Episode 150: My Pine Weasel is Out

Look: we’re talking about Twin Peaks: The Return.

We know, this might not seem like the topic for a comics podcast, but hear us out. Twin Peaks is one of the main inspirations for The X-Files which is clearly turf for genre shows. It features a shared universe of different genre stories like any good comics universe. It has characters with super strength. But most importantly, Rob is a giant Twin Peaks fanboy, and he can’t pass up an opportunity to talk about the return of the first television program that showed him the promise of a shared genre universe the way that comic books did when he was 18 years old.

So we discuss what made the original Twin Peaks great, why there’s still excitement about it 27 years after it ended with little fanfare, and whether it was worth the wait to a person who owned every Twin Peaks property available between 1990 and 2016, or if it is even remotely compelling to someone like Amanda, who watched every episode of Twin Peaks that Rob rammed down her watchholes last week.

We also discuss:

• The Flash #22, written by Joshua Williamson with art by Howard Porter, and:
• Secret Empire #2, written by Nick Spencer with art by Andrea Sorrentino!

Ah, disclaimers:

• This episode was recorded live to tape, meaning that there might be more than the usual number of pauses, verbal tics and weird inside jokes. But we figure if you’re willing to listen to a show about Twin Peaks, then pauses, verbal tics and inside jokes are maybe your jam.
• This show contains spoilers. Laura Palmer’s killer was revealed on November 10, 1990. Rob found a way to find out who killed Laura Palmer despite not having hindsight, the Internet, or a working ABC television station in reasonable broadcast range on November 10, 1990. Rob has no pity for you when it comes to this subject.
• This show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. We talk about Secret Empire. That means there is cursing. You are forewarned.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:41:32 — 100.8MB)

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Thanks for listening suckers!

Episode 149: The Joe Dirt Cinematic Universe

A wise man once said, “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” I think it was Harvey Dent. Or maybe Billy Dee Williams. Either way, it’s a statement that certainly applied to last week in comics and comics-related entertainment.

In column A was the United States debut of Marvel Studios’s Guardians of The Galaxy, Vol. 2. We managed to sneak in a matinee last weekend of a movie that we greatly anticipated as either a new installment of a light action science-fantasy property, or an excuse to spread Baby Groot out over two and a quarter hours, or perhaps both.

We talk about the movie, how it is satisfyingly character driven, almost completely disconnected from the master Marvel Cinematic Universe storyline, heavily influenced by some of the best genre sequels out there, and what music cues we might expect now that Star-Lord has access to more modern tunes (here’s a hint: Sonny Crockett and Patrick Bateman would totally approve!

And then there’s column B, which comprised a few of the biggest comics* released last week:

• Batman #22, written by Joshua Williamson and Tom King with art by Jason Fabok,
• Secret Empire #1, written by Nick Spencer with art by Steve McNiven, and
• Secret Empire; Free Comic Book Day edition, written by Nick Spencer with art by Andrea Sorrentino!

(*In the interests of ending on a positive note, we give a quick shout-out to Project Superheroes: Hero Killers #1, written by Ryan Brown with art by Pete Woods)

You wanted the disclaimers, you got the disclaimers!

• This show contains spoilers. If you don’t want to know how Captain America and Hydra consolidate their power, well, it really doesn’t matter, since we have no idea, either. But either way: consider this a master spoiler warning.
• This show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. We have jokes about The Flash being unable to find The Button, and those jokes are about exactly what you think they’re about. So wear headphones.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:50:07 — 88.5MB)

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Thanks for listening, suckers!

Episode 148: Home Movies in the Man Cave, or: Neglecting the Button

As we ease into convention season, the comics news starts to slow down so publishers have something to discuss in panels. You know, other than garbage news items about the dangers of trying to be funny in 140 characters or less.

So we briefly discuss the next step in the million-mile march toward San Diego Comic-Con: hotel sales, which happened last Wednesday. We also talk about a superhero movie that we missed in 2016: X-Men: Apocalypse, which didn’t really interest us at the time – seeing Oscar Issac painted blue is only a gimme draw if you’re in his fraternity – but which really impressed us now that it’s on cable.

We also talk about some of this week’s books:

• The Flash #21, written by Joshua Williamson with art by Howard Porter,
• Action Comics #978, written by Dan Jurgens with art by Carlo Barberi,
• Ben Reilly: The Scarlet Spider #1, written by Peter David with art by Mark Bagley, and:
• Detective Comics #955, written by James Tynion IV with art by Marcio Takara!

What’s that? You want disclaimers?

• This show contains spoilers. While we try to give warnings ahead of time, if you don’t want to find out why Angel is a terrible character in X-Men: Apocalypse, I don’t know why you’re listening, since you’ve clearly never read a comic book before.
• This show contains adult, profane language, and is therefore not safe for work. During this episode, Amanda says, “Touch the fishy.” Your boss won’t want to know why. So get some headphones.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:14:41 — 61.1MB)

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Thanks for listening, suckers!

Episode 117: You Grok What I’m Saying, Fat Bieber?

This 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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:19:31 — 138.4MB)

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Thanks for listening, suckers!

Raider of the Last Arc: Voodoo Who?

EDITORS’ NOTE: Trebuchet has been a regular commenter here (“Regular” being a relative term) since we started in September, sticking with us as we spun off into writing about odd tangents with which he was unfamiliar: namely, comic books. However, Trebuchet has been sending us interesting private emails asking about what books we recommended and then commenting on them after he read them. He had the idea of picking up longer recent story arcs and reviewing the entire thing in one shot, which sounded cool. This is his first submission, and well: damn. 

So Crisis On Infinite Midlives is proud to introduce our latest contributor: Trebuchet! Please tell him it doesn’t suck so he’ll write some more!

Thanks Rob, now get off my lawn.

I was a casual comics collector back in the late 80s and early 90s, until other interests gradually overshadowed my weekly pilgrimages to the local comics shop. Since then, I’ve picked up a few things here and there at Rob’s suggestion, but generally speaking, I’ve been out of the game for almost 20 years.  I missed the advent of “event” stories, massive crossovers and “point one releases”.  I’ve missed the tragic deaths and resurrections of countless heroes and the births of others, so at the moment, I have no idea what the hell is going on in any of the superhero universes.

The New 52 seemed like a great opportunity to jump back on the train and start fresh. So shortly after the launch, I was perusing the shelves of my local comic store, where they have no idea who the hell I am and keep telling me that the Bingo hall is across the street, and anyhoo, the cover of Voodoo issue 4 jumped off the shelf at me, so I decided to take a chance on something I didn’t recognize.

It’s important to mention this because, I had absolutely no idea that Voodoo was an existing property, or that it was recently folded into DC from an Image / Wildstorm universe.  Hell, McFarlane and Liefeld were still working for scale when I got out of the game.  So yeah, I never heard of “Wild C.A.T.S.” (Lawn; off now!)

Hey, Kids! Comics! And Diabetes!

When I was a kid, my Mom would sometimes buy me a comic book out of the grocery store spinner rack to shut me up about not buying me the sugary cereals I was always screaming about (Although to be fair, one time she did buy me a box of Lucky Charms to get a hold of the Six Million Dollar Man sticker prize I spent days obsessing over after I saw the TV commercials. Then she picked out all the marshmallows while I cried. I was 32. But I digress).

But that was 1978. It’s 2011 now, and the spinner rack disappeared sometime around, well, 1978. So if you want your kid to shut the fuck up about buying them Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs with a comic book, well, you’ll have to buy them Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs.

The New York Times is reporting that DC Comics and General Mills are gonna be announcing, sometime during this weekend’s New York Comic Con, a deal to distribute four specially-printed issues of Justice League to be dumped into nutritious fare such as Trix, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and my old nemesis: Lucky Charms.