Ready For More Batman? Animated Dark Knight Returns – Part One Trailer Now Online

On the off chance that Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises was too upbeat and happy ending oriented for you, hardcore Batman fans can now look forward to an animated version of Frank Miller’s 1986 classic, The Dark Knight Returns,…if they can overlook Robocop Peter Weller in place of Kevin Conroy as the voice of The Batman.

The animated feature follows the same premise as the graphic novel – a retired Batman coming back to protect Gotham from a brutal gang called The Mutants, who have come into possession of military grade weapons. He takes on a new Robin, a young girl named Carrie Kelly. She will be voiced by Ariel Winter. Harvey Dent/Two-Face (Wade William) and Commissioner Gordon (David Selby) also make appearances.

Check out the trailer after the jump!

Missed Landing: The Bionic Man #11 Review

When I was six or seven years old, I had a Power Records LP…

(Note to Generation Y: “LP” stands for “long playing record.” It was a big piece of vinyl that sounds were recorded on. Think a CD, only bigger and with shittier sound, no matter what line of horseshit Jack White tries to sell you about vinyl sounding “warmer.” Crackles and skips are not features, they are bugs,)

(Note to Millennials: “CD” stands for “compact disc.” It was a small piece of plastic that sounds were recorded on. Think an MP3, only one you had to spend all your beer money on in college back in 1991 if you wanted to own any music. Now all of you: get the fuck off my lawn.)

Sorry about that. Anyhoo, I had the Power Records LP of The Six Million Dollar Man, which included a retelling of Steve Austin’s origin, according to the television series. Which is a story that anyone old enough to associate the “bah-nah-nah-nah-nah” bionic sound effect with something other than Chevy Chase doing putts in Caddyshack knows: Steve Austin is a test pilot in a plane crash, and Oscar Goldman and Rudy Wells…

(Note to Gen X’ers and drunken comics Website editors: There is a thing on the Internet called YouTube where everything you ever loved as a child has been collected, for free. And it allows you to embed those things in your own Website! So quit chasing those little bastards off your lawn and, you know, do that,)

We Will Be: Gillen and Land Apparently Taking Over Invincible Iron Man

Marvel continues to hype their Marvel Now! initiative, where they’re planning to restart a bunch of their titles at issue #1 so that for a period of several months, every week when I go to my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me not to ask the paying customers if they “want to see my number one,” there will be a new Marvel first issue for me to pick up. Or, if is a first issue of something with Cable written by Jeph Loeb, for me to point at accusingly while loudly insinuating that it is practicing witchcraft.

Today’s announcement from Marvel? That writer Kieron Gillen and artist / pornography lightboxer Greg Land will be taking their work from Uncanny X-Men to a new comic book.

What comic book? Beats the shit out of me. See if you can figure it out:

I Don’t Believe It, It Must Be True: Hit-Girl #2 Review

I have always had mixed feelings about Mark Millar’s and John Romita Jr’s Kick-Ass. On one hand, I feel like it has a tendency to go for over-the-top, nihilistic violence as a simplistic deconstruction of the superhero genre. Which, while effectively demonstrating that the concept of superheroes in the real world would be somewhat ineffective and silly, means that we’ve gotten a lot of likable characters getting their faces kicked in so that Millar can try to make a point. It doesn’t take a genius to point out that a dipshit with a stick in a spandex suit would lose to the business end of a .45, and after a while, seeing it happen over and over again just feels fucking mean. There’s no great joy or enlightenment in seeing a costumed adventurer you’ve grown to like  getting stabbed and beaten to death; it just feels like the comic writing equivalent of having your head jammed in a junior high school toilet while a jock bellows, “Superheroes are fucking stupid, wuss!”

The best part of the Kick-Ass universe has been Hit-Girl, who is as close to an actual superhero as exists in this world. And even granting that the character was probably only created to show that a kid sidekick would grow up to be hopelessly warped, and that any really effective superhero would need to resort to extreme violence in order to be in any way effective, she provided the only real and exciting superhero action in any of the Kick-Ass miniseries. And while we are only in the second issue of the Hit-Girl miniseries, and while it’s probably safe to say that, as with Kick-Ass and Kick-Ass 2, everything will end in tears, that particular book is simply action-packed, interesting, and just fucking fun. At least, for now.

Klaatu Barada Nicto: Green Lantern #11 Review

On one hand, Green Lantern #11 is an encouraging sign that the book might be returning to its glory days of  the spectacular Blackest Night crossover from a couple years ago… almost literally. We’ve got the return of that crossover’s villain Black Hand, he’s got his Black Lantern ring back and he’s bringing the dead back, getting ready to take over the world again. It’s exciting, even though it’s a story that maybe we’ve seen before.

On the other hand, Green Lantern is a sign that the book might be returning to another story from the past. That story is Army of Darkness.

This issue is very much a transition story, wrapping up the recent origin of the Indigo Tribe while laying the groundwork for the upcoming Third Army event, of which it appears that the returning Black Hand will be a big part of. Sinestro has been released from the thrall of the Indigo Lanterns, which is a shame, since on an infinite timeline we’d have see a lettering mistake having Indigo Sinestro muttering, “Nok. Kok. Nok kok. Kok nok. Kok.” Yes, I am emotionally twelve years old, why do you ask?

Schizophrenia: The Comedian #2 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: Whatever happened to The American Dream? Spoiler alert!

So The Comedian started the Vietnam War. Must be Tuesday.

The Comedian #2 is better than the first issue, but then again, it almost had to be. Seeing writer Brian Azzarello having Eddie Blake simpering around the Kennedys and doing things that blithely and utterly flew in the face of some of Alan Moore’s existing story canon were almost more than this old school Comedian fan could bear. This issue improves on the ruins of the first, by getting The Comedian the fuck away from politicians and into the jungle of pre-Gulf of Tonkin Vietnam, allowing the character to show a little more of the savagery and moral ambiguity that we’d come to expect from the original Watchmen.

Of course, it also include’s Azzarello’s apparent burning compulsion to put The Comedian at the center of every major event in American history that has occurred since 1939.  In the first issue, it was the death of Marilyn Monroe, and here it’s the Ali-Liston fight and the literal beginning of the Vietnam War. If The Comedian hadn’t been killed in the original Watchmen, I’d be afraid that Azzarello would end issue 6 with Blake at the discovery of the Higgs Boson snarling, “You’re turning into a flake, Doc.” Actually, that’s probably a hasty argument; after that first issue, I’m not yet convinced that Azzarello won’t decide that the murder of The Comedian isn’t really Watchmen canon. But I digress.

Cloud Atlas Extended Six Minute Trailer Hits The Internet

Cloud Atlas, the new movie from the Wachowski brothers and Tom Tykwer, debuted an extended six minute trailer on the Web today. Having seen the trailer now, it looks like it will serve up some trippy Inception level cinema, with a storyline that spans across centuries.

Here’s a summary of the novel it’s based on, via io9:

A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan’s California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified “dinery server” on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation — the narrators of Cloud Atlas hear each other’s echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small.

In his captivating third novel, David Mitchell erases the boundaries of language, genre and time to offer a meditation on humanity’s dangerous will to power, and where it may lead us.

Check out the trailer (for as long as Warner Brothers lets it stay out in the wild) after the jump.

The Heartbreak of Misplaced Penance

It is Wednesday, and as with all Wednesdays, that means it is New Comics Day. Which means that, as with every Wednesday, we pay a visit to our local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me, “Didja hear that I’m not allowed to sell you Batman Incorporated #3 today? Oh, they shipped it to me, but I can’t sell it to you! I need to store it someplace for a month! Why? Here, I got the issue right here! Look at this picture of some chick with a gun! For this I can’t sell you the book! That I’m holding in my hand and showing to you! And will place directly into your pull pile after I am done showing it to you! With a big “DO NOT SELL TO ROB UNTIL FOUR WEEKS FROM NOW” sign on it! Because a month from now, the families of those poor fuckers in Colorado will have forgotten all about the shooting!”

EDITOR’S NOTE: Yes, I realize that that was the least funny “my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me…” gag we’ve ever done here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives, but for a change, that was actually a question that was asked of us at our local comic store this evening.

Regardless, the point is that we were at our local comic store this evening, which means that this…

…means the end of out broadcast day.

But it is a decent day’s take. We have a new issue of the Before Watchmen issue Comedian for me to possibly continue hating on, a issue of Jonathan Hickman’s Manhattan Projects, a new issue of personal favorite The Goon, and, if no issue of Batman Incorporated, an issue of Batman: The Dark Knight.

But before we can accuse any of them of being insensitive to tragedy that has nothing to do with comic books, first we have to read them. So until we have that chance…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Back In The Shadows: Batman Incorporated #3 Delayed

So now it’s a comic book story: DC Comics and the Batman editorial team have decided to delay this week’s scheduled release of Batman Incorporated #3 due to “content that may be perceived as insensitive in light of recent events.”

Wow, that content must be a pisser. Let’s see what the original issue’s solicitation says about it:

BATMAN, INCORPORATED #3
Written by GRANT MORRISON
Art and cover by CHRIS BURNHAM
Variant cover by JAY FABOK
1:100 B&W Variant cover by CHRIS BURNHAM
On sale JULY 25 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
Combo Pack Edition: $3.99
Retailers: This issue will ship with three covers. Please see the order form for more information.
• The DC COMIC – THE NEW 52 debut of…MATCHES MALONE??
• BATMAN is hot on the trail of whoever is trying to kill DAMIAN – and he’s not going to like what he finds!

Okay, with an appearance by Batman’s undercover alter ego Matches Malone, this seems like it’s going to be an organized crime story… which at face value seems pretty innocuous compared to the theater shootings, but on one hand, one could argue that, for the next couple of weeks, any Batman story with a shooting might touch a nerve. Further, since the story is about someone trying to kill Damian Wayne – a ten-year-old kid – seeing a gun on him in the context of the theater shootings might be a little sensitive, whether or not the ten-year-old kid in question is a trained ninja assassin.

Man Of Filthy, Dirty, Bootlegged Steel

We here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office got excited by the sanitized and truncated Man Of Steel trailer from the The Dark Knight Rises screening trailer, but it really felt like a trailer built on practical footage, with the single special effects shot shoehorned in to prove it was an actual movie.

We thought that because we had too much to do, and too much self-respect, to spend nineteen hours in the Hall H lane to see whatever they were calling the “extended trailer” at SDCC. We figured that all there was to see would be in the Dark Knight theatrical trailer.

We were wrong.

After the jump, is a hand-filmed and certain-to-be-deleted video from the SDCC Hall H Man Of Steel panel, showing far more (badly focused) Superman footage than the actual theatrical trailer. So, until someone gets wise and yanks the footage: enjoy the Man Of Steel SDCC 2012 trailer, in rotten, unfocused cell phone video!