Episode 99: Thing Ring, Do Your Ring Job

Secret Wars #9 was released this week, marking the official end of the Marvel Universe as created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (or by Kirby and Lee, depending on whose version you prefer) in the November, 1961 issue of Fantastic Four #1.

Purely by coincidence, this was also the week that our local comic store put used copies of the first two volumes of Marvel’s Essential Fantastic Four reprints on sale. And also purely by coincidence, this was the week we obtained a copy of last year’s Josh Trank-directed movie version of Fantastic Four, with the original plan being to watch it so we could, in good conscience, list it as our worst genre movie of 2015.

However, with both the beginning and the end of Stan and Jack’s Fantastic Four and Marvel Universe in our hands, as well as this wretched little celluloid deviation, we decided it was a perfect time to revisit the team, how much of the Marvel Universe just those first few issues laid down for decades to come, how the comic really was a product of its time (and how the movie was proof of that), and how Jonathan Hickman laid those characters, as they have been since 1961, to rest. And, ultimately, we discuss whether this team, that was born during the Space Race, when Kennedy was President and World War II was closer in history than the Y2K Bug is to us today, could have a future in 2016.

And now, the disclaimers:

• We record this show live to tape, with minimal editing. While this might mean a looser comics podcast than you are used to, it also means that anything can happen. Like a discussion why Sue Storm makes Helen of Troy look like Willie Lumpkin.
• This show contains spoilers. While we try to shout out warnings ahead of time, be aware that we will spoil the fact that the Fantastic Four movie just sucks.
• This show contains adult, profane language, and therefore is not safe for work. See that “Ring Job” in the title? Don’t let your boss hear about that. Get some earphones.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:54:41 — 106.1MB)

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Thanks for listening, suckers!

Crisis On Inifnite Midlives Podcast Episode 17: The Bucky Larson of Superhero Movies

It’s Sunday, so it’s time for another Crisis On Infinite Midlives Show! May God have mercy upon your soul!

It has been a big, weird week for Marvel, both the movie studio and the comic publisher, so we talk about:

• Edgar Wright’s departure from the Ant-Man movie, who might be a good choice from the directors who have been named as probable replacements, and who would actually be a good replacement
• The rumor (a rumor that is picking up some partial documentation and some steam) that Marvel might cancel Fantastic Four to spite Fox Studios efforts to promote the latest movie adaptation
• The concept that Marvel and DC might just be intellectual property farms for movies and TV, the deleterious effect that that could have on comics, and what, if anything, comics fans can do about it (spoiler alert: not much)
• Fantastic Four #5, written by James Robinson with art by Leonard Kirk
• Trees #1, written by Warren Ellis with art by Jason Howard

And, the usual legalese:

• This show was recorded live to tape, which means you might hear more weird pauses, aborted jokes, and jokes about abortion than you might hear on your normal podcast
• This show contains spoilers. We try to warn ahead of time, but there is every chance you will hear the odd spoiler of a story point or nine. What can I say? We ruin stuff.
• This show contains adult, explicit language, and is not safe for work. Invest in some headphones, even if they must be those awful Beats By Dre monstrosities.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:22:41 — 75.7MB)

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Enjoy the show, suckers!

Fantastic Four Movie Cast Confirmed; Internet Fanboys Predictably Freak Out Unfavorably

According to Variety, the main cast of the Fantastic Four reboot have been confirmed. Miles Teller has accepted an offer to play Reed Richards. Kate Mara will be Sue Storm. Michael B. Jordan is Johnny Storm. Finally, Jamie Bell is expected to be picking up the role of Ben Grimm. The reboot will be based on the Ultimate Fantastic Four run, which means we can expect that Reed won’t necessarily be the team leader, a role that initially fell to Sue and Johnny’s father in the Ultimate series, who is a professor at a project housed in the Baxter Building for gifted students. If that is the route this story will take, that role has not been cast yet. It would also mean that Reed’s digestive system would be replaced by a bacterial stack that allows him the ability to get nourishment without eating. Just throwing that out there.

Predictably, rabid fan boys have taken to social media to decry the casting of Jordan as Johnny Storm. Johnny is a blond haired white boy in the comics and Jordan is an African American. Jordan previously worked with new FF director, Josh Trank, on the superhero pic, Chronicle.

Further stirring the pot is this little nugget, dropped by the Hollywood Reporter a couple weeks back:

Dr. Doom is said to be the villain of the reboot (the character appeared in Fox’s two previous movies and was played by Julian McMahon). The Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Vision is hearing that the studio is likely to go for a big name and isn’t ruling out switching genders for the role.

So, fan boys are freaking out. I think it’s much ado about nothing. I think the larger gain here is a script that will draw on some of the better comics writing work from Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Millar, and Warren Ellis. Not sure why fan boys aren’t focusing on that instead of whinging because some of the casting doesn’t meet their imagined platonic ideals. Oh wait, yes I do. Because that’s what fan boys do. Get it out of your systems now, kids. You know you’re just going to go see it anyway when it hits the theaters. And you’ll buy and play whatever video game comes out for consoles to accompany it. Just own it and move on with your lives.

The Fantastic Four hits theaters June 19, 2015.

Neverending Doom: Fantastic Four #9 Review

Editor’s Note: Stretch, I’m tellin’ ya… I messed with spoilers I didn’t understand, and it all blew up in that jerk’s face. Literally.

Considering he’s one of the premier villains of the Marvel Universe, Doctor Doom’s origin has always been kinda crap.

I mean, think about it: the dude is a brilliant scientist and a master magician who, upon having an experiment blow up in his face, uses that wealth of head-earned knowledge to alleviate his condition by covering it with an iron mask that looks like it was forged and riveted by a seventh grade industrial arts student. And on a basic level, we’ve spent years being told that, if it weren’t for the one, single incident of his horrible disfigurement, Doctor Doom would never have become a tyrannical despot with a lust for immortality and ultimate power despite being born the heir to the throne of a third world Eastern European toilet (an area historically known for its great record on human rights) and having the positive family name of “Von Doom.” Which is, of course, the Germanic term for fucking “of doom.”

So I have never completely bought into the simplistic background of Doctor Doom… and clearly neither has Fantastic Four writer Matt Fraction. Because in Fantastic Four #9, he gives us a firsthand view of Doom’s originating accident, but from a completely different angle then we’ve seen before. And while it doesn’t make Doom’s motivations any more complicated – it actually simplifies them by a pretty significant level – it does make Doom and his personality a lot more believable, if not any more relatable. He doesn’t make Doom, who has always felt a little like a guy who only wears an iron mask to stop himself from twirling his moustache and cackling, “Moo-hah-ha-ha!”, any more complex… but he does make him a two-and-a-half dimensional megalomaniac that I find more believable.

And it is very, very good.

New Beginnings And Selective Amnesia: FF #1 Review

The biggest problem I have with FF #1 isn’t the characterizations or the ideas behind the story or the dialogue, all of which are, frankly, realistic enough to engage and sometimes even delightful (although I have no idea who Darla Deering – Ms. Thing – is, and I really thought that Scott Lang was dead). No, the biggest problem here is the invisible hand of Marvel Editorial. Because they are the reason that, all while reading this issue, I kept thinking, “Yeah, but Spider-Man really should be here.”

But let’s forget about that right now and talk about what is here. And what is here is pretty damned entertaining, if little but a giant wad of exposition wrapped up in fun dialogue and pretty pop art.

FF #1, written by Matt Fraction with pencils by Mike Allred, spins directly out of Fraction’s recent Fantastic Four #1, where the team decided to go on an exploration mission for a year that, in relativistic terms, should keep them away from Earth for four minutes. So this issue involves each member of the Fantastic Four picking a surrogate to lead the Future Foundation in their stead. For four minutes. Because of course they’ll only be gone for four minutes! This is, after all, a mission planned by Reed Richards! You know, the genius who once said, “Hey, why don’t we just steal the rocket? What’s the worst thing that could possibly happen?”

Fantastic Voyage: Fantastic Four #606 Review

Editor’s Note: Come along and ride on a Fantastic Spoilage! 

First off, let’s stipulate that Fantastic Four editor Tom Brevoort was having a bad day when he recommended that an issue about alternate Nazi versions of the Fantastic Four be labeled as a Point One entry issue, rather than this simple, classic-feeling one-and-done about the core team performing the type of weird, over the top science adventure that is the team’s stock in trade. Yes, a bad day, and not simply colossally poor judgment, or perhaps rampant alcohol abuse. But more likely an off day. Sure.

Let us also stipulate that, while this is an entertaining and charming issue that services all four core characters extremely well and captures the feeling of a classic FF adventure, part of the reason it feels classic is because the plot has been done before. And done, and done, and done, both in movies and in other comics. The thing works, but it works because it’s hung on a proven framework… the same way The Magnificent Seven is cool, but mostly because it’s taken straight across from The Seven Samurai.

Ich Bin Ein Douchebags: Fantastic Four #605.1 Review

Editor’s Note: It was the world’s strangest accident. While testing a new Web site, our heroes were bombarded by mysterious spoilers from outer space!

In a complete and total vacuum, Fantastic Four #605.1 is an interesting little one-and-done Elseworlds-style alternate history of the Fantastic Four, hypothesizing what the team would be like if they’ve been born and raised in Nazi Germany. Which, again, taken on its own is a kind of cool concept (although “Nazi Thing” sounds suspiciously like a fetish German Scheisse porno), but in the real world, it only shows that writer Jonathan Hickman has read Mark Millar’s Red Son and Warren Ellis’s Planetary, and that he also thinks that the character of Reed Richards is a real, real douchebag.

A Whole New 52-Less World

It is Wednesday, and as it has since the inception of this publication almost three months ago…

…this means the end of the Crisis On Infinite Midlives broadcast day.

Which feels like business as usual, but… something is missing… Oh right! There’s not a single issue of DC Comics’s New 52 in the take this week! That explains why my local comic store owner, who knows me by name and asks me to stop asking whoever’s milling around the Archie comics rack if they “wanna see the Old 5-2″, looked at my take this week and only said, “Bomb Queen? No refunds if the pages stick together, Rob. And no, I won’t shake your hand. Or anything else.”

It’s gonna be a weird week with almost no DC books to review, but check it out: we’ve got a new Mark Waid and Marcos Martin issue of Daredevil, Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Rizzo’s Spaceman #2, Neal Adams art and script on Batman: Odyssey, Jonathan Hickman’s followup to FF #600, and a new Angel & Faith from Buffy Season 9!

This is going to be an interesting week; without the new DC books, we’ll have a chance to review some different stuff, and without that New 52 pressure (And since a series of head and chest colds here at the Home Office are starting to dissipate), we should be able to get a new episode of the Podcast in the can.

But before any of that, we need to read the new stuff. So see you tomorrow, suckers!

Flaming: Fantastic Four #600 Review

I have decided that when I die, I want someone at Marvel to write my obituary. Because that will mean that I won’t be dead for very fucking long.

Yeah, The Human Torch is alive again, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

I haven’t reviewed any of the issues in Jonathan Hickman’s run of Fantastic Four before because honestly? It just hasn’t hooked me in. I’ve given it a try because the book has been part of my pulls since Mark Waid’s and Mike Wieringo’s run, so I’ve sort of been getting it by default. And I read it every month, but there’s something about ir that just doesn’t stick to my brain. I’ll grant that alcohol might be a factor, but considering not ten seconds ago I was asked, and able, to recall the Libby’s jingle from the 1970’s, I doubt booze is just attacking my memories of Hickman on FF. Hopefully.

I’ve certainly given Hickman’s writing an honest chance. On top of Fantastic Four, I’ve been reading his book Red Wing by Image, and I’ve picked up trades of his miniseries Red Mass for Mars and Pax Humana. All of which are big idea comics, with intricate clockwork plots that pull together seamlessly… and to a one populated with characters that feel to me like ciphers that exist purely to further those plots. They are impeccable works of engineering, yet oddly bloodless, like a high-end silicone fuck doll: there are people who swear by them, but I was born a blow-up doll man, and I’ll die a blow-up doll man. And lonely. But I digress.

I Love You, The Check’s In The Mail, and a Marvel Character is Dead: Bucky’s New Book

We’ve talked a lot here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives about the formula of event comics: new costumes, giant battles, and the death of at least one character. Some creator boasting that the event is so big it will “change everything” and will “break the Internet in half” remains optional. For now. Rob Liefeld still has to submissively piddle at the end of each event. Rumor is it’s in his contract, along with the whole “coprophagia” clause. But this is no time to be making up stories about Liefeld, this is serious business. We’re talking about death here.

One of the two big deaths in Marvel’s Fear Itself event was the death of Bucky, Captain America’s old World War II sidekick who took over Cap’s mantle after Steve Rogers was killed in (say it with me!) a big crossover event in 2007. Bucky, who was also killed during World War II, was the victim of the new Red Skull, who tore his arm off… probably at the direct order of Joe Quesada, who figured out that it would probably be a bad idea to have a different guy as Captain America in the comics than in the multi-million dollar blockbuster movie of the same name. He apparently realized this several months after the movie was released, and several years after most of us understood that “Bucky Cap” sounds like euphemism for some kind of French Tickler-type device, but that’s not important right now.

What’s important is that Bucky is dead. He is bereft of life. He rests in peace. His metabolic processes are now history. He’s kicked the bucket. He is an ex-Bucky. And he’s been an ex-Bucky twice. That’s pretty final. Right?

Sure it is. This is Marvel we’re talking about: