I Don’t Have To Listen To You; You’re Not My Real Dad!

"Diana, please, I just want to get to know you." "Screw you, man! You're not my real dad!" "But, I have *alimony*..."

Look, frankly I was going to go to bed but, as I take after my own dad, I have an affinity for Scotch and rolling into work egregiously hungover. My liver knows its place and will do as its damn told. Now, what was I talking about…? Oh, yeah, Wonder Woman.

See, here’s the thing, today Josh Kushins posted this on the DCU Blog:

In DC COMICS-THE NEW 52, Wonder Woman will have a new origin, in which she is the daughter of Hippolyta … and Zeus! In recent interviews, writer Brian Azzarello and artist Cliff Chiang have teased that readers should expect the unexpected in this edgier, horror take on the superhero genre ­and the king of the gods will ensure that nothing goes as planned for his defiant daughter.

Originally created by the goddess Aphrodite and raised to perfection on the Amazon island of Themiscyra, the newest incarnation of Wonder Woman has a new costume and now a new origin ­ but she remains Wonder Woman. Strong. Proud. Fearless. WONDER WOMAN is the 12th title in DC COMICS-THE NEW 52 to sell more than a 100K copies.

Bastard Son Of A Thousand Comics: The Strange Talent of Luther Strode #1 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review contains spoilers. If you decide not to read it, just go buy the book right fucking now, and we’ll leave it at that.

The Strange Talent of Luther Strode is the story of a high school nerd who buys a “Tired of having sand kicked in your face?” fitness book out of the back of a comic book, develops superpowers after reading it, and uses those powers to get a girl and defeat his jock nemesis in dodgeball and in a high school men’s room fistfight. Truly, writer Justin Jordan is one of us… or would be if he didn’t seem to know that people like us didn’t go into the men’s rooms in high school, because we generally didn’t need cigarettes or black eyes.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s more going on than Geek Rage in this book. We open the book seeing Strode in a flash-forward where he’s masked, ripped and has the ability to stop loads with his chest and beat men down by jerking off some of their parts… which sounds like it would be yet another reason that I personally never went into the high school men’s room if it didn’t look like this:

Jordan teases that there’s some kind of reasoning behind Strode’s newfound powers, and that those powers might make him the target of a mysterious bearded dandy called The Librarian that will lead us to a greater story to take us through this six-issue miniseries, but issue one is all about a high school loser who gets superpowers… which is absolutely smart and compelling storytelling.

Because after all, it’s pretty safe to say that if you’re reading a comic book, you were either a nerd who had a hard time in high school, or you were a jock who suffered a grievous concussion. And if you were the latter, you’re not reading a book as smart as Luther Strode.

And smart it is, because there is a LOT of groundwork laid here, and if you’re not careful, you could miss it.

Baseless Speculation For Fun and…

UPDATE 10/12/2011: The September sales numbers have been released, and OMAC #1 actually sold 33,581 copies. So let’s make that purely speculative magic cancellation number a little closer to 15,000 copies. 

Last week Diamond, the company that distributes comics to retailers like my local comic store owner (Who knows me by name and asks me if I would please stop asking to use his bathroom right after buying tentacle hentai), announced the preliminary wholesale sales numbers for September, which include all of the DC New 52 books except for the first print of Justice League #1, which came out in August. There are no specific copies-sold numbers yet, but OMAC came in at number 82, behind all the other New 52 books… including Justice League #1, which came out in… fucking August.

Which is a bummer to hear, since clearly OMAC is growing on us here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives… and even more of a bummer when Bleeding Cool reported last week that it was already in danger of being canceled:

And it’s written by co-publisher [Dan DiDio] and [sic] the man who has been pushing for the relaunch so long. So here’s the thing – will it seem just to anyone if one of the other 52 is cancelled [sic] due to lower sales and the publisher’s own comic, O.M.A.C., survives? I doubt it. Dan DiDio may be forced to sacrifice one of his own…

Wow. That’s depressing. Guess I’d better yank the title off my subscription pull list. At the very least, it’ll be another three bucks toward tentacle porn, or at least two bucks with another buck toward the sock cleaning bill. I guess when God closes a door, he opens a – what’s that, OMAC inker Scott Koblish?

O.M.A.C is not in danger of being cancelled.

GO ON…