Your Circuit’s Dead, There’s Something Wrong

Yeah, so, long story short: there’s no podcast tonight. Life got in the way again, and we have learned that we simply need to record this thing on Sundays… and to plan our Sundays to make sure we can record them. Because terrible distractions happen on weekdays. Distractions like day jobs. And the cat. And the day job of the cat. Which is also a night job. And an afternoon job. Parker The Kitten is a cruel and unforgiving taskmaster, is what I’m saying.

So throw today’s travails on top of the fact that we will be unable to tape tomorrow because we will not only be attending an advance screening of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, but we will be attending it with the owner of my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to remember that not everything that shoots sticky goo is a “web shooter”, and it looks like there won’t be a new show until this weekend.

So we feel shame that, not only are we a week behind in our podcast, but we are so under the gun that we don’t have time for a new comic day review. But there are new comics today, which means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But there are some long awaited comics in that pile, man. We’ve got the first Peter Parker-headed comic book since 2012 in The Amazing Spider-Man #1 (not the particular comic book with that number I’ve wanted since I was five years old, but still very, very decent), the official return of Wally West to the DC Universe in The Flash Annual #3, a new issue of Dream Police by J. Michael Straczynski, which is the sequel to a 2005 one-shot drawn by Mike Deodato that was powerful enough that I literally got chills when I saw this new issue almost nine years later, a new issue of Kieron Gillen’s Uber (which, after the last issue, I could not wait to see), and a bunch of other cool stuff!

But you know the drill: before we can talk about them (and we will talk about them in a podcast this weekend, along with the Star Wars casting and possibly the new Spider-Man movie), we need time t read them. So for now…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Family Reunion: Cast of Star Wars: Episode VII Announced

Yeah, I know we were gonna release a podcast today, but a couple of unexpected things got in the way. The first being that Amanda, my co-host and co-editor, is still trapped at her day job. The second being that the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office Mascot, Parker The Kitten, is inconsolable because Amanda is not here, and is displaying his displeasure in his normal reasonable way: by attempting to destroy everything we love.

So right now we intend to record and release a late episode of the podcast tomorrow (we won’t be talking about any particular comics since we won’t have had a chance to read the new books, but we’ll address a couple on the planned, regularly-scheduled weekend episode.

And we will be addressing this little news item in a little more detail on the next episode as well: the main cast of Star Wars: Episode VII was announced today.

Big News, Bigger Monsters: Godzilla Featurette Released

While we were busy at the American Classic Arcade Museum, pretending that the end of the world would come from the bottom of a vector graphics tube, or perhaps in the form of an orderly stack of marching aliens that mutter, “Dun DUN Dun DUN” while firing missiles so powerful that even gravity doesn’t change their velocity (because Force equals Mass times Fuck You Gravity I’ll Get There When I’m Ready), there was a of comics news that came out of Chicago’s C2E2 convention.

There was the announcement from Marvel that we’re about to learn about a second person who was bitten by the spider that gave Peter Parker his powers, and the other announcement that Wolverine is about to die (and unlike every other comic book character who isn’t Uncle Ben, Logan is really and truly gonna stay dead you gais!!!1!), and then there was the news that Zack Snyder has already been signed to direct Justice League immediately after he’s done with Batman Vs. Superman. And these are all things that we want to talk about… and we will, when we record our podcast tomorrow. Yes, I know we are already a day late on releasing it, but we are still half dead from playing stand-up arcade games for eight hours at a time, and the Home Office Mascot, Parker the Kitten, is still exacting vengeance for our 72 hour absence by demanding constant and exhausting play.

So while we gather our thoughts on these weighty matters for honest discussion (and dick jokes – a J’onn J’onzz vs. J’onn T’omazz gag is never far from my lips) tomorrow, we will instead move to simpler matters of giant monsters and mass destruction with no possibility of superhuman intervention: Godzilla, to be precise. The movie opens on May 16th in the United States (and on May 14th or May 15th across most of the rest of the civilized world), which means that Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures are putting the publicity machine into overdrive.

The most recent release is a short featurette on the flick, which features some quotes from Bryan Cranston and Elizabeth Olsen… which means that you can forget what I said about superhuman intervention a paragraph ago. Godzilla is doing battle with Walter White and The Scarlet Witch, yo. With that kind of opposition, Godzilla won’t have the time to throw a tidal wave in a bathtub.

Either way, you can check out the video after the jump.

Rise From Your Grave: Another Visit To The American Classic Arcade Museum

So have you heard the urban legend about when Atari buried about a million copies of the E. T.: The Extra Terrestrial in a hole in the desert? The rumor is that Atari whipped out the E. T. video game in about six weeks to make the almighty Christmas dollar, and when the game turned out to be a giant, buggy, stinking pile of shit (that part’s not a rumor; I borrowed the game from a buddy back in sixth grade for a weekend, and have never been so happy that I didn’t spend my own allowance on something) that no one wanted to buy, Atari’s management sent truckloads of of the game to the middle of the desert, under cover of darkness, to drop in a dark hole to take as some kind of filthy tax write-off.

It’s an event that, while a lot of people thought it was apocryphal, is widely considered to be the beginning of the end of the original era of classic video games. Within a couple of years, the Atari 2600 and 5200 had gone down (along with ColecoVision, which was the biggest and most advanced competitor for the home video game throne until people just stopped giving a shit) and video arcades began a long, slow decline to take a place in Americana with the drive-in movie theater: an institution that once was everywhere, but that now you need to really hunt for.

And it all started with an alleged hole in the desert, dug by a company that did something that the full weight and power of the United States Government was unable to do: kill E. T.

Or at least it was an alleged hole. This weekend, a group of documentary filmmakers successfully found that hole in an Alamogordo, NM landfill and unearthed a bunch of copies of the E. T. cartridge, thereby bringing to light the end of the first golden age of video games.

And it is purely by coincidence that the bulk of the Crisis On Infinite Midlives staff made our semi-annual visit to the American Classic Arcade Museum at the Funspot Arcade in Laconia, NH, to get back a taste of the meaty days of that first golden age.

Down In An Internet Hole

Most of the staff of Crisis On Infinite Midlives is traveling today, and disturbed to find ourselves in a place with a drought of Internets.

I am posting this from my phone, in the very, very sketchy 1G sticks of northern New England wireless connectivity. If you can call it that.

We will be back in service tomorrow with photographs of our adventure, and will then resume our regularly scheduled programming.

The (Mouse) Empire Strikes Back: Star Wars Expanded Universe No Longer Canon

I know I’ve recounted this story before for people who are far too young to have seen Star Wars in its original theatrical release, but there’s some news today that makes it bear repeating: there was a time, not too long after Return of The Jedi left theaters, when Star Wars didn’t mean shit.

I know, it’s hard to believe, but by around 1989 or 1990, nobody was thinking about Star Wars. After Jedi came and went in 1983, we had moved on. There had been two Indiana Jones movies, Ghostbusters had come out, people who had been scared by Darth Vader as little kids were cackling at Freddy Krueger flicks, and Batman was ushering in the first real age of comic book movies. Star Wars was over. Nobody cared. Hell, even Marvel Comics had stopped publishing Star Wars comics in 1986, and that was the title that kept the company afloat in the late 70s.

Sure, we still loved Star Wars, but by then we had moved on. George Lucas wasn’t talking about making any more movies – sometime around the release of The Empire Strikes Back he was making bold claims about producing a nine-movie epic – and by 1986, he was busier executive producing Howard The Duck, possibly from behind a giant mound of cocaine (Editor’s Note: There is no evidence or allegation whatsoever that George Lucas was using cocaine during this period. Other than the fact that he was in the movie business, and it was the 1980s. Which, as someone who lived through that period, is pretty damning evidence all by itself. But I digress.)

But then, all of a sudden in 1991, there was Timothy Zahn’s Heir to The Empire. A novel set after Return of The Jedi featuring Luke, Han and Leia. And a story that, in those pre-Internet days, was strongly rumored to be the actual stores that Lucas planned to tell in the final three movies.

And once that novel hit, Star Wars interest exploded all over again. There were two sequels to Heir to The Empire. There was the Dark Horse comics sequel to that sequel called Dark Empire. And a metric shit-ton of other novels and comics, which piqued interest enough to get the Star Wars special editions released in theaters (including that victory fireworks display on Coruscant – a city introduced in Zahn’s novels!), and then the prequels, and then years of fandom rage, and now the new Episode VII being directed by J. J. Abrams…

…but without that first novel that really established the Star Wars Expanded Universe and kickstarted a new wave of interest in Star Wars? It’s the 70s and 80s version of The Matrix: One great movie, a couple of sorta okay ones, and ultimately a thing we liked when we were younger, until we moved on to bigger and better things, so we don’t really even think about it anymore.

So Star Wars owes a lot to its Expanded Universe. Which you would think would be recognized by J. J. Abrams, who, when he rebooted Star Trek, went to great story lengths to find a way to reboot the property without invalidating all the other stories that came before.

Yeah, but you’d be wrong. Because as of today, all of those stories? Not even remotely canon anymore.

J.H. Williams III’s Art Gets Animated In New Blondie Video

Need a quick fix of J.H. Williams III’s art before the next installment of Sandman: Overture hits the shelves, which, frankly could be weeks or months. Great! Then check out his work in the most unlikely of places – a Blondie video.

Actually, his style does seem to work nicely with Debbie Harry’s vocals. As, someone who grew up listening to Blondie, I’m not sure I’m down on giving her work the Autotune treatment, but this is probably why I’m not pop music’s demographic anymore.

Check out the album art after the jump.

Death By Minutiae

I know that we have posted fresh comic reviews on Wednesday nights for the past couple of weeks, but things are a little different this week. First off, I have spent a large part of my week’s free time dealing with my insurance company and my auto upholsterer, trying to coordinate when I can get my recently-vandalized convertible roof repaired. I have done this all while staring down the barrel of our long awaited semiannual pilgrimage to the American Classic Arcade Museum at Funspot in Laconia, NH to play Tron until I make my inner 12-year-old look like a bitch by making it through the third rack as a 42-year-old. Further, this is the first time this regular trip requires us to interview and employ a catsitter to care for Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office Mascot Parker The Kitten.

Overall, it means that this has been a busier-than-usual week for us. Which further means that we decided to celebrate a week’s worth of new comics with a pile of beers at the bar next to our local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to stop talking about our new pussy unless we have high definition photographs of it to share.

This combination of events means that we are not operating at our full capacity. But it still means that we have new comics. Which means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But there are some good books in that pile. We’ve got the final issue of Robert Kirkman’s All Out War storyline in The Walking Dead (where, if there is a story God, Negan will finally suck the pipe), the first issue of Marvel’s Original Sin, Flash #30 (which supposedly features the long-awaited return of Wally West to the New 52 universe), Batman: Eternal #3 (which allegedly does the same for Stephanie Brown), an issue of Guardians of The Galaxy written by Brian Michael Bendis with art by 80s Justice League artist Kevin Maguire, and a bunch of other cool-looking stuff!

But you know how this works: before we can talk about any of them, we need time to talk to insurance companies, get the cat used to being fed by a stranger, and then to read the books. So until that time…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

All Hail The Great Marketing Machine – Review Of Ultimate FF #1

I’m going to come clean with you nice people.

I keep going to our local comic books store every week, you know, the one where they know us by name and ask Rob to stop telling the other customers that he’s got an “ultimate ff and it ain’t a comic book, baby! Amiright?! Please talk to me. I’m so lonely.” I go. I get my stack of pulls and pick up whatever other books look interesting that week. Then I go home, fall asleep on the couch watching Arrow, and get up the next morning to go about the rest of my week. It’s a week that often finds me with fewer and fewer opportunities to really sit down and read through the books I’ve picked up that Wednesday. I’ve got stacks of pulls from previous weeks that may have already found themselves cataloged into a long box and brought over to the off site storage that Rob has finally broke down and gotten rented. I feel badly about this, not the rented storage, but that I never got a chance to read the books. I hope to at some point, but the Home Office was beginning to look like it belonged to a couple level 5 hoarders, so the books, read or not, needed to go.

As a consequence, there have been far fewer reviews on the site lately. So, today I made point of sitting down to read a brand new series, Ultimate FF #1, written by Joshua Hale Fialkov with art from Mario Guevara and Tom Grummett. The book takes place in Marvel Universe #1610. Therefore, if you’re like me and have a passing familiarity with Marvel characters from Fantastic Four in the 616, but haven’t had a chance to keep up with anything particularly current in Marvel since Marvel Now! kicked off, in theory, this should be just the book for me, right?

Will I find something that will reignite my interest in publications from the House Of Ideas in Ultimate FF #1? Maybe, but, be prepared for me to spoil the hell out of it, after the jump.

Crisis On Infinite Midlives Podcast Episode 12: The Groin Kick of Empathy

Okay, okay; it’s been slightly more than a week (eight days, you want the exact tally) since our last podcast, but we (I) have a good reason, which I expand upon in the first few minutes of the show.

Tune in this week for discussion about:

• Automobile vandalism! (Shit, I gave away the super-secret reason for the show’s delay!)
• Misguided fangirl hate (Prompted by the t-shirt on sale at Wondercon, the design of which you can see at the top left, and the truly reprehensible reaction to Janelle Asselin’s critique of the upcoming Teen Titans #1 cover and suggestion that it might be a book prime to be designed for a female audience)
• The new Joss Whedon written and produced movie In Your Eyes, which recently debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival and which can be rented for video on demand via Vimeo right now! Here’s the first three minutes of the movie (with a built-in button to rent the whole thing) so we’re at least kind of on the same page:

• Scott Snyder’s Batman: Eternal #2 and American Vampire: Second Cycle #2!

And as always, our disclaimer: this show was recorded live to tape, so there may be a few more instances of “um,” “uh,” and “douchenozzle” than you are accustomed to in a comics podcast. Further, this podcast contains explicit, vulgar language, and is not safe for work. Every cell phone you have owned since 2006 has come with earphones. Use them.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:02:09 — 56.9MB)

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Enjoy the show, suckers!