Monthly archives: March, 2009

Book of Doom:
War of Kings #1

First off, many apologies for the tardiness of this week’s Book of Doom. I had in-laws in town this weekend and completely spaced it until I was already in bed last night.

So as for War of Kings #1, we’ve got the Starjammers on Hala for the wedding of Crystal and Ronan. For some reason, this wedding was a surprise to me. I don’t remember if I misread something from the preview issue that came out not long ago or maybe forgot reading something else, but I thought there had been a mention of them once being engaged, but that it had been called off. Maybe it had just been put off. No matter, because it didn’t take long to realize that what I had thought was either wrong or irrelevant, for there was a couple to be wed (and that big softie Ronan got his heart broken too).

Back in Shi’ar land, Vulcan is planning to wipe out the Kree because he wants to. Thankfully for the Shi’ar, the Kree have all of their defenses coordinated from a single tower easily infiltrated by a shape-shifter, so that when said shape-shifter suicide-bombs the tower, the defenses are down and the Shi’ar can invade. That seemed a little too easy to me.

I can think of absolutely zero examples, but for some reason the concept of “Tragedy at a wedding” seems like a cliche. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but if it is, it makes good sense. You increase the sense of tragedy, because the victims are there to celebrate love but fall by war. You also clearly establish who the bad guys are, by pointing out these sneaky Shi’ar scumbags would attack people who are in no position to fight back. (Now that I think about it, recalling Abnett & Lanning’s previous efforts at comparing the Skrull invasion to “jihad,” maybe wedding attacks seem familiar because of attacks in real life.)

This issue leaves us with a bloody wedding scene filled with casualties and Medusa declaring the Shi’ar “shall pay in blood.” So now we have two alien races the Inhumans have declared war on. Given the preview issue was the Inhumans declaring war on the Skrulls, I’m a little puzzled as to why that was a one-shot and this was issue #1. I think it would’ve been fine to have that be issue #1 and this be issue #2. Not that any of that really matters. As far as stages being set, this still looks like a good one.

Here’s what Doomsday Spa thought about the issue: (more…)



Stump the Doominator, week of March 8, 2009

Welcome one and all to this week’s edition of Stump the Doominator, brought to you this week by a nasty Yuengling hangover and a sinking feeling inside me.

Remember the fun of it all – you ask me a question, and in varying degrees of accuracy and a solid state of flipancy, I try to solve them in one sentence.

Nate Winchester of Hunting Muses asks:

Explain Zero Hour

Christ. Here goes:
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“Watchmen” opens today

Of course you knew that, you’re a total nerd.

So we’ll see whose right … is it Jim Doom or Alan Moore, a la this cartoon, found at The Ephemerist?

Alan Moore wins

We’ll see. Do I smell a roundtable or Podcast of Doom?



Book of Doom Preview:
War of Kings #1

This is what Guardians of the Galaxy has been building up to. I love me some Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning and Paul Pelletier. As for the rest, I’ll let the solicitation do the talking.

WRITER: DAN ABNETT
ANDY LANNING
PENCILS: PAUL PELLETIER

In the aftermath of the Secret Invasion, Black Bolt has led the Inhumans on a shockingly savage path to restore their strength and security. But that path has brought them into direct confrontation with the Shi’Ar Empire – and their mad ruler Vulcan! Who will get in the first strike? Who will fall on the bloody battlefield? Who will rule? The Imperial Guard, the Starjammers, the Inhuman Royal Family and more of your favorite sci-fi characters are locked on a collision course…and it all starts here! Join the acclaimed team
of Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning (NOVA) and Paul Pelletier (GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY) for a pivotal turning point in Marvel’s
cosmic history!

Yes, it’s $3.99, and yes, it has a Brandon Petersen cover, but if you give it a chance, be sure to send your reviews to doomkopf at doomkopf dot com to be included in the weekend roundtable.



Swamp Thing, Alan Moore and radicalism

Salon had an interesting piece today on Swamp Thing and Alan Moore’s politics in the midst of so much Reagan. It can be found here.

While nothing staggeringly ground breaking, it does make a lot of connections to attempted counter-culture movements of the time:

It’s been said that Moore was ahead of his time by infusing a holistic, ecological perspective into comics in 1984, and that his anti-authoritarian politics, sometimes bordering on anarchism, were unusual and daring amid the so-called Reagan revolution. But that overlooks the fact that the radical environmental movement was rapidly gaining steam among the American left — Earth First! had been founded in 1979 — and in a climate of deepening economic recession and widespread youth unemployment (hello!), the summer of 1984 would see large, anarchist-influenced “punk protests” at the Democratic convention in San Francisco.

Moore was right on time and right on message for a specific micro-generation of young people who were disillusioned and disgusted by Reaganism, and had lost any sense of connection to the American dream. Our consciousness had been shaped — as Moore’s clearly was — by Joe Strummer and Johnny Rotten (Moore had actually written a screenplay for Sex Pistols impresario Malcolm McLaren), by Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon, by campus organizing against apartheid and the U.S. proxy war in El Salvador. With his near-total divorce from human ethics balanced by his planetary consciousness, Swamp Thing became perhaps the first postmodern comic-book hero.

and finishes with:

He gave a generation of suburban nihilists, fueled by black coffee and loud guitars and soulless temp jobs, a creature from the swamp who seemed to embody their desire to destroy and their urge to create. It was something to believe in, at last.

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Just got home from seeing Watchmen

I know to some people, any kind of reaction whatsoever can be considered a spoiler, so in the interest of protecting all potential surprises, my best efforts at compiling spoiler-free thoughts on the film are after the jump.


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Stump the Doominator, Week of March 1, 2009

Well, it seems that despite my own superpowers, my car is not invincible, and Sunday when I should have written this, I was stuck in a snow storm in Aberdeen, MD waiting to see if I could get a serpentine belt for my car. Wouldn’t you know, you can’t find those on a Sunday night in the middle of nowhere, and in real life, I don’t have any powers to conjure those out of my ass or the ass of the patient mechanic witnessing my desperate pleas to any and all friends who live or know somebody who lives in the Baltimore metropolitan area.

So here’s your stumpening for the week. Remember the rules. You throw me a storyarch, origin or trivia item, and I have to try my best to sum it up in one sentence. It’s like a Cliff Notes of nerdery.

As is cumpolsory, seemingly, at least one member of the Legion of Doom threw a question my way. This week it was Doom Fritter. He asks:

Since you’re an X-Fan, I’m going to throw you a curve ball and ask for the summary of the first twenty-five issues of X-Men 2099.
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The Doomino Effect for the week of Feb 25, 2009

I’m going to blast through this today because I am hopefully going to an early screening of Watchmen tonight and I need to get out the door.

Speaking of blasting through things, that leads me to Superman #685 in which Mon-El has emerged from the Phantom Zone but he’s gonna die from lead poisoning. Superman’s Legion flight ring isn’t working (He says “Something’s wrong with tomorrow,” naturally) and someone left him a bottle of magic Mon-El curing potion on the countertop.

Apparently security cameras are too advanced for all the futuristic otherworldly outer-space technology found in the Fortress of Solitude, so Superman has no idea who left said potion. But it works! Mon-El feels great, after a six-panel spread in which the obligatory “Is he dead? Is he dead? Is he dead? Is he dead? Cough! Nope, he’s alive!” process plays out. One of these days, I’d like someone to administer life-saving care and the recipient just wakes up and says “Well, that worked!”

Then Lois, who only cares about her needs, leaves the room and changes into a skimpy robe while her poor husband is struggling to grasp what’s going on. All she hears is “Better get naked quick because Superdong is leaving the planet.” And then he takes his supersuit off to satisfy his puny human wife, only for Lois to distract him with the news! I don’t know what’s gotten into that woman’s head.
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Worst to First: February 25th, 2009

This past week, I bought six issues, and it was an even split between Marvel titles and DC titles. While nothing monumental happened in any of them, some were better than others. Some set up interesting things to come, some retold origins of characters, and two of them featured covers by Alex Ross. Seriously, enough is enough. Give the guy a rest. So, without further adieu, let’s see how they all fared in the eyes of yours truly, Mr. Doom DeLuise.

justice society of america 24Worst: Justice Society of America #24

Whatever happened to Mary Marvel?

I’m not the first person to complain about the abuse done to Mary Marvel’s character over the past couple years, but let’s think about all that she’s gone through for a second (or two). She lost her powers in Brave New World, that dreadful one-shot that set up a bunch of new series, including Martian Manhunter, Trials of Shazam!, OMAC, The Creeper, and The All-New Atom.

From there, she went off to the pages of Countdown, where she searched for new powers, eventually settling for the powers of Black Adam, who’d recently lost his one true love Isis and didn’t want to have anything to do with his powers any longer. So, against her better judgment, she allowed Black Adam to transfer all of his powers to her, leaving him alone and powerless and her full of evil new energy. (more…)



Local media prep readers for The Watchmen

Nebraska’s two largest newspapers have both run Watchmen primers to prepare their readers for the film’s release Friday.

• The Omaha World-Herald posted an interactive graphic called “Know Your Watchmen,” allowing readers to get a quick sense of each of the main characters in the book. The trivia feature makes this especially cool for comic nerds, as it explains how each Watchmen character was based on a then-unused Charlton Comics character.

• The Lincoln Journal Star ran a story that mentions Watchmen but serves more as a sweeping explanation of the world of graphic novels. I’m not crazy about stories like this, which seem to come around every time another big comic book movie does, because they seem to exude a kind of insecurity from the industry, as if comics should always be on the defensive about being legitimate. That said, there’s a big story about comic books in the local newspaper. It’s hard to complain about that.