With Great Power Comes Great Bedsores: The Amazing Spider-Man #699 Review

Editor’s Note: Hey Amanda – have I done the “Amazing Spoiler-Man” gag for a spoiler warning yet? No? Jesus, how the fuck have I left that one on the table? No, I’m not gonna do it NOW, I gave it away already! I’ll just tell people that this review is loaded with spoilers. Right after I pour another whiskey.

Here’s the problem with hype: ever since The Amazing Spider-Man #699 was available in stores yesterday morning, Dan Slott’s Twitter feed has been ablaze with cries of “Oh God! You bastard! That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen!” and “I threw up when I saw IT,” and “Follow me for slutty cam vids!” Okay, that last one might have been from Twitter pornbot Diane’s Slot, but that’s beside the point.

The point is, if all you have to go on it the online hype, you would think that Amazing Spider-Man #699 was a bloody slugfest in the final battle before the book goes tits up in favor of Superior Spider-Man at the end of the month, but that’s not the case. Make no mistake: that moment that people are shrieking about is in the book. And it is… yeah, we’ll go with the adjective “disturbing.” But I won’t spoil the moment here, because despite the hype, it isn’t germane to the story. Which is actually a pretty solid middle part to a story that Marvel promises will “change Spider-Man forever,” or at least until three months after The Amazing Spider-Man 2 shows up in movie theaters and reminds people that there’s money in the character the way he’s always been.

Four-Color Riot

If you believe the shitstorm of rage, hatred and recrimination coming from The Amazing Spider-Man writer Dan Slott’s Twitter feed since the comic stores opened at about 10 a.m. today, it would make you think that The Amazing Spider-Man #699, like The Clash in 1978, was the Only Thing That Matters. And, as the second-to-last issue of The Amazing Spider-Man as an ongoing comics concern (until someone realizes they might make an extra seventeen dollars out of Amazing Spider-Man #725), it is certainly an important comic book – and one we will be addressing in the very near future – but certainly not the only comic book of the week that matters.

Not when Luther Fucking Strode is back in the house.

Which is a long way to go to explain that this wealth of awesome…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

Seriously: this might be the most interesting week of new comics in quite a long time. Not only is there the new Amazing Spider-Man and the first issue of the second Luther Strode miniseries, but there’s the first issues of the renumbered (but not rebooted! Marvel doesn’t reboot! And the editorial staff of Crisis On Infinite Midlives hasn’t been drinking since four minutes after leaving the comic store!) Avengers and Thunderbolts (starring Punisher, Elektra and Deadpool), along with the third issue of Daredevil: End of Days by Brian Michael Bendis, and the latest Hawkeye by Matt Fraction!

But before we can review them, we need time to read them. So until we have that chance…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Seasickness: Aquaman #14 Review

Editor’s Note: One last review of the comics of November 28, 2012 before the comic store opens with the new stuff today…

I have never understood the general enthusiasm over the New 52 reboot of Aquaman, even though my co-editor Amanda liked it enough at the start to mutter things like, “Hero’s Journey” and “Joseph Campbell” and a bunch of other stuff that made me wish I’d learned more in college than the fluid dynamics surrounding beer bongs. For me, the sudden DC focus on Aquaman, who has never been able to support his own book for very long (his longest running self-titled book lasted 75 issues – about six years) stunk of a Trading Places-style Gentlemen’s Wager between Geoff Johns and Dan DiDio: “I will wager you, sir, one American dollar that I can transform this water-sucking, fishfucking, orange-pantsed fashion victim into a proper superhero!”

So I read the first few issues and then kind of tuned out – and I’ve just realized that I’ve said that about no less than three New 52 books in the past couple of weeks, which might be a topic for another time – but with Throne of Atlantis, the next big Justice League arc, on its way, I decided to check out Aquaman #14 to bone up and get a sense of what’s going on with the book.

The short answer? I have no fucking idea.

New Avengers! Well, Not “New Avengers”, But New Avengers! New Old Avengers! Third Base! Screw It, Here’s A Trailer

Marvel’s first post-Bendis issue of Avengers, written by Jonathan Hickman and drawn by Jerome Opena, will be in comic stores tomorrow. But is Marvel taking it easy and banking on the fact that the pre-Marvel Now version of the book was one of their bigger sellers, or that its being written by one of their A-List creators, or that it shares the name with a near-billion dollar movie that just came out just six months ago to sell the thing? Fuck no; that would be lazy. Besides, why rest on your laurels and prior achievements when you’ve got motion comics algorithms, a microphone with a dude with a semi-deep voice, and possibly and purely by speculation a pile of pure flake cocaine burning holes in your pocket and / or nose (if you believe the rumor that I made up just now)?

Stack on top of those assets about 15,000 comic Web sites looking for something cool to talk about on a lazy night before New Comics Day, and it means that Marvel’s created a trailer for Avengers #1, which you can check out after the jump.

Zombie Apocalypse: Batman Incorporated #5 Review

Editor’s Note: Babylon falls! The spoilers you defended are meaningless!

Back in 2007. Batman #666 kind of came out of nowhere, clearly a result of Grant Morrison realizing he was writing a issue numbered “666”, rubbing his hands together and cackling gleefully around a mouthful of peyote.

Batman #666 introduced Damian Wayne as Batman, having taken over the mantle after some unexplained thing happened to Bruce Wayne fifteen years in the future. Damian is a gun-toting, trenchcoat-wearing lethal version of Batman, who has sold his soul to the devil and must battle a demon for the future of Gotham City… and none of that description, by the way, is an Issac Hayes style euphemism to make Damian sound tough; these are things that actually happened. Imagine listening to the Theme From Shaft and feeling the slowly-dawning horror when you realize that John Shaft actually fucked his mother. And apparently did it badly. Yeah. Welcome to shoot-first, sell-your-soul-to-Satan-even-sooner Batman.

The whole issue was kind of a goof, and as a gimmick issue, the whole thing kind of came and went without further comment in the story arc. But due to the asskicking nature of Damian as Batman, the issue has become a fan favorite (not my favorite, but your mileage may vary), and I don’t think a San Diego Comic-Con that had Morrison in attendance has gone by without some fan asking when we would see Damian’s Batman again. To which Morrison would reply: “Schoor toor ach Damian fchoor ich dloor Mescaline schaar ploor Scotland.” Dude has one hell of an accent is all I’m saying, but I digress.

Well, their wait is over. Batman Incorporated #5 is Morrison’s version of The Dark Knight Returns for Damian’s version of Batman, It is the imaginary final battle for that version of Batman, featuring his final conflict against his most dangerous antagonist with the fate of Gotham City hanging in the balance. However, unlike Frank Miller’s classic, Morrison accomplishes it in less than 20 pages (appropriate for a character who showed up for about 20 pages more than five years ago), and considering it tells the story of an apocryphal version of Batman who exists purely thanks to a vagary of issue numbering, it is surprisingly effective.

Post No Bills: Star Trek Into Darkness and Man Of Steel Posters Released

It’s getting to be the end of 2012, which means two things. First, it’s the time of year to get ripped to the tits on egg nog and try to convince the local constabulary that I just got some bad Boston Cream Pie, and second: it’s time for next summer’s genre movies to start dropping teaser posters.

And yesterday gave a wealth of still-framed, Photoshopped, Public Relations Department approved brain candy that starts the geek glands a-drooling while showing us absolutely nothing of concrete value. And in that spirit, we at Crisis On Infinite Midlives are happy to present two new teaser posters, both after the jump.

A Queasy, Unbalanced Feeling: Karen Berger Leaves Vertigo Comics

It’s been while since the 1990s glory days of Vertigo Comics, when books like Sandman, Hellblazer, Shade The Changing Man, Y: The Last Man and Preacher stomped on the terra and helped solidify the concept that comics weren’t for children anymore. These days, it feels like Vertigo is down to what feels like a few miniseries, some original graphic novels and Fables, and with the recent announcement of the cancellation of Hellblazer, it has seemed like the imprint has been at a crossroads. And, as anyone who’s ever listened to Robert Johnson knows, good shit never happens at the crossroads.

And today is living proof. DC Comics has announced that Karen Berger, the longtime Executive Editor of Vertigo Comics, is leaving the company at the end of first quarter 2013.

DC’s official announcement is after the jump.

Bar Gags And Animal Cruelty: I, Vampire #14 Review

I’ve honestly missed the last several issues of I, Vampire – not because it’s a bad book or one that I don’t like, but the ugly reality is that, when you spend the week writing 1,200 word reviews of comics, it is impossible to read one while you’re writing about another, sometimes because of the pure, inexorable nature of time, other times because it’s hard to type and read when you’re already holding a glass of whiskey.

However, after finishing yesterday’s vaguely frustrating read of this week’s Angel & Faith, I figured it was as good an opportunity as any to check back in with the book. Because after reading an vampire story that seemingly blithely chucked aside the plot that had been driving the story, I thought it might be comforting to revisit vampire Andrew Bennett and his eternal war against his darker nature, and against his girlfriend Mary’s efforts to turn vampires into the ascendant race on the planet Earth.

So yeah, funny story: at some point in the last few months? It seems Andrew lost.

So here we have yet another vampire comic that, at some point, has taken its status quo and turned it on its head, reversing pretty much everything you’d expect from the book. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily bad… but it does mean that I’m not entirely sure what in the hell is going on.

Alien Resurrection: Angel & Faith #16 Review

Editor’s Note: If I ever want to hear your spoilers Spike… come to think of it, I’ll never want to hear your spoilers.

Well, I certainly didn’t see that coming. I probably should have, given how similarly weighty events have recently played out in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, but what the hell. We’ll get to that in a minute.

We’ve spent sixteen issues watching Angel and Faith off in England, trying to work out how to bring Giles back from the dead. And during that time we’ve met some interesting new characters and we’ve come across some old familiar ones, and some weird shit has gone down, but that first statement has been our core mission: Angel and Faith are trying to resurrect Giles. And that has made Angel and Faith, to me, more compelling than the core Buffy Season Nine title, because of what that mission entails: doing some dark shit, shit that the Buffy TV show, in Season Six, showed us was difficult on a good day, impossible on a bad one, and dangerous, ill-advised and rife with bad, bad unintended circumstances on every day. And this story has worked for me because if anyone knows the dangers behind raising the dead, it’s members of Buffy’s Scooby Gang, and yet they were doing it anyway. And the promise has been that we will eventually see them on the precipice of darkness, with Giles’s body and some magical McGuffins, and having to make the conscious decision as to whether to proceed or not, and face those consequences.

Well, that’s over now. While the conclusion of Angel & Faith #16 delivers one hell of a twist and teases a possible big bad for Faith and Angel that I didn’t really see coming and which could well wind up with an emotional and affecting climax. However, by taking that course, writer Christos Gage has let the air out of the story so far. He trades the weird, sick momentum of the story so far for a twist and an “oh shit!” moment. And while that moment has some promise, it doesn’t trade even in my ledger.

Monstrous Teasing: Pacific Rim Teaser Video Released

About a year and a half ago, it looked like things were good to go for Guillermo del Toro to get the green light to film a live action adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s At The Mountains of Madness, with a 150 million dollar budget and a commitment to turn the story of the Antarctic discovery of Elder Things, Shoggoths and Cthulhu into a film with a hard R rating, in accordance with the horror of the original story. That was good. However, at the eleventh hour, Universal pulled the plug on the movie, because it had a 150 million dollar budget and a hard R rating. That was less good.

However, del Toro took the adversity on the chin, wiped it off like a pro, and took the disappointment of suddenly finding himself unable to adapt a classic of the cosmic horror genre to sink his teeth into something equally weighty: a flick about giant monsters and robots.

Pacific Rim is scheduled to open on July 12, 2013, and the first teaser video of the flick has been released, which you can check out after the jump.