Old Man And The Shield – Trailer For Captain America: The Winter Soldier

While the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office was celebrating the Red Sox and their 8-1 trouncing of the St. Louis Cardinals last night with whiskey, bottle rockets, and eventual blackouts, Marvel released the new extended trailer for Captain America: Winter Soldier into the slipstream of the internet. Prepare yourself for Nick Fury, cybernetic arms, and being uncomfortably close to other men on elevators. Also, thrill to the reveal of the rumored Robert Redford appearance as Alexander Pierce, S.H.I.E.L.D. covert über spy.

Cool to see how they’re handling Falcon, and if you didn’t get more than a little excited at the glimpse of Bucky’s cybernetic arm, well, then I question your Captain America fanhood.

Not seen in this trailer? Batroc the Leaper. Yep. He is supposed to be in the film.

Guess there’s just some things we’ll need to wait for the movie to experience.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier drops in US theaters on April 4, 2014.

Good Times Never Seemed So Good

My sincere apologies, since I haven’t resorted to one of these kinds of posts for a while on a Wednesday night, but as you may or may not know, Crisis On Infinite Midlives is based in Boston. And the Boston Red Sox will be taking the field at Fenway Park in literally minutes to play in game one of the World Series. And being native Bostonians, and because being a comic book geek does not necessarily preclude being a baseball fan, that means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But there’s quite a take to dig into and review in the coming days – you know, provided that the inevitably late-running ballgames and the inevitable extra beers that that will mean don’t land us in the hospital by the end of the week.

We’ve got the first issue of former Captain America creators Ed Brubaker’s and Steve Epting’s spy comic Velvet, a new issue of Matt Fraction’s Sex Criminals and Satellite Sam, a metric buttload of new chapters of Marvel’s Infinity crossover and DC’s Forever Evil event, plus a ton of other cool stuff!

But you know how this works: before we can review them, we need time to read them… and with the first pitch imminent, that won’t be until later. So until the Sox take game one…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Eat The Rich: The Extinction Parade #3 Review

Editor’s Note: One last review of last week’s comics before the comic store opens…

There is an entire generation of Twilight fans who, after eight years of mooning over broody prettyboys who sparkle in the sunlight and chuck around pledges of eternal love like they’re trying to bubble to the top of a Ponzi Scheme based on the hard fucking of teenage girls, should be kneecapped and forced to read the third issue of The Extinction Parade, written by Max Brooks and drawn by Raulo Caceres.

There is also an entire generation of Keeping Up With The Kardashians fans who, after six years of squealing over the adventures of a yammering pack of B-grade starfucking sisters and their step-something who started life as an Olympic champion and is now visually indistinguishable from a C-List Batman villain, should be kneecapped and forced to read the third issue of The Extinction Parade.

This is because, even though the hook to get people on board with The Extinction Parade was that it was another angle on a zombie apocalypse by the guy who wrote the novel World War Z, it is instead really about vampires, who by dint of their eternal lives, are also the idle rich. And since Brooks is, as I am, a little too old to be a fan of either Twilight or the Kardashians, that means that he knows that vampires are irredeemable and detestable dicks.

The only downside is that this comic series places the vampires still in the Kardashians-on-the-news, Twilight’s-ruining-Comic-Con era of the zombie apocalypse. But the cracks in their perfect little lives are starting to show… and it is sweet.

Walking Dead/Monster Mash Mashed Up

What? You say you’re already two episodes into this season of The Walking Dead and you can’t get enough of that sweet, sweet ultraviolence? Miss the satisfying pop as a shovel separates a walker’s head from his spinal cord? Wish Shane, Merle or the Govenor was still around because they helped to reinforce the idea that evil doesn’t come in an airborne virus or a shuffling, hungry horde, but rather through the way we treat our fellow man?

Still happy Andrea’s dead?

Then watch this mash up where The Walking Dead meets The Monster Mash and all will be well. At least until you start to get the zombie apocalypse DTs next Sunday – for that I’ll recommend whiskey. It always stops my hands from shaking, especially if I’m trying to whack my neighbor’s kid a zombie in the head with a shovel. Precision is everything.

Via The Mary Sue.

Giant Naked Guy: Avengers Assemble #20 Review

Avengers Assemble #20 does a lot in 20 pages. First of all, it’s a rare one-and-done, which is refreshing in the middle of the Infinity event that has been going on for a couple of months but which sometimes makes me feel like we have always been at war with The Builders. Second, it gives a spotlight to Wonder Man, Wasp and Scarlet Witch, who have been inveterate second stringers recently (when one character has become a pacifist and another who just about a  year ago was valiantly fighting to remain dead. Third, it gives us a taste of what we can expect from the Great Terrigen Mist Release of 2013 (the fact that what we can expect is a bunch of people with new superpowers all reliving the first season of Heroes is beside the point). And finally, it wraps all of this in a relatable story about side characters who were damaged long before they were affected by the Terrigen Mist.

But this is not a perfect story. In order to fit everything into a single issue, writer Al Ewing has Wasp make a couple of quick and significant leaps in logic to get the story from Point A to Point B. Further, in order to balance Wonder Man’s out-front and obvious pacifism, Ewing contrasts it with a child gleefully stomping bad guys to death.

So there’s a lot here, some of which works and some of which doesn’t. But is does it work as a coherent whole?

World Class Series: New Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Teaser Released

I have lived in New England for most of my life, and in Boston for more than half of that time, and unless you’ve lived here for any length to time, you don’t know what it’s like when the Boston Red Sox make it to the World Series. Oh sure, for new residents of the area, it seems almost like a common enough occurrence, but for a very long time, through the 70s, 80s and 90s, it felt as likely as seeing decent production values in an episode of Doctor Who.

So what this means is that most of the staff of Crisis On Infinite Midlives started drinking well before the Red Sox / Tigers game started yesterday at 8 p.m., we switched to shots when Shane Victorino hit his grand slam home run, and things got a little hazy after that. So we have spent most of the day quite damaged, being of a certain age where the idea of the Red Sox in the World Series is still damn exciting.

As is the idea of Doctor Who with production values. So as a nod toward the fact that we are truly living in halcyon days, here is the latest teaser trailer for the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary episode, Day of The Doctor. It’s not the full trailer that was supposedly shown during San Diego Comic-Con this past July, but it is pretty cool, and most importantly: it is genre-related, and can be posted without too much unnecessary motion or sound to make our hangovers fire up.

Since Game One of the series starts on Wednesday, expect several more barely coherent posts for the next week and a half. But in the meantime, you can check the teaser out after the jump.

Khan Roll

I’m afraid it’s a busy morning at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office  – the coffee is barely latching onto my neurotransmitters, and we need to pack up and head to Worcester (The Heroin Capital of Massachusetts!) on a mission of parental mercy involving helping with computers. Which means that by noon I will be filled with my recommended daily allowance of hatred and rage, and will thus be in poor shape to write about comics.

So instead, with the limited time I have available this morning, I am pleased to offer this exclusive, never-before-seen Star Trek footage, which you can find after the jump.

Breaching The Secret Society: Dan DiDio To Appear On The View Today

So if you’re home sick, unemployed, or nursing your methamphetamine habit in front of daytime TV today, here’s a thing that’s happening: Co-Publisher of DC Comics, will be appearing on The View today.

Is he appearing to pitch something specific coming from DC? No, although DiDio’s obvious abilities as a pitchman that he shows at conventions will probably allow him to drop some hype. Is he attending to hype up the Batman Vs. Superman movie? No, although if he doesn’t take the opportunity to mention it given that filming on the flick reportedly starts this weekend, it demonstrates that he might be nursing a methamphetamine habit.

No, instead he is going on The VIew so that Whoopi Goldberg can pitch him on a comic series. Based on herself. Only with superpowers.

Return of The Joker: New Commercial For Batman: Arkham Origins And Joker Voice Actor Does The Killing Joke

In April, Amanda and I completely redid the Entertainment Annex of the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office, and due to changes in layout and furniture, we haven’t reconnected my XBox 360 (My gamertag? You don’t want my gamertag. I shoot the Witches in Left For Dead 2, and I do it because I quickly reach a point where I don’t care if it’s my “teammates” or me who dies if it means I don’t have to hear about my mother’s sexual proclivities anymore).

And, in an effort to keep the newly-renovated room looking like adults live here, I have held fast in keeping it disconnected, despite having a yen to play my XBox Arcade downloads after a weekend of classic video games, and even through the release of Grand Theft Auto V, because I figure once either the XBox One or the Playstation 4 comes out, either will replace my elderly and slow Blu-Ray player in favor of a new one that will report my tastes in pornography back to Corporate Headquarters.

But I recently realized that, even if I need to balance the ol’ 360 on top of a speaker or run cables across the middle of the floor, I will need to hook that bad boy up, because Batman: Arkham Origins is dropping before the end of the month. And even though this one isn’t being written by Bruce Timm, and the main voices aren’t by Kevin Conroy or Mark Hamill, and it’s the first Arkham game not produced by Rocksteady Games, the first two games earned more then enough goodwill for me to pick it up on launch day.

And the ads are helping to get me excited… kinda. On one hand, this new spot that takes us, in just a few seconds, through Bruce Wayne’s journey from Crime Alley to Batman… but it also makes me concerned that we’re gonna be spending more time than I’d like with Bruce Wayne instead of Batman. Arkham Origins without the Batman suit or the streets of Gotham or familiar rogues stands a real chance of becoming Double Dragon… but the emotional beats in the video give me some hope that it’ll be right at the core.

And you can check the latest spot after the jump.

Hunting Angels In The Gutters: Guardians of The Galaxy #7 Review

Since Guardians of The Galaxy #7 has the names Brian Michael Bendis and Sara Pichelli on the cover, I will start by saying yes, there are at least three double-paged layouts in this book where you need to stop what you’re doing (which will be enjoying the actual story) to decode whether you need to read page one and then page two, or across the spine from the top. The bad news is that this is still a storytelling technique that drives me bugfuck nuts.

The good news is that I have long since learned, when I see the names “Bendis” and “Pichelli” on the cover, to stop with every page turn and decode how to read the pages before continuing my story enjoyment. But still, even though I have learned to look for the layout doesn’t mean I like it. It’s like an SAT word problem, or a solid donkey punch: you don’t start loving it just because you know it’s coming.

Jesus, I have been writing comic reviews for more then two years, and I have never started one by poking at a technical element of the visual storytelling before. Which should go to show just how crazy the whole cross-spine layout makes me… but which also might make make it seem like all I have to say about it are technical nitpicks and “get off my lawn!” screeching about more modern storytelling techniques. But that’s really not the case.

Instead, Guardians of The Galaxy #7 is a comic book that will play for any Browncoat. It’s one of Bendis’s “let’s alll sit around a table talking” issues that let’s the reader spend some quality time with a tight crew of a small starship, cracking wise in the face of danger while simultaneously trying to negotiate with and size up a potential enemy. And with its cocky and wisecracking captain, warrior woman second in command, and gunslinging goon backing them up, it’s a stupid hat and a misguided hero’s ballad away from being an episode of Firefly.

And I like Firefly. So I had a lot of fun with this book.