myjetpack:

For the Guardian Review.
#tomgauld #cartoon #surgery #writing #editing

Getting hired to write a theme song for a new take on James Bond and calling it “You Know My Name” was downright brilliant.

RIP, Mr Cornell

Behold: a perfectly titled comic book.

(Batman #23, DC Comics 2017, Tom King and Mitch Gerads)

mattfractionblog:

mysterytheater:

zgmfd:

The Universal Horror Library movie novelizations
(Carl Dreadstone 1977)

Dear Santa…

D👏R👏E👏A👏D👏S👏T👏O👏N👏E👏

CA-RL-DREAD-STONE!

👏🏻

👏🏻

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

The only movie news I care about for the foreseeable future is who’s going to be playing this dude.

I guess they had to settle for “Legacy” after they couldn’t just outright call this character “The 1990s.”

(Silver Surfer Vol. 3 #90, March 1994, cover art by Ron Lim & Keith Aiken)

This is your occasional reminder that comics are the best.

(Cover to The Brave and The Bold #177, August 1981, art by Jim Aparo and Tatjana Wood)

theisb:

ryannorth:

classictrek:

Look, this is a TOS-oriented blog, but Mirror Universe Wesley Crusher is my everything now. Deal with it.

same tbh

Good. Lord.

I assume that’s supposed to be Mirror Universe Picard but it kinda looks like Bruce Willis.

SPOILERS AHEAD for DC REBIRTH, BATMAN #21 & #22, and THE FLASH #21

I don’t know if Flashpoint was the “worst” DC Comics event ever- I’ve never actually read Armageddon 2001 but I’ve heard generally negative things- but I know it’s my least favorite. It’s the only comic book storyline, in years of reading superhero comics, that made me drop an entire company’s output from my list before it even came out. Not even Secret Empire got me to do that. Flashpoint and its aftermath in the form of The New 52 was meant to be a jumping-on point but I took the opportunity to jump off*. I was enticed back soon enough, by positive responses to Morrison’s Action and Snyder’s Batman, but I still largely stayed away until DC hit the reset button again with Rebirth.

So imagine my dismay when the first two issues of “The Button,” and now the third, an arc which promised or at least heavily implied to be about Watchmen, turned out to be about fucking Flashpoint.

I’m not exaggerating. It’s not just that this issue sees Batman and The Flash end up back in the Flashpoint universe- or, as Flash calls it, simply “the Flashpoint”- and it’s not just that Flashpoint Batman is there. It’s about Flashpoint. Thomas Wayne mentally recaps the events of the Flashpoint miniseries, then bemoans how terrible it is that it still exists, then Flash and Batman show up and talk about how it’s not supposed to even be there anymore. Then, after Flashpoint Batman and Real Batman have an emotional reunion and fight a joint Atlantean/Amazon hit squad (naturally) and they deduce that it only still exists because of the intervention of the (presumably blue and naked) entity behind The Button, it is immediately destroyed. 

(How convenient.)

So they go on for half the book about how the Flashpoint isn’t even supposed to be there, like some kind of cosmic Dante Hicks, and then it gets erased. This is like the entire problem with event comics, in general, condensed into about twelve pages. “The Flashpoint” is supposed to have been erased. Then it turns out it wasn’t! Except, oh, wait, now it is. It’s the fastest “This will change everything! Now it’s over and everything’s back to normal” ever. Even Age of Ultron** didn’t render itself pointless that quickly. 

In theory, honestly, this is something I could get behind. If this arc was about Batman and The Flash chasing the button’s energy signature across all these different DC timelines, that’d be potentially interesting. There’s a lot of awesome alternate DC timelines. Kamandi. Kingdom Come. Red Rain. The Multiversity stuff. But unless I’m mistaken this story- or at least this chapter of it, because there’s no way DC’s going to wrap up the apparent return of Doctor Manhattan in a random issue of The Flash- comes to an end next week, so there’s not much more room to explore that idea. And even if there was… god, did they have to start with Flashpoint?

There’s one thing in this comic- which, like Flash #21 last week, is never actively bad but simply not all that good- that I loved, however, and that’s this: near the very end, when The Flash has rebuilt the Cosmic Treadmill (which requires far less effort than you’d expect) and he and Batman are about to leave, Flashpoint Batman refuses to leave, and gives the following piece of advice to his (sort-of) son:

That’s awesome. Thomas Wayne looking Bruce dead in the face and saying “Stop it, don’t do this to yourself anymore” is great. This is a Thomas Wayne who’s about to give his life for his son just as he was meant to all along, only now he knows what Bruce’s future is. This Thomas Wayne has been Batman, and knows how hard a life it is, and he doesn’t wish it on anyone, least of all Bruce. It has potential to have a huge impact on Batman going forward. The issue lacks the structural impressiveness of The Button’s first installment, but it makes up for it with this one indelibly powerful moment.  

Wait a second…

… oh no.

…… do I like Flashpoint Batman now?

* Except from Booster Gold. I stuck with Booster til the bitter end. #BoosterGoldForever

 ** The comic, not the movie.

(Art from Batman #22 by Jason Fabok)