Early Retirement: Ed Brubaker Leaving Marvel Comics

It’s been an eventful week at the big two this week when it comes to high profile creators stepping away. Earlier this week, Rob Liefeld left DC in what could be called “colorful circumstances”… but which most people would call a petulant display of “Fuck you, Mom! You’re not the boss of me!” via Twitter. And while an argument could be made, given similar (albeit lower-keyed) sentiments about post-New 52 practices by DC Editorial have been voiced by creators like John Rozum and Gail Simone, that maybe there is a logic behind a public airing of grievances, all I can say is, that as a guy who recently changed jobs, I find the airing of dirty laundry in public, and the burning of bridges, to be incomprehensible to me. Don’t get me wrong, I did it – once – and it basically guaranteed that I could never work in that particular industry again. But then again, I was never a particular name in that industry, so there was no reason for anyone to try to keep me, despite the fact that, drunken snit or no, at least I never drew tits on Captain America. But I digress.

Turns out Liefeld isn’t the only high profile creator walking away from a high-profile assignment: yesterday, also via Twitter, Winter Soldier and Captain America writer, and Marvel Architect Ed Brubaker, announced that his current tenure at Marvel is drawing to a close:

To end all speculation: Cap 19 and Winter Soldier 14 are my last Marvel books for now. But I may return, because Marvel has been my home.

— brubaker (@brubaker) August 24, 2012

Brain Bleach – Naked Stan Lee

Yup. I saw it. I can’t unsee it. Now I’m sharing it with you:

Hey ladies! Check out my Hulk!

You can check out the specifics of why this is a thing that happened over on Sean Howe’s Tumblr. And, you can actually purchase Batman Vs. The Incredible Hulk, which is also a crazy thing that apparently happened, over on Amazon. Most importantly, you can purchase enough whiskey to make you forget that picture over at your local liquor store. I know that’s on my list of things to do right after I hit “post” on this.

You’re welcome.

Both Alive And Dead: Dr. Manhattan #1 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: All the atoms in the test chamber are screaming at once. The spoilers… the spoilers are taking me to pieces.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I think it bears repeating: Adam Hughes’s Dr. Manhattan #1 cover looks like the Good Doctor is blasting Silk Spectre right in the shitter.

Now that we have the pleasantries out of the way, we can talk about the issue itself. And a big part of me expected to not like this book. Writer J. Michael’ Straczynski’s work on fellow Before Watchmen title Nite Owl has been disappointing on a good day, and an irritating retcon of various elements of Watchmen continuity as a whole, on a bad one. Further, this book lives and dies based on Manhattan’s preoccupation on quantum theory, which is something that I can’t remember the character ever obsessing over in Watchmen, but which makes sense since Wikipedia’s article on quantum mechanics shows that not only was quantum theory viable in the mid 20th century, but that even in the early 21st century I am still too stupid to understand quantum theory.

With that said, this is an engaging book that captures the ADD nature of Dr. Manhattan’s inner dialogue in a manner that Watchmen fans will find familiar, fills out some of the backstory to the character that makes some sense, and closes on an intriguing mystery that makes me want to come back to see how it plays out. At the same time, it also somewhat overplays those character traits in ways that don’t make sense for a character who can see the totality of time, instills motivations on Manhattan that have never been mentioned before, and uses the word “box” more than an 1974 porno loop.

That’s the hell of quantum mechanics – all possibilities are real, and influenced by the observer.

How To Torpedo Friends And Napalm Bridges: Rob Liefeld Loudly Quits DC Comics

Earlier this evening, an monumentous event happened in the comics world that can only be adequately described by the chroniclers of the two extremes of human morality and mortality: King James and Dante:

Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.

– King James Bible (Cambridge Ed.)

Try not to suck any dick on your way across the parking lot!

– Dante, Clerks

In short: Rob Liefeld has left DC Comics, in a fashion in which we all wish we could leave our employers: by apparently screeching, “Fuck you, I quit!” and telling the world the boss sucks on Twitter.

What’s In The Box?

I have not yet read J. Michael Straczynski’s first issue of Dr. Manhattan, and I am frankly afraid to. Is it an interesting take on Manhattan’s quantum views of time, or is it a copout layering of populist understanding of quantum physics on top of a character that has absolutely no basis in quantum physics? Will it be a reimagining of the character’s very underpinnings, or will it be Straczynski saying, “Everything you thought about this character is wrong, even if everything you thought was that basic underpinning of the character!” Will it be a dense story like Babylon 5, or will it be a dense story like “Superman walks across America like a common wino”?

Frankly, until I open it, it’s all of those things, none of those things, and / or an Archie comic bound in the wrong cover. So until we can read it, this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But still, it looks like it’s shaping up to be a decent week of comics here. We’ve got Brian Michael Bendis’s and Mark Bagley’s latest issue of Brilliant, the first long-form Rocketeer story in damn near 20 years by Mark Waid and Chris Samnee, The Amazing Spider-Man‘s 50th anniversary issue, the issue of Batman: Incorporated that we’ve been waiting a damn month to see because someone’s holding a gun, and a bunch of other good-looking stuff!

But until we have a chance to read them, we can’t review any of them. So until later…

See you tomorrow, suckers!

Everything Old: All-New X-Men #1 Preview Art By Stuart Immonen

We haven’t devoted a whole hell of a lot of pixels to the Marvel Now! initiative of re-imaging and recasting some books, and restarting others, all with newly mixed up creative teams, partially because thanks to the sheer volume of teaser posters and creative team teases Marvel’s been putting out about the changes since SDCC, and partially because it all seems kinda familiar (but Marvel doesn’t reboot! And Spider-Man has always been an unmarried highly-paid research scientist! And we have always been at war with Eastasia!).

That said, a couple of the books that have been announced are exciting me more than others, and one of them is All-New X-Men, written by Brian Michael Bendis with art by Stuart Immonen. The concept is pretty interesting and somewhat novel: the original X-Men as created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby – Iceman, Cyclops, Angel, Beast and Jean Grey as teenaged school children – travel forward in time and space (and hopefully Bendis remembers the “space” part, otherwise the X-Men will wake up gasping with their blood boiling somewhere off the shoulder of Orion) to the current Marvel Universe and meet their modern counterparts. Meaning that these five idealistic teenagers who firmly believe they are on the side of the angels in trying to save the world will have to come to terms with the fact that they grow up to be the semi-psychotic angst-ridden spastics who started Avengers Vs. X-Men.

Part of my excitement for this title, despite not being the X-Men fan on the staff, is the sheer number of cool, obvious storytelling opportunities this crossover will provide. I’m no comic writer, but I’m guessing we’re going to be seeing:

Image United: Supreme #66 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s Super – nah; it’s just spoilers.

Alan Moore’s run on Supreme, back when it was part of Rob Liefeld’s Awesome Comics imprint in the mid-90s, was a classic of the superhero genre in an era that brought us The Spider-Man Clone Saga, the death of Superman, and nearly every other comic book that wasn’t Starman, Hitman, Preacher or Channel Zero (my pull list was a lot shorter and cheaper between, say, 1995 and 2000). It was a simple concept: examine the character of Superman using a pastiche character, using versions of Superman’s Silver and Bronze age history as canon, while placing that character in the modern world of the 1990s, all about fifteen or so years before All-Star Superman was a glimmer in Grant Morrison’s baggie of peyote.

What with Liefeld resurrecting the comics under his Awesome imprint under the Image proper label, bringing back Supreme was a gimme, especially considering Alan Moore’s script for issue 63 had been written, but never produced, what with Awesome folding back in 2000. Moore’s final issue dropped a couple of months back, with Image partner Erik Larsen taking over writing and art in the subsequent issue. And Larsen is no Alan Moore. No one is… but in Supreme #66, he gets the broad tones and feelings right while updating Supreme for the 2010s. The question is: is that enough?

The answer is: kinda.

The Avengers: Making You Gag Since 2012

The Avengers is scheduled to be released on DVD and Blu-Ray on September 25th, and what with this being 2012, that means that pirated rips of the four-disc set are reportedly starting to appear in the darker corners of the Internet.

This further means that some of the special features from the disc, including deleted scenes and extra documentaries and production clips, are beginning to trickle to YouTube, where they pop up for a while before being inevitably smacked down by Disney for copyright violations.

So if you want to see, say, a deleted scene fleshing out the relationship between Hypnotized Hawkeye and Loki, or maybe the gag reel from the movie? Well, I’d click through the jump and check it out sooner rather than later…

Dickpunch: Avengers Vs. X-Men #10 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m just going to spoil the Earth, like Kane from Kung Fu.

Even if Avengers Vs. X-Men goes the way of such other luminary comics crossover events as Contest of Champions, Atlantis Attacks, or Heroes Reborn, meaning in order to remember it one needs to find it on Wikipedia, it will have accomplished one thing that no other event in Marvel Comics history has accomplished, and which is long, long overdue.

In issue ten, it showed Cyclops getting the everfucking shit kicked out of him while a baldheaded nerd points and laughs, and the he goes running for his Mommy. Well, not exactly, but close enough to make me giggle myself into a halfway decent erection.

Yes, I hate Cyclops just that much.

Unlicensed Brain Surgery By Amateurs

We are in the middle of some pretty significant site maintenance today – a man with a hangover should not be this deep into a MYSQL database is all that I’m saying – which means that you may see some occasional site outages over the next several hours, including strange changes in images on the page, and frankly, this Web site might – might – speak an unholy word.

However, while we perform delicate computer brain surgery after a night of reckless Car Bomb shots, please enjoy this clever reinterpretation of the truly horrible song Call Me Maybe by an outfit called NoBatStache.