We Admit Nothing

It’s been a big week for Crisis On Infinite Midlives. We started the week as we normally do: wth a crippling hangover. And we ended it in the way we always dreamed: with a “Good job, champs!” message from DC Comics! Assuming that by “Good job,” you mean “Cease and desist.” And that by “champs” you mean “Scofflaw spastics.” And that by “comics,” you mean “legal.”

Either way, what’s done is done. It’s a new year, and the first Wednesday of selfsaid new year, which means that legal entanglements or no, this:

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But even though it means very few appearances in front of an intellectual property judge, it means a week of good comics: we’ve got a new The Boys, Defenders, Action Comics, Lone Ranger, AND… most importantly (to Amanda): Peanuts #1.

But let’s face reality: be it new comics or reprints, C&D or T&A, before we write about them, we gotta read them.

So while we get up to Mach 1 speed and remember how to recite Amendment 5: see you tomorrow, suckers!

Extra Pulp: Black Panther #527 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: And once again, one last review of last week’s books before the comic stores open… and somehow once again, it’s about Black Panther. Although it might seem like it, Black Panther is not the last book I read every month. It’s just that since it comes out a week before Hawk & Dove, I need it to steel myself for the inevitable.

Black Panther has been canceled; the last issue of David Liss’s run is in two months, closing out the currently running Kingpin of Wakanda storyline. Which is a Goddamned shame on a couple of fronts, the first being that Liss has put together a great run of comics. The second being that, after all this time – I got an inkling of it back when I reviewed issue #524 a couple months back, but I didn’t totally get it – I’ve finally figured this book out. It’s old-school pulp, pure and simple.

A rich guy with a background in adventuring in the jungle, genetic superiority to normal men, who’s battling to defeat colonial encroachment? That’s Doc Savage when it isn’t Tarzan or Alan Quartermain. A rich guy who puts together a team of specialists to battle corruption in an urban jungle? That’s The Shadow –  yeah, okay; it’s also Batman, but if you look back at Detective Comics #27, Batman was also The fucking Shadow. Not to be confused with fucking The Shadow; that was Margo Lane. Or maybe Alec Baldwin. But I digress.