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!

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.

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.

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?

Something dark and malevolent is afoot in the DCU, and it’s not just the continued employment of Rob Liefield despite any evidence of an ability to utilize symmetry or feet in any of his attempts at artwork. No, I’m speaking of magical nasties that defy even the efforts of the heavy hitting Big Three to put down. In Justice League Dark, magically powered individuals have to join together to defeat an out of control, seemingly insane villain, the witch known as The Enchantress. But is she really the Big Bad that is causing reality to come undone or the victim of some other, similarly damaged, reality challenged, spelling slinging powerhouse?

Spoilery goodness after the jump!

The only people who would argue that Justin Bieber isn’t a destructive purveyor of  impending doom do not have penises, secondary sexual characteristics, or are trolling pederasts.

He turns music into sadness, the car radio’s scan button into a perverse game of auditory Russian Roulette, and legitimizes Rebecca Black. His ability to turn everything he touches into shit – apparently by sucking all the money out of it –  makes me wish I were dead, if only so I could, as an incorporeal ghost, slip into his mansion in the dark of night and wake him by whispering “Leeeeiiiiiiifff… Gaaaaarrretttttt…”

Ruining music is forgivable. Making CSI unwatchable is something I could skate past. But now Justin Bieber has done the indefensible.

He has ruined the fucking Batmobile.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review is believed to be dead, and it must let the world think that it IS dead, until it can find a way to control the raging spoilers that dwell within it.

I’m probably not the best person to review Jason Aaron’s and Marc Silvestri’s The Incredible Hulk #1, because I am not the world’s greatest Hulk fan. Sure, I read Bill Mantlo’s stuff back when I was a kid, and I watched the Bill Bixby / Lou Ferrigno show religiously, because I HAD to. In the dark, pre-cable days of the late 70’s and early 80’s, if you wanted new genre TV you had two choices: The Incredible Hulk or Struck By Lightning. Well, I guess there was also Bosom Buddies, but technically that’s a whole different kind of genre.

Part of the problem was that, for a very long time, every Hulk story was the same: Banner gets agitated, turns into Hulk. Hulk reiterates a desire to “smash”. Hulk swings tank by gun barrel. Hulk jumps somewhere into Marlboro Country. Hulk relaxes and turns back into Banner. Banner avoids death by dehydration or copperhead bite to find more purple pants just in time to repeat it all again next month.

The last time I was excited by The Hulk was during Peter David’s 1988 Ground Zero arc, when Todd McFarlane was an exciting new artist and not comics’ most notorious ball cupper (What? The man collects baseballs). Because for the first time in my memory, someone was doing something different with The Hulk. He was cunning. He was gray. He LOOKED different. The book was exciting, because it felt new.

Problem is that David opened the floodgates on creative teams making Hulk whatever they wanted to serve whatever story they wanted to tell. In twenty-five years we’ve see Hulk as genius. Hulk as emperor. Hulk as medieval gladiator. Hulk as fucking Mafia enforcer (“Ever since Hulk can remember, Hulk wanted to be gangster. If we wanted something, we just SMASH it!”)

Hulk’s been green, gray and red, and at least one or two other people have been The Hulk. It’s like a stealth Clone Saga’s been going on in Hulk titles for a quarter century. For good or ill, there is no single “The Hulk” of which to be a fan, unless your only criteria for liking a story is “a big muscular dude of color”. In which case, I’m guessing that back in the 80s you were watching Bosom Buddies rather than The Incredible Hulk, but I digress.

This is a whole lot of words to spend on an individual issue of a comic book without addressing the book itself, but the preamble feels necessary, if only to make it clear that I don’t know if I can recommend The Incredible Hulk #1, because it is yet ANOTHER vector on the original story: The Hulk and Banner as separate entities.

Over on The Mary Sue, they’ve been keeping track of all the various parody trailers that have been released this past year to promote The Muppets, a new installation of Muppet zaniness that is written by (and stars) Jason Siegel. One of the trailer parodies was even Green Lantern themed.

What does the new one spoof? Among other things Paranormal Activity, Twilight: Breaking Dawn and, well, itself:

The Muppets hits theaters nationwide November 23, 2011. Go blow off your Thanksgiving preparations and support interspecies dating, mediocre ursine comedians who wear farty shoes and Jason Siegel’s continued attempts to work on projects that are not How I Met Your Mother, animated, or produced by Judd Apatow. Stay strong. I believe in you, man.

Doctor WhoOkay, the dust has settled, the TARDIS has stopped making that WHIRR-CHUNK noise, and River Song and the Doctor are apparently hitched. So I’ve been considering the most recent season of Doctor Who, and I have a few thoughts that I’d like to share. First off – Can River Song go away now? She’s gone from an interesting and mysterious character to a sort of creepy MILF, and not in that fun Stiffler’s Mom way.

Alex Kingston is a talented actress, but hearing “Hello Sweetie” is beginning to remind me of my time as an altar boy. This season, with episodes like “The Girl Who Waited” and “The Wedding of River Song”, feels like the cast of Doctor Who desperately wanted to prove that THEY. CAN. ACT. “I emote! Feel as my character feels! My Hamlet was the toast of RADA!” and so on. I don’t think that they recognize that a show with murderous rolling salt shakers isn’t going to ever win anyone a BAFTA award.

So after a long morning complaining that money ruins comics…

…we must end our broadcast day with a pile of comics released today that prove that paid comics on proven properties can, in fact, pique the interest.

Just look at this take! We’ve got Astonishing X-Men with Art Adams art (Not a palindrome, no matter what Mr. Adams would like you to believe), Wolverine and the X-Men, new Walking Dead, Green Wake (Which, despite the fact that you just heard about it, you should be reading), Brian Azzarello’s and Eduardo Rizzo’s Spaceman, and a ton of other good shit that we will try like hell to read and review for you!

In the meantime, it’s beer o’clock, which means: see you tomorrow, suckers!