Legion Sprocked

ScienceFiction.com has an exclusive preview of the upcoming DC New 52 title Legion Lost #1, written by Fabian Nicieza with pencils by Pete Woods. You can check it out here.

I’ve never been a big Legion of Super Heroes fan; it’s hard to take seriously a group of super heroes that include one who’s power is apparently based on Skittles and the neverending battle with Type 2 diabetes, and many other who were invented by 12-year-olds mailing in character ideas. So while this book is on my pull list for the first issue, it wasn’t one I anticipated adding to my monthly pull list… until I got a look at this page:

Who Wants A Puppy?

DC released 13 new #1’s this week in its effort to reboot the DC universe. I’ve been trying to work through the stack. It’s been challenging; I love comics, but I also love having the opportunity to get up and do things like eat or huck rocks at the neighbor’s kids.

One of the books I’ve enjoyed the most so far has been Animal Man, written by Jeff Lemire (most well known for Sweet Tooth) with art by Travel Foreman and Dan Green. Lemire sets up Buddy Baker, aka Animal Man, as a mostly retired super hero who is now focusing his attention on animal rights activism education. He’s also just finished shooting an independent movie that sounds suspiciously similar to “The Wrestler”, but with more super heroes and less dignity. Despite Baker’s fame and success as Animal Man, there is tension at home. Money is tight; his wife is giving his mixed messages about whether he should continue being a super hero; and, his daughter really wants a puppy. I mean really wants a puppy. More on that later.

When Buddy finally does get to escape the house to go defeat a threat at a local hospital, using his powers come at an unexpected cost:

Do not eat the brown acid.

And then, he comes home and finds out the lengths his daughter will go to in order to have a pet. Plus, mutant powers!

What was most enjoyable about the story is the way Lemire’s storytelling worked in conjunction with Foreman’s penciling to give the whole issue a creepy, otherworldly vibe that was reminiscent of Grant Morrison’s work with the character without being completely batshit whack-a-loon. Furthermore, Foreman and Green’s artwork is a pleasant respite from the pretty to the point of sugar shock art in many of the other books that DC has released in the past two weeks (JL #1, I’m looking at you).

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with a plate of nachos and this bag of rocks.

GD Fundamentalists

There’s a panel in Action Comics #1 where Superman is shot by a tank, and he utters, well… he utters this:

Which is not the worst thing I’ve seen in a comic book this week – that would be The Big Lie by Rick Veitch, which makes Hawk & Dove look like Great Expectations, and which I’ll probably rant about tomorrow – but apparently it made the owner of The Comics Conspiracy, a comic store in North Carolina, go apeshit ballistic based on their Facebook page:

As of today’s release of Action Comics #1 by Grant Morrison, The Comic Conspiracy, will until further notice, be boycotting all future Grant Morrison books. If you want Action Comics, you will have to buy it elsewhere…

Christian comic book readers and shop owners. Join us in the Grant Morrison Boycott. Action Comics #1 is a slap in the face to Superman, Christians and Superman creators Siegel and Shuster!!

…It grieves me to see a liberal Scottish schmuck like Grant Morrison take these liberties. I’m sorry, Superman would NEVER take God’s name in vain. In the words of the late Jim Croce, “You don’t tug on Superman’s cape.

The dude’s blowup got a lot of play in the comics press, including Bleeding Cool, Geeks of Doom, and about a million other sites including Reddit. And I’m guessing that DC Comics, who’re in the middle of the New 52 press juggernaut, didn’t want to alienate the huge Christian fundamentalist market segment, who are well known for their love for comic books and other genre fiction, because they trotted Action Comics writer Grant Morrison out onto the DC Source blog:

Angry Birds

Okay, I’m sure Sterling Gates is a lovely person, and while I’m sure many people have enjoyed his Supergirl comic between 2008 and the New 52 reboot (Besides Brian Wood, but that’s another story), let’s start with a little basic science, shall we?

DC to Batgirl From SDCC: Sandwich – I Don’t Have One.

Image via Bleeding Cool. Also, I like pie.

This week, we’ve got thirteen new number ones, plus Justice League #1 from last week. I added it in because it seemed a little silly to give it its own post last week, so I saved it. On September 7, 2011, DC released 14 (really 13, plus 1 from the week before) brand new titles featuring 105 credited creators, 97 male and 8 female. So we’re nearly two percent less than the average amount. If you want to get into a whole percentage of percentage thing, this 7.6% is almost twenty percent below the average total of female creators.

So, holding all those “The New 52” panels hostage while constantly harping about how DC needs more women while you were at the microphone really seems to have worked out, huh, Kyrax2? Don’t you know you were supposed to do the decent thing and walk up to the microphone and say “Mr. Didio, you’re really awesome! How’d you get to be so awesome?”, while shallowly breathing through your mouth to avoid smelling the other sweaty, latex clad superfans gathered in the aisle waiting for their turn to fawn at the throne?

14 down, 38 to go. Maybe DC thinks hiding the Mysterious Woman Of Mystery in every single DCnU #1 is raising the total number of women in its books. Maybe we’ll find out she could be any one of a set of octuplets. Cosmic octuplets. Cosmic octuplets who follow Booster Gold through space and time, because he’s from the future and he knows that it’s important for the future of humanity to up the number of women involved in DC and –

Oh, fuck it. Just come back next year and try again. I have money riding on this.

Action Comics #1: Look At This Fucking Super Hipster

EDITOR’S NOTE: There might be spoilers here. I will try to keep them out, but I am writing this hung over, so I guarantee nothing.

Okay, I will never rule out the possibility that I am a complete moron, but I’ve read Action Comics #1 three times now, and to save my soul, I CANNOT figure out how Superman knew about the bomb on the platform. Oh wait… this book was written by Grant Morrison. That explains everything.

Morrison has a habit going back at least to his JLA run where he seems to like to jump right into a sequence without any explanation as to the events that let up to that sequence. Unlike any other writer I can think of, he seems willing to say, “Look: this is a comic book. Does it really matter how Superman found out about the bomb? Why spend time showing him investigating and wandering around asking questions or seeing clues or any other explanation? You just want to see him try to STOP the bomb, right? RIGHT… okay, maybe I just don’t feel like writing the explanation. Write it, don’t write it, the check cashes just as easy.”

13 Problems But A Foot Ain’t One

Things will be quiet for the remainder of the broadcast day for one reason.

Okay, for thirteen reasons.

DC’s Crazy Stalker Girlfriend

You promised me Dave Matthews tickets in this timeline! And cuddling!

Who the hell is this chick? DC wants us to play Where’s Waldo and spot the crazy lady in each of the 13 issues of the New 52 that have been released this week, with plans for her to make appearances in each remaining #1. They’re whoring her out more than Ke$ha at a recording industry retreat, “Can a sister drop some mad rhymes on a random kinda celeb’s mixtape? What? Ke$ha. K-E-dollar si- Please? I’m so lonely.”

No one knows who she is, but theories range from some sort of new Harbinger to a gender swapped Time Trapper Keeper. To paraphrase Bill Cosby quoting another guy, “She’s in your home state! She’s outside your front door! And she’s coming to get you!”.

Publicity generator or monster in my closet: you decide! Also, I am not a hoarder.

Oh no! She found me!

Time to start smearing Jell-o and lighting my couch on fire. BRB.

Jonah Hex In: A Good Jonah Hex Movie

One of my biggest fears when I heard about DC’s New 52 was that they’d use it as an opportunity to cancel some of their smaller books that never got the attention (or, honestly, the audience) that Batman and Green Lantern got, but that I really enjoyed, like Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray’s Jonah Hex.

I don’t remember why I was so worried… oh yeah – because DC fucking cancelled Jonah Hex.

But I should have known that Jonah Hex is IMPOSSIBLE to kill (If the Goddamned movie couldn’t do it…)! DC’s kept Gray and Palmiotti on to script All-Star Western, which will be starring ALL of DC’s star western characters, including Jonah Hex, and…

Yeah, pretty much Jonah Hex.

This past weekend, DC released a motion comics trailer for the book, which you can see after the jump:

Scalping Batgirl

Bleeding Cool’s reporting that Batgirl #1 – which doesn’t even go on sale until tomorrow – is selling on eBay for ten bucks… which is more than triple the cover price.

Now granted, the book’s already sold out at the distributor level, but it’s already gone into a second printing (Which, if Justice League #1 is any guide, should turn around back into comic stores in a week or two), and again: IT HASN’T EVEN GONE ON FUCKING SALE YET.

This, of course, is not a problem for me, because when I heard this news I promptly emailed my local comic store owner, who knows me by name and asks after my general welfare when he sees me, and asked him to set a copy aside for me. Which I GUESS you could try with your iPad. It might respond. If it does, well… I’d say seek help, but the people sitting next to you on the bus while you whimper at your computer that you “Really want to get your hands on Batgirl” will probably make sure you get some whether you want it or not.

No, if you want an honest-to-God first print copy of Batgirl #1, your iPad won’t help you. But that’s understandable; if I’d ever taken my local comic store owner into an airline lavatory and made him perch on my lap while I masturbated, he wouldn’t help ME, either. (via Bleeding Cool)