Problem Child: Damian: Son of Batman #1 Review

Editor’s Note: Don’t overlook anything. Spoilers will be hard to find in this amount of carnage.

I don’t think I’ve made it a secret over the years that I was never a fan of Damian Wayne. He was a mouthy douchebag who was designed to irritate, and usually delivered. He was a ten-year-old in all the worst senses of the word: impulsive, opinionated for no good reason, and often disrespectful to his family… and any person with the unmitigated gall to be disrespectful of The Goddamned Batman? He and I can never be friends. So I didn’t shed too many tears when his creator, Grant Morrison, had him whacked a few months ago.

The thing is that Damian was that much of an irritant as a ten (or so) year old, and everyone knows if you want someone truly insufferable, you need yourself a teenager. That’s when kids take their original irritating personalities and add moodiness, mopeyness and just general emo. They start listening to Joy Division (or whatever the 21 Century version of Joy Division is; I’m old and picked all my bands years ago. Do kids go through a Doors phase anymore? Or are they truly fucking hopeless and deserving of being written off? No, I don’t have children, why do you ask?), and they cut their hair all funny and they yell stuff like, “You’re not my real dad!” and “No I won’t get in your fucking van!” and “Who the fuck are The Doors?”

But Damian was safely killed before he could hit those difficult years… which clearly disappointed writer / artist Andy Kubert, because in his new book Damian: Son of Batman, he gives us not only a teenaged Damian, but one with a marked lack of adult supervision. And while that story is generally beautifully illustrated, it is also a little exposition heavy where it’s not needed, exposition light where it really is needed, and retracts an important plot conceit almost as soon as it’s introduced.

Happily Ever After: Bill Willingham Announces Fables To End With Issue 150

It’s a good thing that, for good or ill, Vertigo Comics has got some Sandman back in the fold for at least a little while, because their arguably final big series from their second wave of glory days is coming in for a landing.

That’s right: Bill Willingham has announced that Fables will be ending with issue 150 in about a year and a half, with its spinoff book Fairest closing out at about the same time.

This is… not particularly welcome news.

So what’s up, Bill?

Family Reunion: The Sandman Overture #1 Review

Editor’s Note: Since my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me why anyone would consider a digital publication of any kind when he’s sure he probably has a slightly used yet still perfectly good Juggs Magazine he could sell me floating around somewhere, was sold out of The Sandman Overture #1 when we visited yesterday, this review is based on the digital version available on Comixology and read on a seven-inch Android tablet.

So. A prequel to a beloved genre series that is widely considered to be a classic, released about 16 or so years after the original series ended. That almost always ends well.

Seriously: I’ve read through The Sandman Overture, written by Neil Gaiman with art by J. H. Williams III and purported to tell the story of what Morpheus was up to just before that dink Roderick Burgess trapped him in a snow globe, and I’m not sure what I think about it. Because it’s a comic book that’s almost impossible to consider on its own merits… not that that’s a bad thing. After all, if The Phantom Menace hadn’t been tagged with the words Star Wars, it would be best remembered as a Twitter hashtag whenever it aired on the SyFy Channel after Sharknado.

But if you take The Sandman Overture #1 as part of the epic tale of Sandman, that means that you’re not only tacking onto a mythology that took 16 or so years for Gaiman to write, but one that spans thousands of years and just about the entire universe. Gaiman took the long view with Sandman, and there’s no reason to think he’s not doing the same with this miniseries.

But the trouble is that we don’t have the entire miniseries yet. We just have this one issue. And while the sum of the parts might wind up being spectacular, I just can’t say that about this single issue. What we have here is, well, a prequel. And one that shows some disturbing signs of succumbing to the same pitfall that all-too-many prequels to genre properties have fallen over the years.

Fan service.

No Dwarves Or Irish – New Simpsons “The Hobbit” Couch Gag

I feel bad that I haven’t really been watching The Simpsons for a couple seasons now. Sunday night the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office DVR is set to favorite Once Upon A Time over The Simpsons and, while the former is not without its own flaws, it’s still new enough that I’m more interested in watching it instead of the over 20 year old animated series. And, I can usually find The Simpsons in various On Demand formats.

Besides, the best part of the show has often been the couch gag anyway. If I can find the couch gag on YouTube with relative ease, my needs as a viewer are largely met. Below check out this Hobbit spoofing clip from the upcoming episode “Four Regrettings And A Funeral”.

All that being said, I might check out this episode when it airs next Sunday, because it will be the bittersweet final appearance of Edna Krabappel, voiced by the late Marcia Wallace. It will also feature voice appearances by Rachel Maddow, Joe Namath, Gordon Ramsay, and Aaron Sorkin. I wonder if Ramsay is going to go all Kitchen Nightmares on Moe’s Tavern? Or I might get drunk and watch a DVR marathon of Bar Rescue, which is pretty much what that situation would look like anyway.

Another Series To Follow

And with that, we are staring down the barrel of another Wednesday of failure. Between heavy commitments in the morning and at the day jobs for Amanda and myself, we barely had time to accomplish the stuff that pays the bills, let alone write that last-minute review of last week’s Ultimate Comics Spider-Man #28 (Short answer: it was good). Combine that with the fact that we live in Boston, and not only are the Red Sox are back at Fenway hoping to wrap up the World Series tonight, but President Obama is in town to distract us from the problems with the health care Web site (of course, he came to the wrong place: we’ve had one for years, so we’re good, yo), and we were barely able to get the cars through the crippling traffic in time to get to my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to remember that the closing time on the door isn’t just a fucking suggestion.

And combine all those factors with the fact that the World Series has been going on for a week now, meaning that we have spent five of those days grappling with the terminal exhaustion that only comes on the back side of three-plus hour games, and we’re lucky either one of us can write our own names, let alone any kind of in-depth comic book news or reviews. I mean Jesus, DC Comics just announced that they’re moving their entire operation from New York to Burbank, California, and the best analysis I’ve been able to muster up is, “Um, that’s wicked far away.”

And alas, the Red Sox game starts in just a few minutes, which means my only comic book related thoughts will be my suspicion that David Ortiz might have superpowers. However, the big takeaway from this tale of missed deadlines is that we made it to the comic store, which means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But even with the distractions of October baseball at Fenway Park, that’s a good haul of comics. We have a bunch of DC Comics annuals, the first issue of Andy Kubert’s Damian: Son of Batman (But I watched him die!), the Point One introduction to the Ultimate Universe (ending?) crossover Cataclysm, and, most anticipated – the new issue of Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples! Plus there’s a bunch of other cool stuff!

But before we can talk about any of them, we need to watch the Sox win the World Series (please God, I need to sleep!). So until then…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Days of Future Aging: X-Men: Days of Future Past Trailer Released

A lot of the geek excitement for movies in the next year is focused on Marvel Studios, what with Thor: The Dark World opening next weekend, Captain America: The Winter Soldier dropping in April, 2014, and Guardians of The Galaxy (and if you’re not excited for that one, go see director James Gunn’s earlier flicks Slither and Super and tell me how you feel then) coming out next summer.

And once upon a time, that slate in and of itself would be enough to blow the heart of any self-respecting comics fan right out the back of his or her underpants. But we live in a charmed time, where we have even more comic flicks on the way, like The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and X-Men: Days of Future Past, which features the return of Bryan Singer, the director of X-Men and X-Men: United, the two films that started the whole superhero movie renaissance.

Twentieth Century Fox brough some footage from the film to this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, but none of it has made it to the general public… until today, when the first official trailer from the movie was released. And you can check it out right after the jump.

Marvel’s Mighty Avengers Mystery Spoiled By Spoiling Jerks At Marvel: Identity of Spider Hero Revealed

Editor’s Note: This story contains spoilers for upcoming issues of Mighty Avengers. So if you’re digging the mysteries that were presented in the first issue last month, please feel free to pretend that we are still upgrading our Web server, and that I am still shrieking impotently at our Web caching software, which apparently only accepts upgrading when it is convinced that you are who you say you are, and that game four of the World Series is safely past the third inning.

We really enjoyed the first issue of Mighty Avengers, written by Al Ewing with art by Greg Land. It was, unlike many recent Avengers titles, a more human, character-based story, with an interesting mystery at the code: who is the “muscular” and “intense” dude who has a history with Monica Rambeau and wears, at least for now, a rotten “Spider Hero” costume into battle?

There was a lot of speculation that it might turn out to be Miles Morales behind that mask, giving that character a place to go if the upcoming Ultimate Universe Cataclysm event does, as it appears it will, fuck all that Universe’s holes and leave it for dead. But regardless, it was meant to be a fun little guessing game for a few months before Ewing pulled back the curtain sometime in the next few issues.

Yeah, I said that it was “meant to” be a mystery. Past tense. Because Marvel went and gave the whole thing away.

Another Editor’s Note: Spoilers will follow after the jump. Last chance to bail, turn on the TV and watch the Red Sox show St. Louis how we do things in Boston…

Cut The Green Wire With Yellow Stripes? Or The Yellow Wire With Green Stripes?

We are in the process of performing a series of pretty significant Web site upgrades today, which will take a while to complete. So if you see anything weird happening, please be patient; we’re working on it.

We will return to our regularly scheduled programming as soon as possible.

Throw Your Hat At Her And Die: Velvet #1 Review

When reading the first issue of Velvet, the new spy comic written by Ed Brubaker and drawn by Steve Epting, you can almost hear the creators saying, “You know what would be fucking awesome? If Miss Moneypenny was actually the baddest motherfucker who ever walked in or out of M’s office. Now pass that thing over here before it goes out, willya?”

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Velvet is a spy comic set back in 1973, when the Cold War was running full blast, men were men, women were secretaries, and spies were dapper motherfuckers with laser wristwatches and cars that turned into submarines.

Which is, of course, utter bullshit. Everybody knows that there’s no such thing as James Bond – hell, even James Bond knows it, based on the relatively gadgetless Daniel Craig version we’ve had for the past few years. At this point, we can be pretty confident that real spies are either faceless geeks sucking up Internet traffic (Hi, NSA!) or large-jugged Russians with crappy Facebook cover identities. And besides: real spies work for real governments, which means hierarchy, bureaucracy and internal politics… and they know that you never fuck around with sharks with frikkin’ lasers when you can just blow your enemy’s head off with a shotgun.

So James Bond sure is fun, but he doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense in the real world if you stop to think about it longer that a minute or two. And Ed Brubaker clearly has stopped to think about it, because Velvet takes the world of James Bond, plugs it somewhat realistically into the real world of 1973, and turns things on their head by making Moneypenny the one that you really need to be concerned about.

And it gives us a meaty mystery: who killed X-14… and just who the hell is Velvet Templeton?

Batman Down: Cartoon Network Puts Beware The Batman On Hiatus

God knows that we have had our issues with some of the decisions that have come from the DC Nation partnership between DC Comics and Cartoon Network – we still bemoan the cancellation of Young Justice and Green Lantern: The Animated Series, and when it comes to replacing one of those shows with Teen Titans Go!, well, you know how we feel about that decision.

One bright spot to come out of last year’s cancellation turmoil, when both Young Justice and Green Lantern: The Animated Series were initially pulled from Cartoon Network’s schedule without notice toward the end of 2011 before running off their inventory of both shows, was the launch of Beware The Batman, the latest Batman animated show from Warner Bros. And while the new show really couldn’t hold a candle to the Bruce Timm / Paul Dini Batman: The Animated Series from the 90s, it’s certainly been entertaining enough to make a spot on our TiVo, and to catch at least half of the DC Nation shorts on a weekly basis. We try to catch the other shorts online, since there isn’t a force on Earth, including the marijuana that apparently allows most people to sit through it.

Well, that is we had Beware The Batman. Because in a case of history repeating itself, Cartoon Network has, without prior notice, pulled the show from their schedule with episodes still in reserve.

So… what the fuck, Cartoon Network?