Category Alternating Current

Cross-talks on individual issues.

Sep 30 2013

Nova 8

Alternating Currents: Nova 8, Drew and Shelby

Today, Drew and Shelby are discussing Nova 8, originally released September 25th, 2013. This issue is part of the Infinity crossover event. Click here for complete Infinity coverage.

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Drew: Teenage superheroes are tricky. Part of what makes them appealing is their adult-like agency, but if you give them too much, they cease to resemble actual teens — writers must maintain a careful balance between escapism and realism. One of the most common tools used by writers to keep their teen heroes grounded is to surround them with other teen superheroes, and maybe even have them fight teen villains. This effectively scales their world back, giving them a comfortable niche between regular, mortal adolescence, and full-on adult superheroics. In Nova 8, writer Zeb Wells starts building that teen cast, giving Sam a stake in the events of Infinity that are fully unique. Continue reading →

Sep 30 2013

FF 12

Alternating Currents: FF 12, Shelby and Drew

Today, Shelby and Drew are discussing FF 12, originally released September 25th, 2013.

Shelby: Destiny takes on a whole new meaning in ComicBookLand. To us regular folk, destiny is the idea that the natural order of the universe has predetermined our future. In comic books, it generally means a version of yourself from the future has arrived who knows what happens next because they’ve already lived it. It makes it a lot harder to argue your future is your own when faced with someone who knows what you’re going to do next, and the consequences of those actions. Unless, of course, you’re in Matt Fraction’s FF; no matter how many intellects from the future drop by, you never actually know what will happen next.

Continue reading →

Sep 30 2013

Justice League of America 7.4: Black Adam

Alternating Currents: Justice League of America 7.4: Black Adam, Drew and Mikyzptlk

Today, Drew and Mikyzptlk are discussing Justice League of America 7.4: Black Adam, originally released September 25th, 2013. This issue is part of the Villain’s Month event. Click here for our Villains Month coverage.

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Oh, you mean…Black Debbie

Whoa whoa whoa whoa, why is she “Black” Debbie?

No, not in a BAAAD way. It’s just to tell them apart because she’s…black!

Stormy and Sparks, “No Names (Black Debbie)”

Drew: A child, orphaned by crime, vows to strike fear in the hearts of criminals. The last survivor of a race of superpowered aliens is raised in small town Kansas. A regular guy is given super-speed when he is struck by lightening and doused with chemicals. Our favorite superheroes have simple, iconic origins, which make them easy to introduce in film or television, and easy to reintroduce when relaunching an entire comics line. That simplicity is a big selling point for a lot of these characters, but what of those whose history is a bit more complicated? Black Adam has always been a dark reflection of Shazam, but exactly how dark has varied widely over the years, and has offered a great deal more interest than its simple villain-turned-antihero scaffold might suggest. Unfortunately, the New 52 steamrolled all of that history, turning Black Adam back into a straightforward villain. With Justice League of America 7.4: Black Adam, writers Geoff Johns and Sterling Gates work to re-complicate Adam’s story — making him more than just “Black Shazam” — but may go for too much, too soon. Continue reading →

Sep 27 2013

Justice League 23.4: Secret Society

secret society 23.4

Today, Mikyzptlk and Patrick are discussing Justice League 23.4: Secret Society, originally released September 25th, 2013. This issue is part of the Villain’s Month event. Click here for our Villains Month coverage.

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Mikyzptlk: Villain’s Month has been letting the creators of DC Comics “unleash” its many baddies across the many corners of the DC Universe. Now, “unleash” can mean many things, and it’s clear that the storytellers at DC are having fun with the format. For the most part, the one-shots have been straight-up origin stories. Kind of like the “Zero Month” for the villains. Other one-shots, while still mainly origins, have tried to give us a peek into the current status of the featured villain now that Earth has been taken over. I wasn’t sure what I was going to get from Secret Society, other than a story about the Secret Society, but what I got wasn’t quite that. Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily, but in the end, this issue leaves me feeling just a tad misdirected.  Continue reading →

Sep 27 2013

Avengers 20

avengers 20 infinityToday, Spencer and Drew are discussing Avengers 20, originally released September 25th, 2013. This issue is part of the Infinity crossover event. Click here for complete Infinity coverage.

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Spencer: Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver; the Avengers have a long history of welcoming reformed villains into their ranks. Ex Nihilo and Abyss are the latest Avengers to take advantage of this, but after serving as the villains of the first storyline of Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers — and after spring boarding the series’ central conflict — their reformation has felt just a little too easy. They basically became Avengers just because Captain Universe said so. I’m sure she knows best (well, kinda sure), but while I had no problem believing that these two were no longer threats to the Earth, I had a much harder time believing that they could reliably serve as Avengers. Now Ex Nihilo and Abyss are faced with their creators, their brothers and sisters…how will they react? Are they heroes, or villains?

Continue reading →

Sep 27 2013

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 26

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Today, Patrick and Ethan are discussing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 26, originally released September 25th, 2013.

Patrick: The Foot Clan is already an army – that’s sort of their whole shtick. The Ninja Turtles are another story all together. They’re a family. Their list of allies is pretty long, but, well – not all of those allies are immediately combat-ready. Lucky for them, The Foot seem hellbent on ridding the city of all other distractions before taking down the three remaining Turtles and their Rat father. What they might not be counting on is just how varied and awesome the Turtles’ friends are. Super scientists? CHECK. Badass brawlers? CHECK. Spies all over the city? CHECK. A potential mutant army, armed to the teeth? CHECK and also CHECK. These teams are moments away from squaring off, and our heroes’ bench is starting to look awesome. Continue reading →

Sep 27 2013

Saga 14

saga 14

Today, Shelby and Drew are discussing Saga 13, originally released September 25th, 2013.

Shelby: One of the big parts of growing up is learning that you can’t always have what you want. As a kid, when your parents tell you that you can’t have something, you pitch a fit in the middle of the Jewel-Osco, but as you grow up you learn to more appropriately deal with disappointment. It’s a process that never stops, because we constantly have things we want taken away from us. Sometimes we have to choose between two things we want, knowing that we’ll always be a little disappointed for the option we didn’t take. Sometimes we have to face the hard truth that we can never again have what was lost, no matter how badly we want it.

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Sep 26 2013

Wonder Woman 23.2: First Born

Alternating Currents: Wonder Woman 23.2: First Born, Drew and ScottToday, Drew and Scott are discussing Wonder Woman 23.2: First Born, originally released September 25th, 2013. This issue is part of the Villain’s Month event. Click here for our Villains Month coverage.

What comes before anything? What have we always said is the most important thing?

Michael Bluth, Arrested Development

Drew: Family. What would we be without them? No, seriously: they’re there from the start, and they have a profound effect on the people we eventually become. For better or for worse, who they are and how they interact with us largely shape who we are and how we act. The same can be said of who they aren’t — perhaps in spite of what we want them to be — which can have just as significant effect on the people we become. As a character, the First Born is far more defined by the absence of his family, but how that manifests is just as subtle and specific as any other family dynamic. Continue reading →

Sep 25 2013

Captain Marvel 15-16

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Today, Patrick and Drew are discussing Captain Marvel 15-16, originally released August 21st and September 18th, 2013, respectively. These issue is part of the Infinity crossover event. Click here for complete Infinity coverage.

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Options >> Preferences >> Fog of War: Off

Warcraft II, Traditional.

Patrick: I used to play a lot of Warcraft II, and by most accounts, I was very good at the game. I played both the campaigns, all the expansion packs, even played on-line before that was really a thing. But no matter how much I wanted to challenge myself, I would always, always, always go in to Options, Preferences, and then turn “Fog of War” off. The Fog of War feature would gray-out areas on the map that you had explored but in which you didn’t have any units — you could still make out the terrain but enemy activity would be totally invisible to you. I always wanted to see what was going on. Besides, the metaphorical fog of war would set in anyway — with so much activity it became impossible to focus on all of it. Ironically, if I had just let Fog of War stay on, I could have zeroed in on my own army and really understood what they needed to become stronger. Infinity has been playing the game with Fog of War off, and the spectacle of seeing the whole board lit up at once has been astounding, but the Captain Marvel tie-ins relish the Fog, finding focus and purpose and a very specific time and a very specific place. Continue reading →

Sep 25 2013

Swamp Thing 23.1: Arcane

arcane 23.1Today, Scott and Mikyzptlk are discussing Swamp Thing 23.1: Arcane, originally released September 18th, 2013. This issue is part of the Villain’s Month event. Click here for our Villains Month coverage.

Scott: Some villainous behavior is justifiable — if you get all sides of the story, you can at least understand why someone would commit such seemingly evil acts. This is a big part of Villains Month, understanding why villains act the way they act. In fact, many of these issues have taken advantage of a little trick: when you tell a story from a character’s perspective, that character immediately becomes more sympathetic to the reader, even if that character is not such a great person. But there are some villains whose actions cannot be justified, who have an inherent evil to their ways that a normal person just can’t understand. Anton Arcane is one of these villains.
Continue reading →