David is a young code monkey/software architect living and working in downtown Toronto. He likes Kirby, Morrison, and any creator who tries to make you think. He's got an irrational fascination with the big-two shared universes, but is interested in anything with something to say.
Final Crisis: Submit So yeah, Final Crisis isn’t shipping on time. I’m sure someone, somewhere, is shocked, but I can’t fathom it – #3 was a week late, #4′s three weeks late, and we’ve got an extra skip month in December with a Secret Files. (On a side note, I’m incredibly curious to read that [...]
All-Star Batman & Robin, The Boy Wonder #10 It’s been an eventful week here on Team FBB as we (well, at least I) have been glued to the stats watching a bunch of cellphone shots of a funnybook using dirty words become, like, our most popular post ever. Back to that in a second. In [...]
Hh. Spoilers within. This is actually the first thirty pages of a sixty-page script; I imagine Morrison still did a bit of work to modify it, though, since it ends on a pretty satisfying cliffhanger (if that makes any sense). I assume the second issue won’t hit until at least December, either along with or [...]
Oh hell yeah. This issue was incredible. Batman #679 Page 1: Batman’s fully enveloped himself in his new persona. Note his weapon, the baseball bat, making him a literal bat-man. (I can’t believe I had to have this pointed out to me.) Pages 2-3: The tailor doesn’t seem to be Paul Gambi, the Crime Tailor. [...]
I was recently linked to this list on Empire Online of the “fifty greatest comic book characters.” This isn’t all that different from many of the lists I’ve seen go around, where they throw together characters from every subgenre to create this fucked-up chimera of superheroes, everymen, Warren Ellis-style “yeah he is on a heroic [...]
Before I launch into the annotations for this issue, a few corrections regarding my previous stuff and other interesting things from the Director’s Cut: The evil Monitor isn’t Solomon from Countdown, it’s “Rox Ogama.” The Monitor we first see in FC #1 is “Zip Hermuz”. The Monitors’ world was supposed to seem largely like a dying [...]
I understand DC’s sitting on this artwork, but if I were doing the 50th issue of Superman/Batman, I’d be kind of annoyed if this was the cover treatment the issue got: Superman/Batman #50 covers Hey, these look famili– Superman/Batman #23 solicited cover Superman/Batman #27 cover given at announcement of Verheiden/Van Sciver taking over the book [...]
There’s apparently a hell of a quote that the panel reports for Final Crisis Management missed, that you can find if you look at the recordings on dccomics.com. In the interest of public education, I’ve transcribed it for you all: Um, I love what you do with your storylines, I found out this year that [...]
I think most fans of nerd-based movies have been sitting and watching as the fresh tomatoes come in on The Dark Knight. And, you know, it’s pretty fantastic news – it’s close to universally agreed that this is a goddamn good, if not truly great, movie. I’m hearing “better than Batman Begins“, and since that’s [...]
Part one Part two Part three is HERE: Batman #676 Batman #676 – “Batman R.I.P. Part 1: Midnight in the House of Hurt” (art: Tony Daniel, Sandu Florea & Guy Major) Page 1: We shoot forward in time for a page. The background, with red skies and lightning, fairly definitely dates this page as being [...]
CBR just put up a (quite sweet-looking) preview of some new Dodson pages from Uncanny 500, and in the process also put up the final Greg Land cover (original here). Besides compressing a lot of the figures to make it fit on two pages (I gues it’s not a gatefold anymore), there was just one [...]
Going forward with part two! Don’t forget to read yesterday’s part one as well. Batman #667 Batman #667 – “The Island of Mister Mayhew” (art: J.H. Williams III & Dave Stewart) NOTE: Rather than recapitulate it here, I’d just like to point everyone towards J.H. Williams III’s commentary on the Club of Heroes and the [...]
I’m seeing a whole hell of a lot of confusion about Batman R.I.P. out there, which is perfectly understandable – it’s a pretty damn opaque story, even more so than Final Crisis. In the interest of art appreciation, I’ve decided to try to go through Morrison’s recent Batman work and see if I can help [...]
You know the drill. Let’s roll. Massive spoilers ahead. Note: I’m going to be largely talking about the book without Countdown; sections that relate to events in Countdown or Countdown-related series or really anything outside of the Johns/Morrison/Rucka axis will be discussed separately, since anything “learned” in Countdown is suspect. Okay, double note: Note the [...]