Dick of Death

The Dick of Death is the premiere Duck of Death tribute podcast. It's awful and you will feel awful when you listen to it. With Paolo and Travis in the two man booth, our conversation meanders from the Avengers, gardening, mumbling about why we're not talking about comics, and various summer fun-tivities.

Comics Recommendations:We botched comics talk during the show so I've provided comics recommendations below.

►Sensational Spider-Man Annual by Matt Fraction and Salvador Larocca
►Civil War: The Confession by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev
Oldies but goodies. Spider-Man and Iron Man are my two favorite heroes and these two teams nail those characters and what drives them and who they fundamentally are. And who doesn't love a solid one-shot.
►Animal Man by Jeff Lemire and Travel Foreman
Been a fan of Travel Foreman since he did the Ares mini-series for Marvel and if had known he was the artist on Animal Man I would've checked it out sooner. I've been a light fan of Animal Man since 52 when he was traipsing about the universe with Adam Strange and Starfire but never really got into him and past arcs mainly due to my dislike of Grant Morrison. The Annual issue of Animal Man came out this week and I decided to check it out on whim. Suffice it to say, I was impressed and immediately downloaded every New 52 issue of Animal Man available. I'm rather too lazy to explain why it's neat but if you like past Animal Man stuff or Swamp Thing, definitely check it out. Foreman draws a great meat dimension.


I have a deep hatred for Grant Morrison. I'm from the Will Eisner school of thought of telling as much story in as few pages as possible and each individual issue needs to be able to stand on its own. Morrison on the other hand says to the audience, "You haven't read the rest of my two year run on Batman and you don't get the references to the Batman issues I grew up with as a kid? Well, fuck you. Now read this Batman issue that takes place pre-New 52 even though it's being released post-New 52."

While sorting my comics out last night I ended up rereading Infinite Crisis and concluded that this was indeed the best Crisis (Identity doesn't count). In the grand scale of Infinite Crisis, Geoff Johns peppers in these beautiful character moments throughout the event, my favorite being Batman's "fuck you" to Earth-2 Superman after contemplating the fate of Dick Grayson in the new world E2 Supes and his cohorts plan to make. Again with Batman, there's when he conveys his insecurity to Dick by admitting that he failed to trust in and connect with others (which led him to the events of Tower of Babel and the development of OMAC). There are also the motivations of the Infinite's antagonists that have far more more depth than the Anti-Monitor's and Darkseid's reasons for ruining everyone's day. All Superboy-Prime wants to do is go home. It's those character moments that keep Infinite's narrative relatively contained in a neat little package. It helps if you've read the Teen Titans arc where Lex Luthor used Superboy to hurt his friends or if you were there turning the page and seeing Ted Kord getting shot in the face, but Johns is able to convey the driving factors of the Crisis through the characters within its pages.
 Final Crisis on the other hand is utter non-sense unless you read Death of the New Gods, Countdown, Seven Soldiers, and plethora of other tie-ins/lead-ups. Final definitely feels like the locomotion of events are being driven by outer forces and not by what's on the page. More often than not it seems that Morrison is driven more on concept and plot and that is especially true with Final Crisis. Morrison's Crisis feels like its driven by the author and not the characters inhabiting the narrative, although with the motif of storytelling through out Final and his love of breaking the fourth wall, it may be an intentional feeling Morrison is trying to cultivate. The only character driven moment of note in Final Crisis is Bruce Wayne breaking his one rule and shooting Darkseid with a godkiller bullet. Batman has always lived by a code but was aware that the current situation was bigger than one man and his morals. It's a powerful moment that gets cheapened when Batman's sacrifice doesn't actually accomplish anything until the next issue when the Flashes run through Darkseid with the Black Racer in tow, and even then in the issue after that Superman has to sing Darkseid to death.
Long story short,
►All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely.
Despite my dislike of Morrison, he is quite magical every once in a while and with All-Star Superman he delivers one of the greatest Superman stories of all time.