MarvelAllNewAllDifferentIt’s the final day of a long holiday weekend in the United States. We celebrated Independence Day in the ways of our forefathers: by getting drunk, listening to stuff blow up, and spending hours and hours playing Batman: Arkham Knight on our brand new XBox One. So we spend a little time talking about the new game, the new game system, our relationship to gaming, and how, no matter which next generation console you choose, you are now doomed to live with that company’s games until they, or you, die.

But this is a comics show, and there was big comics news this week: Marvel announced a huge chunk of the books that they will be releasing in October to follow the universe-rebooting Secret Wars. It’s up to 45 books, which means we don’t have time to talk about all of them, but we spend a little time with Amazing Spider-Man, The Ultimates, Captain Marvel, Karnak, Old Man Logan, and Doctor Strange. We discuss how we think they’ll work, how Amazing Spider-Man could be the answer to the prayers of both fans and haters of One More Day, and how the creative team behind Doctor Strange has Rob as excited about a comic book as he’s been in years.

We also discuss:

  • Secret Wars #4, written by Jonathan Hickman with art by Esad Ribic,
  • We Stand On Guard #1, written by Brian K. Vaughan with art by Steve Skroce,
  • Groot #2, written by Jeff Loveness with art by Brian Kesinger, and:
  • Little AvX Marvel #2, written and drawn by Skottie Young!

And now the disclaimers:

  • We record this show live to tape, with minimal editing. While this might mean a looser comics podcast than you’re used to, it also means that anything can happen. Like learning about Immaculately Manscaped Galactus.
  • This show contains spoilers. While we try to shout out warnings ahead of time, be aware that you will learn which X-Man takes balls to the face in Little AvX Marvel.
  • This show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. You want your boss to know the etymology of the word “crotchal”? Then get some headphones.

Thanks for listening, suckers!

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Update, 4/10/2013, 5:50 p.m.: As contributor Lance Manion pointed out in the comments, it turns out that Apple isn’t the party that censored Saga #12. It was Comixology themselves. Details at the end of the original story, after the jump.

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The Internet is an interesting place. It’s a place where, by simply closing your eyes, pounding on your keyboard with your fist and pressing the Enter key, you can see pictures, in living color, of a woman with a substance abuse problem blowing a horse.

It is also a place where you can obtain anything that can be turned into ones and zeroes that you want, completely for free, much to the consternation of major media producers. But thankfully, most of those media producers have embraced the possibilities of the Internet, making their content instantly available to anyone with a credit card – you know, adults – instantly, and at a reasonable price. And all across a medium that only fifteen years ago was best known as a delivery vector for animal pornography and autopsy photos.

Well, unless you’re trying to ply your wares through Apple’s App Store. A company and a store who have, in their infinite wisdom, decided not to accept Image Comics’s Saga #12 for sale via the iOS Comixology app due to two images of gay sex. Because God forbid that a consenting adult be allowed to decide to purchase a cartoon that includes two panels of sex acts on their iPad – a device widely used to make it possible to view and masturbate to high-definition pornography in a public toilet stall.

So, what with Apple acting in a manner similar to Wal-Mart and other prudish, yet powerful, corporate overlords who want to tell you what you can and can’t read or watch, I imagine Saga creators Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples, and their little publisher Image, have agreed to self-censor their book in order to gain access to iPads, yes?

Yeah, no.

new_years_ballIt is New Year’s Eve of the first complete year of the existence of Crisis On Infinite Midlives. We have all the comics we’re going to get in 2012, so it is time to publish my list of the best comics of the year… mostly because with no new comics, there isn’t much to review, and the biggest comics news we’re likely to get between now and Wednesday is likely to be “Frank Miller Publicly Intoxicated, Yells At ‘Hippies.’ Must Be Tuesday.”

So here’s my list; Amanda’s will appear later today. It is in no particular order, it encompasses everything from single issues to multi-issue story arcs to series that started in 2011 and ended this year. And I know what you’re thinking: “Rob,” you’re thinking, “Why don’t you organize things a little more? And use some consistent criteria for your list?” Well, because fuck you, that’s why. Look: it’s New Year’s Eve, and I intend to be recklessly intoxicated within about 90 minutes from the time I press the “publish” button.

So without further (or any) ado: here’s my list!

Saga, by writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Fiona Staples, is awesome. It is a space opera on a massive scale, spanning planets, including interstellar war, magic, technology, and strange races of aliens, from the primary warring races of ram-horned magic users and their pixie-winged opponents, to the charming triclopsed giant with man-tits and a scrotum that looks like it’s where the testicles of steroid-users go when they die, who we meet in Saga #7.

It has enough good guys, bad guys, androids and bounty hunters to populate ten Star Wars movies, with enough foul language and robot-fucking to make Disney put away its checkbook in gagging horror. And it does it with the kind of special effects budget you can only get with a pen and paper.

And yet, that is not what makes Saga awesome. It is awesome because, while this massive conflict is happening, this is not a story about those things, but one that happens during them, or perhaps in spite of them. Despite the aliens and robots and magic and technology, this is a human story, and Saga #7 is a perfect example of that. This issue contains magic and starships and the Scrotum That Ate Pittsburgh, but it is about a couple visiting their in-laws for the first time, when those in-laws don’t approve of the relationship. And as a guy who has been in situations where his girlfriend’s parents have treated him in a way ranging from aloof politeness to barely-restrained contempt, it is damn effective.

Plus, it has that splash page that I Goddamned guarantee you was shipped back to Staples with a note from Vaughan reading: “More scrote.”

The first thing I noted while reading Brian K. Vaughan’s and Fiona Staples’s Saga #1 was that, with every page – and sometimes every panel – this team was raising the required budget of any possible film adaptation by several million dollars. And movie studios simply don’t spend that much on an NC-17 flick.

The second thing I noticed was that this comic book is an imaginative, large-scale space opera that simultaneously hits all the expected and classic tropes of the genre, while chucking in enough weird and mad ideas to make Grant Morrison mutter, “Shit; nice one,” and tying the whole thing together with an out-front, genuine sense of humor about itself that you won’t find outside of a Star Wars parody. This is a very, very good comic book.

1/10/12 Update – Dave Dorman has taken down the post and comments linked to in this article. For now, you can see the cached page with the quote and comments in question here.

Dave Dorman, an artist known for his work on Star Wars and Heavy Metal, took to his blog today to decry the artwork of Fiona Staples published in USA Today to promote her upcoming comic book Saga, which will be written by Brian K. Vaughan. Saga will follow the story of two soldiers from opposite sides of an intergalactic war who fall in love, start a family, and then get pursued by bounty hunters (among other threats).

Here’s the artwork in question:

His beef? After the jump.