tmp_ant-man_movie_logo871384253It’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.

Enjoy the show, suckers!

scatterlands_promoA few weeks ago, Warren Ellis teased some kind of a new comics project, named Scatterlands, with Super Dinosaur artist Jason Howard… and he did it without mentioning any further detail about what it was. Oh sure, he had previously Tweeted that he missed doing a free Web-based project like FreakAngels, but as a teaser, that really didn’t mean anything. After all, the man has also Tweeted about the gastronomic delights of the common infant, occasionally combined with the pastime refreshment value of Col. Werner Von Braun’s Old No. Nein! Stuttgart Slurpin’ Partially Gelatinous Booster Fuel. So it’s best to take Ellis’s 140-character pronouncements with a grain of salt. At least, I sincerely hope it is.

However, in this case, those announcements were at least semi-accurate, because Ellis has announced the nature of the Scatterlands project: it will be a Web-based, daily, single-panel comic strip, with new panels every weekday.

And by “it will be,” I mean that “it is.” The first panel debuted today on Ellis’s Web site.

So whaddya got in store for us, Warren?

warren_ellis_headshotWarren Ellis is a legend in the world of comic books who hasn’t written a comic book in Goddamned forever. Sure, he did a short run on Marvel’s Secret Avengers toward the end of 2011, but while he released a novel and started a weekly column for Vice in 2012, he’s been pretty much absent from comics for well over a year at this point. And hey, those things were entertaining, but he did these things while there’s a fandom out there waiting for the conclusion of Fell and hoping for another dose of Desolation Jones.

Well, there’s some good news – no, not new Fell or Desolation Jones; we live in a human world, filled not with miracles, but with mundane and crippling disappointment – Ellis has announced a new comics project.

Of some kind.