Baseless Speculation For Fun and…

UPDATE 10/12/2011: The September sales numbers have been released, and OMAC #1 actually sold 33,581 copies. So let’s make that purely speculative magic cancellation number a little closer to 15,000 copies. 

Last week Diamond, the company that distributes comics to retailers like my local comic store owner (Who knows me by name and asks me if I would please stop asking to use his bathroom right after buying tentacle hentai), announced the preliminary wholesale sales numbers for September, which include all of the DC New 52 books except for the first print of Justice League #1, which came out in August. There are no specific copies-sold numbers yet, but OMAC came in at number 82, behind all the other New 52 books… including Justice League #1, which came out in… fucking August.

Which is a bummer to hear, since clearly OMAC is growing on us here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives… and even more of a bummer when Bleeding Cool reported last week that it was already in danger of being canceled:

And it’s written by co-publisher [Dan DiDio] and [sic] the man who has been pushing for the relaunch so long. So here’s the thing – will it seem just to anyone if one of the other 52 is cancelled [sic] due to lower sales and the publisher’s own comic, O.M.A.C., survives? I doubt it. Dan DiDio may be forced to sacrifice one of his own…

Wow. That’s depressing. Guess I’d better yank the title off my subscription pull list. At the very least, it’ll be another three bucks toward tentacle porn, or at least two bucks with another buck toward the sock cleaning bill. I guess when God closes a door, he opens a – what’s that, OMAC inker Scott Koblish?

O.M.A.C is not in danger of being cancelled.

GO ON…

Pissed Men: Avengers: 1959 Review

Since AMC’s show Mad Men became a hit by turning mid-20th century nostalgia into a bankable commodity and by casting Vincent Kartheiser in his second role where I want to stomp his balls off, it was only a matter of time before the copycats started showing up. Much like Raiders of the Lost Ark begat Tales of the Gold Monkey and Bring ‘Em Back Alive, this year Mad Men has given us the creatively leeched Pan Am and The Playboy Club… with pretty much the same predictable results.

And so what with Marvel Comics hoping to bring in new readers and not being fools (Because Marvel doesn’t reboot! Marvel doesn’t NEED to reboot to keep their number one market sh… wait, what?), Marvel’s thrown their own hat in the Good-Old-Days ring with Avengers: 1959, apparently having missed the twin memos that the current trend is toward reliving the 1960’s, and that the last go-round with 1950’s nostalgia ended by jumping the shark. Literally.

Look: I’ve been around the block enough to know that the idea of a comics company sniffing for a bandwagon to jump on is hardly new. Let’s face reality: if Roy Thomas hadn’t snapped up Star Wars license, then Marvel would be the ones trying to pretend they hadn’t released Star Hunters – a comic so bad they pulled the “kill the hero and bring him back with a new costume to save the book” trick 120 days after the book started. Being a realist I know that if Mad Men was about Christopher Street in New York, Marvel would be releasing Avengers: What Price Glory Hole? right now. So I won’t try to hold the copycat feeling against this book.

1978 Redux, In A Good Way: OMAC #2 Review

“Lemme see,” I said to my local comic store owner, who knows me by name and asks me why his store always smells like a distillery explosion after I leave, “The New 52 week one books that we want to keep getting… definitely Detective Comics. Also Animal Man, Swamp Thing, Justice League International… we’ll call Batgirl ‘on the bubble,’ and, um…”

“Don’t forget OMAC,” Amanda chimed in.

“OMAC? Are you fucking kidding me? You read The Outsiders at the end of its run. Dan DiDio might be a good publisher or editor in chief, but whoever he answers to shouldn’t allow him to write anything longer than his own name.”

“Yeah, but I like Keith Giffen. And I really liked the end of the first issue. So I want to give it another shot.”

Sheesh. Wimmens, man. What’re you gonna do? So I made the commitment to spend another $2.99 a month because hey: I love her, and it isn’t gonna suck itself, and sandwich: I don’t have one, amirite?

Ow. Owwwww. Note to self: don’t write shit like that when you don’t mean it and when your girlfriend is your editor. But I digress.

So this past Wednesday OMAC #2 was, in fact, in my pile of subscription pulls, whether I really wanted it or not. So imagine my surprise when it turned out to be one of the better books of the week.

Batman Year One: I Can Has Batman?

Let’s start with a little in the way of full disclosure: we here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives are big fans of Warner Brothers’ / DC Comics animation. We could talk about our shelves full of Bruce Timm / Paul Dini Batman, Batman Beyond and Justice League DVDs, or our epic weekends screening all four seasons of Batman: The Animated Series while drinking a concoction we like to call Venom (Protip: the secret ingredients are Rebel Yell bourbon and Wild Cherry Jolt Cola – because you can’t find this shit in the States), but I won’t.

Because frankly, this picture of the Crisis On Infinite Midlives’ Home Office TV room art centerpiece is worth a thousand words… all of those words being “geek”.

Which is part why we are so excited about the impending release of WB Animation’s adaptation of Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One on October 11th on the video on demand service of your choice, and on October 18th on DVD and Blu-Ray. The other part is that, after five weeks of DC New 52 books were Batman lubes his Batpole with every trollop in Gotham City, it’s nice to see a Batman who saves pussy rather than trolling for it, as he does in this second released clip from the flick:

Right There On The Shelf: The Walking Dead #89 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review may contain spoilers. Such as the fact that zombies have taken over the world. Tread lightly.

There’s been a lot of handwringing in the comics / zombie community (Which is a small community, but they throw great parties… except at the end your dick rots off. And not because of the zombie thing. But I digress.) about how AMC fired The Walking Dead showrunner Frank Darabont – about a week after he hyped season two at SDCC, no less – and how that and threatened budget cuts meant that the The Walking Dead was doomed.

And as someone who watched that show from the first episode and who bought season one on Blu-Ray the day it came out, allow me to go on record to say: who gives a shit?

Sure, the show is fun, and anything that puts comic stories in front of Joe Blow can only be good for the industry (Ghost Rider movies excepted), but the show was only ever second fiddle to Robert Kirkman’s original comic book. And if you’ve ever seen the show and you haven’t checked out the comic book? Well, that’s stupid. And you’re stupid for not doing it.

A Faceful Of Marvel

On yesterday’s New Comics day, retailers like my local comic store owner, who knows me by name and asks me if I hate the Scott Lobdell’s depiction of Starfire so much, why am I using it to hide the front of my pants, received a postcard from Marvel. And unlike every other postcard received since the dawn of email, which describes how much your mom loves Paris but is having trouble making BM after all that brie, this one was a little more mysterious:

Back To The Grind

Well, it’s over now. DC’s New 52 first issues have been replaced by all second issues… except for the new first issue.

Yep, that’s a new DC first issue of Huntress, which I’m sure was released due to popular demand for the character and because the story and art are exemplary, any not because it occurred to Dan DiDio that it might be nice if Robin also had someone to grudge fuck on a rooftop.

Also in this week’s take are the latest issue of Garth Ennis’s The Boys and Butcher, Baker, Candlestickmaker. We also got the new Walking Dead and Invincible from Robert Kirkman, along with Skullkickers, Brian Michael Bendis’s Moon Knight, and a stack of the New 52 week one books we liked enough to keep covering through issue two.

And not only that, my local comic store owner, who knows me by name and asks me if he has to call me by my rap name (Spunkmaster Rhino P-P), threw in a bunch of free DC Comics promotional bags and boards, brightly printed with a reproduction of last month’s Justice League #1! Meaning that at least five of this week’s books will, over the course of years, leach that image onto their back covers thus rendering them utterly and completely worthless, which is a hell of a way to treat Action Comics #1… even when it’s the one by Grant Morrison, which you could only retire under if you had 75 of them to make a blanket for your park bench.

So as always on Wednesday, Amanda and I need time to read these books so we can review them for you throughout the week. So thus endeth our broadcast day.

See you tomorrow, suckers!

Flipping The Bird: The Savage Hawkman #1 Review

Editor’s Note: This review contains spoilers. But what do you care? It’s not like you were gonna read Hawkman anyway.

And, as usual, one last Wednesday morning review before the comic stores open…

For good or ill, we’ll end our coverage of DC’s New 52, which officially ends today with a new batch of #2 issues, with The Savage Hawkman #1. The Savage Hawkman is the story of Carter Hall, who has a harness made of Nth metal that allows him to… um… fly and stuff… and he… has… yeah, sorry. The problem is I don’t care about Hawkman. The problem is that nobody cares about Hawkman. The only person who cared about Hawkman was Hawkgirl, and nobody gave enough of a fuck about Hawkgirl to leave her alive.

The upside of that general apathy is that it allows writer Tony Daniel to try almost anything he wants to make Hawkman interesting for a new generation. The downside is that what he tries feels like throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks. Almost literally.

Daniel opens this new chapter in Hawkman’s rebooted life by showing how exciting it is to be Hawkman… by having him be a depressed alcoholic who hates being Hawkman so much he tries to kill his costume with a flare gun.

Let’s take a moment and examine that, shall we? As a New 52 book, this is meant to make new readers excited about characters they aren’t familiar with. And Daniel has decided to introduce us to this new Hawkman by telling us that:

1. Even Hawkman thinks that being Hawkman sucks, and:
2. Hawkman’s power set is so weak that even Hawkman himself thinks he can be defeated by a roman candle.

Crisis On Infinite Midlives Podcast Episode 3: The Fistula Of Justice

The Sudafed finally mixed with the Jack Daniels and made a mellow, Earth-friendly body-meth, which gave us enough energy to complete Episode 3 of the Crisis on Infinite Midlive’s Podcast: The Fistula of Justice!

Thrill to two drunk sick people as they talk about the impact of the New 52, DC Comics’ new Neilsen Survey (Which sadly didn’t include the obvious question: Orange nip slip: horrifying moment or the most horrifying moment?), the overriding post-Catwoman question: are superhero comics sexist (“What’s wrong with being sexist?” “Not sexy, sex… Jesus, you really are a monster, aren’t you?”), and our sleeper favorite books of the week!

And to answer some questions from the show that are enigmas, wrapped in riddles, covered in mucous:

• The Crow said Don’t Look (Seriously: don’t look at this. It’s not safe for work. Or your appetite)!
• Turns out 53 is a prime number!
• Tell DC what you really think without having to spoon Dan DiDio (EDITOR’S NOTE: Rob just tried to take the survey and was told he wasn’t qualified. Probably because of his area code. Or because he said his penis had an area code of its own)!
• Newsarama asks if comic fans want to Smell The Glove!
• Hot, sweet, [male] child on [male] child roundeye action!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:37 — 34.4MB)

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

Enjoy the show, sucker! And if you don’t, just hit that “Don’t Look” link up there!

Overwhelming Pity

Well, it’s official: Image Comics has announced that they’re going to make their most popular characters, including Spawn, The Savage Dragon and Witchblade, available via an alternative distribution channel. They’re taking the big step away from the comic store and into the arena that most teens are most enthusiastic about and are likely never to stray away from: Pogs!

Whoops! Sorry, flashed back to 1994 there… actually, if you replace “Pogs” with “digital downloads”, you have exactly the same story that broke earlier this week… including the likely longevity and outcome.

Image announced that starting this week they’ll be releasing all of their books, including Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead, Invincible, and Those Other Books You Don’t Care About, as day-and-date available downloads from Graphic.ly.

Graphic.ly isn’t a platform with which I’m familiar, so I decided to check it out. And I have to tell you: compared to Comixology, which I tried the other day, Graphic.ly’s digital reader is VASTLY superior in that it allows you to actually be able to read the book. It blows things up to readable sizes and automatically follows from panel to panel to keep each image at maximum size and legibility.

This is not always a good thing. Because after literally 15 seconds of poking around to see what kind of books Image would be keeping company with, well, I found:

MISTER MOTHERFUCKING T.