That Fine Line Between “Partner” And “Accomplice” – Review Of The Punisher #8

Happy Wednesday! Despite being the first of February, it hit 60 degrees Fahrenheit, with sunny skies and a warm breeze. I can’t possibly be expected to work on a day like today. So, I made it to our local comic book store before my typical 5pm drunk set in – and you, fine readers, you reap all the benefits!

While we are dealing with unnaturally spring like weather here, Frank Castle is knee deep in The Dead Winter. As the police are beginning to tighten their own investigation of Frank’s connection to The Exchange murders, he and Rachel Cole-Alves begin a tentative, if brief, partnership as they search the remains of The Starbucks Staff Retreat The Exchange’s ski chalet for further information they can use to put more nails in the company’s shiny corporate coffin. Meanwhile, Managers-Of-Year, Stephanie Gerard and Christian Poulsen break into a S.H.I.E.L.D. safehouse – because they’ve had so many good ideas that have helped The Exchange out, already.

Greg Rucka continues to slowly unwind this tale, as he has over the past seven issues. Seven months in and Glee The Exchange is still breathing despite Frank’s efforts. So, should you continue to invest your time in this series?

Answers and spoilers after the jump.

Joss Whedon And Sam Jackson Talk Avengers On Twitter, Plus Teaser Of New Avengers Super Bowl Commercial

Avengers, assemble: Things that make you go "BOOM"!

Today was a big day on Twitter; Joss Whedon, Samuel L. Jackson, Gregg Clark, and Tom Hiddleston participated in a live chat to promote The Avengers movie. If you’re interested in catching up with the chat, in which Joss Whedon tells us that not only will there be Easter eggs in the movie, but that they will be “actual dyed eggs” (I’m not kidding), head on over to @Avengers on Twitter or go Marvel’s Avengers Assemble. A transcript of selected highlights from the chat can also be found at Slash Film. For example:

Can you enjoy Avengers without seeing all the other films?
Joss Whedon: “You don’t need to see any Marvel movies to enjoy Avengers! But you need to see Steel Magnolias, like, six times.”

Oh, I don’t know Joss. I can only take watching Julia Roberts die of kidney failure so many times before my face hurts too much from laughing. That’s just me though.

The chat ended with a link to a 10 second teaser trailer from the new 30 second commercial that will be aired this Sunday, February 5, during the NFL Super Bowl.

Check out the teaser, with new, previously unseen Avengers footage, after the jump!

Kimota! (Don’t Sue Me!): Gaiman / McFarlane Lawsuit Reportedly Settled

It is (almost) official: the long-running lawsuit between Neil Gaiman and Todd McFarlane over the rights to Spawn characters Angela, Medieval Spawn, and Cogliostro that Gaiman wrote into Spawn back in the early 90s is over. I don’t know what’s harder to believe: that this mess has been going on for just about ten years… or that there was once a time when someone thought that Spawn characters had value.

The long, twisted and complete tale is available elsewhere at more reputable Web sites, but in a very incomplete, semi-biased and opinion-laden nutshell written mostly from booze-addled memory: in the early 90s, McFarlane was probably the hottest artist in comics, so he decided that he would take a shot at doing the stories as well. But there was a problem: at the time, he shouldn’t have been allowed to write anything longer than his own name. Seriously: have you read Spider-Man #1? Constant drum sound effects of DOOM, DOOM, DOOM; it reads like it’s being told from the point of view of a twitching boner.

Taking The Bullet: Secret Avengers #21.1 Review

In the world of stand-up comedy, one of the biggest nightmares you can have as a comic is for a legend of the medium to show up unannounced to do a guest spot. Entertaining people on your own merits is hard enough without suddenly discovering that one of the best in the business has shown up… and now you have to follow them. It leads some acts to tweak around their own styles to better match the person they have to go up after. It can fuck your own rythyms and take you off your game.

In Secret Avengers #21.1, writer Rick Remender is taking over from Warren Ellis’s title-redefining four-issue run. And while it’s too early to really tell, it feels like Remender might have fallen into that old comedy trap.

Please don’t misunderstand me; this is not a bad book. And it doesn’t feel like any kind of slavish imitation, just that it was influenced and steered by the fact that Remender is being forced to follow a modern legend. When you see lines like, “When you see your yankee doodle deity in his chicken-fried heaven — tell him you died molesting the world!” come out of the mouths of characters not written by Ellis, I can’t help but picture some pimply-faced yeoman comic taking the mike and saying, “Jeff Foxworthy, everyone! Hey, you know when you might be a redneck?”

Knife To The Eye! Wait, Which Book Now?

If you’ve been following Marvel’s Battle Scars miniseries that launched from the still-twitching carcass of the Fear Itself event, you know that the prevailing mystery of the story is: who is protagonist Marcus Johnson, and who is his father? Now, a story about a young African-American man who doesn’t know who his father is might sound like one of those “conservative comics” that blew up the comics Internet a couple weeks ago (At least he’s not looking for food stamps, amirite, Newt?), but it’s actually been an intersting little tale.

Like I said in my review last week, the evidence presented is that Johnson comes from a family history of American heroes, that dad has a mortal enemy looking to get at him through Marcus, and his father reportedly might not be able to die. And the smart money has been on Nick Fury being being Johnson’s father. The prevailing theory is that Marvel, what with at the Avengers movie coming out in just a few months with Samuel L. Jackson in the Fury role, was looking to put a more familiar on the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the comics. I, however, I predicted Bucky Barnes… mostly because I drink and I am a contrary dick. One more beer before I wrote my review and I might have gone for Dick Clark.

Well, things are starting to look like I’m on the losing side of the argument, because Bleeding Cool recently got their hands on the full-sized cover to the issue 6 of Battle Scars…

Come On, Vern. The Kids Haven’t Changed; You Have! – Review Of Generation Hope #15

Let me preface this entire review by saying: I know that it’s unconscionably wrong to hit a child. No matter how snot-nosed and entitled they may act, children are defenseless and we should not only protect them from harm, but behave as temperate role models so that they might understand how to conduct themselves in dealings with others as they make their way into the world. That being said, there is a moment in this issue where Emma Frost lays into Hope Summers with a queen bi-atch of a backhand (for being snot-nosed, entitled and mouthy – hat trick!) that will make any worn down adult with a recent weekend at the mall under hir or her belt and a fair sense of decency stand up offer writer James Asmus a hearty and heartfelt, “Well done, sir.”

Also, Hope Summers, the mutant messiah who will almost certainly become the embodiment of Earth’s next brush with the Phoenix Force, is far from defenseless. So, slap away, Emma – while you still can, anyway! Pretty soon she’s going to be able to apply her lipstick hands-free using her cleavage and level planets with a thought. God help you when she snarkily asks you if you get your wardrobe by raiding Barry Manilow’s RuPaul’s closet, then.

Generation Hope follows Hope and her team of young mutant super heroes, assembled from the first new mutants to arise on Earth since the events of M-Day decimated the Earth’s mutant population to a total of 198 remaining mutants. In their last outing, Hope and her gang of brains, athletes and basket cases round out their crew with a criminal – one Sebastian Shaw. Or is it?

Cha-cha-cha-changes…and spoilers…after the jump.

Action Figure: Moon Knight #9 Review

Not for nothin’ my man, but why do you want a Captain America shield?

Because it’s cool.

What are you, six years old?

That exchange between Moon Knight and his weapons procurer, Buck, describes Moon Knight #9 in a nutshell. It’s like little pre-adolescent Brian Michael Bendis trumpeted, “Y’know what would be fuckin’ cool? If Batman had Wolverine’s claws! And, and Spider-Man’s web shooters! And fuckin’ Captain America’s shield! Snikt! Thwip! Whooooosh!” Just before lil’ Brian’s mom Adderalled him into dullness. Blessed, quiet dullness.

The hell of it is, he’s right. Is is kinda fucking cool.

Y’know, provided you can forget the reasonably tight little story of a lone superhero on the edge of sanity that came before this issue and put yourself in the mindset of when you were seven, and you stuck your Luke Skywalker action figure in your G.I. Joe Skystriker jet and sent it to attack your little brother’s Castle Grayskull… or if you’re me, like you did when you were on Tuesday.

That’s Not True… That’s Impossible: Battle Scars #3 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This final review of last week before the comic stores open contains… I’m not sure “spoilers” is the correct term… howsabout “reckless speculation?” Nah, we’ll stick with spoilers. We’re fucking OG that way.

So being an American hero runs in Battle Scars protagonist Marcus Johnson’s family, and people think his father can’t die. That conventional wisdom is that those statements mean the smart money’s on his dad being Nick Fury… but since plot credit to this book includes Matt Fraction, it really could be anyone. Because no one can die in a Marvel comic by Matt Fraction.

Battle Scars has been the most – if not the only – interesting spinoff from the Fear Itself event, the story of an Army Ranger whose mother was killed during that event, and who returns home for the funeral to find he’s extremely popular with S.H.I.E.L.D., Captain America, and Taskmaster. In this third issue of the six-issue miniseries, Johnson discovers that he is also popular with everyone in the Marvel Universe with a gun and a Swiss bank account. This month, that includes Deadpool, and thank God, because he almost never appears in comic books these days.

Don’t Need No Civil War: Avengers Vs. X-Men #1 Cover

According to various Twitter feeds, the winter Marvel Editorial Retreat is starting today in New York. So, possibly to fend off questions from the outside world like, “So if Cable’s a time traveler with less than 24 hours to live due to a crippling and debilitating illness, and he wants to take out The Avengers, why is setting up a boat with a bunch a deathtraps a better plan than whacking Captain America’s mom in 1920? It probably wouldn’t be hard; Steve Rogers didn’t need the Super Soldier serum because he came from hearty stock,” and, “What Marvel character will Matt Fraction be killing next? And is Matt aware of what ‘dead’ actually means?” they’ve released Jim Cheung’s cover to the upcoming first issue of Avengers Vs. X-Men for us to drool over.

Some Walk By Night, Some Fly By Day: X-Factor #230 Review

A beleaguered detective agency. A hot blonde who doesn’t fit in. An ill-advised love story. A bizarre cast of supporting characters. Celebrity cameos. Breaking the fourth wall. Snappy patter by the bucketload. I finally figured out why I like X-Factor so damn much: it’s Moonlighting. Moonlighting with superpowers. And a more reliable production schedule.

X-Factor #230 is the second part of a decompressed storyline and there’s next to no action in it… but I wholeheartedly recommend it anyway, even for new readers. Because it is just so much damn fun to read, and that’s saying something for an issue where the male lead is dead, the female lead is depressed into inaction, and the only fights-and-tights action happens in the in-house ads for Avengers Vs. X-Men.

To bring you up to speed (Although Amanda is perfectly capable of doing so… go ahead; I’ll wait), Madrox The Multiple Man is dead… although he appears to be alive and jumping through multiple alternative dimensions. But his team at X-Factor Investigations isn’t aware of that, mostly because the evidence all points to his being dead… that evidence being that they’ve got his body in a Frigidaire in the conference room. It’s a tragedy… because that means the office beer must be sitting on a desk getting warm somewhere.