Like a lot of people, I was pleasantly surprised when I found myself enjoying DC’s weekly comic, 52, which followed the exploits of DC’s less-marketed heroes during the “Big Three’s*” one-year hiatus following the events of Infinite Crisis. DC was even shocked at how well that series was received. Unlike a lot of people, though, I read all 52 issues of the next year’s follow-up, Countdown to Final Crisis. Since I am, in the Southern vernacular, “hard to learn,” I decided to give Trinity a chance as well.

Trinity was also a 52-issue weekly series, however this story would focus primarily on DC’s most popular heroes. I couldn’t help but be optimistic. The story was written by Fabian Nicieza and Kurt Busiek, comic veterans with hundreds of great stories to their names, and drawn by Mark Bagley, who is most widely recognized these days for having drawn the first 110 issues of Ultimate Spider-Man. In other words, these men are professionals who are more than capable of doing their jobs extremely well. So what happened?

I’ve held back all criticism until the story was finished, but now I don’t even know what the story was about. Essentially Morgaine Le Fey, The Riddler from Earth-2 (Enigma), and Despero (though it turns out later he’s actually not) cast a spell to set themselves up as the trinity of the DC universe, replacing Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, thus recasting the world in their image. Fair enough, but did we really need to take 20 issues just to get that far in the story? I’ll save you the details, but 32 issues later everything gets restored to normal, except that Tomorrow Woman (remember her from Grant Morrison’s run on JLA?) is back from the dead and maybe not a robot anymore and Enigma is running around Earth-2 with his energy-based daughter making life difficult for The Crime Syndicate of Amerika.

This book was promised as something that would have a far-reaching impact on the ongoing DC titles, but Batman died in Final Crisis and was replaced by Dick Grayson before Trinity, which features Bruce Wayne as Batman for the entire run, even finished. In the last issue, it’s made apparent that most of the heroes aren’t even supposed to remember what happened after the story is over. How is that supposed to have an impact on the future?

It’s not that this was such a bad story so much as it was much longer and more convoluted than it ever needed to be. I might have enjoyed Trinity as a 12-issue limited series, but $150 in this economy is way too much to charge someone to read a story that has no impact and really says nothing about the characters that hasn’t been said better elsewhere. At the end of the day, though, I really just want back the time I wasted reading these comics.

*Comic terminology referring to Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman.

Well, now that Ben Zani has given it his approval, and I’ve listened to a few dozen of his CDs, I think it’s time for The Jamison to officially endorse Doug Stanhope. I first heard mention of Stanhope on a message board where the subject line read “The Next Bill Hicks?” I read the discussion and ultimately contributed that Stanhope could not be the next Bill Hicks because he’s not Southern. After listening to my first Stanhope CD, though, I realized that to call this Boston native the next Bill Hicks would be to discount the originality and depth of his comedy. To be sure, Stanhope and Hicks take a similar position, for instance, on politics (essentially that the game is fixed and all of the public debate is a side show). Regardless even Hicks never went so far as to call pro-lifers who wave pictures of aborted fetuses “child pornographers.” Anyway, read the above-linked article, then pick up No Refunds and Deadbeat Hero, and when you’re done with that, go take in a show. In the meantime, here’s a preview:

I’ve come down lately on both DC and Marvel, but today I want to call them out for doing something right. Free Comic Book Day was this past Saturday, and I have to say I was blown away by the free Avengers and Blackest Night books.

Brian Michael Bendis has been teasing us with the inevitable confrontation between the Dark Avengers and the New Avengers since the end of Secret Invasion, and we finally saw it in last week’s special. Not only do we get to see the two teams meet, but Thor is caught in the middle of the whole affair. The story is written by Bendis, which means there’s plenty of snappy dialogue and Jim Cheung’s pencils are nothing to sneeze at.

DC’s offering felt a little bit more like a gimmick, since the comic is an introduction to their summer event, Blackest Night, but it still made for a fantastic read. For obsessive Green Lantern fans like myself, Blackest Night is an event we’ve been waiting for since Geoff Johns resurrected Hal Jordan in “Green Lantern: Rebirth.” The book provided an opportunity for curious readers to get a taste of what’s in store while also finally launching us into Blackest Night, which the Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps series have been building up to for the last few months.

Just to show that I’m not just a shill for the big two, I also want to point out that all of the FCBD offerings were great. The Savage Dragon special was actually the next issue of the ongoing title and made a great jumping-on point for new readers. The Hernandez brothers put out a great Love and Rockets special. The biggest surprise was seeing a reprint of the first issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles made available for free. I guess they’re hoping to succeed at pimping their upcoming TMNT Volume 1 Omnibus.

Anyway, I’ve always been skeptical of Free Comic Book Day. It came off to me like a lame premise and I never imagined the publishers were going to put out quality material for free. Fortunately I’ve been proven wrong.

Just to prove I don’t just have it in for DC Comics, I got two gripes for Marvel.

Part 1: Dark Tower

Marvel keeps publishing these guides to the world of the Dark Tower comics based on the famous series by Stephen King. There’s nothing wrong with that, in fact I love reading everything I can get when it comes to “The Dark Tower,” but shouldn’t these books have at least a page or two of comics in them? DC always breaks up the monotony of page after page of profile with a 4-page story in their Secret Files books, but the guys at Marvel just print these $4 encyclopedias. Is there any good reason, aside from the pretty pictures, that I wouldn’t just go out and buy the Dark Tower Concordance?

2. Dark Reign: Elektra and Dark Reign: Hawkeye

Just from a story standpoint, is there any reason that these two limited series can’t just be the same book? Times is hard out there, economically, so why bombard fans with superfluous comics? As near as I can tell, the Hawkeye book is just Bullseye wearing Hawkeye’s costume and resorting to meaningless violence in spite of Norman Osborn’s complaints. The Elektra book at least catches us up on the character of Elektra, who was kidnapped sometime before the Skrull invasion, and has Bullseye/Hawkeye chasing her down for what promises to be some meaningless, yet exciting violence.

Bullseye works well as a Daredevil villain and even as a Deadpool supporting character, but between Dark Avengers, Hawkeye, Elektra and any guest appearances he’ll be making as the Dark Avengers do battle with other Marvel heroes, I think we’ll be seeing enough of him. If Marvel keeps over-exposing Bullseye, I suspect fans are going to get tired of seeing him.

I had the pleasure of meeting J. F. Lewis last year at DragonCon, where he was hoping to promote his recently released novel, “Staked.” Dekker and I were interviewing him for an AMC show which may or may not have ever aired, but J. F. gained one fan as I listened to him describing the plot of his novel, which centers around a vampire named Eric and his stripper girlfriend, Tabitha, who just won’t stop begging Eric to turn her into a vampire. Eric lives in a town called Void City, a place infested with werewolves, demons, witches and, of course, vampires. The vampires basically run the city, which we learn is based somewhere in the south-eastern United States, while most of the humans wander around completely oblivious to their handlers.

A note to anti-spoiler nuts: the following is all revealed in the product description for “Revamped.” If you don’t want to skip ahead, check out “Staked” first.

*Begin Spoilers*

Eric turns Tabitha early in “Staked,” so the narrative splits as the reader jumps back and forth between Eric and Tabitha’s perspectives as Eric battles a local werewolf clan and Tabitha adjusts to life as a vampire. Tabitha quickly becomes involved with the local blood-sucker high society while Eric learns about his origins and gets involved with Tabitha’s sister, Rachel, who happens to be a tantric witch. “Staked” ends with Eric being betrayed by his best friend and turned into a kind of ghost after having his body atomized.

*End Spoilers*

“Revamped” picks up right where the last novel ended, so you’ll probably be lost if you decide to read the books out of order. People who read the first novel and were disappointed by the cliffhanger ending will no doubt be satisfied as Lewis wraps up this story while hinting at things to come. In a culture dominated by feminized vampire tales like “Buffy,” “Twilight,” and the Anita Blake series (all of which I like, btw), it’s fun to have a vampire hero who acts before he thinks and rarely broods.

What makes Lewis’ take on vampire mythology so interesting is the powers and weaknesses with which he imbues the various monsters who rule “The Void.” In addition to the traditional vampire and werewolf characters, we also get to see revnants, ghosts, mages, and even a sort of holy werecat named Talbot. The vampires’ abilities vary from person to person, so much so that there are actually 5 classes of vampire described in the novels, the lowest being drones and the highest being the emperor class, each with their own unique abilities.

Look, I could comb through the book and hack away at the diction and sentence structure and differences in character voice, but these books are fun. If you’re looking for some easy-to-read fantasy action, or an adult counterpoint to our Twilight-dominated popular culture, then the combination of “Staked” and “Revamped” will definitely satisfy.

I have always been a fan of Deadpool. I came of age during the aforementioned “big shoulders, big guns” craze of 90s comics, and Deadpool was always sure to be carrying big guns. His costume looked like a rip-off of Spider-Man, but I was willing to overlook this because you never saw Spider-Man carrying a rocket launcher. A friend of mine turned me onto the first Deadpool ongoing series which was written by Joe Kelly and illustrated by Ed McGuinness, whose genius lay not only in bringing an unparalleled degree of humor to the series, but also in building up Deadpool’s cast of supporting characters and nemeses.

I was disappointed when Kelly left the book, however Christopher Priest’s run took the series to new territory in the marvel universe while keeping the same degree of humor, however the book seemed to go downhill afterward. The stories and plots got more and more convoluted, and the wisecracks got more and more hackneyed. “Cable & Deadpool” seemed like a stupid marketing ploy to me, though Fabian Nicieza did a great job with it while trying to sort out some of the continuity gaffes which now plagued the character.

Fortunately, that’s all over. Daniel Way takes on the character fresh off a guest arc in “Wolverine: Origins” with an unofficial Secret Invasion tie-in. True to form, Deadpool takes on an entire Skrull mother ship complete with one Super-Skrull inside a baseball stadium while wearing a stupid mascot costume. Paco Medina’s art is perfectly suited to both the humor and action which come hand-in-hand with a good Deadpool story. As an added bonus the end of the book has a biography of the Merc with a Mouth. Defnitely worth picking up.

Warning: Do not click the picture below unless you have at least an hour of your life you don’t want back.

Snares in Action

“Off-Road Raptor Safari” has to be the greatest internet game since that “Sex Tetris” game or even “Snood.” Imagine you’re driving the Warthog from “Halo” on the box canyon map, which just happens to be infested with velociraptors. Your mission is to kill raptors and get them to the time platforms that send them to the future so the corporation you work for can study them. You can transport the bodies using your handy-dandy mace-like SNARE!!!

The gang at Flashbang Studios knows their dinosaurs, as evidenced by their current project, Jetpack Brontosaurus. When hit, the raptors explode a cloud of feathers, making the game feel like a giant chicken round-up. Mad points can be earned not just by making kills and getting them to the transporter, but also by doing insane stunts, collecting tokens, and doing maximum damage to your car, which never falls apart and almost always rights itself when flipped.

For a relatively simple game, Raptor Safari is obscenely addictive and frequently entertaining. Play at your own risk.

If “Air” by G. Willow Wilson and M.K. Perker doesn’t take off, I’m going to blame it on DC marketing. My Vertigo stack has been growing of late. Thanks to the confidence restored to the brand by “Y: The Last Man,” I have taken a chance on books like “House of Mystery” and “Young Liars” and have so far been decently impressed.

“Air” is no exception. The story follows Blythe, a flight attendant who finds herself caught in a web of weirdness involving an underground, anti-terrorist vigilante group and an ethnically-ambiguous stranger named Zayn. Perker’s art is fantastic and looks even better in color than it did in the black and white graphic novel, “Cairo.”

I bring up DC’s marketing department, however, because when I read the preview for “Air” which appeared in the back of all the Vertigo books last month, I assumed the book was going to be God awful. The preview they put together has almost no story and is completely out of order. It makes Wilson look like one of those writers that tells stories alinearly just to be pretentious. The story itself is mostly linear, except for following that classic comic tradition of showing the climax of the story at the beginning of the book and then flashing back to explain how the characters got there. The first issue reads as an almost self-contained arc, except there are so many questions at the end you can’t wait to see how the rest turns out. It’s definitely worth the $2.99 if you’ve got it and you’re old enough to be considered “mature.”

I have to admit up front that I’m a big fan of Morgan Spurlock. I agree with a great deal of his opinions, and he somehow always finds a way to argue his side convincingly when I disagree. When I sat down to watch “Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden,” I expected to agree with him a great deal. Spurlock does not disappoint.

The premise is pretty self-explanatory. Morgan travels all over the Middle East with a camera crew asking random (and some not so random) people “Where is Osama Bin Laden?” The answers become a source of comic relief in between much tougher questions like, “What do you think of America?” and, “What would improve the quality of your life?”

My favorite moment in the film, the one that really sums things up is when Morgan asks an old man where Osama is hiding and he responds, “Who is Osama Bin Laden?”

The translator replies in Urdu (I think), “He’s the one who blew up those buildings in America.”

The old man says, “Fuck Osama Bin Laden. Fuck America.”

That about sums it up. The theme of the film is the same thing I tell everyone when they ask me what it was like to live in Egypt: Most people in the world can’t afford to care about international policy. They just want to live good lives and provide for their families. I don’t know how the documentary scores as a film, but it is an entertaining and emotional piece and a fine non-thirty-day format film from Spurlock. Everyone who has an opinion about the Middle East needs to see this movie.

Oh, and the animation is hilarious in this one.