Drunken Comics Rage

Okay, I wasn't in San Diego this weekend. But I did think there was enough stuff announced that intrigued me that I should comment on at least some of it. And lets face it, the boys that were there fell apart fairly quickly after arriving (as I predicted). I'm sure by the time they get back there will be something in the way of more substantial thoughts on the con, as well as lots of pictures of booth babes. But until then you will have to settle for my ramblings.

So it seems without a doubt the big buzz this year was around Watchmen, which is quite understandable. I have seen the trailer and was fairly impressed. I still think I must reserve judgment until the film hits the theaters. Watchmen is such a complex story to try and bring to the screen I still have some serious reservations about how they might pull it off. Hopefully our DCR crew actually made it to the panel on the movie and has more to tell us.

Both DC and Marvel held panels revolving around their major events Final Crisis and Secret Invasion. And as one might expect, they spent most of the time talk about the events without actually talking about the events. I've come to the conclusion that if all you can really say for an hour is "keep readin" you probably shouldn't have had the panel to start with. I also think that asking your audience if they are reading the event book during the panel about the event book is a pretty stupid ass question. Would you attend a panel on the damn thin if you weren't reading it?

Marvel also did a lot of dancing around talking about Ultimatum in the Ultimate Universe panel. Again,nothing much was said other than lots of shit will change (which they said last year when I was there). They did announce that Mark Millar would be coming back to the Ultimate Universe, but of course could not say what he was working on. Thank yew very much for next to no information, Marvel.

In other news, DC announced that the Milestone characters were being brought into the DC universe proper.  While I read Didio's comments on the the announcement, I'm far more interested in what Dwayne Mcduffie thinks about it. On the one hand, characters he and his friends created are getting dusted off after more than a decade on the shelf. On the other hand, your characters are now subject to the whim of whatever batshit crazy scheme editorial has for the DC universe upcoming. Which if I'm being my most pessimistic likely means we are less than a year away from some big baddie killing one of the Milestone characters just so we can show how fucking serious he is, or worse one of the Milsetone characters is destined to go insane and become the next big baddie. And if I'm a betting man, EvilArtist is going to curse my name as soon as he reads this because that's likely his fear as well, I just said it aloud first.

Shark briefly mentioned seeing the Black Panther animated series trailer. I watched and thought it looked completely horrid. I'm not even talking visually. I could tell it was at least referencing the JRJR art from Hudlin's work. I don't particularly care for Romita Jr's art, but I recognize that and have somewhat learned to set that aside when judging things he's involved in. However the idea that the trailer was set in 8000 BC and the members of the rival tribe are telling each other to "be cool" made me want to throw up in my mouth a little bit.

Let's see, what other announcements were there? A new Cloak and Dagger series was announced which makes me at least a little happy. There's no guarantee it ends up being good, but those are certainly characters I have a soft spot for that have only really been bit players in other books for some time.

DC announced Neil Gaiman writing Batman, which sounds pretty glorious on the surface. Then they immediately crush most of my interest in it by announcing that it will crossover between Batman and Detective for two issues. I really fail to see the value in a two issue crossover. Okay to be honest, I see no value in crossing a story over between books. It's almost always the quickest way to get me to not buy something (see: Messiah Complex, Spiderman: The Other, etc.). So to have a story only cross over for two issues, what exactly is the point there? I suppose you likely see a huge spike in the sales of both books in one month, but does that matter much? Does anyone believe that folks who weren't buying before are sticking around a month after Gaiman bails? Couldn't you just as easily make this a miniseries outside the books or (heaven forbid) release it was a mini TPB right from the jump? Then in insult to injury they announced it is titled "Whatever happened to the Caped Crusader?" which is a not so subtle reference to the Alan Moore story "Whatever happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" Clearly Gaiman carries the talent and the connection to Moore, but I'm betting Moore is less than enthused by the idea.

On the gaming front, Sony did have a demo of DCU Online running. I'm hoping the boys looked very closely at this as I want to get their take on it. The screens I've seen look nice and the articles about gameplay at least sound intriguing. I love CoX, but I've often said my two (biggest) beefs with the game are not being able to pick things up and beat people with them and not being able to punch someone through a wall. Well, there's been no mention of the wall punching, but every article talks in great lenght about slapping a villain with a bus, a car, etc. That alone should have me at hello, but I would prefer to see that action in the game to be able to make a judgment.

And outside of San Diego, Dark Knight made something in the neighborhood of another shitload of money. The records continue to fall by the wayside for this thing. It is no the fastest to $300 million, beating the precious record by damn near a week. The fastest to $400 million was Shrek 2 in something 40 and change days. So barring unforeseen tragedy, it will likely crush that record as well. I'm sure consensus at WB is to start planning the next one pronto, but If I was Christopher Nolan, I'd think seriously about just cashing out now. I'm not sure you're going to be able to be more successful than this with the franchise.

Filed under: Comic Movies & TV, Comic-Con, DVO Reading Rage