Saga 13

saga 13

Today, Patrick and (guest writer) Brandon are discussing Saga 12, originally released August 14th, 2013.

Patrick: At the midnight Saga release party at Meltdown Comics over a year ago, Brian K. Vaughan said that he wanted to tell the story of a normal family stuck in the middle of an interstellar war that they wanted nothing to do with. The series itself bears this idea directly – Marko and Alana are combatants from opposite sides of an endless war that find each other through their shared belief in peace. From a storyteller’s perspective, War is much easier to write than Peace. In war (metaphorical or otherwise), there is an objective: no matter how messy and dark it gets, conditions for victory are clear. Saga 13 finds our characters searching blindly for what they’re ‘supposed’ to do next. It’s a meditation on the hope buried in hopelessness and the origin and influence of values. That’s right – welcome back to motherfucking Saga.

Continue reading

Fearless Defenders 8

fearless defenders 8

Today, Shelby and Taylor are discussing Fearless Defenders 8, originally released August 14th, 2013.

Shelby: Another day in the life of the Fearless Defenders: tracking monsters, fighting crazy mystics, teaming up with alien parasites. All in a day’s work. It’s not all business as usual, with the whole Annabelle and Valkyrie sharing a body situation. While I’m intrigued by what that means for those two, and the rest of the team, I really found the art lacking; for the first time with this title I was really bothered by the way these awesome women are depicted.
Continue reading

Cram Session: Avengers 1-17 – World Builders and World Breakers

It can be hard to keep up with all the comics you love. But it’s damn near impossible to keep up with all the comics you’re interested in.

Retcon Punch got you covered.

Infinity is already looking to be an insane exercise in more, MORE, MORE. If you missed out on Hickman’s run on Avengers, you’ve missed out on that precedent. “Bigger” is the name of the game, and it’s in that spirit that we cram 17 issues into one six-minute video. Enjoy!

Justice League of America 7

Alternating Currents: Justice League of America 7, Drew and Taylor

Today, Drew and Taylor are discussing Justice League of America 7 originally released August 14th, 2013. This issue is part of the Trinity War crossover event. Click here for our complete Trinity War coverage.

trinity war divDrew: Determining a level of focus is perhaps the most important step in evaluating a work of art. These foci are specific to the style at hand — harmonic analysis is likely going to tell you very little about a rap song, just as an examination of brush strokes wouldn’t add much to a discussion of da Vinci. Intriguingly, these styles often begin to resemble each other as you zoom in and out — abstract paintings may share concepts of form, color, or composition with those of the Rennaisance masters, for example — further increasing the importance focus in an analysis. Geoff Johns has always written “big” — he’s been at the helm (or at least sharing the helm) of some of DC’s most important events over the past decade — and his writing has often chafed at the analyses of his critics. Justice League of America 7 actually avoids many of the pitfalls Johns is often cited for (a lot of stuff actually happens here), but it still has me wondering if we’re simply using the wrong tool for the job of evaluating a giant, Geoff Johns-penned event. Continue reading

Suicide Squad 23

suicide squad 23

Today, Shelby and Mikyzptlk are discussing Suicide Squad 23, originally released August 14th, 2013.

Shelby: How do you say good-bye? If you’re a regular person saying good-bye to another regular person, you would probably do it with a wave, or maybe a handshake or a hug. Tonight the 4-year-old daughter of the owners of my LCS said good-bye to me by jumping up and down and shouting; come to think of it, I think Patrick has said good-bye to me the same way. Like I said, these are all perfectly legitimate, regular person ways to bid someone adieu. If you’re comic book writer Ales Kot saying good-bye to Suicide Squad, however, the best way to do it seems to be with sociopath’s musings on the meaning of love, followed by a battalion of missile-wielding drones and some pie. Not a bad way to go.

Continue reading

Deadpool 14

deadpool 14

Today, Scott and Ethan are discussing Deadpool 14, originally released August 14th, 2013.

Scott: Nothing is more satisfying to me than making a good joke. As an aspiring writer/comedian, sometimes it’s impossible for me to get out of “joke mode”. Ask anyone who knows me well and they’ll tell you, it gets annoying. For every good laugh I provide, there are many groaners and bad puns to endure. For me, it’s worth it, as long as I get some good hearty chuckles. I’m thinking Deadpool writers Brian Posehn and Gerry Duggan are after something similar. Like me, they seem willing to sacrifice introspection for a witty one-liner, deep thoughts for goofy non sequiturs. They tend to have a lot more hits than misses, so it’s easy to forgive any shortcomings in their writing, but Deadpool 14, more than maybe any other issue, begs the question: is it worth reading a comic that exists solely for the purpose of humor? In an issue where the plot rehashes points that have already been made, the jokes are just about the only things making it feel fresh.

Continue reading

Infinity 1

infinity 1-INFINITY

Today, Spencer and Patrick are discussing Infinity 1, originally released August 14th, 2013. This issue is part of the Infinity crossover event. Click here for complete Infinity coverage.

infinity divider

Spencer: “So…what is Infinity actually about?!” It’s a question that, in one form or another, has been tossed around Retcon Punch quite a bit the past few months. Up until now, my answer has always been, “Um…Thanos?,” and even the Preludes over in Avengers and New Avengers did little to clarify things. Thankfully, now that the first issue has dropped, I can finally give a clear answer: “Infinity is the story of what happens when two different universe-ending threats—each capable of supporting a summer crossover all on their own—hit at the same time, leaving the Earth absolutely helpless.” Pretty cool, huh? Now I only hope that the series can live up to the massive threats it’s spent its first issue establishing.

Continue reading

Batman 23

Alternating Currents: Batman 23, Drew and Patrick

Today, Drew and Patrick are discussing Batman 23, originally released August 14th, 2013.

Drew: Origin stories are a fact of life for comic book fans. Love them or hate them, they’ve become an obligate part of superhero storytelling. Every movie franchise, every hard reset, every soft relaunch, needs to retell the origin story with a new spin (you know, to justify the retelling), folding new elements into those of previous iterations. The result is a strange, multi-generational chimera, cannibalized from every version of the story that’s come before. The results can range from beautiful to grotesque but the best manage to pay homage to the past while pointing a way forwards. Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo tackle a seminal moment of Batman’s history in Batman 23, perfectly balancing the admiration and innovation, building to a climax perfectly designed to excite Batman fans. Continue reading

All-New X-Men 15

all new x-men 15

Today,  Shelby and Patrick are discussing All-New X-Men 15, originally released August 7th, 2013.

Shelby: No one knows better than I the importance of taking a break every once in a while; heck, I took several writing breaks before I even started this post. But seriously, it’s important to take breaks to keep from getting burned out, and the same applies to comic books. Stories take little breaks with what we call “hang-out issues,” where the bulk of the plot consists of the characters hanging-out. The beauty of the hang-out issue is, when it’s done well, we get a story break AND character development. Artists take breaks too, but the obviously visual nature of art can make an artist break more jarring and disruptive. This month, Brian Michael Bendis gives us a story break as we wait for Battle of the Atom to start, and David Lafuente gives Stuart Immonen a break on pencils; the result is a story which feels very different from what we’re used to in All-New X-Men.

Continue reading

Manhattan Projects 13

Alternating Currents: Manhattan Projects 13, Drew and PatrickToday, Drew and Patrick are discussing Manhattan Projects 13, originally released August 7th, 2013.

Drew: We often joke about “historical fiction” being an oxymoron, but that mostly stems from a misperception of just how fictionalized history is. Indeed, if history were simply a compilation of irrefutable facts, we could probably stop writing books about the life of Abraham Lincoln or whatever. Instead, we have a messy timeline made up of conflicting accounts and countless ways of explaining all of it. To me, the biggest difference between history and historical fiction is that history needs to back up its conclusions with more facts — it’s basically the narrative between to factual points — whereas historical fiction treats the facts more as a starting point, but doesn’t need to tie back to any facts. In that way, Manhattan Projects has become a kind of meta-historical fiction, taking a fictionalized conclusion as its starting point, and building to ever more spectacular fictions. It’s never been anything other than divorced from reality, but as the narrative continues, it somehow manages to become even less related to history. Continue reading