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.

Mar 11 2015

Weekly Round-Up: Comics Released 3/4/15

Look, there are a lot of comics out there. Too many. We can never hope to have in-depth conversations about all of them. But, we sure can round up some of the more noteworthy titles we didn’t get around to from the week. Today, Drew, Patrick, and Spencer discuss Saga 26, Universe 2, The Woods 11, Batman Eternal 48, Operation S.I.N. 3, Spider-Woman 5, Guardians Team-Up 1, Rocket Raccoon 9, and X-Men 25.

Well, I’ve been afraid of changin’
‘Cause I built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Children get older
I’m getting older, too

Stevie Nicks, “Landslide”

Drew: In 1972, Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould coined the phrase “punctuated equilibria” to describe systems where short burst of change punctuate otherwise stable conditions. They were working in evolutionary biology, but they might as well have been referring to highly episodic narratives like sitcoms and comics. Or, at least as long as there aren’t kids involved. I’m not sure exactly what was the first series to acknowledge that its child stars were aging in real-time (though that would be a fun research project), but everything from For Better or For Worse to Full House benefitted from that precedent. In those situations, the series must evolve along with those characters as they mature, gain independence, and grow into (and out of) age-appropriate storylines. Saga has long been driven by “big” ideas — family, love, war — but as issue 26 reveals, the specific relationship to those ideas will change along with its child characters. Continue reading →

Mar 11 2015

Nameless 2

Today, Drew and Michael are discussing Nameless 2, originally released March 4th, 2015.

Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL 9000: I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that

2001: A Space Odyssey

Drew: Arthur Miller called betrayal “the only truth that sticks,” and it’s hard to deny the visceral power of a betrayal. Betrayals are at the center of every great tragedy, from Euripides to Shakespeare, and are still very much a driver of drama today. In it’s simplest form, a betrayal is simply someone acting differently than we expect, but “acting differently” can have dire consequences in a life-or-death situation. That’s what makes HAL 9000’s turn in 2001 so compelling — a computer with a sense of self-preservation is shocking enough, but because the story is set in outer space, there’s a lot more at stake than when your laptop decides to auto-update. Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham’s Nameless 2 clearly draws a lot of inspiration from that betrayal, as the crew remains unaware of a mutiny brewing back at the base. Continue reading →

Mar 10 2015

Avengers 42

Today, Patrick and Drew are discussing Avengers 42, originally released March 4th, 2015.

“We don’t view our history as being broken or something that we need to fix. If anything we think we are building upon that history and we are taking the best and biggest pieces of it and seeing how easily they coexist with one another. We don’t expect all our moves to make everyone happy, but we think it will make for a really fascinating read through ‘Secret Wars’ and beyond.”

-Axel Alonso, Secret Wars Press Event

Patrick: The grander hyper-textual implications of Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers and New Avengers have been apparent for some time, but the importance and meaning of the meta-textual reasons have been something of a mystery. By Alonso’s own admission, Marvel doesn’t really need a Crisis-style reboot, but Secret Wars and Battleworld seem to bear all the multiversal signatures of one of DC Comics’ rebooting events. The problem with Crises (and it’s a problem that I think both DC and Marvel are starting to experience) is that the real world drama trumps the in-narrative drama. We’re more interested in answering the question “What’s going to happen to Batman?” than “What’s going to happen to Batman?” — and that means that we are necessarily less interested in the stories themselves than the companies telling those stories. Avengers 42 tries to reclaim some of that drama for itself, representing what appear to be conflicting editorial voices as characters within the Marvel Universe. Continue reading →

Mar 10 2015

Grayson 8

Today, Drew and Patrick are discussing Grayson 8, originally released March 4th, 2015.

Drew: I like to read into titles. We tend to boil down the difference between Superman and Action Comics to the creative teams involved, but I think the focus of every story is informed by its title. Luke Skywalker may feature prominently in Star Wars, but not in quite the same way he would if the movies were titled Luke Skywalker. In that same vein, when a story’s title is the protagonist’s name, we understand that story to necessarily be about that character. Oliver Twist may deal with poverty and exploitation, but the story is ultimately about a single orphan. In the month-to-month grind of comics, it’s sometimes easy to forget that Spider-Man is actually about Spider-Man (and not the criminal-of-the-month), but the best writers manage to keep the focus on the heroes, even as they’re put up against an endless lineup of threats. Tom King and Tim Seeley have never lost sight of Dick as the center of Grayson, but issue 8 reasserts that focus so strongly, we never feel lost — even as they yank the rug out from under us. Continue reading →

Mar 6 2015

Swamp Thing 40

Today, Drew and Spencer are discussing Swamp Thing 40, originally released March 4th, 2015.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

William Shakespeare, The Tempest

Drew: I’ve always been frustrated by endings. Not necessarily because I want the story to continue, and not even because they’re done poorly (though they often are), but because the notion of “ending” draws attention to the limits of the narrative precisely when we want to savor every moment of the story itself. “Life goes on,” so the saying goes, but stories don’t — at least, not on the page. It’s a testament to this awkwardness that even William Shakespeare felt the need to lampshade it, defiantly pointing at the limits of the narrative itself in the hopes of elevating it beyond them. Charles Soule does something very similar in his Swamp Thing 40, turning this final issue into a postmodern commentary on endings in general. Continue reading →

Mar 4 2015

Weekly Round-Up: Comics Released 2/25/15

Look, there are a lot of comics out there. Too many. We can never hope to have in-depth conversations about all of them. But, we sure can round up some of the more noteworthy titles we didn’t get around to from the week. Today, Patrick, Spencer and Drew discuss Darth Vader 2, Spider-Man 2099 9, The Amazing Spider-Man 15, Deadpool 42, Secret Avengers 13, S.H.I.E.L.D. 3, All New X-Men 38, Effigy 2, The Wicked and the Divine 8, Orphan Black 1, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutanimals 1, Batman Eternal 47, Secret Origins 10, and The Flash 39.

“I’d rather be a hammer than a nail.”

-“El Condor Pasa,” Simon & Garfunkel

Patrick: Part of being a good soldier is accepting the responsibilities that are thrust upon you without questioning. I was hanging out with our own Shelby Peterson this weekend, and she was talking about the ship that her father served on in the Navy. Evidently, they did all kinds of drills as through they had nuclear weapons on board their aircraft carrier, but none of the sailors ever actually knew whether or not they were armed with nukes or not. That information simply belonged to men at higher pay grades, and it was basically their jobs not to ask questions. In Darth Vader 2, general Tagge makes the assertion over and over again that Vader is nothing more than a tool or a weapon, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Continue reading →

Mar 4 2015

Suiciders 1

Today, Patrick and Drew are discussing Suiciders 1, originally released February 25th, 2015.

Patrick: I usually resist pulling in creator’s comments about their own material when discussing a comic book — especially a first issue. But I’ve heard Lee Bermejo pitch this series twice now, once at NYCC in 2013 and again at C2E2 in 2014. Both times, he lead with a joke about the premise: “It takes place in post-apocalyptic Los Angeles… which is to say: Los Angeles.” It’s a good line, and far be it for me call someone out for re-using a clever turn of phrase. What interests me about his repeated use of the joke is that there’s really no point in any post-apocalyptic storytelling unless it can tell us about life in the pre-apocalypse. In a manner reflecting his detail-heavy drawing style, Bermejo writes about many specific societal ills that plagues LA, blowing everything out to grotesque proportions. The remarkable thing — and the thing that makes me most uneasy as a reader and resident of the City of Angels — is just how recognizable it all is. Continue reading →

Mar 3 2015

Daredevil 13

Today, Drew and Patrick are discussing Daredevil 13, originally released February 25th, 2015.

Illusion, Michael. A trick is something a whore does for money…or candy!

George Oscar Bluth, Arrested Development

Drew: While I understand the distinction magicians make between “trick” and “illusion” — the former is about the techniques a magician uses, the latter is about the effect those collected techniques have on the audience — I think we’re perfectly justified in calling them “tricks.” The “illusion” — that a rabbit appears out of thin air, that a lady survives being sawed in half, that a card jumps to the top of the deck — dares us to believe that “magic is real,” but the actual techniques used to pull it off tend to be much more clever, if simpler, explanations. For me, an understanding of those tricks leaves me much more impressed about the illusion — knowing just how subtly they palmed the coin, or how convincing their false shuffle allows me to appreciate the actual craft that goes into what they’re doing. Indeed, any “magic” in the illusion lies in the skills of the magician, making knowing the trick more magical for me. Which I suppose is my way of asking forgiveness in focusing on the “tricks” of Daredevil 13, which pulls off an illusion so compelling, it’s hard to deny its magic. Continue reading →

Mar 2 2015

Batman 39

Today, Michael and Drew are discussing Batman 39, originally released February 25th, 2015.

Michael: When it comes to Batman, Joker stories are pretty much hit or miss. We’ve seen great successes and failures in film, animation, television (I’m looking at you Gotham), and of course, comic books. He’s an iconic character that has been built up to mythic proportions equal to (or greater) than Batman’s. Counting the Joker’s brief appearance in his Detective Comics run, this is Scott Snyder’s third stab at the Clown Prince of Crime. To make a truly remarkable Joker story, the approach to the Joker and how the story is told have to be changed. Continue reading →

Feb 27 2015

The Black Hood 1

Today, Drew and Patrick are discussing The Black Hood 1, originally released February 25th, 2015.

Drew: Superhero comics are a trope-filled medium. That’s doubly true of origin stories, which need to explain what would drive a normal person to dress up to fight crime. It turns out, there aren’t a whole lot of explanations out there. Was their family murdered in front of them? Were they the victim of some kind of science experiment gone wrong? Have they inherited some kind of mythical power? Every variation has been done, but so few have been done well. Indeed, the drive to get to the actual superheroics tends to leave origins rushed and expository — not the best recipe for a great story. The Black Hood 1 manages to avoid the tropes and the gratuitous exposition — while still taking its lead from regular guy to masked vigilante — trading our expectations in for some good old fashioned mystery. Continue reading →

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