The most important thing that happened at Comic-Con International?: Someone who does a hell of Stan Lee impression dressed up like Stan Lee, Stan Lee-ed about in front of a camera and six-minutes of gold followed. It gets great around the three-minute mark, where Fake Stan Lee starts interacting with other cosplayers. You can see a little bit more of Fake Stan Lee at fakestanlee.com. (Via Journalista)

The second most important thing?: Dean Trippe, Chris Burnham and Tracie Mauk contributed sketches of Arsenal and dead cats to David Walkin’s Arsenal-with-a-dead-cat sketchbook.

If no one dies under mysterious circumstances, it’s not a very good curse: “Mark Ruffalo Is The Incredible Hulk. Is This Role Cursed?”

“It’s just constantly raising expectations for myself…to the point where, inevitably, I must surely collapse under my own mass and become some sort of creative black hole”: That’s Alan Moore talking to the New York Times for a somewhat lengthy feature about the CD release of the spoken word version of his essay Unearthing, which is about his friend and fellow comics creator Steve Moore .

“Then, as a creative person who works with dark liquid all the time —in ink— something organically grew out of that”: Political cartoonist Steve Breen discusses his cartoons about the BP oil spill, the ones that he colored with actual oil spilled during the environmental disaster,  with Michael Cavna of the Washington Post.

“I’m still on the fence regarding Silver Age Flash. I can see its potential”: After a not terribly generous review of Flash: Rebirth, Richard Cook decided to go back and look at the original Silver Age Flash stories to see if he could see what apparent Barry Allen fans (like Rebirth writer Geoff Johns) see in the character. His ultimate assessment of the Flash’s first appearance in 1956’s Showcase #4 finds the character hardly compelling, although I’m not sure I see the value in attempting to interact with a book that’s more of a cultural event/milestone within the history of a particular genre of comics. In other words, of course Spider-Man is a much more dynamic and compelling character than Barry Allen—he was created eight years later, and in some ways as a response to the Silver Age Flash and the DC Comics heroes that returned right after him. Anyway, interesting reading.

Not that the one thing has anything to do with the other, of course: Check out this headline Fantagraphics’ Eric Reynolds found. Coincidence, or…well, probably a coincidence.

Boneyard v.7
Written & Illustrated by Richard Moore
Published by NBM

The publishing world of comics won’t be quite as fun any more, as Richard Moore’s Boneyard concludes with its seventh collected edition.  Yeah, he could one day return, but for now, this supernatural comedic adventure serial is closing up shop, leaving its creator more time to pursue other projects that percolate in his mind.

Here’s Boneyard’s big picture: Michael Paris inherits a graveyard from his grandfather, and in this graveyard he discovers a classic sitcom-worthy collection of spooks and ghouls, including a lewd demon, a wolfman mechanic, a fishy temptress and one very cute, very deadly and very caring vampire named Abbey.  Over the previous six books, Michael and Abbey have grown toward one another, but always find themselves interrupted by … perhaps the devil himself trying to take over the graveyard.

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Fans of Spider-Girl — that’s the alternate future, May Parker, “MC2″ Spider-Girl — are uniquely passionate. Devoted. Loyal. All of that. It’s why the book has been saved from cancellation some six hundred or so times. But, as you can expect, most are not too happy over the news that Anya Corazon, the former Araña, will be starring in a new Spider-Girl series starting in November from writer Paul Tobin and artist Clayton Henry. (Read more about that here.)

Take for instance, this missive from “VENOM,” co-moderator of an unofficial Spider-Girl message board that serves as grand central station for May’s intense fanbase, reportedly sent to Marvel as an explanation for why he’ll no longer be reading their comics:

“I can almost understand giving Arana (lame character, IMO) the “Spider-Girl” name to give her some publicity, but to do it at the expense of Tom DeFalco and Co’s “Spider-Girl” and her fans is a real travesty. Not only does Arana say in the most recent ASM (which I’m ashamed to have picked up) that the Spider-Girl name is “corny” and “makes you want to puke,” now we have to accept the fact that this (THIS?!), is the “new” Spider-Girl?”

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Major motion pictures these days are built to be franchises; it’s almost imperative that they have a sequel, or at least be open to one. And The Losers certainly leaves it wide open. Here, in a public forum, I’d like to appeal to cooler heads at Warner Brothers and say: Don’t make one.

Don’t get me wrong. The movie is terrific. It’s fun, funny, quirky and action-packed; it retains the tone and much of the best material from Andy Diggle and Jock’s Vertigo series. Still…it seems like nothing good can come from a second installment, in spite of a final twenty minutes of this film that essentially begs for one. But it’s a bit like Kill Bill. Now, there are those who really dug the second installment becuase it was basically all action, all the time. I’m not one of them. I felt like all the story that was worth telling happened in the first movie, and by the second you pretty much knew what was going to happen, and the process of watching it play out wasn’t so clever as to merit another two hours of my life. As it stands, the unresolved-but-it’s-obvious-where-all-this-is-going thing really works for the ending of The Losers, endowing a crazy summer revenge/action shoot-’em-up with an arthouse sensibility that there was really no way for it to come by honestly.

The sequel issue aside, The Losers had few flaws. Frankly, some of the shine might come off it when The Expendables–a similar concept, but with a stronger overall cast–hits theaters later in the summer, but for now it’s safe to say that Jeffrey Dean Morgan really proved himself as a strong action lead. Chris Evans–soon to be Captain America–did little to prove he can expand beyond the comfort zone he’s developed in a handful of mediocre previous appearances, but didn’t do anything to hurt the film either.  And while there were some good and bad moments for almost everyone in the cast, they all seemed irrelevant once you realize that in The Losers, Captain America and The Comedian went to war together.

The plot is a little bit like a hyper-violent episode of TNT’s Leverage (with all the stuntwork and con artistry that such a declaration implies, but without ever really establishing that some of the characters are capable of the computer work necessary later), which is odd because the movie is PG-13, so most of the violence is offscreen and much of it is played for laughs (in a sequence, the villain is being escorted down the beach by a beautiful woman carrying an umbrella. For almost the duration of her screen time, she’s never out of frame, as someone on this film really, really likes to point the camera at beautiful women and just leave it there for a while. When, however, she stumbles in her high heels on the beach sand and the umbrella shifts so that it’s not covering our villain for a moment, he blows her head off. It’s at this moment that she disappears off camera, never to be seen again, because the only way to get a PG-13 rating with as much violence as this film has, is to show almost nothing.

All in all, the movie’s worth watching. There’s no doubt there will be talk of a sequel, and while I hope they can resist the urge…well, let’s be honest–this one was so good that if they make one, I’ll go see it. And then probably kvetch after.

The Losers is available on DVD, Blu-ray and Video on Demand from Time Warner right now.

The DC Bullets steamrolled through Newsweek Monday evening by the lopsided final 32-4.  Now, I know what you’re thinking.  Way to run up the score.  So I did some calculating – for the game, the Bullet team batted .571, which is a good, but hardly otherworldly batting average.  The primary reason the score went so far in Bullets favor had more to do with Newsweek missing their primary pitcher and auditioning four different hurlers during the course of the game.

Those auditions did not go particularly well, as the Bullets drew an astounding 22 walks.  Every hitter in the Bullet line-up except second baseman Christine “CNap” Napolitano (ironically, the smallest strike zone on the team) (1-3, R, RBI) drew at least one walk.  Inveterate free-swinger, third baseman Mike Lorah, with no walks in sixty 2010 plate appearances coming into the game, drew three free passes, and during the third walk fouled off a 3-0 pitch that nearly hit him in the chin while trying to find a pitch to put in play.

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I hadn’t realized Nick Cave had turned into Ben Stiller’s character from Anchorman.

Joking aside, it was reported today by numerous affiliates that Nick Cave, former frontman for The Birthday Party and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, as well as actor and acclaimed author, has been selected to write the script for James O’Barr’s The Crow film reboot. Now, I remember a few years ago, Stephen Norrington (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) was supposed to helm the gothic anti-hero, but nothing’s been heard from that camp in quite sometime.

Having Cave pen the script is, for lack of a better word, sublime, in my opinion.

Of course it’s hard to think of The Crow movies and not also associate the strange death of film star Brandon Lee. It’s been almost twenty years since the incident, and with two more than sub-par sequels, I think it’s time again to let this bird fly.

If you like what you’ve read so far (c’mon, how can you not?) totally check out more super cute comics at:www.sosuperduper.com!

Oh no! A terrible but tiny gremlin is in my laptop! Or in the Internet! Or in the massive crays of Newsarama.Com HQ’s central computer banks! Or somewhere! And this terrible gremlin won’t allow me to upload imagery, thus denying/sparing you a colored pencil-on-index card “gag” cartoon at the top of this column this week.

Well, the gremlin may be able to stop my pictures, but he can’t stop my words! So join me for a brief discussion of some of the books that look good, bad or somehow notable that will be in your local comic shop this week.

And then I have to go get the blender…if I remember anything from 1984′s Gremlins, it’s that the best way to kill a gremlin is with a blender. And that Phoebe Cates is pretty.

Android Karenina: Okay, I can see Pride and Prejudice and Jane Austen books in general being popular enough to support weird genre mash-up parodies, but Tolstoy? Are there really enough Anna Karenina fans out there who snicker at that title (and, okay, I admit that I did) to make writing and publishing a steam-punk version of it worthwhile?  I guess so. Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters author Ben H. Winters penned this $13 prose book, which will be showing up in comics shops this week.

Archie: Pureheart the Powerful Vol. 1: This $20, 145-page trade from IDW collects the initial Archie superhero parodies from the 1960s, featuring work from Frank Doyle and Bill Vigoda.

Artifacts #1: This is a big-deal, game-changing crossover/event type of story set in the Top Cow Universe, with writer Ron Marz and artist Michael Broussard helming. It’s a thirteen issue miniseries—one for each of the mystical artifacts the title alludes to—and is a $4 book.

Batman: Return of Bruce Wayne #4: Cowboy Batman vs. Jonah Hex? By Grant Morrison and Georges Jeanty? Sure, I’ll pay $4 for 30 pages of that. Any time Batman gets on a horse it usually turns out to be a pretty good comic book, right? You can see a preview here.

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Over at Dwayne McDuffie’s blog, he made an announcement that I’m sure a TON of readers will appreciate: “Warner Home Video revealed the title of my next project, so I can finally talk about it. It’s a feature-length animated adaptation of one of the greatest stories in comic book history. And it will be out next spring: Morrison and Quitely’s All Star Superman.”

No voice cast announced of course, but what would your readers like to see from the movie? Who would you cast in the parts?

I guess you can go home again. Just a couple of months after Dan Jurgens’ name disappeared from the monthly credits of Booster Gold, a series based on a character he created, he’s picked up numerous plot threads from that title–as well as some of the characters he’s worked with extensively during his run on Superman and in the mega-crossover Zero Hour, which he wrote and drew–in Time Masters: Vanishing Point. A part of the ongoing “Return of Bruce Wayne” story, this miniseries by Jurgens and former Booster Gold inker Norm Rapmund will explore not only the search for Batman, but the role of time travel in the DC Universe now and going forward. Besides Booster Gold, Green Lantern, Superman and Rip Hunter, the story features Supernova and Goldstar (Booster’s superheroic family members) and Rip Hunter’s sometime-allies the Linear Men, among others. So, while Booster’s monthly has been taken over by the Justice League: Generation Lost story and is tying only marginally into the ongoing narrative of Booster and Rip, that story is being continued–by the same creative team who’s been doing it for a few years now.

We sat down with Dan Jurgens to talk about the first issue, and he took time out of his San Diego recovery–and from browsing the recently-launched DanJurgens.com–to answer us.

The Gold Exchange: You’ve said that Time Masters: Vanishing Point will not only tie into The Return of Bruce Wayne and “Flashpoint”, but also clarify how time travel works in the DCU these days. Will we get a clarification (or have we already have one and I missed it) on the two different interpretations of Rip Hunter that we’ve seen at Vanishing Point in the last few years?

Dan Jurgens: Simply put, I think it’s a part of the change over time, in terms of how I see the character and where I want him to go. Some of this may seem a bit more natural by the end of the series. But I’d also say the more “public” Rip, as seen by Superman and GL, is closer to what may have appeared several years ago. The Rip seen in BG is generally with Booster, which means there is more familiarity and they’re going to have a more relaxed relationship.

In terms of time travel, I don’t know that it’s quite right to say that we’re going to clarify how time travel works. What we will do is reset the table a bit so everyone gets a bit of a better feel for who the main players are, why they do what they do, etc. (more…)

Over on Ron Salas’ (Popgun, Mice Templar) twitter, he had posted a really interesting Daredevil piece. The fact that it’s a square (6 x 6 no less) makes it all the more interesting, I don’t know that many individuals who do those sort of things, but they are out there. Similar to Chris Samnee, who is known for using negative space in his artwork, Salas here has shown ole Hornhead deflecting shurikens left and right, with his patented radar going off.

If you’re not familiar with Salas’ stuff, you better get on it. In addition to this fine piece, he also has done one of my favorite Westley Dodds sketches ever. Head on over to his blog to see more.

Find out more about Global Freezing here on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays or at ComicsByEgg.com.

Comic-Con International: San Diego may be over for another year, but that doesn’t stop major comic book-related movie news from coming in, like these four Green Lantern character posters. Featuring Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan, Blake Lively as Carol Ferris, Peter Sarsgaard as Hector Hammond and our very first glimpse of Mark Strong as Sinestro, looking faithfully Sinestro-like — plus the famous oath of the Green Lantern Corps — these hit online today.

The DC Comics adaptation is scheduled to hit screens on June 17, 2011. Check out all of the posters after the jump.

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Looking for Comic-Con International coverage? Try here. Looking to see if it’s possible to link-blog on the subject of comic books the day after a long weekend of Comic-Con announcements without re-covering those announcements? Okay then, you’re in the right place.

Finally, a story on digital comics that uses terms I can understand: “Digital Comics: Nemesis or sidekick to comic book culture?”

Hey, I enjoyed all of these too: “Five Graphic Novels Your Kids Will Enjoy (and So Will You)”

“So, yeah: this one maybe isn’t for you, and by you, I mean the entire internet, basically.  Basically”: While everyone’s attention was on San Diego, Abhay Khosla released a new review/essay into the world, dealing with Tim Hensely’s Wally Gropius.

“You’ll have to forgive the 28-year-old Vancouver native if he moans about all the other superhero properties that fly much faster and far straighter on their way to movie theaters”: This LA Times profile of Seth Rogen and his January opening Green Hornet movie is a mostly superficial  hype piece, but there’s an interesting section in which Rogen compares the difficulty of the road he and others have traveled to get their Green Hornet made to the relatively assured success of the X-Men: First Class movie.  Also from the LA Times and also on the subject of Rogen and Green Hornet is this piece, which tracks the mixed reaction clips of it received at Comic-Con.

That’s an…unusual angle on the Boom/Stan Lee announcement: “Stan Lee’s Three New Superheroes Sure To Provide Stan Lee With More Painful Acting Moments” (The costume designs do seem particularly live action movie-ready though, don’t they?

Is Clark Kent the patron saint of bloggers?: Tom Spurgeon makes the case.

Say you’re a cartoonist responsible for a brilliant bit of social commentary tied to a particular time period that has passed, like Get Your War On—how exactly do you follow that?: Three words.

Is Jim Rugg going to be working on that Thor movie?: I sure hope so, because this is the single best image from it I’ve seen so far.

Blackest Night: Black Lantern Corp v.1 & 2
Written by Peter J. Tomasi, James Robinson, J.T. Krul, Geoff Johns, Tony Bedard & Greg Rucka
Penciled by Ardian Syaf, Eddy Barrows, Allan Goldman, Ed Benes, Scott Kolins, Marcos Marz, Eduardo Pansica & Nicola Scott
Inked by Vicente Cifuentes, John Dell, Ruy José, Julio Ferreira, Eber Ferreira, Rob Hunter, Jon Sibal, JP Mayer, Scott Williams, Ed Benes, Kolins, Luciana Del Negro, Barrows, Wayne Faucher, Sandro Ribeiro, Prentis Rollins, Jonathan Glapion, Walden Wong & Drew Geraci
Colored by Nei Ruffino, Rod Reis, Hi-Fi Design & Mike Atiyeh
Lettered by John J. Hill, Steve Wands, Rob Clark, Jr., Travis Lanham & Rob Leigh
Published by DC Comics

Okay, yes, the art is choppy.  Those credits include a metric ton of pencilers and even more inkers.  Most of the art is credible, but the sheer number of artistic voices does add a sense of inconsistency within each series.  One penciler handles most of each miniseries, so it’s not completely jarring, but you’ll notice some art discrepancies.

Black Lantern Corps v. 1 and 2 compile six different three-issue miniseries that tie into the Blackest Night miniseries.  Vol. 1 collects Batman, Superman and Titans, while v.2 brings together Flash, Justice Society of America and Wonder Woman.  The overall effect of reading all six series is an impression that the heroes’ victory over Blackest Night is largely pyrrhic. The sheer number of people killed in these two books makes a reader wonder if the heroes really are accomplishing anything.  Tomasi has Batman and Red Robin repeatedly state that their primary objective is to protect the innocent, yet dozens of Gotham police officers are killed on their watch.

Which isn’t to say that, taken on its own, any individual series isn’t without its redeeming points.  Superman, in particular, manages high octane action, a fair amount of creepy terror, and the most effective use of the over-used emotional spectrum view of the characters.  Wonder Woman, by comparison, feels jumpy and uneven, despite a strong opening narration wherein Greg Rucka examines Wonder Woman’s character quite nicely.

In the big picture, some entertainment lurks between these pages, but reading three straight Black Lantern Corps series (one volume), or all six (both volumes), probably isn’t necessary.  The repetition of themes (heroes’ regret over losses, rage over desecration of loved ones) and humorless struggles against zombie heroes add up to less than the sum of each individual serial.  Once you’ve read one of these Blackest Night tie-ins, you’ve read them all.  Stick to your favorite hero and enjoy one ride; six won’t add much to the experience.

Comic-Con International: San Diego is now over, but did you miss this prop from next May’s Thor film?

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Kevin Smith hasn’t got quite the street cred, either with fanboys or with the mainstream film industry, that he had before Jersey Girl…but there are still those of us who love him. Speaking for myself, since I became aware of Smith, I’ve seen all of his movies in the theater—all of them, that is, except for Cop Out.

Smith directed (but didn’t write—a first for the man who often tells reporters that his directing style is to point the camera at stuff) the Bruce Willis/Tracy Morgan comedy, which Warner just released on home video and which frankly looked pretty awful from the ads. Having heard nothing good about the film, I gave it a miss in cinemas. Morgan has never really done much for me—his character on 30 Rock is basically no different from the character he played in his two-minute cameo in Smith’s Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back. Combining Morgan’s cameo in that film with Smith’s own cameo in Willis’ Live Free or Die Hard a couple of years ago, the principal players of this picture have a strange, Kevin Bacon-less six degrees thing going on which made an already-not-promising project feel just a little too much like a self-indulgent boy’s club.

So it was significantly to my surprise that, upon playing this movie on home video, I discovered it was actually very not-bad. Early in the picture, Morgan’s trademark irritating personality was already starting to grate on me when the scene was rescued with a well-placed Die Hard joke that reminded me that Smith is still a pretty hardcore cinemaphile, and that you can’t completely keep the director’s fingerprints off someone else’s script, if your director is someone with such a big personality. Remember, after all, that the press junket for this picture was completely overshadowed by the “Too Fat To Fly” story that got more headlines and made Smith more friends than Cop Out (or, as Smith prefers, the working title “A Couple of Dicks”) ever did.

The movie isn’t amazing by any stretch; if you’re looking only for a loving send-up of ’80s action flicks you’d do better to check out Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz. Still, it’s enjoyable enough and you can see where, even as he sells out and does a mediocre flick for the money, Kevin Smith managed to elevate the script’s game. Still, it’s not completely free of the chains that come with a ranting, babbling Tracy Morgan doing his best to make moviegoers miss Martin Lawrence. Bruce Willis’ humor drifts randomly between a spot-on deadpan and a kind of listless, lifeless delivery that makes you wonder if, about a third of the way into shooting, he suddenly realized what he’d gotten himself into. After a couple of lackluster genre deliveries in this and last year’s The Surrogates, one hopes that Willis’ upcoming turn in the adaptation of Warren Ellis’ Red is good–otherwise he’ll have burned a lot of bridges in the comics community, and Boom! Studios’ Die Hard: Year One wasn’t spectacular enough to win him all that goodwill back.

Cop Out is available now on DVD and a Blu-Ray combo pack which includes a DVD and digital copy; it’s also On Demand if you’ve got Time Warner Cable, but they’ve been very aggressively advertising that this (as well as their upcoming Clash of the Titans release) is unavailable on Netflix and Redbox as yet.

Since the San Diego Comic Con is the time of year that a young man’s fancy turns to comics, I decided to check in with writer Todd Dezago, whose creator-owned project The Perhapanauts with artist Craig Rousseau has been one of my favorite irregularly-published titles of the last few years. After a pair of Dark Horse miniseries that put the title on the map, Dezago and Rousseau took a couple of years off and then moved to Image, where the title became ongoing–except that the creators’ heavy workload of mainstream work tends to shunt the ‘Haps to the back burner pretty often and the ongoing has released a little more than a single story arc since it debuted. It’s been consistently excellent, though, and Dezago has crafted an ongoing mythology that proves he’s invested with these characters for the long haul, as subplots and character beats have been set up in almost every issue to pay off later. With Image collecting the Dark Horse minis as a single volume (The Perhapanauts: Dark Days, out September 21), what’s the story with The Perhapanauts in 2011 and beyond? I asked the writer.

“Well, finally, after a long period of down-time, production on the next arc of The Perhapanauts has started up again. Craig has been able to find some (very precious) time to focus on the rather demanding pages of the next story line. Also, we have lots of other artists–Matt Wieringo, Lauren Monardo, Leonel Castellani, Matt Smith–working on back-up stories that will fill out each issue and take our story even farther!

“Also in the works are some very cool webcomics featuring The Perhapanauts in “Elseworlds”-type stories called “Tales From the Perhaps!” which we plan to debut on The Perhapanauts website sometime later this year! The first selection, by writer Rich Woodall and art by Jason Copland, is just about finished and it’s a masterpiece!

“Finally, while I won’t be there (I don’t think…) Craig will be at the Baltimore C0micCon in August and will be bringing the latest in our “Perhapanauts one-sheet series”, this one featuring the Maryland Goat Man! We realized that the best way to make these prints more exclusive would be to make them regional as well! (we’re hoping to have a “Loveland Frog Creature” one-sheet for the Mid-Ohio Con in november)! Craig will also have the latest printing of the infamous Choopie butt-cards and the all-new, all-cool Perhapanauts pins touting all of your favorite Perhapanauts characters on tiny little pins! Collect ‘em all!”

I for one am glad to hear that the beat rages on with this terrific title–and while I look forward to seeing other creators take on the characters, and enjoyed the Molly’s Story one-shot recently, I really can’t wait to see Todd and Craig handling the ‘Haps again. There really is no place like home when it comes to creators working on a property they own and love.

Now where have I seen this before?

I remember now. Back in November, we first talked about Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) taking up the bow of Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye. Well as of yesterday, it is official according to Avengers director, Joss Whedon. “There will be some avenging that takes place during the film and that’s about all I can tell you,” said Whedon. “I think it’s well-known that Jeremy Renner is joining us as Hawkeye, which is so exciting for me and the rest of the cast.”

Let me first say that I can’t believe that within two years, we will see Cap, Iron Man, Thor and Hawkeye share on scene together on the big screen, and my enthusiasm is pretty intense. Now, I’m still weary about Whedon’s style and how he’ll handle this, but just for casting alone, he gets an “A” so far.

So, readers, what do you think of this decision? Think Renner has got what it takes to do Hawkeye justice?

Perhaps they hadn’t fully recovered from a game the previous evening; perhaps the speed of the turf field caught them flatfooted; perhaps they were simply getting too big for their britches and needed some humility.  Personally, I think LP’s right and the blame goes to Mike Lorah for forgetting his lucky Phillies hat (and by extension, blame to the Phillies for not playing better and reminding him to wear the hat).  Whatever the case, the DC Bullets fumbled and errored their way into an early hole, rallied back to tie the game, and then stumbled one last time during a 9-inning  12-11 loss against The Nation.

Now, the Bullets’ struggles – which included several errors at third base; a few tricklers lost in the Bermuda triangle between the pitcher’s mound, first base and the second baseman; a dropped fly ball; and two balls that bounced past outfielders for extra bases – should take nothing away from the solid softball played by The Nation.  In sharp contrast to the Bullet infield, The Nation took eight outs on fielder’s choices and threw out a runner attempting to go first-to-third on a base hit.  The Nation also came up with several clutch hits to take advantage of a DC mistake.

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