Glimpse of The Golden Age: Miracleman Triumphant Pages Released By Inker

Back in the halcyon days of 1993, (not the Halcion days, at least not that I’ll admit on a public Web site), when Kurt Cobain was alive (if you can call cohabitating with Courtney Love living), a man could light a cigarette in a bar where people were disintegrating their livers with cheap domestic bourbons without someone getting all self-righteous about their health, and Eclipse Comics was still a going concern. A going concern with, on paper at least, the free and uncontested right to publish Miracleman.

Back then, Neil Gaiman had blessed a miniseries to fill in some of the gaps as to what happened between the end of Alan Moore’s run and the start of Gaiman’s The Golden Age arc. The miniseries, Miracleman Triumphant, was to be written by Fred Burke – the writer of, well, some stuff you’ve never heard of –  with art by recent New Avengers artist Mike Deodato and inks by Jason Temujin. Here’s what the story was to cover:

Miracleman Triumphant #1, entitled “Oracles,” begins where Miracleman #22 leaves off, focusing on the aftermath of the annual Carnival memorializing Kid Miracleman’s slaughter of London in Miracleman #15. The opening pages were to show Miracleman, disguised as an ordinary human, surveying the closing moments of the Carnival, wondering to himself if the changes he has brought to the world were the right ones. While ruminating, he stumbles onto a flier advertising a family of fortune-tellers and, interested in their opinion, seeks them out.

That miniseries was in the works when Eclipse Comics choked on its own debt, going down with all hands and throwing the rights to Miracleman into a legal black hole that would make Stephen Hawking scream in existential horror were he to contemplate it.

And that was pretty much that; sure, the odd partial page has popped up now and again, but not much in the way of completed art… that is, until this morning. That’s when Temujin posted the latest of four pages that he had finished inking before Eclipse went out of the comics business and into the asset auctions business. There’s no dialogue attached, but considering that these are pages from one of my favorite comic sagas, drawn by one of my favorite comic artists, I figured they’re worth making note of. And you can check them out after the jump.

Teen Titans Go! – Here’s The Crap That Is Replacing Young Justice

For the past two seasons, Cartoon Network has been offering a DC Nation cartoon block. The one hour block showcased two twenty-five minute length cartoons, Green Lantern: The Animated Series and Young Justice, as well as a variety of animated shorts ranging from a goofy take on Animal Man, voiced by Weird Al, a cute take on Supergirl, Wonder Girl and Bat Girl in Super BFFs, to an interminable anime inspired run of Amethyst: Princess Of Gemworld. While the Green Lantern series got off to a rocky start, with animation and storylines that seemed cribbed from The Clone Wars, it eventually did find its footing. Young Justice, meanwhile, was strong out of the gates and created a compelling ensemble story, proving that animation can be a vehicle that tells smart stories and isn’t just for kids.

Problem is – Cartoon Network and DC really only care about the “just for kids” part of the animation block. Neither cartoon series was moving enough toys and other merchandise to justify keeping it on the air, compounded by an uneven airing schedule that saw both shows unexpectedly pulled off the air last fall, despite having show times and episode synopses published for promotion. So, when DC Nation pulled the cord on the two series this month, it was hardly surprising.

Compounding the “no really, we’re in this to sell toys to the kids” vibe is the decision by the suits to replace these shows with Teen Titans Go!, an ultra child friendly version of the previous WB anime style Teen Titans property that aired back in 2003 and spawned a children’s comic, also titled Teen Titans Go!.

Check out the trailer for the new series, after the jump.

Info (Star) Wars

When I was a young lad back in 1977, I used to argue with my friends at the schoolyard during recess over which one of us would get to pretend to be Luke Skywalker as we relived the daring rescue of Princess Leia and the subsequent destruction of the Death Star. We were young, innocent, and simply eager to mimic one of the greatest heroes of modern times. Or at least, that’s what we thought.

What if we were lied to? What if Luke Skywalker – Red Five himself – was part of a secret plot hatched by the entire Skywalker family to destroy the Death Star from the inside, as part of a conspiracy to kill much of the Empire’s top military personnel, profit from the military / industrial complex that would inevitably demand the reconstruction of the Death Star, and eventually seize control of the Imperial government. We’ve heard of the Old Republic… but why haven’t we heard of the New Galactic Order?

I mean, sure: we’ve all seen video of the X-Wing Red Squadron flying the trench and launching their proton torpedoes – we’ve seen that video on film, on VHS videotape, on DVD and on high-definition Blu-Ray so far – but what if it was faked? What if some insidious, shadowy figure behind the scenes kept doctoring that video, to the point of repeatedly tinkering with it, without our consent? All in the interest of muddying our memories of that momentous event, in the pursuit of simply cynical profit?

Clearly, I’m not the only person who thinks this might be the case. Because free-thinking patriot Graham Putnam has created a video that just might change your thinking about the fateful day we witnessed the thousands killed in the tragedy that is the Battle of Yavin IV… and might make you question whether or not The Force, is in fact, with any of us. And you can watch this eye-opening video after the jump.

We are through the looking glass, people! Tarkin was martyred!

I’m A Superhero: Wolverine #1 Review

Editor’s Note: Many years ago, a secret government organization abducted the man called Logan, a mutant possessing razor-sharp spoilers and the ability to heal from any bad comic…

I don’t know about you, but I really didn’t feel like I needed another Wolverine book. We got the debut of The Savage Wolverine just two months ago, we’ve had Wolverine & The X-Men going since the end of the Schism event about a year and a half ago, and then there’s that good old Wolverine comic that, until recently, had been running since Logan put on an eyepatch and started acting like it would make people without massive traumatic brain injuries think he was a completely different dude with fucked-up hair and adamantium claws back in 1988. Even forgetting the recent Wolverine: The Best There Is series, throw on top of those books Wolverine’s appearances in X-Men, Avengers, New Avengers, and even fucking X-Babies, I wasn’t exactly waiting with bated breath to bring my monthly Wolverine expenditures into the three figures.

But still, I picked up the first issue of writer Paul Cornell’s and artist Alan Davis’s new Wolverine, partially because I generally dug Cornell’s recent work on DC’s Demon Knights, partially because I’ve liked Davis’s work since Captain Britain and more importantly (to me, anyway) Miracleman, and partially because I co-run a comics Web site and part of my job is to read stuff that I don’t necessarily give a damn about and write about it.

And it turns out that that’s not a bad thing, because Wolverine #1 is good. Really fucking good. Better than the opening to about any solo Wolverine story in recent memory.

Particularly that first page, which is one hell of a cool shot across the bow.

In Our Cups: New Game of Thrones Season 3 Trailer, Episode Synopses

It is St. Patrick’s Day, and that means that we will be adjourning to a local drinking establishment to drink to excess and act like degenerate spastics. Well, the fact that it’s a Sunday means that we will be doing those things; the fact that it’s St. Patrick’s Day means that we will be surrounded by people who are not very good at doing those things.

This commitment to debauchery means that my review of Paul Cornell’s and Alan Davis’s Wolverine #1 will need to wait until tomorrow morning (sneak preview: it’s damn good), but the concept of medieval excess (and, once the rubes get to Green Budweiser number 11 after a pile of corned beef and cabbage, medieval plumbing facilities) brings to mind Game of Thrones, which is returning for it’s third season on HBO on March 31st, and which is therefore in full publicity mode right now.

In fact, HBO has released another preview trailer for the new season, as well as some plot summaries for the individual upcoming episodes, which you can check out after the jump.

Tweet Impairment: Bryan Singer Posts Photo of X-Men: Days of Future Past With New Cast Members

You ever wake up on a Saturday morning, crippled from drink with the sense memories of about seven too many Jack Daniels-based drinks lingering in the back of your throat (along with a flavor that you can’t identify, but strongly suspect is gonorrhea)? And then your phone rings, and it’s a friend of yours saying, “Um, buddy? What exactly is this thing you went me a cell phone picture of? It’s a little blurry, but I figure it’s either a couple of sand dunes in the Saraha Desert, or else you’d better start rehearsing the speech you’re gonna give to your neighbors when the judge orders you to… inform them.”

Of course you have; if you were an upstanding citizen, you’d be getting your comics information from a more reputable source (read: almost anywhere else). And that means you understand the innate and insidious nature of Twitter. Just four years ago, the worst thing you could do with your cell phone camera was baffle a single person. Now, you can baffle the whole world at once!

Which is a long way to go to say that X-Men: Days of Future Past director Bryan Singer has been Tweeting again.

What The…: DC Reveals WTF Gatefold Cover For Batman #19

Several months ago, DC Comics announced that April would be their official “WTF Month,” in which every issue would include a special gatefold cover and a guaranteed moment to make readers say, “What the fuck?”

We here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives did not report on this exciting new development in the implied use of the word “fuck” when it was announced back in January because:

• We are busy people with a limited number of hours in the day to write about comics news, and not every marketing move by a major publisher is exciting news just because it implies the use of the word “fuck.” We are not immediately impressed by the word “fuck.” We fucking use “fuck” all the fucking time, for fuck’s sake.
• There have been plenty of moves by DC Editorial that have made us say, “What the fuck?” without requiring a special stamp on any special cover.
• The whole thing sounded pretty fucking contrived. We could just picture scripts being sent back to writers with “bigger fuck!” written in classic “Harras Red” ink.
• Fuck it.

Well, despite our initial feeling of, “meh,” DC has continued with their plan, and today they released the first complete gatefold “WTF” cover, for Batman #19, by artist Greg Capullo. And you can see the full cover, gatefold and all, after the jump.

Crowdfunding Will Not Save Us: Thoughts On The Veronica Mars Kickstarter

Editor’s Note: Please be advised that this long-assed editorial is written by someone who knows exactly fuckall about the television and motion picture industries. So the opinions therein are bourne purely from a dude who has spent more than 40 years watching niche properties flare up on the horizon, getting excited in anticipation like every other genre geek, and being disappointed after they pass. Plus, I’m hung over right now.

The world of genre TV and movie fans went mildly apeshit this week when Rob Thomas and Kristen Bell, the respective creator and star of the mid-2000’s CW show Veronica Mars, put up a Kickstarter project to fund a Veronica Mars major motion picture. At launch time, it seemed like a longshot – they were asking for $2,000,000 within 30 days, which was more than any other Kickstarter had ever set as a funding goal, but Thomas said in the project’s description that the deal with Warner Bros., who owns the actual rights to the property, had already agreed to greenlight the movie (albeit for a limited theatrical release) if they hit the ambitious funding goal.

When I heard about the project, it sounded kinda ridiculous to me. Trying to scrape up two million simoleans from a fanbase just in the hopes of getting a genre flick made seemed about as productive to me as clapping your hands to keep Peter Pan alive, or clawing futilely at a Fenway Park beer counter’s security barrier ten seconds after the seventh-inning stretch.

Silent Lucidity: Batman & Robin #18 Review

When DC leaked the news last month that Grant Morrison would be killing Damian Wayne in Batman Incorporated #8, the company claimed that the character’s death would resonate across the main Batman Family titles, despite Batman Incorporated existing, since the New 52 reboot, in some strange continuity bubble that seems to lie outside of the New 52, and based on some weird editorial philosophy where all major decisions are tagged with the phrase, “…but keep Grant Morrison happy.” In that spirit, one would think that, compared to the maintenance of continuity spreadsheets, last-minute story changes and line editorial late nights and headaches, it would be cheaper and simpler to just dump a truckload of peyote on Morrison’s driveway, but whatever.

My big question at the time of the reveal was: how exactly were the other Batman Family creators going to handle this event? After all, Batman and Robin’s battle against Leviathan from Batman Incorporated wasn’t exactly something that had been addressed in the other books, and it seemed like those other writers already had plans for upcoming story lines. Hell, before Robin’s death, Scott Snyder had announced he was embarking on a Riddler story in Batman before more recently announcing that instead he was gonna do a long-form Batman: Zero Year story focusing on Batman’s early years, and while Riddler might be a part of it, it at least seems like a change of plans.

But my biggest question, that I couldn’t address at the time without riddling the story with spoilers, was how this would affect Peter Tomasi’s Batman & Robin, what with the tiny detail that Robin’s name appears in the fucking title. And while other Batman Family titles have clearly just shoehorned Robin’s death into previously-planned storylines as an afterthought (last week’s Detective Comics simply mentioned it in a panel or two while Batman then went on his merry way attacking Penguin and Emperor Penguin as previously planned, and in this week’s Batgirl the death gets a page and a half before going back to Barbara’s fight with James Gordon, Jr), it’s gotta be hard to move forward with any previously-existing plans when one of the title characters is taking a dirtnap. You know, until someone kicks his carcass into a Lazarus Pit (and you know this will happen).

So given the early efforts of the Batman Family titles to apparently simply slot the fact that Robin is dead into existing story plans (Please note that I don’t know that this is the case. For all I know, Grant Morrison called a staff meeting with the Batman editors and creators a year ago and announced his plans over absinthe and some form of ritually sacrificed beast of burden, and it’s just the half-assed executions that make it look shoehorned in), I was half-expecting for Batman & Robin #18 to be a standard Batman story with maybe some weird-looking camouflage art to cover where Robin was supposed to be, and a headset quickly pencilled onto Batman’s head so it wouldn’t look like he was talking to himself like an insane person.

I was wrong about that. Instead, Batman & Robin #18 takes Damian’s death head-on, with the focus solely on Batman and how he is handling the event (short answer: badly), and makes use of a bold storytelling choice to make the reader empathize with Batman by almost forcing us to try to think about what we’re seeing in his reactions. Suffice it to say that, if Robin’s death in Morrison’s playground was a forced afterthought in some of Batman’s titles, it most definitely was not here.

Robinus Resurrexit!

So as of yesterday, Tuesday, March 12th, in this year of our Argentinian Pope who is old enough to have met (if not harbored) escaped Nazis after World War II, there were two widely-known facts that were the uncontested word of God when it comes to comics:

• Damian Wayne – Robin – has been dead for two weeks, and:
• Wolverine is the above-the-fold star of at least two different monthly comic books, which is one more than almost any character who isn’t The Punisher in 1987 could support (and given that The Punisher spent one of those books horking a jet ski, turns out he couldn’t support them either).

These facts would normally mean that these two characters shouldn’t appear in any more comic books than they already have. But it is a special day; the Vatican displayed an eruption of smoke from the Sistine Chapel, meaning that they either selected a new Pope or hotboxed the place, so miracles are abound! Miracles such as Robin being referenced on the covers of three different comic books despite the mild adversity of being deader than shit, and Wolverine having two new books to headline!

Truly, it is an age of infallibility! Or perhaps incontinence; one can never tell when the elderly blaze dirtweed under the auspices of diplomatic immunity. But either way, it means that this…

…means the end of out broadcast day.

But despite the weird incongruity of seeing people in books that sanity indicates maybe should not be so, there’s some good stuff in the till this week. We’ve got a new issue of The Walking Dead (where we meet Ezekiel, another elected spiritual leader overseeing a flock thanks to his quiet dignity of office. And a tiger.), the second issue of Marvel’s Age of Ultron event, the third issue of Brian Wood’s Star Wars, a Christopher Yost Avenging Spider-Man, and a bunch of other cool stuff!

But you know the drill: before we can review them, we need time to read them. Well, we also need time to try and resist to make filthy genital jokes about “worshipping the Holy See,” but mostly to read them. So while that happens…

See you tomorrow, suckers!