Shane! Come Back! – Jon Bernthal Cancels Boston Comic Con Appearance

Say, were you excited about meeting Maggie and Shane from AMC’s The Walking Dead next weekend at the Boston Comic Con? Yeah? Well, temper your enthusiasm a bit. Lauren Cohen will still make an appearance, but Jon Bernthal will not. According to an email sent by the convention to ticket holders last Friday:

A Message from the Host:

Unfortunately, Jon Bernthal (Shane Walsh) of The Walking Dead must CANCEL his appearance at The Boston Comic Con due to a sudden change in his filiming schedule.

All attendees who purchased a VIP Photo Op ticket will be refunded in full.

Any other person who wishes a refund of their admission ticket to the Boston Comic Con due to Jon Bernthal’s cancellation must submit a refund request by no later than Friday April 19th. Once the show has started no refunds will be issued whatsoever.

We apologize for this unfortunate inconvenience which is out of our control.

The Boston Comic Con

Beyond their control, perhaps, but certainly a possibility that they were aware of. A source connected to the group that produced the 2013 commercial for Boston Comic Con tells me that they were told to downplay Bernthal’s appearance at the con because of the likelihood that he might pull out. You can check out their commercial after the jump.

Always A Bridesmaid: Batman #19 Review

Editor’s Note: Your have eaten Gotham’s wealth. Its spoilers. From now on, none of you are safe.

Is there anyone who saw the teaser for the WTF cover of Batman #19 and didn’t know pretty much automatically that it was probably Clayface impersonating Bruce Wayne? And more importantly, is there anyone in the comics reading world who really gives a tin shit about Clayface?

I mean, the concept of Clayface has been around 1940, and even after all that time, it’s not like Clayface is anybody’s idea of a classic character. Because even though there is clearly enough behind the concept of a shapeshifting supervillain to keep Clayface popping up now and again for the past 63 years, let’s face reality: there have been eight different Clayfaces since Detective Comics #40. The only reason to revamp a “classic” villain on an average of every eight years is if there is something fundamentally wrong with it.

The fact of the matter is “Clayface” is nothing but a set of powers behind a grotesque body, with next to no personality behind it. Hell, I’ve been reading Batman comics for 37 years, and I couldn’t tell you any of the Clayface’ origin stories, or what motivates them to crime as opposed to, say, looking at my dripping, earthy face and attempting suicide. Or maybe shifting into Brad Pitt and trying to impersonate myself into a better life (although if you’re old enough to remember Angelina Jolie back when she drank blood and was married to Billy Bob Thornton, you might think she’d be more into the whole monster thing).

My point is, I don’t think anyone really cares about Clayface. And Clayface is the antagonist of Batman #19. So the question is: does writer Scott Snyder finally do anything interesting with the character?

Short answer: nah. Not really.

Brain Bleach – Battlestar Galactica As Sappy Network Sitcom

Ok, Rob is currently downstairs up to his eyeballs in a home wiring and plasma television mounting project. Jack Daniels may or may not be involved. You might think that he can’t be productive in the throes of a Jack bender, but I watched him build an entire computer one night in a whiskey blackout. It was Christmas Eve and the next morning he actually thought that Santa had brought him a computer. So cute! And hungover!

Anyway, since we have no live electricity or Internet, I’m posting this from a scant 2G signal begrudgingly supplied by my phone. Ever wonder what would happen if Battlestar Galactica and Friends had a baby? A cheesy, awful, horrific waterhead baby? No? Well, too bad. The same Internet that will give you bukkake clips on demand will also give you this:

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to use what power is left in my phone to dig up 33, find some whiskey, and have a blackout of my own.

Via Gizmodo UK.

Hawkguy Trouble: Hawkeye #9 Review

Hawkeye is one of the best superhero comic books that you can currently buy, and it is because it isn’t about superheroes. Oh sure: it has all the trappings of a standard superhero comic book: it stars an Avenger, it features The Black Widow and Spider-Woman, it has fistfights and a motorcycle chase and international crime and women of mystery, but those aren’t the things that Hawkeye, and in particular Hawkeye #9, is about. For all the action and the trappings, Hawkeye #9 is about a guy who has made some bad decisions  – some for good reasons and some not – and is dealing with the consequences of how those decisions have affected the women in his life, and by extension how those women’s reactions are affecting him.

So Hawkeye #9 is a story about some superheroes, but it is not a superhero story. It is, instead, a very human story that anyone with any regrets over how they have treated someone close to them, or anyone who has felt let down by someone close to them, can relate to. And it includes Russian mobsters getting the living shit kicked out of them on more than one occasion. Which means that this is an extraordinary issue of an extraordinary comic book, and one of the best books in the past several weeks.

Seriously: considering there’s another issue this week where Hawkeye fights Ultrons, it says a lot that Hawkeye’s most compelling conflict this week is with Spider-Woman over an old girlfriend. This is a good one, kids.

Space Cowboy Butttext, Or: First Second Printing

Based on the comics news of the past couple of days, there have been thousands of comic readers who have wondered, based on the initial indications that it would be impossible to get Saga #12 on the iPad or the iPhone because of Apple’s App Store policies, and the subsequent news that Comixology had never submitted the issue to Apple for sale, how they would get their hands on that particular comic book. For a while, it seemed like the rarest comic book in the world on sale this week.

However, based on this picture…

…that clearly isn’t the case.

But before we talk about the misstated rarity of Saga #12, or any of the rest of the comics in that photo, let’s talk about this one, which seems to be a genuine Goddamned rarity:

That is a copy of Invincible Universe #1, which was released for the first time today. Which means that it is an initial printing. And yet if you click that picture to enlarge it, and look under the issue number, it clearly says, “Second Printing.” And while it might be an apocryphal story, the owner of my local comic store, where they know me by name and often tell me, “Rob, you are a long-time and valued customer, so long as I can’t prove you’re the source of those awful stains,” told me that his is the only comic store in America who received first-print copies of the issue with the “second printing” indicia stamped on it. And if he is correct, and / or telling me the truth, that means that that photograph is of a comic book of which there are only eighteen copies in existence.

I just bought a 55-inch TV, which is being delivered tomorrow. If you’d like to pay for it in exchange for a weird issue of Invincible Universe, ping me in the comments.

But anyway, regardless of comics that are rare because of Space Cowboy Butttext, or because of misprinted print issuance indicia, its still a pretty decent week for comics. We’ve got a new issue of Scott Snyder’s Batman, the second issue of DC’s Constantine, the final issue of Mark Millar’s and Dave Gibbons’s The Secret Service, the issue of Batman & Robin that supposedly gives us Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns Carrie Kelly as Robin, and a bunch of other cool stuff!

But before we can address any of them, we need time to read them. Well, either that or read them and then slab them and slap them on eBay before a real second printing is issued, but one way or the other: until we can do that…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Fruit Forbidding: Apple App Store Refuses Sale of Saga #12

Update, 4/10/2013, 5:50 p.m.: As contributor Lance Manion pointed out in the comments, it turns out that Apple isn’t the party that censored Saga #12. It was Comixology themselves. Details at the end of the original story, after the jump.

———————-

The Internet is an interesting place. It’s a place where, by simply closing your eyes, pounding on your keyboard with your fist and pressing the Enter key, you can see pictures, in living color, of a woman with a substance abuse problem blowing a horse.

It is also a place where you can obtain anything that can be turned into ones and zeroes that you want, completely for free, much to the consternation of major media producers. But thankfully, most of those media producers have embraced the possibilities of the Internet, making their content instantly available to anyone with a credit card – you know, adults – instantly, and at a reasonable price. And all across a medium that only fifteen years ago was best known as a delivery vector for animal pornography and autopsy photos.

Well, unless you’re trying to ply your wares through Apple’s App Store. A company and a store who have, in their infinite wisdom, decided not to accept Image Comics’s Saga #12 for sale via the iOS Comixology app due to two images of gay sex. Because God forbid that a consenting adult be allowed to decide to purchase a cartoon that includes two panels of sex acts on their iPad – a device widely used to make it possible to view and masturbate to high-definition pornography in a public toilet stall.

So, what with Apple acting in a manner similar to Wal-Mart and other prudish, yet powerful, corporate overlords who want to tell you what you can and can’t read or watch, I imagine Saga creators Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples, and their little publisher Image, have agreed to self-censor their book in order to gain access to iPads, yes?

Yeah, no.

Hulk And His Anonymous Friends: Indestructible Hulk #6 Review

Editor’s Note: Hulk spoil!

Let’s start off with this: that’s a great cover. But since I am emotionally no older than 12 years old, all I keep thinking is that if you obscure Thor’s hammer, what you’ve got is a spectacular pin-up of The Hulk after a horrific night of Taco Bell.

Second: I really wanted to like Indestructible Hulk #6. I am generally a fan comics that are written by Mark Waid, and as a dude who was reading comics back in the 80s, I will buy damn near anything pencilled by Walt Simonson, particularly an issue that you can tell based on the cover features Thor. For a generation of comic geeks, having Simonson draw Thor is appointment comic reading second only to maybe seeing Todd McFarlane draw Hulk.

And having read through the issue a couple of times, it turns out that seeing Simonson draw Thor again is one of two good reasons to read the book, the other being the final panel, which I’ll get to in a minute. But otherwise, this is a decompressed first issue of a longer arc that asks more questions than it answers, but in many cases not teasing the mysteries well enough to make them compelling rather than incomplete and confusion. And worse: while, again, it’s nice to see Simonson’s Thor again, his storytelling choices take characters that are meant to be enigmatic and instead makes them cannon fodder.

This one’s only okay, guys. On a good day.

Freedom Is Free Again: Comixology Ready To Deliver On Marvel’s SXSW Free Comics Offer

Once upon a time in a magical land known as Austin, during a festival known as South By Southwest where the peasants celebrate the coming of spring by paying nine bucks a beer to their corporate betters, the benevolent kings of Marvel Comics announced that they would bestow a boon upon the common folk: 700 classic and new tales of knights and heroes, delivered instantly into their homes, notebooks and even their pockets, all thanks to the magic of their House Wizards at Comixology, known far and wide as the most proficient magicians in the delivery of these tales (or at least amongst the last ones standing).

But alas, no sooner did the Day of Giving arrive than the secret magicks of the Wizards of Comics Delivery failed, leaving hundreds without their promised boon, and some wondering just what in the hell they had been paying the magicians for in the first place.

Which is a long and stupid way to go to say that, about a month after Comixology was forced, due to server load, to suspend Marvel’s offer of a few days of free comics, they have told those who emailed them to say that yes: they wanted the free comics, fer Christ’s sake, that they will soon see their patience rewarded.

Sexy Beast. Or Maybe Blue Balls: Bryan Singer Reveals Beast’s Look in Days of Future Past

While we have been talking about the rapidly ramping up hype around this summer’s geek and genre movies, the cool thing about living in this part of the 21st Century is that no one is waiting to see how the comic book flicks do this year before they make more: we’ve already got at least four of them in the pipe for next year.

As we speak, Marvel Studios has Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Thor: The Dark World and Guardians of The Galaxy being whipped together, but let’s not forget the Grand Old Man of modern superhero movies: the new X-Men, Days of Future Past, directed by Bryan Singer, the dude who put together the first two X-Men flicks (and I guarantee you that he thanks God for that fact every day, since there ain’t no one wandering around referring to Singer’s accolades as the director of Superman Returns, or Valkyrie).

And even though Singer is relatively early into production on Days of Future Past, he’s done a good job using Twitter to keep the rabid fans on the edges of their seats. Not too long ago, he Tweeted pictures of a bunch of the actors attached to the movie, but now he’s moved to showing off some early makeup effects. Specifically that of Nicholas Hoult in his Beast makeup. Which you can check out after the jump.

T-Minus 27 Days: First Complete Iron Man 3 Scene Released

We are about a month away from the start of summer movie season, and to this day, it feels a little funny to say that this early in April. Back when I was a really little kid, “summer movies” were, well, just movies that came out in the summer, and generally amounted to whatever Disney re-release fronted the double bill at the drive-in theater, where my parents gambled on me falling asleep in the back of the Dodge Aspen early enough for them to get hammered in relative peace and bemoan that they ever decided to have children.

But Jaws, in June 1975, changed all that, with Star Wars moving the start of summer blockbuster season up to Memorial Day. And that’s how it was until Spider-Man moved the magic date up to the first Friday in May back in 2002, and where it has stayed, guaranteeing a huge blockbuster on that day… and a giant pile of expensive shit that Hollywood knows sucks, but is still hoping will lure in enough bored dupes looking for something to do on a Friday night to make back the production investment, the weekend before (hello, Pain & Gain!).

But regardless: the season is coming, and we are, as we have stated in the past, most looking forward to Iron Man 3. Sure, we could spend our early spring looking forward to geek movies like, say, Man of Steel – and make no mistake, we kind of are – but as we have established, this is not our first rodeo. And while the early trailers for Man of Steel look good, we have been burned by a Superman movie made by a director with geek cred starring an unknown before (hello, Superman Returns!), and that one wasn’t even by the poor, deluded schmuck who made Sucker Punch.

So for now, Iron Man 3 is our frontrunner, and since it opens first, on May 3rd, it means we are getting more and more promotional stuff about it. Such as the first complete scene from the movie to be released via Yahoo Screen. It is referred to as “Holiday Greeting,” which is appropriate, because it reminds me of every Christmastime “conversation” I have ever had with my brother. And you can see it after the jump.