You Sometimes Get A Second Chance: Batman & Robin #4 Review

Batman & Robin is a textbook case of the dangers inherent in telling a decompressed comics story. The first issue read to me as a wretched Goddamned mishmash of elements from Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies and the old 60s TV show: big, silly action – including riding Batpoles, and not in that good superhero porno parody way – combined with the introduction of some darker elements, like a new villain who dissolves his enemies in acid. It was a frustrating experience in cognitive dissonance, like watching Cesar Romero tie Adam West to a giant roman candle and then chop Burt Ward’s foot off with a rusty machete.

The first issue was so dissatisfying that I was prepared to drop the book from my pulls, except I didn’t want to risk accidentally losing Scott Snyder’s Batman by accident. And I am glad that I didn’t, because the subsequent three issues, which tie up the opening story arc, have proven that Batman & Robin deserves to stand with Snyder’s Batman and Tony Daniel’s Detective Comics as some of the most rock-solid, entertaining Batman comics in years. Sometimes I’m glad to be wrong.

Let’s get some of the prejudicial facts out of the way up front: I have never particularly liked Damian Wayne. Since his introduction he has often been written as a bitchy little brat, to the point where Amanda has sometimes gotten the both of us laughing by reading Damian’s dialogue in the voice of Stewie from Family Guy. Try it yourself, it’s fun: “Now look here, Pennyworth…”

Spoon! The Tick and Invincible

It’s March solicitation time, and all the big publishers have hyped their stuff for the new year, but there’s one solicitation from a little local press called New England Comics that is filled. With. Win.

THE TICK #100

THE TICK MEETS INVINCIBLE!

We celebrate the 100th issue of The Tick with a 48-page full-color blockbuster co-starring Robert Kirkman’s INVINCIBLE! In a full-length 24-page epic, Invincible is transported to The Tick’s Universe where the two mighty heroes confront the combined threat of the master criminal Chairface Chippendale and a mysterious and menacing new villain who makes even Chairface look like an ordinary umbrella stand! A story so awesome that it requires two planets (and at least one moon!) to contain it! Added bonus: THE SAGA OF THE TICK, a 20-page full-color history of The Tick’s illustrious career, heavily illustrated with covers and selected artwork from all 99 previous issues of THE TICK!

Writer: Benito Cereno Artist: Les McClaine

Cover price $6.99

Saddlestitch, 48 pages Color text, color covers

The Dark Knight Rises Trailer Finally Out

Well, it’s finally out and far more viewable than the blurry cell phone footage that made its way to The Gothamist four days ago. I give to you, for your viewing pleasure, The Dark Knight Rises official movie trailer:

Just in the nick of time, now that the other, also blurry, cell phone footage of the 8 minutes of DKR prologue got yanked from the Internet by Warner Bros. I will say the brief snippets of Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle are definitely getting me more interested in her/the movie’s take on the character. Oh, and it’s nice to finally be able to understand what Bane is saying without needing a script to follow – although the dialogue in that script refers to the DKR prologue, not that Bane was particularly intelligible in the trailer leaked on Dec. 15, either.

SSDDR: New Avengers #19 Review

I had a moment reading The New Avengers #19 where I just about completely and totally checked out. I just suddenly had had enough of Norman Osborn and the Dark Avengers and different made up villains in Avengers costumes and doing the mental clean and jerk required to buy into a story where a man who is known to have killed a woman in cold blood in broad daylight follows a master plan of winning over public opinion to prove he leadership material when in reality we demonize leaders for taking pictures of their junk.

That moment was at the end of the book, when Norman and his Dark Avengers are standing in front of a crowd and announcing that they were here to make the world a better place, and I realized it was the same Goddamned moment as when he introduced the Dark Avengers back in Dark Reign. And my enthusiasm for this story, as precarious as it was to begin with, just vanished.

Seriously, I know what I said last month, but I don’t think I have it in me to climb back on board the Norman Osborn PR gladhanding and the Dick Avengers train again. I stuck with it for what felt like forever in Dark Reign and I just don’t care anymore. This doesn’t feel like anything interesting or new or that I didn’t read a dozen times over in the earlier story, which I didn’t like the first time around. The whole thing was like watching your uncle use his AA chip to crack open a Bud before Thanksgiving dinner: you know what’s coming, you’ve seen it before, and you know it’s not gonna be fun.

Assuming you don’t have an innate and visceral weariness and mistrust of Dark Reign and it’s ilk, on an individual issue level, there’s nothing wrong with this comic book. Bendis continues to write excellent dialogue and character moments. Seeing Daredevil wandering by Avengers Mansion and being hit on by Squirrel Girl – while being overwhelmed by the stench of baby shit and squirrel funk – is a nice little moment showing that sometimes superpowers aren’t all they’re all cracked up to be… while knowing all the while that yeah: he’s gonna hit that. Daredevil’s already fucked every woman that’s walked, moved or crawled; why wouldn’t he add “skittered up a tree?”

Well THERE’S Your Problem…

We will be performing some site maintenance this morning / early afternoon, and there may be some outages from time to time, or for an extended period of time if the process moves past Beer O’Clock, and one of us inevitably says, “Fuck it! Set all the files for CHMOD 000!”

Thanks for your patience. Your normally scheduled scrote jokes about Norman Osborn’s haircut will resume as soon as humanly possible.

UPDATE: The main part of maintenance is over, but you might continue to see what those in the computer science game call “weird shit”. Thanks for bearing with us.

Forced Spectrum: The Ray #1 Review

Let’s get the good part of the review out of the way up front: Jimmy Palmiotti’s, Justin Gray’s and Jamal Igle’s The Ray is a fun comic that I intend to keep buying, at least for the time being. It has a likable protagonist, a stack of interesting supporting characters, and an old-school, “Wrong place, wrong time, boom! Dude gets superpowers” attitude toward it’s origin story that reminds me of comics like Nova and Firestorm when I was a kid back in the 70s.

The bad part of the review is that The Ray feels like the obligatory “black best friend” that DC Comics will trot out at SDCC 2012 to prove to extremists in Batgirl costumes that they’re not racists. But we’ll come back to that.

Our hero is Lucien, a lifeguard in San Diego who gets blasted by something called the Sun Gun – probably because if it was the actual Large Hadron Collider that it’s clearly meant to be aping it would imply that he got his powers from something called a God Particle, which would draw out a whole different kind of extremist to SDCC – and gets the power to control light. All of this happens in three pages, and one of them is the opening splash page. Compare that to, say Ultimate Spider-Man, where we’ve gone four issues without even putting Miles Morales in his own costume, and you can tell we’re looking at a fast-paced origin book like, say, the original Spider-Man.

Of course, it takes a little longer than for Lucien to get his costume on because gaining the control of light apparently means losing the ability to wear pants. Everything he touches burns, which means that The Ray will be the first superhero to die of a backup of semen to the brain stem. In fact, a large part of this issue revolves around Lucien’s pants problem, meaning that we spend a lot of time in the company of a naked young man, and that there is a particular demographic who can use the book to make sure they are in no danger of death by semen accumulation.

Not Getting Older, Just Getting Better…Right? – Review Of Deathstroke #4

Ed. Note – This review is in no way influenced by the fact that I’m turning 40 tomorrow. Condolences, whiskey and Lipitor can be sent to the usual place.

Being Slade Wilson has never been easy. Given super strength, agility and healing factors through military experiments, you’d think Wilson would’ve had a bright future ahead of him as a metahuman super soldier. But, as so often happens, government bestowed super powers only come with more headaches than they’re worth. Am I right, Captain Atom? That guy knows what I’m talking about. In Slade’s case he ended up going mercenary to protect a friend, getting one of his sons kidnapped and grievously injured, getting shot at and partially blinded by his wife, and going on to become the punching bag for a group of teen superheroes, the Teen Titans. Oh, and engage in what can best be described as an “inappropriate” relationship with a 15 year old girl in the process. Slade Wilson – making the good choices! Serious, it’s all in The New Teen Titans: The Judas Contract. Go on. Read it and come back. I’ll wait.

Ok, so, now that the DC Universe has been rebooted, where does Slade Wilson find himself? Still a sad adversary to meta-powered children or did The Powers That Be give him a shot at a better life this time around?

Spoilery goodness and knife play after the jump!

Sometimes A Cigar Is Just A Cigar And Sometimes The Scarlet Witch, Well, You Decide.

Bleeding Cool wants to know: Did Frank Cho realize when he drew the Avengers vs. X-Men 0 cover that Hope Summers appears to be, well, flying out of the Scarlet Witch’s special lady place…or at least a cape, gently waving in the breeze of the Phoenix Force or something, that’s shaped like a vagina?

Yes. These are the questions that need to be answered.

Here’s Frank Cho’s response:

“It never occurred to me that I was drawing a giant vagina when I drew this cover. I could kind of see it now in its final colored form. It’s funny how people project their fears, concerns and fantasies into other people’s art.

“Okay. Rebuttal.

“Like Georgia O’Keefe, I love vaginas. What’s wrong with vaginas? ;-)”

You decide, after the jump.

Burning Ringpiece Of Fire

Since there’s a better than average chance that The Dark Knight Rises prologue we posted will be gone any second, even though it is of quality so shitty you will question whether you are seeing Commissioner James Gordon, Gordon Lightfoot, or perhaps the anthropomorphization of the voice in your head that tell you to burn things (…just me? Really? Okay.), we thought that it was only fair to provide you with a suitable back-up. DC isn’t the only comics company releasing a movie in 2012 after all; Marvel has a dog in this fight, so we at Crisis On Infinite Midlives are proud to present the newest, high-definition trailer for Marvel’s much anticipated… Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, starring Nicolas Cage!

…Ghost Rider? Really?

Huh. Really. Okay.

Seriously?

C’mon! That could be Nic Cage on any given Saturday night! Frankly, that could be me on any given Saturday night! Jesus, the big comics Web sites get crystal-clear Avengers shit, and we get Ghost Rider? (Rob: Just write the copy and put the video after the jump. We can feel bad about our place in the comics world later. -Amanda)

*sigh* Fine.

The Dark Whowhatnow Prologue?

It’s 10 p.m. on Thursday, and you should hurry up and look… because it won’t be here by 11.