Turning Back With No Turning Back: The Lizard Returns To Spider-Man

Thanks to the hectic nature of a weekend that’s contained St. Patrick’s Day, a visit with my tax guy where I learned my coming federal refund, and a trip to my local electronics retailer to piss that refund away on a jacked-up tablet PC to help faciliate more effective reporting at SDCC this July (At least that’s the excuse I’m using to justify dropping the coin), it has been difficult to keep up with the goings-on at this weekend’s Wondercon in Anaheim, CA. Frankly, by about our second bar yesterday afternoon, it was difficult to keep up with the going-on in my my own pants (“I’m actually peeing in the bathroom, and not dreaming I’m peeing in the bathroom while I’m busily pissing myself on the couch, right? Right? …who am I talking to?”).

But when I finally managed to find the time to filter through the Wondercon announcements after a busy morning whimpering and cleaning the couch, one particular item jumped out at me: Marvel’s announced the return of The Lizard starting in Spider-Man issue #679. Which, on one hand, is in no way surprising; the issue’s due out about a week before the Amazing Spider-Man movie’s scheduled to be released in theaters, and if there’s one thing comics do well in the face of movie publicity, it’s try to match the books with the flick… and fuck it up. After all, this is the industry that killed Batman just before The Dark Knight make a bazillion dollars. So I’m less surprised over Marvel’s bringing back The Lizard than I am that they’re not bringing back Gwen Stacy (“Oh, Peter! I was absorbed by the Phoenix Force! No? Howzabout I’m a clone? Um… Ultrons? Just shut up and give me your comics money.”).

So the concept of writer Dan Slott and artist Giuseppe Camuncoli bringing The Lizard back wasn’t exactly exciting. The art that debuted at Wondercon, however…

She Blinded Me With Something Other Than Science: Amazing Spider-Man #681 Review

Amazing Spider-Man #680 was good and fun enough that this week’s immediate followup of issue 681 was the first book I pulled off the stack yesterday, despite the cover that, if you remove the planet Earth from the background, looks like a frame grab of a Spider-Man / Human Torch bukkake flick. Seriously: if that’s how people look in hard vacuum, we now know why HAL wouldn’t open the pod bay doors: because it’s fucking hilarious. They look less like they’re suffering from asphyxia than like they have a pube caught in their throats. I could go on, but rumor is there’s a whole comic book behind this cover.

Writers Dan Slott and Chris Yost have delivered what is still a big, fun comic book, but in no way will it make you smarter. In fact, you’ll need to turn off large parts of your brain in order to fully enjoy it as the high-budget b-movie that it is. The science in this issue makes Michael Bay’s Armageddon look like Nova with Neil Degrasse Tyson.

No One Can Hear You Thwip: Amazing Spider-Man #680 Review

The Amazing Spider-Man #680 is a buddy flick set in a zombie apocalypse occurring in space. If you walked into a movie studio executive’s office with that pitch, you’d be thrown out on your ass. Unless that executive worked for the Sy-Fy channel. In which case you’d be given their largest production budget to date: 75 bucks. Although they might go up to an even hundred, assuming Tiffany and / or Lorenzo Lamas was available.

My point is that this comic book is a big, glorious mess where I’m sure that the one “splorch” sound effect in tne book represents the sound of writers Dan Slott and Chris Yost throwing absolutely every plot idea they can think of at the wall… and it all sticks. I can almost picture those two guys saying, “Spider-Man… we bring in The Human Torch… and put them on a space station… what can they fight, what can they fight, what can they – space zombies! Now let’s write, but first: let’s take this TV apart!”

The Punishment For Graffiti: New Clip of The Amazing Spider Man Released

The first complete, non-trailer scene clip of The Amazing Spider-Man flick has been released to the Internet on a viral site called Mark of The Spider-Man, a site which shows pictures of a bunch of people doing Spider-Man graffiti in cities around America, and then shows a disclaimer saying that each tagging was done with permission and that they don’t “condone or support the propagation of unauthorized graffiti.” In really small letters. Way at the bottom of the page. All the while, I’m sure, praying fervently that teenaged punks actually do start throwing Spider-Man symbols on brick walls around America. Which they will never do. Because all evidence to the contrary, teenagers are not morons. If Columbia Pictures really wants to reach the young, dumb and full of come “XXX-treme” demographic, they should put the Spider-Man symbol on bags of meth. Perhaps with a disclaimer stating that Columbia Pictures doesn’t condone or support the use of methamphetamines. And yes, I am currently whacked on a double dose of Sudafed; what’s your point?

Anyhoo, if the marketing swine at Columbia are hoping that releasing a clip of Spider-Man will lead to some kind of viral campaign of petty vandalism, they might be right… if perhaps they had released a clip including, you know, Spider-Man. Or The Lizard. Or any action whatsoever. However, they did not, so stow your spray cans, settle in, and enjoy approximately 45 seconds of the epic battle of: Peter Parker vs. The Dick Doorman!

The Amazing Spider-Man Trailer – Can It Hurry Up And Be July Now?

You know, I was perfectly fine with the Sam Raimi incarnations of Spider-Man. No, they weren’t perfect. Tobey Maguire was a passable nerd and Kirsten Dunst had a really punchable face, but Alfred Molina was a surprisingly touching Doc Ock. Willem Dafoe chewed a lot of scenery as Norman Osborn – but, shitty armored costume aside, that’s what Stormin’ Norman does, right? I mean, have you read The New Avengers, lately? Oh, Norman…

Anyway.

It was a nice couple of flicks. Thank god, they didn’t make a third one^*.

But, Sony decided to reboot the franchise. Tobey Maguire couldn’t stay a teenager forever and Kirsten Dunst was widely reported as feeling like her story was “done” after her last Spider-Man movie. Even if Durst might have been open to “considering” more Spidey, no one wants a lukewarm Mary Jane. Not even Harry Osborn at his loneliest – that’s what drugs are for!

So, with the trailer finally released, how does the new reboot look?

Check it out after the jump!

Flagsmasher Is A Stupid Name: Amazing Spider-Man #679 Review

God knows that The Amazing Spider-Man isn’t perfect – it gets sucked into events like most Big Two publisher books, and sometimes it uses valuable page real estate setting up the next event – whatever the hell that winds up being. But when it’s not being co-opted and fucked with by higher Marvel editorial for whatever crossover event the Architects bake up at their retreats (“I’ve got it! X-Men kick the Fantastic Four in the groin! Let’s try it on new guy Hickman! Hold him down, Aaron, or you’re next!”), it is one of the best, old-school comics you can get.

Amazing Spider-Man #679 is the second part of a two-and-out that at face value has no place in a book about a guy who, in his best stories, fights more street-level crime than cosmic stuff. If you’d told me that writer Dan Slott was going to do a story about Spider-Man that included time travel, continuity paradoxes and Madame Fucking Web, I’d have said that was stupid, and you were stupid for saying it.

But Slott takes those elements and does the smart thing with them: use them as simply a catalyst for the rest of the story. The entirety of the time travel involvement is to show the stakes  – the destruction of New York by a certain time – if Spider-Man can’t figure out what to do… and he does those things where Spidey should: on the streets.And after months and months of seeing Spidey battling Thor knockoffs in the Avengers, and traveling to other dimensions in FF, it’s nice to see Spider-Man just stomping dudes in an alley with a wisecrack for a change.

Spider-Who What Now?

If you’re a genre fan around my age, you have fond memories of Jenny Agutter, whether you know you do or not. Granted, she hasn’t been in a lot that’s been on any American’s radar for quite a while, but she played Jessica in Logan’s Run and Alex in An American Werewolf in London, which means for a Generation X male geek, there’s a better than even chance she was the cause for the first time you said, “Mommy? My pee-pee’s broken. It’s pointing at the ceiling.”

Agutter’s making an appearance in the upcoming Avengers flick – after all, Joss Whedon is a male, Gen-X genre fan – which makes her newsworthy, particularly in England, where she’s apparently been working steadily since the 80s. Newsworthy enough to have done an interview for the Radio Times (Think England’s TV Guide) about the experience. An interview where she said that she was sworn to secrecy about anything that happens in the movie… and where she promptly dropped a massive spoiler that, if not a mistake on her part or the part of the reporter who wrote the story, is fairly fucking awesome:

Captain Jack Will Make You Sad Tonight

There are times, when I’m about five beers in, when I say to myself, “You know who might be fun to go drinking with? John Barrowman.” And there are other times, when I’m more like nine beers in when I say to myself, “You know what might be fun? Going to New York and seeing that Spider-Man musical. I bet with enough whiskey, it’d be fun to watch Spider-Man dance!”

And there are other times, when I surf the Internet, when I find things that make me think I should quit drinking altogether. Like video of John Barrowman. Singing and dancing. With Spider-Man. In public.

Oh yes. This is a thing that has happened to me. And now, after the jump, it is going to happen to you.

Where’s Waldo: Amazing Spider-Man #676 Review

Dear Dan Slott: when I spend four dollars on an issue of The Amazing Spider-Man, I have only one expectation. It’s not that the art is always exemplary, or that it end on the finest of pants-shitting cliffhangers, or that it even showcase a member of the supporting cast in an entertaining fashion… which is a good thing since this book contains none of those things.

No Dan; I’m a reasonable man. All I want from an issue of The Amazing Spider-Man is that somewhere, somewhere in the issue there is at least one appearance of The Amazing Fucking Spider-Man.

That’s right – the only appearance of Spider-Man in this issue is on the cover. The only places the word  “Spider-Man” appears are on the cover, the letter column and the in house ad for next month’s Daredevil… where Spider-Man apparently appears more often than he does in this issue of The Amazing Spider-Man.

Instead of a Spider-Man story, what we have here is a battle between the Sinister Six – which I’m sure was a bitchin’ name back in 1964, but which in 2011 sounds like a moniker you adopt when you find out that someone’s already trademarked “Democracy of Douchebags” – and the Intelligencia (The name you grab when you discover even “Sinister Six” has been sponged off the bottom of the barrel).

Don’t Mind Stepping Into The Twilight Zone: Carnage USA #1 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review contains spoilers. Because I’m a bad man! And I keep thinking bad thoughts! But since I live nowhere near a cornfield, all I can say is that you have been warned.

People talk about the Spider-Man Clone Saga as if it was the low point of comics in the 90s… and those people are arguably right. But the problem with designating something as the worst thing ever is it makes it easy to forget, and sometimes wrongfully forgive, other things that were also awful, just not quite as bad. After all, it’s hard to bitch about a stubbed toe when it happens on the way back from a botched colonoscopy.

The Clone Saga was the worst. That doesn’t mean that Carnage wasn’t also truly, truly horrible.

A knockoff of Venom introduced at the height of Silence Of The Lambs mania who was probably created at an old-school Marvel Summit (Two guys in a Manhattan nightclub men’s room saying, “Hannibal Lecter as a Venom whatchacallit!” “Genius! Let’s gack up another rail!”), Carnage was unoriginal on his face.  And he became so prevalent and irritating that it only took Brian Michael Bendis two issues of New Avengers to have Sentry not only drag Carnage into outer fucking space, but also tear him apart. For a writer of slow, decompressed, all-foreplay comics like Bendis, that was the equivalent of hatefucking Carnage and wiping his dick on his knee on the way out. It was awesome.