upcoming James Gunn directed Guardians of The Galaxy, I was honestly surprised. Not that Diesel was playing the role, but that the fact that he was playing the role was news.

Seriously: there were rumors months ago that Diesel was in talks with Marvel to do something with them, and I follow Gunn on Twitter, so I was pretty sure I had read Gunn reference Diesel in there somewhere along the line. And normally someone only references admiration for Vin Diesel when they are working with him, or else accompanied by the word, “homoerotic.”

So I have taken it for granted for months that Diesel was playing Groot… but apparently I had no basis for that opinion because yeah: now it’s official.

Harlan Ellison Is Not A Fan Of “Saving Mr. Banks”

Harlan Ellison, Angry Man. Est. 1934

I’ve not seen the movie, but Ellison’s rant kind of makes me want to now. He feels that movie is nothing but propaganda that burnishes “Uncle Walt”‘s image and serve as Oscar bait. As an author with quite fervent feelings himself over how his own work is used, he sympathizes with Travers and disapproves of how she comes off in the movie – even going so far as to say that one particular pivotal scene never happened and that half the movie is made up. The movie struck a raw nerve in the man, who has never been shy about speaking his mind on a good day. Check it out after the jump.

I Love You, (Ant) Man: Paul Rudd Cast In Edgar Wright’s Ant Man

So Marvel made it official yesterday: Paul Rudd has been cast as the lead in Edgar Wright’s (The guy who directed The World’s End, which was, bar none, my favorite movie of 2013) movie version of Ant-Man.

When Edgar Wright came to us with the idea of Paul Rudd, we felt a huge sense of relief because the first step in creating any Marvel Studios film is finding the right star,” said Marvel’s Kevin Feige. “We knew early on that we had found the right person in Paul. When he not only agreed to do it but became as enthusiastic as any actor we’d ever met with about doing the work, we knew we’d found the right guy. We couldn’t be more excited for our audiences to see what he’s going to do to bring Ant-Man to life.

Yes. He’s enthusiastic about “the work,” Kevin. He’s certainly not considering Robert Downey, Jr.’s percentage of the gross of Avengers and envisioning finally being able to tell Judd Apatow to fuck off when he calls at 3 a.m. with an idea for a gross, yet sweet, comedy about some experience Apatow lived through at some point.

Look: I like Paul Rudd. But I can’t address whether or not he’ll be a good Ant-Man. Because we still don’t know which Ant-Man he’s gonna be playing.

Don’t Call Me TARDIS, Whitey: Time Of The Doctor Trailer Released

Okay, so here’s the tricky thing: Matt Smith’s final turn as The Doctor will be happening in The Time of The Doctor, which will be the annual Doctor Who Christmas Special because… well, because the British. Sure, there are American news organizations swearing up and down that there is an annual War on Christmas, but over in England, Christmas has been Blitzkrieging all comers for years. Here in the states some might claim that Santa is losing ground to multiculturalism (not that I give a shit; Santa could be a plaid Martian so long as he bring me my annual case of Stone Arrogant Bastard Ale), but in London, old Saint Nick annually marches to victory on a road of bones.

But the relative strength and / or armaments of Santa Clause aren’t the tricky part. The tricky part is that the Doctor Who special is airing on Christmas Day… and that means that the editorial staff of Crisis On Infinite Midlives will be scattered across the country, visiting family. Sure, my co-Editor Amanda will be holding down the fort (and making sure Parker, our new mascot kitten, doesn’t eat every network cable in the joint), but I will be in the southern United States visiting my family, Trebuchet and Pixiestyx will be somewhere in Massachusetts, and Lance Manion will be observing his annual tradition of visiting restaurants in Boston’s Chinatown, screaming for cold tea and trying to Roofie himself.

So the question as to how we will watch and report on the death of the Eleventh Doctor is still up in the air. For last month’s The Day of The Doctor special, most of the staff gathered at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office to watch and drink and live-Tweet the experience. We are considering setting up a Google Hangout to teleconference the viewing experience (and maybe wind up with a podcast in 2013)… but that will involve convincing my parents to voluntarily watch Doctor Who (“Why is this limey mincing across my new flat screen calling me a TARDIS?” “For God’s sake, Dad, we’ll put the NCIS reruns back on in an hour!”).

So whether we can even watch the thing in a way that will allow us to report on it is still up in the air… so it might be that the trailer is all we can address in somewhat real time. And thankfully, the BBC has released the latest trailer for the special, and we can all check it out together after the jump.

They Say It’s Your Birthday

Gotta keep things short today, because it is my Co-Editor Amanda’a birthday. She is Editor’s Note: If you tell people my age, I will divide it by 10 and chop that many inches off your junk, Rob. -Amanda years old today, which means that she gets whatever Italian food she wants, and an evening of movies that do not feature lead “actor” Jason Statham.

So writing time is limited, but since this is Wednesday, that means new comics… for the last time in 2013. Because of Christmas and New Years falling on Wednesdays this year, new comics will be released on Tuesday for the next two weeks. But Christmas is not my concern today, a birthday is, but either way: this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

And there are many good comics there (not necessarily including the next two point issues of The Amazing Spider-Man, which are apparently nothing but banked file filler stories left over in case Dan Slott fell behind in 2011… and which are really not very good. Let’s put it this way: last week’s The Amazing Spider-Man #700.2 was the worst Spider-Man story I’ve read since Easy Reader was introducing Spider-Man stories), but nothing is more important to me than Locke & Key: Alpha #2, which is the final issue of that series. And if there is a single comic that I have discovered and fallen in love with since we started this crappy little rag in 2011, it’s Locke & Key. So while I’m sad to see it go, I’m psyched to see how it ends.

But that’s not all; there’s also a new issue of Saga, The Superior Spider-Man, Daredevil, and a bunch of other cool looking stuff!

But you know how this works: before we can talk about any of them, I need time to load Amanda up with antipasto, gnocchi and limoncello, hold her hair back while she yenches, wake up hung over, and then read them. So until that last dry-heave…

..see you tomorrow, suckers!

The Book Was Better: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Neil Gaiman To Produce Sandman Movie

I love comic book movies, but it is a love like John Hinckley Jr.’s for Jodie Foster: just because a feeling borders on obsession doesn’t mean that the object of that affection will ever love you back.

It is a hard-fought love, as I am 42 years old, and therefore lived in a dark time when genre fans hoping for a movie to their tastes would have to bite the bullet and pretend to be excited about things like Harley Davidson And The Marlboro Man and then find a way to convince ourselves that we were worthy of sucking breath in the morning. And if you wanted a comic book movie? Well, there was the first Batman movie that opened just after my 18th birthday, sure, but before that? Well, in the five years before Batman, the only comic book flicks that were released were The Return of The Swamp Thing, Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, Supergirl, and Howard The fucking Duck. That’s a real murderer’s row of movies. In the sense that I want to line them up and shoot them.

So we comic book fans truly live in an amazing time, in the sense that there are many movies based on comic books, and most of them are pretty damn good. Sure, there’s the odd X-Men 3 and Spider-Man 3 out there, but there are very few real stinkers. Sure, there are still arguments about Watchmen (which I rewatched recently and still like a lot), but that comic was so dense that it would have been well-nigh impossible to do a really killer adaptation of the thing. So while I like it, I can understand the argument that everyone involved should have left well enough alone. After all: some comics should just stay comics.

Which is one hell of a long way to go to report that Joseph Gordon-Levitt has announced via Twitter that he has signed on to produce a movie adaptation of Sandman with Neil Gaiman and David Goyer.

Parents And Children: Justice League #25, Justice League of America #10 and Cataclysm: Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #2 Quick Hit Reviews

Editor’s Note: It’s The End Of The World As We Know It, And I Feel Spoiled.

So between spending the week helping the new cat get used to a life where the searing agony of a shot to the nuts happens to stupid humans, and dealing with the first ice and snow falls of the winter (Three times in eight days! I love New England! And I am apparently alone in this affection, since clearly God has forsaken us!), so I am well behind in reading this week’s comics. You’d be surprised how hard it is to concentrate on a simple piece of graphic literature when the cat is yowling and my co-Editor Amanda is asking if I think it would help if she plunked his sack in a snowbank.

It’s hard being a parent, even to a lower beast who shits in a box, loves the taste of network cable, and thinks a laser pointer is the best thing ever despite not being a seven-year-old boy in 1977. So I found it interesting that the first three books I peeled off my stack this evening – Justice League #25, Justice League of America #10 and Cataclysm: Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #2 – all were about, on some level, the relationships between heroes (or anti-heroes) and their parents.

And all three books range from pretty good to excellent, but while I would normally review each of them in depth, well, it is Monday, and to compose my usual type of review for each comic would take me three hours and about 1,200 words to review, meaning there is no way in hell I could get them done before the new comics drop on Wednesday. So for a change, I’ll just write a couple of paragraphs about each, in ascending order of my opinion of them.

Assuming, of course, that this cat doesn’t decide to use my leg to sharpen his claws to remind me that I should be spending my money on scratching posts rather than silly things like neutering. Or comic books.

International The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Trailer Has Some Previously Unseen Footage

Greetings from the snowbound headquarters of The Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office! While we spend the day digging out, please enjoy this new international trailer of The Amazing Spider-Man 2. There are some differences from the US version, notably Gwen almost outing Peter Parker’s identity at 1:44 and a good look at the Rhino’s armor at 0:54. Meanwhile, I’m going to try an convince Rob that you can’t clear snow from an icy sidewalk by pouring lighter fluid on snow to light it on fire. You need at least one beefy hobo for that lighter fluid, so that the flames can get some traction in a solid fat source to keep the fire burning longer and melt more snow over a larger surface area. I’m pretty sure that won’t violate the condo agreement, right?

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 will open on May 2, 2014.

Descending Again Into Sin: Teaser Poster For Sin City: A Dame To Kill For Released

We are battening down for our first winter storm here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office. These preparations are not really rigorous – as a wiser man than me once said, all a man needs to weather a blizzard is beer and toilet paper – but we need to get to it while the getting’s good.

So in the meantime, let’s all reflect on a place where it never snows (although it always rains when you need to take a long walk to ponder the priest you just shot), which is a good thing because the cars are all convertibles and the babes are all wearing exactly enough to avoid arrest… although it doesn’t really matter because the cops are all dirty anyway.

I’m talking about Basin City, or Sin City to the locals. And Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez are taking us back there in the sequel to 2005’s Sin City, Sin City: A Dame To Kill For, which is due out on August 22, 2014. And Dimension Films has released a new teaser poster for the flick, which you can check out after the jump.