This week I’m joined only by Space Jawa. It’s a somber week of panels, as Darkwing Duck meets its end through the final issue. There are rumors that Disney is going to try to start an imprint within Marvel and I really, really hope it works out.

My comic shop got double copies of Point One, so they did the sensible thing and cut the price in half. Even then, I found I just didn’t care enough to pick it up. I heard the Nova stuff was terrible.

Also, remember, if you see a panel in a new comic and want to see it represented, by all means send me a line.

Avenging Spider-Man #1
Zeb Wells and Joe Madureira

Batman and Robin #3
Peter J. Tomasi and Patrick Gleason

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For the past four years, I’ve been hyping up the indy wrestling fed CHIKARA. Originally just a wrestling school run by Mike Quackenbush, it translated into its own fed for the sake of giving its students somewhere to compete and over a decade carved its own niche. It’s got just about everything a wrestling fan could want. Great characters, great wrestling, great comedy and some of the better storylines in the business while at the same time keeping it something all ages can enjoy.

Of course, my support of the company can only go so far. While they’re doing shows more spread across the country nowadays, they are centered around Philly and I can’t expect anyone reading to go and buy a ticket on my say. Their shows are all available on DVD, but I can see the hassle in that, especially not knowing where to start.

On the other hand, this Sunday is High Noon, the company’s very first iPPV and I highly, highly, HIGHLY suggest giving some thought in checking it out.

High Noon is the finale of CHIKARA’s tenth season. It’s a climactic, big profile show that you can watch live from the comfort of your own home. It’s $15 and you can order and stream it through GFL Combat Sports. It starts at 4pm and has its own 45-minute free preshow beforehand.

Here’s a look at the card and what the show has to offer.

The main story of the 10th season has been crowning the first ever CHIKARA Grand Champion. Although the company has had tag champs and a Young Lions Cup (a singles title for people 23 and younger), they’ve been able to write around the fact that they’ve never had a world heavyweight championship. Until now. Twelve wrestlers were selected to take part in a year-long round robin tournament called the 12 Large Summit (“12 Large” being a catchphrase of the late Larry Sweeney, who died early this year). With all the matches done, we’re down to our finals.

On one side, we have “Lightning” Mike Quackenbush, the squeaky-clean head trainer of CHIKARA who is an absolute genius at technical wrestling. On the other side is “The Last of a Dying Breed” Eddie Kingston. Eddie is a brawler, who tends to win the crowd over with his pure emotion and never-say-die attitude, along with an intensity reminiscent of Taz in ECW. Despite Kingston being a major name in the company for years, I can’t recall too many times that the two have crossed paths. Either way, this should be good and constitutes as a perfect money match for someone to be crowned the first champ.

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Last week started the new status quo for one of my favorite comics going on right now, and maybe my favorite comic coming out of the Big Two, Christos Gage’s Avengers Academy. In a time when new characters get shoved into cancelation only months into creation, it’s good to see that this series has lasted through 21 issues, a Point One, an appearance in Amazing Spider-Man, a giant-sized crossover with the ill-fated Young Allies, a crossover with Thunderbolts and some cameos in Ant-Man and the Wasp. Like with all good comics that don’t feature a marquee figure, there’s always that looming threat of it being canned, but with the new setting and storyline, now’s as good a time as any to get people to jump on.

I figured I’d take a look at our main cast and maybe inform someone out there enough that they’d give the series a try. In this series, it’s not the past that truly matters for the team of six, but the future. You see, this isn’t your regular young generation superhero team. Just because “Avengers” is in the title and our protagonists are teens doesn’t mean that this is your usual Teen Titans knockoff. It’s not so much a book about teenage Avengers as it’s basically the Teen Thunderbolts. Much like the Thunderbolts, the true hook of the series isn’t actually revealed until the very end of the first issue.

The hook? These are all kids who were controlled, captured, experimented on and/or tortured by Norman Osborn when he was in charge. Now that the good guys have the keys to the kingdom again, some of the mainstays from the ended Avengers Initiative take these kids in and offer to train them, insisting that they’ve got the most potential to do the most good. As the kids discover, this is a big lie. According to their psyche profiles, power sets and histories, they’re all most likely to become some of the world’s biggest supervillains. Hank Pym and the rest are using Avengers Academy as an over-elaborate way to nip their dark futures in the bud. It’s not about training the best of the best. It’s about predemption.

The comic becomes an exercise in looking at each member under a magnifying glass. Who is going to turn out good and who is going to fall from grace? At first it seems obvious. Half come off as truly decent folks while the other half seem like ticking time bombs. As it progresses, the lines begin to fade. We’re kept guessing on who’s going to crack and who’s going to stand tall. Over the last couple years, we’ve seen them clash with the faculty, make decisions that split the team down the middle, see their own possible futures, win battles, lose battles and be forced to take part in the Fear Itself war. And let it be said that Avengers Academy was one of the better tie-ins to that miniseries event.

As of #21, things have become very different. One of the members has quit and Pym has moved them all to the old headquarters of the West Coast Avengers. Now they allow more teen heroes to join, such as Power Man, Boulder, Spider-Girl and that kid with the pet Sentinel, among others. They’re all background, mainly, though Lightspeed and White Tiger have joined the main class with X-23 set to join in a couple issues. Hawkeye’s joined the faculty, showing that Wolverine and Spider-Man aren’t the only ones who can be on way too many teams. Most importantly, there’s been a bit of a murder.

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With last week’s misadventure that prevented me from updating, I’m mixing the last round of #2s with the first round of #3s. I’m going to be quick on this one because I’m tired and the #2s aren’t as fresh in my mind.

Also, I’m kind of feeling as though this whole experiment has lost its luster. At least, in the writing part of it. Nothing especially earth-shattering is said and by this point it’s going to be more and more of the same. A lot of the good will continue to be good and it’s a stretch to keep coming up with paragraphs to remind everyone that after every month. I figure that I’m going to stop the regular updates by the end of this month, once all the #3s are out. Then maybe three months down the line, I’ll do a little retrospective to see where I stand and what went wrong with the ones I dropped.

First let’s get with Week 9.

All-Star Western by Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, Moritat and Jordi Bernet continues to kick a lot of ass, although the first segment makes Hex seem a little too good. Even Frank Castle wants to trade his plot armor for that shit. It’s not quite as good as the first issue, but at least the backup story is readable, unlike a certain book about men being of war. Stick.

Aquaman by Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis does a better job holding onto the momentum of the first issue. The only problem is how short it feels, although Johns shows potential in getting me to care about Mera for the first time. Well, other than that time she vomited acid blood on a baby. Stick.

Flash by Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato is solid enough, but the art only hides how it doesn’t feel like much has happened. Flash understands his powers a bit better and… stuff is brewing. Sticking, but my regard isn’t as high as the first issue.

Fury of the Firestorms: The Nuclear Men by Ethan Van Sciver, Gail Simone and Yildiray Cinar is something I gave a second chance to because the concept is so ridiculous it just might work. And you know what? I still think so. Just with another writing team. For a hero concept that’s supposed to be so upbeat, having to put up with our protagonists being labeled terrorists while surrounded by blood just doesn’t do it for me. Drop.

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Nature forced me to take last week off, so like usual, I just merge last week’s missing update with this week. Probably wasn’t the best plan, since between myself, David Brothers, Was Taters and Space Jawa, we have a total of 55 panels. Great Zampano, that’s hefty!

Space Jawa, by the way, has ended up convincing me to check out the new Ninja Turtles series. The first issue is a bit shaky, but the rest of it has my attention. Especially digging the different origin that goes a long way in explaining why Raphael is the grittier and less refined of the team.

And away we go.

Action Comics #3
Grant Morrison, Rags Morales and Gene Ha

All-Star Western #2 (Was Taters’ pick)
Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, Moritat and Jordi Bernet

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So I’m sure you have heard about some miraculous snowstorm that happened the other day in the early month of October. My first reaction to that being, “Hey, snow! Neat!” Especially since it got me off work Saturday. Unfortunately, the whole thing turned out to be this huge ordeal. When Hurricane Irene hit me a few months ago, it wasn’t too bad. It rained like crazy for a day, the power eventually cut out and the next day everything was so sunny that the streets weren’t even wet. You wouldn’t have even known a hurricane had happened if it wasn’t for the tiny branches spread all over the pavement. I got my power back in a day and my cable back in another.

The damage of the snowstorm was at least thrice as severe. Fun fact: leaves on a tree are like tiny little catcher’s mitts. When it snows in the fall, those trees get weighed down like nobody’s business. I drove a little during the storm and every other tree was leaning over, ready to snap at any given moment. Crazy dangerous. It didn’t take long for me to lose power, as well as most of the area. Huge branches and even entire trees simply tore apart and killed countless wires. Even the lack of electricity wasn’t that bad. It was the post-storm wreckage. It seemed nearly every road was blocked off in some way. Doing something as simple as going to work meant having to go through an hour-long maze of finding a path to the end.

Every cloud has a silver lining, though. With all the darkness and live, dangling cables everywhere, those little toilet paper-tossing bastards didn’t do shit on Halloween Eve. Sadly, there was very little in trick or treating too. I myself went from Saturday to Wednesday without power or heat, which is maddening, but that’s all over.

Because of that little misadventure, I was forced to skip out on This Week in Panels and Brave New World; Bold New Direction. Guess I’ll just have to lump them together with this coming week’s stuff, so stay tuned for that.

Since I had nothing much to do on my day off, I dropped my phone off at work to be charged and hit up Real Steel, which I had been meaning to do for a while. It’s a really fun movie, albeit one of the most derivative ones I’ve ever seen. The final battle is like a checklist of references from the different Rocky movies with the robot champ Zeus being like Apollo Creed, Clubber Lang and Ivan Drago rolled into one. Still, it’s like a big wrestling show with really good CGI. It tells a story that allows cool fights to happen and even if it’s all been done, it’s a good time that’ll get you cheering the heroes on. It’s worth checking out.

Despite the limitations, I was still able to get my Halloween groove going on Monday.

Yeah… that nametag probably would have looked better had I had access to a printer, but it is what it is.

I’m back, though. And thank God. After all, I don’t want to miss tomorrow’s Beavis and Butt-head.

At this year’s New York Comic Con, I was walking through Artist Alley, not sure where I was going but yet on my way, and I was stopped in front of one of the booths. Someone at the booth had noticed my press pass tag and asked me if I’d like to check out his comic. Not an unheard of thing at Comic Con by any means, but rather than hand me a 22-page issue of something, he gave me two thick-ass full trades! For free!

Now, to be perfectly honest, if he had just given me an issue of something, I would have gotten to it eventually. But the fact that he gave me 400 pages of material no questions asked, I felt I kind of had to look through it sooner than later. I mean, that’s some kind of moxie right there.

The books in question are the first two volumes of Twisted Dark, written by new writer and self-publisher Neil Gibson.

The back cover didn’t give me any details on what I was about to experience. No description of the book, but a series of reviewer quotes. Well, I’m still going to read it anyway, so let’s have at it.

The opening story Suicide with art by Atula Siriwardane wasn’t so much a story as it was a prologue. The four pages lead to a punchline of sorts that may make you laugh or smirk ever so slightly, but you’re going to question yourself for doing so because it’s pretty messed up. If this whole book was about this character, it would be a fantastic introduction. Instead, this is an anthology of stories and what we have is a fantastic introduction to the tone of Twisted Dark.

I hadn’t even grasped the full idea of what this book is about yet as I read the next story Routine with Caspar Wijngaard on art. Taking place in Norway during the 50’s, a man sends his son out hunting and becomes disturbed when he doesn’t come home at night and goes on a one-man search. It’s a pretty solid short story and came off better with me not yet realizing what kind of theme this book had going.

Twisted Dark is made up of eleven short stories in all, with the additional art talent of Heru Prasetyo Djalal, Jan Wijngaard, Ant Mercer and Dan West. The anthology series is best compared to the Twilight Zone, though mostly in the sense that the stories tend to end with some kind of twist. The difference is that Twilight Zone regularly dealt with the supernatural and science fiction, while Gibson uses none of that. Well, okay, there is a story in there that introduces a technology that doesn’t exist, but it’s not something completely unbelievable. By staying away from the beyond, Twisted Dark lets the grounded humans do the talking. The hooks are more cerebral than anything else, putting certain character flaws under a microscope and watching them develop (sometimes over years) into something truly damaging and disturbing.

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Another week has gone by and once again, I have my plate full. Last month, I dropped Blue Beetle, Legion of Superheroes and Red Hood and the Outlaws. From what I hear from those who have read those, I made the right decision. That leaves ten comics to read and review.

First is Batman by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo, which may no longer tie in with Nightwing. It’s hard to tell, since their “Dick Grayson is a killer” plots appear to be moving in different directions. Still, it’s the best Bat-book of the relaunch by far. Snyder’s Batman seems to embrace just enough sci-fi gadgetry, high-octane action and dickery without going too overboard. I really dug his moment of confronting Nightwing about the suspicions that he was involved in a murder. He takes Dick’s explanation at face value, which makes it seem like a trust moment where he’s cool because they’re family… only we find out that Bruce is a bit of a cock (calling him a dick in presence of Dick doesn’t sound right) and didn’t trust him all that much after all. Dick, used to all of this, plays it off like it’s the usual Bruce thing, but even Bruce seems a little disappointed in himself.

“Yes, I’m a jerk. I know.”

The main story is moving along well enough and I’m cautiously optimistic about the possibilities of the new mayor hopeful character. Of course, I won’t know more about what he’s all about until the next issue. Most definitely sticking.

Birds of Prey by Duane Swierczynski and Jesus Saiz isn’t so much a bad comic as it’s just weak. I kind of like it, but there’s nothing especially strong about it. There wasn’t too much in terms of strength of the last issue either. It’s cute and I can easily see the potential in the characters, but it’s in this strange middle area. Nothing about it offends me, but nothing about it has me super excited. I’m going to go probation style on this one. Sticking, but I need something to latch onto by the next one or I’m done.

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Welcome to This Week– ah, screw this. I’m getting my random YouTube clip out of the way. Look at this shit.

What the hell, 80’s? What the hell?

Yeah, so I got David, Was Taters and Space Jawa on board. If ThWiP is about whittling down a comic to one panel, I think we’ve done gangbusters with Supergirl #2.

Avengers #18
Brian Michael Bendis and Daniel Acuna

Batman #2 (Was Taters’ pick)
Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo

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Another year and another trip to the Jacob Javits Center for New York Comic Con. My fifth NYCC. And now you have to hear about it. Unless you came here by accident or you’re one of the 90% who only come here to read the David Brothers posts. If so, I apologize and understand.

I mean, for one, you won’t see this kind of crap in a Brothers post.

Maybe in an Esther post. Probably maybe.

DAY ONE: THURSDAY

This is the first year of NYCC where they had Thursday open, as far as I know. The place was only open for three hours, so it was mainly about getting the lay of the land and enjoy being able to breathe on the show floor. Shortly into my trek, I met up with my B&N coworker Jody. He was nice enough to hold the camera as I made this terrible, overplayed visual joke.

I spent a couple minutes at the Capcom area of the floor, where I briefly got to try out Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Street Fighter X Tekken. Then they had a weird little spot where they promoted the upcoming game Asura’s Rage by sticking people in a glass booth and having them scream as loudly and angrily as possible to see where they rate on the rage meter. When it was my turn and the host asked why I’m so angry, I told him I had been fighting with my eating disorder, which he didn’t know how to react to. I ended up with a 95%, which is just fine. I also got a strained throat, a promotional wig and a poster that I left in the hotel. I didn’t even see what the game looks like.

I found a booth selling comics in batches based on runs. I tend to like those better because a lot of the time, the weird shit I’m on the look for isn’t available in trade form. I bought a handful of stuff, including both runs of Seaguy and the original run of Rocket Raccoon, but one thing I had to get based on the cover was Superman vs. Terminator from 1999-2000.

Can Superman stand up to the Skynet Masterlock Challenge?! Really, though, I was too enthralled by the concept. I don’t care how many Terminators you have. It’s a bunch of faceless villains vs. a guy who will casually eat a robot if someone dares him.

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