Back In Thine Saddle: Simonson Returns to Marvel for Avengers

There was big news yesterday afternon from Marvel via their Next Big Thing liveblog with Brian Michael Bendis: starting with issue 25, the main Avengers title is gonna tie into the Avengers Vs. X-Men event for six issues! Wait, that’s not news… after Fear Itself and Avengers: X-Sanction so far, a Marvel event tie-in unfortunately sounds less like news than it does a diagnosis.

Then again, maybe not. Because Walt Simonson is returning to Marvel for the first time in around a decade to draw it. Not that image above; that’s a sketch for the Hero Initiative from a couple years ago, but I figured it’d be a nice taste of what we’re in for.

Cable’s Out: Avengers: X-Sanction #2 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review contains spoilers. Also rage, but mostly spoilers. Look at it this way: it’ll save you four bucks.

God damn you for making me do this, Jeph Loeb. I defended you after Heroes hit the skids. I didn’t scream at you for Ultimates volume three. you brought Jason Todd back from the dead and I didn’t insist you take his place (Yeah, I know it was actually Clayface impersonating Jason in Hush, but you planted the filthy idea in Judd Winick’s head). I tried, man.

But Avengers: X-Sanction is so wretchedly and abysmally bad it boggles my mind. For a time travel story it is heartbreakingly tiny in scope. The storytelling is flawed and full of holes, and required every character involved to act like a complete fucking idiot. As an event, it makes me miss Fear Itself, which is like being nostalgic for a canker sore.

The Dame Wore Tentacles: Fatale #1 Review

I am probably not the best person in the world to review Ed Brubaker’s and Sean Phillips’s Fatale, because I’ve spent the past several months, on my wretched morning commute, plowing through old crime and detective novels. Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Richard Stark; basically anything with a meaty crime in the middle of it that isn’t a comic book, if only so I dont have to attract a conversation with a comic book fan on a city bus. Have you seen us? We can be… awkward. But I digress.

The point is that someone like me would be the prime audience for Fatale, which if distilled down to its elevator pitch would be: “Philip Marlowe vs. the Cult of Cthulhu and Brigid O’Shaughnessy, provided Brigid’s powers of seduction were somehow supernatural in nature as opposed to the half-decent set of jugs that women need to seduce dudes in real life, by which I mean it’s okay if she only has one.”

So in short, I generally liked this book a lot… but someone like me is supposed to.

Get It In The Back For A Buck: Batman Backup Stories

A cynical man might say that the real story here is: yeah, the price of Batman is jumping up to $3.99. An optimist might say that we’re finally getting some solid background on the Court of Owls, co-written by Scott Snyder and drawn by Rafael Albuquerque. A realist like me might say, “Fuck. Now I have to review two stories every month.”

What are we gonna be forking over twelve and a half cents a page for, Scott?

…We Thought They’d Never End

2011 was one hell of a big year for DC Comics, a year of bold moves against the grain of what Marvel was doing, proudly proclaimed with bold slogans on their comics’ covers: “Holding the line at $2.99!” and “The New 52!” But, as tends to happen with all well-meaning slogans, like “habeas corpus” and “I’ll pull out,” some things are easier to say than to live up to.

In an extensive interview with Newsarama’s Vaneta Rogers, DC Comics Vice President of Sales John Rood and SVP of Sales Bob Wayne announced that Batman and Detective comics will be bumping up to $3.99, while increasing their page count for additional “story and editorial content.” No word, however, on what “editorial content” means. Could be interesting backmatter… could be grainy photos of Grant Morrison’s junk.

Occupy Gotham: Detective Comics #5 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: Spoiler alert! No, not Stephanie Brown, I just ruin the story for you.

The first four issue arc of Detective Comics was one of the most pleasant surprises of DC Comics’ New 52: tightly written with an interesting new villain, excellent art, and with the best cliffhanger of all September’s comics where The Joker’s face is apparently torn off and nailed to a wall. And what was most remarkable about the run to me was that it was written by Tony Daniel, who is first and foremost an artist. Now we’re on issue five. And it turns out that as a writer? Maybe Tony Daniel is a hell of an artist.

This  issue really felt like Daniel said, “Okay, I put my all into those first four issues… now what the fuck am I gonna do?” He opens up with a riff on Occupy Wall Street – which means he probably only came up with this arc within the past couple of months – and since this protest is pro-Joker, it just falls flat to me. Don’t get me wrong, as a Watchmen fan, I am totally willing to accept the concept of a good anti-vigilante demonstration in comics, but pro-Joker? In Gotham City? That’s about as believable as a pro al-Queda rally in lower Manhattan, or a pro-Beiber riot in Max’s Kansas City. It just doesn’t ring true.

There Will Be Trouble: Robocop: Road Trip #1 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review’s Prime Directives: Serve the public trust. Protect the innocent. Spoil the book.

Dear Marvel Comics: please hire Rob Williams back. His work on Daken: Dark Wolverine was compelling and entertaining. Amanda liked his Ghost Rider a lot. Hell, I think his Classwar is a damn fine book, and that was his first time writing comics. He needs you to give him work. We need you to do it. Because if you don’t give him something to do, he might write some more Robocop for Dynamite Comics, and I don’t think I can bear that.

I’ll start with the positive: this isn’t as bad as Williams’s last run on Terminator / Robocop: Kill Human a few months back. That, however, is not an endorsement; a massive concussion isn’t as bad as an impacted skull fracture, but ain’t nobody lining up for either of them.

…And They Have A Plan. It’s Super Effective!

It has been a crazy-busy day here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office; some days, you just don’t have a lot of time to play around on the Internet. Or to watch TV. I mean, let’s say you want to catch up on Battlestar Galactica. That’s four seasons, man! It’s like ninety hours if you want to catch up on the whole thing, or sixty-eight hours if you just want to see the good stuff (Tigh’s a Cylon? Really? If we’d gone to season five, we probably would have found out that Adama was a Power Ranger. And stay tuned for season six, where we ask: who are the final four Weebles!).

We understand, and want to help. So even though we’re strapped for time today, we’d like to present: Battlestar Galactica. In it’s entirety. In four minutes. In 8-bit animation.

You heard me.

We Admit Nothing

It’s been a big week for Crisis On Infinite Midlives. We started the week as we normally do: wth a crippling hangover. And we ended it in the way we always dreamed: with a “Good job, champs!” message from DC Comics! Assuming that by “Good job,” you mean “Cease and desist.” And that by “champs” you mean “Scofflaw spastics.” And that by “comics,” you mean “legal.”

Either way, what’s done is done. It’s a new year, and the first Wednesday of selfsaid new year, which means that legal entanglements or no, this:

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But even though it means very few appearances in front of an intellectual property judge, it means a week of good comics: we’ve got a new The Boys, Defenders, Action Comics, Lone Ranger, AND… most importantly (to Amanda): Peanuts #1.

But let’s face reality: be it new comics or reprints, C&D or T&A, before we write about them, we gotta read them.

So while we get up to Mach 1 speed and remember how to recite Amendment 5: see you tomorrow, suckers!

Extra Pulp: Black Panther #527 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: And once again, one last review of last week’s books before the comic stores open… and somehow once again, it’s about Black Panther. Although it might seem like it, Black Panther is not the last book I read every month. It’s just that since it comes out a week before Hawk & Dove, I need it to steel myself for the inevitable.

Black Panther has been canceled; the last issue of David Liss’s run is in two months, closing out the currently running Kingpin of Wakanda storyline. Which is a Goddamned shame on a couple of fronts, the first being that Liss has put together a great run of comics. The second being that, after all this time – I got an inkling of it back when I reviewed issue #524 a couple months back, but I didn’t totally get it – I’ve finally figured this book out. It’s old-school pulp, pure and simple.

A rich guy with a background in adventuring in the jungle, genetic superiority to normal men, who’s battling to defeat colonial encroachment? That’s Doc Savage when it isn’t Tarzan or Alan Quartermain. A rich guy who puts together a team of specialists to battle corruption in an urban jungle? That’s The Shadow –  yeah, okay; it’s also Batman, but if you look back at Detective Comics #27, Batman was also The fucking Shadow. Not to be confused with fucking The Shadow; that was Margo Lane. Or maybe Alec Baldwin. But I digress.