Episode 125: Boston Comic Con 2016, Part II: The Miller Whisperer

It’s been a week since the conclusion of Boston Comic Con 2016, and we’re still coming to terms with the fact that we saw Frank Miller speak live.

We have a complicated relationship with Frank Miller here at Crisis On Infinite MIdlives. We will always love him for what he did with Daredevil and Batman in the 1980s, helping to bring comics into adulthood at the same time we were moving through our own adolescence. We will always respect him for doing cool stuff like Give Me Liberty and Robocop Vs. Terminator in the mid-1990s. And we will always be concerned about him due to his public statements about Islam, and there will never be a force on Earth that will make us really like Holy Terror.

But no matter what, the man is a legend in comics, and we were not only there to see him, but to record him. So we’re psyched to be able to bring you panel audio of Miller himself, talking about his Dark Knight trilogy, Sin City, Daredevil and what it was like to be at the forefront of comics during the 1980s.

We also discuss:

• Civil War II: The Fallen #1, written by Greg Pak with art by Mark Bagley, and:
• Demonic #1, written by Christopher Sebela with art by Niko Walter!

And, as always, the disclaimers:

• This show contains spoilers. If you’re not aware which Gamma-irradiated founding Avenger was shot in the brain by Hawkeye, well, then you’re not reading Marvel Comics anyway, and you won’t care.
• This show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. One of our possible titles involved Amanda using the convolutedly-spelled word “sidebewb”. You should probably use headphones.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:11:20 — 126.8MB)

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Thanks for listening, suckers!

Episode 124: Boston Comic Con 2016 Part One, or: Monetize My Fandom

Boston Comic Con, our local convention, was this weekend, and we went after it with both hands, hammer and tong… until we realized that we’d hit all the comics news panels by the end of the first day, collected all our commissions and desired books by midday on the second, and had one working hip between the two of us by the beginning of the third.

But our infirmities didn’t stop us from seeing the whole floor and attending some excellent comics panels. So we talk about this year’s show in general, some of the creators we met and the loot we scored, and then we talk the DC Universe Panel.

Held Friday, hosted by DC Co-Publisher Dan DiDio with panelists Aaron Lopresti, Phil Jimenez, Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti, the panel stayed away from DC: Rebirth news (other than providing some of the reasoning behind making the move), and focused more on the creators, their motivations, their inspirations, and how they managed to get some of their most high-profile gigs. And we not only talk about the panel, but we present audio direct from the show! It’s like you’re there! If you were there with two drunks able to stop the panel at will to interject with mouthy sarcasm!

And, before you ask: yes, we did attend the Frank Miller spotlight panel, and yes: we have audio. And we will present and discuss that panel during next week’s show.

And, the disclaimers:

• Due to limited time (the convention ended today, for God’s sake), we were unable to clean up the panel audio as much as we would have liked. It should still be perfectly audible and understandable, but we apologize if it’s a little muddy.
• This show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. One of our audio tracks is named “Scratch ‘N Sniff Beaver.” You are forewarned.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:57:16 — 113.8MB)

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Thanks for listening, suckers!

Episode 123: Binders Full of Metahumans

DC Films’s Suicide Squad opened this week, to impressive box office numbers, if not so impressive reviews. But here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives, Rob in particular is a fan of John Ostrander’s and Kim Yale’s 1980s original DC comic, so we went out of our way to see the flick, excited to spend Sunday preparing to talk about it, in depth, during this week’s show.

Then Rob’s day job called him on on Saturday night and worked him like a dog until 5:45 a.m. Sunday morning.

But we refused to let that stop us! So we spent our few waking hours today rereading dozens of issues of Ostrander’s Suicide Squad (and a few more modern issues, and even a few issues of Michael Fiffe’s Copra for some flavor), hashing out problems with the movie, discussing the differences between Ostrander’s nihilist Deadshot versus Will Smith’s devoted dad, arguing about whether the movie’s Harley Quinn was insanely devoted to Joker or ready to accept herself as a massively anti-social person, speculating about whether the rumored studio edits and deleted scenes would have made a better or worse flick, and bickering over whether three naps in a single 14 hour span is healthy.

So you’re in for a unique show: we taped this late, didn’t have time to really edit it at all, and recorded it in a state of profound fatigue hysteria. And we still somehow found the wherewithal to discuss DC Rebirth Suicide Squad #1, written by Rob Williams with art by Phillip Tan!

And, as always, some disclaimers:

• This show contains spoilers. If you haven’t seen Suicide Squad, and want to avoid being told whether or not Captain Boomerang consummates his forbidden love with a fluffy pink unicorn, you are hereby forewarned. (NOTE: This is not a sleep deprived hallucination. It is an actual and valid question introduced in this multi-million dollar studio-backed major motion picture).
• This show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. Hello!? Aussie Unicorn Rogering! Get some headphones.
• We repeatedly misidentify this episode as number 113 during the show. We are very ,very tired.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:57:29 — 117.2MB)

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Thanks for listening, suckers!

Episode 122: A Dick Grayson Pillow From Osaka

It is the final day of San Diego Comic-Con… which we were not able to attend. So, to make up for the fact that we were unable to report from the biggest comics event of the year, we distracted ourselves by catching up on some of the bigger recent announcements from the convention, and by seeing Star Trek Beyond, which is the third movie in the Bad Robot-produced reboot of the series, and not that fanfic movie that Universal Studios is suing like Rob thought it was until about three weeks ago.

It feels like the Star Trek franchise has lost some attention since J. J. Abrams left to direct a little indie film, and certainly our personal enthusiasms have been at different levels, as our relationships with the property have waxed and / or waned since our childhoods. And that differing excitement comes across as we discuss the movie: one of us finds it to be a fun popcorn flick with solid themes of making your own family, while the other thinks it has the crappiest Star Trek villain in 25 years and the worst film photography outside of an amusement park virtual reality attraction.

We also discuss:

• Justice League #1, written by Bryan Hitch with art by Tony S. Daniel, and:
• The Hellblazer #1, written by Simon Oliver with art by Moritat!

And the usual disclaimers:

• This show contains spoilers. Numerically not as many spoilers as the actual Star Trek Beyond trailer, but if you want to avoid knowing plot points smaller than the destruction of the U.S.S. REDACTED, consider yourself warned.
• This show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. We speak extensively about the sexual connotations of a clown suit on a mannequin. If you don’t want those connotations read back to you during your annual performance review, get some earphones.

Note: During the show, we speculate that Star Trek Beyond director Justin Lin was scheduled to direct The Flash. That was incorrect. We were thinking of James Wan, who also directed one of the Fast and Furious movies. And who, it turns out, won’t be directing The Flash.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:52:26 — 111.9MB)

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Thanks for listening, suckers!

Episode 121: Underground Gozer Society

The new Ghostbusters movie opened this week, after a long production period marked by a non-stop screeching hate frenzy from Bill Murray fans, enthusiasts of old-school J. Michael Straczynski Saturday morning cartoons, and people who think that comedy has been redundant since Rick Moranis donned a track suit to dry hump the windows at Tavern on The Green.

We here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives have long and storied histories with the original Ghostbusters, from Amanda’s devotion to its scientific approach to the paranormal that led to her being interested in applying to Duke University’s Parapsychology Laboratory, to Rob’s appreciation of the flick as an teen-safe entryway to early Saturday Night Live and the National Lampoon. And even with that long and beloved history, we have long been looking forward to the more modern interpretation of the franchise.

So we discuss our feelings about the franchise at large, how we liked (and didn’t like) the new movie, what we’re hoping for from any possible sequel, and Amanda’s theory about how this movie not only doesn’t turn its back on the original movie, but actually makes the concept that it’s a sequel as likely as not.

Regardless, we have no sympathy for those who say that the new Ghostbusters has destroyed their childhood. And we’re not alone.

We also discuss:

• Nightwing: Rebirth #1, written by Tim Seeley with art by Yanick Paquette,
• Wonder Woman #2, written by Greg Rucka with art by Nicola Scott, and:
• Civil War II #3, written by Brian Michael Bendis with art by David Marquez!

And, the usual disclaimers:

• This show contains spoilers. If you want to avoid knowing whether every molecule in Melissa McCarthy’s body explodes at the speed of light in a total protonic reversal, consider yourself forewarned and forearmed.
• This show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. You want your boss to learn a whole new definition of “hard but fair”? Then buy some earbuds.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:05:29 — 125.8MB)

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Thanks for listening, suckers!

Episode 120: The Bootstrap Paradox, or: Why Is Your Kindle Sticky?

Another season of HBO’s Game of Thrones is behind us, leaving us once again with a pile of dead so high it would embarrass Jerry Garcia, were he not also dead.

This was a big season: not only was it the first that wasn’t completely backed by one of George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire novels, but it pushed some fan-favorite characters toward their eventual endgame by (gasp!) allowing some of them to not only live, but to win. And not only to win, but to win in the layman’s sense of the word, not George R. R. Martin’s normal definition of “win,” which is “alive, but mutilated and perhaps covered in latrine leeches.”

So, as is becoming an annual tradition here, we welcomed guest John Keating: an actor, a comedian, and as close to an expert in Game of Thrones as you’re likely to find without riffling through a stack of Martin’s restraining orders.

We discuss the season, the huge arcs some characters have, the double-edged sword of certain characters’ comeuppance, and why the only ones in Westeros qualified to ride The Iron Throne are either ten years old or a quadruped.

In addition, John brings us up to date on The Concessionaires Must Die!, the independent film he co-starred in and co-wrote, which features Stan Lee in a cameo role, and has a new trailer available to psyche you up for when it appears at a film festival near you.

And, we talk about Chuck Tingle. For some reason.

Strap yourselves in, it’s one hell of an episode.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:48:10 — 104.2MB)

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Thanks for listening, suckers!

Episode 119: Wheatcakes!

It has been a busy week here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office. Between the delivery of new cooking apparatus that can also conveniently act as an incendiary bomb, to unexpected day job responsibilities, to nearly getting caught up in an unexpected session of Cornhole, it was hard to keep up on a week that was comics news-light to begin with.

So we decided to keep things short and simple this week, and just talk about some comics. And while we have some general discussions about how it was a standard off week for Marvel’s Civil War II event (by standard, we mean that every Marvel comic had “Civil War II” on the cover, without advancing the main story a whit), and how DC’s Rebirth continues to be a pretty solid soft reboot that’s unfortunately wrapped in the wretched trappings of Watchmen characters, we pretty much focused on a few books:

• The Totally Awesome Hulk #7, written by Greg Pak with art by Alan Davis,
• Justice League #52, written by Dan Jurgens with pencils by Tom Grummett, and:
• Teen Titans #21, written by Tony Bedard with art by Miguel Mendonca!

And, as usual, the disclaimers:

• This show contains spoilers. So if you want to remain unspoiled on whether or not Lex Luthor will be a villain in DC Rebirth (The answer won’t surprise you!), consider yourself warned.
• This show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. You think your boss wants to hear details about Boston Cornhole (The answer actually will surprise you! But good luck convincing HR of that!)? Then get some headphones.
• As a reminder: We will not have a new show on the week of July 3, 2016. We’ll be back the following Sunday.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 58:45 — 58.0MB)

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Thanks for listening, suckers!

Episode 118: Send In The Clones

This week, Marvel and Spider-Man writer Dan Slott announced that this fall’s Spider-Man event will be called The Clone Conspiracy, and will feature The Jackal and the clone of Gwen Stacy, possibly bringing a bunch of long dead Spider-Man characters back from the grave. We initially had a very negative reaction to this news, because any Spider-Man title that includes the word “clone” brings back memories of the 1990s Clone Saga… but then we realized that neither of us had actually read all that much of the original Gerry Conway clone stories from the 1970s, or the Clone Saga stories from the mid 90s.

So we ran out and purchased the trade of the original clone stories from 1975 through 1990, and one of the trades of the 90s Clone Saga, to see how we really felt about the clone stories in the face of the actual works. And we discussed, in the face of actual exposure to the clone stories, whether we wanted to see any more clone stories… and whether we did or not, if they could possibly overcome the reputation of the 90s Clone Saga.

We also discuss:

• Civil War II #2, written by Brian Michael Bendis with art by David Marquez,
• Superman #1, written by Peter Tomasi with art by Patrick Gleason, and:
• Batman #1, written by Tom King with art by David FInch!

And, the usual disclaimers:

• This show contains spoilers. If you don’t want to learn the ending of who wound up with the mantle of Spider-Man at the end of The Clone Saga 21 years ago, you are a wise person with good taste in serialized graphic storytelling! But we’ll still ruin it for you.
• This show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. If you don’t think your mom wants to hear how there’s a big bit of Hal Jordan in Carol Danvers, then get some headphones.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:50:18 — 108.3MB)

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Thanks for listening, suckers!

Episode 117: You Grok What I’m Saying, Fat Bieber?

This week, The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman had an interview published in Rolling Stone where he chided George R. R. Martin for revealing the ending to A Song of Ice And Fire to the producers of HBO’s Game of Thrones. And it caused the predictable Internet uproar, but it also got us to thinking: we had six out of seven Fear The Walking Dead episodes unwatched on our TiVo. We’d been complaining for years that The Walking Dead comic’s pacing had been untenably slow. We’d been getting Kirkman’s Outcast in our pulls since it started, but we actually hadn’t been reading it, so we had no intention of checking out the comic’s new adaptation on Cinemax.

So we asked ourselves: have we reached peak Robert Kirkman? Has his work lost its mojo, at least for us? And we decided to test the question by burning through the remainder of Fear The Walking Dead season 2, re-reading the first issue of Outcast, and checking out the first two episodes of the adaptation. And having spent the weekend binging on Kirkman (eww!), the answer might surprise you!

We also discuss:

• Wonder Woman: Rebirth #1, written by Greg Rucka with art by Matthew Clark, Liam Sharp and Sean Parsons,
• The Flash: Rebirth #1, written by Joshua Williamson with art by Carmine Di Giandomencio, and:
• Daredevil #8, written by Charles Soule with art by Goran Sudzuka!

And, the disclaimers:

• This show contains spoilers. If you listen, you will learn how many Fear The Walking Dead characters Rob wants to hit with a chair (Hint: It’s a non-zero value).
• The show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. We talk about Superman’s dickie. Get some headphones.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:19:31 — 138.4MB)

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Thanks for listening, suckers!

Episode 116: They Lebowskied Superman

It’s the first full week of DC Comics: Rebirth, and not a single Watchmen character appears in those issues, so we decided it would be a good opportunity to complain again about Watchmen characters appearing in the DC Universe.

Specifically, it was revealed this week that DC Comics didn’t contact Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons to ask him his opinion about adding Watchmen characters to Dc Universe: Rebirth. So we talk about whether that was a bush league move (protip: yeah), some of the history around DC leaving Watchmen alone, and whether DC Editorial really had any choice in asking for Gibbons or writer Alan Moore for even a half-hearted blessing in using their characters in Rebirth.

Then, since we were on a Rebirth roll, we discussed all this week’s titles from that event:

• Superman: Rebirth #1, written by Peter Tomasi with art by Doug Mahnke,
• Green Arrow: Rebirth #1, written by Benjamin Percy with art by Otto Schmidt,
• Green Lanterns: Rebirth #1, written by Geoff Johns and Sam Humphries with art by Ethan Van Sciver and Ed Benes, and:
• Batman: Rebirth #1, written by Scott Snyder and Tom King with art by Miken Janin.

And, just so Marvel doesn’t feel neglected, we close the show by talking about:

• Civil War II #1, written by Brian Michael Bendis with art by David Marquez!

And, as always, the disclaimers:

• This show contains spoilers. If you want to avoid knowing how the DC: Rebirth books end (spoiler alert: no matter what happens, it probably won’t matter next month), then consider yourself warned.
• This show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. You want your mom to know what “giddy bottom” means? Get some ear buds.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:34:08 — 92.2MB)

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Thanks for listening, suckers!