Events and crossovers are a longstanding tradition in the world of comics. They provide a means of telling a larger story than can normally be told, and they give a reason for characters who normally don’t interact a chance to do just that. They’ve been around since the very beginning of comics, and they’re not going anywhere at this point. Given the prevalence of events and crossovers, it stands to reason that some of them are more well-planned and better received than others. DC’s 2005-2006 Infinite Crisis event impacted the entire DC universe, with tie-ins to every major title published at the time. Love it or hate it, Infinite Crisis was an important crossover, with effects that resonated until the reboot in 2011. ...

When I first heard about Multiple Warheads: Alphabet to Infinity I had no idea who Brandon Graham was and the solicit didn’t particularly sound exciting: Sexica and her Werewolf boyfriend Nikoli travel across a sci-fi, fantasy Russia smoking singing cigarettes. Meanwhile the organ hunter Nura is sent out with a severed head and instructions to find its body. I mean, Sexica? That just sounds like it’s going to be such a corny, stupid story. And a werewolf boyfriend? I don’t even like horror. So I ignored it. But I kept coming across all these incredible Image Comics series like Saga, Chew, The Manhattan Projects, and Harvest among others. That combined with Comixology making the first issue free made me decide to take a look. Unfortunately, Comixology does not have the original Oni Press One-Shot where Graham introduced us to Seixca and Nikoli, but Graham does a good job of catching the reader up when the first issue of Alphabet to Infinity starts. ...

I tend to read comics backwards. Well, not entirely, but usually I don’t start at the beginning and go on from there. For one, that’s a really intimidating number of comics for a lot of series, and for another, the comics from the silver and golden ages are fun to glance at, but the racism and sexism inherent to media of the time can get a little (or a lot) grating if I try to read too much of it at once. I started reading comics again by trying to read the Iron Man comics from Tales of Suspense, and if I hadn’t switched to reading some more recent miniseries instead of plugging my way through that, I might have given up on comics altogether. Luckily, I picked up Red Hood: Lost Days, and realized that grounding myself in current canon was probably going to be more my style than starting from the beginning. ...

Man of Steel has its US theatre release today. It claims to be a fresh look at Superman as well as an origin story of sorts. In honor of this, today I’m looking at a Superman origin story from the comics. Eric talked about Superman: Birthright a couple of months ago, so I’m going to take a look at Superman For All Seasons, a retelling of Superman’s origin that was published in 1998. ...

note on all the image scans: they are correct manga-style so they are read right to left Spend enough time doing critical readings of media and you come across the assertion that all media tells you about the culture it was written in. Sometimes, as in contemporary media, this is easy to tease out. Other times, as with science fiction, it’s by extrapolation. So I thought it might be interesting to re-read Love Hina, by Ken Akamatsu, as a way to to understand Japanese culture. Part One can be found here. ...

No, I don’t mean Dan Didio with a fake mustache that he twirls diabolically. DC has released all of the solicits for their Villain Month in September, along with the following quote: The first universe-wide event of The New 52 begins as FOREVER EVIL launches! The Justice League is DEAD! And the villains shall INHERIT the Earth! An epic tale of the world’s greatest super-villains starts here! It’s interesting to note that the villains aren’t taking over all titles during “Villain Takeover Month.” Instead of having one of each title in the month of September, like usual, it appears that some books are getting more than one issue, each focused on a different villain, while other books aren’t being published at all. For example, they have Justice League listed four times: 23.1, 23.2, 23.3., and 23.4. They’re going on sale one per week, and each is a standard sized issue. They also each feature a different villain, and feature different creative teams, including a book written by Dan Didio… so we may actually see some Didio-related mustache-twirling after all. ...

There are a lot of details in Strangers in Paradise that add up to make it an excellent book. It’s written and drawn by Terry Moore; since it’s all done by the same person, you know that everything you’re seeing is the absolute intent of the creator, rather than an interpretation on someone’s part that might have given you the wrong idea. It’s in black and white, which both adds charm and lets you focus on the details that Moore has included. It’s not a book about superheroes, and while I do love reading about superheroes, it’s great to see something that’s about regular people (even if the situations aren’t the kinds of things that happen to everyone every day, they’re all things that you can see happening in the real world). It also has a great cast of characters, all of whom are presented in ways that surprise and delight me as a reader. ...

Super hero sidekicks almost have the same joke status nowadays as Star Trek’s Red Shirts. In a lot of ways they’re a relic from an old era before people asked questions about reckless child endangerment. We seem to have transitioned away from the sidekick to the teen hero as a substitute. The main exception is Batman who has a Robin for historical reasons. Even there, the trend for more realism in comics (kicked off in large part in the 1980s) we’ve seen the consequences as two Robins have been murdered. (Although Damian is more of a bit of family violence than being targeted for being a sidekick - if you want to get technical about it) ...

note on all the image scans: they are correct manga-style so they are read right to left Spend enough time doing critical readings of media and you come across the assertion that all media tells you about the culture it was written in. Sometimes, as in contemporary media, this is easy to tease out. Other times, as with science fiction, it’s by extrapolation. So I thought it might be interesting to re-read Love Hina, by Ken Akamatsu, as a way to to understand Japanese culture. Part One can be found here. ...

Satellite Sam #1 The AMAZING Matt Fraction ( see today’s post in which Kari explores his teamwork with Aja on Hawkeye) will be teaming up with Howard Chaykin for a new black and white series called Satellite Sam. I’m extremely excited for this series both because of Fraction’s involvement and because of the time period in which it takes place: 1951 in the early stages of television becoming one of the most powerful forces on the planet until the advent of the Internet. I’m a history junkie and especially so when it comes to media. Additionally, I’ve been wishing more people would realize that the 1950s weren’t as perfect as we assume when we watch TV and movies from that time period. So this description just got me so excited: ...