Conjugal Visit With A Remorseless Killer: Scarlet Spider #2 Review

Scarlet Spider is going to be a hard book for anyone who read comics for a long time before the Spider Clone saga to read with any level of objectivity. I’ve just now written and deleted a bunch of reasons why that is, but what it comes down to is that if you spent your 1980s adolescence reading books like The Dark Knight Returns, Mage: The Hero Discovered and Watchmen, the logic in the 1990s was simple: if ($_spider + $_clone) {($_comic == shit) && ($_comic_dollars_spent == 0)}. Sure, there are people crawling out of the woodwork now defending the Spider Clone saga, but there were also people who begged for conjugal visits with Ted Bundy; we call whose people cranks on a good day and apeshit crazy on a bad one, and we don’t generally entrust either with important things like firearms, or the editors’ desks of major comic books.

Long story short: I have not been looking forward to Scarlet Spider.

So I was prepared a few weeks ago to pick up the first issue, summarily review it and probably discard it… except by the time I got to my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me if I’m such a hotshit writer about comics how come I don’t rank free advance review copies, it was already sold out… and this was by Wednesday evening. Which proves that despite my personal prejudices, someone was looking forward to this book.

So this week, I was able to get my hands on Scarlet Spider #2, and even at face value, I wasn’t excited about it – I mean, look at that cover. The center focus is the hero’s crotch with a bisected stone behind it, making it look like Scarlet Spider either has The Thing’s wang or that he is literally shitting a brick.

With all that said: Scarlet Spider #2 is actually a decent comic book. The character work is engaging, and I actually enjoyed it… even if I think it’s all presented in a way that isn’t going to be sustainable in the long term

It’s Better To Burn Out: Daken: Dark Wolverine #21 Review

We’ve had some fun at Rob Williams’s expense here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives because to be truthful, I put Robocop on my pull list from back when Avatar was publishing Frank Miller’s Robocop – a Steven Grant written and Juan Jose Ryp drawn adaptation of Miller’s original script for the movie Robocop 2. And because of that, I kind of automatically get copies Dynamite Comics’s version of Robocop, and honestly? Rob Williams should not be writing Robocop comics. He probably shouldn’t be allowed to write the word Robocop.

And when it comes to Daken: Dark Wolverine, we kinda get it for almost the same reason: I put Wolverine on my pulls back when Jeph Loeb and Simone Bianchi were on the book about five years ago, and I started getting Daken by default. I mentioned the mistake to my local comic store owner, who knows me my name and asks me if I’d rather buy a couple extra books or get my comics from a Rite-Aid spinner rack while parents hustle their children away muttering “Don’t talk to perverts,” and wound up keeping it… even though I think that the term “Dark Reign” should only be used again when some comic geek biologist uses it in the name for a newly-discovered shit beetle.

So we’ve got a writer with some decent books under his belt – but some real stinkers, too – and a book born from the one of the longest and most irritating events Marvel’s produced since Maximum Carnage, and on top of it all? The book’s been canceled. So there should be nothing in Daken: Dark Wolverine to look forward to… Which is a shame, because it is a pretty damn solid comic book. It’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s interesting, and that’s enough.

But Will We See Deanna Troi And Amy Pond Mud Wrestle? – Rumor Of Doctor Who-Star Trek Crossover

Bleeding Cool is reporting that IDW will be attending the Gallifrey One convention next week (February 17-19) with the purpose of announcing a Star Trek/Doctor Who crossover comic book series.

Did IDW just get tired of watching Amy Pond and Deanna Troi get it on while Riker watched in other people’s fan fic?

Details Speculation after the jump!

…The Dead Will Seek A Cut: Tony Moore Sues Robert Kirkman Over The Walking Dead

UPDATE, 2/11/2012, 12:30ish: Robert Kirkman’s calling the lawsuit bullshit (Well, he said, “ridiculous,” but my word’s better), saying that his contract with Moore gives Moore 60 percent of the net on The Walking Dead comics and 20 percent of the net on the TV show, and that Moore’s been paid accordingly. Now, as you can see in the conversation in the comments, generally a percentage of the net in Hollywood usually falls somewhere between jack and shit, but it, and Kirkman’s assertion that both he and Moore had lawyers when they made the deal, clarifies the situation a little bit. (Update via Comic Book Resources)

There are reasons why my default answer to nearly any question is: “I’m not answering any Goddamned questions without my lawyer here,” and here is a prime example:

Robert Kirkman, the famed comic book writer who helped create AMC’s hit zombie series The Walking Dead, has been sued by a childhood friend and collaborator who claims he is entitled to as much as half the proceeds from the lucrative franchise.

If you’re only a fan of the AMC Walking Dead television show and not as familiar with the comic, I won’t even tell you to fuck off to some other comics Web site, but I will acknowledge that you might be responding to this news with a resounding, “…who?”

Tony Moore was a longtime collaborator of Kirkman’s, doing art on early Kirkman-written indie comics like Battle Pope and Brit. Moore also did the art on the first six issues of The Walking Dead before being replaced by still-current artist Charlie Adlard, and Moore continued to do Walking Dead covers for another 18 issues before leaving completely to work on books for Vertigo and Marvel. Kirkman has implied that Moore went off the book because he was late… now I’m inferring that Moore’s position is that he was “late” because Kirkman fucked him without contraception.

Interruptus: Powers #8 Review

I like Brian Michael Bendis’s Powers a lot. It has been on my pull list at my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to stop acting out the term “pull list” in front of the paying customers, for more than ten years. I have all the individual issues that follow the first “Who Killed Retro Girl?” arc back when the book was published by Image Comics. And I even like this individual issue of Powers. But I’m not going to recommend that you buy it.

It is, in fact, all but pointless to buy this book, because it doesn’t matter whether it’s good or not, or if you like it or not. Falling in love with an individual issue of Powers is more pointless than falling in love at summer camp. It’s more pointless than falling in love with a hooker. It’s roughly akin to falling in love with a hooker in a city that isnt your own, that you might come back to in a few years, and as you’re zipping your pants you realize that all you remember is that her name is P-something.

Because this comic book simply. Does not. Come out. Ever.

We Don’t Need No Steeking Badges!

Earlier this week, I said to my partner Amanda, “Look at this week’s new comics list! There’s a new issue of Bendis’s Powers on it! I’ll make you a bet: if it’s actually on the stands when we get to our local comic book store, where they know me by name and ask me to stop settling my penis-related wagers there, I’ll do anything you want!”

Well, we are back from our weekly comics-buying excursion, and I lost my bet. So thanks to that, and the attendant hyperextension of the jaw, this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But it’s looking like a pretty decent week: we do, in fact, have Bendis’s and Oeming’s Powers (Ow, clicky jaw!),Plus Brian Wood’s and Becky Cloonan’s Conan, and Robert Kirkman’s Thief of Thieves, a new Batgirl and Batwoman (Hurry up and heal, temporomandubular joint!) and a bunch of other new and cool stuff!

But before we review them, we gotta read them. So because of that, and the fact that women don’t have the needed recharge period guys do…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Delayed Gratification: The Boys #63 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: Crisis On Infinite Midlives is proud to provide you with one final review from last week’s books before the comic store opens up with the new books. You, however, will have to provide your own shitty Thin Lizzy joke.

If you’ve been reading Garth Ennis’s The Boys for a while, this is the stuff you’ve been waiting for almost since the book started at Wildstorm Comics back in 2006. If you haven’t been reading it, well, you’re kinda screwed. There aren’t enough pixels on this page to bring you up to speed on what the hell is going on, so yeah: you’re boned. If it helps, there are at least two dismemberments and three decapitations. Superhero comics, everybody!

The Boys is almost a prototypical comic written for the trade. Comprised almost exclusively of six-issue, reprint-friendly arcs, it is truly a long form novel in comic form… to the point where when I almost have to recommend that you don’t buy the individual issues – and I’m a fan. I initially bought in when the book was announced, and as an old Preacher fan, I told my local comic store owner, who knows me by name and asks me to remember that the Voice Of God usually smells less of garlic and bourbon, to add it to my pulls as soon as issue one was solicited.

And I didn’t like it. The build was slow, the plot was talky, and it seemed like to took forever for it to get going. In retrospect, for me the best thing that could have happened to this book was its cancellation by Wildstorm after the sixth issue, apparently over the miniscule and ridiculous concern that the Homelander, the Superman analogue of The Boys, orally raped a superheroine with a couple of his buddies. Superhero comics, everybody!

The Amazing Spider-Man Trailer – Can It Hurry Up And Be July Now?

You know, I was perfectly fine with the Sam Raimi incarnations of Spider-Man. No, they weren’t perfect. Tobey Maguire was a passable nerd and Kirsten Dunst had a really punchable face, but Alfred Molina was a surprisingly touching Doc Ock. Willem Dafoe chewed a lot of scenery as Norman Osborn – but, shitty armored costume aside, that’s what Stormin’ Norman does, right? I mean, have you read The New Avengers, lately? Oh, Norman…

Anyway.

It was a nice couple of flicks. Thank god, they didn’t make a third one^*.

But, Sony decided to reboot the franchise. Tobey Maguire couldn’t stay a teenager forever and Kirsten Dunst was widely reported as feeling like her story was “done” after her last Spider-Man movie. Even if Durst might have been open to “considering” more Spidey, no one wants a lukewarm Mary Jane. Not even Harry Osborn at his loneliest – that’s what drugs are for!

So, with the trailer finally released, how does the new reboot look?

Check it out after the jump!

Hauntingly Familiar: Batwing #6 Review

Batwing has been one of the weirder and more interesting books of the New 52. It leverages Grant Morrison’s Batman Incorporated concept – Bruce Wayne finances local Batman franchises around the world, possibly because Batman believes that Starbucks are a superstitious, cowardly lot – and uses it to answer a question that only a few comics have tried to address: if there are superheroes, why don’t they go after real scumbags in places that make Gotham City look like Metropolis after a massive federal grant to finance free beer for the sad?

In a nutshell, Batwing puts a version of Batman in the Congo, smack in the middle of one of those hellholes that have been at civil war for so long they call it Tuesday. Batwing didn’t lose his parents to a killer, he lost them to AIDS and was drafted by one of those tinpot shitsplat warlords who whip up armies of children because children haven’t learned to say “no,” or, “that’s wrong”, or “tinpot shitsplat dictator.” Or at least that haven’t learned to say that last one with the level of derision it deserves.

So instead of a Batman moved to fight crime based on seeing a murder during his childhood, we have one who is moved to fight crime after being a murderer during his childhood. And he’s doing it in a country so loaded with corruption and casual daily horrible crime that it really feels like it needs a Batman. Which is a cool concept, and it generally works… but for a book that packs an extra punch by being based in a truly horrible place in real life, it doesn’t meet the level of realism I’ve come to expect from a Batman comic… which sounds stupid, but bear with me.

We Have A Hulk: Avengers Extended Super Bowl Trailer

If you watched the Super Bowl yesterday for the actual football game, you are moaning with disappointment over the Patriots loss, chortling in a self-satisfied manner over the Patriots loss, or a poor, doomed resident of New Jersey enjoying the first modern mention of your state that does not involve the terms, “guido,” “Snooki” or “taint-scented.”

However, if you’re one of the smart ones who watched just for the commercials, you saw a new, thirty-second spot for the upcoming Joss Whedon Avengers flick with a bunch of not previously seen footage. That was sweet… but you know what’s sweeter? The extended version Marvel released online with even more not previously seen footage. Which you can see after the jump…