A Dream of Flying Again: Marvel To Reprint Moore’s and Gaiman’s Miracleman, Complete Gaiman’s Story

There are hazards, when you run a comics blog, to making the decision to fuck off to central New Hampshire to play classic video games during the weekend when the New York Comic Con is occuring. We knew when we made the call that we would miss some news, but we figured that that wouldn’t be all that big a deal, as there would be half a dozen comics blogs with budgets bigger than ours (read: almost all of them) who would have boots on the ground and be better able to cover it than we would even if we spent the weekend parked at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office Information Center (read: the couch with a first-generation Transformer tablet tuned to our “comics news” RSS feed).

So we knew that we would be late with some news… we just didn’t anticipate that some of that news would entail several hundred dollars worth of direct impending loss of value to our personal comic collection!

To wit: Marvel announced at New York Comic Con that they would be reprinting Neil Gaiman’s and Mark Buckingham’s late-80s / early-90s run on Miracleman… and that they would be finishing the three-part storyline that was aborted after Miracleman #25, the first part of the middle The Silver Age storyline, after Eclipse Comics went under.

Which is excellent news (well, it’s excellent news for anyone who didn’t spend the first two years of the 21st Century hunting down those original Eclipse issues), but that original announcement only referenced Gaiman’s and Buckingham’s issues, which didn’t start until Miracleman #17. Miracleman #1 through #16 were written by Alan Moore, and include the infamous 15th issue, Nemesis, writh art by John Totleben and featuring the complete decimation of London in the battle between Miracleman and Kid Miracleman. If you’ve never read it, it’s a classic, that is well worth the fat cash I dropped on it during a drunken bidding war on eBay in 2002.

And it looks like that is fat cash that I will never see again, because today Marvel made it official: they will be reprinting the entire Eclipse Comics run, starting with Alan Moore’s Miracleman #1, starting in January.

But Marvel’s still not using Moore’s name anyplace.

Greetings, Starfighter! A Weekend At Funspot

Some of you might be wondering why we have been so silent over the events of the New York Comic Con, which has just finished up and featured news including the return of Stephanie Brown to the DC Universe proper.

Well, the reason is that we checked our bank balance after returning from the San Diego Comic-Con, determined that we didn’t have the cash or the cachet to attend another giant-assed comic convention three months after the Big Show, and therefore decided to spend the weekend doing something geeky, but geeky within our budget.

And that means video games. And being from Boston, that means that the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office exists about 100 miles from Funspot, the home of the American Classic Arcade Museum.

Now the whole “museum” tag might make the whole experience sound boring, but what it really means is that the third floor of one of the biggest arcades in the world is (minus the only indoor miniature golf course I have ever seen) completely loaded with original and working arcade cabinet games (the real machines, not that MAME stuff that your creepy uncle misguidedly uses to try to lure young-looking girls into his basement game room) that you can actually play with a simple token from an old-school token machine.

And, since Funspot is the arcade featured in The King of Kong, you can, for the low-low price of 25 cents, play the actual Donkey Kong machine that Steve Wiebe went head-to-head with against Billy Mitchell for the world record. Or, if you’re me, you can use that legendary machine to learn that you were never any good at Donkey Kong, whether you use the cross-handed grip you saw Mitchell use in that movie or not.

And not only did I learn that I am not good enough to fondle the joystick that Wiebe and Mitchell used to make history, but I learned that, when you are a 42-year-old man, spending eight hours a day playing as many video games as you want is more physically exhausting that you would have thought when you were 12 years old and never had more than five bucks to spend at any given arcade at any given time.

Meaning that I am physically crippled, and functioning only through the glee that, 22 years after it was released, I finally got through the second level of Tron. Combine that with Amanda’s excitement over holding the Pole Position II high score for the entire weekend, and we are collectively running on fumes here.

So while we recover, please enjoy these photos of a place that exists in this world 20 minutes off of Route 93 in New Hampshire, where any person with a quarter can play as Flynn against Sark (in not only Tron, but Discs of Tron), or as Pac Man before he had eyes and a Saturday morning cartoon, or even as Mario when he was still known as Jumpman and was just fighting against a giant monkey.

It is more fun than you could think you could have, and some proof is available after the jump.

Video – Harrison Ford And Benedict Cumberbatch On Star Wars Sequel Casting

Normally, I wouldn’t go out of my way to watch BBCA’s The Graham Norton Show. However, the season premiere is going to include an interview with Harrison Ford and Benedict Cumberbatch, in which their potential involvement with the Star Wars sequels is going to be discussed. Harrison Ford is…noncommittal. Hillariously noncommittal.

The Graham Norton Show season premiere will air on BBCA on October 19. Star Wars Episode VII will drop some time in 2015, precisely, as Boston comedian Rich Gustus would say, “the second Saturday after I get my shit together.”

Walking Through Mud: The Walking Dead #115 Review

This review is going to be colored by the fact that I am sick to fucking death of Negan and am more than ready for The Walking Dead to move on to something new.

We have been dancing with this character for fifteen months and his crew of douchebags for even longer than that, and for the entire time it has felt like the guy has one note, and writer Robert Kirkman has been playing it over… and over… and over, in an unending loop that should offend the mind of any self-respecting software developer:

while (bool negan.getIsAlive())
{
    negan.sexualizeBaseballBat();
    negan.leaves().
    List ricksPlanToBeatNegan = new List ( { “Take The Fight to Negan!” } );

    ricksPlanToBeatNegan.getIndex(n).execute();
    ricksPlanToBeatNegan.getIndex(n).setSuccess(false);
    negan.threatenMassViolence();
    n = n + 1;
}

See what months and months of reading about Negan has done to me? I develop software for my day job, and I just spent ten minutes trying to come up with a valid Java-ish method rather than contemplate 12 more issues with this fucking character.

But 12 issues should be the long and short of Negan, because The Walking Dead #115 signals the start of the major story arc All Out War, which should give us the final showdown between Rick’s and Negan’s people. And if the check that the title’s floating is any good at all, this showdown will be a straight-out fight, rather than these little insurrections and half-measures and bouts of oneupsmanship that have made reading The Walking Dead since July of (Jesus) 2012 feeling like walking through thick mud: you take forever and a ton of effort to take every step, and yet go nowhere fast.

So things should start speeding up… eventually. Because part one of All Out War is really more of the same.

From Out of The Past: Nine Missing Late 60s Doctor Who Episodes Released

Well, it’s official: the BBC has announced that they have recovered nine episodes of Doctor Who from the run of Patrick Troughton, the second Doctor. Which means that I will only need to spend a full day watching British children’s television to bring myself up to speed… but since the episodes have been released only via iTunes, it will mean that I will finally be forced to give Apple my real name. Or wait something like 24 hours for the episodes to be released to Bittorrent. Jesus, did I say that out loud? Either way, I’m getting ahead of myself here.

The episodes are from the 1967 story arc The Enemy of The World and the 1968 arc The Web of Fear, which is the first story to feature The Great Intelligence…

Hey Amanda? What’s The Great Intelligence?

Well Rob, he’s the guy with the evil snowmen. The one that was voiced by Magneto in that Christmas special. And I think he was the leader of The Whisper Men in that Name of The Doctor episode.

Were those the ones that ripped off The Gentlemen from Buffy? I don’t remember that one all that well. I was pretty shitfaced when we watched that.

You mean as opposed to now?

…don’t give me static. I’m doing journalism! Or at least blogging. It’s like journalism, only you can go off on ridiculous tangents, and no one cares if you do it in your underpants!

Anyway.

Brain Bleach – Pectoral Implants a la Khan Noonian Singh

Say it with me: KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!

Ever want the massive, gleaming chest sported by Ricardo Montalban in Star Trek II – The Wrath Of Khan, but can’t commit to diet, exercise, or silicone prosthetics? Well, pine because of your puny, flat physique no more. The fine people at SuperHeroStuff have just the t-shirt for you. For just under 40 American dollars, you too can achieve the look of a man who has been placed on ice for a lengthy stretch of his wretched life and then spent 15 years in exile with nothing to do but hate Kirk, plot revenge, and push ups.

So, don’t put down that can of Pringles, my friend. Throw this shirt on, pop your Star Trek II DVD in the player, and eat up. And know that when Shatner yells that immortal line, he’s really yelling for you.

Via Fashionably Geek.

Archie And Victims: Afterlife With Archie #1 Review

“Afterlife With Archie is my pick of the week,” said the owner of my local comic store, where they know me by name and generally ask me to stay right the hell away from the kids’ comics.

“…you gotta be shitting me, dude.”

“I am not kidding. It is not like any Archie comic you have ever seen…”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Goddamned Archie comic,” I muttered.

“…and no matter what you think, it is much darker than you think it is,” he said.

“It would almost have to be.”

“Go take a look,” he said, “Dig to the back of the stack and find one of the variant covers.”

I pawed past copies of your expected Archie-style cartoony fake horror covers and saw… something unexpected. “Jesus. How’d they convince Francesco Francavilla to do a cover for this book?”

“By letting him do the interiors, too.”

“…come again?”

“Check it out. Take a look at page three.”

I opened the book. “Um… is that a Francavilla splash page of Jughead handing Sabrina The Teenage Witch a dead fucking dog?” He nodded. “Okay,” I said, “I’ll try anything once.”

So I did try it. And allow me – a 42-year-old cynical and angry drunk who has just read an Archie comic book – to tell you this: Afterlife With Archie is pretty fucking good.

Everyday Superpowers: Carrie Publicity Stunt Is Kinda Awesome

I haven’t paid a lot of attention to the upcoming remake of the movie Carrie, starring Chloe Grace Moretz, because the Brian DePalma original from 1976 is a Goddamned classic, and seeing a remake is just yet another sign that Hollywood is out of original ideas and they won’t champion new properties and I am getting old oh God so old get off my lawn you damned kids and turn down that rotten hippity hoppity okay who pissed in my pants?

Ahem.

Anyway, even though Carrie is, as many of Stephen King’s best works, a superhero story (Don’t believe me? Carrie is about a girl with Jean Grey’s powers. The Dead Zone, The Shining and Doctor Sleep are about guys with Franklin Richards’s powers. Firestarter is about a girl with The Human Torch’s power. Jack Sawyer in The Talisman and Black House jumps dimensions like Pariah. And if The Gunslinger from The Dark Tower isn’t Batman with a gun, I’ll shit myself), it hasn’t really been on my radar… until this little stunt.

The producers set up a publicity stunt in a New York coffee shop where they packed the place with a few actors, a fake wall and some gimmicked props, before opening the place for business to the rubes and staging a little impromptu demonstration of psychokinetic rage. And while I try to call myself immune to these made-to-go-viral video publicity stunts, this one put a smile on my face. Because if I had been there to witness it live, I would have counted it as the greatest thing I had ever seen. Right after I established exactly who pissed in my pants.

You can check it out for yourself right after the jump.

Evil Lurking In The Heart Of The Devil: Dynamite And Dark Horse Announce Matt Wagner’s The Shadow Vs. Grendel

Since taking over The Shadow license, Dynamite Comics has come out with what seems like a Bakers Dozen worth of Shadow titles, some good, some only okay. And I have taken or left them on a title-by-title basis without really getting excited about too many of them after Garth Ennis’s initial few issues… up until now.

Dynamite and Dark Horse Comics have announced that they will be producing a crossover: The Shadow Vs. Grendel. Colt .45-wielding Vigilante Lamont Cranston versus Wagner’s fork-bladed staff-swinging master criminal Hunter Rose.

Jesus. This idea is such a gimme that I’m almost okay with it being yet another project between Wagner and Mage: The Hero Denied.

Sweet Boneless Jesus – Review Of Todd The Ugliest Kid On Earth #6

Ed. Note. This review starts off with spoilers. Ugly, ugly spoilers. And tits, but, mostly spoilers. You’ve been warned.

The world is not what it seems.

That is the message writer Ken Kristensen and artist M.K. Perker are trying to get across in Todd The Ugliest Kid On Earth – and they are succeeding.

Ever wonder why Charlie Rose is so damn popular? Arguably, because he is a national treasure (his words). Also? Satanist. No, scratch that. Satanist-In-Chief.

Yep. Kristensen and Perker have created a world where Rose is a Satanist hunted by a Groucho Marx lookalike, where tits are the mirror of the soul, and local bullies get their comeuppance during a Seven Minutes In Heaven session that rapidly devolves into their own, personal Crying Game. And in the middle of it all?

Todd. The Ugliest Kid On Earth.

Interested? You should be.