How To Terminate A Terminator In One Easy Step – Rob Liefeld To Take Over Deathstroke At DC

According to Comics Alliance, comics illustrator and mangled foot enthusiast, Rob Liefeld, is set to take over both art and writing duties on Deathstroke from the current team of writer Kyle Higgins and artist Joe Bennett beginning with issue nine. This is a very interesting turn of events, particularly in light of the fact that DC also recently turned the writing of Hawk and Dove over to Liefeld from Sterling Gates (best porn name ever, by the way), a title on which Liefeld already had penciling duties, only to then turn around and cancel the whole damn thing. So, in order to save the title, it was necessary to destroy the title. Apparently.

Seems auspicious for Deathstroke, eh?

But, on the off chance DC decides not to send Slade Wilson off to the great Retirement Home In The Sky For B List Villains, how does Rob Liefeld plan to ruin plot the book that I’ve currently been enjoying for the past five issues?

Look, Ma! Deathstroke! No feet! After the jump.

Dave Dorman Gets Upset Because Of Boobies. It Must Be Opposite Day On The Internet.

1/10/12 Update – Dave Dorman has taken down the post and comments linked to in this article. For now, you can see the cached page with the quote and comments in question here.

Dave Dorman, an artist known for his work on Star Wars and Heavy Metal, took to his blog today to decry the artwork of Fiona Staples published in USA Today to promote her upcoming comic book Saga, which will be written by Brian K. Vaughan. Saga will follow the story of two soldiers from opposite sides of an intergalactic war who fall in love, start a family, and then get pursued by bounty hunters (among other threats).

Here’s the artwork in question:

His beef? After the jump.

Ones And / Or Zeroes: Nook Comics, Part 2

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part 2 of our review of buying and reading comics on the Nook Color in its new version 1.4.1 software release. You can find part one here. You can find an anxious walrus reporting crimes here.

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Look: one thing you’re never gonna get past reading a comic on the Nook is the size of the screen. At about seven inches of widescreen diagonal, it’s 2/3, maybe 3/4 the size of a standard printed comics page. That’s not the fault of the Nook platform; it is what the thing is. But given that limitation, the images are clear – either they’ve pulled in digital originals or they made a damn good scan. When held in the vertical position, you get a complete single page that’s imminently readable unless you’re farsighted or worried about being seen occasionally squinting like a furious masturbator on the city bus.

The problem here is the splash pages. When the Nook is held vertically, you get, like I said, one comic page, which means you only get half the splash. If you rotate the Nook, the page reloads into a two-page view that shows you everything, but is imminently unreadable. You can zoom in using the standard poke-your-fingers-and-spread-them as you know from the iPad and dating virgins in high school, all the way to full original page resolution. And you can drag the page around with one finger, as in other table apps or dating slutty skanks in college.

Ones And / Or Zeroes: Nook Comics, Part 1

EDITOR’S NOTE: The first draft of this was written on Christmas Day while my parents were at church. They came back before I could finish, so I put it aside hastily, because I would rather have them believing that I was viewing pornography than running a comics Web site. So please forgive the dated references.

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Merry Christmas from deepest, darkest Florida! Being the holiday season, familial obligations have forced us to leave the Crisis In Infinite Midlives Home Office, with it’s convenient bars, restaurants, bars, liquor stores, bars, movie theaters, bars, comic store and bars. I am writing this from an area of Florida that, if you’re familiar with the adventures of Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs, well… they’re familiar with those adventures here too, because they also watched them on TV when they were younger and had less ear hair.

This is what they call a “snowbird community,” because to call it a “retirement community” brings uncomfortable connotations of Blade Runner, which their Generation X children forced them to watch repeatedly on grainy VHS tapes. Or at least my parents were forced, so we’ll stick with the snowbird thing. It’s a nice little town where you can get anything you need, provided it helps in maintaining regular bowel movements.

But one thing they don’t have is a comic store. If you ask a local where you can get a comic book, they think you’re asking for something by Andy Rooney, and then they remember that he’s dead, then they get quiet, and then they call you an ungrateful hippie.

So it seemed that my visit here would remain comicless, since I certainly didn’t pack any comics for my trip down here. Packing anything more subversive than an iPhone with a fart generator app is a non-starter when facing an interaction with a TSA “agent”, since the last comics-related story they’ve probably heard was that Superman renounced his American citizenship, and if they see a picture of Batman boning Catwoman, you will become intimately familiar with the second knuckle of the middle finger of a strange man making minimum wage. It’s a Christmas Miracle OH GOD WHY I’LL ADMIT ANYTHING YOU WANT I’M SORRY BATMAN IS A BIGGER PIMP THAN YOU YES THOSE ARE MAGNIFICENT DREADLOCKS FOR A FEDERAL AGENT NO NOT THE THIRD KNUCKLE

But I digress. I thought I was going to be comicless, but a couple of weeks ago, Barnes & Noble released an operating system update for their Nook Color e-reader that prominently touted the availability of digital comics, particularly Marvel Comics. So I thought I would give the new functionality a shot.

Neil Gaiman Helps Save Free Speech At The University Of Wisconsin

Brendan Connelly of Bleeding Cool reported yesterday on the case of University of Wisconsin professor James Miller. Miller was targeted by Stout, Wisconsin police chief, Lisa Walter, over his choice to hang a poster of Nathan Fillion, as Firefly‘s Mal Reynolds, outside his office door. This is the poster in question:

More on the police chief’s rationale and how censorship was defeated after the jump.

Should You Have A Burning Need – Valen The Outcast #1 Review

I know we’re heading into December and that, as the season gets colder, we all try to find ways to keep warm. Me? I go to my day job and get money to pay for utilities, like gas and electricity to run my heat. Maybe I throw on an extra pair of socks and pop open a bottle of Bowmore. Scratch that. I definitely open the bottle of Bowmore. Michael Alan Nelson, on the other hand, burns books, specifically, his own. Why?

Even though I’ve been writing comics for seven years and have written over 120 single issues for dozens of series, most comics readers have never heard of me. Now, that’s not a woe-is-me-nobody-reads-me-wah-feel-sorry-for-me statement. Not at all. Let’s be honest. If you’re a customer and can only afford one comic, are you going with the book about a character you’ve been reading since childhood or a book by some guy who includes his middle name in his credit like some self-important twit? The math is simple. Childhood Hero > Self-Important Twit.

That said, I’ve been fortunate enough to have people take a chance on me and many of them can now be called my fans, for which I am incredibly grateful. I believe, as does BOOM!, that if you read one of my books, chances are you’re going to enjoy it and want to read more. The problem is getting enough people to pick up that first issue.

Um, ok. Seeming self esteem issues aside, this lead you to burn your own books in what appears to be some kind of publicity stunt? Really?

Yes, really. Check it out after the jump…oh, and some spoilers on the book in question.

Spider-Clones: Marvel’s Recent Moves

It’s been a weird month or so at Marvel, what with a bunch of layoffs, the cancellation of several ongoing books (Including Jason Aaron’s Punisher MAX, Crisis on Infinite Midlives favorite Black Panther: The Man Without Fear, and X-23 and Ghost Rider – Marvel’s only two books with female leads), and a couple of books (Destroyers and Victor Von Doom) that haven’t even come out yet. The word is that Marvel has been particularly nutcutting because of budgetary concerns, which means Marvel may be the first company that requires people with the job title of “Architect” to bring their own fucking toilet paper to work.

Any detailed analysis of what Marvel is doing and why would require more knowledge of the comics industry than a guy who just likes comics has, and, you know… math and shit, which means I’m not the one to do it. Kiel Phegley at Comic Book Resources runs down what’s happening and possibly why from an informed prospective, which you should go read. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

You’re back? What? you want to know what I think? Didn’t I just tell you that I’m not the one to ask? But then again, it’s Thanksgiving weekend, which means that we’re all doomed to listen to some drunkard spouting off in an authoritative manner about things they know nothing whatsoever about. Okay, fine; fill your glass, pull up a chair, and listen to your Uncle Rob run his mouth about something he knows nothing whatsoever about.

Will It Be Like Chocolate Meeting Peanut Butter? – Anthony Bourdain’s “Get Jiro!”

I was always one of those people who, in high school, kept very separate groups of friends. I had one group for theater geek activities, one group for all things jock related, and another one for the things that neither of the either groups needed to see. It was a very well planned orchestration that I kept meticulously cordoned off, like one of those plates that lets you keep all your food from touching lest the squash touch the potatoes and all mayhem break loose.

These days, I feel much the same about my hobbies. Comics, Club-A-Wino-To-Death Night, and foodie pursuits all hold very meaningful places in my life, but they’ve been there as spaces for me to move in and out of. My fenced off little refuges have not come into contact with each other…until now.

Enter Get Jiro!, which will be written by television personality/chef/author, Anthony Bourdain and author Joel Rose with art by Langdon Foss, whose work has previously been seen in Heavy Metal.

Should I be getting excited or scurry back into the shadows in trepidation?

New To Comics: So… I Guess Hawkeye Drives A Yaris?

EDITOR’S NOTE: Crisis On Infinite Midlives is proud to introduce our newest contributor: Pixiestyx. Pixiestyx is relatively new to reading comics, and therefore brings a different perspective to the comics world then Amanda and myself, who have been around the block enough to know who to curse at by name and general description. She’s been leaving great, interesting comments recently, and we’re glad to add her to the Crisis On Infinite Midlives team!

Does the comic industry really want to bring in new readers? If they did, one would think that the publishers would want to make it as easy as possible for a new reader to find a storyline that interests them, as well as figure out where to begin following that storyline. I have been an occasional comic reader for just over two years, yet when it comes to much of the comic world, I feel very much like Hal Jordan, having been told to speak the oath of the Green Lanterns without knowing what that oath is – completely lost.

I know how to do research; how to comparison shop, read reviews, and decide what to buy. However, most of the publishers’ websites have not been very helpful. They are good at listing the new books for this week and what’s coming out next week; but other than great cover art images, they do a very poor job of drawing me in and telling me why I should begin reading a series. They tend to have a busy layout and are unintuitive if you don’t already know what you are looking for. The UserWiki on Marvel’s site offers series background information, but the volume of information is inconsistent – a page and a half on some, non-existent on others. It appears that Marvel’s primary focus is on getting visitors to buy a Toyota Yaris instead of their comics anyway.

Down On The Upload: Downloading Avenging Spider-Man, Part 2

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is part 2 in a short series about downloading a digital comic book from Marvel’s online store. Actually, it’s a very short series considering this is the last part. You can find part 1 here. And if that doesn’t sound interesting, you can find cats talking to each other here.

After I muddled through figuring out how to give Marvel enough personal information to be able to read the digital copy of Avenging Spider-Man they’d offered to give me for free with my purchase of the print edition, and I finally was looking at the book in Marvel’s computer comic reader, it occurred to me that nothing in any of the Web pages I came through told me how to find the book again later. Lemme look at the app… aha! There’s something about subscriptions! Let’s click that!