Hey, remember when Doom DeLuise stopped caring about Countdown? The series created a whole new level of suck at one point and Del just couldn’t bring himself to review the thing on a weekly basis. Well, I’ve offcially gotten to that point. This issue of Trinity is from last Wednesday’s comics, which I guess is obvious since this Wednesday’s comics won’t come out until this Friday. And as a strange coincidence, it happens to be the same issue number that it was for Countdown, #30. Granted, Countdown was counting the other way, but that’s weird, right?

So what happened this issue that sucked so much? In the lead, Alfred’s Six learn the story of how the purple alien world came to be. Turns out they live in the cosmic egg, and Krona was their god until he escaped. Then the Trinity became their new gods and things got better. In the back-up, Morgaine Le Fey forms her bad guy team while Hawkman forms his good guy team, using certain villains/heroes to fit certain roles in the major arcana that’s on tarot cards.

Okay, so the back-up wasn’t terrible, but the lead was just boring as hell. That’s the sort of thing that should be the back-up story: something that isn’t essentially to the plot but fills in some gaps. Does it matter that the Trinity is the Holy Trinity inside of the cosmic egg? Not really. What matters is that Alfred has to find a way to bring the Trinity back, and this trip inside of the egg is the way to do it.

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Starting off this week’s haul is Batman #683, the conclusion to the two-part “Last Rites” storyline, of which part one was a Book of Doom earlier this month.

While working on a separate post about the Gnosticism in Final Crisis, I came upon a July blog on Final Crisis #2 which mentioned one of Grant Morrison’s favorite tricks is “…the last minute revelation that the good guys have already won.” I’m not enough of a Morrison devotee to be able to identify his favorite themes, but I think we have a winner if a line in a Final Crisis writeup from this summer accurately predicts the outcome of the first two conclusions to “Batman RIP.”

We continue to saunter through the disjointed retelling of Batman’s history, now revised in order to distract Batman’s increasingly dangerous consciousness so that The Lump can continue to suck out the good parts. It’s important to note that, without a costume, gadgets and a cave to play in, Bruce Wayne sure comes off like a loser. And nobody tells Batman he’s a loser, especially not in made-up memories crafted by a fat thing in a chair disguised as Alfred!
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In the madness of getting ready for Christmas and trying to clean up my workspace, I can’t find any of the comics I bought in the past two weeks. I don’t even remember everything I picked up, so this is going to be a totally stripped-down bare-bones version of reviewing the comics I remember buying, and I’m not even going to do segues.

Final Crisis #5: I thought this was pretty good. All kinds of crazy going on is finally making me feel like something bad is happening and therefore something awesome needs to happen to make the bad good again. Still some stupid stuff, like the possessed Alpha Lantern going through the charade of being an Alpha Lantern for obviously longer than was necessary, but then just nonchalantly dropping it as if she just didn’t want to bother anymore. Judging Morrison’s recent works side by side, I think I liked Batman RIP because it didn’t have that kind of dumb acting (though I won’t deny that a case can be made that it had plenty of dumbness of its own).

Final Crisis: Revelations #4: This is a five part series. Part 4 ended with a “To be continued” rather than a “To be concluded.” The Spectre has been stripped of his human host once again, and he needs to be re-bonded. This all fuels my theory that Batman will become the new Spectre, which is, of course, the best idea.

Madman #12: For all that I dislike about this new volume of Madman, I think what always keeps me coming back is the fantastic love between Frank and Joe.

Thor special: I loved this. If Marvel would release a monthly comic like this, which includes an extra-length stand-alone story starring one of their major characters and a back-up reprint, I would gladly pay $3.99 and buy it every month. I don’t care about Thor, but I took a chance on this. I won’t even say I totally loved the story, but I loved the experience of reading it and the value of it.

I don’t remember what else I bought. A normal Doomino Effect will resume after the holidays.

Orson Scott Card, a sci-fi author and one of those word-book writers who has crossed over to comics, has found himself a candidate for Andrew Sullivan’s 2008 Malkin Award, which is awarded “…for shrill, hyperbolic, divisive and intemperate right-wing rhetoric.” (He’s in 5th place as of posting time, right behind Michael Savage.)

Card earned a finalist slot for a column he wrote for the Mormon Times, which produced this noteworthy quote:

Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn. Biological imperatives trump laws. American government cannot fight against marriage and hope to endure. If the Constitution is defined in such a way as to destroy the privileged position of marriage, it is that insane Constitution, not marriage, that will die.

All that I’ve read of Card was his terrible run on Ultimate Iron Man. I thought it was crap, and that was even before I knew he was a bigot! I think he’s done ruining superhero comics for the time being, but Marvel is still licensing his stuff for comics adaptations. Think about where you’re money’s going, kids.

It seems these days that the default mentality of comic book writers when drafting up the rosters for the various superhero teams is a simple mindset of including all of their favorite characters from the Silver Age, when they first got hooked on comics as little kids. It’s why Geoff Johns has such a mad-on for the Legion of Superheroes (who are pretty lame, if you ask me) and everybody and their brother is bringing in nonsense from Jack Kirby’s hay-day. Why else would we see monthly installments of garbage like The Eternals or regularly see OMACs popping up in every single stupid DC “Event?” Heck, it seems like Countdown was one big circle jerk for everything Kirby ever worked on, and we all know how that turned out.

But, still, it’s an interesting idea, wondering what sorts of superheroes I’d pile into my fantasy superhero team, if I were operating with the same mind I had when I first got into comics at the age of nine, way back in good ol’ Cedar Falls, Iowa (let’s face it, though - - it’s not that old, and it’s not all that good, either). I’m sure it would be just as lame, if not lamer, than the upcoming James Robinson penned “Justice League.”

For the sake of argument and discussion, though, let’s leave company affiliation out of this and just let Young Doom DeLuise pick whomever he thinks would be coolest to have on his team. Hope you like nostalgia and XTREME superheroes, because this is about to get pretty thick with both! Hit the jump, chump: (more…)

It’s probably beating a dead horse by this point, but I found some videos on the Internets that I thought were funny.

The Best Part of Batman and Robin:

…and of Superman III:

In the lead: Alfred’s Six spy on those sorta alien guys from last issue, and Donna Troy interjects when violence ensues. Surprise! She has her Wonder Girl powers! Then Alfred talks to the alien dudes and they decide to make a pilgrimage to the Trinity-inspired holy site. Meanwhile, Tarot freaks out a little bit and Charity reads her tarot cards.

In the back-up: The League tries to stop a jailbreak at Alcatraz, but gets ported away to Metropolis for a big fight with TVM and company. Tomorrow Woman manages to literally pull herself back together, but the bad guys get away. And Prometheus breaks Braniac out of prison.

Back in the lead: Tarot is kidnapped once again by the Dreambound, and Alfred’s Six start on their pilgrimage.

My take: Trinity has only deviated from the 12-page/10-page story formula a few times so far, in issues #17, #22 and this one, and it always seems to make the issue better. The back-up often seems completely unimportant, but by inserting it into the middle of the issue, it really seems like a 22-page story instead of two shorter ones.

Unfortunately, the back-up still sucked. I said last time that everything with the JSI is boring me, and it still is. I guess you need a good guy army to fight the bad guy army, but they’re not going to win the day. Alfred’s Six will be saving the day, probably with a little assist from Tarot or maybe some inadvertent help from Despero and Kanjar Ro. (more…)

The Crow Gets Remake

UK, December 15, 2008 - Relativity Media are set to reinvent Goth fantasy movie The Crow, with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen helmer Stephen Norrington hired to direct according to Variety.

The 1994 movie, which was based on the comic by James O’Barr and was directed by Alex Proyas, revolved around a rock musician who was murdered trying to protect his girlfriend from thugs. A year later he returns from the dead to exact vengeance. The original film became a smash hit, but also earned notoriety after star Brandon Lee was accidently shot and killed on set.

Norrington has a new take on the antihero, telling the trade mag, “Whereas Proyas’ original was gloriously gothic and stylized, the new movie will be realistic, hard-edged and mysterious, almost documentary-style.”

Norrington hasn’t directed since the disastrous shoot for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen back in 2003. The production was beset by problems and the helmer publicly fell out with star Sean Connery.

There has been no word as yet on who will star as the vengeful rocker Eric Draven.

So … let’s remake “The Crow,” but take out the things that made it cool. Then let’s turn it into “Cloverfield.”

Ugh.

I went to sleep last night, and I swear it was the year 2008. But, then, I woke up this morning to find the new trailer for the Wolverine Origin movie had been thrown up online over at 20th Century Fox’s Myspace Page. Now I’m not so sure what year it is. Is Dane Cook popular again? Anyway, follow this link to go see the new trailer for yourself. It debuted with The Day the Earth Stood Still over the weekend, and, up until today, all I could find were grainy bootleg copies that were eventually taken down by Fox within ten minutes of being posted.

It goes to show you, by the way, that 20th Century Fox is pretty out-of-touch in many ways, but taking down bootleg trailers? Why would they do that? Look at all the positive buzz that bootleg trailers for Iron Man and The Dark Knight generated. Paramount and Warner Bros could have fought with YouTube to get them taken down, but, instead, they embraced them and let fans salivate for a few months before giving them something in QuickTime to really get their fanboy hearts aflutter.

The big question, though, is whether or not this new Wolverine movie looks any good. I think it has potential. In the trailer, I spotted Sabretooth, Deadpool, Gambit, and the Blob. Quite the lineup. And it looks like they’re starting way back at the beginning of Wolverine’s childhood, maybe even using some of the story from the Origin miniseries that Marvel released in late 2001-early 2002.

It’s too early to tell, but if this movie isn’t markedly different from the last X-Men movie, I don’t think it has much chance of succeeding, in spite of how great Hugh Jackman might be as the title character.

This week we took a look at Secret Invasion: Dark Reign #1, the book that carries us from the closing pages of Secret Invasion #8 to everything else that comes next. The end of Secret Invasion left me intrigued, but I’m not sure how much I’ll be following along. Now that the Marvel Universe has changed fundamentally and many comics are going to be $3.99 per issue every month, I doubt I’ll be keeping up on former regular books like New Avengers or sampling new ones like Dark Avengers. So I pretty much judge this book on “Will I feel like I’m missing out on something?” as opposed to “Will I keep buying this?”

I was actually pretty reluctant to pick this, because I know Fin Fang Doom isn’t a Bendis fan, and if you’re not a Bendis fan, the idea of a comic book that is very little more than a group of people sitting around a table and talking is probably the exact representation of what you would hate most. But at the same time, at least it’s not just a Brave New World or DC Universe #0 where it just charges you for 3-page ads. It’s an actual story that acknowledges there’s some explaining to do.

For what it was, I really liked it. It creates an easy-to-follow road map of where the Marvel Universe is and where it’s going. There is a cohesive umbrella over everything, and individual books will be able to function under this umbrella without having to do something drastic, such as making the world be overrun with anti-life zombies for a few issues or risk seeming disconnected and irrelevant.
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