terminator_cyborgWhen we published last week’s episode on Sunday night, we had lofty ambitions to go through a week’s worth of San Diego Comic-Con panel streams, pulling audio and dissecting some of the biggest news items of the con, and maybe having a guest to talk about the experience of being at the this year’s convention. Then all of our belongings staged a bloody insurrection against us.

Not eight hours later, on Monday morning, we awoke to the gentle aroma of burning insulation permeating the Home Office kitchen. Luckily, this smell only occurred intermittently, Unluckily, that interim was whenever the refrigerator compressor turned on. This required us to shut down the unit, run around like spastics to order a new fridge and purchase a bunch of coolers and ice, and pack every ounce of food we’ve ever purchased but not gotten around to eating into them. Note that this process didn’t include the beer.

Wednesday, we had high hopes to get back on track, but those plans were derailed by a nice lady, distracted by a bad day, who didn’t realize that the pretty red lights Amanda was showing her were actually being lit because Amanda was applying the brakes in her car. Amanda is fine (unlike her car), but by the time the cops and insurance company were gone, we just didn’t have the energy to match say, Geoff Johns’s enthusiasm about the return of Aqualad.

Luckily, the new fridge was delivered Thursday. Unluckily, it was delivered by gentlemen who didn’t seem to understand why it’s generally considered desirable to avoid slamming the front of a fridge into your plate glass storm door. I can understand why they didn’t consider this a big deal; considering the preexisting and extensive scratching on the front door that may or may not have intentionally resembled a gang sign, what’s a couple more dings? This meant a couple of more days without a fridge and with warm beer, and suddenly trying to hunt down Brian Michael Bendis’s explanations about why he’s turned Captain Marvel into a fascist for Civil War II kinda lost its luster.

Yesterday, we finally got the fridge and the ability to chill up some fine Berkshire Brewing Company Steel Rail Pale Ale… but our Web provider began warning us that we were so far behind on upgrades and capital improvements that we were in danger of being hacked by Rush. No, not “Russians”, the band Rush, who thinks Unix are how you get angelic voices on backing tracks. So cue a long Sunday of data backup and running upgrades, and boom!. Suddenly it’s 6 p.m. and we’re completely unprepared to produce a new episode for the week.

So unfortunately, we need to call a mulligan for this week’s show. We’ll be back next week to discuss DC FIlms’s Suicide Squad, which opens this weekend here in the United States.

At least, that’s the plan. With the luck we’ve had with machinery this week, the movie theater’s IMAX projector will mutate into a device that only warms Rob’s beer (a D.O.W.R.B! It’s a Kirby-esque villain that made Captain Marvel into a douche! I own that idea, Marvel! You hear me?) and we will be forced to review Sharknado IV.

Thanks for your patience. Talk to you next week,

star_trek_beyond_posterIt is the final day of San Diego Comic-Con… which we were not able to attend. So, to make up for the fact that we were unable to report from the biggest comics event of the year, we distracted ourselves by catching up on some of the bigger recent announcements from the convention, and by seeing Star Trek Beyond, which is the third movie in the Bad Robot-produced reboot of the series, and not that fanfic movie that Universal Studios is suing like Rob thought it was until about three weeks ago.

It feels like the Star Trek franchise has lost some attention since J. J. Abrams left to direct a little indie film, and certainly our personal enthusiasms have been at different levels, as our relationships with the property have waxed and / or waned since our childhoods. And that differing excitement comes across as we discuss the movie: one of us finds it to be a fun popcorn flick with solid themes of making your own family, while the other thinks it has the crappiest Star Trek villain in 25 years and the worst film photography outside of an amusement park virtual reality attraction.

We also discuss:

  • Justice League #1, written by Bryan Hitch with art by Tony S. Daniel, and:
  • The Hellblazer #1, written by Simon Oliver with art by Moritat!

And the usual disclaimers:

  • This show contains spoilers. Numerically not as many spoilers as the actual Star Trek Beyond trailer, but if you want to avoid knowing plot points smaller than the destruction of the U.S.S. REDACTED, consider yourself warned.
  • This show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. We speak extensively about the sexual connotations of a clown suit on a mannequin. If you don’t want those connotations read back to you during your annual performance review, get some earphones.

Note: During the show, we speculate that Star Trek Beyond director Justin Lin was scheduled to direct The Flash. That was incorrect. We were thinking of James Wan, who also directed one of the Fast and Furious movies. And who, it turns out, won’t be directing The Flash.

Thanks for listening, suckers!

The new Ghostbusters movie opened this week, after a long production period marked by a non-stop screeching hate frenzy from Bill Murray fans, enthusiasts of old-school J. Michael Straczynski Saturday morning cartoons, and people who think that comedy has been redundant since Rick Moranis donned a track suit to dry hump the windows at Tavern on The Green.

We here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives have long and storied histories with the original Ghostbusters, from Amanda’s devotion to its scientific approach to the paranormal that led to her being interested in applying to Duke University’s Parapsychology Laboratory, to Rob’s appreciation of the flick as an teen-safe entryway to early Saturday Night Live and the National Lampoon. And even with that long and beloved history, we have long been looking forward to the more modern interpretation of the franchise.

So we discuss our feelings about the franchise at large, how we liked (and didn’t like) the new movie, what we’re hoping for from any possible sequel, and Amanda’s theory about how this movie not only doesn’t turn its back on the original movie, but actually makes the concept that it’s a sequel as likely as not.

Regardless, we have no sympathy for those who say that the new Ghostbusters has destroyed their childhood. And we’re not alone.

We also discuss:

  • Nightwing: Rebirth #1, written by Tim Seeley with art by Yanick Paquette,
  • Wonder Woman #2, written by Greg Rucka with art by Nicola Scott, and:
  • Civil War II #3, written by Brian Michael Bendis with art by David Marquez!

And, the usual disclaimers:

  • This show contains spoilers. If you want to avoid knowing whether every molecule in Melissa McCarthy’s body explodes at the speed of light in a total protonic reversal, consider yourself forewarned and forearmed.
  • This show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. You want your boss to learn a whole new definition of “hard but fair”? Then buy some earbuds.

Thanks for listening, suckers!

Episode120BootstrapParadox_smallAnother season of HBO’s Game of Thrones is behind us, leaving us once again with a pile of dead so high it would embarrass Jerry Garcia, were he not also dead.

This was a big season: not only was it the first that wasn’t completely backed by one of George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire novels, but it pushed some fan-favorite characters toward their eventual endgame by (gasp!) allowing some of them to not only live, but to win. And not only to win, but to win in the layman’s sense of the word, not George R. R. Martin’s normal definition of “win,” which is “alive, but mutilated and perhaps covered in latrine leeches.”

So, as is becoming an annual tradition here, we welcomed guest John Keating: an actor, a comedian, and as close to an expert in Game of Thrones as you’re likely to find without riffling through a stack of Martin’s restraining orders.

We discuss the season, the huge arcs some characters have, the double-edged sword of certain characters’ comeuppance, and why the only ones in Westeros qualified to ride The Iron Throne are either ten years old or a quadruped.

In addition, John brings us up to date on The Concessionaires Must Die!, the independent film he co-starred in and co-wrote, which features Stan Lee in a cameo role, and has a new trailer available to psyche you up for when it appears at a film festival near you.

And, we talk about Chuck Tingle. For some reason.

Strap yourselves in, it’s one hell of an episode.

Thanks for listening, suckers!

totally_awesome_hulk_7_cover_2016It has been a busy week here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office. Between the delivery of new cooking apparatus that can also conveniently act as an incendiary bomb, to unexpected day job responsibilities, to nearly getting caught up in an unexpected session of Cornhole, it was hard to keep up on a week that was comics news-light to begin with.

So we decided to keep things short and simple this week, and just talk about some comics. And while we have some general discussions about how it was a standard off week for Marvel’s Civil War II event (by standard, we mean that every Marvel comic had “Civil War II” on the cover, without advancing the main story a whit), and how DC’s Rebirth continues to be a pretty solid soft reboot that’s unfortunately wrapped in the wretched trappings of Watchmen characters, we pretty much focused on a few books:

  • The Totally Awesome Hulk #7, written by Greg Pak with art by Alan Davis,
  • Justice League #52, written by Dan Jurgens with pencils by Tom Grummett, and:
  • Teen Titans #21, written by Tony Bedard with art by Miguel Mendonca!

And, as usual, the disclaimers:

  • This show contains spoilers. So if you want to remain unspoiled on whether or not Lex Luthor will be a villain in DC Rebirth (The answer won’t surprise you!), consider yourself warned.
  • This show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. You think your boss wants to hear details about Boston Cornhole (The answer actually will surprise you! But good luck convincing HR of that!)? Then get some headphones.
  • As a reminder: We will not have a new show on the week of July 3, 2016. We’ll be back the following Sunday.

Thanks for listening, suckers!

clone_conspiracy_promo_poster_1This week, Marvel and Spider-Man writer Dan Slott announced that this fall’s Spider-Man event will be called The Clone Conspiracy, and will feature The Jackal and the clone of Gwen Stacy, possibly bringing a bunch of long dead Spider-Man characters back from the grave. We initially had a very negative reaction to this news, because any Spider-Man title that includes the word “clone” brings back memories of the 1990s Clone Saga… but then we realized that neither of us had actually read all that much of the original Gerry Conway clone stories from the 1970s, or the Clone Saga stories from the mid 90s.

So we ran out and purchased the trade of the original clone stories from 1975 through 1990, and one of the trades of the 90s Clone Saga, to see how we really felt about the clone stories in the face of the actual works. And we discussed, in the face of actual exposure to the clone stories, whether we wanted to see any more clone stories… and whether we did or not, if they could possibly overcome the reputation of the 90s Clone Saga.

We also discuss:

  • Civil War II #2, written by Brian Michael Bendis with art by David Marquez,
  • Superman #1, written by Peter Tomasi with art by Patrick Gleason, and:
  • Batman #1, written by Tom King with art by David FInch!

And, the usual disclaimers:

  • This show contains spoilers. If you don’t want to learn the ending of who wound up with the mantle of Spider-Man at the end of The Clone Saga 21 years ago, you are a wise person with good taste in serialized graphic storytelling! But we’ll still ruin it for you.
  • This show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. If you don’t think your mom wants to hear how there’s a big bit of Hal Jordan in Carol Danvers, then get some headphones.

Thanks for listening, suckers!

outcast_cinemax_posterThis week, The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman had an interview published in Rolling Stone where he chided George R. R. Martin for revealing the ending to A Song of Ice And Fire to the producers of HBO’s Game of Thrones. And it caused the predictable Internet uproar, but it also got us to thinking: we had six out of seven Fear The Walking Dead episodes unwatched on our TiVo. We’d been complaining for years that The Walking Dead comic’s pacing had been untenably slow. We’d been getting Kirkman’s Outcast in our pulls since it started, but we actually hadn’t been reading it, so we had no intention of checking out the comic’s new adaptation on Cinemax.

So we asked ourselves: have we reached peak Robert Kirkman? Has his work lost its mojo, at least for us? And we decided to test the question by burning through the remainder of Fear The Walking Dead season 2, re-reading the first issue of Outcast, and checking out the first two episodes of the adaptation. And having spent the weekend binging on Kirkman (eww!), the answer might surprise you!

We also discuss:

  • Wonder Woman: Rebirth #1, written by Greg Rucka with art by Matthew Clark, Liam Sharp and Sean Parsons,
  • The Flash: Rebirth #1, written by Joshua Williamson with art by Carmine Di Giandomencio, and:
  • Daredevil #8, written by Charles Soule with art by Goran Sudzuka!

And, the disclaimers:

  • This show contains spoilers. If you listen, you will learn how many Fear The Walking Dead characters Rob wants to hit with a chair (Hint: It’s a non-zero value).
  • The show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. We talk about Superman’s dickie. Get some headphones.

Thanks for listening, suckers!

dc_rebirth_charactersIt’s the first full week of DC Comics: Rebirth, and not a single Watchmen character appears in those issues, so we decided it would be a good opportunity to complain again about Watchmen characters appearing in the DC Universe.

Specifically, it was revealed this week that DC Comics didn’t contact Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons to ask him his opinion about adding Watchmen characters to Dc Universe: Rebirth. So we talk about whether that was a bush league move (protip: yeah), some of the history around DC leaving Watchmen alone, and whether DC Editorial really had any choice in asking for Gibbons or writer Alan Moore for even a half-hearted blessing in using their characters in Rebirth.

Then, since we were on a Rebirth roll, we discussed all this week’s titles from that event:

  • Superman: Rebirth #1, written by Peter Tomasi with art by Doug Mahnke,
  • Green Arrow: Rebirth #1, written by Benjamin Percy with art by Otto Schmidt,
  • Green Lanterns: Rebirth #1, written by Geoff Johns and Sam Humphries with art by Ethan Van Sciver and Ed Benes, and:
  • Batman: Rebirth #1, written by Scott Snyder and Tom King with art by Miken Janin.

And, just so Marvel doesn’t feel neglected, we close the show by talking about:

  • Civil War II #1, written by Brian Michael Bendis with art by David Marquez!

And, as always, the disclaimers:

  • This show contains spoilers. If you want to avoid knowing how the DC: Rebirth books end (spoiler alert: no matter what happens, it probably won’t matter next month), then consider yourself warned.
  • This show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. You want your mom to know what “giddy bottom” means? Get some ear buds.

Thanks for listening, suckers!

amc_preacher_jesse_posterIt’s the end of the week of May 25th, 2016: the Wednesday the Big Two drooled on themselves, shrieked “Excelsior!” into the Black Void, and keeled over. At least if you believe the Internet comments.

But before we talk about that, there was one major positive for comics fans this week: AMC debuted the pilot episode of their adaptation of Garth Ennis’s and Steve Dillon’s Preacher this past Sunday. We’re big fans of the comic, which really meant something to us… back when we were in our twenties, same as the characters back in the original 1990s comic. Both we and the comic are older now, with different lifestyles and priorities, so the question is not only whether or not Preacher is a worthy adaptation of the classic Vertigo comic, but can it have the same effect as it did when we were in our twenties?

That’s the good news. The bad news is that we also discuss:

  • Steve Rogers: Captain America #1, written by Nick Spencer with art by Jesus Saiz, and:
  • DC Universe: Rebirth #1, written by Geoff Johns with art by, well, many, many people!

And, as always, the disclaimers:

  • This show contains spoilers. So be aware: if you haven’t been spoiled on the events of either Steve Rogers: Captain America #1 or DC Universe: Rebirth #1, then you clearly haven’t had any access to the Internet and therefore can’t read this warning anyway. But rest assured: we’ll be spoiling them.
  • This show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. We recite Preacher’s recipe for making a homemade bazooka in this episode. You don’t want your boss to hear that any more than we want this episode entered into evidence in a Felony Menacing trial. So get some headphones.

Thanks for listening, suckers!

dc_rebirth_coverHere’s a warning about this week’s episode right out of the gate: details about DC Universe: Rebirth #1 have leaked to Reddit, including images from that issue. The user who leaked the pages has since deleted his or her account, but those images have been picked up and published by Bleeding Cool (Seriously: there are massive spoilers at that link, so beware), and have led to major spoilers about the book being published across the comics Internet. And those images and spoilers contain a revelation that is not only startling, but infuriating, if not downright rage-inciting, for fans of a particular classic comics property. Like, we sat down to plan this week’s show, found this news item, and chucked everything so we could fume about this move. It stands to possibly be bad, bad mojo for fans of DC who date back to the 1980s.

And we talk about that revelation. So if you want to avoid spoilers for DC Universe: Rebirth #1, you should avoid listening to this week’s episode until you pick up this week’s comics on Wednesday, May 25th. But if you’re not concerned about spoilers, and you care about the legacy of one of the great superhero comics works of the last thirty years, jump on in! We’ll never compromise! Not even in the face of Armageddon!

We also discuss:

  • Future Quest #1, written by Jeff Parker with art by Evan “Doc” Shaner and Steve Rude,
  • Chilling Adventures of Sabrina #5, written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa with art by Robert Hack, and:
  • Civil War II #0, written by Brian Michael Bendis with art by Olivier Coipel!

And, the usual disclaimers:

  • This show contains spoilers. Like, terrible spoilers for DC Universe: Rebirth #1. So if you don’t want to have the terrible spoiler revealed, it’s up to you. I leave it entirely within your hands.
  • This show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. If your version of The American Dream is to get fired for listening to bad language at work, it’ll come true. You’re looking at it.

Thanks for listening, suckers!