For Great Justice – Review Of Vibe #1

Vibe #1 drops into stores today and, if you’re like many of my LCS’s core demographic, you responded with a polite, “That’s nice”, blinked nonchalantly, and then went looking for Hellblazer #300 because you are a SERIOUS PERSON, GODDAMMIT and that the LAST REAL JOHN CONSTANTINE ISSUE before DC further neuters him and…went on to some post traumatic whimpering before finally pulling yourself together to look through the spoils of this week’s stack. Turns out, once you put your wailing and gnashing of teeth over the the Constantine thing aside and read Geoff Johns and Andrew Kreisburg’s Vibe, it’s actually pretty good.

If you are like many casual, or perhaps not even so casual, comics readers, unless you were a fan of Justice League Detroit in the 80s your only real brush with Vibe was in cameos on the television show Justice League Unlimited and on Cartoon Network’s DC Nation shorts. Behold:

Yeah, you’d take that character seriously too. And, you wouldn’t be alone in your opinion. The original Vibe was killed off by J. M. DeMatteis to try and cap the end of the JLD era and George Pérez disliked Vibe so much that he refused to draw anything more than Vibe’s legs falling off a panel in the mega crossover JLA/Avengers – and Pérez knows a thing or two about teen superheroes.

So, why does this new iteration of Vibe work?

Warning – Ahead there be spoilers!

And You Sir, Are No… Comedian #5 Review

Editor’s Note: And one last review of the comics of 2/13/2013 before the comic stores open with the new books…

I had sworn to myself that I was gonna stop reviewing Comedian by writer Brian Azzarello and artist J. G. Jones, because after just two issues I knew it wasn’t working for me, and even that damnation with faint disappointment was only possible when the book wasn’t actively pissing me off.

From the beginning, Azzarello has made Comedian a story where Watchmen continuity is optional on a good day, where consistency of character with any prior depiction of Edward Blake was problematic, and where Azzarello seemed less interested in telling a story about The Comedian than he did in telling a story about shit that happened in the 1960s where The Comedian happened to be. Sure, The Comedian was an active part of the story, but it wasn’t so much about him; imagine Mad Men if Don Draper was selling anti-Kennedy ads to Donald Segretti, or if he was running a pro-segregation focus group with James Earl Ray as a member: all of Mad Men‘s elements are there, but it ain’t really a story about a conflicted advertising executive anymore, is it?

That tendency continues in Comedian #5, which, as per this book’s norm, is less a story about The Comedian than it is a story about Vietnam and My Lai, where The Comedian just happens to be. Which, again, I’ve learned to expect from this comic book, and which is something that I didn’t think needed further reviewing. However, Azzarello added one thing to this books that boiled my blood. It’s not much – just two words – but to my mind, it put a stamp on the book stating Azzarello’s intentions toward the book, and it’s a check that the series just doesn’t cash. And while there’s a possibility that I’m wrong, and that those two words might just be a simple Easter Egg to observant readers or maybe a nod to placing Comedian into a Wold Newton-style shared universe, it blew me out of the book as effectively as would have seeing Blake throwing the meat to Trudy Campbell. Or even Pete Campbell.

One-Two Punch: SDCC Hotels On Sale 2/26

Now that was fast: just a few days after selling out passes to San Diego Comic-Con 2013, the convention has announced that hotels in the downtown area will be going on sale Tuesday, February 26th at noon Eastern Time. This is fully a month earlier on the calendar than last year, when there was almost a month in between when passes went on sale and the opening of hotel reservations. So I don’t know if the people at SDCC are hoping that forcing people to fork out for passes and a couple of days worth of hotels all at once will help deter the bubblegummers who aren’t really serious about attending Comic-Con… or if they’re treating the preliminaries like a Band-Aid: just rip the damn thing off all at once and just get the pain over with.

Well, whatever the reason, here’s the deal. At some point in the 72 hours before Magic Hour, SDCC will be sending an email with a link to the sales site to badge holders. The site won’t go live until noon Eastern Time on the dot, and when it does, once you get in, you will need to pick six hotels from the list: no more and no less. This is different from previous years, when you could pick one hotel or all of them. And it is certainly different from, say, 2006, when I read the list, thought it over, went to lunch, came back, thought it over some more, and then booked a room with no trouble at about 4 p.m.

Stan Lee Explains How Popular Movies Should Have Ended, Avoids Telling Kids To Get Off His Lawn

Good news, everyone! Stan Lee is feeling better – so much so that he’s teamed up with the crew at How It Should Have Ended to let us all know how some of the most popular movies should have actually ended. Check out his take on Inception, Batman Begins, Star Wars, and its prequels, explained to us as only Stan can. Welcome back, man!

Via The Mary Sue

First Step Into Scatterlands: Warren Ellis Debuts Daily Webcomic

A few weeks ago, Warren Ellis teased some kind of a new comics project, named Scatterlands, with Super Dinosaur artist Jason Howard… and he did it without mentioning any further detail about what it was. Oh sure, he had previously Tweeted that he missed doing a free Web-based project like FreakAngels, but as a teaser, that really didn’t mean anything. After all, the man has also Tweeted about the gastronomic delights of the common infant, occasionally combined with the pastime refreshment value of Col. Werner Von Braun’s Old No. Nein! Stuttgart Slurpin’ Partially Gelatinous Booster Fuel. So it’s best to take Ellis’s 140-character pronouncements with a grain of salt. At least, I sincerely hope it is.

However, in this case, those announcements were at least semi-accurate, because Ellis has announced the nature of the Scatterlands project: it will be a Web-based, daily, single-panel comic strip, with new panels every weekday.

And by “it will be,” I mean that “it is.” The first panel debuted today on Ellis’s Web site.

So whaddya got in store for us, Warren?

A Better Bullet To The Head: Suicide Squad #17 Review

Am I the only one having fun here, boys?

– Harley Quinn

That’s the first line of Suicide Squad #17, and it’s pretty much a complete review in and of itself.

This is not the smartest comic you will read this week. It is not the finest attempt at visual narrative aspiring toward classic literature that you are ever going to see. It doesn’t have the most intricate plot – hell, it doesn’t have much plot, period. And with the exception of two panels for Harley and some backstory for Yo-Yo, the closest thing this comic has to character development is the establishment that Harley’ll let you suck her toes if you kill someone for her. So if you’re looking for some kind of high-falutin’ example of comics as the entertainment of choice for the discerning sophisticate, this is not the book for you.

However, if you are looking for non-stop, balls-out violent and gory super villain action, with entertaining repartee and a few damn good jokes? Suicide Squad #17 is about the best three bucks you can spend this week.

Bodies On The Road To San Diego: SDCC 2013 Tickets Sell Out In About 90 Minutes

So, you thinking about going to San Diego Comic-Con this year? Yeah, well, you can stop. Because it’s sold out.

Tickets went on sale via a specific Comic-Con Web site that they only publicized to those with Comic-Con member IDs who were eligible to take part in the general sales – those who got tickets via the early sale open to those who attended SDCC 2012, for example, were unable to get in on this to maybe get tickets for friends, loved ones, or anyone they’d like to drive into a forced geek march for four to five days.

Now, as we tried to establish in our report on how we proceeded in the early sale back in August, it is best to approach any Web-based sales event related to Comic-Con as if you are attempting to use the Internet to complete a transaction required to ransom your child, and that you are doing it from a location prone to network outages, power failures, and pre-nuclear electromagnetic pulse attacks. Comic-Con makes it a point to learn lessons from where their online sales and registration procedures fall down each year and plug those holes… only to find brand new holes that need plugging the next year.

Long story short: not everyone can get tickets, and sometimes the system to sell the tickets that are available falls down.

The sales Web site opened at noon. And we soon started seeing Tweets expressing… shall we say, displeasure. Apparently the waiting room went into overflow within a minute or so, and, unlike prior years when people complained that the URL to the sales site was bad and the server threw rampant 500 errors, this time around, it was complaints that the waiting room didn’t refresh,

I’ve seen reports from the well-prepared that the waiting room “line” hit over 6,000 people within three minutes. As for the less prepared and / or lucky?

Well…

Plans Within Plans: Batman #17 Review

In the history of Batman and The Joker, there are only a couple of iconic story endings that I can think of. There’s the end of the third issue of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, where Batman pursues Joker with the intent to kill him, finds himself unable to pull the trigger, and Joker takes one final shot at Batman by killing himself to frame Batman for his murder. And there’s the end of Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke, where Joker and Batman share a laugh when Batman finally understands how connected he is to Joker… and really, that’s about it. Sure, you’ve got Jim Starlin’s Death in The Family, but I really don’t remember how that actually ends; all I remember is Joker swinging the crowbar and Batman carrying Robin’s body. And yeah, there’s the Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers Joker Fish story, but all that easily comes to mind on that one is Joker with the fish.

When it comes to endings, there aren’t a whole hell of a lot that you can really point to as classic. Most Joker stories wind up one of a couple or three ways: Batman stops Joker in the middle of whatever his plan is in the nick of time and slaps him into Arkham, Batman stops Joker in the middle of whatever his plan is in the nick of time and Joker escapes, or Batman stops Joker in the middle of whatever his plan is in the nick of time and Joker appears to die and disappear. Some combination of these endings have been popping up in Batman / Joker stories literally since the first one, and none of them are particularly memorable… particularly since there are rarely any lasting consequences to the story. That’s part of why The Dark Knight Returns and The Killing Joke stand out – as, for the most part, standalone stories, the ending is, you know, the ending. In the regular monthly comics however, it’s hard to have one of these conclusions stand out since the events of the story are never permanent; hell, the most “permanent” Joker effects have been the killing of Jason Todd and the crippling of Barbara Gordon, and both of those have since been retconned.

All of which is a long way to go to start talking about Batman #17, and the conclusion of Scott Snyder’s Death of The Family crossover. In some ways, this ending isn’t really particularly special, in the sense that the actual mechanics of it are as familiar as color superhero comics to anyone who’s been reading them for longer than a month. However, Snyder does one thing that some of the best Batman stories do: create a lasting set of consequences for Batman as a result of Joker’s actions. But Snyder also does something that normally doesn’t happen in a Batman / Joker story, and it’s something that not only confirms something that most of us who have been reading these stories for years have always suspected, but it creates a situation in the Batman / Joker dynamic that I don’t recall ever having seen before… and while it is all doomed to be reconned and forgotten, right now, it makes it one of the best conclusions to a Joker story in recent memory.

A Flanking Maneuver Into The Killbox: A Valentine’s Tactical Assessment of The Battle of Hoth

It is Valentine’s Day, which means that couples everywhere are discussing matters of the heart. They are having heart-to-hearts about their relationships. Their futures. Their dreams. And, if that couple has been together for a while and know each other in a truly intimate manner, they discuss things that truly matter. Things such as the shortsighted and deeply flawed attack plan that Darth Vader launched following Admiral Ozzel’s clumsy and stupid drop from hyperspace into Hoth orbit, where he used overwhelming armored forces to achieve exactly fuckall, due to his apparent belief that a “flanking maneuver” is a Correllian sexual position, and that a “killbox” is a derogatory euphemism for a skilled laboress who trades in the Correllian Flanking Maneuver.

Well, it’s a good thing that, earlier this week, Wired Magazine published a lengthy article by defense blogger Spencer Ackerman discussing, in fairly low-level detail, the tactics used by Darth Vader and his attack fleet during the Battle of Hoth, a battle that only a week ago I would have sworn under oath that I knew more about than not only any American military battle, but also knew better than any of my childhood fistfights.

Turns out? Yeah, not so much. It turns out that the heroic escape of the Rebels in the face of overwhelming evil and incredible odds was, instead, the military equivalent of suckerpunching a kid in a helmet who drew up his battle plan with Crayolas.

What Once Were Vices

So far in 2013, we have always posted a new comic review on Wednesday night, since we here at Crisis On Infinite MIdlives have generally eschewed our regular post-comics purchase stop at the local bar on Wednesdays.

With that said: have you ever been through a New England blizzard? We’ve been stuck here in the Home Office for most of the past five days – the roads weren’t passable from Friday morning until late yesterday, with all schools closed, meaning we’ve been cooped up hearing happily shrieking children sledding into the street, with us unable to get our cars out to run them down.

Which means that, hell yes, we took our first chance in days to hit our favorite bar, which further means that we are currently unable to write any review longer than, “good,” even for Batman #17, which we have read, and which will make our Best of 2013 list.

tl;dr: We are drinking, and yet it is Wednesday, both of which mean that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But we are looking at one hell of a take here. Clearly, the biggest excitement of the week falls to Batman #17, and the conclusion of Death of The Family, and again: while I won’t review it until sometime tomorrow, I can tell you this: it is one of the best Batman / Joker one-on-one confrontations I have ever read. But there is also a new issue of The Walking Dead, the first issue of Ann Nocenti’s Katana, the first issue of Brian Michael Bendis’s Powers: Bureau (and his first issue of Uncanny X-Men with Shade: The Changing Man artist Chris Bachalo), Jonathan Ross’s and Bryan Hitch’s America’s Got Powers, and a bunch of other fun-looking stuff!

But you know (or at least remember) the drill: before we can review them, we need time to sober up, curse the inventor of the cheap plastic sled, and then read them. So until those planets line up…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!