Wish Fulfillment: Dial H #1 Review

I always feels a certain level of excitement when I pick up a new comic by an established prose writer who’s never tackled the medium before. The kind of feeling that I imagine people get when they play Russian Roulette. You know that you’re holding something that is at least potentially very powerful; you know it has to at least be competently written, because book publishers rarely chuck money at any dingbat with a copy of MS Word… unless they’re using it to run a find / replace on some Twilight slashfic.

However, just because someone can write a book doesn’t mean they can write a comic book. Sometimes you get Neil Gaiman and Sandman (Yes, Gaiman wrote a book before he broke into comics). Unfortunately, other times you get more Brad Meltzer on Justice League of America; Brad spent so many issues showng Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman looking at pictures of potential League members that I began to suspect they were masturbating under the table while they were doing it.

All of which is a long way to go to say that China Miéville’s first issue of the rebooted Dial H is a well-plotted comic with a thoroughly weird, yet engaging, twist on the book’s original concept of a telephone that turns whoever uses it into a superhero. And it is well-written, in the sense that the pure language is entertaining and just damn fun to read. It’s not perfect, but for a dude who’s never written a comic book before, it’s a decent start.

Not-Quite Epic Kill: Epic Kill #1 Review

A couple months ago I read a preview blurb for a new Image book about a young female assassin, called Song, who had come down with a case of amnesia. The book was Epic Kill – created, written, & drawn by Raffaele Ienco.  It sounded fun, very Jason Bourne, so I threw it on my pull list & then proceeded to forget about it until the clerk handed it over this morning.  Though neither Trebuchet nor I could remember adding it, when the clerk asked if we still wanted it, we said “Sure!”

The storyline is alright, though I had to read through it a second time to realize this because on the first pass the art pulled me in multiple directions, one of which was straight out of the story. When it comes to the art, Ienco has a great, sketchy style and nice coloring. Present day panels have a warm toned color palette, and flashbacks a cool tone which provides an immediate reference as to which you are viewing.  However, there were several problems which made me immediately want to set this book aside without finishing it.  For everything that Ienco did right, he did something else very wrong or very strange.

Assembly Required: Marvel’s The Avengers Movie Review

Update, 5/7/2012: Our spoiler-laden and much more in-depth Avengers podcast is now available.

Editor’s Note: This review contains no spoilers. As such, it feels very sketchy and incomplete. For more in-depth analysis of the movie and drunken incoherent ranting about specific things about the movie that were awesome, we will be producing a podcast in the coming days.

Marvel Studios’ The Avengers (Or as it’s known in England, Avengers Assemble, and as I presume it’s known in Pakistan, Imperialist Great Satans With Devil Powers) is finally in theaters in the United States. And you should go see it. Because it is good. Damn good. Seriously fucking good. Arguably the best superhero movie of all time (Granted, for me personally it is knocking M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable out of the peak spot, so take that into account as you read my opinion. Your mileage may vary, is all I’m saying).

Hey, Spider-Friends, New Amazing Spider-Man Trailer Is Out And, Well, Amazing.

Ok, I’m behind on my comic book reading for the week and in a fit of desperate jealousy right now because Rob is at a showing of The Avengers at the moment and I am not. Stupid “having to go to my day job” thing. Boo! However, here’s a little something to cheer us all up: a new trailer for The Amazing Spider-Man! It’s got a bit deeper insight into Dr. Curt Connors, aka The Lizard, in relation to the events of the film. We see more of him, both in pasty pale scientist and green scaly goon forms. Also, more shots of the new web shooters in action. Cool! I have to admit that I didn’t see the point of rebooting the franchise, particularly so soon. But, this trailer does get me more interested in seeing the new film. Good job, marketing department!

The Amazing Spider-Man opens in US theaters on July 3, 2012.

Fair And Balanced, Or: Wolverine Vs. Everybody: Avengers Vs. X-Men #3 Review

The biggest problem with the first two issues of Avengers Vs. X-Men was, to me, that in order for it to make any sense, the writers needed to make Cyclops into a monomaniacal zealot, vis a vis Hope-as-mutant-savior, so focused, rigid and intractable that he made Timothy McVeigh look like Winston Churchill with a quualude habit.

It is now the third issue, and it appears that the Marvel Architects in charge of this story have found a way to temper our perceptions of Cyclops’s fanatical tendencies: by making Captain America a focused, rigid and intractable monomaniacal zealot.

In short, Avengers Vs. X-Men #3 displays the first real and disappointing cracks in what has been a tight, if sometimes logic-stretching little tale (if you can call an event comic destined to cover all Marvel titles for the next four months “little”): and that is that it attempts to mask Cyclops’s believability-stretching reactionary behavior with similar, yet opposite,  behavior by Cap. And instead of balancing the scales, it shows the Man Behind The Curtain by making two characters do stupid and unbelievable things in the interest of advancing the plot.

With that plot apparently being to make it so Wolverine can fight anybody. Because that shit sells some comics, yo. But we’ll get there in a minute,

How Can You Keep Them Down At The Comic Store Once They’ve Seen…

How can anyone be expected to give a shit about comic book superheroes when The Avengers movie opens in America on Friday?

(Recognizes cognitive dissonance) (Head explodes)

But impending comic movie geekgasm or no, it is still Wednesday, which means new actual comics, and which further means that this…

…is the end of our broadcast day.

But it is quite a week leading into Free Comic Book Day, ain’t it? There’s Round 3 of Avengers Vs. X-Men (Where Cyclops bites Captain America’s ear off. Or not), DC’s debut of Earth 2 (Featuring 100% of the Power Girl with nearly 0% of the cleavage), a new Daredevil and the first Peter Milligan-written Stormwatch, and a bunch of other good stuff!

But before we can review any of them, we need to read them. So until that time (Minus noon to 2 p.m. on Saturday, when we will be 3D-glasses blind watching Hulk Smash Loki)…

See you tomorrow suckers!

Todd McFarlane Leaves Bankruptcy, Miracleman Fighting Valiently To Remain Dead

Hide your baseballs, kids: Todd McFarlane’s out of bankruptcy.

Todd’s company, Todd McFarlane Productions, voluntarily declared bankruptcy back in 2004, and only an irresponsible fool would imply that it had anything to do with Neil Gaiman’s lawsuit against Todd over the rights to Medieval Spawn, Angela, and Cogliostro. That suit was reportedly settled back in January, so all that was left to put the company back into the Black Ink was to pay some assorted costs to cover odds and ends totalling $975.

Oh, and an afterthought check to Gaiman for an even million-one.

Third Dark Knight Rises Trailer – Now With More Intelligible Bane Audio!

In case you haven’t seen it yet, the newest trailer for The Dark Knight Rises is out. Not only do we get to see more of Batman, Catwoman, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s John Blake, we also get to hear Bane’s voice more clearly as he menaces Batman. Yay! Complaining about stuff on the Internet works!

The Dark Knight Rises opens in US theaters on July 20, 2012.

Comic Book Dead: Secret Avengers # 26 Review

Editor’s Note: The Review Force is a cosmic entity capable of causing a planet-wide Spoiler event. 

Usually, when a more minor, lower circulation comic becomes part of a major summer crossover event, it is a book to avoid. Almost invariably books like that are where publishers stick filler while hoping that the crossover’s logo on the cover increases circulation enough to justify the printing costs and stave off cancellation for a couple of months. Everyone knows that an event’s important stuff occurs in the primary title and the related major titles, while the second tier books are where you get “major” revelations running the gamut from, “Some minor character is terrified of the ramifications of this major event!” to “Wow! It turns out I, the reader, don’t give a fuck about any of this shit!”

So imagine my surprise when Secret Avengers # 26, which is precisely the kind of book where you’d stick Captain Cannonfodder and his fear of Phoenix but need to (fatally) redeem some misdeed made in a 1974 issue of The Brave and The Give Us Your Quarter Kid, wound up not only being the scene of one of the more major (yet least hoopla’ed) comic book resurrections of the past several years, but of a reasonable examination of why a Captain Cannonfodder-level character is as minor a player as he is. All with some damned interesting and unconventional art to boot.

First off, despite what I just said, make no mistake: this is, in fact, the first totally unnecessary side story in the Avengers Vs. X-Men event. There is, after all, a reason the crossover is called Avengers Vs. X-Men, and if you are a superhero and you find yourself on an Avengers team, in outer space to stop the Phoenix Force, with no X-Men anywhere in sight? Welcome to the B-plot, pal. Look to your left, and look to your right. One of you is going to die. The other is probably Squirrel Girl.

Our America – Review Of Crossed: Badlands #4

What are the Crossed? Zombies? Infected, delusional maniacs? Cleveland Cavaliers fans? Who are these creatures and why do they want to violate various orifices in my body while they eat my face? The latest entry in Avatar’s own, never-ending man vs. monster in a post apocalyptic setting, Crossed: Badlands #4, kicks off a new story arc written by Jamie Delano with art by Leandro Rizzo.

Delano’s new arc follows a very brief one by series creator Garth Ennis. That one, set in Scotland, went in perhaps the most predictable direction of any story in Crossed thus far – after 3 issues, everyone was dead or turned Crossed. Pretty much what you’d figure would happen if the world was actually over run by contagious monsters. This new story moves the action back to the United States, somewhere in the swamp lands of the South. Delano showcases a new cast of characters, most of which illustrate the way some of us worry that we Americans come across to the rest of the world: the meth head trailer trash, the disgruntled, water boarding Islamophobe, the degenerate, bored offspring of cocaine cowboys. About the only broad stereotypes that seemed to be missing were The Situation and Snooki – but this is just the first issue. We may still have time to shoehorn them in, yet.

But, is it a worthwhile read? That and infectious spoilers, after the jump!