Meet Max Landis. He currently has the number one movie in America. Writer of found footage superhero flick Chronicle (which eked past Harry Potter’s new Hammer Film to take the weekend box office) Landis has just landed himself on the young Hollywood A-List in one fell swoop. He’s already sold an original franchise to Disney, and rumor has it that his directing partner, Josh Trank, is in line to take over the as-yet mishandled Fantastic Four franchise. Lucky bastards.

Anyway, Max Landis is also the son of John Landis, director of American Werewolf In London, Blues Brothers, and Animal House. Which I guess explains how he got all these cool people to show up in his new monologue/short film about DC’s misguided 1992 mega-event Death Of Superman. Not only is it funny just to hear the whole debacle rehashed, but it is nice to see that a fellow comic nerd who really appears to know what he’s talking about is getting jobs making comic book movies. As it should be.

Interesting news today. The much loved comic series The Watchmen, is being revisited as a seven part comic-book mini-series entitled Before Watchmen which will be starting this summer. Unfortunately, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons are not involved in Before Watchmen. Nonetheless, DC has chosen basically to expand on the back stories of some of the main characters like Rorschach and Nite Owl, and not go the prequel route completely.

God knows DC Comics was expecting this decision to be controversial, as well as highly anticipated by Watchmen fans. Alan Moore, has distanced himself from DC Comics on this one, and called the new series “completely shameless.” Those are strong words. This dude is fucking pissed they are going forward with his story, introducing new characters and plot lines and he is not involved, and doesn’t want to be. I understand his frustration actually. It’s like someone rewriting your childhood, that’s just messed up. Even after 25 years.

Durning a recent phone interview (not with me) Alan Moore said, “I tend to take this latest development as a kind of eager confirmation that they are still apparently dependent on ideas that I had 25 years ago.” I agree with this sentiment. So much culture today is almost always dependent on previously consumed culture that was deemed successful by the mass market. The fact that Watchmen is so widely popular shouldn’t be grounds for perpetuating it. Especially after that damn movie. I can definitely see how fans and the creator of the series are angry as hell over the introduction of this new series.

The main problem is the Watchmen story is finished, and has been for sometime. The extension of any aspect of it could be widely interpreted as insulting by hoards of comic book fanboys across the world. I think that DC is banking on the fact that people will want to be apart of the chaos that is this series. Younger fans will want to find out first hand, week by week as the new issues are dropped. The writing of history and the complex origins of some of the main superheroes are being brought forth into twenty twelve, with or with out the support of Alan or Dave. DC entertainment seems like it is doing whatever it can to keep it self above water, even if that includes resurrecting dead story lines.

Near Mint Condition. The column where I blather about what comic books I’m excited for in a given week. Audience participation is encouraged!, for I have poor taste and also cannot get to all the quality materials dropping out there in the land of comics. Sharing is caring. Or something. Et cetera.

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Action Comics #6
Grant Morrison and Andy Kubert team-up to bring a Superman tale that I’m only moderately interested in buying. In fact, I don’t really know why I’m mentioning it. Blind allegiance to Morrison? Sorta. Vague enjoyment of a Kubert-penciled issue? I suppose so. There’s a bulge within my soul, slowly eclipsing into a vacuum where my excitement for something Grant Morrison is writing should be. Is anyone legitimately digging the Kal-El blase reboot affair?

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The Ed Brubaker College Fund Project 2k12
I don’t know if Ed Brubaker is married or has sired some offspring, but if he did then I am there for them. With weeks like this, I feel as though I’m almost single-handedly attempting to put them through college. Yeah I know $5 or whatever from some blowhard like myself doesn’t go very far. I know! I know it. I just have this dream scenario where he walks up to me and shakes my head, commenting on how my altruistic tendencies have really helped out his family and how he’s going to write me into Captain America canon as Bucky’s Blown-Up Left Arm. How will that work? I’m not sure. We’ll leave it to my friend.

Speaking of my amigo, Winter Soldier #1 drops this week, and it’s fucking gorgeous. Butch Guide is all that is glory. As well, the second issue of Fatale is arriving. True confession time. Teary-eyed blathering at a Real World camera time. I wasn’t really floored by the first issue. Feel guilty just typing that. I’ll stick along though. It’s Brubaker, it’s Phillips. It’s going to be enjoyable at the very least.

(more…)

Near Mint Condition. This is the venue for me to wank to the comic books dropping in a particular week that I’m interested in. It’s generally capes heavy, because when I was younger I myself was heavy. As always, you folk are encouraged to share the shit you’re checking out this week. Peep the deets at ComicsList. It’s show and tell without the creepy Uncle and lollipops. Bummer about the lollipops, agreed.

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Wasteland #33
I first heard about Wasteland a while back, but truth be told I couldn’t hunt down a copy. Truth be told even if I could, I was dreadfully far behind in the series and I have a backlog that bulges along leotard-on-a-linebacker levels. So it was doomed. Or so I thought. See the switch! The turn! The happiness! Antony Johnson and Justin Greenwood’s post-apocalyptic series is suffering a thankful soft relaunch this week, and it’s going to allow me to scurry aboard the title. Warren Ellis really likes it too, and that’s often enough for me to pledge my full support regardless of where I’m being ferried to. The nodes in my neck begin to burn and churn and cause dizziness if I try and disobey my Ellisian commands. Hit the prior link for a preview. Do it, before my neck hairs begin to sizzle. I must be supplicant. I must be.

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Ultimate Miles Morales Web-Time #6
Brian Michael Bendis continues to prove that perhaps he was cloned. Perhaps those clones suffered some sort of Multiplicity-esque degradation. Despite this rot in his genetic code, the clones continue to mash keys on Avengers: X-Ceptional, Muddy Avengers, Newly Minted Southern Cone Avengers, and the rest of those slam-bang team titles. Bendis proves all this, but on Ultimate Miles Morales he also proves that the original Brian Mikey persists. I’ve heard people coated in malaise and cheesey-things across the comic shop I frequent that the title is slow. Yeah, maybe. It’s a Bendis book.

I fucking love it. Heartfelt and humorous and Jesus Christ don’t worry the action is coming. This month Bendis is being complimented by Chris Samnee, who after Thor: The Mighty Avenger deserves slow claps and head nods from all of us.

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Danger Girl: Revolver #1
What Fresh Hell is this? Danger Girl lives? I can’t tell you the amount of awkward boners I roused up while looking at Danger Girl in my bathroom. Shower running, Mom and Dad knocking. I’m taking a shit! Or something! Leave me alone. Ah to be a comic book nerd hitting puberty. Why, it explains just why the industry is clan in tits and asses. ‘Cause dudes like me with freshly lit hormonal glands pushing insensible amount of erections into our jeans will snag up anything with cleavage. Don’t ever change, Danger Girl. I may just buy this new series and run the show for old time’s sake.

Or (probably) pass on the title and watch odd, uncomfortable to describe niche fetish porn. The result of probably too many latex-wanks to funny books something like fifteen years ago. That long? Jesus Christ.

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(more…)

Six months in, and DC is already taking the axe to 6 titles from their New 52 reboot roster. As was to be expected, the lineup was more or less incredibly bloated, especially with Bat-titles. None of those have been fussed with though, instead a pretty obvious handful of the lesser known characters who weren’t grabbing any new readers (the whole point of New 52 in the first place). The only one that I’m really sad about is Mister Terrific, which I was enjoying even though it was having a little bit of trouble balancing the quiet genius of Michael Holt and their need to include over-the-top action and intrigue.

Hawk & Dove was never going anywhere with Liefeld’s out of touch art, Men of War was fine but I won’t miss it, and I never got the chance to check out Static Shock but I heard it was nothing special. Mainly I’m just surprised that DC is culling the fold so quickly, but I guess when something isn’t working it just isn’t working. As comics have their own relativity, there is a new batch of returning or original titles to fill in the gaps.

I suppose the most notable is the return of an already rebooted Batman Incorporated (more Batman!!), which is still in the hands of Grant Morrison but will take place in a post-Flashpoint universe. Interested to see what, exactly, the effects of that will be. There will also be a new title called G.I. Combat which will be an umbrella for some of the best old DC war titles like The War That Time Forgot and The Unknown Soldier (YES!).

What I’m most excited for is the return of Dial H For Hero, an awesome old title which had no star but instead was an episodic story about a mysterious device that would grant an ordinary person extraordinary powers for a short time. It’s a great comic already, but the read draw for me is the author: fantastic sci-fi novelist China Mieville has been put in charge of the reboot, after a one off issue of Hellblazer in 2008. Mieville (King Rat, Kraken) is, in a word, awesome, and I think this title has great potential.

It’s no secret that I’m a little bit obsessed with comic book artist (and sometime writer) Mike Allred. Though his finest creation remains Madman, it is followed closely by he and Peter Milligan’s short run on Marvel’s X-Force, which later evolved into a 26 issue original splinter series X-Statix. Taking the X-Force out of the hands of shoulder-pads-n-oversized-cups Rob Liefeld in 2001, Milligan and Allred crafted one of the finest satires I’ve ever read, while also accomplishing the monumental task of giving the exhilaratingly flippant series a hefty emotional weight.

If you’ve never read the story of the pop-band-esque team of Anarchist, Orphan, U-Go Girl, Phat, Vivisector, Venus Dee Milo, Doop, and more, then now is the perfect time. Marvel has finally collected everything X-Statix into a gorgeous Omnibus, featuring all 40 original run issues plus like 10 affiliate title issues. It’s worth it just for the larger format reprinting of Allred’s still breathtaking art.

This is the way you’re supposed to experience the tragic romance of Mister Sensitive and Edie Sawyer (not to mention Myles Alfred and Billy Bob Reilly), the silent trip inside the mind of the mysterious green goop Doop, the rollercoaster rise and fall of the X-Statix team in the eyes of the (sometimes) adoring public, the battle with The Avengers (!), and so so much more.

So I’m obviously geeking out over this a bit (a lot) but it has instantly become one of my favorite collections I own. Though reading them as they came out was fun, it’s even better getting them all in one big magnificent hunk ‘o book. If there is one comic related item you buy yourself with any leftover holiday earnings, it should definitely be this one.

There are comic books coming out tomorrow, which can mean only one thing. Actually, it can mean a lot of things. The you factor into the geek wet dream of a Multiverse and it can mean…literally an infinite amount of things. One!, one of the things it means is that I’m here. In front of Microsoft Word. I am charged with bringing you the list of comic books I’m looking forward to this fine Wednesday. It’s a small charge, one I am capable of answering. My fat brain is filled with too many capes, not enough indies. A smattering of quasi-smaller publishings by actually relatively large companies like Image and Dark Horse.

Whatever the case, whatever the case. My taste is poor, I’m sure yours is better. So when I’m done mash-mash-mashing away on the keyboard and you have engaged in ultimate altruism and answered the bell by reading this mess, I implore you: share the comics you’re buying this week. Share them right up.

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Comic Books I’m Interested In Buying This Fine Week
It’s a bit of a slow week for me. The usual caveats apply. Slow week considering comic books that I know about, have heard about, have read, want to read. Et cetera. I do not delude myself into think I’m not missing countless dope titles. Or rather I want to live in a world where there’s a deluge of excellence underneath the veneer of mediocrity I have trouble piercing by myself.

There’s Activity #2 by Nathan Edmondson and Mitch Gerads. Edmonson had a hell of 2011, breaking into the mainstream collective with his work in the New 52 after catching my attention with Who Is Jake Ellis? I caught a preview of the original issue of Activity and it seemed pretty friggin’ appealing. Here it is. My comic book shop in predictable fashion didn’t have a copy. I’m seriously no bitter. I swear it.

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Comic Hotness: Our Love Is Real
This comic one-shot dropped last year and you can buy it on the cheap courtesy of an Image reprinting. When it dropped back in the oh-so-antiquated-by-now beginnings of last year I remember hearing about it. I noted it to myself. I was informed I could even snag a digital copy of it. Then I forgot. I fucking forgot. For another ten months. Remembrance was only brought to me courtesy of a solid commenter over in a Year’s Best! List at Omega Level. Ordered the motherfucker and—

—wow. What a fucking doozie. Not for the faint of heart, but it manages to terrify, entertain, amuse, and promote some thought within a scant amount of pages. Cheers to the good lad who recommended it. Go buy it. You’ll get all the vegetable-fucking-ultra-violence you could ask for.

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Comic Books I’m Interested In Buying This Fine Week [Cont]
There’s another issue of Wolverine and the New Gang Crush Shit dropping this week. Jason Aaron and Chris Bachalo bring my X-gene with humor and wit. I haven’t enjoyed a “main” X-Title in a good goddamn while, and every time this comic entertains me it makes the glorious corpse of my childhood momentarily raise up. Slagging off rotten flesh and decaying eyeball ocular mess dribbling down its face, it high-fives me. The longer Bachalo persists on the title, the more I’ve come to enjoy him. Listen, his style is never going to be my favorite. Listen, if you feel the same way. Just pause and check out all the shit he’s doing. The unique panel structure and the activity on every page. It’s begun to sway me. I appreciate it. A real lot.

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Dick Grayson Created by Bob Kane, Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson

Vs.

Jason Todd Created by Gerry Conway and Don Newton

Vs.

Tim Drake Created by Marv Wolfman and Pat Broderick

Vs.

Damian Wayne Created by Matt Barr, Grant Morrison, and Andy Kubert

Uh-oh, going outside the box a little bit and dropping a four-way battle onto the Bloglin today. With Arkham City coming out recently, the massive amount of Batman titles that were relaunched with The New 52 (11!), and the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Caped Crusader. Thumbing through some of the new Batman comics, it struck my what a good job that various writers have done with the various incarnations of the Boy Wonder, and how all of them still figure heavily and effectively into the Batman story. There is, of course, the OG, Dick Grayson, the first and most basically iconic Robin. But has he perhaps become more well known as the very strong character Nightwing?

Then there is Jason Todd, the at first beloved and then later loathed replacement for Master Grayson, who was famously voted into death at the hands of the Joker by the American public in Death In the Family. He has, however, returned in full force as Red Hood, and is a major part of Under The Red Hood, one of the best recent Batman Projects. Or maybe you’re more into the charismatic brainiac Tim Drake, who was ward for over 20 years and is now Red Robin. Then, finally, the current Robin, Batman and Talia Al-Ghul’s borderline sociopath teenage son Damian. All great, but you know how this game works. The Choice is Yours…

Hey look! Sports stuff! Though this may come from Chicago Blackhawks fan Frank Saracco, I think all us New Yorkers can appreciate it’s disdain (loving disdain, Philly fans. Relax) for the Flyers, especially after our epic victory at the Winter Classic. Better luck next time Briére, the 5 hole works a little better when the goalie stick isn’t fully covering it! Anyway, check out this mural that this dude made for his daughter. Bawww!

It’s all of the Blackhawks drawn as her favorite heroes like Batman, Thor, Lion-O, Shrek, and the dragon from How To Train Your Dragon (?). This girl is all over the place. The Flyers have been cast as Darth Vader, Wile E. Coyote (is he really evil per se? I guess so…), Maleficent, Skeletor, and Coach Laviolette is Stewie Griffin for maximum lolz. This is fun. I like this.

Via Puck Daddy