Re-Reboot: Justice League International Annual #1 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: One spoiler! One spoiler!

I’ve got mixed feelings about Justice League International Annual #1 which is the final chapter of the book and which depicts the dissolution of the team. It has a lot going for it, including the return of writer Geoff Johns to the character of Booster Gold for the first time since 2008, and Dan DiDio’s return to writing O.M.A.C., which was one of the most underrated and unfairly cancelled books of the New 52 relaunch. It ends the story of the team decisively and fairly satisfyingly, if suddenly, and spins Booster, Blue Beetle and O.M.A.C. into new directions that could prove interestingly in the future… or in the case of Booster, in his past.

The problem is, the issue does it, in several cases, by introducing sudden and drastic changes in a couple of characters’ motivations and personalities, at least in relation to how they were depicted in recent issues of Justice League International. Which makes a certain amount of sense – you switch writers, you get new interpretations… or in the case of Booster, old interpretations. There is a sense in this issue of Johns and DiDio sweeping in to conclude the book and reclaim their characters, all while muttering, “No, no, no… Goddammit Dan Jurgens, you’re doing it wrong!”

Rebound: Justice League #12 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’ve had the blues, the reds and the pinks; one thing’s for sure: love spoils.

Well, that’s the end of the first year of the first post-reboot Justice League since Crisis On Infinite Earths back in 1986. That Justice League, at the end of its first year, had established itself as a solid action book with an interesting character-based humor element… and was already on its way to becoming far more focused on the comedy than it was on the action. It short, its best days were already gone by that first anniversary, having given or on its way to giving Guy Gardner a 70s sitcom level personality change, The Martian Manhunter an Oreo fetish, and Booster and Beetle a harebrained get-rich-quick scheme of the month.

So how does Justice League #12 compete? Well, by going in the opposite direction, coming out of an only okay character-based story while promising, in a Geoff Johns patented epilogue, action-packed tales including an attack by Atlantis, battles between Superman and Batman and Shazam, and a possible conflict between The Justice League and the recently-announced Johns and David Finch produced Justice League of America.

Oh, and it seems that we will spend some time witnessing Superman boning Wonder Woman. But you already knew that, and we’ll get back to that in a minute.

Anniversary Sex

I fully intended to put up a full review of Justice League #12 this evening to address the hookup between Superman and Wonder Woman, but I was unable to complete it in time because after reading it, I found myself unable to stop masturbating. Hell, as we speak I’m typing this with one hand, and you know what that means:

It means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

However, being the approximate one year anniversary of DC’s New 52 launch, it means we have a bunch of cool shit to go over this week. We have annual issues for Flash, Detective Comics, and the final issue of Justice League International, along with a new issue of The Goon, the final issue of Brian Azzarello’s Spaceman, and a pile of other cool stuff!

But before we can review them, I need to finish looking at Wonder Woman and Superman and cranking myself chafed. Oh, and we need time to read them. So until the ointment arrives…

See you tomorrow, suckers!

The Other… Hurts: First Clip From Animated The Dark Knight Returns

With all the recent excitement surrounding Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, it’s easy to forget that DC / Warner Bros. is busy putting the finishing touches on the TDKR movie that anyone who was reading comics in the late 1980s really cares about: the animated adaptation of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns.

As someone who owns the first print issues of The Dark Knight Returns, plus the first print of the trade paperback, and the Longmeadow Press leather-bound Complete Frank Miller Batman from 1989 (including both The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One, and no, it is not for sale), I am damned excited for this flick… and yet disappointed that we are getting it as an animated feature. Because any comic fan around 40 years old had dozens of conversations between 1986 and say, 1996, about who to cast in a live-action version of Dark Knight. My 1988 money was on Lee Marvin as Batman, Anthony Perkins as The Joker, and Christopher Reeve back as Superman… and given all their current availability, I guess I’ll stick with the animated version.

Anyway, DC and Warner Bros. have released the first complete clip from the first part of the movie (It’ll be two DVDs or Blu-Rays), and despite being only a minute or so long, I think you’ll see at least one familiar image… from both The Dark Knight Returns and The Dark Knight Rises.

Semi-Strong Batch: Batman Incorporated #3 Review

Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it? Well, it wasn’t so bad in relation to the July shootings that led to Batman Incorporated #3 being delayed for a month. From a storytelling standpoint, it’s another matter, but I’ll get back to that.

Batman Incorporated #3 has a lot going for it, and that is a surprising thing for a guy who hasn’t been digging Grant Morrison’s Batman stories to say. Morrison delivers us a 70s style detective story, with Batman spending a large part of the issue undercover – Batman doesn’t appear in full costume in a single panel of this issue –  trying to root out Leviathan and Talia Al Ghul. It’s not a perfect issue, but it’s generally a refreshing throwback to Neal Adams / Dennis O’Neil stories from the 70s, with the weirdness for the sake of weirdness that Morrison can’t seem to help himself from chucking into his Batman stories dialed back to a dull roar. Not no roar, but it’s subdued enough for me to alternate between hoping Morrison might be mellowing, and suspecting that his mescaline dealer coughed up a weak batch.

With that said, this issue suffers from a few storytelling problems, and requires a few voluntary leaps in logic if you want to truly enjoy it… which means that the “weak batch” theory is getting more of a foothold with me.

You Bust It Out. You Light A Match: Superman And Wonder Woman On Match.com

You might have heard that, starting in Justice League #12, writer Geoff Johns and artist Jim Lee will be starting a storyline where Superman and Wonder Woman take their relationship, shall we say, to the next level. They go from friends, to friends with benefits, provided my “benefits” you mean “The Kryptonian Armpit Gank.”

We didn’t jump on this story here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives because, after nearly 40 years of reading comics, this isn’t our first rodeo – we’ve seen these two crazy kids bump overidealized comic book uglies in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Strikes Again, and saw it intimated in Mark Waid and Alex Ross’s Kingdom Come, plus if you can spell the words “comic” and “slash” and find the enter key on your laptop, you can get all the super sucky-fucky you can shake your stick at. Besides, these things come and go in the comics – remember when Batman almost chucked the Bat Meat to Zatanna? These things never last, and we figured we’d address it in our review of the issue.

That is, until DC decided to hype the story by setting up profiles for Superman and Wonder Woman on Match.com.

New DC Nation Shorts Trailer!

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: DC Nation makes me look forward to Saturday morning cartoons again!

This new trailer of upcoming shorts features Bane, Amethyst, Black Lightning, goofy takes on Green Lantern, Shazam, The Flash and his Rogues Gallery, and Doom Patrol, along with a whole bunch of other awesome, if not completely readily identifiable, clips.

I think I saw John Kricfalusi-esque animation in there. Would stuff by the actual man be too much to hope for?

DC Nation runs every Saturday morning on The Cartoon Network, beginning at 10am EST.

via WB’s Comic-Con

Stunt Flying: Rocketeer: Cargo of Doom #1 Review

I had mixed feelings about Rocketeer: Cargo of Doom going into it, because as much as I love the character, it really belonged almost totally to creator Dave Stevens. Sure, I’ve been enjoying the Rocketeer Adventures books over the past few months, but many of those stories took place around the Rocketeer universe, featuring other characters and how the presence of The Rocketeer affected them. These short stories felt like tributes to Stevens’s character and work, allowing the original to stand on its own without new creators jumping right into that sandbox.

Rocketeer: Cargo of Doom, however, is a full-length miniseries focused firmly on The Rocketeer and his friends themselves. This puts the creative team of writer Mark Waid and artist Chris Samnee right onto Stevens’s turf, and when it comes to Dave Stevens, we’re talking about a guy who was such a perfectionist that he only came out with two long form Rocketeer stories between 1982 and 1995. So for a long-time Rocketeer fan, who owns the original movie poster and who still carries his keys on a Rocketeer keyring, a poorly-done Rocketeer story would be a catastrophe; a rotten cash grab on the level of the worst of Before Watchmen, only with an added distasteful element of necrophilia thrown in to boot.

Thankfully, Rocketeer: Cargo of Doom is a generally worthy addition to the Rocketeer canon, that continues Stevens’s own addition of period-appropriate pulp canon to the original aviation-based story, with a healthy dose of flying action, a respect toward the vocation of pilot in the early days of flying, and the most dysfunctional relationship since Judd Winick said, “okay” to Catwoman. Of course, being a period pulp adventure story written after 1982, it also borrows some elements heavily from Raiders of The Lost Ark, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

Disconcerting Vibrations: DC Announces Justice League of America at Fan Expo Canada

There is a convention going on in Toronto this weekend called Fan Expo Canada, which we were not able to attend since we are still paying off our attendance at San Diego Comic-Con, I have no valid passport, and because of that 1991 incident where the Montreal Police were forced to declare that particular location of Peel’s Pub “Unfit for human habitation” after five pitchers of Labatts and a plate of their poutine like it’s my fault that there was already a dude locked in the bathroom when the gravy and beer did what it does.

Anyhoo, there was a convention this weekend, and members of the DC Comics staff were there, and there was a pretty big announcement: writer Geoff Johns and current Batman: The Dark Knight artist David Finch will be collaborating on a new book: Justice League of America.

Original Sin: Wolverine #312 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m the best there is at what I do. But what I do is spoil the living shit out of comic books.

When I was but a young lad, growing up in 1980’s America, things were different. We woke up, put on our parachute pants and our high-top Reeboks, strapped on our Walkmen to listen to the Big Band sounds of Dokken and Triumph, and walked to school uphill through the snow (okay, it was flake cocaine). We didn’t have your damn iPhones or your methamphetamine extracts or your Carly Rae Jepsen (although we did have Madonna; we could have done something about that for you kids before it was too late, and we are collectively very, very sorry)… and we sure as hell didn’t have a Wolverine with an origin story. Not like you little bastards today, who know Wolverine’s name is really James Howlett, and that he grew up in the 19th Century, and what his Weapon X helmet looked like; by God, when we read about Wolverine, we knew his name was Logan, that he was from Canada, and that’s all!

Yup, all we had was a Wolverine with a mysterious past, which kept things simple, exciting, and most importantly: difficult to fuck up with stupid shit. And having read Wolverine #312, I can say with some authority that we had it better.