Considering the… *ahem* …recent events on 4thletter, now’s as good a time as any to talk about DC Comics and their New 52. Sales were in the toilet for most anything that didn’t have a bat or a glowing ring in it, so DC decided to shake things up and reboot. Only they said it wasn’t a reboot. Yet it was. I was intrigued by the balls of this move and bought every single #1, deciding to give every one of them at least a chance.

As time went on, I naturally started to drop titles almost every week. Some comics were awesome. Some were terrible. Some were okay enough at the start and picked up. Some were okay enough at the start and fell downward. Some were merely okay and not good enough for me to keep buying, as much as I didn’t hate them. Then some I really enjoyed got canceled or put with a creative team that I have no intention of following.

All 52 books have reached their #6, so with the honeymoon over (I know I’m one of a hundred bloggers who had to have used that term), here’s my look back at the reboot. We’ll go in alphabetical order, like the cool kids do.

Action Comics is something I’m staying with right now, but my interest is noticeably waning. The first couple issues blew the doors off the hinges, but everything since has been the usual Grant Morrison weirdness hypnotism. It’s like this joke wrestler Chris Jericho made about the Ultimate Warrior’s ridiculous interviews from the 80’s. “I’m not sure what that meant but it… sounded cool, so YAY!” I have enough faith in Morrison to keep me entertained and if anything, I’m just going to blame this on the recent inclusion of the Legion of Super-Heroes. Never cared for those guys.

All-Star Western is like a guilty pleasure of mine, but not in the usual way. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with reading Jonah Hex’s badass team-up adventures with the wimpy Dr. Arkham depicted through beautiful art by Moritat. It’s just that it’s $3.99 and it comes with a backup story involving another wild west hero that I promptly skip most of the time. The Hex stuff is so good that I’m willing to pay that extra buck regardless of whether I even glance at the last few pages of the floppy.

Animal Man is easily top three, if not the best of what DC has to offer. It’s the kind of thing that Lemire should always be proud of. If he continues to play his cards right, this run will sit next to Morrison’s Animal Man run as the iconic go-to read for the character instead of yet another follow-up to a classic run that doesn’t measure up. It accepts its ancestry, but goes in its own direction. It’s also an encyclopedia of nightmare material that continues to give me the jibblies. Like this thing.

There it goes again. The jibblies.

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Hey, everybody. Relatively small week here, but some good stuff. This week gave us the most excellent final page of Venom #13.4, which was so metal that it made me cry tears of blood. The second best page of the week is the image of Shade casually killing a boatload of vampire pirates while paying attention to the baby in his arms. Comics are pretty cool sometimes.

I was supposed to have a look back at the New 52 up and done with, but real life got in the way. I’ll save that for tomorrow. In the meantime, we got panels from myself, Was Taters and Space Jawa. Since I jumped the gun last week before Jawa could hand me his stuff, I’ve included last week’s Deadpool.

Deadpool #51
Daniel Way and Ale Garza

FF #15 (Taters’ pick)
Jonathan Hickman and Nick Dragotta

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I’ve been watching wrestling for a long, long time. I only started checking it out two months after the debut of the Undertaker and that was over 20 years ago. A lot has happened with that guy over that time. He’s appeared in Suburban Commando to yell at Hulk Hogan with a dubbed-over 5-year-old’s voice. He delivered a Domino’s pizza to Leslie Nielson, who was at the time hired to figure out how the main event of Summerslam could possibly be Undertaker vs. Undertaker. He died and came back to life a dozen times over and used supernatural powers to mess with the minds of his opponents. He also once called himself Booger Red, whatever the hell that was supposed to mean.

Even for someone like me, who was there for all of it, it can be hard to keep it all straight. For someone who doesn’t know wrestling at all, or has only watched for a few years at a time, it can be downright mind-boggling. Luckily, Tony Barrett decided to make sense out of it all. Or enough sense. He broke up Undertaker’s career into two decades.

That’s all well and good, but Tony figured there was still work to be done. Undertaker’s weird in his own right, but what about his brother, Kane? Before being repackaged as Undertaker’s long-lost, masked brother, he was a Kevin Nash impersonator, an evil dentist and a monster made out of Christmas. Don’t ask. Though he hasn’t been around quite as long as the Undertaker, Kane’s backstory is far more febrile-minded and has involved everything from being accused as a necro-rapist to hooking up a car battery to his boss’ son’s testicles. He’s feuded with wrestlers for such reasons as having coffee spilled on him and starring in a horror movie that’s set to be released on a day when something traumatic happened to him. Wrestling, everybody!

Still easier to understand than Donna Troy, though.

Heyo! This week I’m joined by Was Taters, new fish Tobey Cook and Jody. This week introduces the badass redesign of Krang (or General Krang) in the TMNT comic as well as Hawkeye being a stupid, mean jerk.

All-Star Western #6 (Taters’ pick)
Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, Moritat and Phil Winslade

All-Star Western #6 (Gavin’s pick)
Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, Moritat and Phil Winslade

Aquaman #6 (Gavin’s pick)
Geoff Johns, Ivan Reis and Joe Prado

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“Their emptiness makes me whole. Their weakness makes me strong. Their destruction is my creation.” – Calypso

Just recently, the company Eat. Sleep. Play. released the latest Twisted Metal game onto Playstation 3. I myself love the Twisted Metal games to death and wish I could get my hands on it. Sadly, I don’t own a Playstation 3 and as tempting as it would be, the game (as well as Box Art Mega Man as a console-exclusive character in Street Fighter X Tekken) isn’t enough for me to shell out all that money for the console. Still, I’m not completely bummed because I do have access to YouTube and while the gameplay is the centerpiece in the series, I’ll always have a soft spot for one of the things Twisted Metal does better than most video games: the endings.

For those who don’t know much about the series, the idea is that Twisted Metal is a reckless competition where people drive cars armed to the teeth with all sorts of weapons and have to fight it out until there’s only one car left. These extreme demolition derbies take place in all sorts of settings, especially in public places, where innocent bystanders are ripe for the picking. The whole thing is put together by Calypso, a mysterious and demonic man who is like a genie mixed with a rat bastard. Whoever comes out the winner is granted an audience with him and he’ll grant whatever wish they ask for. Sometimes he’ll give them what they want and they’re happy. Sometimes he gives them what they want and they end up in terrible shape. A lot of the time he openly messes with them by twisting their wishes for his own amusement. There are also those instances when the winner will challenge Calypso himself to varying success.

The story is filled with a million plotholes and to claim it has its own continuity is charitable at best. That said, it’s not meant to be taken seriously and it’s really just a hokey setup meant to be window dressing for the actual game. For the most part, they’re fun to watch and with 124 endings across eight games (released by four different companies), I can’t help but want to celebrate it with a list of my favorites.

Before I get into it, I should point out how different these cutscenes can be and the context of each game. The first Twisted Metal was simply about Calypso hosting the 10th annual competition in Los Angeles. Originally, they spent about $10,000 filming live-action segments for the game as directed by the game’s mastermind David Jaffe. These got canned by the higher ups, not for the hilariously bad acting and cheesy effects, but because they were deemed too violent and sexist. These didn’t see the light of day for years until Jaffe handed them out to a fansite and later put them in the Playstation 2 version of Twisted Metal: Head-On as an extra. The endings were redone for the actual release via scrolling text accompanied by the game’s rocking theme song, a glaring image of live-action Calypso and ending with a shot of the character’s car driving off.

The second game, Twisted Metal 2: World Tour, changed it up by giving us cutscenes done in the style of motion comics. A direct follow-up to the first game, this time Calypso’s realizes that he’s pretty much annihilated Los Angeles off the map and therefore needs to make his contest international. Jaffe’s company Singletrac lost the rights to Twisted Metal after this due to a dispute with Sony and 989 Studios picked it up. They had to start the engine completely from scratch and it ended up being a disaster. The endings were also a casualty, as the CGI segments were only seconds long and existed to have Calypso torture the winner with some kind of lame pun, usually based on a wish that made no sense. Like how the driver of the car Thumper wishes to “forever hang with his homies” and he’s transformed into a hood ornament. The weirdest one is how the police officers who drive Outlaw ask for a world without crime and doing so leads to them being jobless. That… that kind of seems like more than a fair trade. Why is that treated as a bad thing?

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This week I’m helped out by Was Taters, Space Jawa and luis. Small week in total and I’m a little too out of it to come up with any pre-panel banter.

Batman #6
Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo

Captain Atom #6
J.T. Krul and Freddie Williams II

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Last week, we lost one hell of an ongoing series with Punisher MAX #22 by Jason Aaron and Steve Dillon. A lot of the time, when a series is canceled, the writer will claim that it isn’t true and that they insisted it end at this point. Sometimes it smells like bullshit, but here it’s legit as Aaron takes the MAX incarnation of the character to the logical conclusion. Frank Castle of Earth-200111 (yes, I looked it up), is dead. After taking on MAX incarnations of some of his usual punching bags, Frank’s body has finally given out and he collapses after being the last man standing one last time.

But so what? So he’s dead. Big deal. Frank Castle dies all the time, doesn’t he? Sure. I’ve seen it so many times I decided to take a trip down memory lane. As far as I can tell, here is the master list of all the times Frank has kicked the bucket. Now, of course, I’m not counting any “Earth blows up” scenarios because that goes without saying. I don’t need to mention every single time the Phoenix devours the universe. It has to be specifically about Frank buying the farm. I’ll also pass on the really vague mentions, like how he died somewhere along the line prior to Punisher 2099.

Despite debuting in 1974, it would take 17 years for any version of Frank to die. Not only did he die in 1991, but he died a lot. In the second volume of Marvel’s What If, Frank died three issues in a row! Let’s begin with that.

Comic: What If #24 (What If Wolverine Was Lord of the Vampires?)
Year: 1991
Writer: Roy Thomas and R.J.M. Lofficier
Artist: Tom Morgan
Background: The world of this issue is based on the time the X-Men fought Dracula. Rather than be defeated, Dracula turns the team to his side. Wolverine, being so awesome, has enough willpower to challenge Dracula. He ends up killing the Count and takes over his throne. While these days, a supernatural outbreak needs to take over the entire world to show that shit’s gotten real, Wolverine is happy enough taking over Manhattan and using it as his vampire nest. With no real reason given, some heroes and villains are turned to slaves while others are ordered by Wolverine to be killed completely. I feel the need to mention that artist Tom Morgan decided to include Frog-Man of all people into that latter group. Anyway, the whole city is in chaos and in that chaos is Frank Castle with a headband and a whole lot of silver bullets.

In regular continuity, Dr. Strange would read a spell that would wipe out all vampires. Vampire Wolverine gets wind of this and has Vampire Juggernaut take down Strange. Strange possesses the bitching cape and the Eye of Agamotto, then joins it with the Punisher to make the ultimate vampire-killing machine. Because nobody cared about Blade back then.

Punisher killing superhero vampires is a thing to see. He melts Colossus with holy water and fries Juggernaut with the Eye of Agamotto. That leads him to a one-on-one fight with Wolverine.

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The This Week in Panels concept is easy. Me and some other comic readers (and this includes you if you’re ever interested) take every new comic we’ve read from the week and cut out 99% of it, leaving only a lone panel. This panel is meant to illustrate what the comic’s all about. Sell what you’re reading without giving too much away. Catch someone’s eye. Explain it with one image.

125 is a nice round number that feels like something important should happen. We have a full crew this week in me, David Brothers, Was Taters, Space Jawa and Jody, so that works out. Taters supplied the Brave and the Bold panel, which is astounding. She’s just sad that this has to be the final issue of the series.

Batman and Robin #6
Peter J. Tomasi and Patrick Gleason

Batman: The Brave and the Bold #16
Sholly Fisch, Rick Burchett and Dan Davis

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Last week we heard the big news that DC is going to be releasing Before Watchmen, a series of prequels about the adventures of everyone’s favorite dysfunctional vigilantes. The thing has been nothing less than controversial, erupting in anger from many and curiosity from others. This isn’t about that debate. There are other places for such a thing.

The one thing I will say is that shameless cash-grab or not, at least DC is putting their ankle into it. They aren’t half-assing this. Of all their talent on the project, the most troublesome is a guy who at least once gave us a cartoon where the Ghostbusters killed Cthulhu with a rollercoaster. Sure, JMS is pretty bad now, but at least there’s the possibility that he could get his head into the game and make some decent lemonade.

A couple days ago, Bleeding Cool revealed that we dodged one hell of a bullet as Kevin Smith was offered a spot in the Watchmen Writer Illuminati. He turned them down for a damn good reason: even at his best, he’s a complete ill-fit for anything Watchmen.

Talked to Jim [Lee] and Dan [DiDio] about it two years ago. Only passed because I’m not Alan Moore, sadly. If I was Alan Moore, I’d be all over it. As Kevin Smith, I’d likely just make Bubastis “big pussy” jokes and have Rorschach wet himself. Hurm.

Smith made a couple jokes at his own expense, but the more I looked at it, the more I realized how much “Kevin Smith’s Watchmen” writes itself. I wanted to make a quick response, only the punchlines kept piling up in my mind. So for your enjoyment or annoyance, here are 25 jokes to be made about Kevin Smith writing Watchmen.

1) Ozymandias: I did it 37 dicks ago.

2) The miniseries is six issues, but DC releases #4 followed by #2 and then cancels it.

3) Nite Owl: It’s like I’m Blue Beetle, you’re the Question, she’s Nightshade and we’re in that fucked up bar!

4) Rorschach: What is a Nubian? Hurm. Must investigate further.

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Only hours ago we had the Superbowl, which made me a couple bucks richer. I should probably do some kind of tie-in to this, but when I suggested me and the other ThWiP regulars do our own Superbowl Shuffle music video, one of them stabbed me in the temple with a screwdriver. Maybe next year.

This time I’m joined by only Was Taters. Good enough for me!

Action Comics #6
Grant Morrison, Andy Kubert, Sholly Fisch and ChrisCross

Animal Man #6
Jeff Lemire, John Paul Leon and Travel Foreman

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