Heroclix Team Awesome: Thunderbolts #1 Review

Editor’s Note: One last review of the comics of 12/5/2012 before the comic stores open…

Let’s get the preliminaries out of the way: the chick with the purple hair who doesn’t speak and is the only apparent member who isn’t asked to volunteer in Thunderbolts #1? That’s Mercy. She debuted back in Peter David’s and Todd McFarlane’s run on The Incredible Hulk – issue 338 to be exact, a couple of issues before the arc collected in the Ground Zero paperback. If I recall correctly, she shanks people who she thinks are down on their luck… and she thinks everyone is down on their luck. You’re welcome.

Thunderbolts #1 is yet another Marvel Now book that is, despite Marvel’s protestations, a complete reboot (but, but, Marvel doesn’t reboot! Which is why The Punisher is still a superpowered avenging angel! And he’s still a black guy!). We’ve gone from the team being the standardized government-sponsored team staffed by former supervillains hoping for redemption that it’s been for years (but don’t let it make you bitter; if you miss that idea, DC’s still publishing Suicide Squad), to apparently just General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, former Hulkbuster and current Red Hulk, out on his own, building a team out of the darker, more edge heroes of the Marvel Universe. You know, like DC’s Team 7.

So now our Thunderbolts are apparently Red Hulk, Punisher, Deadpool, Elektra, Venom and Mercy, which is a lineup, except for Mercy, that should be familiar to anyone who has seen twelve-year-olds playing Heroclix (although you probably heard them referred to as “The Asskickers,” or perhaps “Team Awesome”). However, this lineup is being written by recent Deadpool writer Daniel Way instead of a runny-nosed punk jacked up on Red Bull and his first boner over imagining Elektra naked, so we can expect a little more from this team, right?

Truth be told, I can’t quite tell yet.

…Moviegoer of Kleenex: New Man of Steel Teaser Trailer Released

As I’ve said before, since it’s the end of the year, the movie studios are starting to get we genre geeks hyped up about the 2013 summer blockbuster movie season. They’ve given us a wealth of teaser trailers and posters, which has led to the staff of Crisis On Infinite Midlives to argue, in the past week, as to which summer movie we’re looking more forward to: Iron Man 3, directed by the guy who wrote Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, and The Last Boy Scout, or Star Trek Into Darkness, directed by the guy who directed Star Trek and Super 8, and also produced Lost and Alias.

Oh yeah, and then there’s Man of Steel, directed by Zack Snyder. The guy who directed the completely unnecessary Dawn of The Dead remake, the can’t-even-sit-through-while-drunk-and-the-remote’s-broken Sucker Punch, and the resoundingly “no homo” 300. Sure, Man of Steel will be opening too, but I can’t imagine there’s gonna be anything that could vault it to the top of the “must see” list, even if we’re totally willing to forget Superman Returns, a movie that even a half-quart of Jack Daniels couldn’t make entertaining.

What’s that? There’s a new teaser trailer for Man of Steel that’s been released? *Sigh*

Fine. Let’s give it a look.

Bamf: I Love Trouble #1 Review

Editor’s Note: Now watch me kids, when I twist my ring: like magic, we’re at Spoiler King!

Let’s go ahead and state the obvious up front: I Love Trouble is a superhero comic.

Sure, it’s a superhero comic where the protagonist is a bit darker and edgier than your standard Marvel or DC fare, and it’s one without capes, spandex or superpowered bad guys (yet… unless you count a protagonist who uses her powers to steal classic art a “supervillain” right out of the gate, but the story doesn’t steer in that direction), but there is no way to spin a book about a woman who suddenly develops powers, that forecasts that there are other people out there with similar powers, and that shows government interest in the woman with powers, and see anything but a superhero comic with a darker bend than many.

Biting The Root: Scott Snyder and Yanick Paquette Leaving Swamp Thing

Remember yesterday, when Gail Simone got icked off of Batgirl? And I listed all the books from the initial DC New 52 that I could remember (of course, forgetting Joshua Hale Fialkov and Andrea Sorrentino on I, Vampire at the very least) and bemoaned the fact that so many creators and books from that first round of rebooted comics had gone down with all hands? And that I listed Scott Snyder as working on Batman and Swamp Thing?

Yeah, funny story about that…

Hey guys – was going to wait until we got a little closer to announce this, but yes, Swamp Thing #18 will be my (cont) tl.gd/ka763m

— Scott Snyder (@Ssnyder1835) December 10, 2012

Swamp Thing #18 will be your what, Scott? Your manifesto? Your articles of sessecion from the United States of America? Your Goddamned prom date? There’s a term for Tweets that are longer than 140 characters, Scott: it’s called a fucking blog post!

Hey, what’s that link at the end of the Tweet do?

When The Legend Becomes Fact: Avengers #1 Review

Editor’s Note: It was the spark that started the fire — a legend that grew in the telling. Some believe it began the moment Spoilers were rescued from a dying universe…

Before you ask, no, I don’t know who all those people are. The floating chick on the left is an incarnation of Captain Universe (who I remember from Micronauts comics when I was a kid), and if I had to hazard a guess based on the nuclear symbol on the team diagram, the dude on the right apparently flying in an effort to escape the fire pouring out of his ass is Nuke from Squadron Supreme. But there are at least four people on that last page I couldn’t pull out of a lineup if my life depended on it.

So now that we have the fanboy gymnastics out of the way, we can actually talk about Avengers #1.

First of all, there is no doubt that this is no longer Brian Michael Bendis’s Avengers. From the opening pages implying that “Previously in Avengers” was a cataclysm of cosmic creation, followed immediately by the representation of the Avengers lineup by an abstract diagram, this issue is a shot across the bow that this is indeed Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers. And that means that, after years of stories that seemingly always hinged around a bunch of guys shooting the shit around the kitchen table, we are in for something very different.

And that is not a bad thing. At least not yet. But we might get there.

And Then There Were (About) Seventeen: Gail Simone No Longer Writing Batgirl

There have been rumors going around for a couple of weeks that Gail Simone, in the face of her exclusive deal with DC Comics coming to an end recently, would be leaving Batgirl, which she has written since the DC New 52 relaunch. Simone has been denying those rumors pretty consistently, to the point where just one week ago, she publicly and flatly stated that “I have not left Batgirl” on her Tumblr blog.

That, however, was a week ago. About 90 minutes ago, on her Twitter page, Simone announced that she would no longer be writing the book… and that her earlier statement was technically true: she did not leave Batgirl. She was replaced.

On Wednesday of last week, new Batgirl editor Brian Cunningham informed me by email that I was no longer the writer of Batgirl.

— GailSimone (@GailSimone) December 9, 2012

Outsourcing: Iron Man 3 Japanese Trailer Features Some New Footage

I realize that we live in a streaming video world, and that because of the ready availability of streamed movies, many of you no longer buy DVDs. And if that’s the case, you are the worst fucking people on Earth.

Because since DVD and Blu-Ray sales have flatlined in the past few years, the international market has become more important for movie studios than ever. And because of that, the cool genre movies that geeks want to see are opening overseas before we get to see them here (Most recent example? About 25 countries are getting The Hobbit before it opens in the United States). So thanks to you swine who have stopped accumulating movies on physical media for the rotten and unjustifiable reason that streaming is inexpensive and convenient, other countries are getting all the cool shit before us! I hope you’re Goddamned proud of yourselves.

But there is a positive about the whole situation: because those markets are so lucrative, they tend to get trailers with a little more detail and a little more footage than the American versions. We saw it earlier this week with the Star Trek Into Darkness trailer, where the Japanese version had a bit more going on than the American version… and now we’re seeing it with the Japanese version of the Iron Man 3 trailer, which has some previously-unseen footage in it. You can check it out after the jump.

The Shape of Things To Come: The Legend of Luther Strode #1 Review

If The Strange Talent of Luther Strode was the origin tale of an 80s slasher film-style killing machine wrapped up in a superhero story, then it would stand to reason that the sequel would have to be the actual horror movie. This is a somewhat tricky proposition, because despite the similarities between a superhero and a slasher flick villain – on a mission, with a distinctive outfit and / or mask, and apparently indestructible – a horror movie is not a superhero story.

In a slasher film, the killer is “other,” appearing from out of nowhere and picking off the people who are the primary protagonists and the focus of the story. Further, while many if not most of the victims might, for whatever reason, “need killing” (for having sex or smoking pot or drinking underage – hey Mom! You were right! I do need killing!), there needs to be one character for whom the audience is invested and pulling for to escape, if not defeat, the unstoppable force in the shadows. And it is one hell of a proposition to try to tell a story about a superhero in a story format where you have to not only stick him in the background, but find someone you like enough to hope that she (because it’s always a “she” who winds up facing down the killer in slasher films, isn’t it?) kills your hero.

If I were Luther Strode writer Justin Jordan, I would look at these challenges, smile, cut my losses and walk away. However, in the first issue of The Legend of Luther Strode, he instead embraces the story structure of a slasher film, taking the risk of pulling focus away from Luther and putting it on his “victims,” and gives us an antagonist for Luther who, at this point anyway, I wouldn’t mind seeing maybe win.

But again, the question is: does the slasher story format work in what is ostensibly a superhero comic?

Plague Bunny: Stan Sakai On Usagi Yojimbo Hiatus

Crisis On Infinite Midlives contributor Trebuchet has been dealing with some health problems over the past few months, and is about to undergo a surgical procedure to resolve them (although we who have known him for a long while believe that the most beneficial surgery he could undergo would be the one that locates his balls).

While Trebuchet swears that the procedure is minor with a good prognosis, we have been looking for a Get Well gift for him. Since we know that he is not the world’s biggest superhero comics fan, and we further know that he is a fan of the Dark Horse comic Usagi Yojimbo, it would seem that a few new issues of that book would be a gimme. Problem is: Usagi Yojimbo creator Stan Sakai has taken a break from that book to work on 47 Ronin with Dark Horse Comics publisher Mike Richardson. Now that is some crappy timing.

Thankfully, rather than putting us into the position of having to explain the lack of Usagi Yojimbo comics to Trebuchet, Sakai has jumped into his own creation to explain the break to its title character. An partial explanation of which you can get a taste after the jump.

The Captain The Federation Deserves: Star Trek Into Darkness Teaser Trailers Released

There’s nothing like the holiday season, and its attendant shopping, travel, insufferable parties, rotten fruitcake, family gatherings, family arguments, family recriminations, family embarrassment, and, well, family, that makes the heart yearn for summer blockbuster movie season.

And Hollywood knows this. This is why they spend millions on new Christmas movies (not that I begrudge Tim Allen a living), on funnelling It’s A Wonderful Life onto every second-rate expanded cable channel in America from Thanksgiving until about Valentine’s Day, and its why your local oldies radio station alternates playing Paul McCartney’s Wonderful Christmastime and Bing Crosby’s White Christmas from the day after Halloween until the smile on the face of the clerk at your local convenience store begins looking suspiciously like a silent prayer for the sweet release of death.

They want you to feel that level of despair so that, when they give you a tease of the big, explodey action of the summer flicks, you become disproportionately excited over the idea of big sun, long days, and starship captains blowing up bad guys.

And in that spirit, the first teaser trailer for Star Trek Into Darkness has been released… along with a little something extra for people in a country where Christmas is a time you spend with your boss instead of your family. Those lucky motherfuckers.