batman_89_one_sheetIt’s the 25th anniversary of the release of Batman in theaters, so this week, Amanda and I talk about what it was like being a geek in the years and months leading up to the flick… and whether it holds up now (Hint: in 1989, Batman was a terrible, terrible pervert).

We also talk about:

  • The pilot for The Flash that leaked to the Internet this week,
  • Superman #32, written by Geoff Johns with art by John Romita Jr., and,
  • New Avengers #20, written by Jonathan Hickman with art by Valerio Schiti!

And, the usual disclaimers:

  • This show is recorded live to tape. It means some more pauses and repeated thoughts than you might be used to, but it also means that anything can happen.
  • This show contains spoilers. We try to warn ahead of time, but if you haven’t seen Batman yet, I’m not sure what you want us to tell you.
  • This show contains adult, explicit language, and is not safe for work. It’s 2014; check behind your couch cushions. You’ll find ear buds.

Enjoy the show, suckers!

django_unchained_1_coverIn this week’s episode, Amanda and I discuss:

  • DC Entertainment’s / Warner Bros.’s rumored slate of movie released, from Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice in 2016 to a rumored new Batman movie in 2019, whether DC is overextending, which ones we’re most looking forward to, how Sandman could work as a movie, and who should play Shazam,
  • The recently announced Quentin Tarantino / Matt Wagner crossover of Django Unchained and Zorro, why we’re not as excited as we might have been 15 years ago, and what Django crossovers we’d rather see,
  • Sex Criminals #6, written by Matt Fraction with art by Chip Zdarsky,
  • Thunderbolts #27, written by Ben Acker and Ben Blacker, with art by Carlo Barberi, and:
  • How World Cup soccer is enough to put an American – even a baseball-loving American – right to sleep.

But some disclaimers:

  • This show is recorded live to tape, like a live radio show. While this might mean some dead air and dead ends, it also means that anything can happen.
  • This show contains spoilers. We try to drop a warning ahead of time, but tread lightly.
  • This show contains profanity and adult language, and is not safe for work. If it was translated into sign language, it would be only a middle finger. Wear headphones.

Enjoy the show, suckers!

star_wars_logoSo given how generally excited fandom has been that J. J. Abrams was chosen to take over Star Wars from George Lucas for Episode VII, the consensus that, given Abrams’s work on Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness, he was the best possible choice to work on the franchise, and that Abrams has said that directing Star Wars was a dream gig, it’s probably safe to say that he’ll be helming the movies well beyond Episode VII, right?

Right?

Rian Johnson will write and direct the eighth “Star Wars” movie, inheriting the franchise from J.J. Abrams, according to two individuals with knowledge of the director’s plans. Johnson will also write the treatment for the ninth movie, but he will not direct it.

Huh. Okay, that was fast.

guardians_of_the_galaxy_movie_posterYeah, I know that just yesterday I said that we couldn’t guarantee that we’d post every day… but it turns out that tonight was a little slow, and there was a cool thing that I wanted to take a minute to share with you.

Most of this summer’s comic book movies have come and gone, but there is one biggie still left in the pipe: Guardians of The Galaxy. Not just because it’s a Marvel Studios flick, and not further just because it’s the first wholly original Marvel Studios movie since Captain America: The First Avenger in July, 2011 (seriously: since then, it’s been all already-seen characters in Avengers, and a pile of sequels).

No, it’s because it’s directed by James Gunn. Gunn is a killer director of fun genre flicks (seriously: if you haven’t seen Slither and Super, you are robbing yourself of joy like a common vegetarian or teetotaler), and here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives, we are fans of genre flicks by auteur directors (hi, Edgar!).

Gunn is a dude who packs his movies with genuine tension and pathos, along with ripping dark humor. If he wasn’t doing Guardians of The Galaxy, we’d be waiting impatiently for whatever else he was doing.

Thankfully for we who are impatient, there is a new British trailer for Guardians of The Galaxy that features almost all unseen footage, along with dialogue from Bradley Cooper as Rocket Raccoon and Vin Diesel as Groot, that was just too awesome not to share. And you can check it out after the jump.

When Amanda and I got back from San Diego Comic-Con in July, 2011, we were both kinda at loose ends. Amanda had just been turned down for a promotion for the second time, and I was in a new day job that I hated so much that, when a minor earthquake hit Boston just a month later, I fled the building as soon as I felt the floor shake without telling anyone, secretly hoping that an aftershock would knock the building to the ground, killing all my co-workers and forcing me to find some, any, better gig.

It was in the days after we got home from SDCC that Amanda suggested that maybe we could start a comics podcast, leveraging our knowledge in our favorite hobby, so at least we felt we were doing something that wasn’t a terrible day job. The idea was awesome at its face – I had worked in radio in the past, and Amanda and I had both worked as stand-up comedians, so talking into a mike to entertain strangers wasn’t a foreign or scary idea – but we had no equipment to record a podcast, nor a place on the Internet to host one.

After about a month and a half, Amanda convinced me to stake out some Internet real estate to host the show, and Crisis On Infinite Midlives was born. When we launched, we still didn’t have podcasting equipment, so we decided to start out as a regular comics Web site.

And at the start, it was awesome. We both had the benefit of working jobs we didn’t care about, so we could write two or three articles a day. And while eventually we did get some gear to record podcasts, it turned out that the process we’d chosen to be more than onerous: we’d record the thing while half-drunk, then immediately listen to it while totally drunk to see if it was any good, and then anally edit out every pause and cough before releasing it. It meant that every one hour show required me to listen to the horrifying sound of my own voice for another three or four hours, which, if you’ve never tried it, is simply awful. It was nothing like radio, when I’d crack the mike, open my mouth, and then close the mike with a shrug and a, “Well, that happened. What’s next?”

So we kinda let the podcast fade, but Amanda and I made the commitment to post at least one thing to the site every day. But here’s the problem with that kind of commitment: when you eventually get a new and better job, and your partner finally gets that promotion, and eventually a little kitten requiring care and play moves into your house, well, that once-a-day commitment becomes damn hard.

And if you are one of the few readers who has become a regular, you’ve see how that extra difficulty has affected the site. It’s been quite a while since we posted more than one article in a day, and it’s been damn near two months since we’ve posted a comic book review. And that’s because there’s just no time anymore; Amanda works late more often that not, and I have to take care of our mascot Parker The Kitten, and when it’s all said and done well… let’s just say that comic book reviews generally take me two to three hours to write. And those are hours I just don’t have anymore.

But in the meantime, what we have learned is that we don’t need to record podcasts the way we did at the start. Not only could we record them live to tape (the way we have since we reintroduced the podcast a couple of months ago), thus simulating live radio and comedy and eliminating the wretched need to keep listening to the show until we’re convinced it sucks, but we learned that we can do other nifty stuff that we’ll be setting up and unveiling in the coming months.

And more importantly: we now have a lot of fun doing the podcast, whereas we currently need to struggle for one of us to free up an hour here or an hour there to try and write something every day. Which has led is to a decision…

…Crisis On Infinite Midlives can no longer guarantee to post written content every day. We will be, effective immediately, focusing on producing and improving our podcast.

We are not giving up on written content; after all, SDCC 2014 is coming, and we will likely post some write-ups and post some photos… but we will also be producing and posting short podcasts from the field, hopefully with some cool audio and special guests to make listening worth your while.

To those readers who’ve been with us for the past few years: thank you. And we hope you’ll check in now and again to see new written content, while still giving our podcast a chance.

You can directly subscribe to our show here, or subscribe to it via iTunes here. As we set up other ways to find the show, we’ll let you know here.

Thanks again for sticking with us for the past few years, and we hope you’ll give our Internet radio show a chance; we post a new episode every Sunday.

And now, for tradition’s sake (and not for the last time…)

…see you later, suckers!

harrison_ford_signIn this week’s podcast, Amanda and I are joined by longtime Crisis On Infinite Midlives contributors Trebuchet and Pixiestyx! Trebuchet read comics as a kid and came back to them as an adult, and Pixiestyx didn’t read any comics until adulthood. Which make them the perfect guests with whom to discuss:

  • Star Wars: Episode VII! And more specifically, why we aren’t feeling all that excited about it,
  • Considering the comics industry is dying (almost literally) to bring in new and lapsed readers, what factors, books, and events brought Trebuchet and Pixiestyx to comics in the 21st Century,
  • Uber #14, written by Keiron Gillen with art by Gabriel Andrade,
  • The Walking Dead #128. written by Robert Kirkman with art by Charlie Adlard, and
  • The United States of Murder Inc. #2, written by Brian Michael Bendis with art by Michael Avon Oeming!

But first, a few disclaimers:

  • This show is recorded live to tape, and may contain more pauses, “um’s”, and references to tube steaks, lips and Kobe assholes than your average comic book podcast,
  • There are spoilers here. We try to warn ahead of time, but proceed at your own risk, and
  • This show features adult, profane language, and is not safe for work. We all found headphones with which to record the show, so you can damn well hunt some up to listen to it.

Enjoy the show, suckers!

We are traveling today for the purposes of recording a new episode of the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Podcast, so we will be dark most of the day.

We will return to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow.

superman_vs_captain_marvel_JLA_137_coverWe don’t have a lot of time this evening – we are preparing to, for the first time, take the podcast out of the studio and on the road to have a couple of guest hosts, which requires the testing of a bunch of new portable equipment and packing it up – but this seemed like a thing we should mention, even if it turns out to be a rumor.

Apparently Hollywood gossip reporter Niki Finke is claiming to have obtained the release schedule for the next several years of DC live action superhero movies, including and beyond Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. This schedule was reportedly meant to be announced at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con in about five weeks – and we might hear something different from DC / Warner Bros. then – but supposedly, here is the schedule of DC Universe movies coming out between now and 2018… and there are one hell of a lot of them.

frank_miller_headshotFrank Miller was behind a computer keyboard yesterday. Someone made a terrible, terrible mistake.

Here’s what I’m talking about: the last time Frank sat down specifically to publish something he thought on the Internet, it was to post a diatribe about the Occupy Wall Street kids who were, at the time, camping out in public parks around the United States. Frank spent a few hundred words and a couple of amateurish “bowel movement” jokes comparing these neo-rich-kid-hippies with Al-Queda, which not only sounded like unnecessary histrionics, but really kinda ridiculous. After all, most world-class terrorist organizations ask their collaborators to have a useful skill. You know, beyond drum circles. But I digress.

Anyway, Frank’s public presence since 2011 has been comprised of that blog post and his original graphic novel Holy Terror, which was a Batman story that DC Comics refused to publish. You know, the same DC Comics that published Kevin Smith’s The Widening Gyre, where Smith retconned Batman to have pissed his pants during his first confrontation with the mob in Batman: Year One, written by… some guy who I can’t remember. I remember he was a good writer at the time, though.

So this is the first time in almost three years Frank has put himself out for Internet scrutiny, and I have to give him credit for doing it in a Reddit Ask Me Anything, where Miller has to boldly face questions like:

[–]metsbnl 133 points

What do you think of DC’s decision to reject publishing Holy Terror?

[–]Izawwlgood 348 points

And as a follow up; what in the fuck were you thinking?

and:

[–]ThrillhausVanHouten 148 points

How do you respond to critics who say your work is sexist and shows you only posses the crudest possible understanding of women?

[–]Psyladine 136 points

What are you talking about? His female characters have great variety, they run the gamut from Madonna to Whore.

and then had the courage to, well, ignore those question in favor of ones asking what superheroes he might still like to write.

Hi folks,

So, funny story, we went to our local comic book store, as we do every Wednesday. The extremely helpful staff, who know us by name and ask us not to frighten the “norms” that have popped in with increased regularity since Winter Soldier became more than a euphemism for a frigid play date, gave us our books and sent us on our merry way. We stopped into the bar…and that’s where I consumed a bottle of something red and, upon emerging into Twilight (the transitive daylight state, not the shitty movie), forgot half our take on a hanger under said bar. My take involved something involving Batgirl 30 and Superman/Wonder Woman…some number. They both have the cool retro covers that DC wants to make a thing for publicity. I also got the new issue of Deadpool, which involves the “Original Sin” storyline and has Dazzler on the cover. I have no idea what its about but, 8 out of 10 – cover has Dazzler, will reach for again Marvel.

Rob has been dispatched to the bar to rectify my inebriated wrongs.

However, Rob, being more accustomed to remembering what to keep track of in the bar – seriously, I usually just look out for me and roofies – brought his stash safely home. So, even if he is not successful on my behalf, that means that we have things to read this week. Behold:

Like tears...in...rain...

Like tears…in…rain…

Campers, you know this means the end of of our broadcast day.

And, what made it home? Kieron Gillen’s Uber #14. The Amazing Spider-Man “Learning To Crawl” #1.2 by Dan Slott. Dead Letters by Christopher Sebela. Are you reading Dead Letters? You should totally be reading Dead Letters. Anyway, those books and more as you can see from my blurry cell phone photo, which totally had nothing to do with my hands shaking or anything.

You all know the drill: before we can talk about them, we have to read them. Which means that this is the end of our broadcast day.

Tune in later this week for our thoughts.

They may even be coherent.