The Factual Opinion

My Wife: And The Meandering Dead

The Walking Dead #93
Art by Charlie Adlard
Written by Robert Kirkman
Published by Image Comics

Hey hey, Party People. What’s going on? I’ll tell you what’s going on with me. I just had a new experience. I read The Walking Dead. Yeah...I don’t think I’ve ever read a single issue of it in these last 3 or 4 years of my comic book reading tenure. I did see some of the TV show, the one shot down in Georgia with all those British people pretending to be American. It kinda lost me after a bit. Not “lost” like I couldn’t keep up. No. It lost me because my mind wandered away, because although they set up a conflict, the story never moved faster than a snails pace. I think I'm remembering that correctly. I remember not being very grossed out by the show, which I thought was strange. It was pretty gruesome stuff, blood and gore all the time...but it was just kind of there on the screen. I felt like the violence on that show was an alarm going off, and then you'd hit the snooze button and the show would go back to sleep for ten minutes. (When I first wrote this paragraph, I actually thought the show wasn't on television anymore, but then I found out that it still is. Am I really that out of touch? I'm going to watch the wolves versus Liam Neeson movie this week. I still watch Justified and Parks and Recreation. Stupid zombie tv show. You make me feel old.)

Anyhow. I wasn’t sure what I was in for here. I was pleasantly surprised to find out the comic was black and white. Normally, I don’t know that I would like that, but for some reason it drew me in. As a matter of fact, the first page drew me right in. It's issue 93, does not start with any kind of recap, has no weird catch-up narration. It just jumps right in with Rick talking to this dude he just met, and the dude is telling him about this large community situation they have going on that he’d like Rick and his friends to be a part of. I don’t know if was somehow by design, and if it was it is GENIUS, but on the first page (!) I was saying to myself “Hmmm....I don’t know. I know I don’t really know anything about this situation, but I think this might be some sort of trap, Rick. You should tread carefully, as I believe this man may not have your best interests at heart.” And right there on the next page? Rick has a physical reaction that lets me know he was having the exact same thought I was having (by "physical reaction", I mean that Rick fakes a handshake and knocks the guy out). I found myself first thinking “see! I was right!” and quickly switching sides to “Wait! Aren’t you being a little hasty and paranoid?” I found that very entertaining. So much melodrama and conflict in just a few pages!

But I think there's a bad side to that as well.

Why? Look: it's good to get me so fully on board this comic's plot from the jump. I didn’t have to read a bit to find my way in. But the bad thing is that turned out be the only real conflict in the entire issue. By page 2, the whole thing is decided: some people are out there, and either this guy is lying about them or he's not. But by page two, Rick's already decided how he's going to handle that situation--he's going to go and be a badass--which means the next 20-some pages are just a bunch of place-setting type scenes--delegation of duties, game plans, declarations of love - and then the last few weird pages where Rick recaps his feelings on what it means to be a person who has to live with zombies all the time. Yes. Reflection on Life with Zombies. On who they’ve become. On how they respond. On maybe it being time to get outside of the walls and see A LARGER WORLD. (Which is...the title of the story.)

Yeah - it was kinda weird for me. It's about five pages of "stuff" dawning on him and him realizing that maybe the guy that he knocked out and has tied up in a chair “back at the ranch” might be honest and offering them the very thing that he just realized they needed. Cue violins. That’s where I suddenly realized that the the whole comic was just, like, this big set-up for the two page spread of the LARGER WORLD, and to introduce this new mini-series THE LARGER WORLD. And that maybe these characters need to get back to living life rather than fighting the dead.  Get beyond the little community they built and back to.....yes, THE LARGER WORLD. (Again: that's the title of the story.)

So, like, this comic went from feeling clever and fun to feeling like I was being spoon fed the writer’s pitch for this new series. It was a quick read, though, and I guess I enjoyed the art. It felt kinda easy on my eyes, in black and white, which I did not expect. But it seems like the comic book series might be similar to the TV show: it starts off with some engaging excitement and then digresses into a slow, meandering story. And then, on the last page, it promises to do something really important...at some later point. Perhaps? I don’t really know. What do you think?

-Nina Stone, 2012

Comics Of The Weak: Don't Call It A Beefcake, He's Been Here For Years

Justice League #5
Art by Jim Lee & Scott Williams
Written by Geoff Johns
Published by DC Comics

Such a miserable experience, reading this comic. It's the narrative equivalent of watching the first episode of that Justice League cartoon in three minute bursts over the course of five months--there's just no way to enjoy that, it's fucking absurd. When you're a kid and you want to hold a boner longer, they tell you to do that exercise where you drape a wet washrag on your shaft and flex it up and down, but they never go so far as to say that you're going to enjoy doing that, or that it's as fun as jerking off, or that you better watch out because you might prefer washrag flexing to putting the thing inside a lady. DC doesn't seem to have ever understood the difference. It's not a surprise that they don't--take a look at the Beat or the Journal's current comment sections, you'll get a plaster cast of what's wrong with comics on both sides--but that doesn't change how tepid and unsatisfying this whole exercise of the Johns/Lee combine has become. Anyway. The Internet says you shouldn't hope people get fired, but honestly, if you just went down the list and got rid of every single person who believes that this comic is worth the four dollars they're asking for it, there's no possible way you wouldn't see an increase in the intelligence average the next time everybody at the staff table pools their "resources" and pours them, like warm oatmeal, into Eddie Berganza's beckoning gullet.

Jennifer Blood #8
Art by Kewber Baal
Written by Al Ewing
Published by Dynamite

Nasty stuff, pretty poorly illustrated for the most part. You can make sense of the art pretty easily, but there's nothing that jumps out as good, the best it ever hopes for is just serviceable. Written relatively well, with some nice Ennis impersonation stuff evenly mixed with what seems to be Ewing's own voice (the "panda" dialog is an excellent line). It's disappointing that one of the most well-regarded of the "new" British writers has to make his entrance into the American market via Dynamite, which is about as good at being a comics publisher as Natalee Holloway is at swimming, but that's just the way of the world in 2012. At least he's got 2000AD--which is currently on a pretty hot streak--to fall back on.

Lone Wolf And Cub: The Message of the Geese & Tale of the Winter Crane
Art by Goseki Kojima
Written by Kazuo Koike
Published by First Comics

"Message of the Geese" is a minor tale, a brief glimpse of the Wolf in battle. It's one of the "features shitting" stories interspersed in the entire saga, a claim to fame that actually isn't all that rare. But beyond the sight of a somewhat constipated Cub forcing out some magic, what sticks in memory most in this brief tale is the momentary compliment paid by the Wolf following his slaughter of a few Yagyu assassins. Upon realizing that one of the Yagyu had sacrificed himself by rushing the Wolf, throwing down his life in hopes that his body might serve as a better launch pad for his partner's attack, the Wolf stops to acknowledge how much like himself the two men were--total dedictation, at less than a moment's notice, to pin all hope, mortal and otherwise, on the missioin, relying on the honor that can only be earned through years of service. It's an excellent moment, one that speaks to one of the saga's greatest strengths: its willingness to embrace the villain.

"Tale of the Winter Crane" is a sneakier story, one whose ending seems always hazily around the corner, only to stop dead with the Wolf (essentially) delivering a "do you know who the fuck I am" speech to a couple of people who don't get it and never will. It's reminscient of that great line at the end of "Mother Russia", when Frank Castle teaches a Delta boy the meaning of the phrase "whatever it takes", made better by the fact that it's delivered with impeccable class by a man who just killed five people with a sword. It's a brief stopover, but a pleasant one.

SFSF2C
By Ryan Cecil Smith

Somewhat reminscient of that Black Jack story where he's brought in to treat a crazy computer, this final installment in Smith's cover version of Matsumoto Leiji's Queen Emeraldas concludes the story the same way it began, with our protagonist musing on a life lived in motion. There's something fascinating about the way the comic depicts space travel as being so empty and "boundless" that it seems as much a philosophical exercise in not going crazy as it is an exercise in just going, anywhere. At the end, this little excursion seems like something that belongs most to its creator (not Matsumoto, but Smith) than it does the audience, and while that isn't a criticism--if anything, this sort of openness to allow an audience inside an obsession should be met with praise--it does underline how exciting it will be to get back to SF proper, a story where the viewing hole is more distinctly made clear.

The Flash #5
By Francis Manapul & Brian Buccellato
Published by DC Comics

In the same way that it's hard not to overpraise Snyder and Capullo's Batman for being the fastest cripple in the polio race, it's hard to ignore that all these current installments of the Flash certainly are a pleasure to look at. There's a delightful strain of homoeroticism running through the current storyline, which is all about contemporary male relationships and great haircuts (without Geoff Johns around to champion conservatism, Manapul has been free to jettison Barry Allen's godawful Right Stuff flattop for a brighter, more pomaded, future). It never feels amatuerish, but one's still left with the nagging feeling that, just maybe, it would if it didn't look so consistently great. For now though, let's just be optimistic and raise a glass to future team-ups with cardigans and soulful brown eyes. That's my kind of rogue's gallery: the kind where the rogues are just some dudes who fuck some other dudes with easily replicatable fashion choices.

-Tucker Stone, 2012

Too Many Movies: That Cronenberg, Always A Crowd Pleaser

A Dangerous Method, dir. David Cronenberg
Matt Seneca

It’s been fashionable recently to say David Cronenberg’s a misogynist, at least in the film-criticism organs I regularly interact with (that’d be LA Weekly, LA Weekly, and the noted LA Weekly), especially in the run-up to his new movie A Dangerous Method. And yeah: the film does prominently feature a jealous wife who saps her brilliant husband’s vitality, women who have no ideas of their own until they develop out of studying male-proposed theories, and a plot that revolves around a hysterically insane beauty’s slow return to relative sanity once she realizes that all she wants is to get her ass spanked, belted, or otherwise tore the fuck up by a suitably awesome dude. And yet somehow the movie feels like a rebuke to the easy characterization of Cronenberg as woman-hater: for two hours we watch Michael Fassbender as Carl Jung and Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud blustering around in stuffed shirts on Joseph Campbell-style heroic quests for knowledge the women they regularly mistreat have had all along. What makes the film more complex than any mid-20th century piece of whimsy about that ole feminine intuition is that understanding things about who we are as people doesn’t look nearly as good on camera as topping a corseted and bound Kiera Knightley does.

Even in this relatively sedate, cerebral period piece Cronenberg’s way with the indelible image remains. Without special effects or even particularly crazy camera work, the onus is on the actors to communicate the director’s signature sense of a world stretched through some alien filter or other, and the result is the strongest performances ever to grace a Cronenberg film. Fassbender is wonderfully frustrating to watch, forever on the verge of an epiphany he never reaches -- in the S&M scenes that everyone in the audience knows should provide him with transcendence especially, the man visibly recedes, leaving only a creepily mustachioed robot swinging his arm wildly back and forth. Mortensen is sufficiently enigmatic, never giving any hint as to his inner workings: the perfect father figure, simultaneously benevolent and unknowable. And a bearded Vincent Cassel as coked out renegade psychiatrist Otto Gross is pretty high up there as personifications of amoral hedonism go. (The film misses the golden opportunity of showing us Cassel and Mortensen banging rails on an all night bender together, but that’s one of only a few strikes against it.)

The film, however, belongs to Knightley, who announces her arrival in the top ranks of working actresses with a performance that would be the only logical choice for the Oscar if not for its incandescent daring, which far outstrips that of the timid Academy voting bloc. As the mental patient-turned-psychiatrist Sabina Spielrein, she singlehandedly brings body horror to what’s essentially a period romance. A spitting, teeth-baring, writhing, masturbating vortex of mental illness in the film’s first third, she commands every bit of the viewer’s attention for every second she’s on screen, even when covered by blankets or subsumed in water. This is full-body acting for the ages, the former Disney pirate-princess’s willowy frame turned to an assemblage of bones that wrack and distort and melt back into captivating, piteous docility within a single breath. But Knightley really shows her chops once she’s cured: the whirlwind inside her does not disappear but is constantly kept at bay, an affliction tortuously written over by visible force of will, only allowed to resurface in the scenes of sadomasochism, whose questionable equation of female sexuality with mental illness is only visible in retrospect. In the moment, all we see is a woman caught somewhere between sanity and insanity, one who seems close to shedding her own skin or suffusing into radiant light. The best fight scenes of the year aren’t in any of the summer blockbusters or even the Korean imports: they’re here, inside Knightley’s body, unspoken but no less luminous for that.

So overwhelming is this show of talent that when the film strays away from Knightley toward the end it takes a minute or two to catch up: oh sure, we remember, Cronenberg might be trying to say something that isn’t contained in one individual’s performance. As such, the film’s real message hits exactly at the right moment. Leave it to a Canadian filmmaker making a movie set over a century ago to create the defining statement about a Europe that’s currently tearing itself to shreds: Spielrein’s theory that true purity can only come from a clash between dark and light that subsumes the individual identities of both is positioned as prophecy, building the violent, remedial sex between the Aryan Jung and the Jewish Spielrein into a metaphor for World War II, the looming memory of which softened borders and brought about a Europe that has managed to unite in name, at least. (Of course, a line of reasoning that views the Holocaust as a continent’s necessary therapeutic evil has its own problems, but look what the anti-Semite tag did for Lars Von Trier!) The film ends with a premonition of apocalypse -- Jung on the eve of the first world war, torn apart by dreams of approaching cataclysm, and a credits-sequence cue card informing viewers that Sabina Spielrein met her eventual end at the hands of an SS death squad.

It’s about as dire as sun-dappled endings shot along the banks of the Rhine get, but not for nothing: today’s united Europe inches a little closer to death with every passing morning, and it’s pretty terrifying to imagine what we’re in for once that particular cataclysm goes down. Good metaphorical films are a dime a dozen, and so are good movies about the past, but sometimes it takes a misogynist Nazi to put together something so cutting you fear for your own future.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
The One That's In English, 2011

A way better movie than the story deserves, and a way better product display than H&M could have possibly paid for. There's no use arguing about this fucking thing anymore, so let's just list what we know: it's a shitty mystery, Lisbeth Salander has less human traits than a box full of ketchup, and Steig Larrsson's wish fulfilment sex and professional fantasies wear out their welcome after the first pass. Fincher does some great stuff in this with the way he cuts a scene together (my personal favorite is the part where Daniel Craig tells Christopher Plummer he has to leave at a certain time, only for Fincher to later cut from the two men sharing a laugh to the face of a clock/which is at a station/next to a sign/for the train that Craig just failed to catch), but this isn't a story that needed telling past the potboiler stage, and it certainly didn't need to waste the time of so many talented people in doing so.

Red Letter Media/Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Whoa, 2012

There's a section in this early on--if you haven't seen it, I'd hate to ruin it for you--where the guy who makes these things essentially throws down the gauntlet harder than I thought was still possible. It's the part involving the Olsen twins and screaming. The second that a better statement on creating "content" for the internet is made, let me know. Right now, this is the champion.

Star Wars Uncut
I made it about seven minutes in, 2012

In keeping with the prizewinning theme, the bar is now officially set: here is the best pro-SOPA argument ever made. Were you listening, webcomics?

The Mechanic
Statham's No Bronson, But Jan Ain't Got Shit On Foster, 2011

There's some bad action here, most of which is attributable to whoever it was that didn't have faith in the ability of the Statham/Foster duo to deliver intrigue without the help of all the overthought action pieces (behind a wall? off a high rise?), but don't let the comparison game get in the way of the general problem: this is a shitty movie that doesn't trust Jason Statham, and while you can get away with that when Jason Statham isn't in your movie, you can't when he very much is. Case in point? The best sequence in a Statham action flick shouldn't be a scene where Ben Foster executes three guys in less time than it takes to remember your mother's name. It should be a scene where Statham does something, preferably with his abs and his fists. Otherwise, you just fucked up the movie version of a peanut butter sandwich.

Kill List
That Happened, 2011

Here's a brief (stolen) list of some of the movies that relate in part to Kill List: Rosemary's Baby, Dead Man's Shoes, Wicker Man, Angel Heart, Straw Dogs, Come and See, Full Metal Jacket. Genre hopping, upsetting, increasingly violent the sort of degree that more than a few will most certainly abandon watching it after a specific sequence set at a kitchen table (and will be right to do so, considering what follows), this is an excellent piece of endurance testing. It is fearsomely compelling and yet almost unwatchable. Recommended?

Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol
Scientology Totally Works, 2011

Following a solid piece of action-eering sullied only by its prominent usage in this film's many trailers, Ghost Protocol--which is a much more ridiculous, and therefore far better title than MI:4 would have been--turns its lens on the introduction of its main character. In keeping with Cruisian law number 714, which states that Tom prefers for his acting to circulate prominently around a character's proclivity for athletic equipment (see Few Good Men, see Top Gun), we're treated to the sight of Mr. Ethan Hunt playing with a rubber ball. It's a great reminder of what these movies are all about: a dude who has balls and does shit. Introspection is fun for some, but for this guy, the game's the thing, and if you don't have one to task him with, he'll find one all on his own.

It's a big fake out though. The real introduction comes next. As our phenomenally physically qualified Hunt stalks, rolls and elbows his way out of a prison riot, with Frank Sinatra cheering him own, a funny thing happens: you see it. It's a weird moment, the one where your brain clicks on a little sharper, realizing that this is going to be one of those action movies where you can't figure out how they did it, because aw shit did ya see that?! 

The entire rest of it is like that, and it only lets up so that Simon Pegg can roam around and make his co-stars (only one of whom ever really "acts", which is why he seems so out of place) laugh at all the Simon Pegg-type reactions he has to things. Everybody will have their own favorite set pieces; mine is definitely the one where Cruise hits the roof of a passing vehicle and falls onto the ground. It's not as flashy as any of the rest of them, and it certainly won't show up in anybody's highlight reel, but there was just something about it that called back to those post Supercop Jackie Chan movies: the honesty of a badass getting older, and yet still willing to get smacked around to make the shot work.

Super 8
Until They'll Put E.T. On Netflix Streaming, 2011

The thing that made that JJ Abrams Star Trek movie worthwhile was that it took something completely unwatchable (Star Trek) and made it tolerable for the first time. In Super 8, all he seems to have done is take something that was totally fine (The Goonies, E.T., your working memory) and brush it up with more nostalgiac dickpulling. The scene where Elle Fanning "acts" is pretty fantastic, but beyond that, this is just a waste of Eric Taylor's time. Ugh.

Patrice O'Neal Elephant In The Room, 2011
One Night Stand featuring Patrice O'Neal, 2005
Richard Pryor Live at the Sunset Strip, 1982

For whatever reason, it's the One Night Stand that made me laugh the hardest of these three, despite Pryor's classicness and the jaw-dropping terrorism of Elephant In The Room. Maybe it's because One Night Stand is the more violent performance, a torrent of energy from a man hungry to prove himself? All of these are great, though. Not a weak show in the bunch.

The Last Picture Show
Quaid Was Always Crazy, 1971

Lovely film, blessed with what has to be one of the all time scene stealing performances from Cloris Leachman. Every moment she's on screen it feels like everything around her is holding its breath, even the inaminate objects. The way she looks at Timothy Bottoms can rip your guts out in a way that Cybill Shepherd's absurd beauty can only hope to mimic.

Head
Hell Yes, 1968

A total financial failure that is absolutely entertaining and far more engaging than its detractors would have one believe. Very short, very funny.

-Tucker Stone, Matt Seneca, 2012

My Wife: Tracked Down An Old Flame

Whispers #1
By Joshua Luna
Published by Image Comics

Oh man! Opening up to that first page and seeing that Luna art felt like coming home. Home! I had wonderful flashbacks to my time with The Sword. Gosh, did I enjoy that comic. I’d almost forgotten how much until I opened Whispers.

So here we are! Issue one in what I hope will be a long series. So far, it's mostly set up: introducing the who, the what, the where, the when and the why for the series. There are definitely some similarities to The Sword in story tactics (is that the right way to say it? You’ll see what I mean.)

You see, back in The Sword, our main character was a wheelchair bound girl who found a sword that gave her magical powers such as giving her the ability to self-heal, or massive amounts of strength. In Whispers, we have a young man who seems to be "crippled" by his OCD, and we see him developing a magical power that's sort of like astral projection: the ability to hear loved one’s thoughts as well as possibly influence their behavior.

And, yes, it looks to be a hero’s journey of sorts. In the Sword, Dara used her powers to go and avenge her family’s death which she witnessed just before finding The Sword - the very thing the killers were after. This powerful weapon had a story that spanned history, a whole mythology that served as the original source of conflict for the whole story.

So far, in Whispers, the set-up is not as dramatic. So far! I’m saying that because, well, I read the first third of The Sword in the trade format. My recollection of it as one overall story comes from that fact, that I read most of it in very quick succession. Reading Whispers, I realized that it might have taken a couple of issues to really set-up the story, something I wouldn't have noticed. Reading it like this, in a smaller chunk, I wonder if I might be giving the information (the piece of story I just read) more emphasis than it really needs. If, for example, I was reading a collection of multiple issues of Whispers, would I be stopping to wonder why Sam (the main character) and Lily recently broke up? Or would I just acknowledge that bit of information (okay, they broke up) and keep moving forward? Would I get as irritated with Rico (a character that picks on Sam for his behavior), or would I just keep reading, having faith that Rico's behavior is necessary to the story and not something I should get that worked up about?

I don't know. It's worth thinking about, but it would be a tough thing to test.

And that brings us to....Astral Projection. Yeah. That’s kinda what this is about. That makes me a little bit worried. I’m sorry, but it does. See, with The Sword, even though it wasn’t “realistic” or “plausible” it was easy to understand. The Sword made her strong. Without it she was weak and vulnerable. Being able to visit people while you are sleeping/dreaming in a way that they can’t see you - I don’t fully yet understand how to grasp hold of it. Sam will be armed with information and therefore truth? He can influence events, perhaps? I’m not entirely sure. It's not like vampires. I wasn't sitting here reading Whispers and remembering all those awesome astral projection movies I watched when I was a kid. I don't have a bunch of daydreams about invisibly floating around in people's bedrooms. (I have a few, of course.)

But I remember how much I loved the Sword, and looking at these very first pages of Whispers...I want this to be that good. I would love to fall in love with something like that again.

Fingers crossed.

-Nina Stone, 2012

Comics Of The Weak: You Can't Work Off A Fat Personality, Buster Brown

Prophet #21
Art by Simon Roy and Richard Hope His Name Really Is Ballerman
Written by Brandon Graham
Published by Image Comics

A nice mix-up of Rip Van Winkle, Prison Pit and Conan (easier version: a French sci-fi comic), with guest appearances by the horrorshow that the dog becomes in The Thing, Prophet #21 does exactly what it had to do to meet up with the pre-show hype: it works. Delivering tone and building its world, skipping the corny character signifiers and logos that stand in for personalities and motives in the rest of the Image universe was the best move Graham could have made, forcing the reader to move closer to Simon Roy, an artist finished with his Otomo/Gipi phase and setting up shop in the "how would Jesse Marsh draw manga" school of obsesion. It's fun, and it's weird. If that's not your thing, there's plenty of the alternative available.

Wonder Woman #5
Art by Tony Akins & Matthew Wilson
Written by Brian Azzarello
Published by DC Comics

Now that Wonder Woman has successfully made it over the "hope it doesn't get cancelled" hump, isn't it time we address the fact that Hermes is wearing the ugliest sunglasses ever made, sunglasses that are second only to a backwards baseball cap in making a man look like a total toolbag? Even if we ignore his Woodstock '99 era rain poncho--and we really shouldn't ignore that thing, because that's as much a sign of the unfunny side of perversion as it would be if he was driving a white panel van with no windows--we're still five issues into a relationship where the most happening broad in the land has yet to tell her own brother that, oh, you know, he's wearing the same fucking sunglasses that Jerry Sandusky wore everytime he wanted to hide his tired eyes from the harsh light of a world where the rest of us don't fuck children in showers.

Daredevil #8
Written by Mark Waid
Art by Kano & Javier Rodriguez
Published by Marvel Comics

If any title is going to survive Marvel's bizarre creative tailspin, the smart money has to be on Daredevil, a book that's almost quaint with its slow-burn long tale plotting, most of which circles around the possession of a high end flash drive, packed to the gills with evil secrets. Even a tie-in with the Amazing Spider-Man (a series that is taking a short break from one piece of shit story arc so that it can rest its weary, shit-filled bones before it delivers what looks to be another piece of shit story arc) didn't slow it down that much, which comes as a surprise when you consider how little anyone, fictional or otherwise, wants to be around Peter Parker for a length of time more extensive than it would take to stab him in his stupid, stupid whining eyes.

Usagi Yojimbo Volume 6
By Stan Sakai
Published by Fantagraphcis

About half this volume of Usagi is taken up with stories where the samurai rabbit deals with the supernatural, while the other half--a multi part story called "Circles"--concerns itself with the warrior's past, albeit with a supernatural villian thrown in. There's also a quick, predictable one-shot involving a couple of conmen, but don't let the implication of shittiness that the word "predictable" brings with it take hold: there's enough great comic-stuff going on in the story to make up for the fact that you can chart every strand of plot the thing has after reading the first five--maybe four--pages. Sakai's ability to draw a character's motives into their facial features is one of his weirdest and most fascinating talents. It's easy to spot the bad guys in most funny animal comics, and that's why Usagi Yojimbo is a cut above the rest--the complexity on display here in the face of the depressed, one-more-scam swordsmen goes beyond the simple "he's a fox, and foxes are tricky".

"The Duel" is excellent preparation for "Circles", which is all about motives and revelations. Usagi decides to return to his former home, only to walk into another one of those hard-working townspeople versus rapacious bandits settings so popular in samurai fiction. He discovers an old friend and old enemy, both still alive, checks in on his estranged lover (who packs a revelation of her own), the friend-turned-rival that married her, and then there's a nice, long battle that lasts multiple pages without ever seeming the slightest bit self-indulgent. It's a lovely story, and what it lacks in humor (Usagi just isn't funny without Gen or that detective character around) it makes up for in earnest sincerity.

Lone Wolf and Cub: The Inn of the Last Chrysanthemum
Art by Goseki Kojima
Written by Kazuo Koike
Published by First Comics

If someone were to make a graph of the types of Lone Wolf & Cub stories, they'd first break them down into two major categories--the one-off ones where he earns money by killing people, and the ones where the ongoing narrative is pushed towards conclusion. Eventually, the entire book focuses entirely on that second category, all of which build to the most satisfying conclusion to any genre comic book ever published. That's not intended to be hyperbole: it's a statement of fact, albeit one that's only seen meager research. The greats of American genre comics--Eisner and Kirby--never got a chance (some quarters might word that "never took a chance", but not this one, and fuck those people) to play around with conclusions and finality anymore than Shultz, King and Herriman (a few of the greats of the newspaper strip) did. Leaving the question of whether genre requires an ending aside for a moment (a moment that could last an eternity, for how little I care to probe it), "The Inn of the Last Chrysanthemum" rests firmly in that first category described above: this one's all about the money.

One of Koike's most consistent methods of story construction is to focus the reader's attention entirely on the point of view of some new, as of yet unknown to us character. We follow that character through their (often depressing) life, they experience a few flashbacks that explain their current situation, at some point the Wolf and Cub arrive in their orbit, and then the story leads up to an (often violent) conclusion. In many cases, the story takes on an intense sense of danger and heightening panic after the appearance of the Wolf, because while this structure of story often appears in the overall saga, there's never any promise that the story will conclude happily for all we might hope it will. Sometimes the best the Wolf can do is mete out revenge for abuses suffered, other times he can only acknowledge them in word, and on a few occasions (not few enough to where the sting is ever lessened), he can only provide a quick, honorable passing for those whose long-term victimization leaves them unable to find any way forward in the mortal realm. "Chrysanthemum" is on the bleak end of the scale--the only bottom left for its guest protagonist, the "forlorn maiden, forced into a life of shame" is found in a blood drenched garden, and the only satisfaction found is in the bodies that the Wolf piles alongside her own. There's no pretense that it will be enough, but in keeping with Koike's plan, it's made clear: what matters is that debts get paid. What happens next is never our concern.

King-Cat #72
By John Porcellino
Published by John Porcellino

Even if you don't read the opening letter, where Porcellino admits that most of what you're about to read stems from a time period when, busted up by heartbreak and economic collapse, he "didn't do so good", you'd have to be one cold ass son of a bitch--or a non-Porcellino fan out scraping scabs--not to pick up on the general dourness of the whole enterprise. The crippling impact of a Faith Hill song? An out of nowhere "I don't want to be alive anymore" response to a Porcellino-standard observation of natural beauty and the change of seasons? It's not that these sorts of emote-heavy moments are a strange appearance in the guy's work--this is King-Creamballs-Cat we're talking about, feelings are what these little bastards always traffic in, occasionally to an embarrassing degree usually reserved for Thomas Kinkade--it's that they're being delivered in such a raw, unkempt fashion. There's no lesson at the end of this issue, no explanation given, just the implication that survival is the game, the only thing that Porcellino was going for. Each of these documents--even the moment of nostalgia that sees the guy flashing back to the irritating dopiness of youth--concludes on the same note: he made it when everything was coming at him knives out. Not every struggle has a t-shirt phrase to go along with it.

Batman #5
Art by Greg Capullo
Written by Scott Snyder
Published by DC Comics

There's some serious self-indulgence going on here--landscape two page spreads for no purpose beyond the ability to say "hey, look, big", coupled with the demanding notion that you're reading about a secret society of owl-obsessed maze-building super-killers, and yeah, sorry, "owls" IS tougher to swallow than "bats", anybody who tells you different doesn't like super-hero shit in the first place--but that aside, this is actually a good little Batman comic. It doesn't deserve the over-the-top praise that it's gotten, but at the same time, it's totally understandable why that praise has been so hyperbolic: this has been the shittiest group of Batman titles in a long time. Having a decent issue show up, an issue that sees a plot humming forward with solid illustration to boot--that's going to get some knees buckling, especially amongst those who have been plugging their quarters into the super-hero slot machine since this New 52 thing started. But don't get too worked up: you've never met anyone who is going to read this thing twice, and you never will.

Thunderbolts #169
Art by Kev Walker, Tery Pallot & Frank Martin Jr.
Written by Jeff Parker
Published by Marvel Comics

Time traveling away from Marvel's bone dry continuity and hanging out amongst King Arthur, violence, Merlin, and lots and lots of titties--if you're using the word breasts to describe what Kev Walker's drawing, you really don't fucking get it and probably never will--Thunderbolts #169 (god bless them for keeping the inane numbering of this series) is one of those totally enjoyable comics that probably shouldn't get mentioned on a blog, because that's a sure fire way to see the thing get cancelled the next time Marvel wants to do one of their periodical "how can we fuck up the thing that people like and want to buy" (see the Amazing Spider-Man and Uncanny X-Force for examples, look under the paragraph heading "Really Shitty Art"). But hey, why not tempt fate?

-Tucker Stone, 2012