Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto

It has been a tiring week here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office. We are not only just now recovering from the Vulcan Midichlorian Flu (Hey- if the Goddamned President of The United States can mix his geek references, well, then he… was just stressed. We, however, spent a day or two double-seeing the ghost of Sir Alec Guinness filing down his fingernails, looking critically at our uvulas and saying, “I’m using The Force… prepare to let go, Luke… or whoever you two shivering dipshits might be…”),  but we are also in the process of making capital improvements of our IT infrastructure (or, for laymen: co-Editor Amanda just bought a blistering I7-processor computer with a monitor so large I’ve taken to despairingly calling it “The Wadd”),  all of which means that it is yet another week where our content production hasn’t been what we hoped.

But it is Wednesday, and that means that it is a big old “do-over” in the world of comics… particularly in the world of Marvel Comics, where a killer robot has taken over, meaning it seems that we are doing over The Terminator.

But regardless, Wednesday means new comics, which means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

And frankly, beyond the first issue of Brian Michael Bendis’s and Bryan Hitch’s Age of Ultron, this is a quieter week than many. For example, we have the first couple of post-Rotworld issues of Animal Man and Swamp Thing, which, occurring after the events of Rotworld, are the epitome of “anti-climactic”… but on the plus side, there are also new issues of almost everything being written by Brian Michael Bendis that isn’t about Ultron. We’ve got Bendis’s Daredevil: End of Days and Powers: Bureau… but there’s also the first issue of Detective Comics following the events of Death of The Family, a new issue of Dan Slott’s The Superior Spider-Man, a new issue of Hellboy in Hell, and a reasonable amount of other good stuff.

But you know the drill: before we can review them, we need to stop drooling mucus onto The Wadd (context is for assholes) and take some time to read them. So until we stop sloppily servicing The Machine…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

New Iron Man 3 Trailer – An Empty Life Or A Meaningful Death?

The newest trailer for Iron Man 3 hit the internet today to hype the UK’s April 25th debut in theaters, while we sad Yanks must wait for our May opening. However, if you’re anything like me, repeated viewings may help stem the long tide between now and then. Or not.

Tony has everything to lose in this new movie: his home, his woman, and, possibly, his life. This trailer gives us some solid glimpses into Ben Kingsley’s villain, the Mandarin, who will attack from the shadows and spur Tony to a very personal revenge:

Does that robe say “Deepened through blood”? Christ. Remember when Kingsley used to be Ghandi? No? Me either at this point.

Take a look at the trailer, after the jump.

Finish Him: Injustice: Gods Among Us #2 Review

Editor’s Note: These spoilers take place before the start of the video game.

Years and years of reading comics have taught me that, with almost no exceptions whatsoever, comic adaptations of other mediums are normally not very good. Sure, there’s Alien: The Illustrated Story, and there’s the original Star Wars adaptation by Roy Thomas and Howard Chaykin, but let’s face reality: in those heady, pre-VCR days of 1977, they could have had Amanda’s cousin Little Billy draw the damn thing and we’d have bought it.

Even worse are the comic book adaptations, which are generally even worse than the TV and movie ones, dating all the way back to Atari Force which, despite the obvious nostalgia for the book by Ernest Cline, might have been an awesome read for video game fans, but wasn’t all that great a shake for actual comic readers. Hell, in 1984 I was a 13-year-old comic book fan who owned the first Atari on our block (back when it was the Atari Video Computer System, before they renamed it the 2600) and I still thought that comic sucked. And the reason video game adaptations almost never work is for a very simple reason: in a comic book, you are a spectator, but it an video game, it is you. And no matter how good the story in the video game is, no comic book ever really captures that feeling of you being in the driver’s seat.

And while I’ll readily admit that I generally don’t seek out video game based comics because, well, I don’t usually like them, there has been one in the past couple of years that was pretty damn good, and that was an issue of DC Universe Online, written by Tom Taylor, that took the conceit of a Green Lantern expansion pack in the video game and used it to examine some of DC’s Lantern characters, and some real questions of moral ambiguity. It was successful because it while it was ostensibly about the video game, it instead used the game as an excuse to make it really about the characters, who just happened to be in this situation. By completely ignoring the first person element of video games, Taylor succeeded in making a pretty good comic book.And this continues in his second issue of the comic adaptation of the upcoming fighting game Injustice: Gods Among Us. As a Mortal Kombat-style fighting game, most comic books about it would be wall-to-wall dudes in spandex smacking on each other. But instead, Taylor makes this book about the characters leading up to whatever causes the dudes in spandex to smack on each other in the game… and even though you will see more than a little of Mark Millar’s The Authority in this issue, it is still vastly better than a simple comic book adaptation has any right to be.

Marvel To Make “#1” Announcement At SXSW

Just what on Earth is “#1”?

Re-Snoogans: Trailer For New Jay And Silent Bob Animated Movie

We are a couple of days late on this one, but we wanted to deal with it for a couple of reasons. The first being that we at Crisis On Infinite Midlives are big fans of Kevin Smith’s Askewniverse movies – a sneak preview of Smith’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back in 2001 was Amanda’s and my first night out together – and we will always have a soft spot for those first few movies from Smith, when he was a crappy 20-something making movies out of love, rather than a 40-something pothead leveraging his name for quick profits on what amount to stand-up tours and podcasts, who makes movies when the urge strikes.

The second being that the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office has been invaded and laid low by the Bolivian Glandfucker Flu, meaning that watching and talking about cartoons is about the best that we can handle at this point.

So on that basis, we’re at least mildly excited about this trailer for the new Smith-produced (not written or directed, however; Steve Stark directed it and supposedly it was at least cowritten by Jason Mewes) movie, Jay and Silent Bob’s Super Groovy Cartoon Movie, which you can check out after the jump.

The Cat Is Dead: Dr. Manhattan #4 Review

Editor’s Note: The spoilers… the spoilers are taking me to pieces.

The final issue of Dr. Manhattan, written by J. Michael Straczynski with art by Adam Hughes, extends what is arguably the greatest comic book story of all time, provides additional perspective on one of that classic story’s great mysteries, and it does it with bold storytelling choices, both in the writing and in the art, that play on one of Watchmen‘s original themes of symmetry.

Or, to put it in plainer terms: Dr. Manhattan #4 is fucking awful.

Straczynski uses the framework of Before Watchmen – a book that was partially sold to a seriously skeptical public as a prequel that would not attempt to modify or circumvent Alan Moore’s original Watchmen – to completely blow away one of the key ambiguities of Dr. Manhattan’s story from the original. Further, halfway through the issue, he switches point of view to that of Ozymandias to show his motivations at a key point leading into Watchmen, but not only are they motivations that really have no real bearing on how that story turns out, but they are presented using a visual gimmick that makes the story difficult to read for no reason beyond either Straczynski, or Hughes, or both, making the decision to say, “Lookit me! I’m dicking around with the established language of comic storytelling! Why? Because fuck you, that’s why!”

There are baseball analogies that could be applied to Dr. Manhattan. “Swinging for the fences” is one, although it’s not really accurate. I’m thinking more along the lines of “Running onto the field and mooning the pressbox,” because Straczynski and Hughes are playing around in areas where they shouldn’t really be in the first place, and they’re sure as hell not playing the game by any of the rules that anyone wants them to.

Plus, there’s one panel where Hughes all but rubs our faces in Doc’s dangling blue wang.

It’s really not that good, guys.

Shark Infested Waters: The Legend of Luther Strode #3 Review

Editor’s Note: Did you know a young boy drowned the year before those two others were killed? The editors weren’t paying any attention… They were making spoilers while that young boy drowned.

Justin Jordan needs to stop, take a breath, and be very, very careful from here on out. Don’t worry, I will explain.

If 2011’s The Strange Talent of Luther Strode was inspired by a 1980 horror movie, then its sequel, The Legend of Luther Strode, is clearly shaping up to be at least somewhat inspired by a 1980s sequel to a horror movie: Aliens. I say this in the sense that, where Alien was a moody, claustrophobic story about an unstoppable monster picking people off one by one, Aliens instead was a big damn action movie that used the trappings of the original movie, like facehuggers, soldier aliens and acid blood, as a plot device to allow people to blow a bunch of shit the fuck up.

And for most of the first three issues of The Legend of Luther Strode, writer Justin Jordan has delivered a very similar experience. He has taken the details set up in the original series – superhuman strength and speed, the ability to see and foretell the physical effects of pending violence, and being pretty much all but bulletproof – and used them to set up not only big action setpieces of Luther stomping the crap out of gangs of criminals who are a motion tracker and a “Game over, man!” away from being Colonial Marine cannon fodder, but long battle sequences between Luther and similarly-powered Binder. Throw in Luther’s friend Petra – a regular woman with a surfeit of cojones running around this superpowered mayhem with just a gun – and Jordan even has his Ripley, albeit in a supporting role. All we’re missing is the damn ship’s cat and Lance Hendriksen… and based on his current filmography, he’d probably show up if Jordan asked nicely and offered a hot meal.

But if this latest Luther Strode series is, in fact, Aliens, then there must be an alien queen. And in The Legend of Luther Strode #3, we meet a contender – I say “contender” because halfway through the series is a little early to be really meeting the final Big Bad – and this contender is… shall we say, problematic. Problematic in the sense that his identity is such a bold move that it can really only elicit one of two responses.

Those responses being either, “Wow!”, or “…are you fucking kidding me?