NEWSARAMA - GREG RUCKA TALKS "SACRIFICE"

A couple of weeks ago, I was musing here whether or not to buy DC's upcoming Infinite Crisis. Thanks to DC and Greg Rucka for turning OMAC Project (a miniseries that leads into Infinite Crisis) from a six-issue series into a ten-issue series by putting a key, indispensible plot point in a story running in three issues of Superman and one issue of Wonder Woman, they've pretty much made up my mind: I'm not buying it. At least not as a serialized story. I'll buy it once it's collected, but I'm not going to start buying what is supposed to be a seven-issue series, only to discover halfway through that it only makes sense if I also buy however many additional issues of series I wouldn't ordinarily buy.

That's the thing about these big crossover miniseries and having the regular comics tie into them: you should get a greater sense of the big picture, and enhanced enjoyment, if you buy all the tie-in stories. But if you're obligated to buy them, because otherwise the core story won't make any sense, then that's just a marketing ploy. And I'm not interested in buying even a single issue of a coming I'm not currently getting regularly, just to get the "full story" of a miniseries I'm buying. Particularly if I'm not sure if the miniseries will be all that good in the first place.

The thing is, as much as Greg Rucka wants to apologize in this article about how it wasn't intentional, that they didn't want to obgligate anyone to buy any issues beyond the OMAC miniseries, that's crap. The crossover story, where a key plot point occurs, involves four other comics and two other writers. And that takes a certain amount of planning and coordination. It doesn't just happen. And if it can happen in this case, it can happen in another. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... So, screw 'em. They've lost me as a customer, at least on Infinite Crisis as a monthly series. And, except for the Darwyn Cooke Spirit series, they'll have an uphill battle getting me on board for any new ongoing DC superhero comics, too.

"Terrible written fright film that has possible the worse performance of the last few years by Keanu Reeves, who literally weighs the film down with his bad acting and bad presence in this film. I would love to meet the casting agent with though that Keanu Reeves of all people would have been great in this movie. The dialog is so bad in this film that you really are taken a back at the sheer stupidity of it and the story does not hold any weight as for as common sense goes."

 

And that's why customer reviews on Amazon.com are beneath my notice.

So, comics of interest to me from... last week? Week before? Now that they're not coming on the Saturday after they're released, it's harder for me to remember. Anyway...

All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder from DC Comics:
Drawn by ultra-hot artist Jim Lee and written by the man who made Batman cool again in the 80s, Frank Miller, this is a book that had some pretty heavy expectations weighing it down. (The idea behind the All-Star name is that DC gets big name creators to do stories featuring their top characters, and they just have to do the best Superman or Batman story they want, without having to fit it into current continuity or anything. Later this year, hopefully, we'll see All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, who did WE 3, my favorite comic of this year. Or maybe last year. So hard to remember.) And some of the comments I've seen online, with the exception of the typically-reliable Shiny Shelf, don't feel like it lives up to those expectations. Because it's just getting so-so reviews.

Whatever. I really liked it, for the most part. It's a good, solid retelling of Robin's origin, told in a much more clear and interesting and memorable fashion than the current Batman comics seem to be capable of. If the writing doesn't seem to be particularly groundbreakiing, it's because Frank Miller is writing it using the same voice he uses for all his Batman comics, and that's a voice that everyone else has been ripping off since The Dark Knight Returns premiered back in 1986 or whenever. But he still does it better than anyone.

Still, there's no excuse for the full-page shot of Bruce Wayne's love interest Vicki Vale to be hanging around her apartment in a lacy bra, panties, and high-heeled shoes. It's gratuitous, silly-looking, and it happens so early on, it's hard for the book to recover from it. Still, one misstep isn't enough to ruin the comic for me. (It's not like anyone is possessed by a yellow fear alien or anything.) So it lived up to my expectations just fine.

Gun Candy #1 from Image Comics:
Okay, the lead story about an 18-year-old assassin dressed as a cute schoolgirl is probably just as gratuituous as the cheesecake shots in All-Star Batman and Robin, but it fits in with the style of the rest of the comic, so I'm okay with it. Lots of cute chicks, guns, and explosions, it's completely a male fantasy comic, and I'm okay with that. (And nice art by Brian Stelfreeze.) The second half of this flip-book features a story by Chuck Dixon, Sanford Greene, and personal fave Jason Pearson, another installment in The Ride, the anthology series that introduced the characters in Gun Candy. The series features a bunch of different stories, all based around a '68 Camero, and this story brings the car and some kids to New Orleans for Mardi Gras... and some unexpected mayhem. Again, nice art, an okay adventure story, and it doesn't work too hard trying to be any more than it needs to be.

Zombie King #0 from Image Comics.
Featuring an opening sequence with a zombie fucking a cow up the ass. Pretty much every review I've seen online fixates on that point, as if somehow that cheapens a medium where the yellow fear alien story is due to be reprinted in hardcover. Zombie cow-lovin aside, I thought the book was hilarious. Looking foward to more from the always-reliable Frank Cho, creator of the comic strip Liberty Meadows.

And that's all I feel like writing today. I haven't read most of the smart comics yet, anyway, except for Smoke #2 from IDW. Every bit as good as the first issue. A nifty political action-thriller story, with fantastic art.

Later.

Haven't written anything the past few days, because I feel like if I'm going to talk about anything, it ought to be about the bombings in London and Egypt, and the police shooting the wrong suspect in London, and Karl Rove, and Bush's Supreme Court nominee, and walking about that stuff is just going to get me upset and depressed and angry.

So I'm just going to write about comic books after all. But tomorrow, probably. Because I want to get dinner now.