Posts Tagged Superman

34 results.
Mar25

Doog Yrev Ton: Action Comics #18 Review

by Rob on March 25, 2013 at 9:30 pm
Posted In: Comic Book Reviews

action_comics_18_cover_2013Grant Morrison is done with Action Comics now. And I am okay with that.

I am okay with that because, with the benefit of  hindsight over the entire run, his story was meant for Superman fans. By which I mean, real, hardcore, longtime Superman fans. The kind of Superman fan who thinks Superman will never look right again now that Curt Swan is dead. The kind of Superman fan who knows, without consulting Wikipedia, that Silver Kryptonite makes Superman PCP-level paranoid, while Red Kryptonite makes him grow four dicks in each armpit. The kind of Superman fan who calls his penis “Beppo.”

Morrison’s run started with Superman fighting corrupt businessmen, as he did in the early issues of the original Action Comics, and ended with a battle with Mr. Mxyzpltk, effectively “modernizing” Superman for the New 52 by bringing him from 1938 all the way to 1965, via a mescaline bender. Sure, there was the odd stop to examine what Superman might mean to the modern world, but all in all, this series started out, and ended, as a celebration of the earlier, more out-there elements of the Superman mythos.

So, as I’ve said in other reviews of Morrison’s Action Comics issues, how you feel about Action Comics #18 will largely depend on how nostalgic you are for Fifth Dimensional imps, multi-colored Kryptonite, super-powered animals, the Legion of Super Heroes, and yet another bold statement about how important Superman is to the DC Universe and to America. You know, bold statements like Morrison made in All-Star Superman and DC One Million.

Personally? I can take them or leave them.

↓ Read the rest of this entry…

Share
└ Tags: , , , ,
 Comment 
Feb13

Ender’s (definitely not) Gay-m – Updated!

by Lance Manion on February 13, 2013 at 12:34 pm
Posted In: Comic Book News

Back!  After only a year absence!  Thank heaven for prison overcrowding, that’s all I’m saying.  Also, Skullfish!  Call me!  What we had was magical! – Lance

UPDATE: DC responds – “As content creators we steadfastly support freedom of expression, however the personal views of individuals associated with DC Comics are just that — personal views — and not those of the company itself.”  Translation – “Card already cashed the check, so we’re damn well going to use the stuff he wrote.”

—————————–

Anyway, in their ongoing effort to make comics inclusive, DC has hired noted gay rights enthusiast Orson Scott Card to write Adventures of Superman.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’ve read a lot of Card’s work.  Ender’s Game is a sci-fi staple and deserving of a place in any classics bookshelf.  It was real eye-opening when I learned that Card is just a bit homophobic.  And by a bit, I mean extremely.  And by extremely, I mean he looks at Westboro Baptist and sneers, “Amateurs…”

Card’s a talented writer, and I don’t blame DC for trying to bring in a name.  Plenty of other books have boosted sales by hiring big name as writers.  The results are… inconsistent (I’m looking at you Bourdain), but hey, it puts eyes on pages.  And if Card is writing fiction, his personal beliefs don’t necessarily have to be relevant.

That said, Superman represents what’s best in all of us.  He fought the Klan in the 1940′s. He protects the weak from the strong.  I like to think that he wouldn’t tell Batwoman or Alan Scott to get lost because they’re sinners.

Maybe the Card is capable of writing a brilliant Superman story that lets me forget what a tool he is.  I’m not real optimistic though.  Still it will be refreshing for Superman to finally tell Jimmy Olsen to sack the hell up.

The Card-authored Adventures of Superman #1 drops online on April 29 and in print on May 29.

Share
└ Tags: ,
1 Comment
Jan31

Unlike The Home Office, Superman Is Unbound

by Rob on January 31, 2013 at 7:50 pm
Posted In: Movie News

superman_unboundWell, the good news is that professional people with some weird forms of PKE Meters have cleared the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office of any signs of water damage and / or Black Mold. The bad news is that the entire ordeal took a lot more time than I anticipated, and beyond that, now my dreams of chucking the workaday world of comics blogging in favor of a home-grown psilocybin farming business (but I still own the name Boston Baseboard Shrooms! And all it’s subsidiary rights!) have officially gone tits up.

And the worse news is that, even as the Home Office has been cleared for human habitation… yeah, heavy windstorms in Boston have knocked out our Internet. Meaning that we can only do a quick update today, using my aged cell phone as a half-assed Wi-Fi hotspot, in clear violation of my terms of service, and way outside the scope of what the good folks at Westinghouse Electrical Notions and Radio Communication Geegaws intended.

But we do have a bit of news: Warner Bros. has released a teaser trailer for their latest upcoming animated, direct-to-video feature. It’s gonna be Superman: Unbound, and based on a Geoff Johns written and Gary Franks drawn series in Action Comics back in 2008. Now, I’m not the biggest Superman fan in the world, but I have never seen a bad DC animated feature, and this one looks to be just as solid.

The feature’s gonna star the voice talents of Matt Bomer (from White Collar) as Superman and Molly Quinn as Supergirl, And you can check out the trailer after the jump… in theory, assuming my shaky, improvised Internet access holds (and if it doesn’t we’ll fix it when we have more signal).

↓ Read the rest of this entry…

Share
└ Tags: ,
 Comment 
Jan17

Able To Cripple Grown Men With A Single Step: Man of Steel Trailer Recreated With Legos

by Rob on January 17, 2013 at 8:22 pm
Posted In: Geek Culture

lego_batman_and_supermanI’m not gonna lie to you: I’ve been on a diet for about a week, which means I am sitting at this keyboard with a low blood sugar headache and not a drop of booze here in the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office.

This means that I don’t have a lot of energy to think too critically of any given comic book beyond, “Lookit the pretty colors. Ooh! That nice horsey got punched in the face!” And while I am counting on the precedent that a good night’s sleep, or at least a good night of thrashing uncontrollably while quietly whimpering for even a Goddamned shot of NyQuil, will set me right again by the first thing in the morning, just in time to talk comics like an adult again.

But in the meantime, I need childish things, and light entertainment. And in that spirit, a nice man named Antonio Toscano has taken the trailer for Man of Steel and recreated it. With Legos. And considering the time and effort it must have taken, he is clearly a creative and dedicated man… or else he’s a kindred spirit trying like hell to distract himself from the fact that there’s no booze in his fucking house.

Regardless, it’s pretty cool, and you can check it out after the jump.

↓ Read the rest of this entry…

Share
└ Tags: ,
 Comment 
Jan10

Truth, Justice And The American Way: Warner Bros. Finally Wins Rights To Superman

by Rob on January 10, 2013 at 8:36 pm
Posted In: Comic Book News

superman_comics_logoUpdate, 1/11/2013, 10:10 a.m.: Jeff Trexler at Comics Beat has a pretty detailed rundown of the decision and its overall meaning.

It was probably a foregone conclusion, given years of contracts and lawsuits and back-of-the-check work for hire agreements and thousand upon thousands of court hours – sweet, sweet lawyer-billable hours – but it appears that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has all but given the rights to Superman to Warner Bros.

In a decision handed down earlier today, the court asserted that an October lower court decision that denied Warner Bros.’s claim that a letter, sent to Warner in 2001 by one of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel’s heirs, constituted the acceptance of a settlement offer over the whole rights mess and therefore meant that the question of who owned what and when and why and under what threats of which ruinous lawsuit or where the promise of torture was made and how. So with that issue resolved, it means that, unless someone wants to take this to the Supreme Court – assuming the Supreme Court wants to spend time talking about comic books – Warner Bros. owns the rights to use Superman pretty much lock stock and barrel.

↓ Read the rest of this entry…

Share
└ Tags: , , ,
 Comment 
Jan05

Daily Bummer: Steve Gerber on Simon And Shuster, And How To Help Peter David

by Rob on January 5, 2013 at 12:11 pm
Posted In: Comic Book News

superman_comics_logoIt will be a quiet day here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives, as most of our contributors will be meeting us shortly to participate in a team building exercise. This will involve being at the bar next to our local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to stop building my own teams by cutting and pasting panels from different new releases, meaning that, if all goes well, our local SWAT Team will have the chance to learn to work together as a closer unit.

So just a couple of quick things today: first off, 20th Century Danny Boy has just republished an article, initially written for Rolling Stone by Howard The Duck creator Steve Gerber back in the mid-70s, about the fall into destitution of Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster prior to Warner Bros. making the deal to pay them an annual pension for life… not for any legal reasons, but to try and win a PR victory despite making millions off a character that Siegel and Shuster created back in the 30s and sold for $130.

Rolling Stone never published the article, but Gerber updated it in the mid-80s and published it in Wap, a fanzine run at the time by Gerber, Frank Miller and Steven Grant, and this is the first time it’s seen the light of day since then. It’s a pretty harrowing story about how the big comic publishers routinely fucked and burned most of the creators who invented the characters we still read and love to this day, and how many of them died penniless, despite publishers making millions off of their creations (and don’t think it doesn’t still happen on some level; ask Ed Brubaker how much input he had over the movie script for The Winter Soldier). It’s one hell of an article, somewhat disturbing, and yet another reason why I’m perfectly happy to be sitting on the sidelines writing about comics rather than actually writing them. Well, that and my utter lack of talent in writing plot, story or characterization.

And in the spirit of helping out comic creators going through a bad patch: we reported earlier this week that X-Factor, Captain Marvel, Incredible Hulk and Star Trek writer Peter David had suffered a stroke while on vacation in Florida. David’s wife Kathleen has been posting daily updates on his condition on David’s Web site, and yesterday she posted a way for fans to help him out with, despite his having health insurance, what will probably be some not insubstantial co-payments:

↓ Read the rest of this entry…

Share
└ Tags: , , , , ,
 Comment 
Jan01

Hangover: Rob’s Biggest Comic Disappointments of 2012

by Rob on January 1, 2013 at 3:33 pm
Posted In: Comic Book Reviews, Editorial

nicolas_cage_supermanIt is New Year’s Day, and thanks to about fifteen glasses alternating between Milwaukee’s and Lynchburg, Tennessee’s finest products last night, it feels like my brain has been taken over and occupied by Doctor Octopus. Or at least part of Doctor Octopus. Part of Doctor Octopus after a meal of bad sushi and piss-warm Chango. And to add insult to injury, I flipped on the TV this morning to be subjected to Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, which, as comic book movies go, certainly is one (man, Stringer Bell and Sailor Ripley sure have let themselves go).

Chuck on top of that steaming mess that there are no new comics until tomorrow, and nothing whatsoever apparently going on in the world of comics, and what we have is a new year that, so far, is… disappointing. And with that feeling in mind, and 2012 at our backs, it seems like as good an opportunity as any to revisit the biggest disappointments in comics and geek culture that occurred in 2012.

And given that the memory is so fresh, we might as well start with (although this list is in no particular order):

Share
└ Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
 Comment 
Dec29

You Damn Fool! You’re More Useless Than Aquaman: Justice League #15 Review

by Rob on December 29, 2012 at 4:14 pm
Posted In: Comic Book Reviews

justice_league_15_cover_2012Since last year’s New 52 relaunch, Geoff Johns has made it his personal mission to rehabilitate Aquaman’s reputation. Which is a somewhat Quixotic task, since Aquaman never had much of a reputation to begin with. I remember years ago, when superhero Underoos were finally released for sale, my mom brought me to the store late enough that all that were left were Aquaman Underoos… and I told her that I would rather parade around the schoolyard in tightie-whities than suffer the indignity of having to pretend to be Aquaman. I was 28. But that’s not the point.

But hey, everyone has an unlikely dream that they harbor deep in their hearts, and I don’t begrudge Johns his, even though I don’t think he’s quite delivered on it thus far. Hey, I have the secret fantasy that someday I, a bloated and drunken 41-year-old, can smack the home run that wins the Boston Red Sox their third World Series victory since 1918 despite never having played even Little League baseball, so I’m not gonna rank Johns out too much for his dream to make Aquaman cool, despite it arguably having a lower chance at success than mine.

After fifteen months of chasing the dragon, Johns has begin phase two of his unlikely Aquaman resuscitation (actually, given Aquaman’s inability to carry his own book for longer than seven years despite more than 70 years of history, perhaps “presuscitation” is a better word) by making Aquaman the focus of a big Justice League event, Throne of Atlantis. So finally, Johns has his main chance to give Aquaman some relevance, not only in his own title but in the DC Universe proper, by making the poor, fishfucking sonofabitch the focus of a story… but for it to work, the story better be a good one.

↓ Read the rest of this entry…

Share
└ Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
 Comment 
Dec27

Next Is Lonely Street, Because I Am A Drunken Goon: Worcester, MA To Rename Street To Lois Lane

by Rob on December 27, 2012 at 6:07 pm
Posted In: Geek Culture

Proving once again that, around the Christmas / New Year’s holidays, every day is a slow comics news day, it has come to our attention that our hometown of Boston’s sister city, Worcester – New England’s undisputed capital of affordable heroin since 1974! – is undergoing a little urban renewal. Specifically, surrounding the name of one of the downtown streets. A street near the That’s Enterntainment comic store on Park Avenue. A small, private street currently known as Marmon Place. Next to a comic book store.

Yeah, you probably guessed it: Worcester is renaming Marmon Place to Lois Lane.

↓ Read the rest of this entry…

Share
└ Tags:
 Comment 
Dec11

…Moviegoer of Kleenex: New Man of Steel Teaser Trailer Released

by Rob on December 11, 2012 at 9:28 pm
Posted In: Movie News

As I’ve said before, since it’s the end of the year, the movie studios are starting to get we genre geeks hyped up about the 2013 summer blockbuster movie season. They’ve given us a wealth of teaser trailers and posters, which has led to the staff of Crisis On Infinite Midlives to argue, in the past week, as to which summer movie we’re looking more forward to: Iron Man 3, directed by the guy who wrote Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, and The Last Boy Scout, or Star Trek Into Darkness, directed by the guy who directed Star Trek and Super 8, and also produced Lost and Alias.

Oh yeah, and then there’s Man of Steel, directed by Zack Snyder. The guy who directed the completely unnecessary Dawn of The Dead remake, the can’t-even-sit-through-while-drunk-and-the-remote’s-broken Sucker Punch, and the resoundingly “no homo” 300. Sure, Man of Steel will be opening too, but I can’t imagine there’s gonna be anything that could vault it to the top of the “must see” list, even if we’re totally willing to forget Superman Returns, a movie that even a half-quart of Jack Daniels couldn’t make entertaining.

What’s that? There’s a new teaser trailer for Man of Steel that’s been released? *Sigh*

Fine. Let’s give it a look.

↓ Read the rest of this entry…

Share
└ Tags: , , ,
 Comment 

Switch to our mobile site