Since we in Boston are staring down the barrel of another blizzard, we decided to get out of the Home Office while we could to catch a movie: Kingsman: The Secret Service, the new movie based on Mark Millar’s and Dave Gibbons’s 2012 comic The Secret Service. While Rob in particular didn’t like The Secret […]
Feb 16, 2015•1 hr 42 min
After another week of snow in Boston, we are half-insane from seeing the same four walls, but we have braved rolling blizzards, loud workmen and sporadic Internet outages to bring you a discussion about DC’s new publishing strategy! It’s not quite a reboot, and it’s not quite an Implosion, but it seems like an attempt […]
Feb 09, 2015•1 hr 42 min
We here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives live in Boston, and it is the week of a large football contest (so we are told). So we decided to spend this episode talking about an organization and its members who were recently accused of malfeasance, dirty tricks in the face of their fans, and a general […]
Feb 02, 2015•1 hr 44 min
It’s been three months since Marvel announced the Secret Wars crossover event, and since then, speculation has been flying about what it meant for the Marvel Universe: would it be a reboot, or just an event allowing Marvel characters from all their various universes to punch on each other for a few months? Well, Marvel’s […]
Jan 26, 2015•2 hr 1 min
Picture, if you will, a comic book about a world where old gods hide in the shadows. They have amassed monetary wealth and earthly power, and they plan to use it to force humanity to worship them again… by fomenting Armageddon on Earth, and then saving the last surviving dregs of humanity, who will worship […]
Jan 19, 2015•1 hr 55 min
It was a big week for Marvel’s Cinematic Universe this week, as the first two episodes of the limited series Agent Carter debuted on Tuesday. So we spend some time talking about that episode, its themes of sexism, how its mid-40s setting is a blessing and an opportunity, and how an obscure comic from 1942 […]
Jan 12, 2015•1 hr 43 min
It’s the first episode of 2015! In a week where there’s no comics news since everyone in comics is on vacation, and there were almost no new comics for exactly the same reason! Which means most comics podcasts and news sites are doing their Best Of / Worst Of lists this week… while we did […]
Jan 05, 2015•1 hr 56 min
It is the final show of 2014: a year packed to the gills with comic books, crossover events, story arcs, and comic and genre movies and TV shows. Some were good, and others were, well, not. So Amanda and I, along with longtime Crisis On Infinite Midlives contributors Trebuchet and Pixiestyx, decided to throw a […]
Dec 29, 2014•1 hr 57 min
It’s the week before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring… including anyone who might generate much in the way of comics news. However! DC sneaked a bunch of cancellations into their March solicitations, including a few books that have been around since the start of the New 52. And since […]
Dec 22, 2014•1 hr 58 min
Even though a big night out last night turned us into shattered wrecks only resembling human beings, we still had a lot to talk about this episode… starting with Marvel’s Star Wars #1, which reportedly will be selling more than 1,000,000 copies… even though Dark Horse’s very similar 2013-2014 Star Wars comic never sold even […]
Dec 15, 2014•1 hr 40 min
It’s a jam-packed episode this week! We start off by briefly discussing the recent Internet kerfuffles over (some) creators vs. cosplayers at comic conventions, and the complaints that Marc Andreyko’s current storyline in Batwoman depicts the practical rape of protagonist Kathy Kane. But then we move on to lighter topics. Specifically, this week’s crossover between […]
Dec 08, 2014•2 hr 1 min
The first Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens teaser trailer dropped on Friday. It’s 88 seconds long, it features less than half of that in new footage, it gives us almost no story context… and it’s enough to get the geek world shrieking like teenagers at a One Direction concert. So we talk about […]
Dec 01, 2014•1 hr 51 min
The world of comics is big, complex, and sometimes even literary… and we are not. So we open this show talking about the return of Underoos. Which might sound frivolous, but when you consider that those underwear packs were the only place we middle-aged geeks could get a decent superhero t-shirt in the late 70s, […]
Nov 24, 2014•1 hr 53 min
This week we added and installed a ton of new studio equipment for the show… and then used it to spend a few minutes laying in movie sound clips like middle-market Morning Zoo jocks. Once we got that out of our system (and it is out of our system, we swear), we spent some time […]
Nov 17, 2014•1 hr 38 min
Pre-registration for San Diego Comic-Con 2015, for people who attended SDCC in 2014, came and went yesterday, and it marked the first disappointment for would-be attendees who didn’t manage to snag passes… including us. So we spend some time talking about the process, how it differed from registration procedures over the past ten years, and […]
Nov 10, 2014•1 hr 36 min
In case you didn’t notice, this week was all about Marvel Studios. They released the extended trailer for Avengers: Age of Ultron on Monday, and Tuesday they announced their Phase Three slate of movies to be released between 2016 and 2019, including Black Panther, Captain Marvel, and Avengers: Infinity War. So we talk about those […]
Nov 03, 2014•1 hr 37 min
This week we’re joined by our longtime contributor Lance Manion, who, similarly to Amanda, has been watching Doctor Who since the 1970s. So, being most of the way through Peter Capaldi’s first season as The Doctor, we talk about the season so far, what we think works and what doesn’t, and what we individually want […]
Oct 27, 2014•1 hr 45 min
At last week’s New York Comic Con, Marvel announced that writer Jonathan Hickman and artist Esad Ribic would be bringing us an updated version of Secret Wars. And after months of Marvel hyping up their version of the Multiverse in Avengers, New Avengers, and Spider-Verse, we can honestly say that: yeah, this looks just like […]
Oct 20, 2014•1 hr 23 min
With the cancellation of Vortexx on the CW network, this is the first weekend that has had no Saturday morning cartoons on a major television network. And given that seeing superheroes on TV was a large part of what got Amanda and I into comics in the 1970s, we spend some time reminiscing about our […]
Oct 06, 2014•1 hr 26 min
Gotham premiered on NBC this past week, so Amanda and I talk about the first episode. We discuss what we thought worked, what didn’t, why we don’t want to see all the fan service super villains we got in this first episode… and frankly, why we don’t want to see much more of Bruce Wayne, […]
Sep 29, 2014•1 hr 22 min
Between the new female Thor, Falcon taking over as Captain America, and this week’s rumors that X-23 will take over as Wolverine (after Sabretooth takes over as Wolverine), Amanda and I talk about succession in superhero comics in general. We start with the idea that DC is all about succession while Marvel never has been, […]
Sep 22, 2014•1 hr 22 min
Over the past week, announcements have come down that TV versions of Teen Titans and Supergirl are being developed… mere weeks before the premieres of Gotham, Constantine, The Flash, and a new season of Arrow. And all this on top of DC’s efforts to build a Marvel Studios style cohesive universe with their own movies. […]
Sep 15, 2014•1 hr 31 min
There are two types of people in this world: superhero comic fans who love Miracleman by Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, and superhero comic fans who haven’t read all of it yet. Rob is in column A, and Amanda is in column B. Which means that they had very different reactions upon hearing that Marvel has […]
Sep 08, 2014•1 hr 28 min
It is the middle of Labor Day weekend, which means that things are slow in the world of comics news, and fast in the world of drinking whiskey to forget you still have a job to go to on Tuesday. So Amanda and I use this lull to idly speculate who might be a good […]
Sep 01, 2014•1 hr 15 min
This week was the much-heralded premiere of Doctor Who season 8, with Peter Capaldi’s first turn as The Doctor. Like most geeks, Amanda and I watched the show, with our special guests, long-time Crisis On Infinite Midlives contributors Trebuchet and Pixiestyx, and spent some time talking about the episode itself, and Doctor Who as a […]
Aug 25, 2014•1 hr 27 min
We are just a couple of weeks out of San Diego Comic-Con, and that means that there is next to no comic news to discuss this week. However, it also means that we are heading into the Big Two’s fall event schedule, so we discuss Marvel’s upcoming Avengers & X-Men: AXIS crossover, as well as […]
Aug 18, 2014•1 hr 35 min
We just returned from three days attending Boston Comic Con, meaning that we have spent eight of our last 18 days walking the floor at various comic conventions. That is a physical feat that no one should ever attempt. Co-host Amanda is now on a course of serious painkillers, and Rob is considering commissioning a […]
Aug 11, 2014•1 hr 28 min
We have safely returned from San Diego Comic-Con 2014, so Amanda and I do a final postmortem of the experience… as we prepare to turn right back around to attend and cover Boston Comic Con next weekend. We also discuss: The new Guardians of The Galaxy movie and how it is one of Marvel Studios […]
Aug 04, 2014•1 hr 38 min
It is the last day of San Diego Comic-Con 2014, and Amanda and I took a break from the floor to record a short show. It was short because we are exhausted. So we spent this truncated show ruminating about how SDCC will tire you out, fray your tempo, make you want to throw a […]
Jul 28, 2014•36 min
We are still in the thick of SDCC 2014, somehow alive after two full days. And today, we are joined by Los Angeles comedian Gariana Abeyta, who is not only a longtime friend of Amanda’s and mine from stand-up comedy, but who is active in L. A.’s film community, and one of the subjects of […]
Jul 26, 2014•1 hr 41 min