Everything But The Fall: Captain America: The Winter Soldier Posters Released

2014 is less than a month old, and yet we are less than 90 days away from the release of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and that feels weird.

It feels weird because it is most definitely a summer movie, and yet it is opening in the spring, while it has “Winter” in the title, and we are talking about it from the planet Hoth. Which is a fucked-up metaphor if ever there was one, but it is cold and I am tired and I grew up in a time when summer movies opened up on Memorial Day weekend, which at this point in the year feels far enough away that it will correspond to the release of Google Wetware.

Why yes, I have been drinking. What’s your point?

Anyway, with the release date coming up fast, the marketing blitz is moving into high gear. Not only will a trailer for the movie air during the Super Bowl this Sunday, but Marvel Studios has released new character-based posters for the movie. And I will stream those posters to your Google Wetware if you’ll provide your IP address and check the box saying you take full responsibility for any and all brain aneurisms arising from the transfer.

Wow; I think I put a little too much Irish in this Irish Coffee. What I meant was, you can check the posters out after the jump.

The Wolf Among Us: Episode 2 – Fables Video Game Trailer

Ok, so, Telltale Games, makers of the award winning video game version of The Walking Dead, have turned their hand to developing a video game from Vertigo’s Fables series. They’re up to Episode 2. I must admit I’m out of the loop on this; I didn’t even know there was an Episode 1! I blame whiskey. Then again, I blame everything on whiskey.

Telltale’s official blog says the release is set for next week but no specific date is given: “We’re super close to the episode’s release now, and will announce dates as soon as we have them confirmed.”

If, like me, you completely missed this the first time around and want to see the trailer for Episode 1: Faith, check it out after the jump.

A Leaf On The Wind

This has been one of those weird weeks. It is yet another week where the mercury on the thermometer hasn’t crept much about 20. Because of that, birds have nested in the vent leading to our bathroom fan. I know this because when I turned it on, I heard a terrible banging sound and a loud chirping. This means that I am now waiting to see if the little thing made it out of harm’s way safely, or if blood begins sinking into the bathrooom ceiling from above. And if it does, it will mean even more damage to the place, because Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office mascot Parker The Kitten will claw through every wall in the place to get to it.

And on top of it all, is was a weird week at the comic store. There are a lot of books, and even a lot of books that look pretty good… but not a lot of standouts, you know what I mean? There’s a few DC annuals, a few regular issues of some old standbys, but not a lot of, “holy shit!” books in the pile. That said, there’s weeks like that.

But with that said, any day with new comics is a decent one. Which means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But even though it isn’t a spectacular week, that doesn’t mean there there isn’t some good stuff in there. There’s a new issue of Saga (which is never a bad thing), another chapter in the really very entertaining Cataclysm crossover, a new issue of Guardians of The Galaxy (featuring the first part of The Trial of Jean Grey), and the one that excites me most: the first issue of Serenity: Leaves on The Wind, which is the first honest-to-Christ sequel to the Serenity movie!

But you know how this works: before we can talk about any of them, we need a little time to clean up the guts, restrain the cat, and read the comics. So while we do that…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

All About The Dixon: Robert Kirkman On Daryl In The Comics

One of the most interesting, and occasionally infuriating, things about the AMC television version of The Walking Dead is how it had followed certain plot arcs from the original comic book, while in others it wildly deviates from those books. For example, Rick’s crew met The Governor in the original comics, but he sure as hell didn’t have a second act after Michonne got through with him (nor a second kidney, and the less said about his testicles, the better), and unlike in the comics, Andrea is still wandering about picking off bad guys almost at will.

Those deviations started early in the first season of the show – in the comic, if Rick ever visited the Center For Disease Control, it was to get a nasty rash he crossed back over the Mexican border with looked at – and at the time, many of us just figured that someone made a conscious decision to make changes over a period of time. Maybe because of something original showrunner Frank Darabont decided, or because of the whim of some focus group-armed network suit.

Well, it turns out, based on a panel that The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman have at this past weekend’s Arizona Comic Con, the decision did come from a guy in a suit. That suit being mostly denim and leather. And that guy being Daryl Dixon.

No Laundry On The TARDIS: Capaldi’s Doctor Who Costume Revealed

The BBC is trying like hell to keep fan interest in Doctor Who up now that the 50th Anniversary festivities are over, as if for some reason the idea of a brand new Doctor portrayed by an actor with a completely different look and style wasn’t enough to keep people intrigued. But then again, maybe they’ve got a point; after all, on some level the franchise has reached its current level of popularity partially on the back of a quirky pretty boy who’s made two companions and a large percentage of the viewing audience all twitchy in the shorts for him, so I imagine it takes a certain leap of faith to hand everything over to a late middle-aged dude best known for creative profanity.

Part of the mystery has been exactly what Capaldi’s new Doctor will be wearing. Many of the Doctors have distinctive costume elements – Tom Baker’s scarf, Matt Smith’s bowtie, Christopher Eccleston’s big, swinging dick (Yeah, Eccleston’s my Doctor. What’s your point?) – that define the character, since apparently “Time And Relative Dimension Through Space” leaves no room for a fucking washing machine or a closet, or the ability to groan itself into existence anywhere near an Urban Outfitters.

Well, that part of the mystery is over, as the BBC revealed Capaldi’s Doctor costume today. So you might be asking: what’s the gimmick? Purple socks? A pocket watch? Hipster douchebag fedora?

Nah. It’s dressing mostly like a fucking adult.

New Teaser Trailer For Guillermo Del Toro’s The Strain

You may remember this found footage teaser for The Strain, a television program slated for release later this year based on a trilogy of vampire novels by Chuck Hogan.

If you don’t, let me bring you up to speed: the CDC is investigating a viral outbreak that seems suspiciously like vampirism. Newsflash: it is. Fortunately, none of the vampires seem to sparkle or mope. Instead, this 13 episode run will focus on Dr. Ephraim Goodweather (Corey Stoll) and his medical investigators, as well as a former professor and survivor of the Holocaust named Abraham Setrakian (John Hurt!), who knows the real score about what is going down in New York City.

A new teaser for the show has been released. While it doesn’t really give us any more information about the program, it does at least narrow the release down to “Summer”. Thank god. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with myself once Dracula and The Vampire Diaries wrap for the season. Or Hulu shits the bed and I can’t watch reruns of Forever Knight, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, or Angel. Or my DVD player breaks and…well, you get my point. But, hey, it’s Del Toro. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. He must have learned something since Blade 2.

Check out the new teaser, after the jump.

You Broke My Heart: Joss Whedon Talks Avengers 2 Inspiration

There’s been a lot of news about Edgar Wright’s Ant-Man recently (including the recent revelation that, in the face of the delay of Batman Vs. Superman until 2016, Ant-Man’s release has been moved up two weeks to take Batman Vs. Superman’s original July 17, 2015 date), to the point where it might be easy to forget that, about two months before that movie’s release, we’ll be getting Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Which means that Age of Ultron is firmly into pre-production, and director Joss Whedon is beginning to talk about what we can expect in the movie. Not in the sense of any actual spoiled plot points or anything – Whedon is a professional, after all, and even rank amateurs know better than to say something that would set Kevin Feige gnawing on their doorknobs and hissing for revenge – but more in the sense of story and plot structure and inspiration.

But Whedon, being no fool, explained his general inspirations to a French publication, probably knowing that they would roll over and surrender the instant Avi Arad hurled himself out of a tree at them, screeching like a rabid were-wombat.

Which, honestly, would be overkill in this case. Because Whedon’s great revelation is that he’s modeling Avengers: Age of Ultron after another classic sequel.

No, not The Empire Strikes Back; Whedon hates that (maybe there’s a little rank amateur still left in the man). I’m talking The Godfather: Part 2.

I Want To Believe Who You’re Going To Call: The X-Files / Ghostbusters: Conspiracy #1 Review

On Wednesday I mentioned that I was as sick as an animal, and that under the influence of three types of antihistamine and some form of Polish pig virus, the new The X-Files / Ghostbusters: Conspiracy crossover sounded like just about my level of fun given my reduced cognitive capacity.

On paper, this kind of crossover is a gimme for big fun. You’ve got Scully the skeptic and Mulder the believer in the supernatural hiding in the shadows, both serious as a bowel prolapse on taco night, confronted face-to-face with big technicolor slime-spitting ghosts and four guys who treat the whole thing like an irritating plumbing problem with a wicked, ironic sense of humor about the experience. Sure, the thing could never be canon – if Mulder and Scully really met Dr. Venkman and company, they’d be able to wave 1080p scan video in Skinner’s face every time he tried to rein him in… or more likely, Smoking Man would have Peter, Ray, Winston and Egon quietly shot in the back of the head in a New York alleyway.

Well, The X-Files / Ghostbusters: Conspiracy #1 doesn’t give us that meeting. It gives us The Lone Gunmen meeting the Ghostbusters – which is a smart way to go in its own way, as it puts comic relief alongside just plain comedy – as the Gunmen investigate the guys as probably frauds and charlatans. And while the Gunmen wind up spending most of the issue as bystanders – what’s Frohike gonna do against a Class Five Full-Roaming Vapor, grump it into submission? – there’s still a reasonable amount of fun to be had in this one-and-done…

Except this issue is part of a great, IDW-wide crossover. Which means a there’s some exposition here that will only matter to you if you intend to follow the remainder of Conspiracy. And considering the next part crosses over with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, well, your mileage may vary.

Cards Against Humanity-Wamanity: Doctor Who Cards Against Humanity

We are still animal sick here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office. We are on so many antihistamines, if our doctor were to centrifuge our blood, he would fondly touch his lab equipment and then die while Badfinger’s Baby Blue played in the background. I personally verbally communicate via sneezing now, and once I can figure out how to tag the obvious “you” at the end of my currently-mastered explosively sneezed, “Fuck!”, I can let the rest of my language mastery go the way of the Pog.

So we have whiled away the past 24 or so hours by playing rousing games of the bafflingly entertaining party game Cards Against Humanity, which is like a game of Trivial Pursuit as played by the attendees of The Cereal Convention in volume two of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. It is one of our favorite games, although when it comes to the geek front, it is a little anemic.

Or at least, it used to be. Since Cards Against Humanity is published under a Creative Commons license, anyone can, under the right circumstances, create their own cards for the game. And Crisis On Infinite Midlives contributor Lance Manion has pointed out to us that an improv comedy outfit called Conventional Improv has come up with a card set based on Doctor Who. And some of those cards are pretty solid and funny.

Not, you know, “Bigger, blacker cocks” funny, but very, very decent. And you can check a few of them out after the jump.

Touch Me I’m Sick

Guatemalan Snot Plague has descended upon the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office. I consider this to be my own fault. I went out of my way to obtain a flu vaccine at the beginning of autumn, and feeling somewhat protected from the ravages of winter illness, I spent weeks licking doorknobs after stealthily finishing the beers of strangers in bars. It seemed like a good idea while I was… actually, no it didn’t. I feel shame. Terrible aching, chills and shame. But that’s not the point.

The point is that, between the Plague and having to wander out into yet another Polar Vortex-fuelled frigid night in Boston, neither Amanda nor I have the energy to do much more than lean back on the couch with a stack of new comics, without thinking about any of them in much more depth than it takes to mutter, “It’s fun to watch dudes get kicked. Kicked right in the face. Hee.”

But that stack is one of new comics, which means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But there are some cool looking books in there with which to while away the invasion of my precious bodily fluids by Godless commie bugs who want to seize the means of mucous production. There’s the first issue of All-New Invaders by James Robinson (who has been known to breathe new life into Golden Age-era heroes for DC), a new issue of Batman, a new Walking Dead, and even an X-Files crossover with Ghostbusters by IDW, which is a no-brainer for a cool crossover that I can’t believe I never thought of as far as I’m concerned and sounds like about the right level of pure fun for a night when my brain would like to vacation away the sea of goop in which it is currently wallowing.

But you know how this works: before we can talk about any of them, we need to stop wishing for the sweet release of death and start reading them. So assuming we don’t die…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!