The Factual Opinion

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

Comics Of The Weak: "Calling In Sick For A Drunk Person Is An Example Of This Kind Of Behavior"

Ultimate Comics Avengers # 3
Written by Mark Millar
Art by Carlos Pachecho & Justin Ponsor
Published by Marvel Comics

It opens in Afghanistan, where a band of machine gun toting warlords prepare the two surviving American officers they've captured for some kind of kidnap/ransom scenario. A gigantic Man of Steel arrives and exterminates the Afghanis, including the woman. As he does so, one of the kidnap victims loudly questions his sanity, referring to the Afghanis as unarmed civilians.This isn't a comic that needs credits. You already know who wrote it. Never mind that plenty of the Afghanis are openly bearing weapons, never mind that they take credit for killing American soldiers within earshot of the survivors--Millar still toes some imaginary "what's acceptable" line, pretending that what War Machine does--dirty widescreen slaughter--is somehow different than what the actual R.O.E. provides or demands. The Ultimate America doesn't drop bombs, they drop men, that's not new. What is new is this driveling self-censorship, this whiny "sorry about that, he's obviously going too far" attitude. No. War Machine isn't. He's doing what a plane does, he's doing the job of a bomb. It's made even more blatant in the next pages, this meek childishness--there, the Red Wasp is used to depict the exact sort of violence that went censored by DC in the Authority, with the character entering Hilary Clinton's would be assassin by way of his eyesocket so that she can exit the back of his skull. Millar can get away with it now, see? That which he couldn't get away with before! And yet, he doesn't have the stones to call it what it is, to admit to the editorial message that his love for explosions bring.Politics aside, what remains true, as much as he's derided for it, is this: Mark Millar brings action to comics. Like some kind of in-print Michael Bay--note that Jim Rhodes quite literally transforms into War Machine before attacking Captain America--there's few that are so willing to exploit the talents of their partners for the boom and crunch they can provide. And while Pachecho lacks Romita's weighty fists of meat or McNiven's OCDetail gore, it's obvious how wasted he was at DC. Crunching cars, distending meat, he draws an American super-hero comic that pulls back into the action-action race the past years have seen them secede from. It's stupid at times, sure. But for every "fuck you, brain" the plot delivers, there's also a sarcastic riff on a Warren Ellis asshole--now that Planetary is over, Millar has stolen Elijah's clothes and gave them to Tony Stark's brother--and a brief touch of openly political criticism, with the story's (American) corporate fiends brainwashing a former terrorist, making her "ours" with antidepressants and technology. (How do you beat extremist religious types in 3rd World countries? You either use a War Machine, or you give them American computers and a dose of America's pharmaceuticals.) As much as it might hurt to see, here it is, says Millar, beating at its heart, there, pumping at its core.

America.Suck this cock.

Fantastic Four # 572
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Dale Eaglesham & Paul Mounts
Published by Marvel Comics

Bad Shiny Norman Rockwell! Bad! Why you wanna make Reed look so beefy and weird, Photoshopped Norman Rockwell? Why you have to make Reed's dad go so far as to close his eyes when spitting out the moral? Is he Stevie Wonder? No, he's not Stevie Wonder. Stevie Wonder closes his eyes and leans back like that because he's feeling the beautiful music he's making! Nobody closes their eyes and leans back when they're telling their kid banal neo-Christian life lessons! Stop your lying, Glossy Norman Rockwell! Don't make Sue crunch down on the floor in supplication to her absent husband! It makes it seem like she was full of shit when she said she understood why her husband would rather hang out in Chalkboard Room instead of sleep in bed with her body! Don't make Sue all full of shit, Too Many Computers Norman Rockwell!

X-Force # 20
Written by Craig Kyle & Christopher Yost
Art by Mike Choi & Sonia Oback
Published by Marvel Comics

This issue of X-Force focuses on some women who all sort of look the same, but one of the women is a total killing machine, and that's fine, because boobsocked girls killing people with claws covers a good bit of the reason comics-stay-in-business, all that bullshit about "my mother's keeper" jagoff comics notwithstanding. (How many people waiting on Stitches # 2? Don't all stand up at once!) At the end, there's this mind-blowing part where the building blows up--they use one of those "blur" effects on a static image to achieve this--and then the blade-girl-killing machine screams about how she "doesn't know what to do", and it reads the way it would if the line was delivered by a Ben Stein voice-over, and then the other lady, who has these really magnificent eyebrows leans over and gives her the old pat-on-the-back. And then there's a whole page with the Postal Service Statement of Ownership--that legal thing where they tell you the average number of copies published. (It's 57,679, which means that you're about 1000 times more likely to have a conversation with a stranger about Sneeze Fetish Clips than "what happened in X-Force"--which is a pretty popular comic.)Comic is done, right? Explosion, death, tits, emotional climax of sorts, back-pat, legal indicia and advertisment for another comic (Ms. Marvel, also a tits chick who fights shit). Hell, they wouldn't put a big black box around the "it's okay, it's okay" moment and then advertise other shit if it wasn't the end of the comic, would they?Ha, that's where you're wrong, sucka! You're a sucker, sucker! There's a whole two more pages, and only one of them is a prologue to another comic that was also released the same day as this one! Hell, the first of those two pages occurs immediately after the big black box emotional climax page! Now, maybe it was supposed to be a false climax--somebody might tell you that, hell, somebody might even try to claim that there's enough people stealing comics off Rapidshare to make X-Force more popular than hand-cumming videos of woman sneezing--but if it is a false climax, it's a really poorly telegraphed one, and nobody wins prizes for trying when you don't cost a nickel and come with advertisments for cigarettes anymore. Nope, it's just good old Marvel Comics shitting all over the people that work for them, and hey! Those cats are already doing a fucking bang up job shitting on themselves, since, you know, they're choosing to make the X-Force comic book.

Justice Society of America # 32
Written by Bill Willingham & Matthew Sturges
Art by Jesus Merino & Allen Passalaqua
Published by DC Comics

That's the long head shot collection used to introduce the sixteen characters that make up the Justice Society. It's near the beginning of the comic. Underneath their names, the reader finds out how much the bounty is on each of their lives. It's basically a nerd debate bomb, the sort of thing that will probably cause a frenzy of arguments, because some of the characters are worth more than other characters (Green Lantern > Power Girl, financially), which is sort of like DC issuing a press release that says "Wildcat is a better fighter than Dick Grayson" or "Batman is smarter than all of DC's female characters" or "Your mother is incapable of being a better lay than Ma Kent". That's about it, really, but that argument fodder is the only thing the Justice Society can offer anyway. That's what happens when you decide to model a comic book on role-playing game supplements.

Secret Warriors # 9
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Alessandro Vitti & Sunny Gho
Published by Marvel Comics

Secret Warriors is another one of Hickman's, like Fantastic Four, it's hampered by an artist that doesn't really have a strong enough style to take the carnage as far as would be preferable. Like every other comic book nowadays, it's a short portion of time expanded to fill an issue, which means it'll take all of five minutes to read. It's mostly set in the same sort of areas that run-and-gun video games are set in, the classic warehouse-type places with uniform colors. It has a big fight scene that doesn't play as much like Where's Waldo as it could. It's fine. At the end, it tells you to read more about the story by reading a comic that came out a few weeks ago. Go figure out life, is what that means.

Detective Comics # 858
Written by Greg Rucka
Art by J.H. Williams III
Published by DC Comics

It really is a testament to sumthin' sumthin' that old Detective Comics reads and looks as fine as it does. Doing another difficult past, horrible shakes, origin? For a Bat-character? Hell, when is the last time anybody thought about the fucking Obeah Man anyway? Joe Chill? Who even cares about origins, anyway? Old Frankie Frank knew that the real mix was always going to be the graven image of the bloody crucible, and Morry's Morrison did him one better with the old eight-word All Star shuffle. Here, it's Rucka, so it's another old drawing room mystery play, time again for another board settling mix-em-up. Mom, this time. Bullet to the face, and DC got hooded kidnaps added to the continuity. Still, it sure is farking pretty as hell, and it sure is impressive how much it looks-like, saints alive and all that. Wanna meet Batwoman though? See you next year, when she joins the Outsiders. (Don't even pretend it won't happen.)

Batman #692
Written by Tony Daniel
Art by Tony Daniel & Sandu Florea
Published by DC Comics

You know what never gets old? Nazis and concentration camps. That shit never gets old. Never. Everybody sees that, they just go "oh shit, party time" and then the pants hit the floor. Someday, probably pretty soon, there's going to be a writer or a celebrity or the first cloned cyberchimp that can talk, and they're going to cause a nice big controversy by saying that the sum total of awesome art and entertainment that's been culled from concentration camps and Nazis now outweighs the lives of the people that they exterminated. And Jerry Lewis is going to pop his head up, and he's going to spit those disabled kids he holds in his giant mouth out, and he's going to say "told you so, you cocksuckers!"

New Avengers # 58
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Stuart Immonen, Wade von Grawbadger & Dave McCaig
Published by Marvel Comics

You know who keeps talking in full sentences, attempting wordy one-upsmanships after punching somebody hard enough they've been sent completely out of earshot? People who make up their scripts by talking to themselves out loud in the shower. People who get out of the shower and stare at their nude, wet flesh in the mirror, and repeat whatever dopefuckingshit they said while they were gliding a soap slimed hand alongside their brown star. Then, when they sit up in bed at 4am and realize that kind of shitty filler doesn't make a lot of sense, even by the "it doesn't make any difference if these make any sense" comic book standard, they just lay back down, figuring Stuart Immonen can just draw a funny panel where Captain America bounces like a pinball. And he totally can.

Blackest Night & Green Lantern # 47
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Ivan Reis & Doug Mahnke
Published by DC Comics

Here's the line, and it's a fucker. "The Justice League is made of outsiders. The only one of us who didn't worry about fitting in was Hal. He let the rest of the world fit in around him."

Do you see it? It's right there.

What is that, if not a marriage proposal?

Look, one more time. You're not special, you're not unique. Reading comic books produces obsessives, sure, and the worst of them may be, and sometimes are, far more obnoxious than a guy who knows the ERA of every single Chicago Cubs pitcher since blacks got the vote, but the extremes don't make the industry. The surrounding world doesn't care about any of this shit. No actual amount of people thinks "comics are for nerds", and that's why no actual amount of people thinks "comics are now cool." It's tempting to give some kind of credit to Geoff Johns for his grotesquely obvious worship of his readers, even when it's apparent that said worship is actually directed inwards, at Johns himself, how impressed he is with himself and what he remembers. It's tempting to give the credit, except that none of his supporters will admit that this--not his art partners, not his contemporary action plotting--is the strongest ingredient of his success. He's incapable of writing something that isn't squealing with joy towards the attention of those that purchases his product, the equivalent of a piece of fiction that operates like that old spaceship program that let you fire guns at the screen to help your heroes. Over and over again, his characters enact the same exact central drama--they are the different ones, and they are special, and they speak in a code that can only be learned by the exchange of massive chunks of time. Did spending too much money and time on comics cut you off from life? Johns understands, and he's got your reward--something that only you could truly comprehend every aspect of, that only you can fully decode, and, if you're diligent enough, sometimes, maybe for a second, he'll turn the visage of your surrogate friends towards you, and, with a "your name here", he'll give you a tug. When it's just jacking off into a long box, when it's just a fucking orgy in the halls of memory, then sure, go ahead and call it fun. It can't be ignored that, for quite a few, it is. But when it's like this--when it not only acknowledges the self-involved fantasy of persecution that barely any comics reader can point to as being anything but self-imposed, and then trumpets that lie as its pulsating member--it's probably the most obnoxious thing the field can produce.

And no, this shit still isn't scary.

-Tucker Stone, 2009

Comics Of The Weak: In The Garden Of The North American Farters

Archie # 602
Written by Michael Uslan
Art by Stan Goldberg, Bob Smith & Jack Morelli
Published by Archie Comics

The picture on the left is the cover solicitation that the Archie people had on their blog. The image on the right is the actual cover. If you ignore the color changes that, among other things, change what might have been jewelry into plastic bracelets, there's no real difference between the two.

Image on the left is the actual cover again. The image on the right is the interior. Now, we see pretty major changes. Veronica's hairstyle is now impossible to recreate with human hair, her breasts are...weird, and she's wearing yellow hot pants. In the background, the guy is no longer dressed like Santa. Biggest change is probably Veronica's face. It's obviously a new drawing, but there's little to indicate why it's such a different interpretation of the same sequence beyond the obvious "the interior art is shitty" response. And no, it's the same artist doing both pieces.

There's nothing worthwhile to be gleaned from the above comparison, but then again, there's nothing worthwhile to be gained from a 2009 Archie comic either. It's just a case of strange and cheap, another indication of the tossed off nature of this whole "Archie marries somebody" story. In this issue, Veronica produces two children, she and Archie name them "Archie and Veronica", there's a panel where Veronica is eating powdered donuts and leaving the residue all over her lips, and at the end, Archie reads his kids the entire Robert Frost poem that this story has used as "inspiration", smirks at his hot-pants wearing wife, and walks the fuck out the front door so that he can get the hell out of the fantasy that he's spent the last three issues living through. Sometime in December, he's going to marry Betty. If things play to form, there will be a bunch of random moments that have nothing to do with the story, existing only so that Archie can dispense odd moral teachings to the reader. In this issue, such moments included Veronica asking Archie if their marriage was only successful because they didn't have to worry about money. Instead of staring at her, hard, and eventually saying "What the fuck kind of weird ass shit is that to say", he just says "All you need is love!" while pointing off to the right. Oh, and immediately after he walks out of the house, away from his children, wife and this storyline, there's a genius moment where he's drawn with a look of utter despair and exhaustion on his face. If there'd been any indication up until now that the people involved in the creation of this comic cared at all about doing something non-horrible, they'd deserve some credit for inserting this moment. It's Archie as actor, Archie as exhausted, broken comic book character, realizing that even now, standing at the end of his story, he's still on the clock. So off you go, you fucking degenerate! It's time to get Betty pregnant.

Brave & The Bold # 28
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Art by Jesus Saiz
Published by DC Comics

This comic is pretty much the end result of a thought experiment about how to make Barry Allen seem less of a stick-in-the-mud by putting him in a situation where he isn't the most boring part of the story. Thanks to people like Hal Jordan and DC Comics (although Stephen Ambrose's hands aren't the cleanest) World War 2 has gone from "the one they made serious movies about" to "more integral to your existence then the time when your dad came inside your mom" status, so it'll fit. Of course, putting the Flash alongside the Greatest Generation immediately runs into a bit of a snag when Those Who Sacrificed All For You Ungrateful Shitheads point out that his red Union suit is, well, lame, and his stance against killing makes him, uh huh, completely useless. Don't want to spoil this one, but here's a bit of a tease: it ends with a guy bowing his head at Arlington National!

DCU Halloween Special 09 # 1
By Don't Care
Published by Really?

DC's Halloween Special was written mostly by editors, Johnny DC people, and inkers. It includes a story where Guy Gardner throws a big Halloween party because Halloween is his favorite holiday. And then, when the party is going down, Guy keeps flashing back to Halloweens of the distant past, and every single one of those Halloween memories involves his father beating him. One year, his dad calls him a pansy. Another year, he grabs Guy's face and shoves it into a bucket of water and apples, and he holds his face in the water. There's a whole lot of these panels--one of them just features Guy's battered face, and the climax is Guy at his dad's funeral. (Which happened on Halloween?) That's all well and good, one imagines that Geoff Johns is off doing something that's sentimental or mature or [big word] with that. Here, it's just strange--Guy prefers Halloween over all other holidays, because Halloween was the special time of year when his father beat the shit out of him? Also, Guy's costume isn't a costume, it's his old football uniform. (Quaint!) Of course, that's not the only story here, and not all of them are as fucking gritty as this one. There's one where a bunch of the Teen Titans pull a joke on Wonder Woman by trying to convince her that the Blair Witch Project is a true story--that part is sort of believable, because Wonder Woman seems like the kind of person who hasn't seen a movie since The Bridge On The River Kwai--but the story's climax consists of Wonder Woman catching the three girls having a splash fight inside the cave where Luke saw himself in the Vader outfit. (Showed that panel to someone who hadn't read the story, and their response was "I'd fuck her, sure." That wasn't the expected response, but at least the story achieved one of its goals.) The only other story point that resonates in a way the reader is unlikely to forget was near the conclusion, where Superman and Lois are taking part in the Daily Planet's haunted house. Superman joyfully uses his heat vision, his freez-y super-breath, and a grim reaper outfit to scare some 30-something punkers. After they run away screaming and crying, Lois joyfully tells Clark that one of them peed their pants, and then they just laugh and laugh and laugh. It's sort of like when Superman used to get bored and decide that it was time to teach Lois a lesson. Now that they're married, she gets to participate.

Superman/Batman # 65
Written by Peter Johnson & Matt Cherniss
Art by Brian Stelfreeze, Brian Haberlin, Kelley Jones, Joe Quinones, Federico Dallocchio, David Baron & Joe Quinones
Published by DC Comics

Superman/Batman will eventually become a part of "continuity", which will probably just mean that it will start containing the umpteeth part of the umpteenth crossover, this will be irritating, somebody will probably write a blog post about it, world, always spinning. It might be worthwhile to remember this particular issue of the title before the keys get struck--continuity may be an obnoxious beast, but is it really that much worse than a comic book where Alfred shoots and kills Bruce Wayne's mother, wife and children while sticking out his tongue? Is the fact that shit like Hunt For Reactron (actual Superman crossover!) will now include a chapter set in Gotham that much more of a nuisance than watching Bruce Wayne shoot his father at point blank range? (The blood and brain matter splats upwards, leaving Daddy Wayne's meat in Bruce's mouth and hair, Chow Yun Fat style.)

Power Girl # 6
Written by Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray
Art by Amanda Conner
Published by DC Comics

Power Girl takes a lot longer to read than most of the stuff that DC publishes, and it has better art than most of the stuff that either of the two super-hero companies publish. But it's still not that fun to read, because it has to struggle with a lead who just isn't interesting in the slightest. Power Girl just...is. She's got powers, and she's a girl. Sometimes she uses her powers, other times she makes faces that look like freeze frame images of the Jim character from NBC's The Office. In this issue, there's a nice drawing of her flying through the subway, a drawing that's able to capture "New York" better than any issue of Spider-Man or Daredevil this year, and there's a funny sight gag where a guy is seen running through the emergency room with a cooler held out in front of him. But the story is just a slog around the country, with Power Girl trying to catch up with some alien celebrities, who are hot, female and, for a little while, naked. It's got a lot of plot in it, and having Amanda Conner's art means the story can be an actual comic (you know, that thing where the pictures actually make the story more involving), so it's an objectively more worthwhile thing than something like Spider-Woman # 2 or Batman # 690, but that's about all you can say about it. (Unless you want to talk about her tits. She has big tits. It might be interesting to see what would happen if you reduced the size of her tits over a period of time, like, would that create an uproar, the way it creates an uproar when they create a new non-white version of a character? Most of the time, the Big Tit defenders just say things like "grow up", which is just odd--after all, it's not like it's an interpretation or a juvenile observation when a non-Justice Society reader says "jesus christ, that character has gigantic tits, it's obviously a comic designed as a masturbation fantasy". Power Girl has big fucking tits. Like--what's that thing that people say? "Can't you get past that?" Of course people can't get past that, you're a fucking moron if you think they will. It's not like only 15 year olds are ripping one off to big tits, that's a love affair that lasts years, even if it eventually just becomes a depressive home movie that plays out behind closed eyelids while an elderly husband humps away at a distant pile of flesh and organs who is considering taking a trip to that Swiss suicide clinic and writing "because this shit never changes" on the reason-we-should-help-you-die line.)

The Incredible Hulk # 603
Written by Greg Pak
Art by Ariel Olivetti, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Cam Smith & Elizabeth Breitweiser
Published by Marvel Comics

Giuseppe Camuncoli was worried that people might think that Dark Wolverine was a good comic that would've been good with or without him, so he left the comic just so you could see that, yes, the only worthwhile thing about it was his art. For some reason, he's paired on this issue of the Hulk with Ariel Olivetti, and the overall result is about as bad an idea as that sounds. If you're looking for an example of two artists who have absolutely nothing in common, you can pretty much stop here and call the game quits. Still, half of a good artist is better than all of a bad one, and Camuncoli once again shows off why it behooves people who want to draw action to actually figure out how a human body would move if it started flipping and bounding around a room--it's worthwhile because it makes for a much better looking comic. It's still a confusing clusterfuck of a story, apparently Bruce Banner and Wolverine want their kids to get better at fighting because they're hoping that their kids will grow up to kill them, something like that. But hey! Bounding!

Batman: Streets of Gotham # 5
Written by Chris Yost
Art by Dustin Nguyen, Derek Fridolfs & John Kalisz
Published by DC Comics

Finally, the definitive answer to the question "What is it that Batman won't do" which is also something that "Oracle can't do"! The answer should have been easy to predict--it's stab the Man-Bat in the deltoid after shooting him in the other deltoid. See, Batman wouldn't do that, because it's a completely ineffectual way to solve Man-Bat related problems, and Oracle can't do that because...not sure, actually. Because she's in a wheelchair? Her hands still work fine, so that can't be it. Maybe because it's stupid? Oracle's usually written as smart, so that's probably it. Huntress can't even be bothered to wear the same costume from appearance to appearance, so we'll leave "stupid bullshit" in her capable hands.

Justice League of America # 38
Written by James Robinson
Art by Mark Bagley
Published by DC Comics

This is basically the wet dream of anybody who has ever wanted hard evidence that super-hero comics were horrible and could only be horrible. It's actually sort of impressive.

-Tucker Stone, 2009

Comics Of The Weak: "Only The Magazine Slut Zone Had The Perspicacity To Notice"

This week's reviews were written by fictional characters created by controversial French writer Michel Houllebecq.

Various Batman Titles

Gotham City has but two types of people-those who wreak violence, and those who have violence wreaked upon them. The first type are all men, for the most part, although the occasional lesbian is permitted participation, as long as she has previously received approval from whomever currently holds the title of most cruel. (Said participation is usually considered an important story point, further cementing the little respect or interest that these stories have for women--there are few other places in fiction where "the bitch can stay" is considered interesting or dynamic.) Batman is their ubermodel, the sturm king who they look to for permissible behavior, be it the anarchic cruelty of a Joker or the crime-towards-system of the grotesque product of inbreeding called Penguin, the City is little more than a repository of bludgeoning, gunshots and death. Men who die are weak, women who are robbed are numbers, all that matters are the muscles that control the clenched fists: nothing can be of more importance than the blood, no skill is given a higher estimation than brute strength. All of the ancillary deaths are pure wish-fulfillment--parents, mostly, although the random spouse falls as well, as that allows for an acceptable frenzied orgy of destruction. (It has been claimed that these stories are not for children, a statement notable for both its pathetic origins in the trivial masturbation known in the West as "therapy" as well as its obvious wrongness--of course these are for children, because it is children who most actively enjoy fantasies about the death of parents. Adult children are already content with the knowledge that they just have to wait for the guilty to reject their withered husks.)

Beyond the nebbishy cries of the nostalgic and the old, this is why the Batman replacement idea cannot work, or does not--a Dick is not a Bruce, because a Dick is weak, a flaccid thing of tears who quibbles and enjoys actual pats-on-back. (Besides the general truth that Bruce would recoil from being "reassured" by another, Bruce's personality would have aborted any such ideas in those near him upon their initial moment of conceptions. Here, Dick not only accepts the grotesque physical touch of friendship, he quite nearly asks for it. Friendship has no place in Gotham City, that fact is the most contemporary portion of the Batman stories--relationships are brutish and mortal, as they are in the real world, where the first action at disagreement is the "block" or the "unfriend"--no longer do we pretend to care for others, we, like Batman, hold all to the one standard: in line, or dead-to-me.) Even worse, Dick lacks the mettle or taste for violence, he recoils from the joy his new Robin finds in the broken bones, the bloodslicked eyesockets, decay...all the worse that, due to his age, this new Robin will abandon violence when his diminished cock begins the biological call to fill its sac, for it is sex that the boy truly craves, and when he realizes that, his taste for gore will abandon him. That is, if he isn't forced into the stunted adolescence that captures his brother Tim, a child who has skipped puberty to become eunuch, with only the final biological slash left for completion. Here, one is given a Batman that is no longer a case and cause of violence, but merely a child in his father's clothing, a case of Home Alone screams at aftershave played out in a decayed memory of Anton Furst's Inferno. (Azrael, the only thing that resembles an adult man, is a tired shadow himself, but here, it is a shadow of a cartoon, a man with multi colored flaming swords and a hood--but with the inability to finish tasks, a lack of stomach for murder. A child's limits placed on man's behavior: repressed, pathetic.)

It is possible, one assumes, for rectification, but only with the most Oedipal (Damian slaughters Tim & Dick, eats their hearts, takes the City as his prize) or base (Bruce returns, kills hundreds and molds the City into Arabian fortress, complete with pedophiliac harem), but, as neither of those help the sales of merchandise and might attract the wholly unwanted attention of America's craven media, they will not take place. Instead, one will be treated to the continued neutering of the one fictional location that formerly most resembled our own: Gotham, the land where you could, and would, be prince--as long as you occasionally offered supplication to the King.

Green Lantern Corps # 41

I cannot be bothered to learn their names, these foolish humanoid beasts, I can only say that they are indistinguishably dull, the lot of them. None capture a moment, excepting the ugliest one, a garguantuan deformity who quotes a pop singer. "Say my name", he cries, and I only recall him now for he reminds me of a Turkish youth who once told me, pride in his breast, that he had made the prostitute I bought for him orgasm. When I asked him why, his stupid mouth opened into confusion--because she said so, he claimed. It can not depress me that they are stupid, I thought, but the feeling of revulsion was so strong! Upon retiring, I knew the simple answer: it was his arrogance! That he would matter to the cheap, revolting whore! I felt the same for this Kilowog--oh that all their names allowed for such easy racial slurs, these weak and simple American stories might have a wisp of danger to them then--that he mattered, that his name did, that his pain did. As if he could not see the globes surrounding him! As if he could not know his singular uselessness! They say the environmental movement got its biggest burst of support when the pictures of our grimy planet were transmitted from the satellites, I know this to be a lie, as all things about the environment are a filthy lie, because the one thing those pictures always inspire is a reminder of our qualities--namely, that we have none. Watching this disgusting elephantine creature punch the undead, screaming for recognition, I thought of it again. We are nothing but husks, sacks of meat to be split and dumped into barrels. I once drained the fluid out of a dog's cracked open ribcage, his body so large that it required two of us tipping him, as the fluid needed measurement, the fiendish ghoul of a doctor hoping for a feature article on retention. As the pus and blood mixed with saline and urine--we had accidently pierced the bladder when removing the beast's shattered ribs--poured out into the plastic buckets, we listened to the grotesque shopkeep cry out the numbers as the level rose. Never have I looked at an animal since and seen anything but that moment. And we are they, the same, sacks of meat, waiting for the depraved to measure us into buckets. This is what the astronauts showed the world, the planet: a land where none of us matter, and all are the same. Say your name if you must, Kilowog. But do not pretend it is makes you any different.

Punisher # 75

I once shook a man's hand immediately after fucking his fiance. My hand was warm, having been pressed between her fleshy ass and the cheap carpet of the rooms he was jobbed with supervising, but he took no notice of it, assuming I to be yet another of those obese cretins whose hands are always coated in a sweat-slickened warmth. He also failed to notice the stink of her sex, which was painted across my mouth and chin, but I've always held to the memory that his eyelashes--he was one of those feminine men with long, cat-like lashes that take on a garish curl--quivered a bit, expressing recognition at the smell his brain must have long since labeled as being one he assumed sole possession over. As I smiled my falsest grin at him, my tongue flecked around the corners of my lips, tasting her sex still, while we forced out the sort of general conversation that was to be expected. The slut waited behind me, and when we sneakily found one another outside--he had another few minimum wage hours left at the desk, and I had not ejaculated yet--she demanded to know why I spoke to him, did I not realize this might arouse suspicion? Sneering at her ridiculous fake concern--if she cared for his feelings, why then had she accosted me a scant hour earlier, demanding that "we fuck right here, while he waits"--I informed her that, while I had no intention of directly informing him of our tryst, she could not expect me to ignore the chance to relish in this, my private drama of power and cruelty.

The Punisher is a character incapable of sexuality, as far as I can imagine, so his only method of exerting that same sort of power is in violence. Devoid of artistic interest or ability, he cannot even revel in creative engagement with this, his only task, so he finds his satisfactions in doing it on a monolithic scale. (The character is a misanthropic lunatic, if the description of his pastimes have not made this clear.) Disappointingly, he only kills "criminals", a ridiculous proposition when considering how impossible it is to find a single human being not deserving of slaughter in the world as it now exists. Born only so that we can die, this "Frank Castle" could work less as vigilante, and more as Platonic argument made flesh--prove your life, or watch it ended. Instead, he's another Good Samaritan, wandering around helping little girls on snowy eves while shooting "bad men" and sneering. However, one story does include the reading of a letter where Frank's daughter reveals her incestual dream to someday "marry her daddy", and that minor twist alone makes it far superior to the predictable "up with normalcy" attitude the rest of this doggerel consists of.

Uncanny X-Men # 516

I am at a loss to understand what is "uncanny" about a father's authority being supplanted by a son, but I will assume that one of the five-hundred previous installments of this serial contains within them the reasoning behind the adjective. However, there is nothing to be found in this particular chapter that cannot be found in any of the generic "action" television products America defecates out of its strangled rectum. While it was somewhat difficult to navigate the hideous drawings that infected every page, I found eventual solace in the belief that the art was the collage project of a diseased adolescent, as the figure drawings most resembled the end result of smearing feces onto pictures culled from mass-mailed catalogs. The story is a simple one, following the decision of a younger man to ignore his surrogate father's warnings and embrace as brother another man the father does not care for, and may in fact fear. Because this plot is not enough by itself to maintain interest, the comic book includes a unforgivable tease of torture sequence involving a professional wrestler who wears mascara. Angry at him because he does not wear form-fitting spandex, the wrestler's captors place him in a plane headed for the psuedo Israel that the X-Men currently live on. It's not very intriguing--like the real Israel, the X-Men are certainly capable of dealing with the incursion of one plane, no matter what its payload consists of--but it does point towards a direction that could be far more worthwhile than the soap operatic of whether or not an old dog is capable of new tricks. One could imagine a delightfully candy-color depiction of the Gaza Strip, with the one-eyed Cyclops eating those who encroach the borderlands, while the women make the final move towards answering the burqa with head-to-toe nudity, a violent explosion of sexuality tangled up in threats of extermination and the death of childbirth. If these characters, these "mutants" really are the last of their kind, it is high time for them to act like it--move past the old rivalries, and celebrate the freedom guaranteed annihilation allows. I.E: they should all be fucking one another. Youthful virility has a timetable. Undergraduate ethics discussions are forever.

Liberty Comics # 2

There are few things as obnoxious as reading what passes for political thought when the speakers are artists, and one of those few things is when the exact same thing happens, but the majority of the speakers are white male American artists. It would probably be tempting for some to claim "for a good cause" while quietly shuffling off to something they actually enjoy, like ultraviolent hobbit smut, but it's undeniably far more attractive to stop for a moment and imagine a world where those who call themselves artists are required to produce evidence that they, at any point in their career, have done something that could honestly be defined as "dangerous". On terms of the examples provided here, a general culling by way of legal attack might not only be necessary, but a more interesting excursion than the work itself. At the very least, one could be assured that the depositions would include at least one moment where the accused broke down into the copious sobs of the charlatan.

-Tucker Stone, 2009

Comics Of The Weak: There Are Too Many Butts In This Room!

Slam Dunk Vol. 6
By Takehiko Inoue
Published by Viz

Slam Dunk Vol. 5 ended with one minute on the clock in a four point game. Although just an exhibition match, the contest had already seen bloodshed. After dealing with the game in the best fashion possible (a loss), Volume Six turns its focus to the other thing that the Dunk drops on the regular: page upon page of purposeless violence between angry first year high school boys. Multiple teeth are lost, the human bodies of the weak are thrown and swung like weapons, girls eject fountains of tears while screaming for their champion's success, and then it's back to the court, time for some one-on-one. There are immediate personal fouls.

This cycle will continue for another twenty-five volumes.

Haunt # 1
Written by Robert Kirkman
Art by Todd McFarlane, Greg Capullo & Ryan Ottley
Published by Image Comics

This is a comic birthed out of somebody yelling at Todd McFarlane during a comic book convention, which is pretty terrifying because it means that people who yell shit at comic book convention panelists now actually can use that behavior as a precedent for "how to get a job in comics", which is even worse to think about when you realize "how to get a job in comics?" is the thing that at least 75% of convention attendees write in their dream diary the night before Fetish Creeps, Movie Trailer & Be-My-Friend Party 2010. For some reason, comics still look upon Todd McFarlane--a hacky, shit artist who used his limited time creating awful Spider-Man comics as leverage to create a toy company/Spawn-production sweat-shop--returning to comics as the sort of thing that still engorges penises, if Robert Kirkman's back matter claim of "my best-selling book ever" is to be believed. (All this after the election of a black man as President? What did we march in Selma FOR, anyway?) Here's what Haunt is: Kirkman's best attempt at copying every crap Image comic book ever, a mercenery and his chain-smoking, whore-fucking brother (who is a priest!) teamed up across the mortal river to form a semen ejecting rip-off of Venom+Spawn. In the back of the book, Robert Kirkman writes about how awesome it is that McFarlane did things like "look at the color and make sure they wuz done right" and "look at the letters and make sure they wuz done right." In other words, his job, but hey: everybody deserves a pat on the back sometimes. Legacies are a bitch to live up to.

Cable # 19
Written by Duane Swierczynski
Art by Gabriel Guzman, Mariano Taibo & Thomas Mason
Published by Marvel Comics

Cable and Bishop are a couple of old X-Men characters that saw the opportunity to escape the doldrums of whatever X-Men: We Will Never Be In A Movie offshoot comic they used to appear in, reached across the fictional world they live in and got themselves cast in a never-ending science fiction movie. While Strange Tales has pretty much answered the question "How far will Marvel let creators go" with a "Too boring, even for MOME inclusion" answer, Cable, the series, has the most potential for being THE subversive/anti-comics comic that Marvel publishes. Not right now, no--right now it's just a stupid rip-off of an Aliens rip-off, a science fiction mash-up that ignores Ridley Scott in favor of Stargate: SVU for influence. But the basic concept: a black man chases a white man through space and time while wearing lots of pouches? That kind of simplicity has got some history to it. The Krazy Kat comparisons just write themselves.

Spider-Man 1602 # 1
Written by Jeff Parker
Art by Ramon Rosanas
Published by Marvel Comics

Of course, even the separation of four-hundred years can't keep a Marvel comic's plot from being Norman Osborn: Cocksucker. Here, old Norm turns out to be the guy responsible for that whole "giving smallpox blankets to the natives" thing, and then he shoots Spidey's latest girlfriend in the neck just to drive the point home. And that's mean and all, but it does give Peter a chance to re-enact the beginning of Bambi, since dead girl is a nekkid shape-changer. Serving as another brick in the nothing-makes-sense anymore wall, this is a particularly well-illustrated piece of Spider-obscurity, made all the worse by the fact that it just looks so much fucking better than its Amazing Spider-Competitor. Look--that doesn't even make sense. Anybody who gives a shit about something as obscure and horrible as "four dollar spin-off mini-series to a shitty Neil Gaiman comic from six years ago" is really fucking unlikely to care about how the goddamn thing LOOKS, the requirement for entry is already so specific that "the art" couldn't even make the top ten. Meanwhile, the regular Amazing Spider-Man comic has panels that only make sense if you can get a Marvel editor to email you a copy of the original script. (Which is a lot easier than it should be.)

Star Wars Invasion # 4
Written by Tom Taylor
Art by Colin Wilson & Wes Dzioba
Published by Dark Horse Comics

Occasionally, there's some moment when churlish shitheads complain about the lack of true comic book journalism--sometimes this is because there's a lack of substantive technical anaylsis regarding business decisions, but most of the time it's because A) shitty comics get treated like shitty comics and B) people whine, because they suck. Every once in awhile, it's because something happened in a comic book that is maybe kind of a big nerd deal, and yet no one really acknowledged said big nerd deal. Like, for example: Chewbacca is dead? Somebody killed Chewbacca? And now Han Solo has a grizzled beard and won't talk to his kid? And Leia has an ugly haircut and an ugly hat, and she wears a football uniform with a cape? And Luke has a wife who wants to have sex with him, and they live in a Mayan ruin? What are we not paying those news sites for anyway? That's the sort of information you shouldn't have to go searching to find.

Batman and Robin # 5
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Phillip Tan, Jonathan Glapion & Alex Sinclair
Published by DC Comics

Most of the time, the best way to talk about a Grant Morrison comic book is just to say "It's the G-Mo, bitch" and then stick a fork in the speaker, Thurston Moore style. After all, the guy did write Doom Patrol AND Doom Force, and those fucking comics are basically cranked out crank, Spank Rock comics, and Spank Rock was a fucking kid when they came out. Then, Grant started rolling deep, dropping comics on such a regular basis that something kinda normal happened: they weren't all great anymore. Not that they weren't great at all, he still has hits, but now he's got misses too. It's problematic, because if you read books, watch movies, do basically anything, people do that shit all the time: like, shit. They do shit. Batman and Robin--hell, it's got some moments. The line "no backstory" is pretty clever, Damian has had the best character moments Morrison has come up with since Xorn held a finger to his missing lips, and yeah, so on. There's stuff that's likable. But the rest of it? It's horrid. Frank Quitely's art has been replaced by somebody who would be better served on a Whilce Portacio comic book. It's a missed note, it's a Hail To The Thief, a Mystery Play. And if it were movies, it would just be a "haw haw" in the parking lot, a "oh man, how about when he realized that she was his mom" conversation over coffee. That's what this one is, and that's all: bad times on the way to the next one. Good thing it's cheap.

Batman Annual # 27
Written by Fabian Nicieza
Art by J. Calafiore, Mark McKenna & Nathan Eyring
Published by DC Comics

Since there's no such thing as too much shitty Batman, here's an annual that leads into another annual, which will eventually lead to a series. The first part came out earlier this year, in a comic book that is only remarkable for wasting the time/talents of Frazer Irving. The story continues here, remains terrible, now has a different artist, he can't fix it, and there will be more coming later, in the form of a monthly comic book about a character who dresses like an early 90's rapper.

Please don't emphasize your violence due to your youthfullness. No penis, don't.

War Heroes # 3
Written by Mark Millar
Art by Tony Harris & JD Mettler
Published by Image Comics

Using Planetary # 27 as cover, War Heroes sneaks onto the shelves a year after the last issue arrived. Like a lot of 2009's Mark Millar comics, it's gross, kind of ignorant, loud. Unlike a lot of 2009's Mark Millar comics, it's confusing and hard to follow, with an entire action sequence devoted to a character who destroys things Tasmanian Devil style without actually depicting the character in anything correspondent to physical movement. It's just a bunch of panels of a stereotypical Muslim infidel (the model seems to be any of those Aladdin type movies where the entire cast consists of white people in greasepaint) posing next to destruction. It's enough to make one think that the draw of comics like Kick-Ass and Old Man Logan might be completely tangled up in the art. That would be really, really weird.

Planetary # 27
Written by Warren Ellis
Art by John Cassady
Published by Wildstorm Comics

This is that comic that took a long time to come out, but it's not like the book would've been served very well by a stunt fill-in: this was John Cassady's book to be lost, and while he isn't given the same opportunity to shine here--with a "boring, nerdiest episode of ER ever" script, as one individual put it--his work will live on in the eventual collection, which is the only place that Planetary can hope to find its home. But Cassady's art--clean, pretty, somewhat predictable--can't conceal the one thing that ten years of comics taught, which is that Warren Ellis has one voice, one tempo, and a Trending Topics library to pull from. Someday, people will just go ahead and read James Gleick and the rest of the high bookshelf types who have struggled to bring top tier physics to the armchair--one can imagine that's what Ellis was hoping they'd do all along, god forbid it couldn't have been "read more super-hero comics", which is the other general attitude--and then one can get around to praising Planetary for the only thing it really deserves praise for: sometimes, it was pretty to look at.

-Tucker Stone, 2009

Comics Of The Weak: Rise, Children Of Wetwork

Quiet, shitty week, so there's also a new comics post up at Savage Critics.

G.I. Joe Cobra Special # 1
Written by Mike Costa
Art by Antonio Fuso
Published by IDW Publishing

So, this thing reportedly contains "vistas of possibility" that "are so staggering in their vastness", which apparently means that there are "vast" possibities to be found in a comic that consists of a nonstop internal monologue and a gimmick construction technique. (The comic repeats itself structurally, with the center of the comic being the point when the individual delivering the monologue changes.) It's the Cloud Atlas of G.I. Joe comic book specials spun off from Sleeper rip-offs. That's a vista of possibility? Besides all that, it's one of those comic books where every single page has been processed through one of the hundreds of grainy filters available in the digital Effects suite, none of which are able to conceal that the drawings look to be lifted from poorly traced catalog pictures. Go figure: some people eat stickers, y'know?

Blackest Night: Titans # 2
Written by J.T. Krul
Art by Ed Benes & Scott Williams
Published by DC Comics

This particular tie in to the "no seriously, people like this one, you shut up" event that DC is currently publishing had the most potential to have an actual story, whereas the Superman one has to spend a good portion of its page count threatening to resurrect Pa Kent, and the Batman one basically exists so that DC can remind the reader that all of the Bat-characters have the same origin. See, the Titans have spent the better part of the last 15 years executing nearly every character it has come into contact with--when it comes to "storytelling options", you couldn't ask for a wider library of characters to create zombie stories out of. That leeway, of course, runs in tandem with the other legacy the Titans has had for the last 15 years, which is that it's usually written and edited by people who were home-schooled inside a crystal meth lab. So when you put two and two together, you end up here: a comic about a dead baby that rips out a chunk of mommy's neck while a couple of old Rob Liefeld characters argue with each other about which one of them is most responsible for them being completely unpopular. It's all very meta, which is fine, until you realize that if the only thing you have to reference is "other things, also shitty", going meta won't make you John Barth.

New Mutants # 5

Written by Zeb Wells

Art by Zachary Baldus

Published by Marvel Comics

This comic looks like it was published by Pirahna Press for eventual inclusion on Liquid Television, it has a character who talks like that alien everybody hated in the Star Wars prequel movies, and it's about mutants, or Native American girls punching surfer dudes. (She has a feather in her hair!) It's not going to make anybody fall in love with comic books for the first time, but it's a readable object, which is more than can be said for Gotham City Sirens and X-Men Legacy, which are the kinds of things that one has to abandon after the first couple of pages due to the searing pain in one's skull that shows up when the human brain says "Really, there's absolutely nothing to be gained by following this experience through to conclusion." That's not really a compliment, but then again: neither is the gnawing realization that God is real, and he's punishing you.

Superman # 692

Written by James Robinson

Art by Fernando Dagnino & Raul Fernandez

Published by DC Comics

It's not even a complaint anymore, it's just an acknowledgement: all DC Comics include a reference to some comic nobody cared about (this time, it's the Human Defense Corps mini-series) and a scene set at some sort of funeral/wake, this one being a bar where a man in a spandex costume props himself on a tiny stool to air out his balls/show off his balls/who fucking knows why, so he can deliver a eulogy. (Bonus points for the person not actually being dead.) Since that sort of stuff only takes up a small portion of the comic, the reminder is filled with some kind of boring exposition about magic and a hilarious subplot about how the Justice Society characters are having trouble fixing the sewer system in Metropolis. Considering how uninteresting and hard-to-follow Superman comics are unless one is willing/obsessive enough to read all eight of them a month, it would be kind of pleasant if they'd just have one title in sole devotion to that particular piece of obscurity. Nothing says Eisner like an eventual collection of "Power Girl & The Toilet Snake".

Wolverine: Weapon X # 5

Written by Jason Aaron

Art by Ron Garney

Published by Marvel Comics

Airwolf wasn't a very good show, which is why it's sort of criminal that it's so easy to track down and watch these days--like every other not-very-good television program that one has fond memories of, due to the fact that watching it lives in memory next to "the day I first wiped my own ass", it doesn't hold up when one watches it post-death-of-a-parent adulthood. That's what makes trust funds and being a vegan so intensely valuable, because both can postpone the eventual feeling referred to by some as "maturity" and by others as "being a snob". If you never stop liking the shit--the unbearably stupid, fundamentally juvenile shit--that gave you a boner when you were 11, you can still have a good old post 30's night marathoning Airwolf while drinking like a fake I.D. carrying 17-year-old. Agree or disagree, when it comes down to it, the acid test is pretty simple: this is the comic where Wolverine flies around in a combat helicopter. Check Yes or No.

Die Hard: Year One # 1

Written by Howard Chaykin

Art by Stephen Thompson & Matthew Wilson

Published by Boom

Yep, that Howard Chaykin. Ouch! Besides the overall weirdness of using old Bruce Willis for a photo reference, instead of just googling "Bruce Willis Moonlighting", which would've provided pictures of young Bruce Willis, this comic consists of dialog that is 100% expositionary bullshit...with ellipsis between...every line of...dialog. If this particular comic where made into a film--that can't happen, right? that should never happen--the movie would consist of at least seven hours of dead space, with the characters pulling a Liv Ullman in every scene. It would probably still make money though, which always proves that something is really fucking great, even when it seems like it's actually...really...horrible.

Genesis

Written by God, some dudes

Art by Robert Crumb

Published by Norton

Heyzeus Kreesto, what a boring, boring, boring, boring, snoozey mcsnoozey [insert generic insult] borefest this fucking was/is. It's one thing to read subversion into something that barely contains it (especially when the author actively claims subversion's absence), it's another thing entirely to lionize something so incredibly toothless when there's more controversy contained within a Madonna music video from fucking 1989, otherwise known as The Decade That Succeeded By Ending. Is God an old white man? You guessed it. Do Abraham and Isaac hug it out following the whole "i'm gonna stab you for da Lord" sequence? Why not. But hey! All the women look like his sketches of women always do! The part where shit blows up? It blows up real good! Otherwise?

It's better than this. But it pales in comparison to this. And at the end of the day, if you're not more interesting than Lego people fucking, and you're Robert Fucking Crumb, something done fucked up somewhere down the five year line.

-Tucker Stone, 2009

Comics Of The Weak: All Things Are Replacable

The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror 15
By Tim Hensley, Matthew Thurber, Kevin Huizenga, Jordan Crane, Ted May, Sammy Harkham, Will Sweeney, Jon Vermilyea, Ben Jones, John Kerschbaum, Jeffrey Brown, C.F. & Dan Zettwoch
Published by Bongo Comics
"Printed by World Color Press Inc, Montreal, QC, Canada 9/16/09 in the forest of unshed tears"

"This is all Matt Groening's Fault yet all our hands have been stained red and swollen while his remain hairy, unkempt, and idle".

That's how it opens, this thing, this comic book. You'll see a leg, decapitated head, a hand: The Couch. Because you don't know or you do, improvisation works like this: a fluctuating wave pattern trapped inside a defined box. The boxes definition does not stem from the artist. The requirement--the purpose of the improvisation--determines the walls and its rules. The artist is then to madly fluctuate within, creating something that bounces off all the edges, doing and imagining, most of all, being: whatever they want, their skills, at their best.

It's why improv comedy is often terrible, it's why licensed work is often terrible, it's why work-for-hire is so often a failure. Not because of the limitations placed by the editor--although sticky fingers and mandates can destroy, the problem, the failure, often lays in the limits the artist places on themselves. That's not a criticism, although stupid, weak artists see it as one, so used they are to the defense of "their fault", "their rules", "not mine". It's not a criticism because the glory--when glory is achieved--belongs to them. Not the tools, not the owner, never the rules. The creation--wonderful, new, fresh and ultimately, courageous--belongs completely to them. You don't want another Treehouse of Horror after you read "Boo-tleg". You want whatever Ben Jones has to give.

This thing? This mash-up of Kramer's Ergot, indy creators and Simpsons? This is a triumph, but it's also a rebuke. It's a comic that laughs in the face of the weak, those that use the greed of corporations to excuse their cheap hackery; it's a comic that snaps a finger into the eyes of the lazy reader that handicaps their pleasures; it's a piece of art that puts to the lie the power of the tastemaker. It's aesthetically resonant in a way that almost no anthology is, a cohesive mass of story that crashes through a pinwheeled vision of right now and right then, a brilliantly illustrated and extraordinarily dialogued piece of comics as work, comics as art, comics as pure cocained genius. It will have "favorites", as contributors like Jones and May are almost unstoppably funnier than anyone surrounding them, but the entire enterprise is ultimately a complete success by nature of it's fervent, bleeding passion. It's a production that stinks of care--for the reader and the paymaster, yes--but mostly for the men who took an opportunity and used it to create risk. 

There will be few like these. Some will decry that it has not found its audience, when the initial sales return a story of trash and fodder stomping Treehouse's numbers off the charts. But at the end of it, art will win.

It always does.

Superman Secret Origin # 1

Written by Geoff Johns

Art by Gary Frank, Jon Sibal & Brad Anderson

Published by DC Comics

Hopefully, there's an adorable 9 year old boy reading The Diary of A Wimpy Kid, and he'll physically grow into a man's body, get a job working in comics of such popularity that he can write his own ticket, and then he'll reveal his dream project: re-inventing Greg Heffley so he looks like Zachary Gordon. He'll re-write the stories of his youth while seated across from his artistic cohorts, occassionally holding up his hand in wait of an accompanying clap, a high five for awesome, just like Jolly Johns and Frankly Frank must have done here, with their pointless, creepshow Superboy, a child with the skull of a dead man screwed onto the body of a prepubescent girl. This comic may not be the worst thing ever--that would probably be the comic that your neighbor just finished stapling together, which is about how hard it was when mommy forgot the morning hug--but its definitely a top contender in the DC Could Sell Some People Anal Fissures If Geoff Asked Nicely contest.

New Avengers # 57

Written by Brian Michael Bendis

Art by Stuart Immonen, Wade von Grawbadger & Dave McCaig

Published by Marvel Comics

Somebody should tell Bendis that black men are capable of responding to stress in more than one fashion.

Blackest Night Superman # 2

Written by James Robinson

Art by Eddy Barrows, Ruy Jose, Julio Ferreira & Rob Reis

Published by DC Comics

This comic opens with the phrase "This Morning". Normally, that prepares the reader for a series of sequences that are set during the morning. The artist helps contribute to this by drawing said series during the period of time that one refers to as "morning", i.e., daytime. So why is the first line of dialog, "Thanks for staying open late"? That implies that the local barber--who responds to the line by saying that he'll stay open as long as possible to keep his customers from "looking like hippies"--usually stays open overnight, closing his barbershop in the morning. The next panel consists of a solitary boy saying "Simon, come downstairs, dinner's ready. Not hungry Mom...." One would assume that the child is speaking to his mother, except all of the dialog--the "come downstairs" and the response "Not hungry"--is attributed to the boy, through the standard usage of word balloons. 

Oh--why is dinner being served in the morning?

That's the first page of the comic, the first three panels. The last page of the comic is Martha Kent saying "It's on!". She says this because she is preparing to fight a zombified Lois Lane Black Lantern in a cornfield. With a torch.

It was more fun feeling sorry for the people who make this shit back when you could honestly believe that somebody actually read them before they went to press.

Fantastic Four # 571

Written by Jonathan Hickman

Art by Dale Eaglesham & Paul Mounts

Published by Marvel Comics

They changed that "final solution" credit they gave Lee & Kirby, if you care. That was a pretty boneheaded thing to do. Now it's "greater than the sum", which is only upsetting if you start thinking about what it would look like if those two had actually made a baby with their body parts. Reed still looks beefy, the art is still shiny and off-putting, but the story is sort of interesting, especially if you know somebody who read the Time Traveler's Wife, because that makes you wonder if all of these Reed characters are occasionally giving each other a quick tug whenever the need arises, since they've all apparently abandoned their wives to live in a magic nerd compound where they fix things and lobotomize an infinite number of Dr. Dooms. Back in the 80's, one would have been considered weird for obsessing over the sexual behavior of comic book characters, but nowadays, you have to think about this stuff in advance just to keep yourself from experiencing the sort of surprises that would bring a half-digested lunch by for a return engagement with your tender lips. (You could just not read them at all, but that's how all the fucking snobs win.)

Conan The Cimmerian # 14

Written by Timothy Truman & Benjamin Truman

Art by Joe Kubert, Timothy Truman & Tell-A-Graphics

Published by Dark Horse Comics

The first four pages of Conan are drawn by Joe Kubert, and the last three pages of the comic are drawn by Joe Kubert. That makes for a total of seven pages, despite the text on the cover that says "Featuring Guest Artist Joe Kubert" without mentioning that he doesn't do anything but those seven pages. That's irritating enough, but the strangest part is that the seven pages aren't used to form bookends to the main story. It's just Joe Kubert starting the story, and then it's not Joe Kubert continuing the story, and then it's almost over, and then it's Joe Kubert again. It's also unreadable, but that's sort of the point of Conan anyway.

Dark X-Men: The Confession # 1

Written by Craig Kyle & Chris Yost

Art by Bing Cansino, Roland Paris, Edgar Delgado & Brian Reber

Published by Marvel Comics

There was some comic that came out that said, in so many words, that if you wanted-nay, needed- to read about what it was like when Cyclops told Emma Frost about stuff and Emma Frost told Cyclops about stuff, you should wait until this one comes out and buy it. It did that on the second page? The silly thing about that idea was that Cyclops was going to tell Emma Frost stuff she would already know about if she read the X-Force comic book, and Emma Frost was going to tell Cyclops stuff he would already know about if he read that Bendis comic where Alex Maleev drew Namor like an alcoholic sex criminal. But anyway, it came out, and it took two writers and four artists to do what some amateur historian was able to handle in about two cups of coffee time over at wikipedia.

Giant Size Wolverine Old Man Logan # 1

Written by Mark MIllar

Art by Steve McNiven, Dexter Vines, Mark Morales & Morry Hollowell

Published by Marvel Comics

Part of the reason this comic book is "Giant Size" is because it has a bunch of filler back pages in it, one of which is, no shit, the cover of the comic book that It Also Is, meaning you have one page that is just like the cover, because it is the cover. There's also this really intricate page of Steve McNiven's pencil work, which is probably included so that the book's defenders can point at it and say "Look at how fucking hard this guy works, that's why the book's schedule ran off the rails so spectacularly." There's no real argument to the contrary, McNiven clearly puts in a lot of work. There's all kinds of fucking detail here, when people get their shit cut open, when they get their arms sliced off, when people get eaten alive and then rip their way out of people's stomachs, when people rip a mid-air cow in half with their claw hands before putting on a duster and cowboy hat and riding off into the sunset with a Lone Wolf Hulk Baby in the horse-y version of a carseat--shit, there's a lot of goddamn detail to the whole enterprise. Like--McNiven obviously spent some time on this thing, getting up in the morning, working all day, going to bed, repeating the process. One almost wishes that Millar had done the same, but he was clearly too busy not coming up with anything beyond Oh Shit Dude, What If Venom Was A Dinosaur Pass Me The Bong I Just Shit Brain Gold, and you can't blame him for that.

Oh wait. You can, can't you?

-Tucker Stone, 2009

Comics Of The Weak: Why Was Tupac So Mean To Larry Holmes Was It Because He Hated Him

Archie # 601
Written by Michael Uslan
Art by Stan Goldberg, Bob Smith--really? & Glenn Whitmore
Published by Archie

Archie doesn't have an age recommendation on it. It should. The age recommendation would be a limit, and that limit would be determined by this question: Do you know how babies are made? Because if you know that babies are made with things called "dicks and vaginas", you really shouldn't read this thing. Not because it shows the actual coitus--it doesn't, it's one of those panels with hearts exploding out of a closed door--but because Veronica is pregnant by the end of the comic, and that means that Archie--somehow, someway--ejaculated his semen into Veronica's body. That's something that happened in between the panels. Somewhere between pages 20 and 23, Archie's penis got hard, Archie put his penis inside Veronica, his little weird face contorted into a death mask as he pumped his pelvic regions toward the part of her body where the legs meet, and then he came inside her. And those actions got her pregnant.

That's really fucking gross. If you don't know how babies are made, you don't think about that kind of stuff when you're reading Archie 601. But if you do? You can't not think about it.

Pluto # 5

By Naoki Urasawa

Published by Viz

The thing about going dark is that you run out of ways to get darker, everybody knows that. They got some show on FX about gun-running bikers, so you know what they had to do to come up with villains? They had a bunch of Neo-Nazi types gang rape some guys mom. That's where you'll end up when you go dark--gang rape in a warehouse, with the guy who used to sing "TV Party" leading the charge. The other thing that happens is that going a completely other direction ends up being courageous, because it's so opposite what people's dollars seem to imply them wanting. And that's how we end up with Naoki Urasawa fighting with Amanda Conner for the title of "ballsiest", which is the real fight that 2009 has been all about. Amanda's spent the better part of the last three months doing a Supergirl comic that's working to redefine the medically allowable amount of cute, and Viz has responded. Here, they say. Pluto 5. Look upon this kitten. Read its meows. Ask yourself: can you handle this, you masturbating blood soaked comics reader? Can you handle the adorable? Because if you can't--well, shit. There's a whole world out there, and they'll find this kitten soon enough. And kittens? Kittens get people fucking laid. At the end of the day, that's where the next generation comes from anyway: people who do it. And when the biological clock starts buzzing, nobody chooses the dude who giggles at gang rape. Not if there's a suave cat into kittens 'round the corner.

Amazing Spider-Man # 605

Written by Fred Van Lente & Brian Reed

Art by Mike Mayhew, Yanick Paquette, Javier Pulido, Luke Ross & Mark Farmer

Published by Marvel Comics

If there's a worse Amazing Spider-Man cover this year, it'll only be because they're currently printing about seven hundred Amazing Spider-Man comics a month, counting all the fucking variant covers and second printing covers. But it's still gonna be a tough fucking battle, because this is some of the ugliest shit they've smacked on a cover in awhile, and barely any of 2009's Spider-Man comics have had nice covers. You gotta give them some kind of respect for the fact that it's a pretty accurate cover, in that the comic underneath it is 100% fluff, just page after page of the sort of soap opera shit that makes one grasp how difficult it must be to actually write a soap opera, because the twists and contortions of this nonsense are enough to make that cage fight season of the O.C. approach Shakespearean depth in comparison. There's a break for Spider-Man to fight some robot suit people who crowd him the same way all the ladies do, but they eventually decide he's a pretty proper dude. So maybe the message is some kind of bros before hoes, Parker just needs more bros, something like that? Yeah, maybe. Or maybe Parker just needs to get himself into a comic where the writers don't set all the women at the level of "shrill martyr".

Brave and the Bold # 27

Written by J. Michael Straczynksi

Art by Jesus Saiz & Trish Mulvihill

Published by DC Comics

It must be a real pain in the ass to go from working on something like 100 Bullets to this, to have to respond to the question "hey, what are you working on these days" and have the response be "a fucking Brave and the Bold issue where Batman gives his rough approximation of the scene from Saving Private Ryan where Tom Hanks croaks 'Earn this' while Matt Damon nodded his head". If only this could've been a little bit longer, and they could've included the Straczynski version of the scene where the old man stands in the cemetery going I tried so Hard I did I made babies and paid Taxes I hope that's what you wanted Guy Who Died omigolly Human Life is so precious and america and stuff now i gotta get back to a comic book blog's comment section to argue about health insurance and patriotism holy shit im so fucking valuable look how i use my time

Vengeance of Moon Knight # 1

Written by Gregg Hurwitz

Art by Jerome Opena & Dan Brown

Published by Marvel Comics

What does Moon Knight need vengeance for, exactly? He chooses to dress the way he does, he says things like "I wanna be on Broadway" without anybody putting a gun to his head...all his problems are his own fault, y'know? Does he want vengeance on the general comic book reading audience, who haven't showed up for his adventures in the amount necessary to continue publication of such adventures? He's got a butler, he's rich, he's crazy--what the fuck does he want out of people? For them to forget about Batman, the character who does all the same things Moon Knight does, albeit with less overall shittiness? If anybody deserves vengeance, it's Jerome Opena, because he really should be given better comic characters to illustrate. 

R.E.B.E.L.S. # 8

Written by Tony Bedard

Art by Andy Clarke & Jose Villarrubia

Published by DC Comics

Is there a rulebook somewhere that says that all spaceship stories have to involve some moment where a group of people do something to their ship or themselves that convinces a giant computer (or hive brain) that they are part of the alien overlords? You know, so that they can sneak onto the planet/mother ship and get down to the business of--whatever, fighting alongside muppets to blow up towers, shit like that. "Giving it a virus", like they did in the Jeff Goldblum movie. They should get some amendments to that rulebook, because anything that shows up in Jeff Goldblum movies--The Fly doesn't count, that's a Cronenberg movie--should never get re-used unless Goldblum's involved. Same reason Bret Easton Ellis shouldn't get to write anymore, because Goldblum in Igby Goes Down--that was the kind of Goldblum performance that rendered all future Ellis books moot. And Igby Goes Down wasn't even an Ellis book in the first place! That's the kind of power Goldblum's got. His mark never fades.

Daredevil The List # 1

Written by Andy Diggle

Art by Billy Tan

Published by Marvel Comics

Whereas the last two guys to handle Daredevil started off their run on the character by doing something "unusual" for the character, Andy Diggle's run gets the unhappy blight of having to do the one fucking thing that no comics writer should ever have to do with the character: a Bullseye versus Daredevil throwdown where Bullseye points out that not killing him is tantamount to helping him kill others. It's like giving Batman to somebody and then saying "oh, you gotta do Year One real quick, don't worry, nobody remembers that Miller/Mazzucchelli thing". But that's the hand Diggle got dealt, and he got "tie it into the current status quo" as well, which was the one thing that the Daredevil title hasn't had to do for what, like 200 issues? What's the last tie in thing they did in this comic? Fucking Secret Wars? Hell, they had Daredevil show up in Civil War and the regular comic chugged along just like normal. 

Was nice of Billy to do such a crappy job on art though. It's almost like he's trying to deflect attention from his brother or something.

Batman & Robin # 4

Written by Grant Morrison

Art by Philip Tan & Jonathan Glapion

Published by DC Comics

In the last issue, Damian was arguing that it would be more accurate to refer to the comic in which he appears as "Robin & Batman", and considering how ineffectual Batman is in this issue (especially cast against the much more effective, and funnier, Robin) there's some value to that little aside. That's good, that the little things have value, since that turns out to be the only thing memorable about this comic--the little things, like when Grant Morrison does his version of the Geoff Johns Read More Comics Reference by calling out to Frank Miller's All Star Batman. (Hey! Thanks for buying stuff! Let me get you more!) Otherwise, you're just trapped inside a comic where buckets of dark ink have been poured across the page, a dead, black world where Commissioner Gordon sucks his lower jaw inside his mustache and Alfred walks around with the back of his head nailed to something so far off panel that he looks like he's going to ask Eddie if he's okay. It's bad art, sure: that was expected. But it does a neat trick, something that Quitely either obscured or didn't have to deal with in the first three issues: this is another mechanical story about why Batman matters--he doesn't--and it's devoid of joy, lacking in ambition. It's weak, and it's old. Considering where Morrison started--with a hairy chested playboy who fell out of a sky of comic panels so that he could dance with manbat ninjas--that's a pretty sad left turn. Like him or not, the most valuable thing about Morrison's stuff has always been that he wrote comics that nobody else could. Like Ennis, Moore or Miller, you could pick Grant's work out of a blindfolded line-up--good or bad, they were different, they were personal, they were his. Batman and Robin # 4? This?

This could've been written by Bruce Jones.

-Tucker Stone, 2009