Curiouser And Curiouser…

It has been a busy day at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office, what with trying to get into the recently popular comic spirit and deciding which of our contributors will be turning gay (the smart money’s on Lance Manion, but I have a fiver on Trebuchet).

But time waits for no comics geek, so regardless of our handicapping of which member of the masthead is most likely to change teams, it is Wednesday, which means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But it’s a pretty decent week, huh? There’s yet another solid-looking Jamie Delano Crossed: Badlands, a ton of new DC stuff (including Jeff Lamire’s first issue of Justice League Dark), and the continuing Spider-Man: Ends Of The Earth story!

But before we can review any of them, we gotta read them. So until that time:

See you tomorrow, suckers!

Astonishing View of Gay Marriage: X-Men Announcement on Tomorrow’s The View

According to Amanda, the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Social Media Director and Marketing Guru, it is safe to say that if you are a devotee and regular reader of this Web site, the research numbers indicate that you are a comics enthusiast, a geek culture devotee, and an unemployed degenerate alcoholic.

And demographic point number three indicates that you will be home tomorrow, watching daytime television and sobbing into your Mad Dog 20-20 Red Banana Flavored Semi-Gelatinous Bevaraje (because calling it “Beverage” would imply that it was legally intended for human consumption). Which means I am the bearer of good news! You’ll be around to see Barbara Walters and the other horrible, horrible harridans of ABC’s The View announce some of the details surrounding this week’s Astonishing X-Men #50!

Dan DiDio Enrages Royalty, Turns People Gay

Historically, Dan DiDio’s panels at San Diego Comic-Con are amongst my favorites every year. The dude has, at least publically, a visceral enthusiasm for DC Comics that is infectious to a crowd… but one which has a fine, keen edge, that isn’t difficult to strike off of true. When Dan’s forced off script, there can be unintended consequences, from unexpected revelations to real tension. Just ask San Diego Batgirl.

Well, this weekend is Mark Millar’s Kapow convention in London, Dan’s been doing panels, and has made a few interesting revelations about the immediate future of DC Comics… the first being that Wonder Woman, ambassador of peace from Paradise Island and the most famous strong female superhero ever created by a polyamorous bondage nut, might be preparing to kill us all.

Ich Bin Ein Douchebags: Fantastic Four #605.1 Review

Editor’s Note: It was the world’s strangest accident. While testing a new Web site, our heroes were bombarded by mysterious spoilers from outer space!

In a complete and total vacuum, Fantastic Four #605.1 is an interesting little one-and-done Elseworlds-style alternate history of the Fantastic Four, hypothesizing what the team would be like if they’ve been born and raised in Nazi Germany. Which, again, taken on its own is a kind of cool concept (although “Nazi Thing” sounds suspiciously like a fetish German Scheisse porno), but in the real world, it only shows that writer Jonathan Hickman has read Mark Millar’s Red Son and Warren Ellis’s Planetary, and that he also thinks that the character of Reed Richards is a real, real douchebag.

Tip Of The Mushroom: The Manhattan Projects #3 Review

When I was 16 years old and a Junior in high school, I designed an atomic bomb. Y’know, for fun.

This was back in the mid-80s, so this was a big thing to try to do; these days, I’m pretty sure you can Google “How to build an atomic bomb” and get three different working designs, provided you don’t mind getting a particular red mark on a file with your name on it, and having to get your prostate tickled every time you go within 500 yards of an airport.

No, back then you needed to hit libraries and read every book you could get your hands on about the subject, from John McPhee’s The Curve of Binding Energy (Which I highly recommend, if only to scare the living shit out of you; the next time a politician tries to terrify you with ephemeral ideas about Soviet-bought dirty suitcase nukes, it’s easier to giggle at their ignorance when you know that you can make a dirty bomb with a pile of uranium, an ammunition press, a .44 handgun and a public toilet. I am not joking) to Richard Rhodes’s phonebook about the original Manhattan Project, The Making of The Atomic Bomb, which still sits proudly on my bookshelf.

I read everything I could get my hands on about the original Manhattan / Los Alamos project for clues on how one might build such a thing (I also asked my chemistry teacher how to synthesize hexamethelinetetramine in case I needed to make RDX high explosives, and I wasn’t referred to law enforcement, but what the hell; it was the 80s. We knew what freedom was then. Freedom and Aqua-Net). I was fascinated by these guys out in the desert, trying to build something that, for all they knew, would turn all the nitrogen in the atmosphere into plasma and make the Phoenix Force look like something that could be knocked down by Midol.

All of this is one hell of a long way to go to explain why, although I am generally not the biggest fan of Jonathan Hickman’s comics, I am totally digging his work on The Manhattan Projects.

Overstimulated, Exhausted Children: Avengers Vs. X-Men #3 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review constitutes a confirmed extinction-level spoiler.

I don’t have kids myself, but many of my former drinking buddies do, which has in turn made me decide I can never have kids. Because I just can’t talk to them. You ever try talking to a little kid, particularly after they’ve had a shitload of candy? Candy you gave them in the hopes they would take it, go away and stop trying to talk to you?

You can’t make any sense of it; they spin wildly from point to point, with no real logical gristle connecting them, with weird exaggerations that beggar belief to hear (“Wait, wait, little Billy… you’re saying Deathstroke rode his pony… sorry, his My Little Pony… to Cybertron? To fight fucking Voldemort? Who plots your shit, Billy? Rob Liefeld?”). After a while, it starts to hurt the mind to keep track of what’s happening and why, because if you stop and think about it for even a minute, it doesn’t make any sense at all.

In that same vein, if I told you that the plot of a story was, “You know what would be cool? If the Avengers battled the X-Men and Phoenix – no, not some redhead in a green body stocking, but the actual giant flaming bird, like the one from Battle of The Planets – on – get this – the fucking moon,” you would think that you were overhearing a schoolyard monologue by some kid who was on the first step of a road that’s started with Ritalin and will eventually end with methamphetamine extract.

Welcome to Avengers Vs. X-Men #4: where every plot point was written with a prefix of, “And you know what else would be cool?” regardless as to whether it makes any Goddamned sense at all.

Avengers Is A Dish Best Served Super Sized

I don’t know if you heard, but there’s an Avengers movie out! You know how I can tell? No, not the big Nikki Frinke articles about the eleventy billon dollar box office or the rumors that Joss Whedon won’t be returning for the sequel or the disturbing knowledge that you can’t drink a Dr. Pepper between now and the release of The Dark Knight Rises without putting your mouth disturbingly close to a picture of The Hulk’s crotch.

No, I know because when I walked into my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to remember that just because I call it Mjolnir doesn’t stop it from being felony indecent exposure, I saw at least four comics with the word “Avengers” in their title. There was plain old The Avengers, Avengers Vs. X-Men, Avengers Vs. X-Men: Versus, and Avengers Academy. Next week I will look forward to Avengers Beach Party, Desperate Avengers, and Avengers Jovengers Banana Fana Bovengers.

But that is (theoretically) next week. This week, the fact that I saw that many Avengers books means new comics, which means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But it’s a sweet looking week for comics. Not only is there a metric plethora of Avengers Vs. X-Men books, but a new Brian K. Vaughn Saga, Garth Ennis Shadow, Jim Lee back on pencils for Justice League, and a bunch of other cool stuff.

But as always, before we review them, first we need time to read them. So for the moment: see you tomorrow, suckers!

White People Problems: Mind The Gap #1 Review

I’ve read Mind The Gap #1 three times now, and I don’t yet know how I feel about it. From one angle, it’s a story populated by either thoroughly unlikeable rich-folk or entitled hipster children of privilege, with the only middle ground between the two occupied, literally, by the hired help. From another angle, it’s a competent whodunit with a dozen suspects, a solidly-plotted attention to detail, and a supernatural hook, albeit one that immediately made me think, “Huh… this guy’s read Midnight Nation.”

I’ll start with the single undeniable positive about this comic book: you get one hell of a lot of story for your money. This book is 46 pages of advertisement-free story for $2.99. And those pages introduce no less than twelve primary characters, establish that almost any of the eleven who aren’t the protagonist – slash – victim are possible suspects, and reinforces that if any of them winds up being the assailant and gets the needle for it, the only tragedy will be that the other ten will be allowed to live.

Seriously: these people suck just that much.

Big Dumb Fun. With Pussies: Avenging Spider-Man #7 Review

In a spring season loaded with Batman battling to save Gotham from the Court of Owls, and The Avengers trading punches with the X-Men with the fate of the world hanging in the balance, sometimes Event Fatigue sets in. And sometimes you want a change of pace from the ongoing Superhero Apocalypse, and as you look at your normal alternatives – the Zombie Apocalypse in The Walking Dead or the Zombie Apocalypse in Crossed: Badlands are normally pretty much it – you maybe start wishing for a nice, fun, and maybe a little goofy one-and-done to cleanse the palate as a change of pace.

Or maybe you just have a thing for cats. Maybe your house smells like cat litter and ammoniac urine, the Internet doesn’t give you enough other cats to fill in the gap, and where the rubber hits the road, you’re despondent that you just can’t hug all the cats, despite oodles of free time with which you can pursue this goal thanks to the aforementioned ammoniac smell. Either way, Avenging Spider-Man #7 is the book you’ve been looking for, and between it and Versus, it is living proof that, from the standpoint of just plain fun comics, Kathryn and Stuart Immonen should be allowed to do whatever the fuck they want, ever.

Subculture Shock: Waltham Steampunk City 2012

Didja know that wristwatches were invented by Tiffany, sometime in the early 1900s, and that they are therefore inappropriate for a Victorian steampunk costume? Me neither, until earlier today when I went to the Watch City Festival – AKA Steampunk City – in Waltham, Massachusetts.

We here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives are not Steampunkers, we’re inveterate comics geeks. However, it is Mother’s Day, meaning that Amanda is laboring to make her mom believe she is still worthy of her meager inheritance, and I needed something to do for the afternoon other than go directly to the bar from where I am writing this (I said, “directly”). And since Steampunk City is literally a hop, skip and a jump from the Home Office, I figured I’d take a gander.