I, Read This – Review Of I, Vampire #1

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: guy meets girl. Guy becomes vampire. Guy bites girl. Girl turns into psychotic hell bitch bent on world destruction. You have? Well, then apparently you’ve met my downstairs neighbor. Or, more likely, you read I, Vampire, either in its current release or in it’s original incarnation, as a short story series in House of Mystery, when it was written by J.M. DeMatteis, between 1981-1983.

The relaunch is written by Joshua Hale Fialkov, whose run of good luck will soon see him taking over writing duties at IDW for Doctor Who as well. He is joined on I, Vampire by Andrea Sorrentino, whose work can previously be seen on God Of War and X-Files: 30 Days Of Night, published by Wildstorm.

Now, to the important question: should you read this book? Answers (and spoilers) after the jump.

We Were Geeks Once, and Young

You know, I reread some of my reviews on this site where I complain that the writing on some comic book sucks, or that the plotting is hamfisted, or that the writer’s betrayed the characters and sometimes I forget that there was a time in my life when, if you’d told me that someday I’d be able to get thirty comic books a week, or that I’d be able to have a place where I could spend all my time just talking about comics, well… I’d have shrieked “Stranger danger!” and run like hell. Seriously: have you looked at yourself? You must have a van.

But seriously: it’s easy to forget how much this stuff has meant to me over the years, or how seriously some of it has affected me. Partially because I’ve simply gotten older, partially because I’ve reached legal drinking age, and partially because I’ve decided that if they diagnose me with cirrhosis while I’m in a blackout, it doesn’t count.

But sometimes I see something that reminds me why I love this shit so much, and why it hooked me from when I was a kid. Something like this video of a four-year-old boy discovering the horrible truth behind the parentage of Luke Skywalker for the first time:

Maintain Radio Silence

Due to continuing illness and other circumstances beyond our control, we are still working on this week’s podcast. We’re hoping to have it ready for later this evening or tomorrow.

If you normally spend your Monday lunch hour tuning in, we apologize for the inconvenience. If you absolutely can’t wait for the show, it is possible to simulate the experience of this week’s show by loudly snorting back snot and repeating “Scott Lobdell may be insane” in a nasal voice for 30 to 45 minutes.

Sorry for the delay.

Paradox On Infinite Crises

So as of last Wednesday, DC had finally released all of their New 52 books. The release had gone generally smoothly, and while there had been some admittedly bad books and a little bit of controversy here and there, the deed was done, and now fans of the DC Universe could relax in the knowledge that the biggest and most disturbing changes were over.

Sorry – what’s that, Dan?

Okay… um… QUIET INTERNET LET ME THINK!

No Nukes: The Fury of Firestorm: The Nuclear Men #1 Review

The one thing I’ll give the first issue of Gail Simone and Ethan Van Sciver’s first issue of The Fury of Firestorm: The Nuclear Men is that it compelled me to go on an all-day hunt for the 1978 first issue of Firestorm: The Nuclear Man.

I called my local comic store owner, who knows me by name and asks me not to come in to the store until my sinus infection passes and I stop dribbling green snot on the copies of Obama The Barbarian (or at least until I start pretending that I’m not doing it on purpose), but as good as he and his store is, he didn’t have what amounts to an obscure back issue just lying around. Or maybe he had ten of them, but allow me to refer you back to the whole snot-dribbling thing.

I had reached the point where I was willing to purchase it as my first digital comic from Comixology, who has the issue available for less than a buck… right up until I reached the point in my registration process when I discovered that they don’t take my credit card and worse: that I don’t own an iPad, so I couldn’t read their comics even if I wanted to. Sure, they have a Web reader, but if I’m going to blind myself I’m going to do it the old fashioned way: frantic masturbating. But I digress.

The new Firestorm made me want to find the old 1978 origin issue, which I haven’t read since I was seven or eight years old, because I have vague memories that Gerry Conway wrote the relationship between Ronnie Raymond and Professor Stein as an examination of the generation gap. And why is that something so important that it made me spend a drinking day hunting for a 33-year-old comic that’s nobody’s idea of a classic and when at the time I liked Nova better anyway?

Because if that element to the characters were, in fact, there, then I can extrapolate that Simone and Van Sciver made high school race relations a cornerstone of Firestorm in an attempt to modernize Conway’s original character intentions. If it isn’t, then this book just is a ham-fisted racial parable that’s a sparkly vampire away from being Twilight with nukes. Which is, actually, a book I would line up to buy. The new Firestorm? Not so much.

Geoff Johns Gives Aquaman A Hand: Review of Aquaman #1

According to USA Today, Geoff Johns has the following to say about Aquaman, the latest superhero to get the patented Johns Silver Age spit polish:

“Everybody around has at least heard of Aquaman, and they’ve probably heard all the jokes — the same jokes Aquaman’s heard — and they have their opinion on Aquaman,” the writer says. “Whether it’s good or bad, that’s what the book’s all about.”

All you need to know to jump into this book is

He talks to fish. And he swims.

What? I’m not going to need to bone up on my knowledge of The Elder Gods, the way I benefited from my previous knowledge of Greek mythology while reading Wonder Woman (which I still think was pretty awesome, but Rob resented having to, you know, know stuff)? I can just sit down and blow through this without having to think about it or have any real knowledge of the DC continuity? Really?

Ok.

Tell Me A Story. And Make It Good. – Review Of Teen Titans #1

Call me a pessimist, but after reading Scott Lobdell’s take on Starfire, Red Hood and Roy Harper in Red Hood And The Outlaws, I wasn’t entirely sure that Lobdell could write his own name correctly without the intervention of special education services. I mean, sure he’s been writing comics for over twenty years, but people also buy art made by zoo animals, so the fact that people kept buying his X-Men titles after Chris Claremont left Uncanny X-Men means they call Marvel fans Marvel Zombies for a reason places a, perhaps, suspect light on the buying habits of Joe Q. Public. However, I found myself pleasantly surprised by Teen Titans #1. Still, I’m going to proceed with caution; it’s just the first issue and we haven’t met all the players, yet.

Neither, Nor: All-Star Western #1 Review

I really wanted to like All-Star Western #1 because I was a big fan of Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray’s Jonah Hex, and if you were too, great to meet you! I was wondering who the other one was!

If you were a western fan the way I am – by which I mean you think “western” means “starring Clint Eastwood and directed by Sergio Leone” – then Jonah Hex was about the perfect comic. The stories were solid shoot-’em-ups, set in the wilderness and the boomtowns of the still-unsettled west, filled with saloons, crooked lawmen, morally-questionable entrepreneurs, and filthy, gunslinging outlaws. They were stories where then Men were Men and the Women were Whores with Hearts of Gold and Groins of Chlamydia.

And at the center of it all was Jonah Hex: a bounty hunter with a face like Clint if Clint never bothered to get that thing on his lip looked at. Fast with a gun, implacable, unstoppable. A man of few words and fewer baths.

You know: a fucking western.

Alas, to my disappointment, Jonah Hex was canceled last month to make way for DC’s New 52 and replaced with All-Star Western. All-Star Western stars Jonah Hex. However, All-Star Western is no Jonah Hex.