Some Will Win, Some Will Lose: Superman Ownership Ruling Opens Door To Justice League Movie

The other day we linked to the at-the-time breaking story that a Federal Judge in California had ruled that, in a nutshell, DC Comics does not owe any ownership of the character Superman to the estate of the character’s co-creator Joe Shuster, who before the decision looked to be able to claim half the character’s copyright in October, 2013, giving DC and parent company Warner Bros. the right to exploit the character in any way they see fit (cue synth-heavy porno music).

The short version of the story is that, between DC’s1975 lump-sum and pension payments to Shuster and co-creator Jerry Siegel, combined with a separate 1992 settlement DC made with Shuster’s sister for another lump sum and a $25,000 annual pension (EDITOR’S NOTE: between issues, trades and convention travel, I about that much per year on my comic book habit), the judge ruled that the creators’ estates have gotten all that they are owed from DC Comics. Proving once again that, the next time you have what you think is a million-dollar idea, you should find a lawyer who thinks you should hold out for something closer to that million before you sign anything… and if you’ve already signed, you should listen very carefully to the other guys’ lawyer to hear if they say anything along the lines of “fuck off money.”

Shuster’s estate will probably appeal – it’s not like there’s a lucrative future in throwing up their hands and going after that sweet, sweet Funnyman cash – but this ruling has a couple of immediate circumstances, even beyond the effect of making Diane Nelson cackle with relief…

The first being that it greases the skids for Warner Bros. to start serious work on a Justice League movie. Which is now expected in the summer of 2015.

Sore Tooth: Superman #0 Review

You ever had a low-grade toothache? You know, the kind where you feel a little zip when you suck cold air past it? The kind of thing where you find yourself constantly inhaling sharply, trying to see if maybe its gone away, or if maybe it’s getting worse? And you find yourself worrying that maybe it actually is getting worse, and you just wish the damn thing would go away so you could concentrate on something else?

Over the course of the past year, Scott Lobdell has become my toothache.

Superman #0 is a pretty bad comic book. It wallows in exposition, alien cliches, and stilted dialogue. It tries to turn Superman’s parents into some kind of asskicking science heroes for some reason, and it implies that Oracle is now some kind of all-knowing, all-seeing space jerk, which should win back all the female readers Lobdell lost with Red Hood and The Outlaws. And it does all this with art that, while pretty enough in a stylized way, serves in places as examples of some of the worst visual storytelling that I have seen in a comic book in 36 years.

Superman #0 made my hangover worse this morning. After reading it I needed to watch my Blu-Ray of The Avengers again too recover any hope for the superhero genre. It made my stool loose and burny. If it had come out two and a half months ago, it would have caused riots in downtown San Diego.

It’s really not very good, you guys.

Rebound: Justice League #12 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’ve had the blues, the reds and the pinks; one thing’s for sure: love spoils.

Well, that’s the end of the first year of the first post-reboot Justice League since Crisis On Infinite Earths back in 1986. That Justice League, at the end of its first year, had established itself as a solid action book with an interesting character-based humor element… and was already on its way to becoming far more focused on the comedy than it was on the action. It short, its best days were already gone by that first anniversary, having given or on its way to giving Guy Gardner a 70s sitcom level personality change, The Martian Manhunter an Oreo fetish, and Booster and Beetle a harebrained get-rich-quick scheme of the month.

So how does Justice League #12 compete? Well, by going in the opposite direction, coming out of an only okay character-based story while promising, in a Geoff Johns patented epilogue, action-packed tales including an attack by Atlantis, battles between Superman and Batman and Shazam, and a possible conflict between The Justice League and the recently-announced Johns and David Finch produced Justice League of America.

Oh, and it seems that we will spend some time witnessing Superman boning Wonder Woman. But you already knew that, and we’ll get back to that in a minute.

You Bust It Out. You Light A Match: Superman And Wonder Woman On Match.com

You might have heard that, starting in Justice League #12, writer Geoff Johns and artist Jim Lee will be starting a storyline where Superman and Wonder Woman take their relationship, shall we say, to the next level. They go from friends, to friends with benefits, provided my “benefits” you mean “The Kryptonian Armpit Gank.”

We didn’t jump on this story here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives because, after nearly 40 years of reading comics, this isn’t our first rodeo – we’ve seen these two crazy kids bump overidealized comic book uglies in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Strikes Again, and saw it intimated in Mark Waid and Alex Ross’s Kingdom Come, plus if you can spell the words “comic” and “slash” and find the enter key on your laptop, you can get all the super sucky-fucky you can shake your stick at. Besides, these things come and go in the comics – remember when Batman almost chucked the Bat Meat to Zatanna? These things never last, and we figured we’d address it in our review of the issue.

That is, until DC decided to hype the story by setting up profiles for Superman and Wonder Woman on Match.com.

Man Of Filthy, Dirty, Bootlegged Steel

We here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office got excited by the sanitized and truncated Man Of Steel trailer from the The Dark Knight Rises screening trailer, but it really felt like a trailer built on practical footage, with the single special effects shot shoehorned in to prove it was an actual movie.

We thought that because we had too much to do, and too much self-respect, to spend nineteen hours in the Hall H lane to see whatever they were calling the “extended trailer” at SDCC. We figured that all there was to see would be in the Dark Knight theatrical trailer.

We were wrong.

After the jump, is a hand-filmed and certain-to-be-deleted video from the SDCC Hall H Man Of Steel panel, showing far more (badly focused) Superman footage than the actual theatrical trailer. So, until someone gets wise and yanks the footage: enjoy the Man Of Steel SDCC 2012 trailer, in rotten, unfocused cell phone video!

Something To Look Forward To: Man Of Steel Trailer Released Online

Despite recent events that may have put some people off, we were able to catch a matinee of The Dark Knight Rises yesterday… and we will probably not comment extensively on those events, because they have nothing whatsoever to do with comic books or geek culture other than the setting. Sure, the dipshit who did the shootings told cops that he was The Joker, but that’s got nothing to do with the comics or the movies. Son of Sam said his neighbor’s fucking pit bull told him to whack out strangers, and I doubt you saw Dog Fancy magazine wringing their hands over what it meant for public perception of dog owners.

Everyone say it with me: James Holmes is a spastic and a monster, but his is a crime story, and not a comics story. Settled? Good.

Because I don’t want to talk about that cocknozzle, and due to a busy day, I don’t have time to talk about The Dark Knight Rises in any detail today. But one interesting new thing that we took from the event was the first trailer for Zack Snyder’s reboot of Superman, Man of Steel. Which a week ago, if you wanted to see it, was worth hours of your time in line for Hall H at SDCC 2012, but which now is available online. Meaning it is available here, right after the jump.

Previews Are The Best Part: SDCC 2012 Preview Night

So Preview Night is past us now, and while I know it’s not even theoretically possible that it was busier than last year – after all, Preview Night passes have been selling out since about 2009 – it sure feels like it was. A few years ago it was possible on preview night for someone to, say, get ripped to the tits on Stone Arrogant Bastard IPA for four hours before he doors opened and then cruise around the floor, staging stupid and adolescent photographs with the Jabba The Hutt prop at the Hasbro booth. If you tried that now, you would inevitably stumble into someone waiting in a truly horrific line for an exclusive S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier playset, be unable to convince said line-waiter that you weren’t claim jumping, and wind up instigating a pathetic slapfight.

There is very little convention programming that occurs on Preview Night, so the action is centered on the main convention floor. The night’s original and intended purpose is to allow people who are attending the con to obtain exclusives, or who are looking for some particular, special item, piece of art or back issue, to have access to the vendors early and get the purchase out of the way so they can enjoy the rest of the convention. As such, any actual comic news is few and far between on Preview Night… but there is certainly some, and if there isn’t? There is spectacle.

Guess The Change In My Pocket Wasn’t Enough: Action Comics #9 Review

Editor’s Note: This is Lex Luthor. Only one thing alive with less than four legs can hear this spoiler, Superman, and it’s you.

Grant Morrison doesn’t do anything by half measures, but he outdoes even himself in Action Comics #9. In 20 short pages, he manages to level searing indictments against comic fans, comic publishers, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, possibly Zack Snyder, and definitely almost anyone who’s written Superman between 1986 and 2011.

At best, this book might – just might – be Morrison’s comment on the upcoming Before Watchmen series. However, at worst it is, for all intents and purposes, a giant and ringing “fuck you” to just about any human being anywhere who might touch it, with the possible exception of Morrison himself. But that’s okay, because that gives me something to do.

Look! Up In The Sky! Run For Your Life!: Superman #7 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: It is new comics day, which means that – wait! Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! I normally get this excited, scream and bother passers-by when I see a bird! Oh, no; it’s one last comic review before the comic stores open, forget it.

Superman #7 is the first issue with the new creative team of co-writers Keith Giffen and Dan Jurgens and art by Jesus Merino and, well, Dan Jurgens. These are a couple of old-school comics writers working on a brand new Superman, which arguably is what this book has been needing, and the classic flavor they bring to certain sequences of this book makes it somewhat endearing, but I’m guessing how you feel about it will likely depend on how much you’re digging  the new, cocky, armored Superman, and how you feel about a villain with a classic feel… that feel being that of a Republic Serial villain chewing scenery like Robin Williams teething in the midst of a heroic Ritalin bender.

This book starts off with an definitive statement of “Bang!” by the new team, dropping us in the middle of a battle between Superman and some robot right on the streets of Metropolis. It’s an action-packed sequence with a visually satisfying amount of collateral property damage, while Superman internally soliloquizes about how the battle seems like merely an attempt to call him out… which would be an interesting plot point if this weren’t Superman, who, thanks to super hearing, can be called out by whispering, “Hey Superman! I’m on the corner of Weisinger and Swan, on my way to fuck yer moms!”

Look At What’s Happened To Me: Action Comics #7 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: Well Lois, we stand for spoilers, ruined story beats, and The American Way. Actually, those first two kind of are The American Way. Either way, you have been warned. Plus, your underpants are pink.

Action Comics #7 is, in many ways, a standard and classic Grant Morrison issue: a bunch of Big Ideas wrapped in one of the oldest ideas in the Superman mythos: fight Brainiac, and choose between his Earth and Kryptonian heritage. It is, in its own way, a perfect amalgam of what Morrison does best: turning old, hoary Silver Age story ideas that most of us laughed at during the Dark Age into something majestic and galactic in scope, all while perserving the humanity of the characters involved (It’s that last part Morrison sometimes punts on, but not here). In general, this is a good comic book.

And then there’s the fucking suit. But we’ll get to that in a minute.