That’s Not True… That’s Impossible: Battle Scars #3 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This final review of last week before the comic stores open contains… I’m not sure “spoilers” is the correct term… howsabout “reckless speculation?” Nah, we’ll stick with spoilers. We’re fucking OG that way.

So being an American hero runs in Battle Scars protagonist Marcus Johnson’s family, and people think his father can’t die. That conventional wisdom is that those statements mean the smart money’s on his dad being Nick Fury… but since plot credit to this book includes Matt Fraction, it really could be anyone. Because no one can die in a Marvel comic by Matt Fraction.

Battle Scars has been the most – if not the only – interesting spinoff from the Fear Itself event, the story of an Army Ranger whose mother was killed during that event, and who returns home for the funeral to find he’s extremely popular with S.H.I.E.L.D., Captain America, and Taskmaster. In this third issue of the six-issue miniseries, Johnson discovers that he is also popular with everyone in the Marvel Universe with a gun and a Swiss bank account. This month, that includes Deadpool, and thank God, because he almost never appears in comic books these days.

Scattershot: Suicide Squad #5 Review

On a lot of levels, the reboot of Suicide Squad has been a hot mess. It started with a psychological torture tale, moved into a zombie story and then transitioned quickly into a prison break movie with almost no segues or fanfare… and that’s all in what’s supposed to be a single, cohesive, five-issue story arc. In many ways it’s a failure, but what’s saving it is two things: a total commitment to the primary characters on the part of writer Adam Glass… with the keyword there being “primary,” because the second saving grace is the apparent willingness to kill just about any character at any time.

By the time this issue rolls around, what’s left of the Squad (We’ve lost one or two via simple escape, gunshot wound, the odd zombie attack and fatal viral infection… only some of which may have been passed on by Harley Quinn) is stuck behind bars, infected with something called the Rot Virus (Yeah, sounds like Harley) and charged with quelling a prison riot before the bombs they had stuck in their brain stems. So long story short, Glass is throwing everything at the wall to amp up the tension. Deadshot’s out of bullets. El Diablo might have to kill someone. Waller’s trapped two floors above the riot. And the tension works… for those characters.

When I was a kid, I developed a theory called “Murder She Wrote Logic,” which was borne out of (duh) Murder She Wrote. Whenever you watched that show, you didn’t need to look at the evidence or the logic or anything else; all you had to do was look at who was least likely to be the killer, and you knew that they were the perp. You can use the same logic on Suicide Squad: whichever characters are drawn in broad strokes are doomed. The aforementioned Deadshot, El Diablo and Amanda Waller are well drawn out with reasonably solid dialogue and characterization, so they make it. Others like Yo-Yo, and Voltaic in the first issue? Meat for the machine, man. It’s an area where the book falls down; yeah, Glass will kill members of the team – something you’d expect to see in a book called Suicide Squad – but you can pretty much call who’s dead the first time they speak. They might as well show Deadshot a picture of their grandkids and tell him how many days they have left until retirement.

Don’t Need No Civil War: Avengers Vs. X-Men #1 Cover

According to various Twitter feeds, the winter Marvel Editorial Retreat is starting today in New York. So, possibly to fend off questions from the outside world like, “So if Cable’s a time traveler with less than 24 hours to live due to a crippling and debilitating illness, and he wants to take out The Avengers, why is setting up a boat with a bunch a deathtraps a better plan than whacking Captain America’s mom in 1920? It probably wouldn’t be hard; Steve Rogers didn’t need the Super Soldier serum because he came from hearty stock,” and, “What Marvel character will Matt Fraction be killing next? And is Matt aware of what ‘dead’ actually means?” they’ve released Jim Cheung’s cover to the upcoming first issue of Avengers Vs. X-Men for us to drool over.

I Think I’m Being Watched

Oh God… they’re videotaping me while I’m not watching! They have tape of the inside of my head, dude!

See video of the inside of my head – not my bathroom, dick – after the jump.

Who Knows What Evil Lurks In The Pants of Men? Dynamite Reprinting Chaykin’s The Shadow

Howard Chaykin’s reboot of The Shadow for DC Comics back in 1987 tends to be overshadowed (Get it?) by other stuff around the same time period, including The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, and Chaykin’s own American Flagg! and Black Kiss. Partially because all those books are so damn good, and partically because DC lost the Shadow license a long while ago, preventing the book from staying in print. Turns out that maybe the Conde Nast guys who own the character didn’t think there was a long-term future in letting Chaykin’s successor, Andy Helfer, graft The Shadow’s head onto a robot… although in retrospect, it was probably a more realistic take on the character than Alec Baldwin.

But Chaykin’s original miniseries, Blood & Judgment, is some of the best comics from the 1980s that you could find. Excellent art with a logical and interesting way of bringing Lamont Cranston from the 30s to the 80s… although it felt more like the 70s what with the way Chaykin wrote Cranston as banging anything that walked, moved or crawled in a skirt, usually without even bothering to check for an adam’s apple first. Plus, the book contained splash pages that you could put against anything from Dark Knight you, if you’re anything like me, xeroxed and tacked to your wall in high school.

What About The Twinkie? or: Site Maintenance

We’re performing some much-overdue site maintenance today, and since we’re a two-person operation, that means that the editorial staff is also the IT staff. Purely by coincidence, we’re also the janitorial staff, the joy division and the town drunks. We’re truly a full-service comics operation here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives.

The point is that, not only might you see some weird-ass shit today (Dogs and cats, living together… mass hysteria!), but updates might be sporadic. Or at least more sporadic than usual.

Please bear with us, and we’ll be back to full operation as soon as possible..

Mixed Martial Artistry: Batgirl #5 Review

The latest issue of Batgirl opens with a shot of Batgirl’s splayed-open ass and ends with her at about crotch-level to Bruce Wayne, who is in the process of preparing to beat her with a crowbar. In between, in at least three different panels, she is hit so hard her face is temporarily deformed – literally, the pretty is smacked off her face. If I had written this, my writing would be decried as reprehensible on every female-centric comics Web site in the world. This book, however, was written by Gail Simone, so y’know… women power?

Don’t get me wrong; I liked this book. It’s the start of a new story arc so it’s a good jumping-on point, it’s got a new villain we’re just beginning to learn about, some interesting character background beats involving Barbara Gordon’s mother, and plenty of action. And frankly, there is a lot of fairly graphic violence for a superhero book, and while I talked a little shit before, it was actually kind of refreshing; fighting crime in Gotham City would not be good for you. Plus, I’ve got a thing for redheads, so it’s got that going for it.

Some Walk By Night, Some Fly By Day: X-Factor #230 Review

A beleaguered detective agency. A hot blonde who doesn’t fit in. An ill-advised love story. A bizarre cast of supporting characters. Celebrity cameos. Breaking the fourth wall. Snappy patter by the bucketload. I finally figured out why I like X-Factor so damn much: it’s Moonlighting. Moonlighting with superpowers. And a more reliable production schedule.

X-Factor #230 is the second part of a decompressed storyline and there’s next to no action in it… but I wholeheartedly recommend it anyway, even for new readers. Because it is just so much damn fun to read, and that’s saying something for an issue where the male lead is dead, the female lead is depressed into inaction, and the only fights-and-tights action happens in the in-house ads for Avengers Vs. X-Men.

To bring you up to speed (Although Amanda is perfectly capable of doing so… go ahead; I’ll wait), Madrox The Multiple Man is dead… although he appears to be alive and jumping through multiple alternative dimensions. But his team at X-Factor Investigations isn’t aware of that, mostly because the evidence all points to his being dead… that evidence being that they’ve got his body in a Frigidaire in the conference room. It’s a tragedy… because that means the office beer must be sitting on a desk getting warm somewhere.

Roll Me Over, Lay Me Down and Do It Again: DC Comics New New 52

Well, we knew it was coming – the DC brass all but told us it was – but DC’s New 52 is now the New 46.

DC has announced that they are canceling Men of War, Blackhawks, O.M.A.C., Mister Terrific, Static Shock, and, in the interest of at least some justice, Rob Leifeld’s Hawk & Dove, after their respective eighth issues.

But since DC’s multiverse includes 52 worlds, and because the only words that rhymes with “46” are “ticks,” “dicks,” and “pricks,” they will be releasing six new regular books in May, including:

Wednesday Night Fights

EDITOR’S NOTE, 1/12.2012, 10:20 p.m.: Three new Avengers Vs. X-Men fight promos have been added to the media gallery below!

It has been a busy and interesting week, including the release of a bunch of Avengers Vs. X-Men promo posters, which we’re just too shitfaced to post for you.

Don’t look at us like that.

Okay, since you’re so nice, and not calling us racist, sexist pigs (Don’t ask. Please).

Now that we have the business out of the way, it is, in fact, Wednesday night, which means this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But it’s a decent-looking take (Then again, so was last week’s and other than Fatale? Guh.): New Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E. with O.M.A.C. guesting (More Goddamned periods to type? Seriously?), Bendis’s and Bagley’s Brilliant, Batman & Robin, and Crisis on Infinite Midlives’ favorite: The Strange Talent of Luther Strode!

Plus we’ve got new Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Batwoman, Batgirl, and many other female-friendly comics! That we read and enjoy (I told you, don’t ask)!

But to review them, we gotta read them. Which means: see you tomorrow, suckers!