Just how do they do it? Really? Only a week after the internet wowed itself into a spasm over Rucka/Williams’ Detective Comics, and completely overshadowing this week’s Big Event from Marvel, here come Morrison and Quitely (and hey! Is this the first time since New X-Men that we’ve had two issues from the pair come out in successive months? Cause for celebration!) to give everyone a timely reminder that we shouldn’t be getting any fancy ideas, because yes, they still entirely rule mainstream superhero comics.

Batman & Robin is just ludicrously confident, unfathomably entertaining comics. It may not have the depth and subtlety of the rest of the writer’s Batman run, but it’s immediately a far more enjoyable read – because it knows that a comic can be intelligent underneath, but still plug directly into the “pure childlike glee” synapses of the brain and thus appear about a million times as effortless as something more overwrought. And even while it’s telling a straight-batting, gloriously fun Batman adventure, it still shows no small amount of experimentation in the way the story’s being told. It almost seems like the series’ gimmick is for there to be a new little storytelling trick each issue – so in #1 we had the inspired use of sound effects as part of the artwork (repeated here in an absolutely wonderful panel of Robin slamming into a wall, the cracks in the plaster spelling out “SMASH”), but the new one introduced here involves pacing in the action sequences.

Quitely’s always been a strange one for this – something that characterises his work is the way that he seems to capture individual frozen moments, rather than directly expressing movement (it’s why – for example – in this issue, when showing Batman setting off a fire extinguisher in a goon’s face, he draws individual droplets rather than a continuous “whoosh” of foam), and yet due to his ability to choose exactly which moments to portray, there’s always still a vivid sense of motion. Similarly, his recent work has seen increasing use of full-page-width panels (barely any panels in this issue sit side-by-side), but due to his placement of items within the frames, everything still feels “active” as your eyes naturally scan left-to-right. Still, though, it’s a technique that – on its own – doesn’t necessarily seem conducive to fast, energetic action scenes (something that B&R is already making a forte) and so this is worked around by judiciously splitting dialogue across word balloons – and even panels – when successive frames are showing a quicker-paced series of moments. It works tremendously well for the issue’s main fight scene, and even better, is contrasted smartly by the slower, dialogue-packed panels as Dick and Alfred ruminate in later pages.

Those pages, incidentally, represent the best thing about an issue that may not have quite the same immediate, “wow” impact of its predecessor, but which is still, of course, an unadulterated joy throughout. Having never really had the chance to fully play with Alfred during his main-title run, Morrison is clearly recognising here the need for a voice of authority and experience to counteract the (wildly different in manifestation, but still shared) youthful exuberance of Dick and Damian. The butler (sod that… the father figure)’s “pep talk” here is lovely, most notably when describing Batman as a “role” and holding up the cowl Hamlet-style, and marks for perhaps the first time a genuine attempt to set out why Dick’s version of the identity is different from Bruce’s – this is not, after all, a speech that he would have given to his former charge.

Even the return to textbook brattishness of Damian can’t harm the sheer unadulterated pleasure of reading this book. The fact that the series is by Morrison and Quitely meant that a certain level of simple, objective quality was always going to be a given. But that it’s already shown the capacity to continually surprise, and perhaps even to exceed expectations, could be the greatest delight of all.

DC appear to have finally cracked the problem of how to get the purchasers of single issues to still fork out for the trade, in this collection of the bizarre fifties Batman tales which fuel Grant Morrison’s run on the book. Even without the introduction by the writer, a cursory reading would make the connections obvious, and the result is an essential purchase for fans of Batman R.I.P. and the epic story that surrounds it. The only slight quibble is the admission fee, but the resolutely un-decompressed storytelling going some way towards remedying disquiet.

The twelve stories reproduced here, mainly from writer Bill Finger, vary drastically in tone. DC has struck a careful balance here, including a few choice examples of this era’s surrealism alongside the expected stories. Although the sheer bizarreness of seeing Bruce Wayne assisting a south American country resist the rage of a rainbow-powered monster offers some entertainment, the greater draw is in those stories more open to modern reinterpretation.  The story ‘A Partner for Batman’ is initially striking due to the amount of unintentional gay innuendo it contains, although by the time that a passer-by has remarked on how Batman and his new older Robin replacement “can do things together”, it’s hard to ignore the feeling that the scripter knew exactly what he was doing.

The adventures that Morrison has directly recast are the main draw, with the original Zur En Arch tale the most obvious inclusion. The one downside to this process is that it’s now impossible to fully appreciate ‘Robin Dies At Dawn’, probably the strongest story in the collection, on its own merits. The infamous isolation chamber experiment is now seen as having a scope far beyond that depicted on the page, being relied upon to account for must of the strangeness in this entire volume. The appearance of the ‘Military Doctor’ is the final nail in the coffin of a contextually-faithful reading. Having a minor character retconed into the embodiment of Satan is unfortunately the sort of thing that tends to leave an impression. The original appearances of the Club of Heroes largely escape this fate, with the Club’s unironic tone completely removed from their Morrison incarnation.

‘The Superman of Planet X’ has been widely distributed online, and given how essential that tale is to understanding Batman R.I.P., it was probably only the promotional emphasis on the extremely gritty Nolan film that prevented the release of The Black Casebook this time last year. You wouldn’t see the successful combination of this price and poor paper stock without the hook of Morrison’s run, but this remains an essential purchase.

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one eyed monster online It will surprise no one that Grant Morrison has produced the most paradoxical comic of the week. How can a book that clearly opens the fourth act of the writer’s epic Batman story cry out for the tag ‘NEW’ to be placed in the corner of the cover? Brazenly ignoring both the extremely good Final Crisis tie-in and the extremely poor two-issue arc from Neil Gaiman, Domino Effect clearly picks up where Batman RIP left off, with Dick Grayson clutching the discarded cape. This time, however, the writer has brought the big guns to bear. Given that the words ‘Morrison’ and ‘Quitely’ appearing on the cover of a comic have become the shorthand for ‘redefinition of medium in progress’, the first surprise is that it’s taken so long for the writer’s favourite collaborator to find his way to Gotham City.

At first, the disappointment is shocking. While the sequence in which the new pop-art Batmobile is put through its paces is not without its strengths, DC has trailed the art to death over the last few months, and the issue suffers from such a familiar opening. Things soon begin to pick up however, as it becomes clear just how heavily the “future” shown in Batman #666 is influencing events. Dick is operating from a familiar looking skyscraper, and the arrival of the previously referred-to Professor Pyg suggests that the barely glimpsed rogues’ gallery that the Damien Batman encountered will make a more permanent incursion into the book. In the midst of some perfectly pitched characterisation, Morrison clearly revels in having finally shaped the core scenario of the franchise perfectly to his tastes. Tim Drake always felt like a pointless legacy inclusion in his run, and the Dick/Damien interplay more than validates the promotions that both characters have been given. There’s little to complain about, aside from the ‘Batman: Reborn’ branding on the book. (It’s getting to the point where if Morrison writes a single issue in which Dick Grayson decides to put his feet up for once, then DC will slap ‘Batman’s Day Off’ banners across the entire line.)

There are two differing intellectually credible viewpoints to hold about Frank Quitely’s art: you can admire the artist’s work because of his unique style, or in spite of it. I fall into the latter camp. While his ability to capture motion is second to none and his storytelling superb, his over-detailing of flesh is just as much a distortion of the human form as the tiny ankles that Rob Liefield bestows on his creations. Based on early images, I wasn’t optimistic, as Quitely’s return to traditional pencilling from the computer-aided All Star Superman appeared to have brought out some bad habits. The turnip-headed Damien on the cover in particular seemed to bode ill. This view is partially justified, with the scratchy motion lines of the opening sequence in dire need of the details backgrounds that have always defined the bat-books. In the book’s quieter moments, however, Quitely’s work is a revelation. The realism in his depiction of Damien during the ‘Batbasement’ scene is magnificent, and easily the man’s best work since WE3. The idea that this newfound clarity in the artist’s depiction of people could be combined with the keneticism of his action sequences is mouth-watering.

Having truly taken possession of the franchise, Morrison offers the reader a thrilling ride, perfectly blending homages to the perceived tone of the Adam West TV series with moments of real horror. A bewitching achievement.phantasm divx movie online

watch dracula 3000 in divx winnie the pooh a very merry pooh year online Despite some stiff competition, the original Seaguy limited series still stands as one of the strangest things Grant Morrison has ever written. While not as obviously mature as some of his more “out there” pieces, the sharp split between the Pixar-does-Popeye opening and the 1984-style nightmare of the conclusion is a truly unexpected mix, particularly in the light of the author’s determination to treat the hero as a serious character. Picking up from the downbeat ending of the first story, Slaves of Mickey Eye effectively has to repeat the events of the last series, leaving Seaguy ready to be taken forward.

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Despite having been brainwashed back into his old life by the forces of Mickey Eye, our hapless hero knows something’s not right with the world. With his new best friend not cutting the mustard and Death under arrest, however, he’s not got many places to turn for enlightenment. Morrison doesn’t miss a trick here, providing an opening that both serves as a recap for readers of the 2004 series and an introduction to the world for those who missed out. The old and new figures it contains are both distinctive and self aware, with Lucky’s self-doubt perfectly reflecting the reader’s initial dismissal of this replacement for the late Chubby Da Choona. The character’s final actions, however, are a truly wonderful moment of black comedy, one of several instances of Morrison perfectly playing on the butter-wouldn’t-melt tone of Cameron Stewart’s art.

What makes Seaguy such a unique proposition is its scale of ideas. The enemy in the book isn’t just an element of society, but its entirety. Over the pages of this issue, Mickey Eye manifests itself as a Disney-like entertainment monolith, a foodstuff manufacture, the police, a religion and the scientific intelligentsia. The question that this issue poses is if Seaguy is to pit himself against all of these pillars of reality, what can he possibly stand for in doing so. A simple act of faith in his childhood friend is enough to pull him through his first clash with Sea Dog, but it’s clear that he’ll have to muster something more substantial to make it through the second volume of adventures. Despite its outward simplicity, it’s a sometimes a stretch to keep pace with the book’s imagination. The reward for doing so, however, is unparalleled.quid pro quo download

Well, okay. If you’ve hated the series so far – and there are many, many readers out there who’ve done just that – you’re going to hate this. But if in the previous six issues you saw increasing hints that there was something worth paying attention to in it; that you were kept reading by the fact that Morrison is still capable of awe-inspiring ideas and moments, and you were finally gripped by the story at some point during issue #5 or #6 then there’s a chance – not a huge chance, admittedly, but a chance – that you might love it.

I loved it. Absolutely and completely.

Alright, look. Final Crisis, if it needed repeating, has pretty much been a failure as a summer event story. The format was entirely unsuited to what Morrison was trying to do, the pre-publicity promises he had to make in order to whip up enthusiasm among the fanboy community never stood a hope of matching their expectations. Doubts remain, therefore, over his ability to write this sort of blockbuster – probably one of the few things in comics that he hasn’t mastered. But I tell you what, for someone who can’t do blockbuster events and can’t always do endings, this is one hell of an ending to a blockbuster event.

It’s frustrating, of course, because you realise just how little of what went on in the first four issues actually mattered. A number of subplots could have been stripped out of the series entirely and left it none the poorer – because what makes this issue work isn’t its culmination of an intricately structured set of story layers (although, that said, the single-page culmination of an entirely different download eagle eye free comic’s intricately structured set of story layers is one of the things that people will be talking about the most – and it pretty much confirms that Morrison is in no way finished with this particular character). What makes it work is that the scope is absolutely massive, characters everywhere get to have their triumphant moments (in the “punch the air” stakes, it comes close to matching Captain Britain and MI:13), and it has all the satisfying epic resonance that the likes of Infinite Crisis lacked. The gathering of an entire multiverse’s army of Supermen is exactly the sort of huge ending that this type of story should be doing.

There are ideas and moments that I want to sit here and list, but to say too much would give away things that are a joy to discover as they happen. Then again, I can’t help myself, so I’ll try and be as vague as I can : a one-panel appearance by someone you’d never

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expect to see in the DCU. Another perfect Lex Luthor moment (”Not a single word, Superman”). The human race in ice-cube trays. Firing the bullet into the past. The Black Racer. The way the Flashes talk. The heart-rending failure of the Black Gambit. “Darkseid always hated music”. Captain bloody Carrot. Superman’s wish. That

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final page. If you’d spread the contents of this issue over the course of a seven-part series, then it’d be up there with Crisis on Infinite Earths. The sheer amount of quality material packed in even makes up for those parts that still seem superfluous.

Some will complain about the ending of the story, given that it doesn’t appear to have had the massive, DCU-shaking ramifications that many expected. To be honest, though, if the most we can hope for is a resolution of the garbled, confusing mess about the status of the multiverse that has hung over the last half-decade of DC stories, and finally be done with the bloody Monitors once and for all (honestly, who thought that a group of characters that were a cross between Uatu and the Time Lords would be a good idea?), then the story has already served its purpose. Others will complain about the structure, given that it jumps around in time and narrative with no real explanation – but it’s really not as difficult to follow as some early messageboard commenters and bloggers would have you believe. If you’re one to actually pay attention to narration (and of the interweaving multiple narrations and perspectives, it’s Lois Lane’s that drives the story in a truly elegant way, especially in the first half of the issue), and you can cope with non-linear storytelling – and don’t mind reading things more than once – it’s hardly a struggle.

Of course, as far as critical opinion on the book goes, I know I’m fighting the current rather than following it. On the whole, Final Crisis was a disappointment. There’s no denying that. And structurally, the entire thing was a mess. Readers who persisted in the belief that they only had to read the core series have been downright cheated by the fact that Superman Beyond’s one major carry-over is a character who turns out to be the “final” threat that the Supermen and the Green Lanterns have gathered to face. If you haven’t read that story, thinking it was a throwaway “this is what happened to Superman while he was gone” type affair – and at $4.50 an issue, you couldn’t be blamed for ignoring it – then you will be genuinely baffled by Mandrakk’s appearance. It’s deeply unfair, and it almost casts a nasty shadow across the whole thing.

free extreme ops movie download But. For all the problems with the structure, the delays, the change in artists (and hey, Mahnke does a decent job here, even if some of the panels are, like in #6, too small for what they’re trying to convey. It’s amazing what a difference having a consistent artist makes, though), and the fact that it went a good four issues before making clear just what was going on, I honestly feel that the way in which it’s managed to come good at the end – and it really has done that – almost makes the whole thing worthwhile. After all, this issue thrilled, entertained and gripped me more than almost any other in-universe superhero title I’ve read in quite some time. And in the end, what more can you ask of a comic?

After a number of false dawns over the last couple of issues – moments at which the story finally threatened to “kick off” only to flatter to deceive – Final Crisis has finally done it. It’s finally become f**king monumental. Of course, the sixth issue of a seven part miniseries is far too late for such a thing to happen – but let’s leave discussion of the series’ overall failures for another time and simply acknowledge that this particular issue, as a piece of epic, explosive superhero entertainment, is absolutely excellent.

From the return of the “real” Mary Marvel and Mr Tawky Tawny (of all bloody people) being absolutely kickass and brilliant (if a little like Morrison channelling his version of Hank McCoy), to the unveiling of Checkmate’s master plan and Superman’s (literally) explosive return to the fold, almost every beat that the story strikes hits home in spectacular fashion. Even the Libra plotline finally does something interesting, courtesy of an excellent Lex Luthor moment (”I’m somewhat *fond* of life, for all its ups and downs”). At this point Morrison is throwing ideas at the wall like so much overcooked spaghetti – and unlike in previous issues, far more of them are sticking. All the promises that Final Crisis really would be “the event to change everything” had looked hollow up to this point, but the announcement of the “Black Gambit” – a plan to move the entire population of the world to a parallel Earth – is a genuine shock, and coupled with the talk of “the age of men as gods”, really could see significant changes for the DC Universe. We shall see.

Of course, all the stonkingly good moments pale into comparison against the events of the closing pages. Again, the publishing context should probably be ignored for the sake of looking at how well the moment works in isolation – because yes, it’s patently ludicrous that Batman survived a story titled “Batman RIP” purely so that he could show up for a handful of pages late on in Final Crisis, do something completely brilliant, and then get killed off. So yes, as the final piece of the jigsaw of Morrison’s Bat-run, it’s inherently unsatisfying. But as a moment of heroic sacrifice to hold up alongside those of Barry Allen and Kara Zor-El in the original Crisis? It’s brilliant. It’s entirely Batman – at least, it’s entirely Morrison’s Batman, right down to the “HH”. Mozza built Batman up over the course of his run to be the most untouchable of humans – the man who “thinks of everything”. It’s fitting, then, that he should meet his end coming up against – and, briefly, outthinking – a god. Of course, Darkseid destroys him – but that’s the point. While it’s possible for there to be a million and one get-out clauses for this (not least because plenty of off-panel time occurs between seeing him get zapped and watching Superman emerge carrying an unrecognisably charred body), and so it’s clearly not The End for the character – it is at least the end for Morrison’s all-powerful version. Having taken on, and defeated, all that Earth could throw at him, it was only a god from another plane that could finally kill him.

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If there’s a way in which the issue suffers, it is – inevitably, given the circumstances – in the art. The sequences that Jones managed to draw before throwing in the towel – most notably Batman and Darkseid’s confrontation – are among the best he’s done for the series, and Doug Mahnke (who, er, doesn’t get a cover credit) steps in with some good work in the closing pages (particularly the last one, which brilliantly evokes the classic DC “hero carries fallen comrade” pose). Elsewhere, though, it’s inconsistent, none of the fill-ins doing a particularly bad job, but none really jumping out, either. More pressing a concern, though, is Morrison’s pacing. For an issue that really does push the series into “epic” territory, there’s too much valuable panel space wasted on people standing around talking, leaving a lot of the “big” moments to be compressed into sections of a third of a page or smaller. Most notably, a double-page spread is wasted on a split between a pretty pointless image of the marauding hordes, and a similarly pointless conversation between the Super Young Team – while Superman’s return to Earth is squeezed into smaller panels, when it really should have been given a proper splash in the manner of, say, John Cassaday’s awesome “bullet” image from last year’s Giant Size Astonishing X-Men wind chill online .

Let’s not kid ourselves that this has been a successful “tentpole” event story. The ideas and themes have clearly been far more important to Morrison than the actual storytelling, which has been disjointed, at times highly confusing, and spread among far too many subplots and character groups to each be given justice by the series’ page count. But for brief, glorious moments, Final Crisis assassination of jesse james by the coward robert ford the free download

#6 touches on genuine brilliance. And like “Batman RIP” before it, works of demented and flawed genius are still, in my book, far more worthy of attention and discussion than the countless “safe”, pedestrian stories that many fans will doubtless hold up as more traditionally satisfying.

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