Category Michael Capristo

Jan 11 2013

Swamp Thing 16

swamp thing 16 ROT

Today, Shelby and Michael are discussing Swamp Thing 16, originally released January 9th, 2013. This issue is part of the RotWorld crossover event. Click here for complete RotWorld coverage. 

Shelby: Enough “Poor Alec.” Last month, we talked about Alec’s lonely road and his single shining star, Abby. Well, that’s all over! He’s got the resources of Batman in the hands of Barbara Gordon, one of the smartest people in the DCU. He can feel his lady love leading him on, and now that he’s got the backup he needs, he’s going to put an end to this Rot shit once and for all! It’s Swamp Thing’s rallying call! He’s gonna kick some ass in the greenest way imagined! No more pity, it’s time for action! Just as we start to get really pumped, though, Scott Snyder reminds us that it might actually be too late after all.

Continue reading →

Dec 17 2012

Before Watchmen – Dr. Manhattan 3

Alternating Currents: Before Watchmen - Dr. Manhattan 3, Michael and DrewToday, Michael and Drew are discussing Dr. Manhattan 3, originally released December 12th, 2012. Dr. Manhattan is part of DC’s Before Watchmen prequel series. Click here for complete Before Watchmen coverage (including release dates).

Michael: One of the themes of almost any time travel story is exponential chaos. Messing with the space time continuum can get out of control fast. The time-travel narrative can get similarly disordered as alternate worlds open and paradoxes proliferate. When the protagonist can exist in and explore these permutations, like Dr. Manhattan, drama gets complicated and the context needed to recognize a satisfactory ending gets fuzzy.  In this issue, “Ego Sum”, J. Michael Straczynski and Adam Hughes try to gracefully execute a clunky, inelegant story solution to the reckless splitting of worlds that results in a nuclear holocaust. Continue reading →

Dec 14 2012

Batman and Robin 15

batman and robin 15 DoF

Today, Shelby and Michael are discussing Batman and Robin 15, originally released December 12th, 2012. This issue is part of the Death of the Family crossover event. Click here for complete DotF coverage.

Shelby: I have some friends who have a young daughter who has just reached the age of willfully not listening. The other day she wanted to use some scissors, which she never has before. Her mom told her not to, but she just didn’t listen. It’s ok, she didn’t get hurt at all; the point of the story is that her mom was looking out for her, trying to keep her safe, and despite that she wouldn’t listen to her. Even when it’s for their own good, once kids think they know better than their folks, there is no telling them otherwise; they only way they’ll learn is by being wrong. A lot of times, being wrong means getting hurt, and Damian is definitely about to learn a lesson about being wrong.

Continue reading →

Dec 10 2012

Before Watchmen – Comedian 4

Alternating Currents: Comedian 4, Michael and Drew B4WToday, Drew and Michael are discussing Comedian 4, originally released December 5th, 2012. Comedian is part of DC’s Before Watchmen prequel series. Click here for complete Before Watchmen coverage (including release dates).

Drew: Comedian 4 begins with the opening lyric from Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sounds of Silence.” This isn’t in itself remarkable — Watchmen itself drew many of its chapter titles from lyrics, and many entries in Before Watchmen have prominently featured lyrics in a similar way. What is unusual about it is that it is immediately followed by a lyric from The Who’s “I Can See for Miles,” with the excerpted lyrics forming a brief thesis on Eddie Blake’s nihilism: “Hello darkness…Here’s the surprise. Come to talk with you again. I can see for miles…Miles and miles and miles and miles…” 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 9 2012

Swamp Thing 14

Today, Michael and Shelby are discussing Swamp Thing 14, originally released November 7th, 2012. This issue is part of the RotWorld crossover event. Click here for complete RotWorld coverage. 

Michael: Poor Alec. First he and Buddy lose an entire year of fighting — and hence, the fight itself — but Alec must forge ahead, beset by mistrust from allies, misinformation, and an intuition that fails him more often than not. He doesn’t quite grasp his powers, he can’t be sure what the Parliament of Trees really knows, and a justifiably cocky Arcane has fortified himself. The only consistent truth for Alec is Abigail’s essential good and his powerful sense that she’s still alive — and even that is in jeopardy. Continue reading →

Nov 1 2012

Superman: Earth One 2

Today, Patrick and Michael are discussing the Superman: Earth One 2, originally released October 31st, 2012.

Patrick: You remember that scene in Mallrats where they’re talking about how Clark has sex? I believe the term “Kryptonite condom” was applied rather liberally to that sequence. It’s a funny conversation, and certainly sparks one of those “oh yeah, how does Superman have sex?” questions. So when J. Michael Straczynski explores the issue of Clark’s sexuality, you can’t say he’s answering a question that no one asked. After all, human sexuality is an immensely complicated subject, and there are countless works of fiction that ask uncomfortable questions about it — throw an all-powerful being with unknown limits into the mix and you’ve got yourself some compelling story-fodder. Right? Turns out that when you address Kryptonian sexuality, you need the same maturity and attention to subtlety that you would need to explore human sexuality. I’ve never known either of these to be qualities of Straczynski’s writing, so Superman Earth One 2 is less a disappointment and more an inevitability.
Continue reading →

Oct 22 2012

Before Watchmen – Minutemen 4

Alternating Currents: Minutemen 4, Drew and Michael B4WToday, Drew and Michael are discussing Minutemen 4, originally released October 17th, 2012. Minutemen is part of DC’s Before Watchmen prequel series. Click here for complete Before Watchmen coverage (including release dates).

Drew: Is it fair to assume we’re all nerds here? Do you remember that feeling when C-3PO first shows up in Phantom Menace? That feeling in the pit of your stomach when you realized this prequel was going to cash in on every moment of cheap recognition it possibly could? Not only did I not care where C-3PO came from, the explanation shown in Menace doesn’t make any fucking sense. The negative response to 3PO’s inclusion probably curbed Lucas’ origin obsession a bit, but he still managed to cram in Luke and Leia’s birth AND the building of the first Death Star, turning the whole prequel trilogy into a sad game of “spot the thing you used to love.” As the world’s most ubiquitous prequel, those movies effectively set my expectations for what a prequel should be, which may explain why I was so resistant to the notion of Before Watchmen in the first place; I was terrified of the prospect of stories focusing on petty details like where Ozymandias got the idea for his TV wall, or spending four issues explaining where that one headshot in Dan Dreiberg’s apartment came from. We’ve certainly gotten some of that, but titles like Comedian and Silk Spectre have turned those expectations on their heads by largely avoiding any such references. With Minutemen, Darwyn Cooke has embraced the third option — addressing the known history head-on with such deftness to make it seem inevitable.

Continue reading →

Oct 12 2012

Before Watchmen – Dr. Manhattan 2

Today, Patrick and Michael Capristo are discussing Dr. Manhattan 2, originally released October 10, 2012. Dr. Manhattan is part of DC’s Before Watchmen prequel series. Click here for complete Before Watchmen coverage (including release dates).

Patrick: The first issue of Dr. Manhattan has sort of become Retcon Punch’s go-to example of something about which we can neither agree nor be civil. At its best, the issue was clever homage, setting up a daunting narrative structure with dazzling artwork. At its worst, the issue was reductive, inaccurate and repetitive. The centerpiece of our contention: Schrodinger’s cat. The thought experiment posits that an unobserved cat in a box is simultaneously dead and alive, and only when the cat is observed do the realities collapse into a single universe. Schrodinger came up with this puzzle partially to illustrate how silly the field of quantum mechanics is. Which isn’t to say that he didn’t buy into it, just that you live in a profoundly weird universe if a fact can be simultaneously true and not true. I’ve been thinking about it all evening, and “profoundly weird” is exactly how I want to describe Dr. Manhattan 2.
Continue reading →