Action Figure: Moon Knight #9 Review

Not for nothin’ my man, but why do you want a Captain America shield?

Because it’s cool.

What are you, six years old?

That exchange between Moon Knight and his weapons procurer, Buck, describes Moon Knight #9 in a nutshell. It’s like little pre-adolescent Brian Michael Bendis trumpeted, “Y’know what would be fuckin’ cool? If Batman had Wolverine’s claws! And, and Spider-Man’s web shooters! And fuckin’ Captain America’s shield! Snikt! Thwip! Whooooosh!” Just before lil’ Brian’s mom Adderalled him into dullness. Blessed, quiet dullness.

The hell of it is, he’s right. Is is kinda fucking cool.

Y’know, provided you can forget the reasonably tight little story of a lone superhero on the edge of sanity that came before this issue and put yourself in the mindset of when you were seven, and you stuck your Luke Skywalker action figure in your G.I. Joe Skystriker jet and sent it to attack your little brother’s Castle Grayskull… or if you’re me, like you did when you were on Tuesday.

Low And To The Left: DC Comics New Logo

Usually news about things like “marketing trade dress” make us yawn and throw blind punches – not in any way necessarily in that order – but for good or ill, this counts as comic news: DC Comics has a new logo.

Rumors have been going around about it all week, but now it’s official: just six and a half years after the last new logo debuted, which was put in place to replace the previous one that lasted about 29 years, DC has a new look. Here it is:

Ah, that reminds me of my childhood. Because it looks like a droopy wang pointing at a roll of duct tape. Which is how I spent weekends when I was in junior high.

Catwoman Vs. The Red Fox: Fox Affiliate Calls DC Comics “Playboy For Kids”

So it’s 56 years after Dr. Fredric Wertham dumped Seduction of the Innocent on us, driving EC Comics all but out of business and forcing the Comic Code Authority on us, guaranteeing that I would reach adolescence without having to see an awesome zombie eat some whiny teenager’s face, and now we have this shit:

Most people think of comic books for kids, but many of today’s comics are anything but that. Turn the pages of DC Comics now and you will find plenty of blood, sex and violence.

Ah, from Fox! The network that brought us Married With Children, 24 and Temptation Island! What else do you have for us, Washington DC Fox Washington DC affiliate WTTG General Assignment Reporter reporter Sherri Ly?

“It’s sort of like a fictionalized Playboy for kids at its worst,” said Neil Bernstein, Ph.D., a child psychologist and author of “How to Keep Your Teenager Out of Trouble.”

Critics worry the once family friendly genre has gone too far. Psychologists point out the overexposure to sex and violence for young children can encourage aggression.

“I think too many kids would be put in harm’s way or at risk,” Bernstein said.

Ah, where to begin… since I’m a dick, how’s about that first sentence (And I won’t even spend too much time pointing out the vile structure of that compound sentence, since I am one classy motherfucker)? “Most people,” huh? What’s your source? Some study? A survey? Your mom? No, I’m guessing your editor, and considering he let that first sentence through, I wouldn’t trust his judgment. Seriously, if you tried to submit that sentence to my journalism professors, they’d recommend you switch to a psych major just to save the red ink.

Gone Sideways: Batman #5 Review

Normally on Wednesday nights, we throw up a picture of the books we bought for the week and declare the end of broadcast for the day. This is because our local comic store is next to our local bar, and therefore by the time we get back to a computer we are normally hopelessly drunk. Tonight, however, the bar is closed for cleanup following a “human biological incident” that happened on Sunday, which is odd because I was there for hours on Sunday and can’t remember seeing anyone do anything like that. Or anything else, for that matter.

So I figured we might as well jump right in this week an do a short review of Batman #5.

This book is gonna get a lot of attention this week, for reasons that will become obvious as soon as you read it, but I’ll get to that in a minute. Let’s start with what I considered the biggest negative of this issue: it’s a Drive Batman Apeshit Crazy story. And Drive Batman Apeshit Crazy stories are pretty much a dime a dozen: Jim Starlin’s The Cult. Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum and, more recently, Zur En Arrh. The Jean-Paul Valley Batman / Punisher crossover… actually, that’s less a Drive Batman Apeshit Crazy story than a Batman Story that drove me Apeshit Crazy, but you get what I’m saying.

That’s Not True… That’s Impossible: Battle Scars #3 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This final review of last week before the comic stores open contains… I’m not sure “spoilers” is the correct term… howsabout “reckless speculation?” Nah, we’ll stick with spoilers. We’re fucking OG that way.

So being an American hero runs in Battle Scars protagonist Marcus Johnson’s family, and people think his father can’t die. That conventional wisdom is that those statements mean the smart money’s on his dad being Nick Fury… but since plot credit to this book includes Matt Fraction, it really could be anyone. Because no one can die in a Marvel comic by Matt Fraction.

Battle Scars has been the most – if not the only – interesting spinoff from the Fear Itself event, the story of an Army Ranger whose mother was killed during that event, and who returns home for the funeral to find he’s extremely popular with S.H.I.E.L.D., Captain America, and Taskmaster. In this third issue of the six-issue miniseries, Johnson discovers that he is also popular with everyone in the Marvel Universe with a gun and a Swiss bank account. This month, that includes Deadpool, and thank God, because he almost never appears in comic books these days.

Hitler Reacts To SOPA

This video (via Aaron Colter at Comics Alliance) explains everything you need to know about why SOPA, Stop Online Piracy Act, is a bunch of bullshit written by politicians in the pocket of corporations. Also, Hitler says “George Orwell would turn over in his grave” which is kind of awesomely ironic, ‘cuz, you know, Hitler.

More on why SOPA bites the bag, as well how you can help, after the jump.

Scattershot: Suicide Squad #5 Review

On a lot of levels, the reboot of Suicide Squad has been a hot mess. It started with a psychological torture tale, moved into a zombie story and then transitioned quickly into a prison break movie with almost no segues or fanfare… and that’s all in what’s supposed to be a single, cohesive, five-issue story arc. In many ways it’s a failure, but what’s saving it is two things: a total commitment to the primary characters on the part of writer Adam Glass… with the keyword there being “primary,” because the second saving grace is the apparent willingness to kill just about any character at any time.

By the time this issue rolls around, what’s left of the Squad (We’ve lost one or two via simple escape, gunshot wound, the odd zombie attack and fatal viral infection… only some of which may have been passed on by Harley Quinn) is stuck behind bars, infected with something called the Rot Virus (Yeah, sounds like Harley) and charged with quelling a prison riot before the bombs they had stuck in their brain stems. So long story short, Glass is throwing everything at the wall to amp up the tension. Deadshot’s out of bullets. El Diablo might have to kill someone. Waller’s trapped two floors above the riot. And the tension works… for those characters.

When I was a kid, I developed a theory called “Murder She Wrote Logic,” which was borne out of (duh) Murder She Wrote. Whenever you watched that show, you didn’t need to look at the evidence or the logic or anything else; all you had to do was look at who was least likely to be the killer, and you knew that they were the perp. You can use the same logic on Suicide Squad: whichever characters are drawn in broad strokes are doomed. The aforementioned Deadshot, El Diablo and Amanda Waller are well drawn out with reasonably solid dialogue and characterization, so they make it. Others like Yo-Yo, and Voltaic in the first issue? Meat for the machine, man. It’s an area where the book falls down; yeah, Glass will kill members of the team – something you’d expect to see in a book called Suicide Squad – but you can pretty much call who’s dead the first time they speak. They might as well show Deadshot a picture of their grandkids and tell him how many days they have left until retirement.

Don’t Need No Civil War: Avengers Vs. X-Men #1 Cover

According to various Twitter feeds, the winter Marvel Editorial Retreat is starting today in New York. So, possibly to fend off questions from the outside world like, “So if Cable’s a time traveler with less than 24 hours to live due to a crippling and debilitating illness, and he wants to take out The Avengers, why is setting up a boat with a bunch a deathtraps a better plan than whacking Captain America’s mom in 1920? It probably wouldn’t be hard; Steve Rogers didn’t need the Super Soldier serum because he came from hearty stock,” and, “What Marvel character will Matt Fraction be killing next? And is Matt aware of what ‘dead’ actually means?” they’ve released Jim Cheung’s cover to the upcoming first issue of Avengers Vs. X-Men for us to drool over.

I Think I’m Being Watched

Oh God… they’re videotaping me while I’m not watching! They have tape of the inside of my head, dude!

See video of the inside of my head – not my bathroom, dick – after the jump.

Who Knows What Evil Lurks In The Pants of Men? Dynamite Reprinting Chaykin’s The Shadow

Howard Chaykin’s reboot of The Shadow for DC Comics back in 1987 tends to be overshadowed (Get it?) by other stuff around the same time period, including The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, and Chaykin’s own American Flagg! and Black Kiss. Partially because all those books are so damn good, and partically because DC lost the Shadow license a long while ago, preventing the book from staying in print. Turns out that maybe the Conde Nast guys who own the character didn’t think there was a long-term future in letting Chaykin’s successor, Andy Helfer, graft The Shadow’s head onto a robot… although in retrospect, it was probably a more realistic take on the character than Alec Baldwin.

But Chaykin’s original miniseries, Blood & Judgment, is some of the best comics from the 1980s that you could find. Excellent art with a logical and interesting way of bringing Lamont Cranston from the 30s to the 80s… although it felt more like the 70s what with the way Chaykin wrote Cranston as banging anything that walked, moved or crawled in a skirt, usually without even bothering to check for an adam’s apple first. Plus, the book contained splash pages that you could put against anything from Dark Knight you, if you’re anything like me, xeroxed and tacked to your wall in high school.