Monthly Archives: August 2013

Aug 9 2013

Swamp Thing 23

swamp thing 23

Today, Patrick and Scott are discussing Swamp Thing 23, originally released August 7th, 2013.

Patrick: Alcohol is weird. It’s dulls our senses, it shortens our lives, it gets us into trouble – and yet we engage with it time and time (and time) again. Why? Because it’s fun. Because when we dial back our inhibitions a little bit, we find the casual courage to do something we’ve always wanted to do. All of that freedom is great, until you cross that line. YOU KNOW THE ONE I MEAN. The moment in the evening where you don’t make decisions with your complete mental faculty. I’ve always had people tell me that drinking brings out who someone really is, but that’s faulty. If anything, booze dulls the prowess of the super-ego, allowing the baser urges of ego and id to take priority. But the id isn’t a person’s “true self” – the psyche isn’t a list of three psychic apparatuses, but the relationship between the three. What you are can more accurately be defined by how you deny the more destructive urges deep in your Freudian well. That’s the kind of thematic material Charles Soule mines in his story about a magician, a plant-man and a booze-tree. Continue reading →

Aug 8 2013

Avengers 17

Alternating Currents: Avengers 17, Drew and Spencer

Today, Drew and Spencer are discussing Avengers 17, originally released August 7th, 2013. 

“Bigger?” Look, it’s not for one of the new guys to say, but — feeling kinda crowded around here already.

Cannonball

Drew: In our discussion of Avengers 16, I complained that the bloated story and cast was collapsing under its own weight — far from making me excited, the sheer scope of the story was preventing me from fully engaging with any subset of elements. It’s a feat that writer Jonathan Hickman can keep all of these plates spinning (and these are only half of the plates he’s writing in this event), but that triumph of multi-tasking unfortunately precludes any real emotional connections. That is to say, the story here is already too big, but as this issue concludes into Infinity proper, we pile on even more Avengers, and widen the scope even further. And there are still only, like, two showers. Continue reading →

Aug 8 2013

Trillium 1

trillium 1

Today, Shelby and Patrick are discussing Trillium 1, originally released August 7th, 2013.

Shelby: I would read anything Jeff Lemire wrote for good reason. He made me love a C-list hero I had never heard of before, and rescued not one but TWO books, taking them from bad to two of my favorite titles. Underwater Welder made me cry on the train on my way to work, it’s so beautiful. It’s no surprise, then, that I have been eagerly awaiting Trillium since it was first announced last October. I couldn’t possibly imagine how a botanist from 1800 years in the future and a World War I vet in the 20’s could possibly encompass “the last love story ever told,” but since Lemire was at the helm I didn’t bother sweating the details; I just assumed it would work and be incredible. One issue in, and I am already pretty sure I was right to believe.

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Aug 7 2013

Uncanny X-Men 9

Alternating Currents: Uncanny X-Men 9, Drew and Patrick

Today, Drew and Patrick are discussing Uncanny X-Men 9, originally released July 31st, 2013.

Drew: Earlier this year, I became addicted to Radiolab, NPR’s quirky show about science and the philosophical repercussions of that science. The show is fascinating, but is also maddeningly self-referential — the hosts will often refer to massive concepts and conclusions from episodes that aired years before. The one that has come up the most often is the idea that your sense of self — the thing that makes you you — is basically the story you tell yourself about your life. That is to say, it isn’t how you look, how you spend your time, what you value, or even the company you keep — what you are is the narrative you believe about your life. Uncanny X-Men 9 finds Brian Michael Bendis examining every single one of his theories, as our new mutants (and a few old ones) struggle to get a handle on their own identities. Continue reading →

Aug 7 2013

Animal Man Annual 2

animal man annual 2Today, Scott and Shelby are discussing Animal Man Annual 2, originally released July 31st, 2013. 

Scott: Nothing is more universal than a parent wanting to provide a safe place for his or her children. And I’m sure nothing is more frightening to a parent than the prospect of failing to provide that safety. For many species- let’s say, spiders, for example- that safety comes at a premium, and many who are born fail to make it to adulthood. That fear has become a reality for Buddy Baker, as he has seen his son Cliff die and been forced to wonder how he could have better protected his child. Animal Man Annual 2 thrusts Buddy’s grieving to the forefront, as writer Jeff Lemire explores a particularly touching and incredibly frightening experience Buddy and Cliff once shared.

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Aug 7 2013

X-Men 3

x-men 3

Today, Shelby and Spencer are discussing X-Men 3, originally released July 31st, 2013.

Shelby: I hate a story that drags on too long. As a creator, it’s important to be able to edit yourself; you have to know where you want a story to go and be able to recognize when it gets there. At the same time, it’s just as frustrating as a reader when the story feels rushed. If I’ve settled in to savor a story as it unfolds, a sudden, “…andthenthegoodguyswinordidtheytheend,” is incredibly unsatisfying. A full-stop, wrap-it-up conclusion to a story arc just leaves me feeling confused, like maybe I missed an issue or something. As excited as I have been for Brian Wood’s X-Men, the end of the first arc has me feeling just that: confused and unsatisfied.
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Aug 6 2013

FF 10

ff 10Today, Patrick and Drew are discussing FF 10, originally released July 31st, 2013.

“I’ve written myself into my own script.”

“That’s kinda weird, huh?”

“It’s self-indulgent! It’s narcissistic! It’s solipsistic! It’s pathetic! I’m pathetic and I’m fat and pathetic!”

Nick Cage as Charlie and Donald Kaufman, Adaptation

Patrick: Adaptation is the best narrative I’ve ever encountered that directly confronts the challenges of portraying beauty abstractly. The screenplay works incredibly hard to achieve this, constantly doubling down on both its own cleverness and its disdain for said cleverness. Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman does this my making himself a character in his own movie about adapting the book he’s been hired to adapt. If that sentence seemed to loop back on itself — and consequently, not make any sense — that’s because the film really needs to be experienced to be understood. Matt Fraction inserts himself, artist Mike Allred and editor Tom Brevoort into this issue of FF, but the lessons he offers have more to do with history than with expression. Plus, he makes himself say “ginchy,” like he’s Velma from Scooby-Doo, so you know it’s a home run.

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Aug 6 2013

The Flash Annual 2

flash annual 2Today, Spencer and Mikyzptlk are discussing the Flash Annual 2, originally released July 31st, 2013.

Spencer: Way back at the beginning of the New 52 initiative, Justice League turned the clock back five years to show us how DC’s most iconic heroes first met. Yet, even at this early stage, two of these heroes had already met and formed one of DC’s most enduring friendships: The Flash and the Green Lantern. Now, nearly two years later, The Flash Annual 2 has arrived to finally show us their momentous first team-up. It may not be a necessary story or even the most original one, but thanks to Barry Allen and Hal Jordan’s infectiously fun relationship, it’s well worth reading.

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Aug 6 2013

Daredevil 29

daredevil 29

Today, Patrick and Ethan are discussing Daredevil 29, originally released July 31st, 2013. 

Patrick: White supremacists are the worst. Don’t try arguing otherwise, ETHAN! They’re represented here by the Sons of the Serpent, a group that tempers their problematic world-view with some good old fashioned supervillainy. This way they feel a little more at home in the Marvel Universe. Just like you can’t have too many straight-up gangsters in Batman before one of them starts to affect a Penguin’s quack or whatever. But there’s one detail about this group that I can’t decide whether in lends credence to their real-worldness or their comic-bookiness: they have infiltrated government organizations at high levels of authority. Hey, either way: Daredevil’s going to have to kick ’em in the face. Continue reading →

Aug 5 2013

Trinity of Sin: Pandora 2

pandora 2 trinityToday, Taylor and Mikyzptlk are discussing Trinity of Sin: Pandora 2 originally released July 31st, 2013. This issue is part of the Trinity War crossover event. Click here for our complete Trinity War coverage.

trinity war divTaylor: We like to think of our world as being made up of opposites. There is always a yin to a yang, there is always a cat to a dog. It’s a convenient way of looking at the world and it helps us make sense of a lot of what we see in our everyday lives. But as we grow older we come to realize that maybe the world isn’t so black and white. Maybe there isn’t an absolute good and maybe there isn’t an absolute evil. Despite this, we tend to think of comic book characters as falling in either the spectrum of evil or good. However, when Superman, supposedly a hero of pure heart, opened Pandora’s Box we realized that not even the best of our heroes is totally without a certain darkness in his heart. But if we flip the tables, is it possible we’ll find a super villain who is totally evil of heart? Pandora wants to find out and in the second issue of her stand alone series, we see that the Trinity War is becoming even more complicated than we thought.

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