I picked up Batman #701 today. It’s part 1 of the Lost R.I.P. story, which maybe is going to explain the holes in R.I.P. (what was the ultimate betrayal after all?) or maybe it’ll just be another story.

But what it very clearly is is yet another continuation of the Batman R.I.P. story. I remember finishing Batman #681, the final chapter of Batman R.I.P., only to learn that the actual conclusion to Batman R.I.P. was in Final Crisis #6. But that didn’t really make any sense, because last we saw Batman, he was in an exploding helicopter, then roaming around at the beginning of the continuity-detached Final Crisis solving mysteries, and then here he is all of a sudden in FC #6 pointing a god gun at Darkseid. To that, as a planned, supposedly sequential series of events penned by the same writer, I said “Huh?”

So then there was that two-part series where Grant Morrison went back and explained how Batman got in the clutches of the organized workers of the Evil Factory. It was a nice story and all, but as far as filling the holes between how Batman went from helicopter to Orion-killer hunting, it really did no good. It filled in the wrong part of the story, though it did at least lay some important groundwork.

But now, starting with Batman #701, Grant Morrison is finally telling the post-helicopter story, that really everyone should have been demanding a year and a half ago. I’m actually quite excited about it, as I really love how things are being pieced together in Batman and Robin and The Return of Bruce Wayne (not so much Final Crisis), but it’s just so weird to me how this story is being told. I have no idea if this is going to answer questions and fill in gaps or just tell more out-of-sequence details in the form of semi-interesting story. Maybe the mystery will be solved in another two-issue storyline drawn by Tony Daniel fourteen months down the road. Maybe it’ll never happen.

I don’t even think I’m necessarily complaining about this. I just can’t believe this storyline is still going on, so ridiculously out of sequence! I mean can you imagine someone pitching this to a reader? “You’ll get all the exciting parts up front, but they won’t actually make sense, because the trudging exposition is going to come a few pieces at a time over the next year or two, completely detached from everything else that’s going on around it in the other Bat-books. It’ll be great!”

I’ve been pretty apathetic about comics lately, even by this blog’s evolvingly negative standards. I’ve maintained a pretty firm boycott of all things $3.99, which means I’m missing out on almost everything new.

I considered Super Soldier #1 and Shadowland #1, but a glance at both sold me on neither. A rush of nostalgia convinced me to pick up X-Men #1 from the shelf, as the 90s X-Men #1 came along during the previous peak in my fandom. But a quick flip through the issue and the casually cartoonish beheading led me to put it back down. Superhero comics are so much more adult and serious now nearly 20 years later, but so shamefully unaware of their lack of maturity.

The only $3.99 book I did decide to take a chance on was Neal Adams’ Batman Odyssey #1 on a pretty Batman-heavy week. I also picked up Batman and Robin #13 (one of the few books I consistently look forward to anymore) and Red Hood #1 and 2. I missed the first issue and have no idea if the series is any good, but I really liked Winick’s run on Batman in the mid ’00s.

Beyond that, Brightest Day #5 was my only other purchase. DC dominated this week, thanks largely to the rapidly disappearing $2.99 price tag.

Cross posted from my Tumblr

Halloween, 1993. I’m nine-years-old, and hopelessly addicted to the X-Men. Yes, little has changed. But I decided that year that the best idea ever is to make my own X-Men costume. For some reason, at this time, there weren’t any or many cheap vinyl X-Men costumes at Wal-Mart or ShopKo.

I wanted to be Cyclops, but on allowance wages, that was a bit much to buy in raw material. But hey, I had the right stuff for Wolverine, by which I mean yellow basketball uniforms and plastic milk jugs.
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Over the weekend, I was talking to a friend of mine about Iron Man and the eventual Avengers movie, including a discussion of who the main characters are going to be and what movies are going to be released before the big team-up in 2012.

He doesn’t read comic books, so he knows nothing about any of the Avengers aside from what’s been shown in the movies. He asked me who Captain America is, and I explained it to him with relative ease. I say “relative,” because it’s not everyday that you can tell somebody that a character survived several decades while frozen in suspended animation inside a block of ice all that easily.

When the topic turned to Thor, though, I found myself scratching my head. I said, “Uh…well, he’s a god or something like that.” Yeah, real smooth. Thing is, I’ve never regularly read Thor comics, so I don’t know doodley squat about the guy (really, though, who has regularly read Thor comics? Come on.).

In an attempt to redeem myself, I am now going to write out an explanation for my clueless friend (as well as for all of you faithful readers!) entitled, “What I Kind of Know About Thor (But Not Really).” Enjoy. (more…)

I gave up reading X-Men comics awhile ago, shortly after “Messiah CompleX” ended. I followed the team’s move out to San Francisco, but once they had that whole flash into the 70s thing, the art became inconsistent, and I gave up. I should clarify: that was Uncanny. I gave up on the other stuff immediately after that stupid crossover.

This week, as fate would have it, I found myself in the comic shop with only one book to pick up. I noticed that there’s a new crossover called “X-Men: Second Coming,” though, so I gave it a whirl. I probably shouldn’t have.

Here’s the basic premise for those of you who have been avoiding the X-Books like Pestilence: The X-Men are worried, because no new mutants have surfaced lately, and their kind is close to extinction. Hope, which is the name of that little baby from Messiah CompleX, returns to the present day with her guardian, Cable, after having successfully survived Bishop’s manhunt through time.

They’re immediately attacked by some robots and tracked by some human supremacist group. Cerebra detects their presence, so Cyclops fully mobilizes the X-Men to go find the duo and bring them back safely to their current hideout. Certainly, a lot of fighting will come of this.

Now it might be due to my absence from the books, but am I the only one who thinks this entire premise is ridiculously stupid? When Messiah CompleX ended, everybody was all upset by all the fighting, so Cyclops told Cable to take the baby to the future and give it the chance Cyclops never gave his own son (psst, I’m talking about Cable).

And now, years later, correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t we just back to the exact same bullcrap that was going on when Cable and Hope first left the present day? Cable was trying to protect the baby, on the run from numerous factions all out to either kill it or save it. Unlike then, now we’re picking up the story with Cable trying to protect the teenager, on the run from numerous factions all out to either kill it or save it.

Ok. (more…)

If there is one moral to be learned in the conclusion to Justice League: Cry for Justice as it segues into The Fall of Green Arrow, it is that heroes don’t kill bad guys. Even if they feel justified, killing is murder. This sentiment alone is driving a significant status quo shift in the DCU — Connor considers his father a murderer, and Green Arrow’s Justice League teammates think he’s crossed a line that has led one of the Flashes (I honestly don’t know how I’m supposed to tell them apart) to unload on him, going on about how disgusted he is by Green Arrow’s decision to kill Prometheus.

So, to restate: Good guys don’t kill people.

Given that this concept has to have been getting heavy rotation in the brains of DC editorial as these events were being shaped and promoted, it makes the abomination that was Crisis on Two Earths that much more unforgivable.

This is a company whose commodities are heroes. How can these people so recklessly muddy the definition of heroism within their own properties?

And then take a step back and look at how the company’s superhero morality is made ambiguous: it’s unacceptable for heroes to kill people in the comics, which are largely purchased by an increasingly aging and maturing audience; on the other hand, nobody bats an eye when a hero kills two people in the cartoons designed for children.

Another year has passed us by, and, while 2008 was a pretty stellar year for the superhero genre of movies, 2009 proved to be a different beast entirely. If there’s one thing that we can all agree on, right up front here, it’s that movies featuring superheroes this past year were pretty terrible across the board.

Not only did Watchmen get skewered by a barrage of quite negative reviews (it received a 64% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes), but it ended up performing terribly at the box office, too (its domestic total topped out just north of $100 million, more than half of which was made in the opening weekend, a total that was a few dozen million short of the production budget).

On the other hand, we were given a couple movies that performed exceptionally at the box office yet were complete disasters when you look at the critical reception. X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen both found their way onto my list of the worst five movies of the year, for example. Then there’s the stuff that I don’t even feel like talking about (G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra and Dragonball: Evolution, I’m looking at you).

Luckily, it’s a new year, and Hollywood is still churning out superhero movies, thanks to the successes of so many past movies with men in tights. And that’s what we’re here to discuss. Just like every single year, it’s once again time to set our attention to the year to come and toss back enough bottles of beer to wash the year that just passed fully from our collective memory.

First up, we have the big screen adaptation of Mark Millar’s Kick-Ass, a series that, as far as I know, still hasn’t completed its first story-arc. I talked about it briefly in my movie preview last year, as its release was still TBA, but I’ve changed my tune in the 365 since.

I’m looking forward to this movie immensely. Yeah, I dropped the comic after two issues, and the casting initially kind of pissed me off (a superhero movie with Nic Cage and McLovin?), but something about the trailers has made me rethink the whole thing. It looks like a lot of fun, and Nic Cage has completely redeemed himself in my eyes after his performance in “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call: New Orleans” (seriously, that movie is absolutely amazing). So I’m going to give this one a chance. If it sucks, I’ll only be down nine bucks anyway, so what’s the big deal?

And, come on, it can’t be any worse than “Mystery Men.” Wait. Can it? (more…)

I pick up Previews every month. I have probably only ordered a half dozen things from Previews in the past few years (and by ordering something from Previews, I mean telling my shop owner “Hey, I saw this is coming out. Can you order one for me?”) but I still read through the thing and look for something to catch my eye. I think that’s how it’s supposed to work.

So anyway, my friend and former co-blogger Van Jensen wrote Pinocchio: Vampire Slayer. As soon as the thing appeared in Previews, I told my comic shop owner “Hey, I saw this is coming out. Can you order one for me?” He did.

I was very excited for it to arrive on October 28. I had never purchased a comic book written by a friend of mine. But when I got to the shop, I was greeted with the bad news that Diamond simply did not ship it. The owner was unable to get an answer why.

I was disappointed, but I bought a lot of other comics last week and so I was at least stocked with other reading options. But then I stopped in yesterday. They still hadn’t delivered it. No explanation why.

At this point, I’m very frustrated. I WANT TO BUY THIS COMIC BOOK. I would like for my money to leave my hand and spread to the pockets of my shop, my friend, his publisher, and DIAMOND. But they won’t deliver the thing.

So I canceled the order. I’m going to order it straight from the publisher. Screw Diamond, man. You guys had a chance to take your cut and you blew it. From now on, when I see a graphic novel that’s coming out that I want to buy, I’m going through the publisher.

It’s impressive how hard some people will work to lose your business.

Epilogue: The unfortunate victim in this story is the comic shop owner. Perhaps from now on, every time I order a book from the publisher and cut him out, I’ll buy some pop from him.

Marvel has (debatably) always striven for inclusiveness in their universe. Just look at the international X-Men squad that was debuted in Giant Size X-Men. Then look in that very same issue at Thunderbird. Yeah, Marvel tends to miss the mark. Sometimes it all comes out OK, as Luke Cage went from blaxploitation caricature to Avenger. But some heroes never quite make the recovery. Here are some of the most stereotypical heroes, villains and otherwise, with all the fun criteria of discrimination … race, sex, religion, sexual orientation …

1. El Aguila

You’re a Spanish mutant who can generate electricity. Logically, you’d want to live up to your cultural heritage. Being from Spain, the one that’s in Europe and not in imaginary land, you decide that your course is to imitate Spain’s greatest hero: Mexican-American swordfighter Zorro. Your tiny, donkey filled village of Madrid (population 3 million) can barely contain your zest for adventure, so you go abroad for your superheroic adventures. Sadly, his days drew to a close in the post-House of M period, losing his mutant powers. But he retained that zest for life, incorrectly applied non-Castilian Spanish and (assumedly, at least) awful mustache.

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Up front, I’ll admit that I’m not as much of a comic nerd as I probably seem. Considering the fact that I write for a blog about comic books, you’d think I’d know a lot about the history of all the characters, their big bad villains, etc, etc, but, yet, truth be told, I know surprisingly little about these stories I love so much.

So when I saw this week’s cover of Previews, with the spoiler of who the main villain behind “Blackest Night” is, it should come as no surprise that I had no clue who this dude is. I mean, seriously, Nekron? That’s all you’ve got, DC? I’ve been following comics fairly seriously my entire life, and I honestly don’t have the slightest idea who this nefarious fellow is.

And, really, I don’t think I’m alone on this. Jim Doom and I buy comics together every week, and he was as confused as I was about who this character is. Our local comic shop, Capes Comic Book Lounge, is run by a fella named Sean, who informed us that Nekron is apparently in charge of some afterlife realm between limbo and hell, but I wasn’t really paying attention, and I don’t care enough to try to recall his words verbatim, but, good Lord, that’s a let down.

Over the course of the past few weeks, I had convinced myself that there was going to be some huge, all-powerful entity from the Black Power Source, ala Parallax and Ion, that would take Bruce Wayne as its host and lay waste to the entire DCU. Imagine if Bruce Wayne was given the powers of the Anti-Monitor or something. That’d be flippin’ sweet.

Instead, we get Nekron. Whoever that is. He sounds like a cheap battery.