Just came across this (Hey, it was a long weekend, and I live 250 yards from a liquor store, a bar and a comic store. I’m only human. A deeply, deeply broken human) – Marvel published a live blog of a conference call between writers Matt Fraction, Cullen Bunn, Christopher Yost and Marvel Executive Editor Tom Brevoort where they talked about the upcoming followups to the Fear Itself storyline: The Fearless and Battle Scars.

Go check it out for details from the horses’ mouths (And for some pretty art from Mark Bagley, Paul Lelletier, Frank Cho and Art Adams), but the nuts and bolts are that, no matter what happens with the Serpent in Fear Itself, the Hammers of The Worthy are still gonna be kicking around, in areas like Utopia, New York, the ocean and other far-flung areas that, purely by coincidence, are the perfect locations for heroes and villains to easily locate them so they can punch each other.

Emo Angel is emo.

I’ve noticed, in the short history that this site has been live, that my posts have been DCnU centric. That’s a shame, because there’s certainly a wealth of other comic book business that is managing to make it out into the world, despite the sucking vacuum of the New 52. Did you know, for example, that a comic book store is launching in Toronto that is intended to be specifically for kids? This is exciting, because I often find myself standing in the middle of a comic store in downtown Toronto pissed that they won’t let me do keg stands because of all the teeming, unwashed masses of children that cling to my ankles like so many fleas. Now I can be surly in public in Toronto in peace.

What? Your comic store doesn’t let you do keg stands? You need a better comic store.

Did you know that Image Comics plans on releasing “Morning Glories” #12, “Screamland” #4 and “Spawn” #211 for sale September 7, 2011? Yes! New Spawn! The one thing in my life that is 1992, every day, all the time.

And, meanwhile, Dark Horse released Angel & Faith #1 last week. Part of the “Season 9” arc of the Buffyverse, “Angel & Faith”, written by Christos Gage with art from Rebekah Isaacs, finds Faith in possession of Rupert Giles’s mysterious journal of mystery. This is because Angel killed Giles at the end of Season 8. BUT! It’s not his fault, you see – he was under the influence of Twilight and, as we all know, Twilight ruins everything.

I was honestly kind of pissed when I first finished Secret Avengers 16; I tossed it on the table and said, “Thanks Warren, but I read it when it was called NextWave.” Then I remembered a few things:

  1. I LOVED NextWave and:
  2. I am a cynical mouthy douchebag prone to bitching prior to thinking, and:
  3. I hate your face. Fuck off.

Secret Avengers isn’t as over the top as NextWave was, I’m guessing because you can get away with being over the top when you’re dealing with characters nobody cares about. After all, it’s okay if Monica Rambeau stomps the testicles off of Forbush Man because even in the ranks of seriously antisocial, Mom’s basement dwelling superfandom, I defy you to find anyone who cares about what damage occurs to those testicles and / or the foot after the kick. Seriously, why not have Machine Man be a shitfaced misanthrope? Before that, he was forgotten. Which would probably make you a shitfaced misanthrope. But as usual, I digress.

Things I’ve learned wandering around the intertrons today:

I’ll probably read this. I’m currently working through The Essential Dazzler. I have no moral high ground.

 

 

 

The DC Source blog released some promotional hype for the New 52 Flash reboot that’s coming in on September 28 with art by Francis Manapul and co-written by Manapul and Brian Buccellato. Here’s a taste; you can see the whole nut here.

Flash’s editor, Brian Cunningham, chimed in on the new series:

But it also has something else. It’s something we let slip at Comic Con, but many of you might not have heard it, so brace yourself for this SPOILER WARNING:

The Flash is a single man. He’s a bachelor who has never been married.

I’ll give you all a few seconds to take that in and digest it.

Yes, folks — in the post-FLASHPOINT world, Barry Allen has not only never dated Iris West, but he’s dating someone else entirely in issue #1! And that someone is…his longtime coworker Patty Spivot!

If that upsets you, sorry about that. But I make no apologies for opening up a traditional storytelling avenue with our hero’s romantic life, something that’s been shut closed for a very long time now.

Look: I love The Flash. Mike Baron’s stuff right after the first Crisis reboot is amongst my favorite 12 issues of comics. William Messner-Loeb’s run on the book was fun back when I was in college (I even have a soft spot in my heart for Chunk, fer Chrissake), and what Mark Waid and Geoff Johns did with the character was damn entertaining.

That said…

Heidi MacDonald of The Comics Beat did a pretty thorough interview with Jim Lee about the DC relaunch of Justice League #1 this past Wednesday.

A bunch of comic stores in New York City did midnight sales Tuesday night / Wednesday morning, and Jim talks about how he and Geoff Johns brought pizza to the comics fans waiting in line:

I’ve seen midnight openings for video games and movies, but I’ve not seen a store signing at midnight with creators before — certainly not at DC. Geoff and I wanted to go the extra step and be there in person for people who are so into a comic that they were willing to forgo sleep.

Oh, Jim… I know you’ve been to San Diego Comic-Con… how can you be surprised that a fan would be willing to forgo sleep when you know full well that many of us are perfectly willing to forgo bathing?

(via Salon)

Newsarama’s got a five-page preview of the new Action Comics #1 that’s dropping next Wednesday in the second salvo of DC’s New 52 reboot. Go take a look and then come back. And bring a six-pack.

You might find yourself confused that Superman’s costume seems to be little more than a Superman t-shirt, but don’t be alarmed: the initial storyline in Action Comics is supposed to correspond to Superman’s first year as the world’s first superhero. Which doesn’t explain how he found the Superman t-shirt; it’s not like he could just go to a comic store like I do for Superman t-shirts… maybe he had it made for him at one of those novelty t-shirt places at the mall… actually, that doesn’t hold up because it’s not fucking 1987… and even if it was, those places were staffed by high school kids who fucked up making me a simple block-lettered “Medicate Me” shirt to wear to prom, so I doubt they were silk screening, and even if they were they were probably huffing the dye.

But I digress.

So, like any good geek, I have finished reading both Flashpoint #5 and Justice League #1 by Geoff Johns. Apparently, I’m not the only one. Justice League #1 is heading into it’s third printing. So, that must mean it’s pretty damn good. Right?

Well, I’ll start with “it’s good because that means fucking Flashpoint is now finally done.”

Flashpoint didn’t do a hell of a lot for me. Between the insane body count and the fact that somehow Kim Kardashian is more competent at pulling off a wedding than Wonder Woman, I just couldn’t get in to it. I really wanted to. I did. But, frankly, I’ve been suffering from massive event fatigue since about the end of Blackest Night so, no offense to Mr. Johns, but he could have created a dimensional rift that allowed the sky to rain vodka and My Little Ponies with power rings and I would have said, “Oh? That’s nice” and rolled over and gone back to sleep. Stick a fork in me.

Hi, and welcome to to Crisis On Infinite Midlives!

We’d like to tell you that Crisis on Infinite Midlives is the hottest, most exciting and comprehensive new comic book and geek culture related site on the Internet, but we think that if you’ll just take a look around you’ll discover for yourself that it actually and truly is a weird little vanity project that we idly came up with while drinking heavily one evening in late July at the San Diego Comic-Con.

“Why’s there so much fuss over the San Diego Batgirl?” one of us muttered while reaching for a beverage, “We were at that panel; she asked a leading question, tried to derail a perfectly good discussion about the New 52, and was treated with far more courtesy than I would have been if I grabbed the mike and shrieked at Dan Didio that I wanted my two bucks back from when I called the 900-number to kill the Jason Todd Robin.”

“Yeah,” the other one of us said, “I’d have respected her more if instead of using weird arguments and trying to gin up a lynch mob, she’d just have had the strength of character to call those guys sexist dicks. And then maybe scream ‘Baba Booey!'”

“But everyone on the Internet’s being so Goddamned serious over what amounts to a live-action troll. Why isn’t anyone just saying that the woman was irritating and distracting in front of 500 paying comic book fans?”

DING.

A couple months of planning (TRANSLATION: Many mornings of saying “Jesus, am I hung over. Did we talk about starting a comics Web site last night?” wrapped in a grand total of about six hours of buying a domain name and three hours trying to ramfeed a microphone meant for performing stand-up comedy into a USB hub… which come to think of it is probably it’s own weird Japanese techno fuck fetish, and which would be a much easier Web site to run), and here you have it… whatever “it” is.