The Savage Critic: May 15th, 2002 By Brian Hibbs

Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends.

When I was a little kid I had kind of a crush on Amy Carter.

A little-kid crush to be sure – I was 10 years old when her dad was elected President – but she was right around my age, the first time in my life when a President’s kid was, and I thought "Gosh, it must be cool to be her: guys with guns follow her around and she gets to ride in helicopters!" Like I said, a little kid’s "crush".

Yesterday our STAR order (Diamond’s TP reorder thing) came in – 7 boxes packed full of TPs and GNs. Sue was running the counter, and I was mono-maniacally focused on opening the boxes and sorting out the stock. Soooo much restock (we actually got a larger STAR restock this week than the regular comics shipment), and I put myself in the Restock Zone where I’m not really focused on anything but sorting out books.

So, I’m doing my thing, popping boxes, making piles, checking things off the invoice, arranging things on the racks, and I take a step backwards to assess the rack I’m currently working on, and I step on someone. "God, I’m sorry!" I mutter, still completely focused on putting out books. "That’s quite alright," comes the response, and the Stocking part of my brain goes "Situation: Normal. Go back to work."

The other bits of my brain register something, but the stocking part is in charge, and I focus back on the work.

Sue gets hungry and goes off for lunch. No prob, I’m almost done, and I can reallocate 10% of the Stocking brain to Watching The Store brain.

The group that had been shopping the store comes up to the counter, ready to check out, and, like I said, I’m still mostly in Stocking mode. I begin to ring up the purchase: the most recent Eightball, the new Peepshow, James Kolchaka’s Sketchbook Diary, Hernandez Brothers stuff. Not a single clunker in the bunch. Big ass pile of stuff, too – triple digit sale. "Wow," I opine, "you have impeccable taste."

"Thank you, this is an excellent store. I’ve quite enjoyed shopping here."

My Spidey-sense is tingling, but I still haven’t registered fully because I’m thinking about how I’m going to fit that last bunch of manga up on the shelf.

They hand the credit card over, and I complete the sale. "Thanks, enjoy your reading," and they depart.

My brain starts to catch up. Wait a minute, did that card say what I thought it did?

Sue comes back with her food (yummy spring rolls from Herbivore), and I ask her, "Hey, that woman who was here before you left.... did she look familiar to you?"

"Yeah," Sue says with a laugh, "She looked like Amy Carter."

"Whoa," I said, blinking away the Stocking part of my brain, "that’s what her credit card said, too! I thought I was crazy!"

"You ARE crazy, boss."

True ‘dat.

Still, how cool is THAT? A childhood crush comes in, compliments the store, buys a fat stack of immensely good comics, and I don’t act like a babbling idiot, like I might have if I hadn’t had the restock to contend with.

My week is complete.

And if Andrea McArdle comes in next, then my month will be complete....

Sorry for missing last week’s books and reviews, but I think you all understand why. Been just a smidge busy in answering phone calls and following the comments. Still, I think the bulk of it is over, at least until Certification comes, so let’s get me back in the saddle.

Quickly, let’s go back a week and do a little make-up:

The Pick of the Week (5/8) was Fables #1. It’s sure nice to read a Vertigo on-going that fired on all cylinders, with a wide open enough premise to tell just about any kind of story. I think this should have a good long run.

The TP Selection of the Week (5/8) was Marshal Law: Fear and Loathing. God bless Titan for getting this material out again. I hope it does well enough to keep reprinting all of the rest of the run. Super wonderful evil stuff. Go buy a copy today.

The Pick of the Weak (5/8): Apparantly my brain has already flushed out all of the crappy comics from last week, and, just looking at the list, nothing really evokes strong feelings except Azrael #90. I don’t think ANYone was hoping the "AzBat" would return.

Misc notes (5/8): Marvel Mangaverse #2 wasn’t a particulary good comic, but, jesus, wasn’t that redesign of the Inhumans about as cool as it gets? They looked wicked cool.

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One other bit. If you’ve come here via a link, or a search engine while you search for "vampire+blowjob" or something (jeez, the stuff people type into Yahoo and Google is... weird), or you’re just blindly searching for things on the Class Action suit, go back to the introduction page so you know what this column is all about

http://comixexperience.com/savcritindex.htm

THEN you can come back here and read my "reviews"

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Right, old business out of the way, let’s move forward into THIS week’s books!

AUTHORITY #29: Was that worth a year’s wait? No, I think not. I was actually kind of hoping that "Let them solve their own problems" would really create a new direction for the book (well, "newish", because one has to think that Ellis’ original overarching point of "Do the right thing, fuckers" eventually translates into "And, you don’t need fucking superheroes to fix things, either"), but since it was such a preposterous threat, and the resolution took place off camera, I was let down by the whole thing. Nice to see the wedding at the end, but the twin Deux ex machina finales were a bit much. If I was Roger Ebert I might say "Marginal thumbs down", but by the Savage Critic Scale, it gets an Eh

BATMAN GOTHAM KNIGHTS #29: Seeing this is the first "DCU" book of the week, let me say here that DC really shouldn’t have bothered to publish any comics this week. There wasn’t a SINGLE "DCU" book this week that was worth the paper it was printed on. That’s really fucking sad. The DCU should really be marked off as a Disaster Zone. Maybe they could get some Federal money to fix it up. Certainly there are bio-hazards involved. And I’m being nice. Really.

This "Undertaker" storyline was possibly the worst Batman comic I’ve had the misfortune of slogging through this year, and that’s AFTER adding a lot of points for Leonard Manco’s art. It’s even MORE sad coming on the heels of the really good "Murderer?" storyline. If you want a near text-book example of how to piss away your audience, then look no further. It was nice to see John Watkiss drawing again (in the "Black and White" backup feature), but, even there, the story was fairly inane. Nice issue to look at, but pain in the brain to read. Awful

BLACK WIDOW PALE LITTLE SPIDER #2: Not at all bad, but I did rather get the point and the connection in the last few pages of issue #1. This was pretty vampy. Igor Kordy once again shows he’s a FAB artist when he’s not drawing superheroes. I repeat: Kordy can’t draw superheroes. Please don’t make him try. Leave him to "real world" stuff like this, where he really shines. OK

CASTLE WAITING #14: A fine issue, but the Bearded Nuns storyline has been going on for almost two years, hasn’t it? Really glad it is over, because Linda Medley is an incredibly under-appreciated artist. Good

DAREDEVIL #33: Not a whole lot happens – this’ll probably read very very well in a TP. But as a serialization, this storyline has been driving me nuts. Very well told, very well drawn, but in terms of "how much story did I get for my $3", every other issue has been a let down. Still, I’ll give it a Good because the overall story will end up being good, I think.

DEADMAN #6: Maybe it was just my mind’s eye this week, but even Jose Luis Garcia Lopez can’t save this book this month. Might be the "thicker" inking Josef Rubenstien applied this month. Plus I saw that ending coming a mile away. Foo. Awful

ESTABLISHMENT #9: It’s not bad, honestly, it is not... but it sorta feels like wandering around Grant Morrison’s flat finding his leftover drugs, and seeing if you can get as high as him. Well, no, you can’t: Grant’s already consumed the best of them. OK

GEN 13 #77: Ah, the "real" last issue, and praise God, it DIDN’T "undo" the last few issues. Useful in the "honestly, they’re dead and gone" sense of things, but otherwise not too much of a point here at all. OK

HARLEY QUINN #20: It’s not like this book usually works anyway, but placing Harley in the single least-funny situation ever makes this sit there like an unflushed turd. Not only is this bad, but it completely misses what ANY one would like or enjoy about HQ. At least when something crappy like Tarot comes out, it is honest about its intent, y’know? Crap

HELLBLAZER #173: *waiting for something to happen* Azzarello somehow gets to work with the best artists, but he hasn’t told me a satisfying story in quite some time. I’m of the mind you shouldn’t work on a character you apparently dislike so much that you feel like you have to fuck ‘em up. Perhaps I’m reading into motivation here (Nah, I’m SURE I am), but that’s what his Constantine run has felt like to me all the way through. The fab art bumps this up (barely) to an Eh

INCREDIBLE HULK #40: Hulk not smash. It’s just not working for me. It should be, and everyone else seems to like it, but this take is just not working for me. Eh

IRON MAN #55: Yikes. Right, so I understand that the big fight in this issue is to show that the New Mandarin is A Bad Ass. But, honestly, can you see ANY hand-to-hand fighter taking out the IM Suit? Ever? I don’t. There’s also a Big Shocking Revelation which, somehow, is less than exciting. One gets the sense there really isn’t much of a game plan here. Awful

JIST WITH CHRIS BACHALO CREATING CATWOMAN: Nice art, same ol’ absurd Stan story. Oddly, we’re almost sold out of this. This makes no sense to me since people haven’t been buying the OTHER "nice art, shitty story" Stan books; nor can we sell hardly any of something like Steampunk. I really thought Bachalo’s star was on the wane. Guess I’m wrong. Maybe it’s the claws? Anyway, the Critic sez: Eh

KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE #67: Perceptually more comics this month. I continue to find this the funniest book on the market. Good

LAB RATS #2: It’s like Byrne himself doesn’t even care anymore. Awful

LUCIFER #26: Now THAT was good. I was really afraid I’d go through the whole week without liking even ONE DC comic. Thank you, Mike Carey! Huge fucking tactical error in not putting Death on the cover since she’s all over this issue, as opposed to just the final page of last months. And she was handled PERFECTLY. That ending almost made me cry. Excellent.

MARQUIS DEVILS REIGN HELLS COURTESAN #2: I’m a big fan of Guy Davis, but I find Marquis to be impenetrable. The first two pages being in French didn’t help one bit at all. Couldn’t read it – just flipped through and gazed in wide wonder at the art. This grade is too harsh, because the art really IS great, but that’s the scale for you: Awful

MIDNIGHT NATION #11: That choice wasn’t really much of a choice (I mean, if he didn’t pick that, we wouldn’t have been reading this story for 11 issues, would we?), but it was still very well done. This could easily have been the last issue... in fact, I can’t even imagine what the next one will be. Well, unless he takes over for her, of course, making the whole thing a circle.... Good

MISPLACED #3: I think you might recall that I really liked the first issue. This one felt like "Oh, god, I’m tired of this story, so let’s wrap it up all fast so I can move on to some other idea". That’s my long-winded way of saying: Awful

MUTIES #4: Nice, if ultimately pointless. I think these stories would have worked better being about half the length and being in an anthology. Then we might be talking about this new writer find. At least it’s not treading old mutant ground, and for that I can give it a Good

NEW X-MEN #126: I have to say that I didn’t really understand the big finish. What WAS that thing? Why did it look one way first, and then like something else? Grant ALWAYS does that to me. Perhaps I am shallow and unwise. I dunno. Though, with Grant, one imagines his head is SO dripping with ideas, that he loses patience with his endings while he barrels forward with his next beginning.

There are also a few storytelling problems: the reveal of Emma’s girls was awkward; the reference to "Onslaught" should have been avoided because it just made me think "right, they did this before"; the nod-to-Origin of calling Wolvie "James" was way out of left field... HE doesn’t know any of that yet; and having Supe...er, Gladiator piss himself was a bit much. But these are quibbles. Grant and Frank ARE the team to beat in modern comics today, and it’s wild and it’s fun and it’s bigger than any movie could ever have been. Just imagine if Frank had drawn it all!

Finally, props to Marvel for putting this issue on really good paper, finally. The coloring was a bit loud, maybe, but this stock is better than the usual toilet-paper they print their comics on. All-in-all: Excellent

NOBLE CAUSES #3: I’m going to use this metaphor again in a few entries, but this feels like someone’s Champions campaign writ-large. I get the feeling Jay knows these characters inside and out, and knows all of their motivations and passions and reasons... but he hasn’t told us most of it. With a good editor, this could have really been something. As it is now, Eh

PANTHEON #11: Again, a Champions campaign. A 12 issue maxi- coming out roughly quarterly... well that’s just a bad idea. I have no emotional attachment to ANY of these characters, and with those kinds of waits, you really need to have SOME feelings. Oh well, only one to go. Awful

POWER COMPANY #4: And our final Champions campaign. (odd how they came all at once this week, in alphabetical order!). Grummet is an excellent penciller, Kurt is a great writer, but the final product is about as generic as things get. Now that the editor has been released (www.modforce.com), I’ll be having more fun playing new Freedom Force mods than reading this book. Eh

PUNISHER #12: I think this was supposed to be funny? Failed. Awful

RADIOACTIVE MAN #575: Also not funny... but a great pastiche of American Flagg! that hits almost every note perfectly. Clearly this book is a labor of love for all involved. Good

SANDWALK ADVENTURES #3: Is that market pressures I’m seeing? A continually fun look at Darwin, but my eye wanted to utterly flee the cover. I almost didn’t pick it up to read. That would have been a major loss. Good

SAVAGE DRAGON #97: And here comes the reset button. As much as I enjoy Erik’s obvious love and passion for what he’s doing here, I ended the issue feeling like I’ve just read the Spider-clone story: Last two years pretty much wasted. Ah well. Eh

SIMPSONS COMICS #70: This issue made no impression on me whatsoever. I can’t even remember from here at home what the cover looked like. That’s an automatic Awful

SPIDER-MAN PETER PARKER #44: Well, that’s how it appears on the invoice at least. I should really edit the title to be in "P", but I’m running out of time before I have to get to the store and open her up to wait for Andrea McArdle. PPSM tries desperately to ride the Spidey movie, while ALSO following non-movie continuity, and I think it ends up neither fish nor fowl. I’m not seeing any "movie related" interest in the comics though – Civs are coming in and buying the TPs. At least we HAVE good TPs this time through. Anyway, this was perfectly adequate, but somehow lacking, or in Critic-speak: Eh

SPIDER-MAN QUALITY OF LIFE #1: The fully computerized art is... well, I think it’s pretty ugly, personally. After reading this, I went back to the credits and was STUNNED that Greg Rucka wrote this. There’s a ten-ton plot hole in the first dozen pages that I’m going to have to assume that he either just dialogued this after the art was done, or the artist completely ignored his script. Not My Thing, and so I say Awful

STRANGERS IN PARADISE VOL III#50: I’m on the fence enough that I was hoping this would suck hard so I could finally drop the book at a nice clean number. But, no, I quite liked large chunks of it. *sigh* Good

STRAY BULLETS #25: Wrong wrong wrong on SO many levels, yet it was so well told I can forgive the sadism. Lapham is REALLY on his game after the break. Excellent

SUPERMAN ALIENS II #1: You know there’s something wrong when the best DC book of the week is published by Dark Horse. I quite liked this... except for the "E-Z Reader" lettering. Yikes, way to ruin a good story. Honestly, that alone drops the grade one notch to Good

SUPERMAN THE MAN OF STEEL #126: I was... well not liking this, but at least hating it less than usual... until we got to the end. Lois as a Goddess? Wrong turn, man. Awful

TASKMASTER #4: Its over. Eh

THUNDERBOLTS #64: (Dramatic Super Friends voice) Will Helmut turn good? (Cynical Hibbs voice) AHAHAHAHAHAHA. As IF. Not much suspense here, so Eh

ULTIMATE MARVEL TEAM UP #16: The last story page made it all worth it. I’ll miss this title, despite it’s unevenness. Good

ULTIMATE X-MEN #18: I kinda liked the tone of the ending a lot, and there were some good twists on the "normal" Marvel universe, but there’s just something that’s not clicking here for me. Wish I knew what it was. OK

WAY OF THE RAT #1: I’m not what you would call a huge Chuck Dixon fan... and I’ve been pretty luke-warm to the CrossGen line as a whole. So color me surprised when I found myself tremendously enjoying this debut. Worked VERY well for me, and there weren’t any "CrossGen Universe" connections that were obvious, making this probably the best "what’s the hype all about then" book to try. Now we make Chris Oarr’s head explode as I give this a Very Good

X-FORCE #127: Last book, and I’m out of witty things to say, so let’s just grade it as Excellent and get to the store....

For Sake of Completeness, here’s a list of all of the OTHER comics that CE got in this week, that I did NOT read (and, therefore, am unlikely to review!). Note, that in most cases this is limited to 1) Manga, which I try to read as it is collected; 2) "Kids" comics like most of the Archies; 3) titles that were subs-only, either by design or accident; 4) Porno [oh, like you need me to REVIEW it!], 5) Things that looked SO bad on the racks that I didn’t bother, and 6) stuff that I’ve assessed before, and I care so little about that I don’t want to waste my time reading anymore. You decide which is which.

ARCHIE DOUBLE DIGEST #134
BETTY & VERONICA #175
CANNON GOD EXAXXION #7
EX PARTE #1
FUTABAKUN CHANGE VOL 8 #3
MYSTIC #24
POWERPUFF GIRLS #27
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #110
STAR WARS #42
SUPER MANGA BLAST #21
TICK GOLDEN AGE COMIC #1
TRUTH SERUM #3
VAMPIRE YUI VOL 4 #3
VANISHERS GN

And, for even MORE completeness sake, here’s a list of books, TPBs, GNs, magazines, and other things that CE got this week. I generally haven’t read any of this by the time I post these reviews. Though I generally attempt to give at least one recommendation amongst the TPBs each week, since I HAVE read the material at SOME point.

2000 AD #1286
ANIMERICA EXTRA VOL 5 #6
ANIMERICA JUNE 2002 VOL 10 #6
ASIAN CULT CINEMA #35
COMICS JOURNAL #243
FORGE #2
FORTEAN TIMES #158
JSA VILLAINS THE SHADE ACTIONFIGURE
JSA VILLAINS VANDAL SAVAGE ACTION FIGURE
LEGION OF SUPERHEROES BRAINIAC 5 ACTION FIGURE
LEGION OF SUPERHEROES MON EL ACTION FIGURE
MAD XL #15
NO NEED FOR TENCHI VOL 12 NO NEED FOR ENDINGS TP
POPIMAGE VOL 1 TP
PULP JUNE 2002 VOL 6 #6
SERGIO ARAGONES ACTIONS SPEAKTP
TEACH ME VOL 1 GN
TOMARTS ACTION FIGURE DIGEST #98
TOYFARE SPIDER MAN CVR #59
X 1999 VOL 7 RHAPSODY TP

This Week’s TP recommendation is: Jeez. No real choices this week, huh? Can’t I just recommend Marshal Law: Fear and Loathing again? Otherwise, and it’s not a TP, my only pick from this category is Comics Journal #243 with the excellent Dylan Horracks interview. I haven’t made it through Popimage yet, and while the Sergio book is Sergio, it’s also all pantomime, which wears a smidge thin about halfway through the collection...

Average Rating for the Week: 41 books "reviewed" for an average rating of 3.73 (out of a possible 7.00) Quite a good week for comics, despite it being a small shipment.

Pick of the Week: Choices choices choices.... Lucifer #26, New X-Men #126 and X-Force #127 were all superb, but I think Dave Lapham got my heart a little more, and so we give this week’s prize to Stray Bullets #25

Pick of the Weak: Again so many choices, but I’m going to make my life easier this week, and just give the booby prize to The Entire DCU this week. All y'all should be desperately ashamed at this week’s output. Its embarrassing, folks.