Teen Titans writer Scott Lobdell, who made a splash in the DC New 52 last week by portraying pre-reboot Titan Starfire as an amoral, cock-hungry nymphomanic, gave an exclusive interview with USA Today yesterday where he described what other… brilliant… plans he had for the rest of the new Teen Titans… wait – old Teen Titans? old New Teen Titans? New new old New… I’ve had a lot of cold medicine, I’d better lie down and let Scott take this:

“It’s designed specifically so that as you’re sitting down to read this book, you’re learning about Kid Flash, Red Robin and Wonder Girl,” [Lobdell] says. “Pretty much what you see on the paper is what we know about them and what they know about each other.”

But… but… wait… so there’s never been a Teen Titans? Right, Scott? Um…

From Red Hood and The Outlaws. Written by Scott Lobdell. LAST. FUCKING. WEEK.

This is the story of Jaime Reyes, a normal teenager living in suburban New Mexico with his best friends Paco – a gangbanger with a sense of humor and a heart of gold – and Brenda – a redhead who happens to be the niece of La Dama – a female crime lord with a stable of superpowered minions. Jaime finds himself fused with the Scarab – a piece of alien technology from something called The Reach – that bestows upon him a suit of powered armor that he doesn’t know how to use and might be operating under its own agenda.

Sound interesting? It should: it’s the plot of Blue Beetle. Written by Keith Giffen and John Rogers. In 2006.

It’s ALSO the plot of Blue Beetle #1, written by Tony Bedard and penciled by Ig Guara, released last Wednesday. And that’s the problem.

Don’t get me wrong: Blue Beetle is a well-executed and entertaining origin issue. It lays out where the Scarab comes from, it introduces all the main players, gets the Scarab on Jaime, all in 20 pages. Of all the New 52 books from DC, it probably meets the stated goal of the reboot, to create an entry point for new, non-comic readers, most effectively. Sure, there’s still a writing-for-the-trade feel since Jaime doesn’t become Blue Beetle until the last page, but Bedard tells us what we need to know without requiring any knowledge of continuity. It’s somewhat refreshing… or it would be if Bedard DIDN’T require a fluency in a second Goddamned language.

There are at least ten or eleven panels in this book that include Spanish or Spanglish – to the point where Bedard puts the ol’ footnote asterix next to the phrase “La casa de Amparo Cardenas” to tell us in caption that it is “Translated from the Spanglish”… except he NEVER FUCKING TRANSLATES IT. He might as well have wasted panel real estate with “Translated into Spanglish from Klingon by way of Helen Keller’s homemade tappity language.” For all I know, Jaime spend half the book saying, “You, reader, are a racist, provincial dingus.”

Marvel Comics' Castle: Richard Castle's Deadly Storm by Brian Michael Bendis, Kelly Sue DcConnickSo now the both of us have caught this wretched head ebola, which means that posting may slow while we lie around looking for mindless entertainment to feed our middle brains while we slowly undergo the process of turning cold medicine into snot… but don’t worry about us, we have a tool for dealing with this. It’s called a screwdriver.

And a likely candidate for tonight’s distraction from our various aches, pains and uncomfortable viscous bubblings is Castle, starring Nathan Fillion, on ABC at 10 p.m. eastern time. It’s not a regular view for us, but ABC is owned by Disney, as is Marvel, and since, purely by coincidence, Marvel’s releasing a Castle graphic novel Wednesday, it seems that tonight’s episode has a distinctly Marvel Comics feel to it, which you can see in the preview after the jump:

We bought some more bourbon, which means here’s another exciting episode of the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Podcast!

Why “The Knockers Of Justice”? There’s actually a reason this time, and it’s Catwoman and Starfire. Plus, “The T*ts Of Justice” just sounded crass for a family site. F**k you; don’t look at us like that.

Other topics include Nightwing #1, Kevin Smith’s The Bionic Man, and Event Fatigue, or: If Wolverine Begins Fighting Cyclops in Schism at 6 a.m., Stops To Fight Juggernaut in Fear Itself  at 8 a.m. and Arrives To Fight With Spider-Man in Spider Island at noon, At What Time Does Marvel Start To Give a F**k About Continuity?

Plus, here are a few links to items we discussed in the show:

Enjoy! Or at least don’t complain too loudly!

Brian Azzarello might be my favorite person in the comic book world, this week. First, he published this great letter on Vertigo’s editorial board, On The Ledge, in which he rails against the future for not delivering the goods it promised:

Dear Future,

F**k you.

You promised me a jetpack, and didn’t deliver. You’ve led me on and really let me down, so you can go to hell.

I’ll admit it: when you handed me a glass of Tang and a Space Food Stick I fell for you hard. You told me you were gonna be beyond my wildest dreams and we would be going places (using that jetpack, right?). You literally promised me the moon and I bought in hook, line and sinker. Well, if I still had that Space Food Stick I’d shove it up your fat bony ass, you two-faced, fun-squashing bag of woe. You can go to hell.

I, too, am disappointed by my lack of cheap, afforable jet-pack ownership. It would make going to my local comic book store ever so much easier and cooler. However, I did manage to get there this week and was rewarded for my efforts with Wonder Woman #1, also written by Mr. Azzarello with art by Cliff Chiang.

Backstage picture of Anne Hathaway as Catwoman in The Dark Knight RisesSome celebrity gossip site called Just Jared got their hands on some more pictures of Anne Hathaway in the Catwoman costume she’s wearing for The Dark Knight Rises.

Here’s one; you can go here for the rest if you don’t mind that their second top story is about Justin Bieber going to Chik-Fil-A… and if you do mind (Please God, if you’re reading this Web site, tell me you fucking mind), Bleeding Cool has all the pictures plus a few more exclusives you can check out.

There seems to be a lot of negative buzz in the comics world about the new costume ever since the first official photo of Hathaway in the suit came out about a month and a half ago – not enough cat ear, too much cat ear but the mask is stupid, no tail, the high heels are dumb for a cat suit – all of which make comics people look less like they’re interested in a good Batman movie and more like petulant, disappointed furries losing their boners.

This week, Marvel’s Ultimate line reboots its X-Men franchise with Ultimate X-Men #1 written by Nick Spencer with pencils by Paco Medina and inks by Juan Vlasco. We’re dropped into a world that is still mourning the death of Peter Parker, and is now rocked by the revelation that mutants aren’t a natural occurrence, but instead are the by-product of decades of bio-engineering experimentation. The general public has orders to shoot any mutant that has not turned itself over to a containment camp. Also, Santa Claus isn’t real and your mom never loved you. It’s a beautiful day in the fucking neighborhood.

Warning – spoilers below the fold!

DC Comics Batman #1 cover, written by Scott Snyder and pencilled by Greg CapulloEDITOR’S NOTE: The following review may contain spoilers. It definitely contains rank amateurish speculation. Tread lightly.

I never read Alice in Wonderland because I was born in the early 1970’s and therefore had Star Wars. I didn’t see the recent Johnny Depp Alice in Wonderland flick because it was a Tim Burton movie that didn’t have Batman in it. So I know next to nothing about Lewis Carroll’s story beyond the character names… but I know enough about Batman to know that the odds that a new character named Lincoln March who is running for mayor will eventually unmask himself as a new supervillain named The March Hare are approximately one in one.

I was – and remain – so sure that this is how this new character was going to turn out that I reread Batman #1 about four times, inspecting the art and rereading every word looking for clues. Meaning that Batman #1 is detective story worth reading repeatedly. It’s about fucking time.

This isn’t a review. This is what happens when I’m left alone in a room with a packet of Sudafed, a bottle of Scotch, and a stack of comics and start to free associate. You’ve been warned.

Menthols? What alternate reality is this?

In addition to John Constantine’s sizable, nay, myriad tragic flaws as a human being, in John Constantine: Hellblazer #283 – “The Devil’s Trench Coat Part 1” we learn that he also doesn’t do laundry. John Constantine would have been that guy who lived on your floor in your college dorm who deposited all his athletic wear on the carpet of the hallway outside his doorway after sports practice and just left it there, stinking up the joint until a squadron of RAs was dispatched to enforce a cease and desist – that is, if Constantine actually went to college. Constantine’s aversion to even hitting his trench coat with the occasional blast of Febreeze is so bad that the coat has, apparently, gained sentience and gone on walk about. Then some hapless chump buys it on Ebay:

DC Comics Superman #1 promo art by George PerezNext week is the final 13-issue drop of first issues in DC Comics’ New 52, and they’re ending it in the last week in exactly the way they started it the first week: firmly in second place behind Marvel Comics, with women everywhere screaming that they’re nothing but a gaggle of adolescent, sexist pigs. They will also be releasing a Superman comic.

Whereas week one’s Action Comics #1 focused on Grant Morrison’s take on Superman’s first year as a superhero, the main Superman title, written by legendary penciller George Perez with breakdowns by Perez and finished pencils by Jesus Merino (Who did some issues of Justice Society of America a couple years ago), is gonna focus on Superman in the current DC continuity, including his new, underpantsless costume. By which I mean it has no underpants on the outside. I assume he wears underpants underneath his spandex pants, otherwise we will be learning the disturbing way whether or not Kryptonians are Jewish. But I digress.

Comic Book Resources has a five-page preview of Superman #1; go check it out then swing back…

Wow. Those pages sure are pretty, and I want to withhold final judgment until I read the entire book, but based on that sample, I’m guessing that in the new DC continuity, Superman’s fatal weakness is exposition.