The Bird Is The Word

It is Wednesday evening, and as you regular readers of Crisis On Infinite Midlives know…

…New Comics Day means that this is the end of our broadcast day.

Still and all, that’s a damn good take for the Wednesday before a long American holiday weekend! There’s a new Kick-Ass by Mark Millar, a new Warren Ellis Secret Avengers, a book from Image’s Pilot Season, a new Justice League Dark (Which had better have some fucking Shade: The Changing Man in it! You hear me, Milligan!?), and a new Hawkman, which I only bought to support an American Thanksgiving “We have a bird” joke!

Speaking of Thanksgiving, due to the holiday weekend, posting for the next four days may be a bit more sporadic than usual. But please stick with us; we will do our best to post new news items and reviews… but to do that, we need tonight to start reading the new books.

See you somewhere during or after the tryptophan coma, suckers!

Gold Standard: SyFy Pilots Booster Gold

I thought I was free of that Goddamned channel.

First they let Battlestar Galactica go – and end on a “Be nice to robots” note. Fuck you. If my Aibo won’t learn to fetch me beers on command, he gets a kicking, just like any other real dog or child.

Then they made have to watch Stan Lee bestow the title of “superhero” on some sasquatch calling herself “Fat Momma” (Well, she was still better than Fin Fang Foom… actually, looking again, she might have been Fin Fang Foom, or at least have shopped in the same Lane Bryant), they cancelled Eureka, and stole two hours worth of my pink, blank neurons and replaced them with something called Mansquito.

I was shut of you, SyFy Channel… and then you had to go and do this:

Syfy is looking to bring Booster Gold to life on the small screen.

Okay… don’t make eye contact with the empty SyFy development suit and give away that Booster Gold isn’t a WWE wrestler and let’s see what’s up.

Will It Be Like Chocolate Meeting Peanut Butter? – Anthony Bourdain’s “Get Jiro!”

I was always one of those people who, in high school, kept very separate groups of friends. I had one group for theater geek activities, one group for all things jock related, and another one for the things that neither of the either groups needed to see. It was a very well planned orchestration that I kept meticulously cordoned off, like one of those plates that lets you keep all your food from touching lest the squash touch the potatoes and all mayhem break loose.

These days, I feel much the same about my hobbies. Comics, Club-A-Wino-To-Death Night, and foodie pursuits all hold very meaningful places in my life, but they’ve been there as spaces for me to move in and out of. My fenced off little refuges have not come into contact with each other…until now.

Enter Get Jiro!, which will be written by television personality/chef/author, Anthony Bourdain and author Joel Rose with art by Langdon Foss, whose work has previously been seen in Heavy Metal.

Should I be getting excited or scurry back into the shadows in trepidation?

Rehab Start: Catwoman #3 Review

Catwoman #3 is better than the first issue, but don’t get too excited about it, at least not yet. Better is, after all, a relative word; losing your job is better than, say, losing your foot, but that doesn’t make it good.

I’m gonna start with the positive things I found in this issue, because unfortunately there’s still plenty that’s disappointing, but we’re 48 hours from a long weekend in the United States, and only 24 hours from the biggest bar night of the year, so I’m feeling charitable.

As opposed to the first issue, which felt like a bunch of plot points strung together to fill enough pages to justify Catwoman fucking Batman, there is an actual story going on here, and it’s reasonable compelling. This comic is a revenge story, plain and simple, and although it is part of a larger story arc that started in the abysmal first issue, it has the feel of a one-and-done that’s refreshing.

We open with Catwoman captured and one of her closest confidants killed,and proceed at a rapid and exciting pace through her escape, hunting of the killer and taking revenge upon him, all in 20-something pages. It feels complete, which is all-too-rare in the New 52 books so far, and it ends with a cliffhanger vastly more satisfying than the first issue, where the only thing we were left wondering was how you get semen out of kevlar.

Avenge Me: Marvel’s February Solicitations

Last week, DC Comics announced their solicitations for their upcoming releases for February, and there was a… disturbing trend of books with covers that made the heroes’ thighs look like something that would make Johnny Wadd Holmes weep with bitter, envious frustration.

But surely the repeating nature of DC’s offerings was just a coincidence. One would think that Marvel, who just released their own February solicitations, would never fall into the trap of repeating themselves in the space of a single month!

So let’s take a look at what is sure to be the widely varied and diverse offerings that Marvel has for us in February! (Rob: Tone down the pissy sarcasm and show the nice people the books. -Amanda)

What’s In A Name? – Review Of Wolverine: The Best There Is #11

Wolverine is a Marvel character that appears in more books than the Duggars have children. As all children are special and unique, like snowflakes, so it is that each of Wolverine’s titles are all a bit different from one another. In the Wolverine family, Wolverine: The Best There Is, written by Charlie Huston, with art by Juan Jose Ryp is the pretty one that’s also a little slow, but really likes to hear itself talk and thinks it’s more mature than it actually is.

Note the “Parental Advisory! Not For Kids!” label slapped on the cover. Marvel already has an existing MAX line in which content with explicit themes can be published. So, if Wolverine: The Best There Is is “not for kids”, why not publish this title under the MAX imprint? Could it be that Marvel/Disney doesn’t want to take one of its most popular characters and place it in a book that is actively off limits to kids and teens? Because, if that is the case, the overall muted storytelling, with its emphasis on violent, graphic imagery, stilted exposition and bleeped out swear words reads like a network television broadcast edit on an “R” rated movie – and a mediocre one at that.

Spoilers, megalomania and wasted potential after the jump.

Spawn Camping: Green Lantern Corps #3 Review

A few weeks ago I reviewed a comic book about a video game that was actually a damn good Green Lantern story. By contrast, the latest issue of Green Lantern Corps is a Green Lantern comic that is, for all intents and purposes, a video game.

This book is what Green Lantern would be if it was a first person shooter in Hoard Mode.

You think I’m kidding? The whole video game vibe frankly bakes off of this book. For starters, look at that Alex Garner cover and tell me it doesn’t look like concept art from some FPS. The first person point of view, “your” hand coming into frame at right to shoot plasma beams at anonymous bad guys in armor with lightsabers… just replace the DC Comics slug with a health meter and the New 52 bullet with an ammo indicator and boom! You’ve got a shooter! A shooter designed by a focus group loaded with Asperger’s patients (“So how about we give stormtroopers lightsabers and have them fight Green Lanterns? Jesus, Bob; they’re all peeing!”), but a shooter nonetheless.

The whole video game vibe continues right into the story proper and doesn’t stop, from the weird aliens coming in multiple waves, to the Green Lanterns using their rings – weapons that can turn whatever you imagine into reality – to do nothing more than create a plethora of BFG9000’s to mow the aliens down. Part of me thinks that writer Peter J. Tomasi took a screen grab of an epic Red Bull-and-Stoli-fueled Gears of War session, emailed it to artist Geraldo Borges, and said, “Lightbox this, but make everything, y’know, green. But don’t trace the chainsaws on the ends of the guns; I don’t want to get sued.”

Can I Get Dental With That? – Review Of The Punisher #5

In the most recent reboot run of The Punisher series, Greg Rucka has chosen to take the tactic of letting Frank Castle’s actions tell the bulk of the story. As he told Comic Book Resources:

We’ve had so many people over the years do an amazing job of getting inside Frank’s head, it seemed to me that nobody needed my take on it because it would just be me aping somebody else really. We know Frank. He’s very straight-forward about what he wants, why he wants it and what he’s willing to do to get it. We ran with him not talking for as long as I think we could get away with in terms of the story. It’s not that we were trying to render him mute as much as, he’s a guy who doesn’t have a lot to say. He’s not the type to talk to hear himself talk. Plus, he doesn’t really surround himself with people that he’s going to converse with.

The rest of the story is told from the point of view of the characters on whom Frank’s actions have had an impact: a police officer, Walter Bolt, who receives a promotion after being perceived as a hero during a shootout in which Frank Castle actually was the one who saved Bolt’s life, a bride, Rachel Alves, who is the only survivor of a massacre that took place on her wedding day, and Norah Winters, who is covering Castle in an attempt to be taken more seriously as a reporter. It’s an interesting choice for Rucka; Castle is so involved in his one man war on crime that he either doesn’t care or have time to acknowledge the impact his actions have on the few people he has around him. Punisher #5 continues in this vein as the characters approach Thanksgiving in the 616.

Spoilers and small children after the jump!

New To Comics: So… I Guess Hawkeye Drives A Yaris?

EDITOR’S NOTE: Crisis On Infinite Midlives is proud to introduce our newest contributor: Pixiestyx. Pixiestyx is relatively new to reading comics, and therefore brings a different perspective to the comics world then Amanda and myself, who have been around the block enough to know who to curse at by name and general description. She’s been leaving great, interesting comments recently, and we’re glad to add her to the Crisis On Infinite Midlives team!

Does the comic industry really want to bring in new readers? If they did, one would think that the publishers would want to make it as easy as possible for a new reader to find a storyline that interests them, as well as figure out where to begin following that storyline. I have been an occasional comic reader for just over two years, yet when it comes to much of the comic world, I feel very much like Hal Jordan, having been told to speak the oath of the Green Lanterns without knowing what that oath is – completely lost.

I know how to do research; how to comparison shop, read reviews, and decide what to buy. However, most of the publishers’ websites have not been very helpful. They are good at listing the new books for this week and what’s coming out next week; but other than great cover art images, they do a very poor job of drawing me in and telling me why I should begin reading a series. They tend to have a busy layout and are unintuitive if you don’t already know what you are looking for. The UserWiki on Marvel’s site offers series background information, but the volume of information is inconsistent – a page and a half on some, non-existent on others. It appears that Marvel’s primary focus is on getting visitors to buy a Toyota Yaris instead of their comics anyway.

Deus Ex Machina: Fear Itself 7.3: Iron Man Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review contains spoilers. But considering the comic this review is about wipes away just about the last persisting effects of the entire Fear Itself event storyline, it’s not like it fucking matters. However, you have been warned.

You want to talk to God? Let’s go see him together. I’ve got nothing better to do.”

– Indiana Jones

The story in this comic book is horrible. It steals shamelessly from better comic stories by better writers, attempts to simulate depth by rehashing a philosophical point conveyed better in an 80’s teen sex comedy, and blows away any lasting effect of the Fear Itself event with a storytelling device that every writer since the ancient fucking Greeks – even the lowliest and worst hack –  has said, “Yeesh, I’d better not end it that way. The audience would kill me.”