Riches Beyond Imagination

There is exactly one week a year I don’t visit my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me, if I want to show them photos, to bring the memory card labelled “SDCC” and not “SCAT,” and that is the week of San Diego Comic-Con.

And during that week, my new books don’t go anywhere. They sit in my pull box, patiently waiting for me to return from the West Coast, only to be joined by the following week’s new comics on that following Wednesday.

And today is that following Wednesday. Which means that this… oh God in heaven, this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

And I’m not gonna lie to you; I have simply almost no Goddamned idea which of those books are from last week, and which are new books. I know that that’s a new Hawkeye annual there, and a new issue of Constantine where John apparently becomes (groan) Captain Marvel, plus a new release of Clone, which I discovered at the Skybound panel at SDCC, and a ton (almost literally) of other cool stuff!

But you know how this works: before we can review them, we need time to read them. So while that happens…

See you tomorrow, suckers!

Summer Cleaning / Demolition

It has been more than six months since we did a good, old-fashioned site maintenance and upgrade, and what with our trip to San Diego Comic-Con coming up (and the limited access to real computers that can handle much more than uploading panel reports or photos of cosplayers and weird ephemera), it seems like the time to tidy up the joint.

This is a big task, so if things go quiet here, or you see some weird renderings or odd things happening around the edges, please forgive us.

We will try to be back online and broadcasting by this afternoon.

Thanks for your patience.

Forced Withdrawal

This is our last Wednesday before we head off to this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, which is always a weird sensation. On one hand, our pilgrimage makes us heroes at my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me if they can housesit (and where my longbox with the first-print Silver Age Batman comics are in the house. And if we have security cameras. Which we do, you treacherous bastards.)… but on the other hand, it means that this is the end of our new comics for the next two weeks.

Believe it or not, even though the biggest Western comic book convention in the world starts on a Wednesday, you can’t find a new comic book to buy there to save your Godforsaken soul. Oh sure: if I stood in the comics retailers section of the convention’s main floor, waving around a fistful of hundreds, and screamed, “Action Comics #1 me now, bitches! And gimme that real stuff, none of that Grant Morrison shit,” I’d be beating well-stocked and willing retailers off with a stick. But when it comes to new books? It’s bubkis for you, True Believer. They just don’t haul that stuff out to the West Coast with them… not when they know that, once they get back to their home stores, they will be faced with people like me who went to the convention wanting to trade in their SDCC-Exclusive Deadpool-themed Fleshlights in for enough store credit to pay for the books they missed while in San Diego.

So it is a bittersweet feeling to have it be a Wednesday, and to come home with new comics, knowing it is the last batch we’ll be getting for a couple of week. But still, it is a Wednesday, which means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But if you need to take a break from new comics for a couple of weeks, there are worse ways to go out. There’s a new issue of The Walking Dead (and God, how I would like to be able to tell Robert Kirkman that I like how he wrapped the story he started before last year’s SDCC), the opening chapter of DC’s Trinity War in Justice League, the second issues of personal favorites Superman Unchained and Astro City, a new issue (finally) of Jonathan Ross’s and Bryan Hitch’s America’s Got Powers, and a bunch of other cool stuff!

But you know how it is (particularly with all the other prep work going into getting ready to cover SDCC): before we can review any of them, we need time to read them. And I promise: we will try to make as much time as possible to review as many of these as we can before the convention starts up. But until we can do that…

See you tomorrow, suckers!

End Of Broadcast Day – Sweat For It

So, today was the day the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office’s air conditioning shit the bed. No biggie – just the afternoon before July 4th. The likelihood that our HVAC guy (yes, we have an HVAC guy) will get back to us before Monday is somewhere in the range of “Poor” to “Aw, hell no!”. Thusly, we hied ourselves off to the local comic book store, where not only was our weekly take ready, but there was air conditioning. Yes, also, they know us by name and spent much of today asking Rob to stop calling their AC unit Killer Frost…and to stop asking Killer Frost if she would “blow on it…just a little…goddamn it it hurts…at least point at it and laugh…” Eventually, with only the lightest threat of police involvement, we acquired our books and found our way back to the Home Office. Here we have a giant box fan and a 30 pack of poor man’s air conditioning. Rob has availed himself of at least 5 since we got home. This leaves me to marvel over the week’s haul. It’s not too bad for a holiday week: Dexter #1 has finally dropped, there’s a new Garth Ennis Red Team, and something called Superior Foes Of Spider-Man by Nick Spencer, because, why the hell not? Nice to finally see the Dexter book though. I think at least 2 Powers Bureau books have come out since that was originally sollicited, and that’s fucking saying something.

But, you all know how this goes. First we need to read the books before we can pass our collective review-y wisdom unto you, so that means this…

…is the end of our broadcast day. Tune in tomorrow to see if we survive a night full of beer and no air conditioning. And, by “survive” I mean “Rob avoids a drunk and disorderly after walking into the local Tedeschi’s buck nude and looking for Lunchables attention ice.” Wish us luck!

Boys and Their Dogs

When I was a kid, comics were beginning to become more grown up, but they were still available at the local market on a spinner rack that read, “Hey, Kids! Comics!”, so there was still room for some stories about boy heroes and their exceptional pets. On any given week, we could get issues of Superboy And The Legion of Superheroes with Superboy and his dog Krypto, there was Shazam! with Captain Marvel and Mr. Talky Tawny, and if everything failed, Peter Parker was still in college (and in high school if you also bought Marvel Tales reprints – which I did), and Ronnie Raymond and Richard Rider were taking high school classes in Firestorm and Nova.

And it’s easy to say that comics will never be like that again, but this week gives us a little taste of those days, what with a new issue of Nova, and the latest Justice League which features the conclusion of Geoff Johns’s and Gary Frank’s Shazam backup story to that book. And let’s not forget Matt Fraction’s and David Aja’s latest issue of Hawkeye, which features the first adventure of Hawkeye’s heroic dog… Pizzadog.

I haven’t read it yet, but I’m not gonna lie: I fucking love Pizzadog.

This weird week of some comics that remind me so strongly of my childhood has me strangely excited… but with that said, it is a new week of comics, which means that this…

…is the end of our broadcast day.

But it is not all clarion calls to my youth in the 1970s, oh no. We’ve got a new issue of Brian Michael Bendis’s and Michael Avon Oeming’s Powers: Bureau (And only, say, three more issues without a year’s hiatus between them and I just might start taking for granted that it’s still a vital and active concern), the followup to last month’s apparent fridging of Catwoman in Justice League of America, the first issue of a new Atomic Robo miniseries, the 50th issue of Unwritten, and a bunch of other cool stuff!

But you know how it is: before we can talk about any of them, we need a little time to read them. So until that time…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Creamy Filling

It is one of those weird weeks for comics. There are a lot of books – and doesn’t it seem like one week every month, there’s a week with about 50 percent more books than all the others? A week where you look at your stack of books and look at your wallet and you thank God you have a cheap and shitty taste in beer? Just me? – but not a lot of big books. Sure, there’s one or two, but for the most part, we’ve got us a big pile of catalog titles here.

And sometimes that’s a good thing. Considering it’s summertime and that normally means a pile of big event comics and crossover books and one-shot crossover event comics, it’s kinda nice to have a week to just catch up on the regular old comics once in a while.

But the good news is, event comics or standard monthly titles, comics are comics. And since it is Wednesday, it means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But there’s some bright spots in there, huh? We’ve got the final issue of Age of Ultron (and unless it ends more strongly than it has been up until now, the ending might just wind up being the brightest spot), the first issue of Brian Azzarello’s Brother Lono – the return of that nice man from 100 Bullets – a couple of new Avengers and Batman family titles, and, most heartbreakingly, one of Peter David’s last issues of X-Factor. Plus a bunch of other cool stuff.

But you know how this works: before we can review any of them, we need a little time to read them. So while we tackle that task…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

All Work And No Play

Goddamn, Scott Snyder is one busy sonofabitch this week. Not only is the first issue of the latest miniseries spinoff from his home title, American Vampire, out, but the first issue of his version of Batman’s origin, Zero Year dropped as well. And on top of both of those giant-sized issue, his first issue of the Jim Lee-drawn Superman Unchained is out, just two days before Man of Steel hits theaters and drives scores of new comic readers to comic stores (yeah, we all know that that’s not a thing that happens. If superhero movies really drove lots of new people to buy comic books, I’d have to elbow people out of the way when I go to my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to stop drawing red underpants on Superman. And Batman. And the city Health Inspector.

But regardless of any big superhero movie, that’s still a lot of comics from one writer… and those are far from the only interesting-looking comic books that were released today. And, since they were released today, you know what that means: it means that this…

…is the end of our broadcast day.

This week gave us kind of a light take, but there is still some good-looking stuff in that pile. We’ve got a new issue of The Walking Dead (and maybe… maybe… someone will finally do something about Negan after a full fucking year of stories about that douchebag), the first issue of a new miniseries of The Crow that’s written by series creator James O’Barr, the latest Guardians of The Galaxy by Brian Michael Bendis, Thumbprint by Locke And Key writer Joe Hill, a new issue of Brian Wood’s killer Star Wars, and a bunch of other cool stuff.

But you know how this works: before we can talk about any of them, we need time to read them (and in the case of Superman Unchained, to figure out how to detach and read the poster insert without destroying the entire fucking comic book). So while we tackle that task…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Transitions

This is a decidedly strange-feeling week in the world of new comics. We’ve got some long-time favorites either ending (Daredevil: End of Days) or moving into their final days (Locke & Key only has two more issues left, and both Age of Ultron and X-Factor and entering into their last arcs)… while other books are either just ramping up (Kurt Busiek’s Astro City is making its debut as a monthly comic), or are getting new beginnings (this week gives us the first issue of Robert Venditti’s writing stint on Green Lantern, and Kick-Ass is back in Kick-Ass 3… making Dave Lizewski the first guy to make it three rounds wearing a green rubber suit who didn’t spend rounds one and two kneeling in front of a hole in a men’s room wall).

So while there’s a big feeling of change in this week’s books, one thing that has remained the same: it is Wednesday, which means new comics. Which further means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But it is not just a week of big hellos and goodbyes. We’ve also got the latest issue of Dan Slott’s The Superior Spider-Man (which, almost six months into this arc, if proving still generally and surprisingly fun to read), a new Jim Starlin Stormwatch, the second issue of J. Michael Straczynski’s Ten Grand, and a bunch of other cool stuff!

But you know how this all works: before we can talk about them, we need time to read them. So until we can accomplish that goal…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!

Unexpected Milestones: Unbreakable 2 News, And Our 1,000th Post

This one’s about a bit of an obscure subject, considering that it concerns genre director M. Night Shyamalan, about whom the joke is now either, “The twist is that it turned out he sucked all along,” or perhaps, “I see dead careers,” if you’ve had a few drinks and you’re feeling mean… which I often am.

But I am going to indulge myself a little bit today, for the reasons that this very article constitutes Crisis On Infinite Midlives’s 1,000th post since our founding in September, 2011, and because Shyamalan’s 2000 movie Unbreakable is a movie with great personal significance to me, by reporting that Shyamalan is once again claiming that he might have a sequel or two to that movie in the works.

First, the facts: Shyamalan is doing publicity for the upcoming film After Earth, a movie about which, as was ably reported by Fox News’s Andy Levy on Twitter, Columbia Pictures has done yeoman’s work in not telling people Shyamalan directed it. And in the course of this press junket, Shyamalan (note to self: it’s “Shya,” like Shia LeBeouf only with a “y,” and then “malan.” Remember that and maybe you can type the guy’s name instead of pasting it over and over again) is consistently asked about the long-rumored sequel to Unbreakable, since asking after a sequel to Lady In The Water would be like asking the poor bastard if he has another suppurating chancre popping up in an uncomfortable place.

For years Shyamalan (Got it! And I didn’t have to backspace or nothing!) has teased that Unbreakable was actually just the first act of his original three-act screenplay, and that sequels might be coming. However, back in 2010, when Shyamalan was hyping The Night Chronicles – a series of urban horror movies that started with 2010’s Devil and then, well, kinda hasn’t gone anywhere beyond promises that the second will start shooting someday soon – he said that he had cannibalized the plot to one of the Unbreakable sequels for one of those horror flicks.

So that seemed like the end of that… but that was 2010, when the tone of the “What the fuck was that?” that people uttered leaving Shyamalan’s movies was still more impressed excitement than befuddled disappointment. With his last couple of movies being apparently work-for-hire projects servicing franchises or a megastar’s dream of his child’s movie stardom, Shyamalan’s tune about a second Unbreakable has changed a little bit.

You Can’t Swing A Dead Cat…

Here in the United States, last weekend was a long holiday weekend. In fact, it was the first official and universal long holiday weekend since New Year’s Day.

Oh sure, we have a few catch-as-catch-can holiday weekends that some American entities like banks and public schools observe (like President’s Day in February, which is not an official national holiday because our presidents are elected, and not worshipped unless they belong to your personal political party and are currently in office), and God knows that your Europeans get off every holiday any reckless alcoholic ever thought of on an Sunday afternoon (St. Shitfaced Day? Really, Icelanders? How can you take that day off in good conscience considering I just made it up?), but for we Yankees, Memorial Day is one of the few universal holidays.

However, being a universal holiday here in the States, that usually means a lighter-than-usual take for the week… and this week is no exception. We got about half the books we normally get on a Wednesday… but it is a Wednesday, and being New Comics Day (albeit a light one), it means that this…

…is the end of our broadcast day.

But still, there are some noteworthy books there. We’ve got the first issue of Scott Snyder’s The Wake, Brian Wood’s all-female team book X-Men, another issue of Mark Waid’s and Walt Simonson’s Indestructible Hulk, and a new issue of Geoff’s Johns’s Justice League of America that closes with a cliffhanger that the title only hints at. If you get my drift.

But even though it is a light week, you know how this works: before we can review them, we need time to read them. So while we continue to recover from our three-day drunk – I mean weekend – and go through them…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!