Hauntingly Familiar: Batwing #6 Review

Batwing has been one of the weirder and more interesting books of the New 52. It leverages Grant Morrison’s Batman Incorporated concept – Bruce Wayne finances local Batman franchises around the world, possibly because Batman believes that Starbucks are a superstitious, cowardly lot – and uses it to answer a question that only a few comics have tried to address: if there are superheroes, why don’t they go after real scumbags in places that make Gotham City look like Metropolis after a massive federal grant to finance free beer for the sad?

In a nutshell, Batwing puts a version of Batman in the Congo, smack in the middle of one of those hellholes that have been at civil war for so long they call it Tuesday. Batwing didn’t lose his parents to a killer, he lost them to AIDS and was drafted by one of those tinpot shitsplat warlords who whip up armies of children because children haven’t learned to say “no,” or, “that’s wrong”, or “tinpot shitsplat dictator.” Or at least that haven’t learned to say that last one with the level of derision it deserves.

So instead of a Batman moved to fight crime based on seeing a murder during his childhood, we have one who is moved to fight crime after being a murderer during his childhood. And he’s doing it in a country so loaded with corruption and casual daily horrible crime that it really feels like it needs a Batman. Which is a cool concept, and it generally works… but for a book that packs an extra punch by being based in a truly horrible place in real life, it doesn’t meet the level of realism I’ve come to expect from a Batman comic… which sounds stupid, but bear with me.

We Have A Hulk: Avengers Extended Super Bowl Trailer

If you watched the Super Bowl yesterday for the actual football game, you are moaning with disappointment over the Patriots loss, chortling in a self-satisfied manner over the Patriots loss, or a poor, doomed resident of New Jersey enjoying the first modern mention of your state that does not involve the terms, “guido,” “Snooki” or “taint-scented.”

However, if you’re one of the smart ones who watched just for the commercials, you saw a new, thirty-second spot for the upcoming Joss Whedon Avengers flick with a bunch of not previously seen footage. That was sweet… but you know what’s sweeter? The extended version Marvel released online with even more not previously seen footage. Which you can see after the jump…

My Dinner With Alan: Alan Moore’s Video Conference

We have a very busy day ahead of us in no way related to the world of comics, so here’s a little light lunchtime / screwing off from work / pretending to work by staring intently at your computer screen entertainment: a two and a half hour long interview with Alan Moore.

Fo some background: a little while back, American Splendor creator Harvey Pekar’s widow, Joyce Brabner, started a Kickstarter project to raise money for a statue of Harvey to be erected in Cleveland. One of the benefits offered for donations of a particular dollar amount was the chance to participate in a video conference with Alan Moore. At the time it just seemed like a neat opportunity to get face time with a legendary creator… nobody knew that it would turn into a neat opportunity to get face time with a legendary creator who just learned that DC Comics was doing a prequel to one of his masterworks.

With that said, reportedly Moore is even-tempered, pleasant and gracious in the video (No, I haven’t seen it yet. I live in Boston, which means yesterday was spent watching a truly depressing football game and that I am hung over… and therefore need something to watch today while pretending to work), and addresses subjects from his feud with Grant Morrison, to Before Watchmen, to how to do magic.

Flagsmasher Is A Stupid Name: Amazing Spider-Man #679 Review

God knows that The Amazing Spider-Man isn’t perfect – it gets sucked into events like most Big Two publisher books, and sometimes it uses valuable page real estate setting up the next event – whatever the hell that winds up being. But when it’s not being co-opted and fucked with by higher Marvel editorial for whatever crossover event the Architects bake up at their retreats (“I’ve got it! X-Men kick the Fantastic Four in the groin! Let’s try it on new guy Hickman! Hold him down, Aaron, or you’re next!”), it is one of the best, old-school comics you can get.

Amazing Spider-Man #679 is the second part of a two-and-out that at face value has no place in a book about a guy who, in his best stories, fights more street-level crime than cosmic stuff. If you’d told me that writer Dan Slott was going to do a story about Spider-Man that included time travel, continuity paradoxes and Madame Fucking Web, I’d have said that was stupid, and you were stupid for saying it.

But Slott takes those elements and does the smart thing with them: use them as simply a catalyst for the rest of the story. The entirety of the time travel involvement is to show the stakes  – the destruction of New York by a certain time – if Spider-Man can’t figure out what to do… and he does those things where Spidey should: on the streets.And after months and months of seeing Spidey battling Thor knockoffs in the Avengers, and traveling to other dimensions in FF, it’s nice to see Spider-Man just stomping dudes in an alley with a wisecrack for a change.

Question: Why Is Vandal Savage’s Daughter’s Last Name Sage?

According to the DC Blog, The Source, DC Universe Presents – a spotlight series that features a different hero in each arc – will begin, starting with issue 9, a new, 3-part story that introduces a heretofore unknown daughter of immortal Vandal Savage, Kass, uh, Sage. Kass is a profiler for the FBI who will need to reach out to daddy for help in order to solve a difficult case. Writing the series will be James Robinson (The Shade, Starman) and art will be handled by DC Universe Presents Deadman arc penciller, Bernard Chang with Ryan Sook on cover art.

So, is this character intended to be a complete retooling of Secret Six‘s Scandal Savage or a new character entirely?

More!

Double Entendre: Invincible #88 Review

In the latest issue of Invincible, our all-American boy hero is attacked by a raging one-eyed monster and gets a load sprayed in his face causing him to be infected with a deadly virus. I am not kidding. Superhero comics, everybody!

Invincible is a strange book for me to review because unlike any miniseries or most standard superhero comics, there is no jumping-on point. It’s an excellent comic book that does really interesting and unexpected things with standard superhero tropes – and has since the very first issue – but while this book has arcs, it is very much a long-form superhero novel, and it assumes that you’ve been reading from the first chapter. So even if I recommend this issue – and I will – it’s pointless, because if you haven’t read it from the beginning, it’ll be three years and about twelve trade paperbacks before you get here.

And, in fact, this book is an even worse place than usual for new readers to get started because it’s a mid arc story. The one-eyed monster in question is named Allen, and he is threatening to release a virus into Earth’s atmosphere to kill a race of superpowered aliens living secretly among us, all of whom can be identified by their universal big, Johnny Wadd Holmes 70s gay porno moustaches. I recognize that this sounds ridiculous, but it’s better than it sounds… frankly, it pretty much has to be.

Raider of the Last Arc: Voodoo Who?

EDITORS’ NOTE: Trebuchet has been a regular commenter here (“Regular” being a relative term) since we started in September, sticking with us as we spun off into writing about odd tangents with which he was unfamiliar: namely, comic books. However, Trebuchet has been sending us interesting private emails asking about what books we recommended and then commenting on them after he read them. He had the idea of picking up longer recent story arcs and reviewing the entire thing in one shot, which sounded cool. This is his first submission, and well: damn. 

So Crisis On Infinite Midlives is proud to introduce our latest contributor: Trebuchet! Please tell him it doesn’t suck so he’ll write some more!

Thanks Rob, now get off my lawn.

I was a casual comics collector back in the late 80s and early 90s, until other interests gradually overshadowed my weekly pilgrimages to the local comics shop. Since then, I’ve picked up a few things here and there at Rob’s suggestion, but generally speaking, I’ve been out of the game for almost 20 years.  I missed the advent of “event” stories, massive crossovers and “point one releases”.  I’ve missed the tragic deaths and resurrections of countless heroes and the births of others, so at the moment, I have no idea what the hell is going on in any of the superhero universes.

The New 52 seemed like a great opportunity to jump back on the train and start fresh. So shortly after the launch, I was perusing the shelves of my local comic store, where they have no idea who the hell I am and keep telling me that the Bingo hall is across the street, and anyhoo, the cover of Voodoo issue 4 jumped off the shelf at me, so I decided to take a chance on something I didn’t recognize.

It’s important to mention this because, I had absolutely no idea that Voodoo was an existing property, or that it was recently folded into DC from an Image / Wildstorm universe.  Hell, McFarlane and Liefeld were still working for scale when I got out of the game.  So yeah, I never heard of “Wild C.A.T.S.” (Lawn; off now!)

Playing With The Third Rail of Comics: J. Michael Straczynski on Before Watchmen

So DC’s announcement of the Before Watchmen series of prequel books has inspired some pretty heated reactions; hell, just the rumor of the thing did the same thing, so knowing it’s coming was bound to turn the comics Internet into stinking, sticky pissing match.

Many of the creators attached to the project have been quiet about it other than for statements in press releases and a few friendly media interviews. Many, except for J. Michael Straczynski, who is attached to write Nite Owl and Dr. Manhattan.

Now, as someone who makes it a point to go to the Spotlight on J. Michael Straczynski panel every year at SDCC, I can attest that the man speaks his mind and isn’t afraid to face down a skeptical public – last year was the year he had walked away from the Superman Walks The Earth Like Caine From Kung-Fu arc, and he certainly wasn’t shy about answering questions. If it was me, I’d have answered every question with, “Fuck you. You don’t like it? You write Superman. Dick,” but I recall him being more articulate than that.

The point is: JMS answers questions, speaks his mind, and has been a Netizen for years; the man was answering Babylon 5 questions on Usenet before Eternal September. You think he wouldn’t speak up about Before Watchmen?

Monkey With A Machine Gun: Winter Soldier #1 Review

EDITORS’ NOTE: This review, should you choose to accept it, contains spoilers. If read, the Web site will disavow any knowledge of how we fucked up the book for you. This message will self-destruct in five seconds. Assuming your browser has been hijacked by a virus. Get that looked at.

Dammit.

I was really looking forward to Winter Soldier by Ed Brubaker with Butch Guice on art. This is the team that brought us the aftermath of the Death of Captain America arc back in 2008, which, gimmick death doomed to reboot or not, hooked me into Captain America for the first time since I was a kid. And it kept me hooked in because it was damn good comics: interesting characters with a darker turn than many superhero comics – almost a spy story set in the Marvel Universe, although with 72% fewer Howling Commandos than most Marvel spy stories (Seriously: if a kid hides a porno mag in a Marvel book, you can count on Nick Fury and Dum Dum Dugan skulking in his closet to pick up the dead drop).

So I was psyched about Winter Soldier, because it put the creative band back together, in a story about a couple of powered-up secret agents working on the fringes of the 616. But ultimately, I found this first issue disappointing. Not enough to give up on it, but for a book produced by A-List talent that promised to live in the shadows, it has two things terribly wrong with it:

• Butch Guice’s storytelling, and:
• Gorilla with a machine gun.

Back To The Future

You know what? I want to see more prequels of classic comics. We can get J. Michael Straczynski writing a ten issue miniseries of Matt Murdock studying for the SATs – First issue in June, tenth issue, with plot by JMS and finished script by Howard Mackie sometime in 2019! We can get Matt Wagner doing Mage: The Hero Degraded, about Kevin Matchstick: preteen pantspisser! Frank Miller can do The Dark Knight Remedial, about a young Bruce Wayne groinkicking hippies!

Okay, clearly I’ve been drinking. And while Amanda was Johnny-On-the-Spot with a zero-day review of this week’s Punisher, the booze and this stack of books…

…means that this is the end of our broadcast day.

That said, it’s looking like a pretty damn good week. Here at the Crisis on Infinite Midlives: Brubaker’s and Phillips’s Fatale, Luther Strode, O.M.A.C., The Boys and Defenders are personal favorites. Plus we’ve got new Animal Man and Swamp Thing, Brubaker’s new Winter Soldier #1, Invincible and Detective Comics!

It’s a good take, but sadly: not a prequel in the bunch. Oh well, we’ll soldier through and do some reviews anyway… but first, we gotta read them. So until tomorrow: hurm.

I mean: so long, suckers!