Ms. Marvel Gets Promoted To Captain

This is in no way at all inspired by Rosie The Riveter...or Frank Quitely.

Yesterday at Wondercon in Anaheim, California, Marvel announced that starting this July, the character currently known as Carol Danvers, aka Ms. Marvel, will move into the role of Captain Marvel – complete with a haircut and costume change. Character concept designs were developed by Jamie McKelvie. Cover art will be handled by Ed McGuinness on issues 1 and 2, with Dexter Soy on interior art. Writing the new series will be Kelly Sue DeConnick (Osborn: Evil Incarcerated, Castle: Deadly Storm w/ Brian Michael Bendis). Says DeConnick:

My pitch was called ‘Pilot’ and the take can pretty much be summed up with ‘Carol Danvers as Chuck Yeager,’” says DeConnick. “Carol’s the virtual definition of a Type A personality. She’s a competitor and a control freak. At the start of our series, we see Carol pre-Captain Marvel, pre-NASA even, back when she was a fiercely competitive pilot. We’ll see her meeting one of her aviation heroes and we’ll see her youthful bravado, her swagger. Then over the course of the first arc we’re going to watch her find her way back to that hungry place. She’ll have to figure out how to be both Captain Marvel and Chuck Yeager—to marry the responsibility of that legacy with the sheer joy being nearly invulnerable and flying really [expletive] fast.

Huh. Chuck Yeager? That sounds a bit similar to the pitch her husband, Matt Fraction, gave when he announced his plans for Invincible Iron Man back in February 2008:

Tony Stark is equal parts James Bond and Chuck Yeager–a pioneer, a test pilot, an engineer, an adrenaline junkie visionary.

Well, Chuck Yeager is pretty cool. I suppose it’s entirely possibly that DeConnick just picked up a Chuck Yeager comparison through some kind of idea osmosis from being in such close proximity to Fraction for so long. Heck, now that Rob lives with me he can tell you exactly how and why you need to temper eggs before adding them to a custard. And he’ll only whimper a little bit when you ask him. I don’t see why he gets upset. Those brain cells were just going to be killed by whiskey anyway.

But is there anything else going on with this relaunch that calls to mind similarities with other creative properties?

If You Have To Explain The Joke, There’s No Joke – Suicide Squad #7

In order to do due diligence for this review of Suicide Squad #7, “The Origin Of Harley Quinn”, I was going to re-read 1994’s The Batman Adventures: Mad Love by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm. Dini, after all, created Harley Quinn and, frankly, my first reaction after reading the conclusion to Adam Glass’s reboot of her character was that I wanted to read the original. However, Mad Love doesn’t appear to be on any of our book shelves at the moment – which means it’s in any one of 23 separate, unlabeled long boxes that are stashed in the closet of the Home Office’s second bedroom, and I just don’t have the patience to go digging.

You know what is out and easily accessible on the book shelves of Home Office Command Central? Batman: Son Of The Demon…just in case Rob wants to get into a drunken pissing contest with a 12 year-old who has a theory that Batman is gay and that Damien was grown in a petri dish in the Bat Cave.

Stranger things have happened. Both here and in the Bat Cave. But, I digress…

The thing is, this issue, and most of the Suicide Squad run in general, isn’t bad. Some of it is pretty good – but it’s not as good as what Dini and company first came up with, even if it’s trying for darker, edgier, clown car…ier, whatever. Perhaps that just my own failing that I can’t get past that.

Or is it? Spoilers and whatnot after the jump.

But With A Whimper: Avengers #24 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: And there came a day, a day unlike any other, when Crisis On Infinite Midlives douchiest editors found themselves united against a common threat. Spoilers Assemble!

I am perhaps not the best person to review Avengers #24 objectively, since I have gone on record as not being the biggest proponent of the whole Dark Reign 2 / Return of Norman Osborn / Dark Avengers Redux storyline. Based on particular individual issues in this crossover, I had somewhat softened my original opinion about the story arc, but considering my original prejudices, I perhaps cannot be trusted to be impartial in my opinions about this semi-ending to the story.

However, considering that you have made it this far after being spoiler and prejudice-warned on a Web site where the tagline on every page proclaims me to be a grumpy drunkard, I now feel safe in telling you that the ending of this story is so Goddamned wretchedly and horrifyingly bad it cheapens the entire arc, which I didn’t hold in particularly high value in the first place. In terms of excitement, this ending ranks with “And then I woke up.” In terms of a climax, this is on par with “I’m sorry; this has never happened to me before.” And in terms of pacing, it can only feel like writer Brian Michael Bendis said, “Avengers Vs. X-Men starts when? Oh shit.”

In addition, this story, as did the first Dark Reign storyline a couple years back, violates what should be an obvious and cardinal rule of resolving a Norman Osborn Ascendant story that should be Goddamned obvious on its face… but I’ll get to that in a minute.

The Posing Dead: Kirkman Publishes Walking Dead’s Michonne’s Origin In Playboy

When it comes to The Walking Dead, the closest thing that comic book has to a superhero is Michonne.

First appearing in The Walking Dead #19 by just wandering up in front of the prison where Rick and crew had taken refuge (Whoops; spoiler alert for people who only watch the AMC TV show! But if you’re one of those people, quick fucking around and go buy the comics, already). She’s a badass, katana-swinging ninja with a killer’s heart, an imaginary friend and Jack Bauer’s sense of justice. And most interestingly, she has a hazy, ambiguous past. Writer Robert Kirkman has truly made Michonne The Walking Dead’s Man With No Name.

Michonne’s origin has been long-awaited by fans of The Walking Dead, and probably by people like my Local Comic Store Owner, who knows me by name and asks me to stop calling him The Governor, because there’s a good chance that that story would get people who normally only buy the trade collections of The Walking Dead to also buy that individual issue.

Well, Robert Kirkman has announced that our waiting is over. Yesterday he announced that he will be publishing Michonne’s origin story. With art by regular penciler Charlie Adlard. And it’s available today.

In Playboy Magazine.

Wait, what?

It Was A Civil War Of Period: Saga #1 Review

The first thing I noted while reading Brian K. Vaughan’s and Fiona Staples’s Saga #1 was that, with every page – and sometimes every panel – this team was raising the required budget of any possible film adaptation by several million dollars. And movie studios simply don’t spend that much on an NC-17 flick.

The second thing I noticed was that this comic book is an imaginative, large-scale space opera that simultaneously hits all the expected and classic tropes of the genre, while chucking in enough weird and mad ideas to make Grant Morrison mutter, “Shit; nice one,” and tying the whole thing together with an out-front, genuine sense of humor about itself that you won’t find outside of a Star Wars parody. This is a very, very good comic book.

We Can Leak That For You, Wholesale – Total Recall 2012 Teaser

Bleeding Cool reports that footage from the Total Recall remake, probably intended to be shown at Wondercon sometime this weekend, has found its way into the wilds of the internet. The remake will star Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Bryan Cranston, Jessica Biel, Bill Nighy, Ethan Hawke and John Cho.

I have no grand illusion that the original film from 1990, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone, was high art, but it does hold a sentimental place in my heart as “that movie we snuck into that one time because we were drunk and in college and in Maine”. I was even less interested when interviews with Colin Farrell surfaced in which he said that the new movie wasn’t going to be “as dark as the original.” Movie? Short story? Use your words, Colin! However, watching Farrell in this teaser does get me the teensiest bit more interested than I was before I found the clip. So, marketing people involved with “leaking” this teaser: Bravo! I might not just wait for it to go to cable now.

Watch the teaser after the jump. Unless it gets yanked by the marketing suits. Again.

I Don’t Want Cake… I Want Me Some Pi

A Republic Serial Villain: More Before Watchmen News

A hair late on this news, but DC Comics has announced the release dates for the first four issues of Before Watchmen. Minutemen by Darwyn Cooke, Silk Spectre by Cooke and Amanda Connor, Comedian by Brian Azzarello and J. G. Jones, and Nite Owl by J. Michael Straczynski, Joe Kubert and Andy Kubert will all drop on June 6th, 13th, 20th and 27th respectively… although if DC really wanted to announce that kind of decisive action, they should have gotten Dan DiDio to stand in front of a bank of flat-screens and say, “I released them thirty-five minutes ago.”

The books will be $3.99 a pop, or $4.99 for the digital combo pack if you want your childhood… shall we say affected… on your tablet, phone or computer. You can see the covers to these first four issues after the jump.

Iron Man 3 Speculation – Extremis?

The Avengers movie hasn’t even hit theaters yet and, already, speculation has become rampant as to the plot of Iron Man 3 – which is still in pre-production. Over at Latino Review, columnist Da7e, has posted a video in which he claims that “an anonymous source from the New York test screening of The Avengers” told him that the villains in Iron Man 3 would be “extremely dangerous” – Da7e’s emphasis, not mine. There were air bunny quote gestures and everything. From there, Da7e postulates that Tony Stark’s next story line would be taken from Warren Ellis’s Invincible Iron Man: Extremis story run, in which Stark injects himself with experimental nanotechnology to fight a similarly powered bad guy. A motion comic version of Extremis can be found at Hulu.

Beyond the anonymous source, Da7e himself points out that part of his post comes from his own “geeky fanboy conjecture” – Stark may demonstrate a willingness to create what The Film Stage refers to as a “‘technology-based solution to replicating the super solider serum that turns Steve Rogers into Captain America,’ known in layman’s terms as nanobots.” The good Captain knew Stark’s dad from back in World War II and has been dismissive of little Tony as merely being a guy in a super powered suit in the trailer. Does Tony Stark have unrequited daddy issues? Why not just ask me if Tony has a Jackson Pollock and impending cirrhosis of the liver?

Are there other hidden clues that point to an Extremely Extremis threequel? Maybe! After the jump.

They Used To Be Kind Of Light And Funny: Defenders #4 Review

Defenders #4 has almost no action. It is a team book that features the team for exactly one page. It blatantly rips off a Bill Hicks joke – and acknowledges the rip right on the same page. And yet it is one of the finest comics you will read this week – and this is a week of some good Goddamned comics.

While this issue continues the story arc established in the first three issues – the team has discovered some kind of magical construct that can grant wishes and is trying to discover its origin – it is, for all intents and purposes, a one-and-done. It is a perfect place to jump into the title, and one hell of a story with which to get acquainted. Because unlike many comic books, this issue is about something: loneliness, longing and isolation. Superhero comics, everyone!

Levity aside, this issue is a rarity in superhero comics: a truly character-driven story. Not to denigrate the genre that I love so desperately, but let’s face reality: probably half the characterizations are along the lines of any hero in a big, fun action flick – entertaining, thrilling, and about as deep as a urine sample. Sure, you get the occasional deeper character study in, say, Spider-Man, but you need to buy a lot of issues where he’s in outer space swapping insults with The Human Torch to get them (And make no mistake: I like that stuff!)… and even when you do, half the time they’re about something ridiculous, like Peter Parker negotiating with the devil. And as much as I love, say, The Punisher, I don’t read it for any insights into the human condition. I read it for insights into the human cadaver. But I’m getting off track here.