Under New Management: New Avengers #34 Review

Editor’s Note: Those spoilers are some bad mother – shut your mouth! I’m just talking about spoilers…

Well, that’s it. With New Avengers #34, Brian Michael Bendis is (for now) finished with the Avengers books. And, as he did in the core Avengers book, he uses this issue as an opportunity to repair all the toys he played with and damaged during his time on the floor, and clears the decks for Jonathan Hickman and Steve Epting to give New Avengers its third first issue in less than ten years, making New Avengers only one comeback short of Lindsey Lohan in that same time period.

With multiple comic series, crossover events, and an Avengers movie under our belts since Bendis started on Avengers, it’s easy to forget that this all really started about a decade ago, when I walked into my local comic store where they know me by name and ask me to stop yanking at my belt and screeching, “Avengers Disassemble!”, and saw a book named Alias that I bought for Amanda, thinking it was a comic adaptation of the new Jennifer Garner ABC TV series. It most certainly was not. It was a crime story taking places on the dirty fringes of the Marvel Universe, involving B-Lister Scott Lang and the first real rehabilitation of Luke Cage since his introduction (we’re gonna claim convenient amnesia about Brian Azzarello’s attempt to turn Cage into a mix of 50 Cent and Leone’s Man With No Name).

Bendis brought Jessica Jones and Luke Cage with him into The New Avengers, and it is somewhat fitting that he closes out his run with them here… with a pretty exciting and well-drawn mystical battle thrown in to boot.

New Beginnings And Selective Amnesia: FF #1 Review

The biggest problem I have with FF #1 isn’t the characterizations or the ideas behind the story or the dialogue, all of which are, frankly, realistic enough to engage and sometimes even delightful (although I have no idea who Darla Deering – Ms. Thing – is, and I really thought that Scott Lang was dead). No, the biggest problem here is the invisible hand of Marvel Editorial. Because they are the reason that, all while reading this issue, I kept thinking, “Yeah, but Spider-Man really should be here.”

But let’s forget about that right now and talk about what is here. And what is here is pretty damned entertaining, if little but a giant wad of exposition wrapped up in fun dialogue and pretty pop art.

FF #1, written by Matt Fraction with pencils by Mike Allred, spins directly out of Fraction’s recent Fantastic Four #1, where the team decided to go on an exploration mission for a year that, in relativistic terms, should keep them away from Earth for four minutes. So this issue involves each member of the Fantastic Four picking a surrogate to lead the Future Foundation in their stead. For four minutes. Because of course they’ll only be gone for four minutes! This is, after all, a mission planned by Reed Richards! You know, the genius who once said, “Hey, why don’t we just steal the rocket? What’s the worst thing that could possibly happen?”

Delayed Hatred

It has been an interesting week for comics and genre pop culture, where many books of generally good quality came out, and despite the wealth of good sci-fi, horror and alternate universe comics, combined with the idea that Joseph Gordon-Levitt might appear in the Justice League move as Batman and that the writer of The Empire Strikes Back might be writing a new Star Wars movie… all anyone can seem to talk about is Dan Slott and how he’s cackling while he’s fingerblasting the almost 700-issue history of Spider-Man, despite having never given Peter Parker six arms nor cloning him once.

But, for good or ill, The Amazing Spider-Man #699 doesn’t come out for another week. But regardless of the anticipation and the hatred and the whinging, it is still Wednesday, and that means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But new Spider-Man or no, it’s still an interesting-looking week, what with the first issue of the new Matt Fraction / Mike Allred FF #1, plus a new Ed Brubaker / Sean Phillips Fatale, and the best of the Before Watchmen books: Amanda Conner’s and Darwyn Cooke’s Silk Spectre, and one of Brian Michael Bendis’s last (if not his very last) Avengers books!

But, as usual, before we can talk about any of them, we need time to read them. So until that time…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

World Building: Man of Steel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt May Be Involved In Justice League Movie

Update, 7 p.m.: According to Sydney Bucksbaum at Hollywood.com, Gordon-Levitt’s representatives have “refuted the rumor entirely.” Of course, one time I had representatives “refute” the “rumor” that I had “run over” an “elderly person” while I was “hammered.” At least they did until my representatives negotiated a final “plea agreement.” So for now, I guess this will remain, as it did this morning, a cool-sounding rumor.

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Ever since Marvel Studios’ Avengers movie made about a bazillion dollars earlier this year, it was all but a foregone conclusion that Warner Bros. would be coming out with a Justice League movie. You know, unless for some reason they hate money. Watching a movie about a superhero team make beaucoup delores, to the point it has only been beaten by blue people fucking or young lovers freezing to death in the frigid North Atlantic (again: blue people fucking. Pow! Thank you folks, I’ll be here all week! I work here!), and then leaving your own superhero property on the table, would be less a poor management decision than terminal self-destructive whiskey insanity.

The Justice League movie has quietly been in pre-production since Warner Bros. won the latest battle for the rights to Superman against the estate of Superman creator Joe Shuster about a month ago, but without a lot of detail as to how they were gonna proceed. Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy had ended, with both Nolan and Batman actor Christian Bale saying pretty strongly that they wouldn’t be involved in anything else Batman-related. Zack Snyder was deep into production on Superman movie Man of Steel, but he’d said back in March of last year that Man of Steel wouldn’t be part of any Justice League movie. So all initial indications were that Warner Bros. was planning pull a reverse of Marvel Studios, and just make a Justice League movie, spinning individual heroes’ movies off of that.

But that was then, and $623,279,547 Avengers movie dollars ago. Today, it looks like there might be some moves to make Justice League tie not only into Man of Steel… but into Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy.

Bait And Switch: Batwoman #14 Review

Despite the fact that the book has been on my pull list at my local comic store, where they know me by name and threaten to ban me if I even remotely try to imply that some douchebags might use “Batwoman” as a verb, I came into Batwoman #14 nearly blind, since I rarely actually read the book anymore.

Oh sure, I always look at the book, at least when J. H. Williams III draws it, because it is one of the most beautifully drawn and laid-out monthly books you can find on the shelves these days. Williams has a unique panel layout, ways of tying panels together, and often uses small panels for storytelling that, when you rack focus backwards, hides truly gorgeous backgrounds hiding in the bleed, that you’ll just not see elsewhere. It’s an awesome looking book… problem is, I just don’t find Williams to be all that compelling a writer. His opening arc from last September was actually the long-solicited and often-delayed Batwoman mini-series that was originally solicited for February, 2011, which meant that by the time it actually debuted, it was set in the pre-New 52 universe, and just didn’t quite fit.

Further, the stories just didn’t grab me; a Bat-family hero working almost completely separately from the main Bat titles, with stories weighted heavily toward the supernatural, simply didn’t hook me in. You might notice that we’ve never reviewed an issue of Batwoman here, mostly because none of them were good – or bad – enough to really whip any of us up enough to sit down and write several hundred words about them. In general, they looked great, with stories that didn’t stick to the brain, and while there was almost always a visual in each issue to make you stop and go, “Wow!”, those visuals weren’t enough to make the stories any more memorable.

However, I decided to make an extra effort to get into Batwoman #14, mostly because of that cover, which, to someone only initiated enough into the series to know that the protagonist often battles with the supernatural, implied the promise that perhaps Batwoman and guest-star Wonder Woman might be dealing with, or perhaps fighting, Jonah Hex.

Yeah, that’s not what happened. Not that there isn’t some good stuff here, but the cover writes a promise that the story doesn’t cash.

Even Hitler Thinks Dan Slott Has Ruined The Amazing Spider-Man?

While we here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives home office, did not feel that The Amazing Spider-Man #698 was by any means horrible, we also weren’t exactly lining up to sing its praises either. Solidly written characterizations aside, it’s a big deal to play the Freaky Friday card on your protagonist, right as you’re about to end the run of a publication that has been in existence since 1963.

To that end, there are a lot of folks out there who are pretty upset about it, even… Hitler? Yes, it would seem so. I Googled it myself after coming across this in Dan Slott’s Twitter feed yesterday:

Showed the Dan Slott/Hitler meme to my folks this morning. Dad was in tears. “I’ve never laughed so hard at Hitler!” #SuckItMelBrooks

— Dan Slott (@DanSlott) November 24, 2012

Lo and behold, someone had enough free time on their hands to update the Hitler Reacts meme.

I had no idea that Hitler was such a closet Spidey fan! Check it out, after the jump!

The Neverending Reboot: Indestructible Hulk #1 Review

One thing I have learned over 36 years of reading comic book is that, for a character who has been a linchpin of Marvel Comics and who has had some of the greatest crossover success of any comic book character, appearing in cartoons, a prime time television show and three major motion pictures just in my lifetime… nobody ever seems to like The Hulk all that much at any given time.

There is no other major comic character that I can think of that has been rebooted, retrofitted and overhauled more often than The Hulk. Just off the top of my head, Hulk has been green and stupid, grey and stupid, grey and smart, grey and smart and a mafia enforcer, green again and a genius, green and stupid again, green and a gladiator, green and a world conqueror, and one time, green in white clown makeup getting his ass kicked by Batman. And when it comes to Bruce Banner, he has been Bruce Banner, David Banner, a wimpy genius, a tactical master, an abused child, a mad scientist, an itinerant wandering hobo, and the leader of government agencies. If a creator came into, say, Superman and said, “You know what would make Superman better? If Clark Kent was a street hustler, and if Superman wore doilies and shit napalm,” there would be nerd riots in the streets around every comic store… but when it comes to The Hulk, the attitude seems to be, “Fuck it. Can’t be any worse than what the last guy did.”

It seems that every time a new creator gets his hands on The Hulk, his or her first action is to look at what came before, boldly state, “Nah, that ain’t right,” and start slapping together a new current status quo. Just a month or so ago, Jason Aaron finished a run where Banner had been separated from Hulk, Banner went nuts and spent a while doing fruitless genetic experiments, a reasonably intelligent Hulk boned Red She-Hulk, Banner and Hulk reunited to fight Dr. Doom, all in a storyline that was packed with big, goofy action and fun. But that was a month and a creator ago, which in Hulk terms means it might as well have never happened.

So yes, the new creative team on Indestructible Hulk #1 has, indeed, looked at Aaron’s run and seemingly said, “Nah, that ain’t right,” and is taking Banner and Hulk in a different direction. Normally, this would be so much the norm it almost wouldn’t register; just another case of a new guy fucking around until he gets bored or sales tank and the next guy comes into to fuck around. However, this time around the writer is Mark Waid – you know, the guy who looked at 25 years of noir stories in Daredevil and said, “Nah, that ain’t right,” and turned the book in a direction that has generally been as entertaining as any Daredevil story since Frank Miller made Daredevil a noir character.

So while this is yet another reboot for Hulk, whether we needed it or not, Waid gives us an interesting new start, with a fresh take on Banner and some of his motivations, a good take on the tension that being around Banner can cause straight out of the Avengers movie, and a fresh “relationship” between Banner and The Hulk… not that it doesn’t have some problems.

Raising Wyoming: Ultimate Spider-Man #17 Review

You ever get a shit assignment at work? Someone pulls you off of your normal duties and you get asked to work on some bullshit project that was someone else’s bonehead idea, and maybe you try to argue that maybe this thing isn’t something that you should be spending your time on, and that maybe it will totally fuck up what you were trying to accomplish on your primary project, but you get told that this is the way it is, and it’s their way or the highway. So you grind your teeth, you take on the assignment, and since you are a fucking professional, you do the best you can with what you’ve been given to work with, while trying your best to keep your original work from dying on the vine.

Welcome to Ultimate Spider-Man #17, a continuation and integral part of the Ultimate Universe’s United We Stand crossover, a story where Captain America has been elected President of The United States in a write-in campaign, where Hydra has taken over big parts of the country, terrorists roam the streets of New York, and Wyoming is some kind of dead zone / no man’s land where anyone who chooses to go there is taking a dangerous, useless risk. Actually, that’s pretty much how Wyoming is in the real world, but that’s not the point.

The point is that United We Stand is a big, goofy, nonsensical shoot-em-up that has made a bunch of schoolyard, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we $WILDEST_THIRD_GRADE_IDEA?” choices along the way. And it has occurred smack in the middle of writer Brian Michael Bendis’s efforts to create and nurture a new Spider-Man, one who attends a private school, who has a loving, if complicated, family, and is learning about what it means to be not only a hero, but to be a decent person. And smack in the middle of those efforts, now he needs to fight War Machines over Wyoming with Giant Woman and Falcon under direct orders of the President of The United States. You know, Captain America. Which flies in the face of the slow paced (admittedly, sometimes seemingly glacially paced), character-driven story that Bendis has been building since last year.

And it is to Bendis’s credit that even though he has to deal with this big, goofy situation, he keeps a tight focus on the characters of Miles and his family, while delivering enough big thrills to make it arguably the most effective issue of this crossover to date.

Nerd Rage: Amazing Spider-Man #698 Review

Editor’s Note: With Great Spoilers, Comes Great… Spoilers. Yeah, there’s no way around it, this review is loaded with spoilers. Proceed accordingly.

Writer Dan Slott has been promising for months that Dying Wish, the final story arc of The Amazing Spider-Man before it closes up shop with issue #700 and is reborn as something called The Superior Spider-Man, would be so incendiary that he would have to go into hiding, and that he would, as he said on Twitter a few days ago, “Ruin your childhood.”

Well, that “final” story line opens in The Amazing Spider-Man #698. And while I don’t want to kill Slott because of the opening to this story (I want him dead for completely different reasons. He knows what he did), I will go on record that he’d better follow this up with one Goddamned good explanation and iron-clad timelines… and I still think it might end up going the way I originally predicted a month and a half ago.

Another Editor’s Note: Seriously, there are spoilers pouring out of this thing after the jump. I have the Bolivian Viral Tourettes Flu, am loaded with antihistamines and anti-diarrhetics, and therefore my self-control is compromised. By the way, the chick in The Crying Game had a dick. See? I am NOT to be trusted.

U. S. (Biological) Agent

Tomorrow is American Thanksgiving, which means that here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office, Amanda is busy mashing potatoes or candying yams or whatever the hell people do when they cook Thanksgiving dinner. And in the meantime, I am upholding my annual Thanksgiving tradition of twitching uncontrollably with the Guatamalan Eplileptic Stink Muskrat Flu.

That means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But there’s some good stuff in there for a long holiday weekend; The first issue of Dan Slott’s The Amazing Spider-Man that he has claimed on Twitter will ruin our childhoods, the first issue of The Indestructible Hulk, the first issue of IDW’s American adaptation of Judge Dredd, a new issue of The Goon, and a ton of other cool stuff! Like compulsive shivering! And dry heaves  – that’s plural, baby!

But before we can write about any of them, we first need a chance to read them, and to struggle to string together two quarter hours that don’t include the trembling shits. So until that time…

…please kill me! I mean: have a Happy Thanksgiving, and dehydration permitting, see you tomorrow, suckers!