Category Drew Baumgartner

Drew Baumgartner, Co-Editor-In-Chief
drew@retcon-punch.com

Location: Milwaukee

History With Comics: Drew grew up with Superman pajamas. His best days were when he never had to change out of them. He fell in love with Batman the Animated Series when he was 5. He had never read a comic in his life, but started reading Batman trades when he was in high school. He continued to pick up trades and one-offs throughout the 00’s, but never got into the monthly swing. After almost a decade of being an outsider looking in, Drew seized upon DC’s relaunch to start picking up monthlies.

Nov 19 2012

Superboy 14

Today, Drew and Mikyzptlk are discussing Superboy 14, originally released November 14, 2012. This issue is part of the H’el on Earth crossover event. Click here for complete H’el on Earth coverage.

Drew: We read a lot of comics at Retcon Punch. One of the best thing about reading so many comics (besides, you know, reading so many comics) is that when we do pick up the odd issue of a title we’re not reading — usually for a crossover event — we still kind of know what’s going on. We may not get every reference to what has happened before, but because we’ve seen glimpses of, say, the Red Lanterns in Green Lantern: New Guardians, we kind of know what’s going on with them when we pick up Red Lanterns 13. This works well enough for stories set in Gotham or Oa, where our coverage of related titles is relatively robust, but it breaks down if crossovers are happening in our blind spots. The Superman and Young Justice groups happen to both be blind-spots for me, which makes jumping into a title like Superboy at issue 14 a particularly disorienting experience. Continue reading →

Nov 16 2012

Batman 14

Alternating Currents: Batman 14, Drew and Michael DFToday, Drew and Michael are discussing Batman 14 originally released November 14th, 2012. This issue is part of the Death of the Family crossover event. Click here for complete DotF coverage.

Drew: Batman and the Joker are timeless. That is, they shift and adjust to the times. It gives them longevity, but it also makes pinning down the true nature of their conflict difficult. The Joker has been everything from a harmless prankster to a genociding psychopath, and Batman can range from avenging creature of the night to kid-friendly crime-stopper, so the fundamental nature of their relationship must lie deeper than superficial proclamations about color scheme, or even “seriousness.” The Dark Knight tilted at the deeper levels, but left them as overtones to the physical conflict. In Batman 14, Scott Snyder takes that subtext and makes it the text, delivering a surprising rumination on the nature of both detective stories and humor in general. Continue reading →

Nov 15 2012

Batman and Robin 14

Today, Patrick and Drew are discussing Batman and Robin 14, originally released November 14th, 2012. This issue is part of the Death of the Family crossover event. Click here for complete DotF coverage.

Patrick: A few summers ago, Drew and I went to a screening of Rise of the Dead at the Winnetka theatre in the suburbs of Chicago. The event was hosted by Dan Tefler — a comedian who had stumbled upon the movie earlier that year with his wife. Tefler invited the film’s director, Will Wedig, and the AV Club’s Keith Phipps to talk about the extreme disappointment that Tefler experienced on his first viewing. Rise of the Dead sounds like it’s going to be a zombie movie, right? It’s advertised that way, and it has all the trappings thereof. But it’s really about the ghost of an aborted baby possessing bitches. When pressed, Wedig simply offered that he hadn’t set out to make a zombie movie, and Tefler very graciously owned his disappointment. Last month, Batman and Robin started to show us a sorta-zombie story, and I’m going to place the onus of my disappointment in the hands of the books creators.

Continue reading →

Nov 14 2012

Chat Cave: Late Additions to Before Watchmen

The Retcon Punchers weren’t exactly thrilled when Before Watchmen was announced. But then, against all odds, the experiment proved largely successful. The original line-up contained many titles that went well beyond justifying their existence — a few even transcend their inherently exploitative premise. Last week saw the release of Moloch #1 and the announcement of a Dollar Bill one-off. What does this mean for the legacy of Before Watchmen? Any additional titles you want to see? What if there’s a chance to get additional issues of existing titles? Welcome to the Chat Cave. Continue reading →

Nov 12 2012

Dial H 6

Today, Patrick and Taylor are discussing Dial H 6, originally released November 7th, 2012.

Patrick: Fall of 2010, I went to a movie at Chicago’s Music Box theatre with Taylor and Shelby. The movie was Gaspar Noe’s Enter the Void. If you haven’t seen Enter the Void, the reason we were attracted to it was because the log-line is aggressively surreal: a single-shot, first-person perspective trip through life and death of an American expatriot in the sleazy underbelly of Tokyo. Sounds promising — and super weird — right? All three of us tolerated the visual and audio assault for the film’s 3-hour run time, but it wasn’t until we stepped out of the theatre and Taylor said “So, that sucked, right?” that I was able to process what the hell just happened. The movie is so relentlessly strange, that I couldn’t even respond to it as I was experiencing it. That’s frequently how I feel about Dial H: especially given the conclusion of the previous story arc – I just couldn’t get a handle on it. But now, China Mieville is kind enough to show us the cold light of day, and seeing them plainly, these characters and this world is boundless and exciting, with a healthy sense of humor about its own absurdities.

Continue reading →

Nov 9 2012

Green Lantern 14

Alternating Currents: Green Lantern 14, Mikyzptlk and DrewToday, Mikyzptlk and Drew are discussing Green Lantern 14, originally released November 7th, 2012. This issue is part of the Rise of the Third Army crossover event. Click here for complete Third Army coverage. 

Mikyzptlk: Simon Baz is so fucking real I JUST LOVE IT. He just seems like such an authentic character to me. I barely just met the guy but I’m already convinced of his motivations and his heroism. Much of this has to do with how well Baz’s background has been set up by the series writer, Geoff Johns.

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Nov 8 2012

Animal Man 14

Alternating Currents: Animal Man 14, Drew and Scott ROTToday, Drew and Scott are discussing Animal Man 14, originally released November 7th, 2012. This issue is part of the RotWorld crossover event. Click here for complete RotWorld coverage. 

Drew: Last month, I couldn’t get over how openly writer Jeff Lemire was playing to our expectations in Animal Man. More specifically, he was setting up expectations with the express purpose of implying he was going to meet them at face value — all with an unblinking swagger that was kind of thrilling. Animal Man 14 finds him switching gears to the kinds of thwarted expectations we expect from (good) superhero comics, but that change actually makes the surprises even more surprising. Continue reading →

Nov 6 2012

Action Comics Annual

Today, Shelby and Drew are discussing the Action Comics Annual, originally released October 31st, 2012.

Shelby: I was talking with a friend recently about Superman. He had listed Supes as one of his favorite superheroes; I’ve made my opinion of the Man of Steel pretty well-known ’round these parts, so we don’t have to go into great detail. I made the point that I think Superman is boring because he’s too powerful, that there’s no believable source of conflict in a Superman story. He made the very good point that boring Superman stories are the product of lazy story-telling, not a flat character. A good Superman story should not be about making up some even more powerful bad guy to threaten Superman physically. A good Superman story is about a man dealing with the strengths he has and finding a way to use them well: striking a balance between Clark Kent and Kal-El. Unfortunately, the Action Comics Annual doesn’t give us any of that, focusing instead on a cookie-cutter Superman story that starts with kryptonite and ends with a feeble attempt to explain what a hero truly is.

Continue reading →

Nov 6 2012

Daredevil 18-19

Alternating Currents: Daredevil 18-19, Drew and PatrickToday, Drew and Patrick are discussing Daredevil 18-19, originally released September 19th, and October 17th, 2012.

Drew: You know that feeling where, for the life of you, you can’t remember where you put something you just had? When I was a kid, it was always my shoes; nine times out of ten they were right by the door, but every once in a while, they weren’t, prompting a lot of frustrated running around as we were rushing out the door to school. If it wasn’t your shoes, maybe it was your keys or your glasses — the point is, it’s a universal sensation, prompting the equally universal (though usually facetious) response of “Am I going crazy?” This is essentially the problem Matt Murdoch finds himself in as of Daredevil 18-19, only instead of the TV remote, he’s misplaced his father’s remains, his estranged wife, and his own body. Understandably, this has him — and those around him — considering his own insanity a bit more seriously.

Continue reading →