Another Godd@*# Batman List: The Most Insane Moments from All Star Batman (so-far)

by Patrick

Here we are, ready for our tenth issue of ALL STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN THE BOY WONDER, and DC issues a recall because you can read they didn't do a good enough job blacking out all the swears that Frank Miller wrote. So why we wait for the long awaited issue to be pulped and reprinted, it seems like a good moment to sit back, look back at the first nine issues, and ask ourselves, "what the hell was Frank Miller and Jim Lee thinking?!" So, now the Bad Genious would like to present the wildest, wackiest, craziest moments that made fandom put their funny books down, look at each other, and say "what the F*@%?"








#1: Talking with Green Lantern Batman finds a way to deal with Hal Jordan. You have to think why didn't Sonar or Black Hand ever use this method.

I love that he's drinking lemonade. It pushes the gag that much farther. And you'll now how Batman refers to himself, which brings us to bullet point #2...

#2: THE GODDAMN BATMAN: No one noticed when Vicky Vale called him by his newest trademarked name (Granted, we were paying more attention to her underwear parade when she rolled out the name).

Clark Kent is way too proper of a young man to say the whole thing out loud, but we all know he is thinking it.

Black Canary seems to think it's his first name.


But everyone takes notice when our favorite playboy millionaire start referring to himself as "The Goddamn Batman!"




#3: Batman Rolls Over Some Cops. So Batman, you've just saved your future sidekick from corupt police officers. Now what are you going to do?
"I'm going to run them over like roadkill!"

All Star Batman- Bringing you the pure Batman you grew up with!

#4: The Introduction of Wonder Woman: We start out with Wonder Woman walking to a meeting with the Justice League. And she just feels like sharing her view of men as she walks along: Sperm-Banks!

Then we have the Amazon's view on what to do with the "Batman Problem."

And then she reacts as only woman on TV or in Frank Miller comics act. Namely "I Hate you! You make me sick! Yet, you turn me on and must have my way with you."




Somehow, I don't think this is what Adam Huges had in mind when he signed up to produce ALL-STAR WONDER WOMAN.

#5: THE VICKI VALE FASHION SHOW




And our final moment...
#6: Batman hooks up with Black Canary
Black Canary. In the DCU, she's a strong willed, strong female. Leader of the Justice League. And not someone who you would want to mess with.
All-Star Black Canary, not quite the strong female role model we see in her own book. Hence her jumping Batman's bones the second she see him.


That's all for today. Until Batgirl beats up gang members while shouting profanities, make mine All-Star Batman!
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Patrick's Hat Trick: Why aren't these collections still in print?

by Patrick

Why worry? It's just me, Patrick, returning with another hat trick. Since we were blessed with the short work week this week, new comics won't come out until tomorrow. So rather than the normal review, this week we are going to the bookshelf to look at three trade-paperbacks and ask "Why aren't these books still in print?"

Robocop Vs. Terminator: The rebels of the Terminators future have found out there was a human mind that was attached to Skynet to give it sentience. And that mind was Alex Murphy's AKA Robocop. So the rebels sent a person back to kill Robocop, and she succeeds. In order to stop that Terminators sent back a unit to stop her. And it does. Then Murphy starts to figure things out. More Terminators show up. And lot and lots of things blow up. Written by the guy who wrote Robocop 2 and 3. A guy who had a little bit of a comic background named Frank Miller. And drawn by a Walt Simonson who was at the top of his game. This book needs to be back in print. Not only that, but the original trade is very weird. It was published by Diamond and what they did was take the comics themselves and bound them together. The covers are on cover stock. The adds and letter pages are still in there. As are the cardboard cutouts that were in every issue. It would be nice to have an addition that read more like a trade without adds and such.

Marvel Monster Masterworks: You might think that with Marvel doing well with both it's various Jack Kirby Collections (Essentials and Omnibus, as well as trades of things like a his runs on Cap) and it's various Marvel monsters (things like old Dracula, werewolf, and newer things like Marvel Zombies) a collection of the best pre-marvel Kirby monster stories would be a no-brainer to have in print. Yet this collection from 1989 has been out of print for a long long time. Divided into sections such as Alien Invaders, Man Made Monsters, and Ancient Menaces. and packed with great creatures such as The Glop, X The Thing That Lived, and that most revered of Marvel monsters, Fin Fang Foom. I do believe the day has come for this collection to be back in print.

Scott McCloud's Zot! Book One: One of the many tragedies is that we never got the final collection of Scott "Understanding Comics" McCloud's Zot!. We, that wrong was finally righted with Harper Collins publishing Zot!: The Complete Black and White Collection: 1987-1991 a few weeks ago, we got finally got those issues we missed the first time around. And while it is great to have any of this great strip back in print, I think it's a crime that these first ten remain out of print. They are filled with charm, wit, and great characters. And he's all over the internet this week with his Google browser comic, I love my new Black and White collection, but it's only the 2nd half of the Zot! Story. We finnaly got the final issues in a collected format, now bring back the first!

So, do I think they will they ever bring these books back in print?

Well, until they do, I'll treasure the copies I have and hope that others will get to join me in my appreciation of these fine volumes someday.

So, any treasures on your bookshelf that you think should be back in print? Share your thoughts in the comments and we'll see you next time.

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Patrick's Hat Trick: Don't You Know There's A Crisis Going On

by Patrick

Where have I been? Well, I've been off preparing my safe-house for the coming Skrull Invasion Final Crisis. And there are a lot of supplies you need for a safe-house. Bottled water. Canned Foods. And of course, reading materials. And by reading materials, I mean comics! Since I am getting ready for the Skrull Invasion Final Crisis, It might be good to read the comics leading into it. So this week we'll be digging into DC Universe: Last Will and Testament one shot, the first of the two part Superman Beyond 3D, and the second chapter of Geoff Johns' Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge. Let's get started, shall we?

DC UNIVERSE: Last Will and Testament: Brad Meltzer finds himself slumming in the comics world again, this time teamed with Adam & Joe Kubert. Why give it a super long and slightly awkward title? I'm guessing it's because calling it "Geo-Force special" wouldn't sell as many copies. The main story-line follows the one time outsider as he plots killing Deathstroke while the world is coming to an end. And while I say a Geo-force comic wouldn't sell, the Geo-force vs. Deathstroke story was actually pretty good, with a good twist or two along the way. Where this book loses it is every time it goes away from the Geo-force story-line. I'm guessing they didn't let Brad Meltzer read any of Final Crisis, because just every big dog of the DCU is shown nowhere near where they were in Final Crisis. Wally West isn't with Barry. Green Lantern isn't imprisoned. Neither is Batman. Clark isn't keeping his wife alive with his heat vision. And that it so completely ignores what is happening with those those characters is annoying. The Geo-Force story gets a B+, while the rest of the book gets an F. So I guess it averages out to an unsatisfying GRADE Of :C-


Final Crisis: Superman Beyond 3D #1: If you are picking this up hoping to see the Grant Morrison who is writing ALL STAR SUPERMAN, you'll be disappointed. But if you are looking for Final Crisis issue 3.5, this might be the book you are looking for. Superman enters the fray and teams up with other Supermen from other realities to find something to fight the Crisis. And along the way we get some hints of answers beginning to form. Some of the mysteries of the Final Crisis start to unravel here, and we even get to see a place we havn't seen since Grant's run on Animal Man. GRADE: B-. It's nice to see this crisis stuff is all heading somewhere after all.

Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge #2: And over here we have the fun corner of the Final Crisis. After telling Libra last issue, "Thanks for the invite, but we are not joining," Libra does the predictable thing and goes after them. Who he sent after them is pretty clever. And even more surprising is the perfectly logical reason Libra thinks he needs the Rouges on his team. Grade: A- Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins are making a great villain book, and I'm sorry we only have one more issue to go.

Well, that's all we have this week. I'll be back in a week or two if I can avoid the Skrulls Parademons. Take care.

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Patrick's Hat-Trick: DC Free

by Patrick

Welcome to Patrick's Hat-trick, where I take a look at three books and offer you my views. Since we started this site a couple of months ago, I've fallen into the role of the DC reviewer. Well, this week I'm going to change it up and look at three books that DON'T come from DC; Mike Allred's MADMAN ATOMIC COMICS #1, Jeff Smith's RASL #2 and Top Cow's Genius #1.

So, I'm not reviewing DC books today, and if you wanted to stop me,

Okay, I don't know if you name is Dre, but the point is you should have shot me. Let's get started!

MADMAN ATOMIC COMICS #9 Years ago, on a whim I picked up a comic I never seen or heard of before called Madman. A whim purchase can be a thing of beauty. Finding that undiscovered treasure. Something that no one else new about. And YOU are the one who discovered the treasure. Such was the way I felt reading that original mini-series. It's been almost 15 years since that day, and Madman has come a long way. He joined the Legends imprint at Dark Horse, met Hellboy and even hung out with Superman. Then he faded away for awhile while Mike Allred played in the Marvel and DC pool. Last year Allred relaunched his creator-owned book as Madman Atomic Comics.

This has been a book I have meant to review the last three times it came out, but never got around to writing those reviews. I think I didn't do it because I've hard a hard time figuring out how to review this book. I'll start off with it's strong points. Mike Allred might be one of the best artist out there today. And with Madman, he is not afraid to try new things that are fantastic to look at. This issue was a chase scene down a snap city street, where if you had enough copies of the book, you could lay them end to end to make one huge long panel. In a previous issue he drew every panel in the style of a different artist, ranging from Jack Kirby to Charles Schultz to Jeff Smith to Rob Lifield. My point: The book looks GREAT. It's about as creative as the kind of things Will Eisner did with his Spirit strips.

But the thing with Will Eisner, he has the great stories to go with his experimental storytelling techniques. But I think Mike Allred has these great visual ideas for the book, and is shoehorning the story into these techniques a story, and they haven't always been great fits. I do think this issue has done the best at merging the two. That's why I'm giving Madman the Bad Genious Grade of B This book has often felt like an experiment in style over strong storytelling. But it's a pretty interesting experiment to watch.

Genius #1: Sometime buying a book blindly works out, like it did when I bought Madman 15 years ago. And sometime you waste four bucks. This week, I wasted four bucks on Top Cow's Pilot Season: Genius #1. I saw it in the shop and thought "The Bad Genious' need to have a review for Genius, even if they spell the name wrong!" (I'll leave it to you to which of us spelled the name wrong)

The book is about the greatest military mind of our time, a teenage girl, taking control of all the gangs of Compton and attacking the police for no other reason then it's "all she knows how to do". It's a pretty bad story, but I did find the art by Afua Richardson good. I wish I had more to say about this book. But there just wasn't much to the book to review. GRADE:D I didn't enjoy it, but I am willing consider that I may not have been the target audience for this.

RASL #2 People picking up this book expecting to find the Jeff Smith of Bone or his Shazam mini from DC will surprised to find a quite different kind of story story. It's not the art that will surprise them, but rather the story. There are no cute creatures, funny gags, and big Lord of the Rings type fantasy. Instead Smith is giving us a sci-fi chase story complete with hookers and bloody murders. In the first issue we get to follow the title character, Rasl, as he travels through alternate dimensions stealing Picasasso's and being chased by a lizard faced goon. In this issue Rasl comes home and we get a little bit filled in about his past, and learn a little more about him. It's an interesting story, and one I'm on board with so far. Looking forward to issue #3 Mr Smith. GRADE: B It's not Bone, and that's not bad

See you next time here on the hat trick, when I'll be doing a Trinity Hat Trick, looking at issues 2,3, and 4. And, as always, I look forward to reading your thought on these books in the comments section. Until then, I'm out of here!

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Hulk's Video Hat-Trick

by Patrick

The original plan for this week's Hat Trick was an in depth look at the three battles that old green-jeans had with the flagship character of the "other big comic company," Superman. But now it's Friday and I've barely started the article. Maybe someday I'll finish it, but for this week, I share with you three fun Hulk videos that maybe you haven't seen before. If you are ready to see Jack Kirby, Guillermo, and some old school cartoons, make with the clicky on the link and I'll show them to you.

VIDEO #1: JACK KIRBY ON THE INCREDIBLE HULK: Stan Lee may get all the love from Marvel with his many movie cameoes, but The King did an appearance as a sketch artist on the old Hulk TV show. See if you can guess who he is drawing!



VIDEO #2: GUILLERMO AS THE HULK VS. ED NORTON: The other night on Jimmy Kimmel's NBA pregame show, they did a pretty funny bit based around today's big movie release. It's really pretty funny (and I think it may be the only bit of promotion that Norton has done for the film):



"Did you see Fight Club? American History X? Do you want you face on the curb?"

VIDEO #3: HULK CLASSIC CARTOON: I was going to post the cartoon recapping the origin of the Hulk, but our esteemed guest editor, The Leader, demanded I include a cartoon featuring him. So watch The Leader send Hulk to another planet, where he meets The Watcher. And dig that groovy theme song! Come on, sing it with me! "Dr. Bruce Banner, Belted by Gamma Rays....."



That closes out the Hat Trick for tonight. Next week things will be back to normal, reviewing books. Until then, don't make me angry. You won't like me when I am angry.

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Patrick's Hat Trick: Signs of Things to Come

by Patrick

Man, this reviewing comics sure can be a lot of work. At times it seems like there are new comics coming out every week! This week, I'll take a look at the first issue of DC's newest weekly book Trinity, the first chapter of "One World, Under Gog" in Justice Society of America #16 and the Hardcover collection of the "hot" Valiant's early ninety's book in, Harbinger: The Beginning.


Whoever I am? It says "by Patrick" right at the top of the post. And if you want the rest of this post to appear so you can get started, all you have to do is click here:

Since Wonder Woman is in such a hurry, why don't we start with her book?

TRINITY #1: After the success of 52 and the...let's call it...the interesting experiment of Countdown, DC is launching their newest year long weekly book. And after one issue, it's looking like this one will be closer to 52 in quality. The issue is pretty much all set-up. And I don't think that is a bad thing. The first part of the book, by Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley (in what I believe to be his DC debut), deals with our "Trinity" of heroes (Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman) getting together to discuss a dream they all had. Except it was one of those dreams that people have in comic books that they know wasn't just a dream. We get lots of good character moments, a little snippet of action from the Flash and his kids, and end on a cliffhanger that looks like it may start moving the story along pretty quickly. One thing I was wondering ....


Since when does Wonder Woman lose her powers when she is out of costume "ceremonial battle armor"? How in the heck does that even work? Is her costume "ceremonial battle armor" magic? Where were the Newsarama stories about this new statis quo in Diana Prince's life? Why haven't I heard Dan Didio talking about how much better the stories will be now that she doesn't have her powers all the time, and all the great new relationships she can have?

The second half of the book, with nice art from Scott McDaniel and Mark Bagley, focuses on a trio of villains coming together to oppose our heroes, as well as offering some possible views of where the story may be going.

I wonder if some reviewers will be complaining that not enough happens in the first issue. I won't be one of them. It was a good set up. If I was reading a 52-chapter novel, I would expect the first chapter to be set up. And that is what we got here. An interesting first chapter that makes me want to come back and check out chapter two. Grade: B An interesting beginning, but can it hold our interest for a year?

JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #16: Has this book been running late and is catching up? Or where there suppose to be two books this month? Because I was very surprised to see this issue this week. It hasn't even been a week since I reviewed issue fifteen. I'm glad to say the pace has seemed to pick up a bit. I felt like more happened. The reveal of Gog and his past was handled well. And it looks like this could be an interesting arc. And it's been fun to have the page or two painted by Alex Ross every issue. Grade: B-The story is good, the pace is picking up a little bit. Let's hope it doesn't tread water until the end of the arc.


HARBINGER: THE RETURN HC: Remember when Valiant comics were the hottest books being published? I remember seeing early issues of Harbinger going for over a hundred bucks. Well, those days are long gone. Valiant was sold, closed its door, and is now back to publishing some of its old stuff again. Dan looked at the X-O Man-O-War collection this past weekend. The Harbinger collection was suppose to hit stores a few months ago, but I believe it was held up by some lawsuits. But I would like to say, I think it was worth the wait.

I read some of the Valiant books back in the day. But Harbinger was not one of them. And I have to say, it was a pretty good book. Strong characters, lots of action, and some densely plotted stories. The art on the original issues is all by David Lapham, but don't expect it too look like his current stuff. Valiant had a pretty strong house style when it started, and the art here reflects that. The extras include the original story from the back of the coupons of Harbinger 1-6, which gave details on the main villain's past, as well as a new story written by Jim Shooter that expands the story from the coupons. I was also surprised by Solar: Man of the Atom's appearance in the books. Everything I had heard about this new Valiant was they didn't have the rights to him or Magnus: Robot Fighter. Grade: BStrong characters, good story (if sometimes a little wooden in the storytelling)and good art make for a very nice hardcover collection.

Well, that's three reviews, so it's time to close up the Hat Trick for this week. Thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts. As always, I'm interesting in hearing yours in the comments section below. See you next week.

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Patrick's Hat Trick: Trickshot!

by Patrick

Greeting fanboys and fangirls. Welcome back to Patrick's Hat Trick, where I supply you with a "hat trick" of reviews (also known as three reviews). Now normally, three reviews equals three books. But today, I am going to attempt to accomplish bit of a "trick shot," and review FOUR books within my THREE reviews. Oh Hal Jordan, you're always blowing things out of proportion. Let's get started.

LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #42 I had been holding off reviewing this book, wanting take a look at the first few months of comic legend Jim Shooter's return after 40 years. But after six issues, I don’t think I have enough to say about this book to devote a whole article to it. The book just is not that good. The characters are unlikable for the most part, and while I’ve enjoyed Francis Manapul's art on other books, he just seems like a bad fit here. The costumes are mostly pretty ugly, and it has been a struggle to pick up this book every month. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just boring and uninteresting. GRADE: D I’m only buying this book because I have OCD for all things LEGION. Unless you share my disorder, I advise staying away from this book.


ACTION COMICS #865: One of the highlights of Geoff Johns' run on Flash was when he would turn the spotlight on the villains. Johns brought a lot of new life into some old villains using this tool. This week he sets his gaze on a member of Superman’s rouge gallery, the Toyman. Johns explains away all the versions of Toyman that have appeared over the past couple of decades, and sets things up for an old supporting character to return. And while I don’t think anyone was clamoring for this character to come back, I find myself looking forward to her return. I also quite enjoyed the art by Jesus Merino. If I’ve read anything from him before, it never left much of an impression. He uses two different styles of art, an everyday style for parts happening “today”, and a Tim Sale-like style on the flashbacks. GRADE: B A solid done-in-one story by Johns and Merino


JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA#15 & GREEN LANTERN #31: While Geoff Johns seems to be firing on all cylinders in Action Comics, with these two books, Johns seems to be treading water. The stories are interesting, but… seem… to… be… moving… so… slowly. These books have good ideas. I want to like them. I bet they’ll read pretty well when they are collected. JSA starts a new arc next month, so hopefully that will pick up the pace. Lantern has three more months to go with Secret Origin. I may save them up and read them all at once.GRADE: C Good story. Good art. But the slow pace stops the book form earning higher marks

That ends my Hat Trick for today. I look forward to reading your comments, either by clicking the comments link at the bottom of the article, or on our brand new Facebook page. Hasta La Pasta!

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