Oh Mama, I’m In Fear For My Life From The Long Arm of The Furlong: Fan Film Star Trek: Renegades Trailer Released

We don’t pay a whole hell of a lot of attention to fan fiction here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives, because while there is some good stuff out there, in order to find it, you need to sift through a whole bunch of crap. And frankly, the only time I should be subjected to the image of Angel fucking Spike is three seconds before I wake up screaming.

With that said, sometimes the bigger, more well-produced projects do get our attention, and this is one of them. It’s a Star Trek fan film, set in the original, pre-Abrams reboot universe, called Renegades. And while you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a Trek fan film with cardboard sets that make 70s Doctor Who episodes look like Pacific Rim, it is rare to find one serious enough to being in primary actors not only from Star Trek Voyager, but from the original series as well.

And it also features Sean Young and Edward Furlong! So you know the budget isn’t that big! Or else someone lost a bet!

Smoking: The Superior Spider-Man #22 (And As A Whole) Review

I haven’t written about The Superior Spider-Man in a while, even though I am still reading it and still generally enjoying it, because it is beginning to succumb to The Walking Dead disease.

Here’s what I mean: we all know full well how The Superior Spider-Man is going to end. No matter what writer Dan Slott says on Twitter and at conventions, we all know that Peter Parker will return as Spider-Man at some point before the Amazing Spider-Man 2 movie opens on May 2nd next year. And even if you choose to believe that Marvel’s overlords at Disney will be willing to allow that corporate synergy and mindshare (Christ, I feel dirty just typing that) to pass since the movie’s owned by Sony and Columbia, the signs are all here that Peter Parker will return and Otto Octavius will suffer a fall. Otto’s showing hubris, he’s arrogant, and his sense of superiority is rubbing damn near everyone the wrong way.

All the signs point to Otto falling from grace and Peter returning, and the problem is that every reader knows this. Because we read comic books, and we know full well that dead only means dead in comics if the dead guy is Uncle Ben, Thomas Wayne or Martha Wayne. So we all know that the broad-stroke ending of Otto falls / Peter returns is coming (the same way we’ve known that Negan falls / Rick triumphs is the likely ending of the Walking Dead arc that’s been going on since 2012)… but it seems it has been going on forever.

And the events of The Superior Spider-Man #22 continues with the long, slow arc of Otto blindly heading toward a bad end, with yet another instance of Otto interacting badly with someone who would expect Peter to know and be friendly with him. And it’s certainly enjoyable enough, particularly in seeing J. Jonah Jameson’s reaction to some of the events of the issue… but it is also still more of the same interminable setup for a story for which I’m becoming damned impatient to see the punchline.

Happy Anniversary: Nova #100 Review

There are bigger and more ostensibly important comic books that have been released this week, but none of them had quite as much resonance with me when I saw the cover as Nova #100. Not because Nova is the biggest book in the world, but because it sure as hell isn’t the biggest book in the world.

My dad bought me Nova #12 when I was about five years old, mostly because Spider-Man was on the cover. And I really fell for the character, as I did DC’s Firestorm who debuted at about the same time, because even at five years old, I kind of understood that there were so many Spider-Man and Batman and Superman stories that I would never be able to never be able to read them all. But when you find a new hero that I found on the 11th issue? Well, that was someone who could belong to me.

However, I soon learned that the world of comics publishing didn’t revolve around the excitement of five and six year olds with 50-cent per week allowances willing to contribute a big $4.15 to the annual bottom line for a single comic book, because it was cancelled in 1978. And then it was cancelled again in 1995 after Eric Larsen brought it back, and again in 1999, and again in 2010 before returning in its current incarnation with a different dude under the helmet.

So it’s kinda cool that after 37 years, Nova has finally hit the hundred issue mark, showing simultaneously that sometimes the things you love when you’re five stick with you forever, and that the tastes of five year olds should never be used as a publishing strategy unless you want to wind up owned by a toy company, or worse, Disney.

But I’m not writing about Nova #100 just because of nostalgia, even though that is the reason it made its way to the top of my stack. It’s because in recent months, this book has become a fun and solid read, getting the mix of millennial spirit and fun, goofy dialogue that the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon on Disney XD often whiffs in trying so hard to deliver. And this issue is no exception, with a couple of cool stories about a kid trying to figure out how to be a hero when he’s got classes in the morning and his family has money trouble out the yang. And it’s a lot of fun.

Your Killers Come As Your Friends

I swear to God, I intended to write and publish a review of one of this week’s new comics today.

I had good intentions. I made sure to leave early to get to my local comic store, where they know me by name and generally ask me to not show up at unexpected times, when customers who aren’t used to me might be there, because the owner was planning to close early for the American Thanksgiving holiday. So I arrived about 20 minutes before closing, made my selections and brought them to the counter when the owner said, “Rob,” (because it’s my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to remember that they can always supply that name to the police), “You’re my last customer before the holiday, and we both walk to and from here. How would you like to help me kill this bottle of Crown Royal?”

To be fair, it was only a pint bottle, but that is still more scotch than I normally polish off before dinnertime on a weeknight. And it has played hell with my analytical abilities vis a vis sequential visual entertainment, and made me totally forget that I promised to help with preparations for the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office Thanksgiving Feast.

tl;dr: Drank at my local comic store, where they know my by name and just bought themselves a quart of Crown Royal from me for Christmas, which means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But you gotta admit that that’s a good take of books to read while waiting for pie and pretending to pay attention to drunk Uncle Pete’s political proclamations and assertion of his rights as a sovereign citizen or whatever damn thing he read in a chain email he got from crazy Cousin Earl. There’s the concluding two issues of Jonathan Hickman’s Infinity crossover (and I’m gonna let you insert your own “finally,” here), a new issue of The Goon, a bunch of DC Zero Year and Forever Evil crossovers, a new Powers: Bureau, and a ton of other new stuff!

But before we can talk about any of them, the room needs to stop spinning enough so we can read them. So until that time…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Shipping Up To… 2014 Boston Comic Con Initial Guest Lineup Announced

This year’s Boston Comic Con was a hell of a surprise, going from a little con with mostly local talent, held in a hotel basement, in 2009 or so, to selling out two days at the Seaport World Trade Center – one of Boston’s bigger convention halls – with programming and a double handful of A-List talent on the floor to boot. Sure, the convention showed a few growing pains – if you weren’t in line by a certain time it took forever to get into the hall, and for the love of God, they need to stop clearing the programming rooms between each panel – but it was damned impressive nonetheless.

My biggest fear was that it was an anomaly. This year’s convention was supposed to take place in a smaller hall in April and was displaced until August and the Seaport World Trade Center thanks to the Boston Marathon Bombing, which meant a few more high-profile guests signed on either to show support to the city or just because the timing was better. And initially, the word was that the convention was going to move back to April, but instead the organizers announced that they were not only sticking with August, but adding a day, going from Friday, August 8th to Sunday, August 10th, 2014.

Which was a good start… but a better sign is that the convention has already announced their first slate of special guests. And let me tell you: last year’s A-List talent was no one-off fluke.

Cranky Old Man Who Made Superhero Comics For Adults Hates Superhero Comics For Adults

They say that you should never meet your heroes, and I am okay with that proposition. Because they also say that you must separate the artist from the art, and I have been forced to do that for my entire adult life. Not only ephemerally – I could read Hunter Thompson all day long, but there is no doubt he was a violent, drugsucking monstrosity, and I could enjoy reading Harlan Ellison stories for a thousand years without having to hear the man calling me a dullard – but professionally. I have worked with comedians – comedians you have heard of – who were the worst kind of arrogant and selfish scumbags, and people in the music industry who would pretend you never even existed if it meant another case of comp’ed CDs to sell to local record stores at a discount, like a common mafioso.

So while I consider several comics writers from the 1980s to be heroes of mine, I am okay if I never meet them. The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One are a couple of the greatest comic stories I’ve ever read, I think I can go to my grave without having Frank Miller chase me around while shrieking, “hippie!” and trying to cut my ponytail off with a replica switchblade from the set of Sin City. Miller’s political beliefs or behavior doesn’t take away a word or line of Dark Knight, but I don’t think it’s something I want to witness firsthand.

And then there’s Alan Moore. My copies of Miracleman are amongst my most prized possessions, and I have both Watchmen and V For Vendetta as not only the original issues, but as the big ol’ Absolute hardcover editions. Those stories taught me, as a teenager, that the superhero stories I loved as a child didn’t need to be put aside, but could be enjoyed as I moved into adulthood. The man basically invented the idea of the superhero written maturely for adults.

And once again, Moore has gone on record saying that he hates the idea of the superhero written maturely for adults.

Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Chatter – The Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office Twitter Feed

Last night the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office Staff convened for the broadcast of the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special. I would like to say that a lot of tequila was involved with the construction of these tweets, but there wasn’t. Sierra Nevada and a fair amount of Sauvignon Blanc were the main perpetrators. The rest was inspired by circumstance. And, possibly tequila happenstance. Enjoy.

Seeing Double: Live Tweeting The Day of The Doctor

We all know that there is exactly one event happening in geek fandom today… actually wait: let me check my news feed just in case Frank Miller’s been caught tazing a pack of hippies in Time Square… oh, look at that! Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer are moving to New York from Boston. I had no idea they were even still here in Boston, but then again, I doubt they drink in the same shitholes we frequent. Actually they might, but considering our favorite bars specialize in the installation and maintenance of alcoholic blackouts, I would never remember anyway.

But other than that, the only event happening today is the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special, The Day of The Doctor, which is simulcasting on your local BBC affiliate at 2:50 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. What time is that in your area? What am I, a Time Lord? Do your own damn math.

To commemorate the experience, most of the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Staff will be assembling at the Home Office in about an hour, upon which we will be heading out to one of the aforementioned shitholes to drink lunch (and watch futilely for Gaiman, now that we know he lives here) before returning to the Big Screen to watch the show. And we will be Live Tweeting the experience via our Twitter feed.

So while we will be assembling those tweets into an actual post for posterity either later today or tomorrow (pending blood alcohol content), we hope you’ll tune into our feed and watch along with us. And by the way, the over / under time for the Tweet reading, “Are there four Doctors on the screen, or is the whiskey getting on top of me?” is 3:25 p.m.

Safe To Travel: San Diego Comic-Con Preregistration Not In November

For people who attended San Diego Comic-Con this year and have been waiting for word on when the pre-registration for next year’s SDCC would be coming off, all we’ve known since about August is that it will be happening “sometime between November 1 and December 31, 2013.”

Which was, and is fine – if the people at SDCC handle it even remotely like they did for the 2013 convention (which happened in August, 2012), all you need is access to a couple of computers with access to reliable high-speed Internet (at a couple of different locations in case one is hit by a bolt of lightning or a meteor or something), nerves of steel and an adamantium bladder so you don’t have to leave the screen until the deed is done. So they can do it pretty much whenever.

However, we are now less than one week away from American Thanksgiving, and there hasn’t been a lot of details released about exactly when this pre-registration is gonna happen. And if it happened during Thanksgiving weekend, it would be an apocalypse.

It would be an apocalypse because many of us travel to visit our parents during Thanksgiving, and have you seen your parents computer? Can you imagine trying to log into the pre-reg Website, competing against thousands of other people, on a malware-packed laptop rocking Microsoft Vista (Service Pack Yeah, Right)? Using a browser with about thirty different third party search bars on it? Over first generation “high speed” 512 KbS DSL? It would be easier and faster to start randomly sucking dicks at the bus station and hoping that some kind soul will pay you in SDCC passes.

Well, fear not. Because even though we still don’t know exactly when pre-registration is gonna happen, we do know that it won’t happen until after Thanksgiving.

The Riverdale High School Bull Dogs Are Not What They Seem: Afterlife With Archie #2 Review

Editor’s Note: This review’s got spoilers, Meathead. What? Wrong Archie? Well, screw you. Dingbat.

Jesus Christ. And I mean that in the best possible way.

This Archie comic book starts with implied incest, moves to graphically bloody zombie violence, jumps to conflicted and closeted lesbians, spends a little time with spoiled children and their obviously disappointed parents, throws in more graphic violence, tosses in a soupcon of implication toward steroid abuse, and ends with the hero telling a girl’s father that he’s spent years trying to surreptitiously bone his daughter under cover of darkness. Again: this Archie comic has all of this stuff.

So what we have here, if you take away all the Archie elements, is a pretty solid if straight-ahead zombie story for young adults, with with enough social issues to make it relevant and modern. Which is fine, and surely a fun-enough read… but with those Archie elements, you get what feels like a look into the gutters and the bleed of 50 years of Archie comics. It’s like reading a version of Twin Peaks set in the Archie universe, where a violent event throws the covers off some pretty dark and difficult suburban secrets.

This is a really, really good comic book.