The Factual Opinion

Television Of The Weak: The Best Jar Is Jargon

This week we've got Venture, V, Fringe, Mad Men & Dexter. Maybe House. Oh, and Sons of Anarchy.

The Venture Brothers: "Return to Malice" by Matthew J. Brady

Here's an episode that was perfectly fine in most every aspect, but neither funny nor eventful enough to really register in the memory all that much. Henchman 21 (I finally figured out which one was which!) is still in mourning over 24's death, and he's honed himself into a badass, whipping Monarch's minions into shape and ready to embark on a quest to find his best pal's murderer. His list of possible candidates includes Hank and Dean, Brock, OSI, and a bunch of others, so he starts at the top, kidnapping the boys and subjecting them to Chinese water torture to try to get them to talk. It all ends up being pretty lame though ("Are you sure you did this right? Cause I'm not really tortured. I'm just kinda wet."), and he gives up almost right away, realizing that he, through his cowardice, was the real murderer. Meanwhile, Dr. Venture and Sgt. Hatred try to rescue the boys but end up spying on Hatred's ex-wife as she has a three-way with some loser villains, Monarch's face swells up due to an allergic reaction to shellfish, and...that's about it. Decent moments here and there (Monarch and Dr. Mrs. the Monarch arguing about 21's behavior and comparing it to Monarch's relationship with his dead, stuffed cat is a good one), a few funny lines ("You seriously gotta untie me. Or you gotta scratch my heinie. Because my heinie totally itches!"), and little else that sticks in the memory. The show often does episodes that don't really impact the main storyline (I particularly like "Dr. Quymn, Medicine Woman"), but that gives them the freedom to just do something goofy and raucously funny, but with this, a plot that kinda-sorta ties into the over-plot but isn't very important in the big picture, they don't seem to have anything interesting to say. Eh, maybe I just miss Brock. I hope that golden-haired, indestructible sex god reenters all of our lives soon.

V - "Pilot" & "There Is No Normal Anymore" by Tucker Stone

The original V wasn't a gem of perfection, by any stretch of the mom jeans. Bad acting, bad casting choices, cheap-as-dirt effects--problems, son. The guy behind it, the dude they fucked out of a budget and fired mid-edit of "Final Battle"? Same cat who wrote and directed Steel, same guy who handled the high chairs for Short Circuit 2. And yes, I hear you out there: That goddamn opener! The Ironsides! The Beastmaster! The guinea pig! And yes, that was all well and good, and yes, remakes inherently suck, and "won't they come up with new ideas", and so on. For every Battlestar Galactica, there's a Taking of Pelham 123, thanks, we got it, but yes-sir-ee-Jonas-Brothers: the complaints of "please stop remaking everything" have made it up there with "hipsters R faggetz" and "I hate country music but I love Johnny Cash", meaning shut up and go think about how long your country has been at war, you entitled piece of shit. It's not like remakes of shit we kinda sorta liked whilst enjoying the blissful days of freedom that predated the demands of daily masturbation are standing in the way of better, smarter art. Nobody's passing on the next Chekhov to re-make V, it's just taking away the timeslot that would otherwise go to Joss Whedon Female Sci-Fi Concept Hour Version 18 or Your Mom Likes Lost, She'll Probably Like Lost-ers.

Of course, it would be pleasant if the new V wasn't so boring that dunking Mini-Wheats in various liquids to test buoyancy becomes more fascinating by default. In a way, it's grasped so much of the old V that it's almost a meta-success--the acting is almost across the board terrible, and the special effects vary from "that looks cool and sort of real" to "why is it that my Nintendo 64 more realistically portrayed the crash of a fighter jet, high budget television show?" So what's missing? No, besides those opening credits, which contain the greatest Tangerine Dream/Goblin rip-off of all time. Honestly, it's too early to tell--but something is. And while most of the reaction (the print reaction, from the people who make a living talking about these kind of shows) has centered on the fact that the aliens are using the word "hope" and "together" and "universal health care" the same way that some American politician does, the funny thing is this: almost every review mentions the guinea pig.

Seriously, that's gotta be it. Eat the goddamn guinea pig, and all the serious people will be cool with you!

(If you want shitheads like me, just bring Ironsides on board.) 

Fringe: "Earthling" by Matthew J. Brady

The big multi-universal over-plot of this series doesn't seem to be enough to sustain regular storytelling, so the last few episodes of Fringe have lapsed into "weird shit of the week" territory, although you never know when some tossed-off element (this episode mentions a Russian counterpart to Fringe Division, along with aliens) is going to turn out to be important when the writers need ideas. But whatever; the best parts of the show involve silly pseudoscience and occasional bits of humorous character work. The worst parts? The drama, oh the drama. Let's trot out that old trope in which a case from the past returns to haunt a character (Lance Reddick's Agent Broyles in this case) and it's a big fucking deal to them because they never solved it. I'm sure it won't be too long before an old flame shows up with deadly secrets.

The actual plot here isn't too bad though, with some sort of shadowy entity that has possessed the body of a comatose cosmonaut killing people by turning them to dust. There's some dumb explanation involving radiation and a mysterious chemical compound, but it makes even less sense than usual. The real money shot is the effect of the people's bodies crumbling to nothing when touched; that's some freaky shit there. It's ridiculous when you think about it (how does the dust maintains a perfect "shell", such that they're indistinguishable from their living selves other than remaining face just disappears like it's being eaten away. Yikes.

The "science" behind it though? Hilariously stupid. There's some sort of "formula" that Walter has to "solve", although it's just a molecular diagram, so what's he supposed to be solving? He does a bunch of writing science-y gibberish on chalkboards, calls the compound a "she" (and gets the episode's best line, "Titanium tetrachloride, you sly temptress!"), and eventually builds a model out of Tinkertoys, all so he can declare that it has inseparably bonded with the cosmonaut's body. There's some other silliness about the entity being like a ventriloquist, "casting" its shadow out of the body so it can kill people, and it can be contained by electrocuting the poor guy, because that makes for something approaching excitement.

So yeah, the show continues to be pretty stupidly enjoyable, but it would be much better if they embraced the looniness rather than trying to take it seriously. Eh, it looks like we won't be out of cliche territory next week either, since the teaser has people talking about that old saw in which people only use 10% of their brains, except for the week's bad guy, who uses ALL OF IT, holy shit! Scary stuff; I'll be sure to clear out my colon before watching.

House - "Known Unknowns" by Tucker Stone

This episode of House was basically a public service episode, because the producers realized that they should re-introduce the one character that makes the return of 13 less weep-inducing. That's right! It's that private detective guy who wears eyeliner. (You got a pause button, right? Tell me that shit on that guys face ain't eyeliner. Look, cupcake: the only dude who can pull off eyeliner is Bowie, which is why America didn't vote for that American Idol kid. Because he wore eyeliner, but was not Bowie.) If you've ever read an actual article about House--no apologies, I made an ass-ton of money sitting around googling shit like that when I was supposed to be paying attention to South Korean market trends in high value shoe purchases--you know that the plan with Private Detective Eyeliner was for him to captain the first official House spin-off. (The title of first un-official House spin-off is, of course, Lie To Me.) How well did that work out? Ha! It didn't work out at all! And this is the same network that keeps giving the green light to Bones! So yeah, P.D.E. is back, he's still horrible, and he's having sex with Cuddy, which is...yeah, that's just gross. Moving on.

The episode surrounding his return wasn't totally great either, with Foreman once again relying on House as he fails to save the patient of the week--a comic book nerd latchkey kid--while Cameron and Chase work out their marriage problems in a bunch of uncomfortable scenes that still play like emotional torture for the actors involved. Meanwhile, House and Wilson had their requisite "we're friends" scenes, some of which was pretty funny--god knows "fjords" will be about 8000 people's responses next time they get asked "what are you thinking about"--as well as being sort of sweet, in that general way all those scenes always are. All in all, it wasn't a very good episode, but unlike most of this season's on-the-nose-thematic plays tangled up in the wretched notion that it's fun to watch House apologize and be nice, this one was wrapped around the best relationship the show has ever had to work with. And yeah, I wouldn't mind if Laurie kissed the guy, just for the hell of it.

Dexter - "Slack Tide" by Tucker Stone

Whereas one of this seasons episodes was able to redeem the boring subplots about non-Dexter characters who have gross sex by throwing in a nice stunt kill, this episode tried for a bite of a similar apple. It failed miserably. 

Like the Lundy-falls-down-goes-dead episode, it's not that John Lithgow didn't bring a slice of the weird and the wonderful--he totally did--it's that the only possible moment you could see Lundy's death coming was in the seconds before it happened. "Slack Tide" spent a healthy majority of every non-gross people have sex filler time setting up the episode's completely predictable conclusion: Dexter kills an innocent person. And while Michael C. Hall can play that "i have totally fucked up" face as well as every 16 year old who just came inside his cousin's sin envelope, he sure as balls can't do anything about a script that dictates, from start to finish, the hour leading up to that moment. God knows if he'd even want to try, because at this point, the character's so far inside a corner that it would take Samuel Goddamn Beckett to get him out. And I'm not using Sam in that little made-up example because I like Sam and needed a writer who screams "smart" to finish the sentence, I'm using him because that's the kind of writer you would need to circumvent the fucking hoops in front of Dexter at this point. Because what does the Dexter viewer now have to suffer through, in every episode? You've got Dexter with his wife, Dexter with his kids, people having sex that you don't care about, people having sex that make you never want to have sex again, and then you've got at least four or five minutes where you have to watch Dexter rationalize why having a wife and family hasn't totally fucked up his life and made him boring, even though they've got James Remar running around in a cheerleaders uniform that says "having a wife and family has totally fucked up your life and made you boring" where it should just have a big A or a horseshoe. Beckett would just turn the entire show into a meditation on the time Dexter spends in that claustrophobic office, and while it would be boring, it would be boring in that way that Michael Haneke films are boring. Boring you can brag about sitting through. Because you're an asshole? I think I lost the plot at the end there.

Oh, yeah. Lithgow! Yes, John Lithgow did something nice and strange, and while he was then fucked by the gods of shitty scripts and forced to over-emote while planing wood (look it up if you don't know, you should, it's a good skill to have), the scene where he had some kind of mental breakdown after hitting a deer was excellent stuff. It seems unlikely that the Trinity character well ever fully make sense--at this point in the season, he's a mass of contradictions and confusion--and while Lithgow's sort of playing him less as a fully realized character, he's giving his all from scene to scene. It aggravates the brain a bit, watching Lithgow go from weeping slaughterbox to cold, manipulative sociopath--it's worth remembering that this guy has A) scream-cried in a hot shower B) psychologically forced a terrified mother to leap to her death C) beat a crybaby to death with a claw hammer and D) believably tousled his teenage son's hair--but it's just as worthwhile to remember that Lithgow's given his all in each of these scenes. In the deer scene, he pretty much lost his shit completely, breaking down and submitting to Dexter's "do you want me to kill it for you" question as if he was a virginal Mennonite ready for her maiden night of quiet sex. For stuff like that, I'll keep watching.

Sons of Anarchy - "Balm" by Tucker I KNOW Stone

Following what came across as the best episode I've seen of this show, the prospect of 90 minutes of the Sons was actually a bit exciting. And while it actually broke down to less than an hour, after you plowed through that extended trailer for Avatar (who is excited for that movie? what is wrong with them?), this was, yes, pretty good. It helped not to have to see a single second of Henry Rollins, that Cop Who Is Made Of Plastic, and Adam Arkin--man, was he a good actor? I keep thinking he was, but nothing pops up when I tell my memory to prove it. It helped that Jax was giving concrete things to do, because that keeps him from talking, and it helped that some of the good acting load was shared between Opie & Tommy Flanagan. (Various reviewers have mentioned that Flanagan wasn't given much to do in previous episodes of the show, one going so far as to call him a "glorified extra", which is sort of insane. While his brogue can be a bit tough to comprehend at times, his performance in Ratcatcher is a veritable showcase of the range he's capable of. Flanagan's career is a depressing one, considering how many of his roles seem to be granted on the basis of his fearsome appearance, so it's a pleasure to see his role on this show expanded. And while some of that expansion is, unfortunately, dictated by yet another threat of rape and murder--his estranged wife and daughter, of course--Flanagan plays betrayal and fear with the same ferocity that keeps getting him cast in shit-house action flicks like Aliens Versus Predator.)

But honestly, it was the scenes that made this one work. Watching Jax get emotionally dismantled by the until-now-funny Juice while Bobby snarled a silent agreement, seeing Opie mumble "the bed" as he finally tumbles into a sexual relationship with his surrogate spouse, and then seeing Ron Perlman openly tell Jax that yes, he does want his stepson to get the hell out of town--all of these scenes were good, and while they don't escape what continues to be the near-farcical seriousness of this pulpy show, I had little to complain about. Of course, all of these built to the emotional climax of the episode, the-decade-standard music montage. Intercut with Katey Segal's monologue, where she finally tells her son and husband that she was, in fact, gang raped and beaten, it was a testament to how exceptional something can be in the proper hands. Because here's the thing: Segal was extraordinary. Perlman was as well. Even Jax, the show's weakest lead, pulled it off. And yet?

There's the doctor girlfriend, spending the entirety of the scene behaving as if she's been brought in from a cloning farm, looking around the room as if she's confused by human presence, quietly smiling, carrying herself with a pride that's inexplicable, doing everything--every little fucking thing--as wrong as every little fucking thing can be done.

The scene worked. It's still a scene about a woman who's been gang-raped by Henry Rollins and crew, it's still being used as a motivation to maintain the show's "Jax is the lead" status quo, and it's the umpteenth time somebody-hurt-some-lady-so-hard-men-could-kill-other-hard-men, all that is totally accurate, and it's up to you how much time you want to give of your life to another "i'm gonna kill the men who raped my momma" story. But if you're down, and you're not full-up on those stories yet, this one knew how to play it, and it played it well. Simple as that. 

Mad Men - "Shut the door. Have a seat." by Sean Witzke

So yeah. This is over, huh? And this is way too long so feel free to skip it.

Open to Don Draper waking up in his dead father in law's bed, late for a meeting with Conrad Hilton. Connie tells Don he's getting bought out by McCann, Don hates those sausage factory assholes. He hates them! He waves his fists in his mind he hates them so much! Draper talks to Hilton like we wish he would, tells him he's sick of his shit. Hilton tells Don he didn't think he was a complainer, and that goddamn he pulled himself up by his bootstraps. Then Connie says they'll try again some other time.

Don steps into his office and flashes back on his dad telling his farm co-op to fuck off, he's not selling. Don then tries to tell Cooper to buy the office out from under them, Don calls Cooper old, Cooper calls Draper young. "I'm not sure you have the stomach for the realities." he tells Don. Basically, he tells Don that if they're gonna do that, they're gonna need to go with Roger Sterling on this. The hard, nasty realities of capitalism means that Sterling would rather make money on his stock options than actually try. Don, at his most desperate says "we have to try", Sterling raises his eyebrows, his interest piqued. Betty tells Don she's talking to a divorce lawyer, she's had a tough year, and she's done. Yeah that shit is happening. Betty and the aide to Rockefeller (I was in Rockefeller's house once. They have Picassos there, my dad took illegal photos of them. I touched the James Bond car they had too and it was the same hand I have with me now!) go see a divorce lawyer, he says theres no way they can do it in New York State. Cooper, Draper, and Sterling call in Jared Harris and asks him what PPL would take for Sterling Cooper. He says they don't have the money for it, smiles and walks out.

Don comes home to find his daughter asleep in his bed, flashes on his father and mother arguing about mother while he's drunk. Don's dad gives him moonshine as they get ready to hop on a horse and ride to Chicago. His dad gets kicked in the head by a spooked horse. Jared Harris runs it up the flagpole to his bosses @ PPL, finds out the whole company is being sold and he's being cut loose. He tells Cooper, Draper, Sterling that, and Don says "FIRE US". Harris says, fuck you pay me in the nicest british manner possible. They have Lucky Strike, which is not much. They plan to steal as many supplies, a few employees, and they have a timeline to do it before 2AM on Monday before the English notice. It's a raid, oh hell yeah this shit just got interesting oh thank fuck. First person Don asks is Peggy. Saw that coming! Actually doesn't ask, just tells her to get her shit together by Sunday. Peggy says she's had other offers (namely Duck Phillips cocksmanship). She says she's not interested in living in Don's shadow, tells him to fuck off.

Cut to Don and Sterling walking into Campbell's house like hitmen or coroners. They're here from the bank for your house, shithead. Campbell pretends he doesn't know what they're talking about, forces Don to compliment his work. Don says that Campbell saw this coming, that he's got his eye on the future completely missing that Peggys the one thats actually saw the future. Campbells getting his way by just being there, finally we're back to the shit that made this show run. Campbell orders his wife around, it turns her on "sound like a secretary". Cut to Draper and Sterling drinking together for the first time in what seems like years, calling Campbell a little shit. Sterling drops a huge bomb on Don, that Betty's love interest has a name and its Henry Francis. Don's pissed, like go home and kill his wife pissed, but he he smiles a little. Then Don goes home drunk and grabs his wife out of bed with one hand, calls her a spoiled brat and a whore. She just stares at him and the baby starts crying, and he doesn't know what to do. He clearly wants to go further but that's the mother of his children. Ten bucks if you thought they were finally going to destroy Don's image completely and have him hit her.

Cut to Campbell and the tv dude in the elevator. He doesn't know shit and they spring it on him. When he says he's gotta think about it, Cooper threatens to lock him in the closet until monday. Then they all realize that its going to be difficult to steal all the shit they need because they don't know where it is.

Cut to Don and Betty telling their kids that Don's moving out, and they think they're in trouble because they're in the living room. Cindy Brady lisps her way through an accusation about her father lying, then tells her mother that this is her fault. The other kid, who I don't even think has a name for me to forget says "please don't go, I don't want you to and cries". Don hugs him for what seems like forever. He doesn't want this either, but it's happening.

Cut to Don at Peggy's door, him begging him to come work for him. Don talks to Peggy like Connie talked to him. "I see you as an extension of myself, and I shouldn't". No shit, Don, no shit, Mad Men writers. Don can't make it right with Betty or his kids so he's going to make it right with the only person he's been able to actually talk to this whole series. Don says he needs her help, but he doesn't want to spend the rest of his life trying to hire her.

Cut to all the guys in the office, Joan Holloway coming in to save all their asses because she's the only one who knows what she's doing. Don kicks open some doors for the fat guy (Harry! Thats his name!) and Campbell, literally. They all spend the day ransacking, Campbell even walks out with that stupid gun of his. Sterling and Draper stand in the office, Don take one last look. Don goes to lock up, Sterling tells him it's not worth it. Jared Harris talks to his boss, gets fired, they all meet up after setting up shop in a hotel room.

Don calls Betty, tells her where he is. He tells her she's going to get what she always wanted. She tells him that she's not going to keep the kids from him. They say goodbye. Don hangs up and looks at his new team, smiles. Cut to Betty and the Baby and Henry whatshisname on the plane, and the kids at home with the maid, because who gives a shit about them anyway. Cut to Draper walking into his new house. Credits.

It's nice that this show found some urgency in the finale. Jesus fuck, it slumped this season, there was a pretty good argument that they had jumped the shark. Seriously, last episode it seemed that they had broken Don's character for good, and the hackenyed "oh Kennedy's dead just like our marriage boo hoo boo hoo" bullshit. If this is the Don and Betty show, it sure as fuck was Betty's season, even though Don meeting Hilton was one of the best scenes in the show's history. Maybe not, maybe it was just me hating the hippie teacher, but goddamn there was a lot of slack in this season. Betty's arc was better, but only by a little - the underlying insanity of the character in the previous two seasons wasn't touched on once, she was just a pregnant woman and then a wife in love and then a wife in love with another man. This shit screamed TRANSITIONAL SEASON like not many before, especially series that weren't recast or retooled. Kinda like the Wire season 4 only not nearly as good, not by a long shot, where they decided that it was time to snap McNulty in half for the good of the show. But no, now we have a new status quo reshuffling that's startlingly like the way the show worked in the first season, without disavowing how much Sterling, Peggy, Campbell, Joan, and Don have changed. The shit Connie Hilton says in the beginning, the angry ghost of his father yelling at him when he was drunk last season, Betty's Dad telling Don that he's not worthy of his daughter, that added up over the season and it just took the writers a long time to let it sink in. If s2 was Don's dark night of the soul, walking into the ocean and coming out different, this season was the world telling him he's not ready. He wasn't. His bullshit is still bullshit and it's even more if he's going to spend every second of his life lying and settling into his life as a cog in a corporate machine. The existential capitalist Don Draper, the poetic Stringer Bell of the advertising game, that guy spent the season doing nothing, sitting on his hands and banging his kid's idealist shithead teacher. He may have been morally right, he may have had more opportunity to buy into a life he thought his wife wanted now that he's carrying Hilton's briefcase, but he didn't do shit. Finally Don's back, angry and forcing his way in the world, ready to fall on his ass because he's got nothing to fall back on. The only difference between this final scene and the first episode is because he was acting like that with a family and girlfriend and lies upon lies all strung together with his damn will and five or six drinks. Now there's none of that, Don's a solitary man for the first time since he met Betty and the only way he's going to avoid losing it is by jeopardizing his career and everyone around him and goddamn its probably going to work. Last episode I was ready to give up on this show, which had turned into slow strangled bore, but that was apparently a dodge because this shit was in the barrel the whole time. Seriously, next season? More like this, goddamnit. More Don and Betty and Joan and Sterling and hey I actually learned some of the minor characters names this time because I gave a fuck. "Sterling Cooper Draper Price, how can I help you?".

-Sean Witze, Matthew J. Brady & Tucker Stone, 2009

The Virgin Read: Part Of Being In A Relationship Is Pretending You Agree With The Other Person Sometimes, Even When It Hurts Really Really Bad To Do So

Each week, the non-comics reading Nina Stone picks out one random comic book based off her own made up criteria, reads it, and then writes about that experience. While she's been doing these columns for awhile, she's only successfully managed to enjoy, remember, and keep up with one series. This week, she picked Cinderella: From Fabletown With Love # 1.

Cinderella: From Fabletown With Love # 1
Written by Chris Roberson
Art by Shawn McManus & Lee Loughridge
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

This one is right up my alley, but not necessarily on the story alone. It's the whole idea that I'm a big fan of. I don't even know what you call this type of story--but yeah, I guess I'm into it. It's not just a modern day version of a fairy tale, that description doesn't cover how clever I felt this Cinderalla story came across.

It's sort of like watching someone do a puzzle, a puzzle that has an unknown solution. I love when an artist can make those kind of things fit, and they certainly did here. All the pieces of the story just started to fit together perfectly. Personal disclaimer: I write music for children. Every now and then I take a story book and put it to music, or I get the kids to tell me their favorite subject matter and put that into a song. And it's always so cool when lyrics, rhythm, style, sing-ability all fit together into the perfect package. You feel like that song was there all along just waiting for you to sing it. 

I wouldn't even know how one goes about gets started making comics, but Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love made me feel like I was reading somebody who knew exactly how to do it, somebody who knew how to make the "puzzle" of a fairy tale character & a contemporary setting work. I was hooked from the first page where the dialog reads: "Everyone knows my story. I get dressed up. The clock strikes twelve. I lose a shoe." But what's being illustrated is dressed up Cinderella in a serious fight, losing her shoe after kicking the gun out of some guy's hand, and then them both falling down passing a large clock reading midnight. I flip the page to learn that Cinderella is a spy. And I just had to find out how else they tie the fairy tale to this story line.

You know what? I never found myself disappointed or wishing they'd been a little more clever. Nope, not once. (If that sounds like I was expecting to be disappointed, it's only because last week had me a little wary of another gross comic, and it didn't help that the people at the store told me that this past week "was a light one", meaning that there wasn't a lot to choose from.) I loved that she's a divorcee who 'the fairy tale" didn't really work for. I love that she owns a shoe store called The Glass Slipper. And, yes, I'm going to have to check out "Fables" because I love the idea that there's a magical place -- somewhat like Hogwarts? -- where all the Fairy Tale and Fable characters exist. And yet the also exist in the "Mundy" world (Muggles?). I'm sure Mundy is short for mundane. One can't help seeing a few Harry Potter similarities. But you know what, when you compare stories about magical lands and magical places, it's likely that they'll have stuff in common.

Anyhow. Loved that the former guy to give Cindy her "marching orders" was Bigby Wolf (Big Bad Wolf! I get it!). And now it's Beast, from Beauty and the Beast. It's pretty clever (and kind of hilarious) that there's a whole complex full of elderly, magical people....like somewhere one might find a Fairy Godmother living. And then Puss n Boots, and the mouse and the bird? I'm just loving this stuff. And like I was mentioning early, Chris Roberson has found a way that it all works together. It's so clever, and cute. I got worried at the end and am wondering what will happen next. That hasn't happened in a while.

And hey, I didn't mean to neglect the art. Sorry. (This is a long one too. I think i'm getting carried away!) I've slowly become a fan of Oeming and the art is similar to his. That style will always draw me. This book has quite a bit more going on in each page - from the number of frames to the colors, and it all supports and expands the story. There's an "old" cartoon-y feel, and it felt like it matched up well with fairy tales and fables. I mean, the picture of Puss-In-Boots looks like it could have come out of a storybook (that's a compliment), and the Beast had a Disney-esque appearance. At no time was I distracted by the art, and that's something that's happened a bit lately. In other comics I've had problems with the way certain body parts were drawn or how a woman was contorted into a position that would not be humanely possible. Sometimes it's just with facial expressions that don't seem to emotionally match what's going on in the story, but none of those problems came up this time around. I looked to the pictures for information that the words might not be giving me and vice versa.

People, I'm going to go out on a limb and say something that I don't think I've said before. Here it goes. "I can see myself keeping up with this one." Yep. I can. I enjoyed it that much. I'm interested in seeing both how Roberson will tie the various Fairy Tale characters together, and I'm interested in seeing what happens next in this story.

PS. After I wrote this, I was told that this is a spin-off story from Fables, a comic that's already got 13 of those book collections. I don't know if I'll make time to read those or not...it's already a bit of a crunch just managing the once-a-week thing I'm doing right now. But I will say that hearing that made me like this comic even more, because I never felt confused, I never felt like I was missing something, and yet--13 books! That's a lot of comics.

-Nina Stone, 2009

Comics Of The Weak: Sometimes Comics Are About People Getting Shot In The Penis

The Great Ten # 1
Written by Tony Bedard
Art by Scott McDaniel, Andy Owens & The Hories
Published by DC Comics

Nobody wants to buy comics featuring new super-hero characters, but it's not like people aren't going to try to publish them anyway. This version of that "try" is about a bunch of characters that were introduced in a series called 52, and it's coming out now because DC Comics thought the first cash grab should be a new Infinity Inc comic, and it took over a year to figure out they backed the wrong horse. So now, 2.5 years after 52 ended, it's time to take a chance on the Socialist Red Guardsman. That's the sort of business model that keeps super-hero comics on the cutting edge of high finance, publishing a ten issue series for a bunch of no-demand characters from an old event comic. Whereas other companies go for the whole "strike while the iron is hot" ideal, DC's at the forefront of the alternative, striking years after the iron was released, often when the iron has been long ignored and replaced by a steam cleaner, or sweatpants. The best part about this is how the eventual trade paperback of this ten issue mini-series will probably stay in print forever, because people will keep saying "Great Ten is a good comic to give to Chinese readers, because...you know, it's all about China and Chinese stuff, you feel me? Just hand it to everybody who says they like that Gene Yang book. Guaranteed fan-for-life material. Hey, did you know Dennis Hopper marched with MLK in Montgomery? Life is weird."

Vampirella: The Second Coming # 3
Written by Phil Hester
Art by Al Rio & Romulo Fajardo, Jr.
Published by Harris Publications

This comic is called "the second coming" because it is about how Vampirella is coming back from the dead, and also because a bunch of demon type monsters are coming. So there are two things that are coming. It is also probably called that as a play on that outfit the character wears, because that outfit is used by people for cumming, and since she had a comic book before, this will be the second time that happens. All the narration in the comic comes from some guy who used to be married to some woman who dresses like Vampirella, but that guy dies at the end of the comic, and then Vampirella comes back to life. Overall, there's lots of coming in the comic. That probably means something, but figuring it out might take away some of the time that you'll wish you had back when you're choking out your final breaths. Mostly, this comic can only get shit on if you focus on the character's outfit, and while the outfit certainly is worthy-of-shitting, as it pretty much encapsulates the intensely geriatric nature of comic's inability to keep up with modern pornography--why no fisting?--but the comic's story itself isn't that far removed from something that DC or Marvel might publish, and it's certainly not an issue anybody would mistake for coming out of the Kinko's next door to a pervert emporium. It's professionally put together, there's no full on nudity--even when she's a withered husk, Vampirella's nipples are concealed behind her spandex body thong, despite the simple fact that her breasts and ribcage lack the body mass necessary for the spandex to conceal her modesty--so it's just another bad comic with a stupid title that a few people (like, less people than you probably see in a regular day few) will look at. Vampirella comics aren't bad, in and of themselves. They just make everything else around them look bad, because really, this sleazy hot girl horror comic is pretty much indistinguishable from a healthy crop of Big Two super-hero comics and most of the non-crime stuff Vertigo publishes. It's the same mediocre shit. The only difference is that Vampirella freely admits it, right on the cover. You're supposed to yell at it for that?

Deathlok # 1
Written by Charlie Huston
Art by Lan Medina
Published by Marvel Comics

This comic is pretty fucking great, actually. It's eventually going to be about a jacked up cyborg designed by scientists from the body horror fashion school of Paul Verhoeven's leave-behinds, but this first issue just focuses on some weird Marvel version of the sideways-future. A bunch of companies sponsor killing squads of what looks like space mercenaries, the various battles are televised with three color commentators (which, when the omniscient narrator starts going, makes for four groups of text boxes on most of the crotch-shooting violence pages), and the art seems to be derived from the fantasy world where computerized comic book coloring isn't considered to be completely fucking ugly. Like--does anybody really like Batman: Digital Justice? Sure, Digital Justice had the best distribution deal of all time, it's the one "graphic novel" that every single used book store has a copy of, it's pretty much the Dr. Dre's "Chronic" of hardcover comic books in that every household has at one point contained a copy, but seriously speaking, as a serious person who asks serious questions--does anybody really like Batman: Digital Justice? Because it really looked like that Dire Straits video parody that Weird Al Yankovic had in UHF. And Digital Justice--that's where Photoshop is going to take you, to Digital Justice and Final Fantasy cutscenes. That's what this comic looks like too. Same thing, only the content and tone makes it more of a ridiculous enterprise. The best panel is hard to choose, because there's a lot of random shit in here, but this one is pretty nice.

 

Yeah, why is dude all angry looking when he says that? Nothing happens before this to explain that face, nothing happens after. And why is he showing the reader that baby chalkboard? He never even explains what that thing is supposed to be, there's no reason whatsoever for him to be doing what he's doing in the picture, he's just showing the reader a video-game looking map to the battlefield, and it's not like that information is valuable. It doesn't come up again later. It's just goofy, and if it was the only panel like that, this Deathlok thing wouldn't be memorable. But the entire comic is like this--at one point, they "roll the footage" of a time that some guy got his legs blown off and then the television producers cut to a close up of his shame and humiliation. It's weird mounted on top of weird--hell, they even censor the language, despite the fact that there's cursing on nearly every page--and it doesn't even try to make sense. Make more like these. They taste funny.

Stumptown # 1
Written by Greg Rucka
Art by Matthew Southworth & Lee Loughridge
Published by Oni Press

Hey, where'd the couch go?

Solve the case of the missing couch first. Nobody likes it when detectives case-hop mid issue. Hey, this isn't as bad a first issue whoopsie as the one in The Mighty # 1 where the dialog balloons were swapped back and forth in a two man conversation, but at least the Mighty didn't have the line "Maybe with a boy? What does that mean? Is Charlotte queer?" 

Who says that? Like, ever. Who, like ever, says that?

Deadpool Team Up # 899
Written by Fred Van Lente
Art by Dalibor Talajic
Published by Marvel Comics

This is one of those comics that has a "production" credit, which is always a bit hubris-y. In television shows, the executive producer credits are usually there because somebody needs to find a way to skip around employment contracts so that people can get more money without doing extra work. It seems unlikely that Deadpool Team-Up would engender that type of business move, so the "Production" credit probably means "made us some tea" or "he walks fast". Oh, the comic? It has a reference to Clockers, or maybe "addicted to Yoo-hoo" is a common Deadpool story trope. Oh, and it also references 2 Girls 1 Cup. And! There's a nod to M.C. Escher, king of the "that's one trippy ass poster" artists. At the end, Deadpool insults the reader and then bastardizes a Geto Boys line ("suck my dick until your lips fall off") to acknowledge that a third Deadpool series is an absurd cash grab. The Geto Boys are pretty fucking great, but that's a lot of in jokes.

Astonishing X-Men # 32
Written by Warren Ellis
Art by Phil Jiminez
Published by Marvel Comics

Although most of the characters in this comic end up sounding like any of the various Ellis-tropes, with the Beast and his girlfriend coming across with the strongest whiff of Global Frequency/Whatever Else that guy writes dialog for, there's one of those Cyclops + Wolverine male-bonding scenes that Grant Morrison made popular, and it's kind of funny. Apparently Cyclops spends the hella majority of his recuperation time trying to prove to Logan how fucking High Voltage he is by refusing painkillers. (To impress him? The "why" isn't really explained.) It's not like Marvel needs or should put out another Wolverine related comic book, but since they're going to anyway, it might not be that bad of an idea to just have one that's full of shit like that. They could call it "Wranglers". Or "Mary and Broseph". Or "Lesbians, But With Penises".

Captain America Reborn # 4
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Bryan Hitch
Published by Marvel Comics

The worst thing about this particular issue of Captain America is the Marvel ad placement, so that's a plus. Usually there's something in the actual comic book part. But yeeesh, seven house ads for other Marvel comic books? Right in the middle of the episode's Climax von Cliffhanger? Who made that decision? Why does that person hate Ed Brubaker and Bryan Hitch so much?

Of course, none of that is supposed to impact upon the comic reading experience, or at least, it isn't supposed to impact upon said quality of the comic book. (It does, glaringly, but it Isn't Supposed To.) And yeah, if you're just into looking at the bang-goes-the-explosion page work that Bryan Hitch does, or the look-did-you-see-this-coming plot twist in complete isolation, this issue of Reborn gets to be the best issue so far, if only because there's a bunch of "somethings" that take place, as opposed to the previous issues, which had the occasional something alongside a fuckload of nothing. Dr. Doom shows up and acts all Dr. Doom-y! Crossbones punches a robot! Bucky drops directly out of the sky on a motorcycle! (Or maybe Bucky jumps over something on a motorcycle. It would make a lot more sense for Bucky to be jumping over something on a motorcycle, but the way it's drawn makes it look like the motorcycle is being slowly lowered by invisible wires.) And at the end, Captain America officially comes back, except he's got the Red Skull's mind where his mind should be, and this is indicated by the tiny Red Skulls drawn inside his eyes.

And that's it. It's so middle of the road it should have a dead armadillo on it, to indicate "The West".

-Tucker Stone, 2009

Television Of The Weak: I'd Rather Watch Television Than Eat Feces, But Danke For The Recs

This week, it's all about Venture Brothers, Mad Men, Dexter & Sons of Anarchy.

The Venture Brothers - "Perchance to Dean" by Matthew J. Brady 

While it's always good fun to see the limitless crazy possibilities in the vast world of The Venture Brothers, some incredibly funny episodes (like last season's "What Goes Down, Must Come Up") have resulted when just sticking around the Venture compound and seeing the main characters bounce off each other, demonstrating the fucked-up nature of their familial relationships and the sordid past that led there. And that's what we get here, with a simple, down-home bit of father-son(s) bonding, as Dr. Venture schools Dean in his inspirations for super-science (progressive rock!) and gets increasingly testy with Hank's "sass" ("You should have thought of that before you called your father the president of the United States of Boogers!"), while a deformed, rejected Dean clone hides in the attic and dreams of being accepted by his father. It's one of those morbid plots that's pretty awful if you stop to consider it (he's building a suit from the skin of other Dean clones to make himself look less hideous, and he's constantly tormented by visions of Dr. Venture ridiculing and belittling him, which aren't that far from the way he treats his "real" sons), but the pacing of the show never stops to allow you to consider it, somehow making the nastiness hilarious.

And, as these things often go, a series of smaller events start to snowball: Hank, spurred on by Brock's bastard son Dermott, rebels by cruising around in the family car instead of washing it, and ends up running over one of the salvaged Dean clones, making him think he killed his brother; meanwhile, a delivery man becomes convinced that the compound is housing a cult, and has the local cops prepare for a Waco-style raid; Dean, inspired by Pink Floyd, attempts some experiments with his growing body hair, and thinks that he's created a monster when the clone comes after him. It all leads to a madcap, chase-filled finale that's punctuated by great character moments like Dermott's obviously falsified bragging (he can't fly the Ventures' jet because his pilot's license is only rated for a single-engine craft) or Sgt. Hatred getting upset that somebody tracked mud all over the clean floor. And the lines! "Hank, leave the man alone. Just because he's black doesn't mean he has the 'Shining'." "I've been buried alive five, maybe six times in my life; this was worse!" "Oh my god, it's side two of Dark Side of the Moon! He's in a Floyd hole!" God, this show is so fucking funny. But it's all rooted in character; these weirdos aren't just joke-delivery mechanisms, they feel like real people, and the humor stems from they way they react to their situations exactly as we would expect them to, since we feel like we know them. That's what gets me about this, and makes me want to rewatch episodes so I can catch the little details, funny facial expressions, and hilarious dialogue. As long as the creators want to keep telling the tales of the most fucked-up family in animation (suck it, American Dad!), I'll be watching.

Mad Men - "The Grown Ups" by Sean Witzke

"I say we hang Lee Oswalt and then we take care of Texas. Hell the whole south!"

Opening shot, with Pete Campbell sleeping in the fetal position and being woken up in his freezing office. The heat is out in the office, and Jared Harris tells Campbell that Ken Cosgrove is getting his job over him, even though he's getting a title-only promotion. Cosgrove, who's barely been on the show this season, is a golden boy who works magic on clients. Campbell is a hateful prick with zero social skills who works on a lizard brain capitalist pig level. Campbell's wife is now on that show Community, where she plays a teen who dropped out of school because she got hooked on diet pills. She's a perfectionist and even more awful and worthless on that show than she is here. And here she's capitalist wife/stick figure.

Roger Sterling's daughter is getting married or something and wah wah. Her mom's smart though, saying "just because she went to india doesn't mean she's not an idiot" about Rogers new young wife. Sterling is an asshole at home, I guess we should learn something from that. I guess the daughter is going to India? Sterling's ex-wife and him are great together still, even on the phone. The new hot wife is heading over to piss off his daughter by seeing her, hates that Sterling bosses her around. Even though she married her boss? Kind of easy to see that one coming, trixie.

Betty wakes up to the baby crying, as she has many times over the latter half of the season, and she finds Don Draper sitting with the kid. She says she thought he already went into work. The implication being that if Don's not out fucking Hippy Teacher at four in the morning, he's more available as a father. Peggy gets a phone call from Duck Phillips who thinks that a Monte Christo sandwich is a turn-on. Ick. Fat guy in glasses and Campbell talk shop, simply so they can have a tv on in the background.

Don and Jared Harris argue over him having to fire Salvatore Romano, and that he's now got a huge problem because there's no one to run the art department. It's hot in their office. Huh, I wonder if that means anything. Oh, they shot Kennedy. Finally. Foreshadow much, you fucks? Then Duck Phillips pulls the cable out of the wall so he can screw a scientologist in a smoky hotel room. They are actually really smart about showing it, using newsreaders talking about unconfirmed interviews with the priests who ministered last rites to Kennedy, not showing footage, Cronkite pulling his glasses off to look at the camera. Don walking into the office and not being able to get an answer as to what's going on, then heading home. The kids watching eyewitness reports. Tell don't show, that's smart.

Don tells Betty "take a pill and lie down, I'll handle the kids". Don tells his kids that everything's gonna be okay. And that everyone's gonna be sad for a little bit. The pragmatism of Don Draper is amazing, that's what's worth loving about Draper. (Also, "hot".) Then he goes and steals one of Betty's sleeping pills. (Also, "drugs".) The idea that Don is a mess underneath is visible here, but instead of the inner darkness, it's held-back tension, it's a Don Draper scared about something other than being exposed and it's weird. It's wrong, it's uncomfortable. Damn, Mad Men. Way to use national tragedy to make Don Draper uneasy. Seriously, the first mass-media snow day is an interesting tool here - this is the first time it happened so people really don't know how to act. It's not the same thing as 9/11 or the Challenger. (Also, "relevant".)

Campbell's idiot wife actually says the obvious that "it's the president for God's sake", on people reacting that Kennedy had a lot of enemies. The heartless social robot couple are offended at people's callousness. Are you fucking kidding me? Next week Campbell will quit, they're gonna position this as his pivot moment. The wedding still happens, even though it's a day later and no one shows up. (Except Draper and half the office, who go out of obligation.) Burt Cooper and Sterling's new wife are in the kitchen watching the news, Burt Cooper and his weird objectivist outlook still has time to watch the new, and to hit on his partner's wife. Don and Betty dance, Don tells Betty everythings gonna be fine. Neither of them seem too sure about it. The mayor's aide dude is there. Betty blows him off, as Don and Betty are now firmly entrenched in their relationship. Turns out infidelity and lies upon lies really cement a relationship after it all comes out. Oh wait it hasn't yet. But still, they seem to be completely in love with each other in light of last weeks soul-bearing.

Sterling carries his drunk wife home like an old carpet, she says "he was so handsome". Sterling calls Joan Holloway, all they say about Kennedy is "incredible isn't it". Sterling says "nobody else is saying the right thing about this" and then proceeds to not say anything. The two of them with this weird semi-platonic relationship, I'm really starting to like that.

They do show Jack Ruby shooting Oswalt. That's smart. That's really really smart. Betty Draper kind of freaks out, Don Draper doesn't believe it's happening. He's kind of terrified at this whole thing, you can see it in his face. They show it again in slo-mo too. The Campbells find it appalling, dressed in their goddamn sweaters. Pete's wife is actually thinking about him skipping the agency with his clients.

Oh wait, Betty goes to see Mayor's Aide and tells him that "I don't care he's been lying to me for years I had to get out of that house". Betty can't stand Don, she was putting on a show for the wedding crowd. Betty and this guy might end up together, and we learn that Betty's favorite movie is Singing in the Rain. Yeah, then she's totally a sociopath. That's a sociopath movie, lest we forget. Yeah, maybe we'll finally get Betty killing Don Draper and the kids in S4, smash cut to house on fire, credits. Betty finally talks to Don, she's mad at him, she's even more mad at him for trying to fix their life. Don wants everything to work, Betty doesn't care about him anymore. At all. It's a reversal, showing Betty for the pragmatist and Don as emotional wreck, weeping alone in his dark bedroom. The next morning Betty refuses to speak to him, and he goes to work in a dark office where only Peggy sits typing. Because L Ron Hubbard didn't cry over Kennedy thats for goddamn sure. Don's there because the bars are closed. Work is his home once again. Didn't see that coming.

Well at least they can't rely on the Kennedy crutch in the finale.

Dexter - "If I Had A Hammer" by Nina Stone

Dexter. I love Dexter. We always talk about the fact that Michael C. Hall carries the show. And it's true, so many other parts of it not only make me cringe, but make me want to turn the TV off. So, this is a testament to how great Hall is, because my desire to see him in all his Dexter-by-dayness or in his true-self-by-night keeps me seated in front of the television, when I would much rather be in the bed, fucking.

The main things I hate about the show? Angel & LaGuerta's affair. I DON'T CARE. I don't believe there is a person on Earth who cares. I can't believe they're doing that and that we've got her saying things like "take care of your personal life" to Dexter. Wasn't it she, in the first season, who completely set up and fucked over the woman she proceeded by getting wrapped up in her personal life? Wasn't she all about the job? So, no, I don't buy that she's in love and a changed woman. As a matter of fact, my reaction to seeing the two of them act remotely sexual together is uncannily similar to my reaction when as an 8-year-old, post-sex-talk I incredulously asked my mother, "you did that THREE times?!"

I also cannot stand Rita. Oh my God. By herself, the character is loathsome, but I'm beginning to think the actress is as well. I don't even want to waste any time typing about her breathy, weak performance. Let's just move on. (I doubt I will ever watch "Rambo", but according to someone who I know in the Biblical sense, she also delivers a terrible performance in that.)

I love John Lithgow, although I've found every one of his "Trinity" murders so upsetting and hard to watch that I did the whole close-eyes and lean-into-couch-arm thing when they happened. I had to do it for a long time, because the guy I live with with kept rewinding the hammer murder and saying "do you see how easy that is to do? do you? do you see how easy that is, killing somebody with a hammer? i have a hammer in the closet. do you see? this is mrs. leeds in human form. do you see? this is mrs. leeds changing. do you see?" 

Oh, and I loved the part when Dexter stood in Lithgow's house, waiting for him with the opened urn. I understood why Dextor did that, but why did he do it like that? It makes no sense for anyone to remove the top of an urn and then just pick it up and hold onto it, presenting it like that. Right? Ah, who cares, it's always fun to watch Dexter push the envelope. And push it he did! (It also seems problematic that Dexter has shown himself and spoken to Lithgow's son so freely. When he eventually kills Trinity--which he of course will, since Trinity shot Dexter's sister--won't the son's memory of the odd loner who just met his dad come up?)

What else? (There's other stuff, obviously I'm not just using Michael C. Hall as a visual aphrodisiac so that I can "get it up" for the sake of my spindly husband's marital advances. That would never happen.) I love the writing when it comes to Dexter and his inner monologue clashing with his outer circumstances. Like when he's investigating Trinity's latest kill -- the way he's actually doing personal research, but somehow manages to cover it up with work. Fascinating. And Deb! I used to hate Deb. But man, that girl can act. When she cries, she CRIES. And it's not just tears. She sobs, and the sobs fit the circumstance. She doesn't cry the same way every time. She, the actress, just has that ability to tap into that raw, vulnerable place inside herself on command. Truly amazing to watch, even when the lines aren't that great. She goes for it, every time.

I could go on and on about this show. I love most of it. But I have to get in bed.

Sons of Anarchy - "Fa Guan" By Tucker Stone

I was pretty hard on the show last week, but hey, that's because it wasn't very fucking good. This week--well. That's not exactly the case. Point of fact, this was the best episode of the second season thus far, and while there's been scant evidence so far as to whether the first season is worth tracking down, a couple more like this...actually, no. That probably won't happen unless the first season had a bunch of Gundam Wings. They didn't, right?

The biggest problems this show has are Jax the character, the actor who plays Jax, and the dumb shit that said actor who plays Jax has to say to keep the plot moving. (Example: "I'm going nomad." How Batman Begins Detective was able to keep from giggling when he spat that out--god knows.) But in this episode, Jax not only didn't screw much up, he actually--jesus, I can't believe I'm typing this--did okay. He wasn't great, nobody's clearing a mantle and spreading thighs over here at Chez Don't Like Guy for this turkey next Tuesday, but yep, watching him cock and hand over his gun to Ron Perlman for a bit of the old "splatter me brains" challenge--pretty satisfying shit. (Obviously, Ron didn't shoot him, Sons is still mistakingly hanging their hopes on the shoulders of the guy least qualified for the job, but oh my. Nice scene!) From there on, the show was pretty much one thing, and that thing--no surprises, I'm clearly rocking a high-test crush--was Opie. From the brief, heartbreaking scene where he and his new jackshack squeeze shared a kiss to the unsettling sight of him shoving a handgun into the mouth of a screaming college student, the guy managed, once again, to redeem every aspect of this particular show. (Not the easiest feat, when you consider they're layering the "Biker Hamlet" aspect so heavily that the episode opened with Ron Perlman referring to Jax as "little Prince". We got it, guys. He's his uncle/stepfather. Son wants his kingdom. Thanks.) Opie's lines aren't that much stronger than anybody else's, his main scene partners are Jax or the girl who was forced to suck the barrel of a loaded gun by Vic Mackie, but Opie's performance of those lines--the heavy weariness with which he enacts the pointless juvenility of a "first kiss" with a hardened cokehead porn star, the contempt that spins out into grief and humiliation during the torture sequence--this is grade A stuff for B-grade product. (Hell, the guy shows nothing more than his eyes while shooting and beating the college kid, and yet it's never in question exactly what he's feeling, what he's thinking.)

But enough about the guy. He makes the show for me, but it's also nice to see the rest of the show hold together around him for a week. And while it's odd to watch the man responsible for all this "go kill or rape some more of our female characters" deliver the emotional climax to last week's beat-porno-star-with-bat murder, it's a nice change-up for Sons creator Kurt Sutter to not be obsessing about human feet the way he did whenever he cameo'd on The Shield. And while Skinner/Shocker/Darby probably deserved a better death than the offscreen beating and burning he received, it's also sort of pleasant that the show left a bit up to the imagination--god knows it would be nice if Jax's girlfriend showed up as often as Maris Crane--and honestly, Breaking Bad notwithstanding, meth cooking isn't a job anybody has for the long term, especially when they hit first name basis with the local Nazi party. Wait, I think I just complimented this show for doing something realistically? That wasn't what I intended at all.

-Matthew J. Brady, Sean Witzke, Nina & Tucker Stone, 2009

The Virgin Read: Somebody Made A Mess On Somebody's Prom Dress

Each week, the non-comics reading Nina Stone picks out one random comic book based off her own made up criteria, reads it, and then writes about that experience. While she's been doing these columns for awhile, she's only successfully managed to enjoy, remember, and keep up with one series. This week, she picked Gotham City Sirens # 5.

Gotham City Sirens # 5
Written by Paul Dini
Art by Guillem March & Tomeu Morey
Published by DC Comics

You know what the best thing about this Gotham City Sirens comic was? The Batman/Doc Savage "First Look" in the back of the issue. Let me be clear. Coming from me, that's saying something. Because I never read the "sneak peaks" in the back of issues. But yo - this one has no word balloons, and all this super linear, super clean art. It looks amazing. It doesn't hurt that it's such a sharp contrast to the mess that precedes it.

Yes, I said it's a mess. I'm no art school chick, nor am I a huge comic book reader. I wanted to read Sirens because, well, I never had before, and it looked like it featured women--so why not? But all my problems with this comic are with the art. The story line I get. It's typical Joker stuff. Here are these three super-chicks who've been done wrong by Joker, one of whom is his apparent ex-lover. However, the guy we think is the Joker - SPOILER ALERT -  turns out not to be. He's one of the Joker's old sidekicks, Gagsworth A. Gagsworthy. To be honest, it felt like this character was pulled out of the air, but I imagine those of you who've followed Batman for a long, long time might remember this guy from some other time and place.

Mr. Gag Reflex is apparently not over being dissed by Joker, and so the plot is about him taking his breakup feelings out on Harlequin, the Joker's ex-girlfriend. I don't know how this completely relates to the issue before, but maybe it means that the Joker and Harlequin aren't actually over. To be honest, I don't really care if I ever find out. It took too many pages of overwhelming art to tell this story. Let me explain.

The first page is a - well, I don't know what it is? A two-page spread? Not really. It takes two pages to spread out 6 consecutive frames attempting to show, um, a cactus growing and exploding? The whole thing lacks contrast in color. The cactus and Poison Ivy are the same color, and so is her hair and, um, the rest of the page...??? You can't tell what's what.

I stared at this shit for ages. 

Then I flipped the pages and flipped them back again to try and figure it out.

Then, I got it. Basically--get ready for this, please--Poison Ivy "encourages" a cactus cock to grow and cum. Seriously. It's ridiculous. And the following page has all three girls covered in a white milky substance. What the fuck? And yeah, I just dropped an f-bomb because the more I look at this and write about it the more offended I am. This is like a comic drawn by an adolescent who can't see the world without seeing his dick. I've been told that it might not be him alone, that it was written this way, and I'm sure that's true. Still...

Grow up.

That's not all. On the following page there's this drawing from an unusual perspective - Harley is talking with Poison Ivy, and we're seeing the conversation occur through the legs of Catwoman.  ?????? How is that a perspective? She's having a conversation with them. In the previous panel, she's a few feet away from them. Is she suddenly standing on a large stool? How is this the perspective? It doesn't make any sense, it's useless to the story, it just looks like someone LOVED the For Your Eyes Only poster a whole lot.

So, after all that, we've got some Joker-stuff happen. Fine. And then the girls are trying to sneak into his place, but, what is that stuff that follows Ivy around? Does she accidentally grow roots everywhere she goes? Is that on purpose? And, um, that's not ivy. That's not what ivy looks like. Those are just full on tree roots. This comic just keeps making no sense. Oh, by the way, I'm tempted to put on a black unitard and five-inch heels and balance in the pose cat woman is in on the bottom of the page where they bust through the ceiling into the Joker's pad. Then I'll post that photo here, just to prove that, um, it's impossible.  Her ass and thighs are so large compared to the rest of her, especially her ankles, that her center of gravity would make her fall on her ass right there. She could do it in flats - but not in those heels! Just ridiculous. And why is Poison Ivy, like, riding that tree limb?  

This is just fetish comics. And normally I'd just say "whatever", tee hee, move along and chalk it up as a "To each his own." But for whatever reason, the more I write about this the more pissed off I'm getting. Not on behalf of womankind or anything, I can't imagine that something this blatant has any impact on "womankind" beyond failing to get women interested in comics. No, I think I'm just angry because I just wasted a whole lot of time reading this comic and then I wasted more time writing about it. Feh. Ugh. I feel dirty. I'm gonna go take a shower. 

Forever.

-Nina Stone, 2009