No Knife To The Eye – The Goon #36 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review contains spoilers. Such as the fact that burlesque dancers will apparently show off their tits. This review also ruins at least one of the best jokes in the book. Such as how burlesque dancers can sometimes drive men to try to write their names on the elderly. Plus, it spoils earlier Goon stories. Like how Franky has a knife. Which I guess we spoiled with this review’s title. Ah, nuts. 

In 2009, Eric Powell announced Goon Year: a year when he upped his production schedule to once per month to tell the epic tale of The Return of Labrazio, which featured The Goon learning that he was literally doomed to unhappiness, followed by watching the love of his life die while we readers learned of a son that The Goon would never know he had.

It’s 2011. This month’s Goon features Franky wearing a fake moustache while peeing on an old woman’s head.

I love The Goon.

Down At The End of Lonely Street

It is Wednesday, as occurs every week, and as with every other Wednesday, this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

And if I were you, I might complain, but if you’re a regular reader of Crisis On Infinite Midlives, you too went to the comic store, and therefore also have a new issue of The Goon! Plus Action Comics #3, and The Goon! And the first issue of the rebooted (But Marvel doesn’t reboot! Or publish The Goon!) Uncanny X-Men, not to mention The Goon! Plus a parody of Fear Itself! And the Red Lantern blood shower girl, underneath The Goon! Not to mention new The Goon!

Hard to say what we’re looking most forward to reading, but we must take the time to read them so we can review them for you, and – holy shit! Is that a new issue of The Goon?

See you tomorrow, suckers!

A Boy And His (Dead) Dog – Possible Krypto Teaser in Action Comics #3

So, as pointed out by Bleeding Cool, one of the opening volleys of writer and confirmed cat person Grant Morrison’s Action Comics run in the DCnU would appear to be the death of Krypto. The beloved pet of young Superboy and faithful companion to the Man of Steel over the decades, beginning with Action Comics #210 all the way back in 1955, was sent to the great Farm-Upstate-In-The-Sky by Jor-El, before the storied relationship between boy and dog ever began.

And, by great Farm-Upstate-In-The-Sky, I mean the Phantom Zone.

Crisis On Infinite Midlives Podcast Episode 6: The Justice of Winky Von Browneye

It’s, err… a day (We’ve just about given up on a regular schedule for this thing)… which means that it’s time for another exciting episode of the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Podcast!

Brought to you, as always, in crystal-clear Drunkard Digital 2.0 surround sounds (2.1 if Rob burps into the microphone! And you don’t want to know under what circumstances it becomes 2.2!)

Discussed in this week’s program:

• Monthly Comics: Holding The Line at 20 Pages plus House Ads and Shilling for Harley Davidson!
• Looney Tunes, or: The Diagnosis of Super-Villains (Ooh! I vote Tertiary Syphilis!), and:
• Our unreviewed books of the week: Deadpool, Dead Man’s Run, and the conclusion of Spider-Island!

And you can follow along at home with these links, kids!

• Who the hell wrote Astonishing X-Men 43, anyway?
• Our Spaceman Review
• Psychiatrists Call Out DC On Depictions of Mentally Ill
• Putting the Caped Crusader on The Couch
• Batman Villains Psychoanalyzed by Mental Health Experts
• Broadcast Thought
• What the hell is The Psychopath Test?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:54 — 42.0MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Play | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS | More

As always: wear headphone when listening at work unless you’re tired of your job!

Enjoy the show, suckers!

…Dressed Up With A Lot of Flash and Thunder: The Flash #2 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review may contain spoilers. Or it may just contain my suspicion that “The Speed Force” comes in powdered form. You are warned.

Here’s the first problem I have with Francis Manapul’s and Brian Buccellato’s New 52 reboot of The Flash: it’s not Mike Baron’s and Jackson Guice’s 1987 post-Crisis reboot of The Flash. To me, that book is the definitive reboot.

It put a new guy in the costume. It completely rethought how the powerset worked – to my knowledge, Mike Baron was the first person to make the mental leap that moving at that speed would require a lot of food and sleep to maintain… something he probably extrapolated from his prodigious use of cocaine. In short: it changed everything, and in doing so, it made it fascinating.

So when I read Manapul’s and Buccellato’s Flash, I kept wishing that I was actually reading Baron’s for the first time… and not just because it would mean that I was 17 years old and 175 pounds again. But also because this book, while beautiful, is completely uneven.

Contact Dermatitis

If you’re anything like me, you’re sitting there all a-quiver, wondering who Kim Kardashian dressed up as for Halloween… actually, that’s bullshit. If you’re really anything like me, you’re wondering who was up Kim Kardashian’s dress for Halloween. And how many times she opened the front door and offered a trick. Which actually is something that you don’t probably need to wait until Halloween to wonder.

Well, for good or ill, we here at Crisis on Infinite Midlives have the answer for you (Let’s call that Fair Warning): Kim went out as a famous maneater covered with a virulent infestation of malignant fungal growth! And she did it while dressed as Poison Ivy! Your need for Brain Bleach is after the jump!

Trick Or Treat – The Further Adventures Of Team Logan: Review Of Wolverine And The X-Men #1

Wolverine And The X-Men #1 by Jason Aaaron, with art by Chris Bachalo, brings us the first day of classes at the newly formed Jean Grey School For Higher Learning. Headmaster Logan and Headmistress Pryde have their work cut out for them as they try to balance first day jitters with a visit from the New York Board Of Education. But, they’ve fought the likes of Magneto and Apocalypse in the past, so this new challenge should be a piece of cake, right?

Not so much.

Turns out Wolverine and company might have been better off putting up with Cyclops and staying on Utopia after all.

Spoilers and teenage angst after the jump!

Dracula Can Has Cheezburger? Crisis On Infinite Midlives Halloween Theater

It’s Halloween, and that means one thing: blasting your enemies with shaving cream. Or, if you’re from my family and your Mom responds to your request for shaving cream for Halloween shenanigans with a can of Edge gel, dribbling blue-green gack down your forearm while the other kids hose you down with Foamy. My childhood was fucked. But I digress.

Actually, Halloween means horror flicks. And, since this is a comics related Web site, we’ve got a doozy for you, in its glorious entirety: a Toei Animation anime adaptation of Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan’s classic 1970s horror comic The Tomb of Dracula!

You know, provided Marv and Gene had ready access to some primo Afghan hash.

This movie has it all: Dracula! Satan! Aggressive and detailed stonemasonry work! An airport in Boston with parking spaces! And the line that will chill your bones: “Hail Dolores, Pride of Satan!”, which I will be shouting whenever I have an orgasm from here until the end of time.

And, best of all: Dracula eating a cheeseburger.

Walking Into View, or: Boom! Headshot!

Robert Kirkman, creator of The Walking Dead comic book, has stepped up in the world. At our first SDCC in 2006, when Kirkman also hosted his first Spotlight panel, he told us in the crowd that he’d brought a deck of cards to play Solitaire in case no one showed up. I may also have seen a copy of Hustler and a sock stuck under the table, but that was a long time ago and it’s safe to say I was hung over at the time. Because God knows I’m hung over now.

Anyway, that was five and a half years ago. Now, Kirkman’s the writer and Executive Producer of The Walking Dead TV show – the biggest hit in the history of cable TV – with all the perks that entails. Big house? Sure… although the poor fucker lives in Kentucky, where you can live like a coke dealing hip hop star for about $12.75 American. Bling? Yeah, if he wanted it, but I’m guessing the poor man gets enough attention from Bear… enthusiasts as it is. Bitches? Well… kinda.

I say “kinda” because Kirkman’s gonna be a guest on The View later this morning.

Mork Calling Orson: Spaceman #1 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: Ground Control to Major Tom: commencing countdown, spoilers on. 

Here’s the thing about Brian Azzarello, which you already know if you’ve read 100 Bullets: he writes a great crime story. I think that’s why, no matter what he’s writing, he winds up shoehorning a crime story in there, the way Robin Williams ramfeeds schtick into every Goddamned role he ever does, or the way low-level Internet writers about comics cram uncomfortable jokes about their balls into their reviews.

And there are times when it’s a welcome addition, like the toy in the bottom of a cereal box – after all, nobody’s gonna bitch about a hard-boiled crime story stuck into in a Batman comic. Others, like when he made John Constantine a gay-trolling ex-convict in Hellblazer, it’s a less joyful little discovery, like scratching your balls and saying, “Huh… what’s that lump?”

It’s too early to tell how the crime story he’s stuck into Spaceman will come across: Cracker Jack prize? Or ball tumor?