Crisis On Infinite Midlives

Marvel Studios’s Avengers: Infinity War opened last week and scored the biggest box office opening weekend of all time. It pulled in about $640 million in four days, meaning that, at around $15 per ticket, it was seen by roughly 43 million people. Which is good news for us, because it means that it shouldn’t be […]

It’s a bit of a mixed bag this week, as we discuss, first of all, that we’re not dead (but thanks for asking!). We then talk about the ongoing process of getting ready to attend San Diego Comic-Con, which, once upon a time, was something that could be achieved in an afternoon if you had […]

Season two of Marvel Studios’s / Netflix’s Jessica Jones dropped late last week, and as with most of Marvel’s / Netflix’s shows, we burned through it in a single weekend binge. And this binge was more enjoyable than the last couple, because for once no one from Crisis On Infinite Midlives threw up while watching the […]

With all the excitement and hype surrounding last week’s release of Marvel Studios’s Black Panther, it’s easy to forget that, when the movie was announced as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Phase Three three and a half years ago, it looked to be nothing but a flick about another mid-tier character just to keep our […]

We are smack in the middle of awards season, when networks cynically fill their airtime with slapped-together ceremonies celebrating old crap you already know about, all in the hopes that someone will get drunk and start making a damn fool of themselves, all on a short budget. Or, in other words: welcome to the 2017 […]

It’s been an speedy week, from the threat of yet another government shutdown, to calling other nations ugly names, to a 30-something minute span where it seemed like a large chunk of the population of Hawaii might be on deck to have a chance at their own Silver Age superhero origin stories. It was the […]

After a couple of weeks off due to holidays, family travel, blizzards, arctic vortices, and professional obligations, and we’ve moved past holiday genre movies and into the pre-convention season lull. Meaning that until Marvel Studios’ Black Panther drops in about six weeks, there’s nothing to talk but comics. And frankly, we’re kinda glad about that. Because […]

Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the inarguably most anticipated genre film of 2017 (at least the most anticipated by everyone except Rob) was released last Friday, and based on the box office returns approaching half a billion dollars in four days, it was beloved by nearly everyone on the planet, yes? Yeah, apparently not. It […]

Crisis on Earth X, the annual crossover between DCW (Rob swears he will make DCW a thing) shows Supergirl, Arrow, The Flash and DC’s Agents of Tomorrow aired a couple of weeks ago, and while we’re a little late to the conversation, we wanted to discuss it, because it wound up being one of the […]

Marvel Studios’s latest Netflix series, The Punisher, dropped all at once a couple of weeks ago, and it was, in a lot of ways, very different than the series that have been delivered up until now. Sure, the other series dealt with adult themes – Jessica Jones tackled being a survivor of abuse, Luke Cage dealt with racism, […]

Justice League was released to theaters in the United States last weekend, and, to put it mildly, it underperformed. In the same way that the Atlanta Falcons underperformed in last year’s Super Bowl. Sure, there was a lot of weird buzz about reshoots and rewrites and new directors surrounding the movie, but none of that […]

There’s a new Thor movie out. If history were a guide, this would excite us not at all. While we have been, and still generally are, fully in the tank for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we have not seen any of the Thor movies in an actual movie theater, and that’s saying something considering we […]

We are now fully into Marvel’s Legacy initiative to step back from years of event overload and senseless character deaths, and to reintroduce simpler, more classic versions of the character back into the monthly issues. And as we glory in the reintroduction of series’ original numbering, and the inclusion of classic Stan Lee / Funky […]

DC has been teasing the inclusion of elements of Watchmen into DC Rebirth for nearly a year and a half now, which has made us, Rob especially, very nervous. That inclusion has been kept down to a dull roar until this past weekend, when DC released an ashcan of the first six pages of Doomsday Clock, the […]

With everything that’s been going on at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office (goodbye flood, hello nine-foot curtain hanging!), we’ve been a little late to the party on Marvel’s latest Netflix series, The Defenders. Again, this is purely because of unrelated life events, and is in no way related to the fact that the […]

It was yet another berserk week at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office, with more workmen in the house, the building of massive shelving that, Tardis-like, is somehow bigger on the inside, and family members evacuating South Florida to escape Hurricane Irma… before turning around to drive right back into Hurricane Irma. Let’s just […]

We are back, after a lengthier-than-expected parental visit, an unexpected recording studio flood, extended remediation of water damage, and a certain amount of recording equipment replacement and testing. So please: be gentle. While the ratings were abysmal (meaning you may well not have watched it), this week gave us the first planned ending to Twin […]

We are back and recovered from San Diego Comic Con 2017. SDCC is a show we’ve attended more than almost any other, and yet this year it seemed, I don’t know… bigger. More oppressive. More willing to empty your wallet and leave you for dead, while showing you genre spectacle you couldn’t get with an all access […]

The first official day of San Diego Comic-Con 2017 was yesterday, and we are doing shows live (to tape) from the belly of the beast. Being our first day back to SDCC in three years, we discuss what’s changed in the intervening time, including a brand new requirement to bend the knee and pledge fealty […]

We’re a little late to the party when it comes to Spider-Man: Homecoming, which opened a week and a half ago to the tune of 200 million dollars and 93% on Rotten Tomatoes. But late or no, there’s a lot to unpack in the movie, given that it’s the third reboot of the cinematic Spider-Man, which […]

We are mere days away from San Diego Comic-Con 2017, which will be the first we’ve attended and covered in the past three years. To say we’re excited would be a massive understatement, and we’re putting together our plans to cover the show and record and release short episodes directly from the con. But figuring out […]

At face value, there is nothing impressive or exciting about crossovers between DC Comics and Looney Tunes or Hanna Barbara. We didn’t pay a ton of attention to these books when they started dropping last year, until we finally picked a couple of them up out of a combination of seeking relief from the impending […]

Some weeks, you don’t record a podcast when you’re ready. You record when you’re awake. Rob had a long weekend of late nights being on call for his day gig, leading to a slim, two-hour window where he’d had enough coffee to be able to say something longer than his own name, yet not enough […]

We are in a genre entertainment lull. A week after Wonder Woman debuted in theaters, three weeks before Spider-Man: Homecoming opens, and with all the geek TV shows on summer hiatus, there’s not a lot to talk about except the comic books. So we stick with comics this week, and we are thankful that we […]

While Patty Jenkins’s Wonder Woman was certainly the big comics movie of the week, we start off talking about, of all things, M. Night Shyamalan’s five month old movie Split. We talk about it because, well, we weren’t expecting it to be a comic book style story, and were extremely surprised to find it so. Mostly we were […]

Look: we’re talking about Twin Peaks: The Return. We know, this might not seem like the topic for a comics podcast, but hear us out. Twin Peaks is one of the main inspirations for The X-Files which is clearly turf for genre shows. It features a shared universe of different genre stories like any good […]

A wise man once said, “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” I think it was Harvey Dent. Or maybe Billy Dee Williams. Either way, it’s a statement that certainly applied to last week in comics and comics-related entertainment. In column A was the United States debut of Marvel Studios’s Guardians […]

As we ease into convention season, the comics news starts to slow down so publishers have something to discuss in panels. You know, other than garbage news items about the dangers of trying to be funny in 140 characters or less. So we briefly discuss the next step in the million-mile march toward San Diego […]

And lo, we return to you from lands afar, with the legendary tale of The Mighty Conquest of the Editing Robot with the Holy Union of the Irish and Columbia or: How We Killed Our Podcast Editing Computer with a Cup of Irish Coffee! Seriously, we’re back after some serious technical difficulties, but ready to discuss […]

Sometimes, the best laid plans to watch thirteen episodes of Iron Fist on Netflix and talk about them on the Internet go wrong, particularly when one of your hosts is on call for work all weekend, and when neither of your hosts are particularly engaged by Kung-Fu stories. However, this week gave us the releases […]

Yes, we’re a day late again, but after a weekend of pulling, cleaning and replacing every connection on the board, at least, unlike last week, this episode doesn’t sound like we’re talking through a bowl of Rice Krispies. This weekend, the first full trailer for DC Films’ Wonder Woman dropped, and as big DC Comics […]

Yes, we’re a day late, and for that, we’re sorry. But it’s a jam-packed show this week, so we wanted to take the time to get it right. That, and we had weird audio issues it took a while to resolved, but let’s focus on the positive. First, we discuss some long-awaited and welcome comics […]

As we move slowly into convention season, there is kind of a dearth of interesting comics news to work through some weeks. Oh sure, we could weigh in on Marvel’s comments at ComicsPRO that the reason their sales are down is because of DC shipping cheaper books, but that’s a little inside baseball even for […]

We are living in an age where we are spoiled for choice, when it comes to comics-related television shows. From The Flash to Supergirl to The Walking Dead to Cinemax’s Outcast to the (possibly) upcoming Scalped on WGN America, there’s something for everyone… which is why we weren’t particularly excited for FX’s Legion, based on […]

Yes, we are late after a weird weekend, but we still have a good show for you! A show barely prepared for, fueled by caffeine and alcohol, but as far as shows go: this is one! Anyway, for the past few years, DC Films seems to have gauged whether or not to proceed making live […]

It was a weird week for comics and genre news. Having recorded this episode one day before the announcement of the official title of the new Star Wars movie (spoiler alert: the spoiler is that the title is Star Wars: The Last Jedi), the only comics related news was whether it was still kosher, so […]

It’s awards season, and you know what that means: networks will cynically use the concept of an awards show to fill time by looking back at old entertainment rather than looking forward and creating something new. By which we mean: welcome to the third annual Crisis On Infinite Midlives Crises awards! 2016 was a weird […]

It is the holiday season, and while that means things like delayed flights, family political battles and regifting, it also means the annual Doctor Who Christmas Special. And this year’s, The Return of Doctor Mysterio, was a double whammy: not only was it the first Doctor Who story in almost a year, but it was […]

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story opened this past weekend, and, if you’re any kind of regular listener to the show, you know that we’re from Generation X, and therefore addicted to Star Wars. And not only that, but everyone we know is from Generation X and feels the same way. And luckily, most of […]

“That’s what I love about these [Spider-Men], man… I get older, they stay the same age.” -Michael Keaton (unconfirmed) (probably made up) (I totally made this up) So we’re on our third person playing Spider-Man since the last time we had a Glutton Bowl, which seems not only unfair, but kinda wasteful. However, this time […]

After a year of superheroes beating on each other in comic books and in not one, but two different cinematic universes, sometimes you just need a good, old-fashioned superhero team-up. You know, where the good guys fight each other at first because of a misunderstanding or mind control or something, then they come together to […]

Last week was Thanksgiving in the United States, a holiday where family members travel for hours and miles to share a table with family members and take a moment to express gratitude for the good things in their life. Then they follow that moment with hours of barely-suppressed acrimony, sarcasm-dipped references to long-buried grievances, and […]

It has been a weird couple of weeks here in the United States. Any week where the honest-to-God news in your local newspaper is more contentious, rancorous and secret identity-obsessed than your average comic book is one where talking about what comic creators are skipping what conventions in which American states, and which writers are […]

Sorry this week’s episode is late, but we had this thing, and we are late because of it. However! This past weekend, Marvel Studios’ Doctor Strange opened in theaters, marking not only the latest film in Phase Three, but the first to have an opening credit production logo featuring almost no comic books. So we […]

This week, the paperback edition of celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain’s graphic novel Get Jiro: Blood and Sushi, was released. This book is a prequel to his 2012 sci-fi comic Get Jiro!, and like the original, it is steeped in modern foodie culture. Luckily, Amanda is also steeped in foodie culture. So we talk about Get […]

We’re back, after yet another interruption – this time, we left the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office to go to the American Classic Arcade Museum, where Amanda beat her personal best on Centipede, and Rob, after 30 years, finally learned the secret to escaping the building in Elevator Action (Take the elevator to the […]

We are more than halfway through Marvel’s Civil War II summer event, which, like most Marvel summer events, has dragged into the fall with no end before the darkest days of winter in sight. And while we previously have idly wondered how Marvel intends to deal with characters who are on the side of profiling […]

After yet another cripplingly busy week at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office (and, to be honest, after about a quart of single malt scotch and a few belts of mescal), we only had the time to discuss a few of the comics of the week. But that turns out to have been a […]

It is the Labor Day long weekend here in the United States, and considering there was little comics news this week, we strongly considered taking a pass on a show this week. However! A quick peek at our Web site archives reminded us that today, September 4th, is the fifth anniversary of Crisis On Infinite […]

We’re not gonna apologize here: we love The Tick. During the 1980s Rob was a regular customer of the Brockton, MA New England Comics retail store where The Tick was born, Amanda was a fan of the 1990s Fox cartoon that brought the character to national prominence, and we both enjoyed the Patrick Warburton live […]

It’s been a week since the conclusion of Boston Comic Con 2016, and we’re still coming to terms with the fact that we saw Frank Miller speak live. We have a complicated relationship with Frank Miller here at Crisis On Infinite MIdlives. We will always love him for what he did with Daredevil and Batman […]