Rob Bass, Author at GeeksHaveGame

December 22, 2022January 4, 2023
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THE GEEEEK AWARDS [Best Comics of 2022] – JLA vs. Avengers!

1. The Human Target – Here, Tom King & Greg Smallwood take another nearly forgotten DC character, give every appearance of intravenously injecting all narrative content from Brubaker/Phillips in the past twenty years cross-blended with the Giffen/DeMatteis JLI run, then blast out the most obvious thing fully formed and nearly vibrating off the page, resonant in its own perfection.

It’s a really really tight, even bulletproof, script from King, but then Smallwood’s art just embarrasses everybody, the letterer, the editors, all of us. We’re not meant to be experiencing this. The release this year of issues 4-9, every single one, made that Tuesday an event entirely unto itself, no matter what else was happening that day, that night. No question the best series happening for as long as poor Christopher Chance lasts. – 5/5

2. The End of Tom King Batman/Catwoman– While only four issues were published this year, that Christmas Special the last week of January that turned out to be a requiem and eulogy for John Paul Leon was absolute emotional carnage for everyone who participated. I won’t catch you up or even spoil the premise, just if you don’t know, learn about Mr. Leon and then power all of King’s run that starts with the Volume 3 Batman #1: I Am Gotham arc. That special was arguably the best single issue of the year already, and but then King/Mann landed Bat/Cat #10-12, the final grace notes of the six-year journey that will resound through the decades and is, for me, second only to Morrison for all time Batman runs.

3. A.X.E.: Judgment Day – And there came a day unlike any other, where a series of well-paced and individually rewarding character arcs was allowed to nurture and cultivate, seemingly immune to editorial influence, and suddenly Kieron Gillen’s Eternals smashed into his fine post-Hickman work on Krakoa with the Immortal X-Men, folding in Jason Aaron’s Avengers while we were at it, and Lo! This was a Marvel anti-Event!, [I mean in the best way possible because most random spin-offs instead of being suddenly Blade or Ghost Rider getting in on the peripheral action and traditional sales-bump], the spinoffs were nearly all just the architect Gillen himself dropping important beats into the main arc. I’ll say it, The Eternals was Kirby’s final great lightning strike against the firmament, but not even he had the tools or time to tell the story, realize the concept to the depth that it deserved, and Marvel’s been half- or quarter-assed trying to figure out how to do it ever since. Gillen has by far been the best one so far.

4. The Jurassic League – Dinosaur Justice League! What if Daniel Warren Johnson and his friend Juan Gedeon recast the DC icons as Supersaur, Bat Walker, and Wonderdon? It sounds like an awesome joke that could never truly land, but the six issues are one of the best rides of the entire year. Absolute maximization of the concept!

5. *TIE* World’s Finest / Superman: Space Age #1 & #2 – Mark Waid. Dan Mora. Tamra Bonvillain. Superman & Batman. Every month, it’s an exemplar of the very best the medium has to offer, particularly and most especially within the bounds of corporate superhero culture. They can all still make you believe… as for Space Age, it’s two issues of a three-part series, so we’re not done, but even individually, I’d be remiss not recognizing this work from Russell/Allreds as already one of the greatest stories of all time starring this man, this light. I don’t want to convince you about it all, just go find it and let it into your life.

Special Mention: The Highly Improbable Publication of the JLA/Avengers trade paperback to Honor the Life & Death of George Pérez. Look it up, if you don’t know. I nearly cried my eyes out at the store only buying it. Legends can inspire all of us to do anything. Even in Real-Life!

Honorable Mentions: Action Comics, Batman, One-Star Squadron, Fantastic Four: Life Story, X-men, Killing Time, Flashpoint Beyond & Dark Crisis, Catwoman: Lonely City, One Dark Knight, Hulk: Grand Design, Fables, Fantastic Four, Starhenge, Superman: Son of Kal-El, Batman vs. Robin, Love Everlasting, Gotham City: Year One, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, One Bad Day: Riddler.

What I Still Need To Read: Fantastic Four: Full Circle, The Incal: Psychoverse.

-Rob Bass

Wait… is GeeksHaveGame actually doing a comic book review? Am I doing a Geeeeeeeeeeeeeek Awards thing? What year is it? Welp! It doesn’t matter ‘cause you’re friendly, neighborhood Houstonian is here to give you my Best Comics of 2022.

5. Batman/Superman: World’s Finest (DC Comics) – With art by Dan Mora and words by Mark Waid, World’s Finest is an absolute blast to read. Over the first 10 issues, the title explores time travel with the Doom Patrol as well as allowing Waid to revisit villains and anti-heroes from his work on Justice League and Kingdom Come. – 4/5

4. Earthdivers (IDW Publishing) – Now, this is a book that was on one of the “MUST READS” at my local comic book shop and the premise is absolutely insane: to save the Earth, Christopher Columbus must be killed before discovering America. Created by Stephen Graham Jones with art by Davide Gianfelice, this book is a time-jumping thriller that keeps you guessing at the end of every issue. – 4.25/5

3. Fire Power (Image Comics) – Robert Kirkman knows how to create a new series, but you add artwork by Chris Samnee and I am in. With a premise that is a mixture of 70’s kung-fu, mind-controlling snakes, and fireballs, you can’t help but be enthralled. (Hint: Pick up Vol. 1 trade first, as it takes place before the first issue.) – 4.5/5

2. Superman: Son of Kal-El (DC) – Both of my top 2 books of the year come courtesy of Australian Tom Taylor. His take on Jon Kent is not only beautiful, but he also captures the essence of the side characters — to which the same applies to the introduction of his boyfriend, Jay Nakamura, his mother, Lois Lane, his best friend Damian, or any of the other numerous characters. Not only that, but Taylor also shows how tough it is when your dad is the most famous superhero in the world. Props to artist John Timms for such a vibrant look on the book as well. – 4.75/5

1. Nightwing (DC) – Tom Taylor made me switch from “really liking Nightwing” to going “uhhh… is he a Top 5 favorite comic book character?!” Taylor has shown just why Nightwing is the character that everyone in the DCU looks to, loves, and respects. Whether it’s Superman asking him to watch over his son, Wally West and him interacting like the brothers they are, or (FINALLY) putting him back with Batgirl and showing why they are one of the best couples in all of comics, Taylor has brought the best out of Dick Grayson. While Geraldo Borges has done some beautiful fill-in work, the main artist Bruno Redondo has crafted some outstanding and phenomenal spreads, covers, and just flat-out gorgeous artwork in general. – 5/5

Honorable Mentions: Bzzrker, The Approach, Spider-Man, X-Men, Batman, Hulk, Strange Adventures, Batman/Catwoman.

-Bobby Bexar

1. Batman vs. Robin – Mark Waid collabos with King Conan’s Mahmud Asrar’s amazing talents. Waid delivers his deep knowledge of Bat canon as Asrar brings rock solid visuals, who is also stylistic and technical at the same time and it’s so captivating. It sets him apart from the thin lined flashy art that Jimenez provides on Batman. The story and art justify the high price of the book. – 5/5

2. Wolverine – Benjamin Percy has really delivered with the grit and comedy I need at the end of a work day. The Deadpool storyline was hilarious and this new Beast Storyline is so messed up. In any iteration of the X-Future I guess we all end up with a Dark Beast and it works. – 4.5/5

3. X-Force – Another one from Percy, as he delivers even more grit and humor that I enjoy. The pesky humans remain a bummer and Beast is losing his moral compass — keeping their threats away. The art is usually subpar but matches the comedic pacing. This book also had a hilarious Deadpool storyline. It also kept Judgement Day way way in the ground. – 4/5

4. Predator – After the Fox acquisition and incredibly violent and beautifully illustrated Alien books, I had to check out our Alien hunter. This book also provides an interesting perspective with visceral and bloody action needed in the title. Ed Brisson and Kev Walker introduce the bad ass, Theta. She’s out and about in the universe hunting down Predators after they. Killed her parents. She looks like Vasquez from Aliens so it really works for me. – 4/5

5. Department of Truth – This book still has me hanging by a thread. They seemed to be dragging their feet this year because I don’t know who the bad guy or the Starfaced character really works for, or I do. I’m really waiting for a resolution but I loved that we got some dirt on Stanley Kubrick and the moon landing. It’s like watching Red Pill YouTube shorts but I can’t make out what I’m seeing because the art still wants to go Dave McKean on my eye. That being said, they’re stringing me along effectively. – 3.5/5

Honorable Mentions: Magic Order 3, Immortal X-Men.

Side note : I don’t appreciate Marvel slowly trying to repackage the X-Men and breaking down the Island Hickman created. If anyone will do it, Sinister. Not the Eternals.

-Rob Deep

May 5, 2022May 10, 2022
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DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS [Review]: The Raimian Aspect.

I first encountered the work of Sam Raimi at a church lock-in in 7th Grade. It was October and the chaperone thought it would be cool to rent a couple scary movies. After the more wholesome church-related activities and ritualistic devouring of the pizzas and the sugar, the twelve of us unrolled our sleeping bags to curl up and watch something great. We chose Evil Dead 2 . . .

Within five minutes, this seemed like not only the best decision we could have made under these circumstances but maybe even the best movie experience any of us had had since the throwdown at the Ewok village, those little guys chanting “Yub nub!” at the end of The Saga. It’s challenging to encapsulate how hard Raimi blew open the doors of my brain in such a short time. His insane-velocity tracking shots, the over-the-top mayhem, the splatter-gore past the point of excess, and best of all, the demon-POV shots cribbed from Friday The 13th but lent a new poignancy by their seasick lurching momentum and perpetual snarls, inspiring the sobriquet “Satan on a Moped,” which we all hollered with joy every time it cut to one of those.

The impossible unkillability of Bruce Campbell’s Ash, who we all adored from the first frame. The fact that this was all unfolding on a Friday night in a house of God charged the proceedings with an enhanced aura of transgression. It was a very progressive Episcopal church.

The next time I found Sam Raimi was the following year when he turned out to be the creator and director of Darkman, a new character rooted in The Shadow and Batman who wound up closer to the Phantom of the Opera.

I was thrilled by the WHO IS DARKMAN? ad campaign, clipped an article from the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal to pin up on my wall, and had my mom and little brother there for opening matinee that last Friday of summer before 8th Grade. This was the first time I ever saw Liam Neeson or Frances McDormand, and Danny Elfman’s thunderous score imbues the proceedings with a thematic continuity dialed into Burton/Keaton’s industry-shattering run through Gotham the previous summer.

As the film progresses, Darkman turns out to be muuuuch more psychological horror than pulp superhero adventure with initially sympathetic Peyton Westlake (Neeson) disfigured for his origin story but then driven to commit increasingly horrifying acts of violence in revenge upon those responsible. Raimi repeats this one trick where he zooms into Westlake’s eye to launch another really wild montage of explosions and other disturbing imagery to illustrate the character’s mental collapse.

My favorite one of these happens in the clip below when our hero is trying to win his girl a pink elephant at the carnival, then feels like he’s being treated unfairly. Montage detonates right at 1:32, but the entire two minutes is extremely compelling footage as a time capsule not only of early Neeson/McDormand [37 & 32 years old at the time] but also one of the better superhero movies of the 1990s that did gangbusters box-office ($48.9 million on a $14-million budget) but that has been relegated to deep-cut cult status despite the pedigree. I love the hell out of this movie, but when Raimi & Neeson opted out for the sequels, I did the same. Here’s hoping that they reconvene before it’s too late for Darkman IV: The Return of Westlake or just a proper Darkman II.

Raimi tried on a few different genres in the nineties. He returned to Bruce Campbell and the Evil Dead with the beloved studio 1992 sequel Army of Darkness, tried on the western with The Quick and the Dead (a screaming-insane 1995 cast, if you have not yet had the pleasure), riffed on his friends and students the Coen Brothers’ neo-noir aesthetic with A Simple Plan, pitched one last baseball movie for Kevin Costner in For the Love of the Game, then closed out the decade with a paranormal murder mystery written by Billy Bob Thornton starring psychic Cate Blanchett called The Gift (another appalling cast).

Then, Spider-Man…

We’ve all seen it. Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst and James Franco and Willem Dafoe. The iconic J.K. Simmons roaring with laughter as J. Jonah Jameson. Rosemary Harris, the only actress to ever physically resemble Aunt May of the comics. Elfman back with another bombastic orchestral theme. It still felt like a Raimi movie, sincerity bordering on campiness while never quite over the line.

But the rough edges from the eighties, the indie budget vibe of Evil Dead and even Darkman, that was all shined up. Cutting-edge big-studio CGI let our friendly-neighborhood hero swing through the steel canyons of Manhattan with the greatest of ease while Raimi’s soaring tracking shots presage the motion of a certain Cloak of Levitation through these same avenues twenty years later and in the blink of an eye.

In the six years following Raimi’s last installment of the Maguire franchise, he directed a horror film written by his brother and a Wizard of Oz prequel starring Franco but then nothing for the past decade. Until the Multiverse of Madness.

When Raimi was announced as director of Benedict Cumberbatch’s second turn in the lead role after hovering around quite a lot these past six years impacting other central protagonists’ narrative, I was bummed that Kevin Feige wasn’t bringing him in to revisit Spider-Man for No Way Home. But of course, Jon Watts delivered such strong work with the first two Tom Holland films, it made no sense to change that up, and maybe Raimi could channel some of his early-career energy to guide Stephen Strange away from the baseline MCU quippy superhero-tone and more in the direction of horror.

Reader, even after three decades of knowing (and feeling known by) Sam Raimi, I was not prepared.

In the parking lot Thursday night afterward, I wrote that the film was “aggressively Raimi.” Others have paraphrased the familiar construction “It’s the most Raimi film that ever Raimi’d.” I remain shocked by how his directorial choices here both completely suit and enhance the tone of MCU Movie #28 while simultaneously tapping all the way back to his earliest work.

It’s like Raimi conjured a portal for his 1990 self to pop through to remind himself exactly how he used to do it in the Evil Dead eighties, the things he’d just learned and was about to use for Darkman. All the hallmarks detonating here before us just as fast as they can:

-The long fluid tracking shots
-The lurching antagonist POV
-The completely over-the-top gory madness
-The spastic demons cackling and taunting the hero, lifted verbatim from Army of Darkness

But that zoom into-the-eye montage, the Darkman deal. It happens here. More than once. That annihilated me, immediately portaled right back through the bulging eye to 1990, Neeson losing it on the midway. Then it happens again. And again. Maybe a fourth time. I don’t know. It all started breaking down. I’m unclear how many of my fellow Thursday-night premiere viewers were also long-time Raimi fans, but the accrued progression of all these choices stacked up on them as well.

This escalated the situation into this pretty much demonstrative religious experience the entire back half through, most watchers on this earth pretty much giving up losing their minds, folks started jumping up out of their chairs to then merely stand stock-still aghast, hands over their mouths, or then others just yelling “NOOOOoooo!!” at the screen or then still more stagger sloppy-crying in the aisles when it all really started to go wrong. The last ten minutes, I was really grateful to realize that probably we were all just extras on Page 19 of a Morrison comic cranked out in his 29th year at Marvel. That is how hard it broke down by the end of the 9:20 screening in Theater #13 at the Pflugerville Tinseltown.

Yes, to fully even understand what’s happening with the plot of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, you need to have a graduate-level understanding of the plot mechanics of at least four other films and one season of heartbreaking television. But the really sublime thing about this movie is that it’s the product of a studio known for sublimating the voice of its directors in favor of a house “Bullpen” style (James Gunn being the real exception here), but then somehow, here we have Feige hiring one of the most versatile and underrated American directors of the modern era and encouraging him to flex his creative vision into a capstone culmination of his entire body of work.

I was powerless not to be portaled right back to my sleeping bag in the church on that unforgiving stiff rec-room carpet when I was 12, high on sugar and friendship and staying up too late and the wild impossibility of all this energy exploding off of the tiny screen at the front of the room, that someone could do this, capture stories the way that I saw them in my head, this kinetic and cackling-mad insane, that movies could go this fast. That they could be this much fun. 4.5/5 “Gimme Some Sugar, Baby!”s.

-Rob Bass

December 30, 2020
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THE QUARANTINE QUAGMIRE [Vol. 5]: The Essential Comics of 2020.

It’s no great secret that 2020 has been a dumpster fire of a year, but traditionally, times of great strife and turmoil yield magnificent works of art, and this year has certainly been no exception.

1. X OF SWORDS (Marvel Comics) – The first comic book that I want to talk about is no great shock but still a bit of a pleasant surprise. Last year’s House of X/Powers of X mini-series by Jonathan Hickman/Pepe Larraz/R.B. Silva reinvigorated Marvel’s stagnant X-Men franchise to a degree that most of us long-term fans had despaired of believing was possible. Everything was new again, seething with excitement and potential. The relentless weekly pace of the twelve issues and the beauty of two complementary art teams with no fill-ins focused the narrative to a degree that made it my favorite run of 2019. However, as soon as the event finished, in the merry Marvel tradition, the franchise immediately fragmented into five or six different titles that were released with such frequency, it wasn’t really tenable for most to even give them all a chance.

So, I was a bit ambivalent when X of Swords was announced. 22 chapters scattered across every title, usually three per week. Yes, Hickman was the “showrunner” or whatever they wanted to call it, and he was writing the major installments with Larraz returning for that already classic HoX/PoX feel, but anyone who’s given them a chance down through the years has been burned on so so many ultimately useless Marvel crossover tie-in “mega-events,” my hopes were still not high. Why not just another tight twelve issues by Hickman and two art teams? I was so so wrong. Every chapter heightened the stakes and propelled the narrative forward at a breathtaking pace, no matter who the creators were. I couldn’t wait for every Wednesday to gorge on another 60 pages of the delight.

There were so many moments that I suspect played well for less experienced readers but that had me clutching my heart while laughing like a madman at the bonkers insanity of the wildly careening plot: Doug’s challenge, Logan’s challenges, Illyana in general, and I mean, Storm just journeying to Wakanda for her sword. That set-up is the definition of event filler. You have to pay $4.99 for this one issue of Marauders that’s Chapter 5 of 22 and the only point is that Storm needs a special sword so that she can eventually be one of ten mutants fighting ten other evil mutants. But Vita Ayala and Matteo Lolli, creators I’ve never even heard of, wring out pathos and deep character depth, really the best I can recall Ororo displaying since Claremont finally took a walk thirty years ago.

And I haven’t even mentioned the absolute glory of how this epic handles Apocalypse as a proper protagonist. Yes, it’s explosive and loud and interdimensional and big and bursting, but this creative crew never loses sight of what binds the tapestry of the folks who used to live on 1407 Graymalkin Lane and have since relocated to a sentient island nation: it’s the quiet human moments, the little beats of self-discovery and revelation, the choices they make that mean nothing will actually ever be the same. 5/5 Swords Across the Multiverse.

2. SUPERMAN SMASHES THE KLAN (DC Comics) – In 1946, when the character was only eight years old, the radio serial The Adventures of Superman aired an arc of episodes entitled “Clan of the Fiery Cross” in which Superman battled the Ku Klux Klan. These were some of the most popular episodes of the series and have now been loosely adapted all these years later into Superman Smashes The Klan a three-part graphic novel by Gene Luen Yang & Gurihiru.

The series takes place in its own Golden-Age pocket-continuity set in 1946 when Superman is still developing as a character and a hero. He doesn’t know about Krypton. He doesn’t know about kryptonite. He can’t fly, so he sprints down telephone wires to save the day. Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen are on hand, but even more prominent are new characters Roberta and Tommy Lee, whose family has just moved from Chinatown to downtown Metropolis. Their mom is having trouble with English and keeps reverting to Cantonese, much to her husband’s chagrin.

This sets up an extremely compelling duality in which this family finds themselves targeted by the Klan because of their race and get help from Superman, who himself is only now coming to terms with his alien nature and true identity as it relates to the fundamental part of what makes him who he is and what that says about America, the land that he calls home. Yang delivers a pitch-perfect script full of drama, humor, and wonderful character moments, all perfectly executed by the art duo Gurihiru, whose cartoony art style belies the serious nature of the narrative while anchoring it in a lighter tone that makes it easier to digest.

At once timeless and classic, SSTK stands as one of the best Superman stories to come along in a very long time and a shining example of the finest qualities that both genre and medium have to offer, telling a story that entertains while actively trying to make the world a better place. 5/5 Immigrant Songs

3. JACK KIRBY: THE EPIC LIFE OF THE KING OF COMICS (Ten Speed Press) – You’d think there’s really nowhere to take it after an instant classic starring the original superhero, but this year saw the long-awaited delivery of one of the greatest stories ever told across the history of the medium: the true and actual story of the life of Jack Kirby…

Tom Scioli has been building toward this in plain sight for the past 15 years, first treating Kirby as genre in the devastating and underrated Gødland, before streamlining his style into a more cartoony pre-aged retro look for G.I. Joe vs. Transformers and Go-Bots, most recently bringing it all home in a stunning act of narrative compression by cramming all 108 issues of Kirby’s legendary Fantastic Four run into only two massive issues, all this though seemingly in service of codifying his situation to tell the life-story of the most important comic-book creator of the twentieth century in Jack Kirby: The Epic Life of the King of Comics.

Scioli writes, draws, colors, and hand-letters the entire book, which opens on Kirby’s childhood as a member of a Brooklyn street gang and quickly moves through his very young entry into the world of cartooning in order to help provide for his family. The early childhood bits are powerful enough, but soon Kirby’s co-creating Captain America, heading off to be an advance scout for the Allies during World War II after drawing enough extra pages that his fans will barely realize he’s overseas, inventing romance comics, then serving as the primary imagination engine birthing the Marvel Universe before heading over to DC Comics for his truncated Fourth World magnum opus, all while battling an increasingly frustrating corporate infrastructure that champions creation at the expense of creator and denies recognition to the white-hot imagination that has given more to the medium than any other.

It was definitely all too much for me to take more than 8-12 pages at a time. Scioli delivers a masterpiece worthy of the epic life that it relates, an inspiration to all who have followed and a call to action to celebrate the man who regularly conjured mythologies through the simple act of sitting down at his table and getting started, every day for decades. Kirby Forever. 5/5 Kirby Krackles

Honorable Mentions: Wonder Woman: Dead Earth, The Green Lantern: Season Two, Locke & Key: In Pale Battalions Go, Doom Patrol: Weight of the Worlds #7, Chu, The Batman’s Grave, The Question: The Deaths of Vic Sage, Strange Adventures.

Have a better New Year, will ya?

-Rob Bass

October 20, 2020October 20, 2020
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RORSCHACH / AN UNKINDNESS OF RAVENS [Reviews]: Fistful of Mystery.

**RORSCHACH #1** – DC Comics Black Label

It’s been almost a year since Damon Lindelof’s HBO mini-series WATCHMEN and the Geoff Johns/Gary Frank DC Comics mini-series DOOMSDAY CLOCK, both sequels to the Alan Moore’/Dave Gibbons seminal masterpiece WATCHMEN, took their final bows. But the former just won a gang of Emmys, and DC Comics is only too happy to push out more new WATCHMEN content, so here we have RORSCHACH by Tom King & Jorge Fornes. No surprise that it’s a 12-issue maxi-series, the format first popularized by the original and employed to pretty devastating effect these past few years by King on THE VISION, MISTER MIRACLE, and currently STRANGE ADVENTURES.

But is this one inkblot too many? Does the reader see an intriguing narrative sweeping us away on yet another murder-mystery or an opportunistic cash-grab strip-mining intellectual property that DC has famously retained under dubious ethical circumstances?

There are many fans who view the issue to be just as black-and-white as poor Walter Joseph Kovacs saw the world in October 1985. Supporting anything, paying a dollar bill for one page after that eternal last Moore/Gibbons panel in #12 cheapens the purity of the original work. And I see their point. I do. Never compromise. But then there’s the whole deal about Moore crafting the original narrative over the Charlton characters in the first place. They became his characters, certainly; but they first appeared on the page created by another man. And that Lindelof show was the best thing on television last year; the Johns/Frank series produced some of the best single issues. I’ve got to at least acknowledge all that contextual baggage just in order to tell you how well this thing succeeds on its own merits.

It’s narratively compelling. King certainly has the beats of this format nailed down, and that opening scene is one hell of a hook. We’ve known since he showed up on the back end of King’s BATMAN run that Jorge Fornes is charging hard at being the second coming of David Mazzucchelli. Extremely elegant storytelling, no line wasted. Every shot-choice ideal. Dave Stewart has been one of the best colorists in the medium for a couple of decades now and obviously doesn’t disappoint.

In terms of plot, we’ve got an interesting inversion on the trope of “Who Killed The Comedian?” into “Who Is The _________ Who Was Killed?” Sprinkle in an old tape of a seance that actually happened at Supergirl-creator Otto Binder’s house in 1973 attended by a teenage Frank Miller, follow that up with an unmistakable Steve Ditko analogue to bring us all the way full circle to the Charlton characters he created in 1966 who started this all, and you’ve got one hell of a mystery crackling.

Two, if you’re wondering how King can possibly land all of this, imbue it with any meaning save for what he chooses to impose. We will see. 4.25/5 Bibles.

–Rob Bass

**AN UNKINDNESS OF RAVENS #1** – Boom! Studios

Boom! Studios brings us the newest series from Dan Panosian’s sophomore effort with An Unkindness of Ravens. Speaking of sophomores…who was expecting comic book’s own Urban Barbarian to unleash a…high school drama? A high school filled with cliques, mysteries, and witches, to say the least?!

Set in New England, we’re introduced to Wilma Farrington and her father as they move back to his childhood town of Crab’s Eye. Everyone remembers being the new kid in school, sure. But imagine being the new kid who just so happens to be a dead ringer for a fellow student who mysteriously vanished a short time ago. Not only do you need to deftly maneuver your new schedule, figure out the good kids from the bad, deal with which group to make friends or enemies with – but you also have the entire school giving you the stink eye? Talk about your high school drama!

It’s part Heathers, with a sprinkling of Riverdale with a dash of The Craft mixed together into a 5 part drama. The cast fills quickly as we meet Wilma’s classmates. Ansel Friend acts as her tour guide, Scarlett Dansforth is the rich and popular queen bee, and we meet The Ravens. The Straight-A’s outcasts Yana, Vikki, Xooey & Zaida. Lunchroom drama leads to Wilma making a decision that brings us to the first issue’s dramatic cliffhanger that has me hooked.

Panosian is a co-founder of the Official Drink & Draw Social Club, inker, penciller, cover artist, and sole creator of the crime drama SLOTS (Image/Skybound). This time around Dan’s providing covers along with creating and writing for Marianna Ignazzi who is making her stateside comics debut from Italy. Her super clean art style has a Venture Bros feel to it and she seems to have zero issues filling the classrooms and hallways with students. 4/5 Bibles.

–Sean Farrell

August 25, 2020August 25, 2020
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THE FLASH vs. THE FLASH [DC FanDome]: Zoom! The Blur of Two Panels.

There was an incredible burden on the DC FanDome panel for the upcoming The Flash movie. This project has buzz-sawed through multiple scripts and directors and already endured several release-date bumps even pre-COVID, not to mention the rough prospect of being an alternate version of the character racing up against six seasons of the Grant Gustin/Greg Berlanti television series that has done an overall commendable job on a regular basis since 2014; The Flash TV show has channeled the wow and wonder of the character who inaugurated the Silver Age of Comics. I am one who, from the initial announcement, was quite dubious about this set-up and bummed that they didn’t just bump Gustin and his crew up to the big screen after having certainly put it the hours, months, and years imbuing a continuity with heart and a great deal of earned character development.

Ezra Miller came off well enough in his cinematic debut, but his cameo during last December’s televised CW Crisis On Infinite Earths went a long way toward mitigating my doubt, not just acknowledging Gustin’s continuity/journey, but also through their wonderful on-screen chemistry. It was a Top-5 moment in a 5-episode crossover hyperdense with incredible moments, and it left me curious and optimistic to see what Miller and director Andy Muschetti had in store for their cinematic version/vision.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDOP3Z69TMc

It was a spirited conference from the get-go. Miller, long-haired and bearded, immediately dropped in with his first Flash Fact! that, according to his Wikipedia page, Muschetti was a PA on the 1996 Evita movie starring Antonio Banderas & Madonna. This set a playful, irreverent, and high-energy tone that careened through the entire experience. Also on the call were Barbara Muschetti, the director’s sister and co-producer, and Christina Hodson, whose last two produced screenplays, Bumblbee and Birds of Prey: The Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn, have been slam-dunks.

Hodson came across very well and knowledgeable about the source material, stating that she fell in love with the juxtaposition in the original Geoff Johns Flashpoint source material of a massive timeline-rebooting hijinx worthy of the original Wolfman/Perez Crisis juxtaposed with the story of a boy just trying to save his mum (she’s British). She also dropped a wild back-channel DC cinematic crossover that growing up, she was best friends with Robert Pattinson’s older sister, so she’s known the current champ “since he was two years old and in diapers.” Which winds up being a hilarious image when you make it to the Reeves The Batman trailer at the end of that experience.

But the especially cool thing about this panel is that it runs with the vibe from the also-excellent earlier Greg Berlanti/Jim Lee Multiverse panel about how this Flash movie is the one that’s going to blast through all the continuity barriers and not only acknowledge but celebrate the entire insane DC Multiverse. I wish they were able to keep the lid on these kinds of things, but Ben Affleck is going to be Batman again in this movie. Michael Keaton is going to be Batman again in this movie. That’s the best news and a very positive direction for where DC movies should be heading as a whole. Embrace the screaming madness.

Muschetti tried to share concept art, but Miller straight-up Rick-rolled him. I guess maybe it was planned? I’m not certain, but it was extremely convincing in the moment. Muschetti seemed very annoyed and is maybe a better actor than anyone credits. The concept art that eventually evaded “Never Gonna Give You Up” is everything you want from your Flash, kinetic and dynamic. The threads of light embedded through the infrastructure are something we haven’t seen in all these years. Hodson said she stole some glimpses of Muschetti’s concept art that has a Speed Force visualization that nobody has ever imagined. It’s all pretty exciting.

Miller kept things crackling with another Flash Fact that the first ever cinematic adaptation of Batman is Andy Warhol just letting it rip in 1964 with unlicensed madness, something called Batman vs. Dracula with a soundtrack by the Velvet Underground. This news appears to be true, Scarlet Speedsters! There are currently 36 minutes of footage available to be screened. Your humble reviewer was so overwhelmed by just this primary experience that he did not investigate further but promises to report back with further results.

The last question was what random crossover would anyone like to see? Muschetti said that he wanted Barry to intersect with the Game of Thrones crew, mainly to cut down the voyage-lag (though it seems like those charmed little fellows Benioff & Weiss took care of that themselves just having Jon Snow leave The Wall at the end of 7.01 and suddenly arriving at Dragonstone there at the top of 7.02? We don’t care anymore and we’re not doing that here? That’s fine. It was wild to me that Muschetti still seemed completely dialed in and just giving notes on that final season. Those choices). Miller ended the whole deal as he began it, knocking it out as hard as he could, wishing that Barry could meet Nicolas Cage, not Spider-Noir Cage or Long-Haired Cage in costume as that whacked-out screen-test 90s Superman Burton/Smith version nobody asked for or received, just the actual man Nicholas Cage, “who I fully believe can actually transcend space and time.”

These words ring true. 4.5/5 Bibles.

And then, on the other side of 133 episodes and months of quarantine lockdown, come our old friends Grant Gustin and Candice Patton and Danielle Panabaker and Carlos Valdes for a very-much Zoom call hosted by Entertainment Weekly’s Chancellor Agard. Agard did his best trying to propel energy into the situation and elicit engagement from the cast, but it was kind of an offbeat deal where they all came across as very much over it. I don’t mean this in a bad way.

It was actually refreshing; there was no artifice or pandering, few smiles, zero bullshit, everybody answering questions but basically not putting a pretty face on any of it. The quarantine was showing, Gustin & Valdes had beards and needed haircuts too, but were projecting the opposite energy of Miller. He was wooing us, dancing through the Flash Facts! This cast was done, haggard and exhausted from quarantine shutdown, very much a Rock of Ages vibe running through, which landed for me…

Showrunner Eric Wallace was on the call, and everyone interacting with him was my favorite dynamic. I hadn’t zoomed out enough to process it, but Season 6 very much split between the first 2019 half being alllllllll about how Barry was going to die on December 10th then we were delivered unto Crisis, praise Rao above all Gods, and but afterwards the post-Crisis 2020 focus shifted much more toward Iris and what she had going at the Citizen with her own crew. They mentioned conjuring Charlie’s Angels, but that allusion misses the entire point about there not being some random old white guy on speaker-phone telling them what to do; it was all about female agency and empowerment.

There was some focus on the newcomers, Kayla Compton as Allegra and Brandon McKnight as Chester. Both actors came across as very sweet and welcomed into the fold by the cast. Compton told a quick anecdote about Danielle Nicolet (Cecile Norton) taking a picture with her to set her at ease. McKnight shared that he’d been watching the series with his little sister since the first season and couldn’t believe that he had punched through into the onscreen narrative.

Again, there was a tired sincerity on display with the cast throughout that I found very moving, keeping in mind that I’ve watched every episode of this series twice the week that it aired, once for consumptive delight, once for craft analysis, and then hitting this second-round Fandome at 12:55 in the early Texas-AM; the lack of artifice was really moving. Valdes had a line late in the game about people stopping him in the street giving him trouble about Cisco surrendering his Vibe powers being “so so gratifying to my budding narcissism,” and right then the frame cuts to bearded Rock-of-Ages Rebel Grant Gustin only closing his eyes and shaking his head, the world-weariness of it, the amount of friendship that gesture speaks to, it was almost my favorite beat of the entire Fandome.

On the aforementioned Greg Berlanti Multiverse panel earlier in the day, Berlanti and Jim Lee confirmed what already seemed apparent in the moment, that in that brilliant Ezra Miller cameo in the Crisis last December, Gustin inadvertently inspired his counterpart to dub himself The Flash just by blurting it out. That is deeply resonant because as any fan or scholar of the DC Multiverse knows, long before Barry Allen actually came face-to-face with Jay Garrick in Flash #123 to canonize the Multiverse, the Golden Age Flash had inspired him to take his name and, it turns out, inaugurate the Silver Age of Comics in Showcase #4. Let’s all have a deep breath and a paragraph break.

There is so much happening now with cinematic comic-book adaptations. Feige & his MCU reigning over the entire medium/industry, even the formally insurmountable Star Wars franchise. Objective domination. Fox still running around spinning out kind of weird shit like Tom-Hardy Venom but then Into The Spider-Verse, an instant classic that almost instantly blasts Maguire & Garfield continuities out of existence even while leaving the door open to welcome them back home later.

Whatever DC’s got going on, the dominant Snyder arc of the past decade that many love and many hate, followed by offshoot schisms where Wonder Woman is an instant classic and Shazam and Aquaman land well enough for most folks, and though Joaquin Phoenix wins the second Oscar for somebody being The Joker (which it seems like nobody has done at all a deep dive on that yet?) and then but all that focused and accelerated into the future while we’re already celebrating obvious successes like WW84 and James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad (and I acknowledge some folks who only think Robert Pattinson can only play poor doomed Cedric Diggory or a sparkly vampire who is going to ruin their fun once again, but this Matt Reeves The Batman movie really has the potential to be the best one yet, you have to see it), all of that, so much swirling, but the guiding magnetic pole about the DC Universe has always been legacy, right? Inspiration.

Remember what Oliver Queen said to Barry Allen on that Central City rooftop in the pilot that aired on October 7th, 2014, that first night that teased that all of this Crisis might even be possible: “You can be better, because you can inspire people in a way that I never could, watching over your city like a guardian angel . . . making a difference . . . saving people . . . in a flash.”

These two Flashes. In the original 1956 sequential situation, Barry Allen reads his original Golden-Age comics about Jay Garrick as a child and honors his hero, actualizes his potential by becoming The Flash. Now, in our insane but analogous 2020 multi-media/televisual/cinematic situation, Ezra Miller Barry Allen stumble-crashes into Grant Gustin Barry Allen Crisis continuity and is immediately receptive to the vibration of the same name.

Lightning crackles. Run, Barry, Run. 4/5 Bibles.

-Rob Bass

May 28, 2020
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STAR WARS – THE CLONE WARS [Last Shot, Part III]: Magic Words.

“General Kenobi, years ago, you served my father in the Clone Wars…”

That simple opening phrase first spoken by the tiny blue hologram of a captured Rebel princess ignited the imaginations of millions of viewers in 1977 and on down through the years. The real trick of it was there had already been so much world-building going on, evil empires and a desert planet and fugitive droids and the tiny hooded nomads who scavenge them and a teenager who just wants to get out of town on his trusty landspeeder.

So that just after, we meet the space wizard and are now only 35 minutes into this experience (back when, remember, the entire Star Wars experience lasted 2 hours and 4 minutes), when she intones those two magic words “Clone Wars,” they detonate in the minds of viewers still breathless and reeling with the wonder of all they’ve seen and the promise of what’s yet to come. Even better, there was no callback. When we meet Han Solo & Chewbecca, they didn’t fly in these Clone Wars, they were too busy making the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs. Again, whatever that was…

The real trick that George Lucas accomplished — along with fusing archetypal mythological content as diverse as Joseph Campbell and Akira Kurosawa and executing while inventing cutting-edge special effects that went on to redefine the entire film industry — is this really cool thing with enthymemes.

You ever heard of an enthymeme? Aristotle first presented the idea as a rhetorical syllogism, as in, we are given two points: 1) Socrates is a man, and 2) All men are mortal, which of course implies the immediate third point: Socrates is mortal. Famous experimental novelists like Laurence Sterne or James Joyce adopted this technique and it was all very literary and generated many Master’s theses, but how cool is it when Lucas does it: 1) Some time before this brand-new story that you are now watching began, there was something called The Clone Wars, and 2) This is what it looks and sounds and feels like when you are experiences 2 hours and 4 minutes of something called Star Wars.

Even tiny children latch onto this instinctively, imaginations racing as fast as they can to conceive of what these Clone Wars could possibly be. Are they an army of clones bred as a worker-class who rose up against the Old Republic and finally had to be put down by the Jedi and a bunch of droids? Two different factions of clones that started a civil war and got the whole galaxy caught up in the battles? My knee-jerk thought as a very little boy did not allow for the years of even sped-up growth and indoctrination that we eventually learned about on Kamino. I wanted instant clones. Like, two Jedi have this one guy flanked and then the guy suddenly starts erupting, just mass-producing a battalion right there out of his back and arms and legs like somebody dumped some water on a Mogwai trooper, and the Jedi can barely contain him/them.

The coolest thing sometimes isn’t what these stories we love so much show us, it’s what they inspire us to create, sometimes even without deciding to. The term “fan-fiction” has a pejorative connotation, but it’s been happening in the comic-book industry since the 1970s when Roy Thomas, Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, and Jim Shooter started turning in scripts, and gentlemen who grew up loving comics like Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, and Neil Gaiman also went on to make no small amount of paradigm-shifting contributions to the medium in their own time. So, all of this to say, I went through a complicated little dance there in the back end of Lucas’s prequel trilogy when EPISODE II ends and begun The Clone Wars have, and my first response was, “Wait, after 25 years, you’re just going to do it all in between the last two parts?” That seemed like a total ripoff that was then completely mitigated by Genndy Tarkovsky’s stunning animated vignettes that led right up into EPISODE III.

So. When Lucasfilm announced this new THE CLONE WARS series, I really didn’t see the point. There were some battles. We got to see some of the random crew from the arena on Geonosis do cool stuff, and we met Asajj Ventress (Nika Futterman), who was way cooler than anybody was suspecting. What Tarkovsky and his crew accomplished was as close to the approaching-infinity level of impossible awesomeness inspired by hearing Hologram-Leia first utter those words all those years ago as anyone was ever going to get.

But this new guy Dave Filoni, over the course of years and years, he did the impossible…

He made Anakin both sympathetic and relatable (along with Matt Lanter’s incredible voice-work).
He introduced a plucky new Padawan sidekick and made her one of the best characters in the franchise’s history (again, all praise due to Ashley Eckstein).
He even pulled off the ultimate storytelling feat for this set-up: take us on the journey of a group of five clones from boyhood through indoctrination into warfare and not only differentiate them but make us care about every single one of these Clones.

We’ve already gone through the journey he took with this series, getting cancelled after five seasons, getting resurrected by Netflix the next year for a sixth, then finally rising once again for this last battle. So, in Tom Kane’s Republic-serial narrator-voice one last time: TRAPPED! AHSOKA AND REX HAVE BARRICADED THEMSELVES IN WHILE REX’S LEGION OF BROTHERS LASER THEIR WAY THROUGH THE FRAME! HOW CAN THEY POSSIBLY SURVIVE?

Part IV opens with the Williams funeral dirge first heard at the funerals of both Qui-Gon Jinn at the end of EPISODE I and Padme Amidala at the end of EPISODE III. It’s an immediately crushing way to set the tone for what follows, which is not quiet or mournful at all but rather a relentless breakneck adrenaline charge to ultimate resolution. What I love about this episode is how massive and important the relatively small stakes that we see here feel as played out in parallel with everything we already know is breaking down on Coruscant and Mustafar in EPISODE III. I mean, I’m not trying to minimize the action here, but we’re not on the galaxy-level stakes of the other movie.

Here, the questions are basically Will Ahsoka & Rex escape? (and we already know they will, so it’s really just How?), and What Will Be The Final Resolution With Maul? This isn’t the final fate of the Republic or the rise of the Galactic Empire at all, but it all feels that important. Every blocked blaster-shot, jump, dead-sprint, scene by scene, beat for beat, this feels like some of the most classic Star Wars action we’ve ever laid eyes on.

The deal with Maul wrecking the hyperdrive is a thing of legend. That’s certainly something we’ve never seen before, and the image of the wrecked Star Destroyer folding down out of hyperspace is all at once timeless and iconic and immortal. A few more allusions in this one. There’s an incredible moment right then where Rex lobs Ahsoka the slow pitch: “We’re caught in that moon’s gravitational field,” and any Star Wars fan in the world has to involuntarily whisper, “That’s no moon,” but that makes no sense, so instead she quotes Dave Bowman and tells him to open the pod-bay doors.

When Ahsoka tries to prevent Maul’s escape, we get a callback to the classic Jedi trial of levitating/restraining a craft. She tries to stop his shuttle, takes hold of it just like Luke failed to and Yoda succeeded in EPISODE V and in the same way that Rey and Kylo Ren squabble over that one shuttle that turned out not even to contain Chewie in EPISODE IX. Later on, when Ahsoka’s tumbling through the sky and Rex is trying to find her through the plummeting wreckage of the Star Destroyer, she appears out of all the smoke and chaos just exactly like the Wicked Witch of the West out of that cyclone in The Wizard of Oz. If only this had all been a dream.

The last time we see Ahsoka, she is now garbed as we will know her in REBELS, and she drops her lightsaber at the graveyard, renouncing her training and all that has brought her to this moment. It’s a powerful earned moment, resonant character work honoring the journey that she and the viewers have taken over all these years.

The cover of the next Star Wars “Jedi” game…

But okay. That last scene. It levels up even now to such a ridiculous extent, I can still barely process it. It didn’t even look animated, right? Suddenly, they just started rolling cameras on another ice-planet with all those same guys from Hoth. The probe-droid, even. Darth Vader at last makes his entrance months or years after the crash. The shot selection is vast and appalling and beautiful. We’ve come all this way and only but never want it to end. Why can’t we have seasons of this now? But this will be all. Vader approaches the wreck of the Star Destroyer and finds Ahsoka’s lightsaber there in the snow. He reaches down and picks it up.

“This lightsaber is your life.”

Remember Obi-Wan saying that to Anakin after chasing Zam Wesell through all the skyways of Coruscant early on in EPISODE II? For all the hate that that installment has incurred, much of it earned, I always simply loved the hell out of that one little beat. Most of it is the weariness with which Ewan McGregor delivers the line, implying that this exact thing is always happening. Jump back to that narrative-enthymeme deal at the top, and I did the same thing with this. Anakin is always diving headlong into action without a thought for the consequences and quite often losing this one-of-a-kind weapon that he’s fashioned to help preserve peace and order in the galaxy and his master is like, “Kid, if you can’t take care of this, you can’t take care of yourself or any of the rest of us, and you have no business at all doing this.” Which, of course he doesn’t.

But right there, watching EPISODE II on opening night, I was like, “Oh, this is nice. We don’t have time for there to be like a show of Anakin getting trained by Obi-Wan for seasons and seasons, but if there was, I bet this would be a recurring bit, and I like it.” So, I loved it when Filoni did in fact pick up on this and thread it through the various seasons of this series.

Anakin was always dropping his lightsaber.

And now, at the end of everything, it is finally time to pick one up. This reverberates back now to him returning Ahsoka’s lightsabers to her at their last meeting in Part I. At the time, it seemed like a nice beat, but I totally forgot about how this had been a motif running through the entire narrative since the very first time we saw Anakin in action as a heedless young Padawan. It was an incredible inversion to have him deliver his former Padawan’s lightsabers to her after all that time apart, demonstrating his growth in not only taking care of his own situation, but hers as well. The lightsaber symbolizes the Jedi’s commitment to the order, to its teachings, constructed at the end of apprenticeship not only as a weapon, but as a thesis to reflect the full breadth of knowledge and training acquired.

Funny that our movie sucks yet everyone wants our toys.

Vader’s decision there at the end to pick up the lightsaber, activate it, and stand there in the snow looking incredible is so much more than just striking an iconic pose, though it’s certainly one for the ages. He looks up into the sky and sees Morai circling overhead, the female convor bird that even long-time viewers might be forgiven for not placing right away after all this, but remember, this bird goes all the way back to the Mortis arc from Season 3 when Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Ahsoka encounter the three supreme Force-wielder beings.

Morai was a spiritual representation of The Daughter, the embodiment of the Light Side, hope and creation. Morai became intrinsically tied to Ahsoka after The Daughter transferred her life-force into her and went on to figure heavily into Season 2 of REBELS and make an extremely memorable appearance very late in that show’s final season as well.

Remember Sidious just blasting the hell out of Mace Windu with Force-lightning in III? “Unlimited poooooower!” Filoni dropping the reflection of Morai in Vader’s red lenses at the end of all this is basically the Light-Side opposite of that. “Unlimited hooooooope!” He’s using long-simmering character motivation and powerful motif symbolism to show that Palpatine hasn’t won. That one day, Anakin’s son will be right. There is still good in him. He holds on to his Padawan’s lightsaber, to his friend’s life that she discarded with much more thought and deliberation than he ever did all those years, all those times Obi-Wan was always there to catch it for him, and he knows that she’s still out there. She lives on. And a part of her, that blue sliver of tenacious unrelenting hope, still lives in him and will one day give him the strength he needs to rise up against his master and redeem himself after all that time.

And it all goes back to what happened not one minute before old Ben Kenobi finally got R2 to play Leia’s full message and we first heard those magic transformative words that started all of this. Luke Skywalker activated his father’s lightsaber that his old teacher had been holding on to for so very many years. That lightsaber was his life.

-Rob Bass