NEWSARAMA Interview: Grant Morrison on Final Crisis #3

The Multiversal structure of parallel worlds is collapsing. Darkseid’s fall has broken the Multiverse basically and he’s pulling everything that exists down with him into Hell, the swine!

The full interview can be found here.

IGN: Killing Batman And The DC Universe - An Interview w/Grant Morrison

As an example of the type of technique I’m using for instance, when the heroes all gather in Final Crisis #3, there’s a kind of subversion of the usual gung-ho effect of such a gathering. There’s a real feeling that these people have no hope. And that’s because it’s shot from above, and we see them all from above, just kind of standing there. And even Alan Scott’s viewed from above, and he’s supposed to be the guy giving the big ra-ra speech. We’re looking from behind and over his shoulder at a crowd of completely unconvinced superheroes. And that changes the meaning of the entire scene. If we had chosen to show Alan Scott from below in a kind of General Patton shot, with the JSA flag behind him, he would have seemed really cool and powerful and in command. We deliberately made you feel kind of like, “oh my god, these people are in real trouble!”

I knew it! I’d pat myself on the back, but then Morrison goes on for six pages talking about all kinds of stuff I didn’t know. The more I hear from Morrison, the more excited I get about Final Crisis. The interview is long, but it’s the best one yet. Like the Director’s Cut, this is a must-read for fans.

The full interview can be found here.

COMIC-CON ‘08: Vs. R&D and Other Crazies!

Enough time has passed that I think I’ve finally recovered from the experience that was Comic-Con. I’m going to keep this post light. This means, I’m only going to show you the “good times” and speak not of the “bad times”. And yeah, there were tons of “bad times”.

First, Pictures With Vs. R&D New And Old:

• Patrick Sullivan stares deer-eyed into the camera.
• The Hump is soooo bored with life.
• Rules Guru, Paul Ross demo’ing some WOW.
• Me and Cate Gary, editor supreme.
• Former VS. Designer, Matt Hyra can not be bothered to smile.
• “No one wants to demo MUB, Billy. Does that make you sad?” –Ben Seck
• John Fiorillo and Billy Zonos… man crush!

…And Now For Something Completely Different, Ballsy Fans In Costumes!

• Ms. Marvel wants me bad.
• OMG! I met Isaiah Bradley!!
• Marvel’s Spider-Man and Black Cat.
• A couple of Teen Titans… is that a sock in his pants? I hope so.
• COBRAAAAA!!!
• Han Solo never looked better.
• The American Dream and Me.

That guy, right there: Costume of the Year! Notice me trying hard as hell not to laugh?

For a complete picture account from Comic-Con, follow this link to my Flickr page.

p.s. my birthday is in five months, someone buy me this.

NEWSARAMA Interview: Grant Morrison on Final Crisis #2

With the issue, Sonny Sumo made his return (?), we met Morrison’s long-promised Japanese super heroes, saw the troubled young Monitor trying to remember the multiverse, the investigation into Orion’s death…and then things started hitting the fan, fast and furious – both Dan Turpin and Alpha Lantern Kraken were taken over, and Batman was taken by Darkseid’s forces. And Clayface blew up the Daily Planet offices.

What’s going on?

http://www.newsarama.com/comics/080721-MorrisonFC02.html

Meanwhile… read/RANT! Welcomes Lebeau To The Team!

Hey guys, we have a new regular reviewer over here at read/RANT! and his name is… Lebeau! Welcome to the team, dude! This guy is so fast; he’s already reviewing stuff before I even got the chance to introduce him. Check out his excellent Action Comics review here. Great start, Lebeau, and I expect plenty more where that came from.

Some of you may be asking, “How did this come about?” Well, allow me to explain. The other day, Lebeau sent me a PM on VsRealms asking if we were still accepting new reviewers and if yes, then he would like to be considered. First of all, we are always looking to expand our reviewership. Second, the criteria to be added is thus:

1) You must have a WordPress account.
2) You must love comics.
3) You must love talking about comics.
4) You must ask.

That’s it. Just ask. Wanna join up? Just ask. All are welcome!

“Hey, can I join your group?” – Lebeau

“Um… sure. What’s your e-mail?” – Me

And literally three hours later, Lebeau was posting his first review. It’s really that simple. If you have passion, we want you. If you’re all talk, well… to quote the esteemed Al Pacino, “Don’t waste my mother####ing time!” In other words, don’t be a “Deranged Bear”.

“OMG SQUEE!!! CAN I JOIN!!!” – Deranged Bear

“YAUS!” – Me

…crickets…

Bear was one of the first members, besides me, to join and he has yet to write a thing in five months. What a bastard. Yeah, I know he’s busy with his weekly column over at the Vs. Blog (pretentious title much? Huh? HUH! HUH? HUH! How’s that taste, Rod-ree-go?) and his bi-annual podcast with his hatemate Ludin “RocketJerk” Romero, but c’mon man! Where’s the follow through?

(I realize this post has collapsed into flames of passion, those secret feelings that have long festered in my belly are bubbling to the surface… I apologize for this unprofessional behavior. The above statements are in no way meant to incite a “Blog War” (although, that does sound kind of cool, yes?) Let’s get back to praising our newest member.)

On second thought, I’ve praised enough. Don’t want to swell his head. So, in conclusion (which is what you say when you’re ready to wrap things up), read/RANT! currently boats six semi-regular reviewers, with 2-3 regular features a week, such as Desiato’s Trade Secrets, Bruce Castle The Archives, Series Review, Origin Stories, etc… as well as daily comic reviews by pretty much everyone on the list. We got tons of content. This isn’t self-indulgent back-patting, as much as it’s just me being super excited that the dream of creating a safe haven for comic book discussion among peers has reached the next stage.

Before I close it out, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone involved with giving this blog that friendly, community feeling and for being so darned dedicated. You are the guys that make this experiment in fun worth it. Readership outside of the Vs. community has also increased, so I’m looking forward to hearing from those guys in the coming months, but… I’m even more excited about the possibility of adding more reviewers to the staff. So, if you want in, now is the perfect time.

It’s a ‘Call To Arms’, bitches!

Michael Turner Passes Away

Not to bring everybody down, but this really hit me hard. I was out all day today with friends. At my local comic shop some idiot said something about Frank Cho dying. I didn’t know anything about it and neither did anyone else. Later on when another friend of mine heard about it, he said that he did hear about some comic artist passing away. An employee at the comic shop said that Michael Turner had died. I was devastated. Here are some articles about it:

http://www.newsarama.com/comics/080628-Turner.html

http://www.newsarama.com/comics/080628-TurnerMourning.html

I’ve always been a fan of the man’s work and was always sad that I couldn’t see more of it because of his illness. I have friends that hate his work and always make fun of it, but I always loved it. Sadly, I only got to meet the man once. I was pretty much the last person in line so it was very brief. I stood in line for hours waiting to see him. When I finally did, he signed my stuff and I gave him a complement that I’m sure he’s heard a million times. Still, he smiled the whole time, shook my hand, and said he really appreciated it. This has been a sad week for me, George Carlin, one of my personal heroes, passed, and now this. I can’t wait to get my hands on this:

I was already looking forward to this, but now I’m going to be a bit sad buying it. I’m going to really miss seeing all his great covers on my comics. You’ll be missed Michael Turner!

Rest in Peace, Michael Turner

Some Thoughts about the News of the Past Week

It’s hard to avoid the rampant rumors and speculation that has been building over the past two weeks or so concerning the job security of DC’s Editor in Chief Dan DiDio. And 90% of it is just that: rumors and speculation. We all saw the hubub over the release of Diamond’s Top 300 comics for May that showed Secret Invasion 2 outselling Final Crisis 1 by a pretty good margin (which I don’t necessarily think is that big a deal, but hey) and the fact that despite three big event books (Final Crisis 1 and the two Batman RIP books) DC slipped below 30% in market share based on units sold for the top 300 comics. We saw Chuck Dixon’s unmistakable shots at the DiDio regime after being abruptly fired from DC. We saw the outcry after Grant Morrison’s post Final Crisis 1 interview where he basically enunciated the opinions of much of the comics populous that Countdown was a hastily put together mess that will be completely ignored during the course of Final Crisis. We all have seen these things. And they have led to rampant (and for the most part baseless) rumors that two things are due to happen any day now: 1. Dan DiDio will be fired. 2. Jimmy Palmiotti will replace him as EIC at DC. I still don’t know where or how Palmiotti’s name got pulled into this, but it’s arguably immaterial for what I find fascinating about all this.

I’m a big baseball fan, and one of the ongoing story lines of the 2008 MLB season was the sorry state of the New York Mets and the plight of their manager, Willie Randolph. All of that came to a head last week when the Mets fired Randolph in probably the most callous way possible, by putting him on a plane to start a west coast series against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (I know. Stupid name) only to have him manage one game and proceed to get fired, having it announced to the world via a press release put on the internet at 3:15 AM Eastern time (which, admittedly, was only 12:15 on the west coast and not too long after the game ended, but it still didn’t go over well). What we have here with Mr. DiDio is a strangely similar series of events that we are currently in the middle of. I find this fascinating myself, so let’s break it down.

The weekend before Willie Randolph got fired, someone from inside the Mets organization leaked to the press that they should expect to hear the final decision about the fate of Willie Randolph by the end of the weekend. This led to the assumption that Willie was going to get the ax, and he had to deal with constant questioning as to such during his meetings with the press before and after every game. Consider then the reaction to the internet comics culture spurned on when Warren Ellis (an industry insider as a writer) wrote a message about big news coming out of DC in some form on Friday. This turned out to be the announcement of the resigning of John Nee, Senior Vice President of Business Development at DC. Despite this (or perhaps because of it), people were not thrown from DiDio’s scent. Now, he doesn’t hold daily media conferences like baseball managers, but he did have to field quite a few questions from fans during the DC Nation panel at Heroes Con in Charlotte this weekend. Similar to a degree, enough for me to find it fascinating.

This seems to be the type of situation where the speculation has gotten so out of control that despite the fact that it is at its core almost entirely baseless (like speculation so often is) and despite the fact that all of this is coming from the internet’s infamous vocal minority, the minority has gotten so loud that it has completely clouded the issue. We’re constantly whipping ourselves up into a greater and greater fervor with every little snippet of news, every “no comment” made by Jimmy Palmiotti, every minute detail that it gets bigger and bigger and louder and louder.

At the end of the day, we’ve boiled ourselves down to the oft quoted Shakespeare line from Macbeth: “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” But here’s the thing. The sound and the fury may be meaningless at its core, but it’s loud and it’s noticeable, and in this case (much like what happened to Willie Randolph) it might lead to DC making some major decision before they’d like to. I could perceive a situation (and this is the only time I’m going to consciously put on my own speculator cap, but bear with me here) where DC is forced to act by the fervor and negativity surrounding their company (that may or may not be loud enough for big daddy Time Warner to actually take notice) that they make a quick decision to show some kind of movement toward the future. That could be one of three things: 1. DiDio gets fired immediately. 2. DiDio is given a contract extension, which is a show of support and good faith from the higher ups, with the added bonus of letting the poor man relax for a bit and not have to worry about the fans imagining a guillotine hovering over his neck with one of those suspenseful fraying ropes its only restraint. 3. Some announcement is made that DiDio’s contract will not be extended come October, but he will work out the rest of his term, allowing for time to be taken to find a suitable replacement to create a smooth transition. Do I know that any of these things are going to happen? Absolutely not. I have NO CLUE, and it would be irresponsible of me to claim otherwise. But I wouldn’t be surprised if this were a situation where no situation actually existed, and the perception of this nonexistent situation actually made said situation actually exist after all (and yes, I did my best to make that as confusing as possible. Believe me, it fits the feel of the weekend).

A quick aside before I wrap this up. I’ve made it well known that the way DC comics are currently written doesn’t excite me as a fan. And I know that I’ve generally put a good portion of the blame for that on Dan DiDio. I have done everything in my power to turn that section of my brain off while writing this and just approach it from the perspective of a disinterested third party looking at the facts. I hope I was successful in doing so. If you think I wasn’t, feel free to ignore everything I’ve said. I think I’ll be able to sleep at night.

In conclusion, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I can read all I want about Rich Johnston claiming we’ll be reading something significant about it in Lying in the Gutters tomorrow to Nikki Finke making claims that Warner Bros. is taking note of the goings on at DC, but no one is ever going to know until we’re told straight from the horse’s mouth. I just find it fascinating that for one weekend two things as disparate as comics and baseball come into a bit of an alignment, and the parallels and coincidences of this crazy little world we live in tickle the brain and fire those synapses. And sure, this article is an ultimately meaningless exercise in comparing and contrasting two different events (one of which isn’t technically happening), but I spent four years of higher education learning the delicate art of an analytical dialectic, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let that go to waste. One thing’s for sure: with San Diego on the horizon and two major events being put out by the Big Two, this is a VERY exciting time to be a comics fan.

NEWSARAMA Interview: Grant Morrison on Final Crisis #1

If there’s one thing that Final Crisis #1 by Grant Morrison and J.G. Jone did, it was rasie a lot of questions among fans.

What does this mean in relation to Countdown?
What was Anthro doing with Metron?
Where are the New Gods?
Did the Martian Manhunter really…

Well – yeah, a lot of questions.

In the first of our regular installments with Grant Morrison, we spoke with him about the first issue, and he graciously handled the questions.

http://www.newsarama.com/comics/080609-MorrisonFC01.html

Secret Invasion #6 Cover Spoiled: Reunited?

Obviously, this put a HUGE smile on my face.

The Failings of DC

Outside of one month (October 2007), Marvel has been crushing DC in both dollars and market share to the tune of approximately 48% to 33% month in and month out. It seems like everything Marvel is clicking, with Secret Invasion #1 having a lot of positive buzz and the runaway success of the Iron Man movie (which could easily translate into big sales from Fraction’s new Invincible Iron Man ongoing launching Wednesday), and there’s a definite feel that Marvel’s got the momentum. But the question is why. As recently as three to four years ago, all the momentum was on DC’s side. Identity Crisis was a big success, and the addition of Brad Meltzer to the book allowed for wider appeal. At the same time, Brian Bendis’ House of M was seen as grandstanding and Marvel’s response to Identity Crisis instead of an organically grown event. Infinite Crisis was on the horizon, and their tactic of using mini series as a lead-in seemed to be working well. Infinite Crisis launched big, and everything seemed to be going very well on Superman’s side of the table. But then things began to take a turn. Infinite Crisis 7 did not go well, with general fan disappointment as to the content as well as art problems that eventually had to be fixed in the trade. Alongside this, Marvel decided to blitz the media for their new event, and the next thing you know, Civil War is selling 300,000 copies per issue, Captain America dies and Marvel completely takes over market share. Despite the delays to the second half of Civil War and subsequent individual book delays that came from it, and the event’s own fan disappointment over its seventh issue, Marvel took control. And here’s why I personally think it happened.

There is a very big difference between the way Marvel and DC are going about publishing books in their universes. I feel like DC is actively pandering to their already established fan base to the detriment of anyone on the outside. Infinite Crisis was heavily steeped in the mythology of Crisis on Infinite Earths. There is absolutely no meaning or emotional resonance for the main villains (Alex Luthor, Earth 1 Supes and Earth Prime Superboy) for those that did not read Crisis, and the couple pages of backstory in issue 2 weren’t going to cut it. 52 focused on the also-rans of the DCU, and admittedly did a much better job of making the reader care for these people. The build to Final Crisis (i.e. Countdown/DC Universe 0) is messy, confusing and alienating. What we have here is the kind of stuff that’s going to make the DC fans even bigger DC fans, but completely turn everyone else off. They’re going for grand concepts riddled with continuity to the detriment of casual readers. And I’m an example of that.

When I first read Identity Crisis (which was my introduction to the DC Universe proper), I didn’t know who half the characters were. But I loved the damn thing for two main reasons. The first was Brad Meltzer, who did some really fascinating writing, namely from the perspective of literary devices as pertains to the narrative found in caption boxes. The second reason was the overt simplicity of the overarching plot. Pretty simple stuff. Superhero’s wife is murdered. Find killer and deal with him/her. Of course, there are many many many more themes and subplots going on here, but if you boil it down to the essentials, that’s what you’ve got. So when I started buying floppies, I decided to get some DC books, namely Booster Gold, the Green Lantern books, JLA and JSA. I’ve since dropped both JLA and JSA, and came extremely close to dropping Booster Gold. Hell, if I followed my own edict of dropping a book when it pisses me off, I wouldn’t be reading Green Lantern right now. I dropped JLA because I wasn’t digging on McDuffie’s take, which granted, had nothing to do with the thrust of this little article I’m writing. JSA got dropped because I’m sick to death of Kingdom Come, and Johns (to me) completely ruined the momentum of the first six issues because of the Lightning Saga and this Kingdom Come nonsense. Booster nearly got dropped because bringing Ted Kord back smacked of pandering (and it still does, as that book is constantly hovering around my cut list). I nearly dropped the current arc of Green Lantern because the random retconny origin story completely stymied the flow of their slow build to Blackest Night, and it seems like Johns is stalling. A retelling of Hal’s origin for the really big numberth time over multiple issues is a complete waste. It’s writing for the trade and it’s nonsense.

So for me, as a reader, DC is failing to bring me in and keep my business. DC Universe 0 didn’t exactly help. I know for a fact that if I hadn’t gone on message boards and Newsarama/CBR, I would not have been able to understand the big reveal at the end of DCU 0. And even now that I know, I can’t say that I care. Their big gesture to bridge Countdown and Final Crisis while bringing in new readers was a complete and total failure on both counts. It’s an odd situation overall, because DC is making their core audience very happy, and outside of Countdown, everyone who reads DC seems to be enjoying themselves. However, they’re not building the product in a good way outside of their core audience. To celebrate the release of Iron Man, Marvel launches a new Iron Man ongoing the following week the features a villain with strong ties to Obadiah Stane, the villain from the Iron Man film. What’s DC doing for The Dark Knight? Why, a fifth week event, of course! And no one who wasn’t already lining up to buy the thing before it was announced cares. This is not going to grow their market share and let them get within reach of Marvel again. Final Crisis should do big numbers, but I seriously doubt it’ll outsell Secret Invasion past issue one. Hell, their best selling book (All Star Batman and Robin) has basically no schedule and never comes out on time. It’s a frustrating situation, because I like DC, and I like DC’s characters, and I like DC’s creators. But they keep doing thing to alienate me. Marvel, on the other hand, builds from a foundation of generally simple and easy to follow concepts (heroes fighting heroes, Hulk attacks New York, shape-shifting aliens invade Earth) and builds the complexity from that base. DC doesn’t seem to be doing that at the moment.

I guess the main reason why I wrote this article is to throw out some insight as to why you folks barely, if ever, see me reviewing DC books. It’s not due to a hatred for their universe as a whole. It’s just that when a company keeps kicking you in the balls, you’re eventually going to stop coming back to them until said ball-kickers are no longer present.

I’m interested to see if I’m the only one who feels this way. Any thoughts from the peanut gallery?

Review: DC Universe #0

Well, it’s been thoroughly spoiled across the internet this morning… Barry Allen is back.

…anyone give a shit?

DCU #0 is a half dollar’s worth of comic trailers about the event books DC’s putting out for the rest of the year. For half a buck the narrative’s not half bad. There’s not really much to say: Batman is going to die? But not really. Superman is going to fight alongside the Legion? Nothing new here. Wonder Woman is forsaken by the gods? Didn’t this happen already right after Infinite Crisis? Black Hand is going to lead the dead against the Universe? About the only exciting thing about this “preview” was the Blackest Night trailer. Crispus Allen is going to learn how to be a better spirit of righteous vengeance? Who? Just kidding, but I still don’t care. Libra is going to become the new leader of the Secret Society of Super-Villains? Well, if someone just straight up told me that like I’m telling you, I wouldn’t be that impressed either. But the speech he gives in this issue… piqued my interest. Notice how they’ve dropped the shorter, more sophisticated “The Society” as the name of their club? I like this change.

Which brings us to the final page: Barry Allen is back. Again, who gives a shit?

I’m still looking forward to Final Crisis, no more or less than I was before I read this. Should you read this? Do you need to read this? Not really. Check out the promotionals below and save 50 cents.

     

The Next Nova Arc

I’m a big fan of Marvel’s Nova series. The book itself has been pretty heavily tied in with the event structure of the Marvel Universe, moving from Annihilation through The Initiative and into Annihilation: Conquest. He’s covering the B story of Conquest in his own book, and the 12th issue, which will be arriving next Friday in my DCBS shipment, and it along with Annihilation Conquest #6 (due to ship next week) will be wrapping up that storyline. So what’s next for Nova? GALACTUS. The next three issues of the Nova book will be covering a run-in between Nova, Silver Surfer and Galactus. I saw the covers in Previews, and this is probably the best work Alex Maleev has ever done on a cover. Here’s a taste.

I mean, come on! That’s beautiful! But what I didn’t know until I read an interview with Abnett and Lanning about the arc on Newsarama (find it here) is that these issues will also serve as a Secret Invasion tie-in. Sure, it’s another event tie in for Nova, and there sure have been a lot of them in the past, but this one makes perfect sense. It seems that the Secret Invasion book itself is going to be predominantly taking place on Earth, as the heroes deal with the Skrull threat on their own soil. But we all know that they can’t only be focusing on Earth, right? And what does the Super Skrull and the Kree have to say about all this once Conquest wraps up? It’s nice to see that Marvel is not ignoring the cosmic aspects of the Secret Invasion event, and who better to be involved than the Skrull’s worst enemy and greatest fear, Galactus? It’s perfect. The Newsarama article also has a few interior pen and ink splash pages that look GORGEOUS.

This book has gone straight to the top of my stack for at least the next three months of this arc. It’s a fantastic book, and everyone should be reading it.

That is all.

Secret Invasion: The First 10 Pages!

 

Over at Entertainment Weekly’s website, you can read the first 10 pages of Secret Invasion here, and then click over here to read an interview with Brian Bendis! In my opinion, the pages looks great so far and I can’t wait to get my hands on this!

Captain America: White Announced!

From Newsarama.com:

Captain America: White takes place in 1941,” said Loeb. “It’s going to be one particular mission that defines who the characters were.” Sgt. Fury and the Howling Commandos will also be featured in the series. We’re going to deal with a lot of Steve’s relationship with Nick, and it’s going to echo a lot with what goes on in present day.”

Loeb talked about the framing devices of Daredevil: Yellow, Hulk: Gray and Spider-Man: Blue, and how they’re all characters in the present reflecting on the past. In Captain America: White, Loeb said that “it doesn’t take place in ‘our present,’” so not to contradict anything in the current Captain America, book, and “it’s in a world where Bucky is dead.”

Sale then talked about the art aspect of Captain America: White. “It’s going to be done in ink wash,” he said, like several of the previous Loeb/Sale collaborations. “It’s going to be a combination of Jack Kirby and Jack Davis,” Sale said, “The all-Jack crew.

WOW, could not be more excited about this!

EDIT: Go here to read more about this from Tim Sale himself: Tim Sale Speaks!

HULK Trailer!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUpOhM8Hxx0

So, what do we think?

The Comedian’s Costume

The others are “blah”, but this one is dead-on. Kudos.

EDIT: There’s a ridiculous debate over on VsRealms about these images, if you haven’t go check it out.

New Wanted Trailer!

http://www.myspace.com/trailerpark

New Wanted trailer is up… hmm, this is starting to look pretty cool.

Yes, I know it has almost nothing to do with the comic version and you know what? I don’t care. Get over it.