Darwyn Cooke “Batman Beyond” Short That Was Just Unveiled At WonderCon

So, in honor of the Batman 75th anniversary, this Batman Beyond short by Darwyn Cooke was just screened out at WonderCon in Anaheim today:

Clever homage to all the various Batmen from the past 75 years. I particularly like the robot Adam West Batman at 1:06.

—————————————————————————————————-

Today being Easter, the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office has been traveling to see family and encountering some…automotive issues. Pop quiz – a car don’t really need a roof, right? We’re hoping to keep the podcast streak alive, though. Tune in tomorrow to see if we make the cast a three-fer. Meanwhile, happy Zombie Jesus and Related Chocolate Bunny Needs Day!

You’ll Put An Eye Out: Spider-Man Web Shooter Toy For Adults

When I was a kid, every time my grandmother would visit, she would bring me Spider-Man web shooter toys like the one pictured at the left. They were basically the spring-loaded suction cup dart guns that you could buy at the drug store for three bucks, only modified with the handle yanked off, a wristband attached, and a button instead of a trigger. You strapped the thing to your wrist, tied a string to the suction cup dart, socketed the dart in the “web shooter,” and blasted it at stuff.

The problem with the toy was that the suction cup would only reliably stick to one thing: the refrigerator. So Grandma would roll in, hand me the toy and catch up with my mom, while I spent hours shouting at an imaginary Green Goblin, licking the suction cup and shooting the fridge with a loud “thwack!” This was excellent fun for me. For my mom, who had to clean about 700 kid-spittled suction cup marks off the front of the refrigerator, it was less so.

I always seemed to lose the toy within a day after Grandma packed up and went home… by which I mean that, when I was about 25, my mom finally copped to throwing the damned things away the minute Grandma’s taillights went around the corner and my back was turned. She must have chucked about 10 of the things… and considering that the last auction for one of them that I could find showed it selling around $425, I will make sure that, when the day comes, she knows that that is the reason she was put in the cheapest nursing home available. And I will pay the rotten orderlies extra to put drooly suction cup marks on her refrigerator.

The sting of those lost toys was alleviated somewhat for me today when I came across this video made by an German gentleman named Patrick Priebe, who makes, as you might guess from his Web site, laser gadgets. But he also does other more practical (and by “practical,” I merely mean “they don’t exclusively use lasers”) gizmos, like this wrist crossbow, or this other crossbow that shoots buzzsaw blades.

Well, his latest invention is a web shooter. And not a web shooter that works like Spider-Man; Priebe seems like a clever fella, but inventing an industrial solvent that can support hundreds of pounds and then completely disappear in an hour is above almost anyone’s pay grade. No, this is closer to the long-lost toys of my childhood: it fires a dart on a string. Of course, that dart is a sharp, barbed monstrosity fired via a powerful capacitor-driven electromagnet, but it’s in the same ballpark.

It is somewhat unfortunate that I am aware this device exists, because now I may need to contact this guy and see if it’s for sale. And once that happens, it is only a matter of time before the line, “A Massachusetts man was arrested on Christmas Day for repeatedly firing a harpoon into his mother’s refrigerator while shrieking, ‘We’ll be even when I do $5,000 worth of damage!'” appears in a Florida newspaper.

Ah well. You can check this nifty little modern throwback out, in action, after the jump.

Eye Candy – VFX Of The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug Featurette

Weta Digital, the masterminds behind the stunning virtual cinematography in The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug, have posted a quick featurette about their work. It’s a neat little package that shows the process from soup to nuts on a small portion of the film. For those of you who were convinced the effects of the movie were the work of digital dark elves on a never ending quest to kill creeps and grind up through levels while leaving magical pixie dust pixels behind in their terrible wake, here is a peek behind the curtain. Also, please stop huffing your keyboard cleaner. It’s becoming a real problem.

Via Bleeding Cool.

Back To The Future Again: Warren Ellis Rebooting Dynamite’s Project Superpowers

Here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office, we are some Warren Ellis fans.

Back in 2000, when watching Unbreakable led me to leave a several-year Vertigo Comics exile to delve back into superhero comics, Ellis’s The Authority and Stormwatch trades helped reinforce my hope that superhero comics had moved away from the Image Age of chicken-scratched detail lines on footless steroid monsters punching on each other with no driving story to speak of, and into something that an adult might like to read.

Ellis’s Nextwave remains one of my favorite limited series of the past fifteen years, and his collection of Come In Alone columns not only reinforced that there were actual adults writing comics, but they made me a lurker on the Warren Ellis Forums, where my proudest contribution was that Matt Fraction ripped off the logo from a 1999 Web site I ran to be his forum avatar for a while.

Ellis has been mostly absent from mainstream comics since we started this Web site in 2001. He wrote Secret Avengers in 2001 (which is the first book I ever reviewed here), and he’s been contributing to the Kelly Sue DeConnick co-written Avengers Assemble for the last couple of months, and he did the Avengers: Endless Wartime graphic novel a few months ago,  but otherwise he’s been working on novels and TV properties and whatnot.

So it is about time, as far as we fans are concerned, for Ellis to take on a larger-scale comics project… which is a thing that he is doing. Specifically, he will be rebooting Dynamite Comics’s Project Superpowers line of books. You know, that line of comics that Alex Ross and Jim Kreuger launched in 2008! The one that none of us actually read!

Return of The King: The Superior Spider-Man #31 Review

Editor’s Note: Yeah. That sounds just spoilery enough to be right. Let’s go.

It’s been about 16 months since Doc Ock took over as Spider-Man, which has been just enough time to forget that Spider-Man is supposed to be fun, dammit.

Spider-Man’s supposed to be a wisecrack and an acrobatic move and a triumphant battle against insurmountable odds, while simultaneously Peter Parker’s a self-defeating complaint, an overdue bill he can’t afford to pay and a ruinous relationship that disintegrates against, well, predictable odds. Is it a formula? Sure. Is it soap operatic? Hell, yeah. But it’s a thing that works, and which has been working for 52 years. And it seems like a simple enough formula that we’ve seen so often over the years that we wouldn’t miss it if it was gone for a while… but I did, dammit.

Doc Ock as Spider-Man has been an interesting thought experiment to help reinforce that it’s the character of Peter Parker that makes the comic and not just a power set and a red and blue leotard, but nobody falls in love with a thought experiment unless it’s the Milgram Experiment, and even then it’s only if the enthralled already had a closet full of jackboots. So while it’s been a kinda cool distraction to watch a darker, more obsessed version of Spider-Man, I was ready for it to be over since I already have Batman.

So not only is it just plain good to see Peter back in the saddle in The Superior Spider-Man #31, writer Dan Slott clearly knows it. Because throughout this issue, characters react to Peter being back in costume (despite ostensibly not really knowing that he ever wasn’t the guy in the costume) with a general sense of relief and a sense of return to normal.

And so did I.

Spy Wanted; Must Have Experience With Death Traps: DC To Make Grayson A Secret Agent Comic

So DC Comics’s current Forever Evil event is famous for a few things, and not just for being an irritating “ending” to prior crossover Trinity War, for putting almost the entire stable of major DC superheroes off the playing field for about five straight months (except in those characters’ home titles, where they are wisely generally pretending that Forever Evil isn’t a thing that is happening), and for making even Marvel’s Fear Itself seem like a fully-baked idea.

Beyond those things, it is known for being the storyline where The Crime Syndicate exposes Dick Grayson’s identity as Nightwing to the world at large. Which has, since that even occurred in the first issue, begged the question as to how that event would be handled once the event ended (assuming it does. Considering Forever Evil spun right out of Trinity War, there is a part of me that thinks there might be another event spinning out of Forever Evil. With another event spinning out of that one. Ad infinitum. Keeping the Trinity of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman on the sidelines, and making Justice League into an anthology title where Geoff Johns can reintroduce whichever Silver Age second stringers he has a fancy for. But I digress). Would Grayson go back to being Nightwing, with perhaps an crossover appearance by Mephisto to make a deal for everyone to forget his identity?  Obtain some kind of neural backup to restore an earlier personality? Or one of the myriad other trick Marvel has somehow successfully used to retcon their terrible continuity mistakes?

Nah. They’re going full James Bond and making him a super secret agent.

Days of Future Passing: X-Men Footage Debuts At MTV Movie Awards

So apparently last night was the MTV Movie Awards, which I missed because I haven’t yet seen the second part of The Hunger Games trilogy, and because I am older than 15 years old and have kissed an actual girl.

But my prejudices are borne of my mid-20s and early 30s, when the only way a superhero story would be referenced would be if Jack Black put on a Robin costume and aped making out with Ben Stiller. That was the 90s, but it is the 2010s, and no less than three superhero movies are on the immediate horizon. That seems to mean that movie studios will try to leverage the MTV Movie Awards for marketing purposes, because apparently the human scum who enjoy watching teenaged mothers assault each other have money that will spend as well as money slung around by decent people.

Which is a long way to go to say that the first minute of the opening fight sequence of X-Men: Days of Future Past debuted during last night’s celebration of movies that appeal to protohumans who still have misplaced affection for Justin Bieber. And not too long ago, seeing this exclusive footage would mean that you would have to swallow your pride and watch some six-packed adolescent wave at the camera for being nominated for Best Movie Kiss in exchange for standing in front of a camera and pretending he liked women. But it is 2014, which means that if you want to see footage from an MTV award show? You just need to visit your favorite comics Web site the day after the awards show.

Or, conversely, you could visit this comics Web site. Which has the goods you’re looking for right after the jump.

Crisis On Infinite Midlives Podcast Episode 11: The Golden Shakeoff Caper

Yeah, I know that we mentioned the other day that we had subjects that we wanted to talk about in a podcast, but I also know that you didn’t even remotely think that we’d actually, you know, do one.

Well, the joke’s on you, because here’s Episode 11: The Golden Shakeoff Caper! In which we discuss:

• The ComiXology buyout by Amazon (in which I reference a piece I wrote about ComiXology’s licensing and lack of ability to back up your comics)
• The San Diego Comic-Con hotel registration process, and the anxiety-provoking processes around attending SDCC in general
• Deadpool #27
• DC’s new weekly comic, Batman: Eternal #1

And here is our usual disclaimer: this episode was recorded live to tape, meaning that other than adding the intro and outro music, it is presented exactly as we discussed it, with every, “um,” “uh,” cough and burp. Further, this podcast is not safe for work. Be advised that we liberally use explicit and vulgar language, although if you weren’t tipped off by the fact that our title this week includes the phrase, “golden shake-off,” you need more help than a friendly warning. Either way, use some headphones.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 58:15 — 53.4MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Play | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS | More

Enjoy the show, suckers!

Brain Bleach – A Brony Tale…A Documentary Of A Fandom That Refuses To Die

Some time in the early 80s, my kid sister began collecting My Little Pony figures. Her two favorites were a pony called Cotton Candy and a pegasus called Firefly. I generally referred to them as Miss Piggy and Braciole, respectively. So, even at a young age I guess you can already figure out where I stood on the matter of embracing the Love And Tolerance creedo of the MLP fandom, along with picking up on one of the rough 732,000 reasons my sister now lives in Ohio and doesn’t speak to the family.

However, there are a ridiculous number of folks out there that are MLP fans. Some of them are grown ass men. They are called Bronies. They are here and they are legion. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

A Brony Tale opens on April 26, as part of the Tribeca Film Festival.

Now, for the rest of us, who’s hungry? I’m in the mood for a little braciole…

Via Deadline.

Bruce Timm. Kevin Conroy. Batman. Animated. What Else Do You Want?

It is Batman’s 75th anniversary, which means that DC and Warner Bros. are gonna spend the next several months dumping out a bunch of promotional stuff that nobody really cares about – expect a collection of “essential” Batman stories that are all one-shots that nobody needs when affordable trade paperback editions of Batman: Year One and The Dark Knight Returns are available in every place in the world where the printed word is sold.

But the one division that gets these kind of things right is Warner Bros. Animation. For Superman’s 75th anniversary last year, they put together a killer montage showing the character as he progressed through the decades. For Batman, however, they did no such thing. They did something better.

When it comes to Batman and animation, all any discerning geek really cares about is Batman: The Animated Series and the work of animator / producer Bruce Timm. That cartoon kept Batman as The Dark Knight even as directors who will remain unnamed and unloved were facing Batman off with a punny Schwarzenegger with nothing but hard plastic molded nipples.

So it was kinda heartbreaking when word came out last year that Timm was leaving his supervisory position at Warner Bros. Animation… but he is back to supervise Batman’s animation one last time with a new short.

This one feature’s Timm’s style from the cartoon, only with a distinct feel and look of Batman from the 1930s, including short gloves, big ears, prop planes, and machine guns… and you can check out out after the jump