Brain Bleach: Marvel Legal Department Edition

Look out! Next he'll be after your wimmenz!

Sherry Singer and Indie Sing were the two international trade lawyers working for Marvel Comics in the ’90s (and they were ladies, we feel obligated to mention by the mandate of the site), who took a look at the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, a book full of customs regulations, and realized that “dolls” were taxed 12% on import, while “toys” were taxed only 6.8%. The difference between the two was that a doll “represented only a human being,” while “toys” were ”monsters, robots, angels, basically anything that isn’t “only representing a human.” Probably, at some point in the past, some American doll manufacturer had felt threatened by overseas competition, and had lobbied the government to put a tax on imported dolls.

There’s also a link at The Mary Sue to a podcast that explains how the case turned out, so click on over there to find out the resolution.

Ones And / Or Zeroes: Nook Comics, Part 2

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part 2 of our review of buying and reading comics on the Nook Color in its new version 1.4.1 software release. You can find part one here. You can find an anxious walrus reporting crimes here.

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Look: one thing you’re never gonna get past reading a comic on the Nook is the size of the screen. At about seven inches of widescreen diagonal, it’s 2/3, maybe 3/4 the size of a standard printed comics page. That’s not the fault of the Nook platform; it is what the thing is. But given that limitation, the images are clear – either they’ve pulled in digital originals or they made a damn good scan. When held in the vertical position, you get a complete single page that’s imminently readable unless you’re farsighted or worried about being seen occasionally squinting like a furious masturbator on the city bus.

The problem here is the splash pages. When the Nook is held vertically, you get, like I said, one comic page, which means you only get half the splash. If you rotate the Nook, the page reloads into a two-page view that shows you everything, but is imminently unreadable. You can zoom in using the standard poke-your-fingers-and-spread-them as you know from the iPad and dating virgins in high school, all the way to full original page resolution. And you can drag the page around with one finger, as in other table apps or dating slutty skanks in college.

Ones And / Or Zeroes: Nook Comics, Part 1

EDITOR’S NOTE: The first draft of this was written on Christmas Day while my parents were at church. They came back before I could finish, so I put it aside hastily, because I would rather have them believing that I was viewing pornography than running a comics Web site. So please forgive the dated references.

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Merry Christmas from deepest, darkest Florida! Being the holiday season, familial obligations have forced us to leave the Crisis In Infinite Midlives Home Office, with it’s convenient bars, restaurants, bars, liquor stores, bars, movie theaters, bars, comic store and bars. I am writing this from an area of Florida that, if you’re familiar with the adventures of Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs, well… they’re familiar with those adventures here too, because they also watched them on TV when they were younger and had less ear hair.

This is what they call a “snowbird community,” because to call it a “retirement community” brings uncomfortable connotations of Blade Runner, which their Generation X children forced them to watch repeatedly on grainy VHS tapes. Or at least my parents were forced, so we’ll stick with the snowbird thing. It’s a nice little town where you can get anything you need, provided it helps in maintaining regular bowel movements.

But one thing they don’t have is a comic store. If you ask a local where you can get a comic book, they think you’re asking for something by Andy Rooney, and then they remember that he’s dead, then they get quiet, and then they call you an ungrateful hippie.

So it seemed that my visit here would remain comicless, since I certainly didn’t pack any comics for my trip down here. Packing anything more subversive than an iPhone with a fart generator app is a non-starter when facing an interaction with a TSA “agent”, since the last comics-related story they’ve probably heard was that Superman renounced his American citizenship, and if they see a picture of Batman boning Catwoman, you will become intimately familiar with the second knuckle of the middle finger of a strange man making minimum wage. It’s a Christmas Miracle OH GOD WHY I’LL ADMIT ANYTHING YOU WANT I’M SORRY BATMAN IS A BIGGER PIMP THAN YOU YES THOSE ARE MAGNIFICENT DREADLOCKS FOR A FEDERAL AGENT NO NOT THE THIRD KNUCKLE

But I digress. I thought I was going to be comicless, but a couple of weeks ago, Barnes & Noble released an operating system update for their Nook Color e-reader that prominently touted the availability of digital comics, particularly Marvel Comics. So I thought I would give the new functionality a shot.

You Said Wood: Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer: Of Wood And Blood Free Downloads

At last year’s SDCC, Amanda picked up the first two books of Van Jensen’s and Dusty Higgins’s Pinocchio, Vampire Slayer from the Slave Labor Graphics booth, partially because the title was cool, and partially because we needed something to read in the hotel bathroom while suffering through either travel-related constipiation or, eventually, crippling beer shits.

Turns out it was well worth the speculative purchase (Neither of us had heard of the book before buying it); it was a smart, funny story about a bad-assed Pinocchio who killed vampires by lying (Along the lines of, “I am going to take no joy in stabbing you in the Goddamned chest.”), breaking off his nose and staking vampires in the heart with it. It’s a hell of a clever conceit, and a damnsight less disturbing an idea than, say, Ron Jeremy, Vampire Slayer.

The second book ended on a cliffhanger – Pinocchio turned into a real boy, which is like taking The Punisher’s gun and replacing it with a My Little Pony plushie – and we have been patiently waiting for book three, Of Wood And Blood. Well, the wait is over: Slave Labor Graphics has released the complete first issue to Comic Book Resources’ Robot 6 for free, and the first and second issues will be available for download via the Slave Labor Graphics Web site and comiXology later this week.

Gotham City, 90210: Teen Titans #4 Review

We’ve had a lot of fun at Scott Lobdell’s expense here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives because, well, if you’re gonna relaunch a tentpole character of the DC Universe as an blank-slated set of jugs trolling for cock, you kinda deserve what happens to you. Just because Starfire happens to be Snooki-orange doesn’t mean you need to write her that way. We’re just sayin’.

Lobdell’s writing on Red Hood and The Outlaws was such a juvenile misfire we almost dropped his Teen Titans book because, well, if a man opens up with a blatant Southern Trespass, you don’t stick around to see what he has in mind after he gets comfortable fucking you and decides it’s safe to try the weird stuff. Frankly, we only held onto it because Amanda liked Brett Booth’s art, and while the story did seem like it was born from the pitch, “X-Men! Only in the DCnU!” it had enough potential to at least see where it was going.

Well, we’re four issues in now, and I have to give credit where it’s due: it’s been a while in coming, but I actually enjoyed this issue. Lobdell might be a juvenile writer, but on a book about juveniles, it’s finally working for me.

Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? Or: Happy New Year, Watchmen Fans

UPDATE, 1/4/2011, 4:45 p.m.: Funny story: turns out that we’re not too small, and Fair Use is great… in theory. We’ve pulled the image at DC Comics’ request… as have pretty much all the sites linked below (except for comics-x-aminer, as of this writing). Hope you saw it while it was available!

UPDATE, 1/2/2012, 8:45 a.m.: Well, Rich Johnston got C&D’ed by DC Legal, which is a pretty solid indication that this image was legit. We’ve heard nothing yet ourselves, possibly either because we’re still too small to notice, or because the snippet of the full image we’ve posted falls under the tenets of Fair Use, so we’ll leave ours up for the time being. Regardless, as of this update, the full image can still be found at Comic Book Movie, io9, Scans Daily, and comics-x-aminer.

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So 2011 brought in a ton of rumors that DC Comics was quietly moving forward with a bunch of Watchmen prequels done by A-List talent (Provided you don’t keep Alan Moore on your personal A-List). Rumors like this have been a dime a dozen over the past few years… except this time, Bleeding Cool came up with speculative cover art for a Comedian series by J.G. Jones and a Nite Owl cover by Andy and Joe Kubert, and if they’re not real, the cease and desists that Time Warner sent Bleeding Cool sure were.

All that happened while the Crisis On Infinite Midlives home office stood unoccupied for the Christmas Holiday. But it’s New Year’s Day, and we are back, weighed down by swollen livers and crippling hangovers, with just enough energy to dial up the Internets… to find the alleged cover art to the Silk Spectre miniseries by Amanda Conner.

Uncomfortable Examination: Witch Doctor: The Resuscitation Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review may contain spoilers. Hey, it’s not my fault that all the best, most quotable lines give away the plot. Blame the writer. Clearly he’s an asshole.

Don’t mock my faith!

Your god has no junk.

Yeah, Image is gonna get some angry letters about this one, Angry, poorly spelled letters with threats of “deevine retrobyushun.” Because for good or ill, writer Brandon Seifert makes some broad generalizations about the nature of deities – at least in the world of Witch Doctor – of the kind that some lead people to make “God Hates Fags” placards, and other people to begin to suspect, or at least hope, that Seifert is right.

My point is that, if you have the right mean and sick sense of humor, Witch Doctor: The Resuscitation is a comic well worth picking up, particularly if you missed the original miniseries and don’t want to risk fifteen clams on the recent trade without getting a taste first. Not sure if you have the right sense of humor? Okay: what was the last thing to go through Princess Diana’s mind? The steering column! Didja smile at that? Then you should buy this book. If you didn’t? Not only is this the wrong comic for you, it’s the wrong comics Web site.

Come For The Hex; Stay For The Ghost – Review Of All Star Western #4

When Rob reviewed All Star Western #1 back in October, his summation that the book was neither “all star” nor “western”, beyond the fact that it includes the character of Jonah Hex, was pretty accurate, even despite the entire fifth of Jack Daniels I personally watched him put down his head shortly before he wrote that review. The man is a fucking machine, I tell you. However, what Rob may have overlooked is that All Star Western is not just about the saga of Jonah Hex as some kind of ass kicking fish out of water in an 1800’s Gotham City. The books also have been including an 8 page mini-story in each issue that fleshes out some of the other Western characters in the historical DCU. Issues #1-3 followed a neat little arc centering around El Diablo. Issue #4 begins the story of a newly created character called The Barbary Ghost. More on her later. Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti seem to be using these issues to tell not only Jonah Hex’s story, but to develop a detailed past history for the DCnU. Maybe All Star History Lesson was a less compelling title than All Star Western? Either way, in an interview with Newsarama, both Gray and Palmiotti express their desire to use All Star Western as a platform to explore the past and plant seeds that will have a bearing on DCU’s future – particularly in the Batman titles:

Jimmy Palmiotti: We are always researching and talking to the editors and other writers of the Batman books to see what’s going on and how we can interact and plant seeds in the past to make the whole picture make more sense. Currently, you’ll be seeing things in All-Star that have everything to do with what’s happening in the Batman titles right now.

Justin Gray: The good thing about it is that we’re working with the idea that Gotham existed long before Batman and it has a rich history to be developed and explored. Like Jimmy said, we’ve been working with Mike Marts and Scott on making sure there are elements from the past that tie directly into Batman’s time.

So, now that we’re four issues in, has this direction positively or negatively affected their stories?

Answers, with spoilers, after the jump!

The Final Countdown: Secret Avengers #20 Review

Unlike every other comics Web site in the world, we here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives are not putting together any lists of the best and worst comics of 2011. This is partially because we only came into existence in September, partially because when we review books we try to tell you what we think in a little more depth than a star rating or an idiotic list of weekly winners and losers, and partially because before we started this site we read many, if not all, of our comics on Wednesday nights while shitfaced at the bar next to our local comic store.

But if I were compiling a list of my favorite comics of 2011, Warren Ellis’s Secret Avengers would have a rock solid place on it. It has been a series of big idea, one-and-done issues with rotating, top-shelf artists, and an overriding concept – missions to stop extinction-level events that no one can ever know about – that cheerfully lends itself to big stories that can flip the bird to ongoing continuity. And this week’s #20 continues the solid run… although I readily admit that more than once, the stories have felt a little, shall we say, recycled.

A couple months ago when I reviewed Secret Avengers #18, I reveled in the fact that Ellis acknowledged that the problem with time travel is that if you just move through time, the planet would have moved, and you would pop out of your time tunnel or your hot tub or your DeLorean in the empty vacuum of space to die with blood boiling in your brain and leaving Elizabeth Shue available for Karate Kid II after all.

Neil Gaiman Helps Save Free Speech At The University Of Wisconsin

Brendan Connelly of Bleeding Cool reported yesterday on the case of University of Wisconsin professor James Miller. Miller was targeted by Stout, Wisconsin police chief, Lisa Walter, over his choice to hang a poster of Nathan Fillion, as Firefly‘s Mal Reynolds, outside his office door. This is the poster in question:

More on the police chief’s rationale and how censorship was defeated after the jump.