Tag Archives: DC Comics

My Free Comic Book Day 2024 Results, Ranked

May 6, 2024 By in Comics/Lit Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Two black-and white panels: angry hunter points his shotgun in the face of a small-town sheriff. Sound effects are in Japanese.

What we have here is a failure to communicate. Art by Masaaki Ninomiya.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Saturday was Free Comic Book Day! Per annual tradition, publishers and retailers nationwide collaborated to offer some four dozen comics gratis to any and all comers. Some comics generously featured brand new stories. Some contained excerpts from upcoming or previous works. A few were, at best, ad pamphlets. I visited four central Indiana shops, came away with 23 freebies in all, and bought additional cool things from each place.

Per my own annual tradition, my reading results came out as follows, ranked subjectively and upwardly from “Not My Thing” to “Buy More on Sight”:

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My 2023 at the Movies, Part 1 of 2: The Year’s Least Best

January 13, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Scene from the second Shazam movie with all six powered-up Shazam Family members standing on a bridge, looking at you.

2023 was the 20th anniversary of the classic “LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT!” LARPing video. The future that faux-wizard foresaw has arrived.

It’s listing time again! In today’s entertainment consumption sphere, all experiences must be pitted against each other and assigned numeric values that are ultimately arbitrary to anyone except the writer themselves. It’s just this fun thing some of us love doing even though the rules are made up and the points don’t matter.

I saw 24 films in theaters in 2023 that were actually released in 2023, a 33.3% increase over 2022 as COVID-19 retreated slightly into the bushes and folks began making more movies, many of them watchable. That number doesn’t include seven Academy Award nominees that were officially 2022 releases, but which I saw later outside the house as part of my annual Oscar Quest. It also doesn’t include the 2023 films I watched on streaming services, which will receive their own listicle.

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Yes, There’s a Scene During the “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” End Credits

December 30, 2023 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Jason Momoa and Patrick Wilson on a beach. Aquaman is trying to catch his breath and holds up his hand waiting for a high-five. His evil half-brother Orm, shirtless and bedraggled after a long prison stay, holds Aquaman's Trident of Naptune in one hand and just stares back at him, leaving him hanging.

Poor King of Atlantis, waiting in vain for all his DC fans to come high-five him again in theaters.

R.I.P., DC Extended Universe. I wouldn’t call theirs “a good run” through-and-through, but it had worthy moments. It’s a shame only a handful of us attended the farewell party in theaters, a.k.a. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. It’s also a shame this rather expensive, mostly underwater half-CG-cartoon sequel was only the year’s second-best DC film.

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Yes, There Are Scenes During and After the “Blue Beetle” End Credits

October 19, 2023 By in Comics/Lit, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
A wide-eyed, astonished Blue Beetle stands still while the alien energy shield around him shears a bus in half.

If too few people see this action-packed gem in theaters, we fans will never stop calling it “criminally underrated” until the day you die.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: I’ve name-checked Blue Beetle ten times in past entries over eleven years. Four of those instances referred directly to Jaime Reyes, who inherited the mantle in 2006 from his Charlton Comics predecessors that DC bought in the early ’80s. Of those four, only once have I gratuitously yet heartily recommended Jaime’s original series, which began in the hands of co-creators Keith Giffen (R.I.P.), Leverage co-creator John Rogers, and artist Cully Hamner, and was carried expertly to the finish line by Rogers and Brazilian artist Rafael Albuquerque. I stopped reading subsequent Beetle books from other teams due to letdown. (If there’s been a grade-A Jaime story printed since 2012, I’m open to recommendations.)

Despite DC Comics’ big-screen misfires, their few rousing successes in recent times gave me the hope I needed to raise my expectations for the Blue Beetle film. I was thrilled by the film, and thrilled to be thrilled. Director Ángel Manuel Soto (Charm City Kings) and screenwriter Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer (Miss Bala) don’t try to reinvent the wheel, but their combined talents go a long way toward differentiating Jaime from the hundreds of other superheroes who reached the American mainstream first.

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Fan Expo Chicago 2023 Photos, Part 2 of 4: More Cosplay!

August 14, 2023 By in Conventions & Events Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Mantis, Drax, Star-Lord and Kraglin

The stars of one of 2023’s best films so far, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3! (Full disclosure: Mantis and Drax — in Holiday Special gear! — are official Friends of MCC.)

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

It’s that time again! This weekend my wife Anne and I attended the second edition of Fan Expo Chicago at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in the suburb of Rosemont, Illinois. Last year they arose from the ashes of the late Wizard World Chicago, which we attended eleven times and whose already-shaky financial standings didn’t fare any better during the pandemic. Fan Expo threw such a great inauguration party, and invited such a staggering guest list this time that we agreed an encore was in order.

Before we attempt any real storytime, let’s do mandatory cosplay photos!

And now, the other half of all the cosplay pics taken by us two aging geeks whenever we weren’t trapped in lines or off resting our weary bones somewhere. Enjoy! Again!

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Yes, There’s a Scene After “The Flash” End Credits

June 18, 2023 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Michael Keaton as Batman in the Bat-Cave, with his costume on except no mask.

…a.k.a. Batman III, as far as Warner Bros. and nostalgia addicts are concerned.

Weaksauce disclaimers up front. Your Mileage May Vary.

Sometimes we spend money on things you wouldn’t. Sometimes it’s for stuff we don’t endorse, like that time we paid to see the largest inherently racist monument in America, or when we watched House of Cards during the pandemic. Sure, we’re happier when our expenditures are a wholehearted vote for the parties responsible for the thing we’re about to experience or consume, but sometimes we pay the price because we want to see the flawed thing for ourselves and formulate our own impressions, for better or worse or worst. Any personal reservations and/or revulsion are then taken into consideration when expressing our opinions and/or regrets in the final analysis. Interpret it however you will, but we define it however we will.

In a sense, we compromised: my son and I went to see the latest superhero film starring an actor accused of felonies, misdemeanors, and misdeeds ranging on a scale from obnoxious to irresponsibly gross. Anne stayed home, enjoyed a free afternoon, and gave me permission to share all the spoilers later at dinner, from the funniest to the stupidest.

The TL; DR version: The Flash was better than I expected, which is more than I can say for some of this year’s other sequels. That’s neither a justification nor an unconditional thumbs-up for it. Onward we press with the usual wordiness.

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My Free Comic Book Day 2023 Results, Ranked

May 27, 2023 By in Comics/Lit Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
The nine free comics I picked up.

The reading pile, alphabetized by publisher.

It’s that time of year again, but delayed on my part! Saturday, May 6th was the 22nd Free Comic Book Day, that annual celebration when comic shops nationwide offer no-strings-attached goodies as a form of community outreach in honor of that time-honored medium where words and pictures dance in unison on the printed page, whether in the form of super-heroes, monsters, cartoon all-stars, licensed merchandise, or in rare instances real-world protagonists. It’s one of the best holidays ever for hobbyists like me who’ve been comics readers since the days when drugstores sold them for thirty-five cents each and comic book movies were shoddier than actual B-movies.

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Yes, There Are Scenes During AND After the “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” End Credits

March 18, 2023 By in Comics/Lit, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Zachary Levi as Shazam, sitting at a park table and looking scared and confused while Helen Mirren (offscreen) says menacing things.

“Wait, what do you mean THEY FIRED HENRY CAVILL?”

Previously on Shazam!: TV’s Chuck, a.k.a. Zachary Levi, was DC Comics’ choice to play The World’s Mightiest Mortal, as Fawcett Comics once billed him before DC Comics swallowed them and the Big Red Cheese whole back in the ’50s. My thoughts in sum:

It’s the role Zachary Levi was born to play! The best DC Comics film of 2019 does a better job than current comics of recreating that classic CC Beck/Otto Binder magic, the heroic misadventure and the endearing innocence. Sivana’s partners-in-evil are disproportionately horrific as if there were a minimum mandatory Zack Snyder threshold to be met, and Billy Batson’s newly-adult, frequently actionable shenanigans are spared a lot of deserved consequences, but the film’s found-family core and ultimately encouraging vibe have such a puppy-dog charm that it’s hard to stay mad at it.

Levi’s magically adult Billy Batson, his teenage counterpart Asher Angel, his seven foster-family members, and five identically super-powered counterparts are back in Shazam! Fury of the Gods, which is all of the above twofold: the rules-free magic, the wacky misadventure, the thick-skulled innocence, the disproportionate horror, the frequently actionable shenanigans, and the complete lack of consequences on every level. This time the meek attempts at encouragement and puppy-dog eyes tested my patience too far.

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Yes, You Know There’s a Scene During the “Black Adam” End Credits

October 30, 2022 By in Comics/Lit, Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Dwayne Johnson IS Black Adam!

The People’s Furrowed Brow.

Longtime MCC readers may recall a quainter era when sitting through the end credits of every single film used to be my thing, a longtime viewing habit I share with my wife that the resulting traffic stats kept encouraging me to indulge here. Sometimes that still works for me, as borne out in the first few months of 2022 when search engine users wouldn’t stop clicking on my months-old, disposable entries for Venom 2 and Encanto. (The latter didn’t even have an end credits scene — just a single fancy clip-art image that amused me. And yet, for weeks strangers kept clicking and clicking and clicking, like hundreds of twitchy-fingered Energizer Bunnies.)

Now every geek-news site has at least one fan-writer on retainer who’s more than willing to sacrifice ten extra minutes of their lives to sit all the way through films in case of any clickbait opportunities. I can’t fault those gig-economy freelancers for getting paid to crank out what I’ve been giving away for free for ten years now. Nice work if you can network with the right people to get it.

For the sake of my mental health and sensible allocation of my free-time resources, I try not to treat the end-credits thing as a competition. If I did, after last Sunday’s nonstop busyness I’d have been neck-deep in despair the next morning when the scene during the Black Adam end credits took mainstream entertainment headlines by storm. The sincerely shocking surprise had already been ruined online by boorish bigmouths over a week earlier, but after opening weekend Warner Brothers and Dwayne Johnson jointly decided it was cool to spread the same major spoiler to anyone with narrower internet feeds who’d missed out. So my pro bono end-credits monitoring services aren’t needed here.

Fun trivia, though: did you know if you pay to see the scene during the Black Adam end credits in theaters, you also get a whole movie for free? It’s true! It’s called Black Adam. I sat through that too, for better or worse. It’s miles ahead of the worst thing I’ve seen in theaters so far this year, and a few streets ahead of Justice League, but it isn’t making my Top 10.

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A Dream Journal, As It Were: Too Many Thoughts on “The Sandman” Season 1

August 10, 2022 By in Comics/Lit, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Tom Sturridge IS the Sandman!

Remember, kids: don’t dream angry!

I was in high school when The Sandman #1 hit comic shop shelves in the fall of 1988. Springing forth from the mind of Neil Gaiman, whom I chiefly knew from Miracleman and Black Orchid, it was unlike anything I’d read before in comics or other media, and was a must-buy over the next seven years — through its transition to DC Comics’ subsequently inaugurated Vertigo line, in its rise to alt-culture superstardom, and even during some of the least favorite parts of my life. The Sandman lasted longer in my life than I lasted in college. I still have all 75 issues, the special with Orpheus’ story, the two Death miniseries, the lovely hardcover edition of my favorite arc (Season of Mists), and some (not all) of the other ensuing spinoffs. (Of most recent vintage, I loved the Gaiman-approved two-issue crossover with Locke and Key, which may have meant more to fans of the latter but contained key prequel scenes to the world of Dream, including front row seats to the fall of Lucifer.)

I rarely allow myself high expectations for anything anymore, but The Sandman left a deep enough mark on my psyche that I insisted the all-new Netflix adaptation — closely supervised by Gaiman — simply had to be The Greatest Netflix Show of All Time. Nothing less would do. The jury’s out on that for now, but after having watched all ten episodes within a 21-hour span (with wasteful intermissions for sleep and life, not necessarily in that order), I can enthusiastically say for now it’ll do. It’ll very much do.

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