The Bum’s Rush #98


WARNING! None of the news or rumors you see here in The Bum’s Rush should be considered FACT until it actually happens. It might never happen. How do you know I’m not just making all this crap up? I could, you know. You’ve been warned!

Right And Wrong

MAJOR SPOILER WARNING – If you don’t want to know what might happen next in the post-Civil War Marvel Universe then DO NOT read this portion of the column. You’ve been warned!

I know, I know. I said I was done with this. And honestly I thought I was. But then I got hold of a juicy piece of info that I could not pass up writing about. This is a “news and rumor” column after all! I apologize to those of you wishing I would just move on. Believe me, I wish I could.

Remember a few weeks ago when I predicted that Civil War #7 would end with the death of
Captain America? Well, it turns out I was half right. Captain America is going to die, shot to death by Sharon Carter on his way to prison. I’m assuming that the shooting stems from the manipulation of Carter by the Red Skull and Doctor Faustus, as seen in recent issues of Captain America. I’m betting the house that this all goes down in Captain America #25, which ships Wednesday.

This is probably why Marvel has been telling everyone that Captain America #25 is a must-have, must-read issue. And it also makes sense when considering the upcoming Civil War: Fallen Son mini-series featuring heroes like Spider-Man, Iron Man and Wolverine mourning the “death of true hero”. Add to this the rumor that Fallen Son is merely a placeholder title and the real title of the series is Fallen Soldier (a rumor further bolstered by Marvel solicits actually reading “Note: Not Actual Title”) and, well, you can kind of see where this is heading right? The only other notable death of a hero to come out of Civil War was that of Goliath, who was killed by the Thor clone (ugh) but, no offense to fans of Goliath or anything, I’m betting Marvel ain’t basing a five-issue mini-series around that guy. And if you need any more convincing, just feast your eyes on the cover to the issue in question, Captain America #25:


So yeah, I was half-right. But still there’s something about this that bothers me… what could it be? It’s right on the tip of my tongue… if I could just… oh yeah, I got it! Why in God’s name did this not happen in the closing pages of Civil War?! Wouldn’t it have made this huge “event of events” even more powerful and in turn bolster the “importance” of Civil War if Captain America’s death (haha, yeah) happened in the pages of Civil War itself, rather than being turned into part of the aftermath, thus making it seem somehow less important than it is? I don’t know. Like so many things that have happened in connection with Civil War, this move makes absolutely no sense to me. The whole thing smacks of being rather hastily thrown together by too many cooks in one single kitchen. And all of them were reading from a different menu.

But hey, no matter when it happened, Cap’s death is probably a good thing. After all, as was pointed out in last week’s Frontline #11, it’s Cap’s fault that America sucks because he doesn’t watch the Simpsons or American Idol, go to NASCAR races (wha…?) or have his own MySpace page. Yes, heaven forbid that Captain America actually stand for some sort of high and noble dream of what this country could be. We’d all be better off if he’d ditch all that “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” hullabaloo and start stuffin’ his face full of McDonald’s, get all emo-whiny on his LiveJournal and spend the day downloading videos of Family Guy clips from YouTube like your average American idiot (myself included). Why, then he’d be relevant!

When the hell did relevant translate to knowing who won the last damn season of American Idol (God, I’ve never been so happy to be irrelevant in my life)? When exactly did it stop being cool for heroes to be people we could look up to, people who were actually better than us, people that we could actually strive to emulate? Instead those heroes should stoop to our level? Why? So we can feel better about ourselves? Ugh… I’m getting dangerously close to a rant about how effed up our culture is right now. And that’s not what this column is about.

Like I said, Cap’s death is a good thing. It’s better that he take one in the head right now than suffer whatever indignities might be heaped upon him by people who think he’s “out of touch” because he doesn’t give a crap whether Britney Spears is wearing underwear or not. Farewell, soldier.

For Really Real This Time

I promise that next week I will do the “My Favorite Comics” feature I mentioned last week. However I can’t promise that I won’t mention Civil War at least once. Possibly in a negative way.

Return of Quick Bits!

Since I’m trying to keep this column short I’ve decided to bring back a feature I used to use back when I first started this column – Quick Bits! It’s more like a news brief, hitting the major headlines and such, without any long winded “opinions” by some tool (a.k.a. Me).

1. The Superman Doomsday animated movie, produced by Bruce Timm, will be released on September 18th of this year. The film is 75 minutes long and will feature Adam Baldwin (Jayne in Firefly) as Superman, Anne Heche as Lois Lane and James Marsters (Spike in Buffy The Vampire Slayer) as Lex Luthor. I think the most unexpected announcement regarding the direct-to-DVD feature is that it will be rated PG-13. No doubt the rating is due to the violent battle between Superman and the monstrous Doomsday, which culminates in the death of Superman himself.
2. Phil Jimenez announced that he would be working on Amazing Spider-Man starting this fall. He also revealed that he will not be the regular penciler on the book per se but will instead be working on specific story-arcs. It was not revealed who else would be working with him on the title, though he and writer Dan Slott are working on a Spider-Man story for Marvel’s Free Comic Book Day release. Hmmm.
3. For the 25th anniversary of his most famous creation, Matt Wagner is working on a brand new Grendel miniseries, Behold The Devil, which will chronicle a time in Hunter Rose’s career that even he would like to forget. Wagner revealed that he is about halfway finished penciling the 8-issue project, which should mean it would be ready for release this fall.
4. David Tischman is writing Star Trek: Year Four for IDW. The six-issue miniseries will serve as the fourth “season” of the original Star Trek television show.
5. DC’s Green Arrow series will come to an end with #75 with Green Arrow proposing to Black Canary on the last page of the issue. However, current Green Arrow writer Judd Winick explained that neither he nor DC was done with the character. That statement, coupled with the proposal and talk of a big DCU wedding in June, seems to strengthen the rumor that DC will soon be launching a Green Arrow/Black Canary ongoing series.
6. Marvel has announced that the upcoming Avengers: The Initiative mini-series, by Dan Slott and Stefano Caselli, has been promoted to an ongoing series making it the third ongoing Avengers comic. Wow! Multiple spin-off titles, variant covers, crappy stories, late comics by Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld? It’s like those glorious days of the early 90’s all over again! Remember? When comics almost died!!
7. Anybody remember back in December when I mentioned Amazons Attack and how artist Pete Woods had placed some of his designs for the series up on his blog? I wasn’t able to get the actually art before Woods was forced to remove it at the request of DC Comics but I did describe the art that I had seen:
   
   “The first picture featured a large cat-like creature bearing a saddle and some sort of headgear and reminded me a lot of Battle Cat from He-Man. Other pictures showed designs for several different ranks of Amazonian soldiers, from foot soldiers to generals, all with a distinct Roman Empire feel. Also included in the soldier designs was a “black-ops” Amazonian and two cavalry soldiers, one who would presumably ride Battle Cat and another who was described as riding some sort of winged creature. Wow… it’s almost like seeing the actual art, huh?”
   
   Well that same art has now been officially released and I wanted you to finally get a chance to see what I was describing:       Click images to view full size in a new window
   
   
   
   
    
8. Producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura has revealed that, following his work on the Transformers movie, his company will be working on a live-action G.I. Joe film, possibly staring Mark Wahlberg as Duke! Whooo! Yo, Joe! Seriously, ever since they announced the live-action Transformers film all I’ve wanted is to hear someone say something, anything, about a G.I. Joe movie. Man, I hope they work Bazooka in there somewhere. Anyway, now you know. And knowing is… something… something.
9. Neal Adams finally confirmed that he is indeed working on a Batman comic with Frank Miller, though it will not be the second arc of All-Star Batman and Blah, Blah, Blah as was once the rumor. In talking about the series, called Batman: Odyssey, Adams revealed that he would be plotting and penciling the six to eight-issue miniseries, while Miller would provide the book’s dialogue.
10. The Kids WB will bring Spider-Man back to the small screen in a brand-new animated series,
    The Amazing Spider-Man, which will explore the life of Peter Parker as a 16-year old high school student dealing with his new-found superpowers.

In Case You Didn’t Know…

I’m still a huge fan of Paul Jenkins’ no matter what role he played in this whole Civil War debacle. He’s written a number of amazing comics, some of which count among my all-time favorites, including (in my opinion) the best run on Hellblazer ever. Plus, how can you hate a guy who’s responsible for something as awesome as this:

Six Weeks Late For Groundhog Day

The Only Comics That Matter

Last Week –
Connor Hawke: Dragon’s Blood #4 by Chuck Dixon & Derec Donovan
Doctor Strange: The Oath #5 by Brian K. Vaughan & Marcos Martin
Runaways #24 by Brian K. Vaughan & Adrian Alphona
X-Factor #16 by Peter David & Pablo Raimondi

This Week –
Shazam: The Monster Society of Evil #2 by Jeff Smith
Criminal #5 by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips
Iron Man: Hypervelocity #3 by Adam Warren & Brian Denham
Boneyard #24 by Richard Moore

Next Week –
Buffy The Vampire Slayer #1 by Joss Whedon & Georges Jeanty
Stormwatch: PHD #5 by Christos Gage & Doug Mahnke
Grifter and Midnighter #1 by Chuck Dixon & Ryan Benjamin


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If you have any interesting news, rumors, lies, etc. about comics and think I should know about it too just email me at thesuperleezard@yahoo.com.

Read more dumb crap written by me at www.livejournal.com/users/superleezard.

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