The Savage Critic: May 23, 2001 By Brian Hibbs

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

Puny, tiny, and utterly weak week for funny books this time out. Bastards! Feast or famine, feast or fucking famine! Why can’t we get nice even ship weeks?

10TH MUSE #4: Crap. Wretched art; garish coloring; and an unreadable, yet edumacated story. Best thing about this comic was the "fan art" from the five- and ten-year olds.

BATMAN LEAGUE OF BATMEN #2: Awful. Sometimes format dictates review. If this was a $2.50 comic, it might get an "eh", but at this price, not a fucking chance. This just feels like "we need a prestige format Batman comic every month, you’re elected", when its anything BUT "Prestige".

BIRDS OF PREY #31: Eh. I like this book most months, but this issue fell utterly flat for me. Does anyone really care about Jason Bard, anyway? I sure as fuck don’t. And it’s goddamn time to put a moratorium on Ra’s Al Ghul.

COFFIN #4: OK. This book surely has craft and an unique style, but its been, what? a fucking YEAR? since the first issue shipped? Too long for me. Bet it reads nicely as a TPB though.

CROSSGEN CHRONICLES #3: OK. It's eminently readable, and it has nice nice art by Perez, and wonderful coloring by Laura DePuy...but I just don’t care. I’m not the demographic for this comic, though (teenage girls, it says in one of the text pieces), so take that into consideration.

DEADPOOL #54: Awful. I got a few cheap giggles from the sex jokes, but this was a padded and weak story.

ELECTROPOLIS #1: OK. It’s nice to see Dean Motter doing comics again, and I’m always amused by his cute world building (The robot named "Menlo Park" is amusing)...but there just wasn’t enough to this issue for me to feel strongly about it either way.

GREEN LANTERN WILLWORLD HC: Very good. JM DeMatteis is a pretty good writer when he doesn’t succumb to the excesses of his philosophies. And theres a SMIDGE of that in here...but not enough to ruin it for me :) The art, by Seth Fisher, is just fucking unbelievably cool, however, and even IF the story was bad, I’d be able to recommend this. Man, is this a NICE book. I only wish the editor had taken out the "chapter titles" which tell you, fairly clearly, that this was pitched as a 4-issue mini-series, and someone up at DC went "Hm, this looks nice enough to upgrade the presentation". That’s me being petty though :)

HEAVY METAL JULY 2001: Eh. "Anthologies don’t sell" is conventional wisdom, and Heavy Metal seems to give SOME lie to this idea...but the thing is, anthologies are only as good as the WORST bit contained within, from a "should I spend money on this?" perspective. And there really wasn’t anything in this issue that offset the mediocre stuff.

JADE #2: Eh. Well-crafted, but ultimately not interesting. Lot fucking better than MOST Chaos! Comics though.

JSA #24: OK. And I really LOVE the JSA. Lalala fight scene, lalalala powerful villain beats the JSA handily, lalalala cliffhanger. Seen it before. IN JSA even. So, foo.

MIKE HOFFMAN'S TIGRESS TALES #1: Eh. He can draw, but the stories were sub-par Warren (the publisher, not Ellis). Art IS nice though.

MONARCHY #3: Eh. I’m Just Not Getting It, I guess. I still don’t know WHO any of these characters are (except FROM OTHER comics), or WHAT their specific function is. There are nice "Mad Ideas" here, but there’s nothing to get me to come back and see how they play out.

NODWICK #8: Eh. Gaming comics (like this and Knights of the Dinner Table), are a neat little development and sub-genre. I really like how Aaron Williams draws, and he’s also good at doing "lite" humor. But I like gaming comics because they skewer GAMING. Doing a parody of Superhero comics sorta seems like missing the point.

OUT THERE #1: OK. Shows real promise, actually. I liked the "realness" of the characters (except for the overly cute "smart kid"), and the setup seems like it COULD be interesting...but, again, not enough here to really judge whether this will turn out GOOD or not. I’ll call it a failure if only because I--if, y’know, I PAID for comics or something--wouldn’t bother plunking down $2.50 for the second issue based on the low pay-off for #1. Noble failure, but failure still.

POWERS #11: Good. Little more "action" than I’m used to in Powers, but it's well put together. I’ll refrain from specifically spoiling the mystery part of it, but I thought motivations seemed a little blurry. I’m also getting a SMIDGE tired of Bendis’ stylistic tricks as a writer. Like, if two characters were to see Ghost Rider, the exchange might go like this:

Character #1: I just saw a guy with a flaming skull for a head.

Character #2: You just saw a guy with a flaming skull for a head?

Character #1: I just saw a guy with a flaming skull for a head.

I mean, YES, that fairly well captures the banality of how real people speak.... but I feel like I read some variation on that type of exchange in ALL of his comics. Anyway....

QUEEN & COUNTRY #2: Good. I’m still not excited by the art, but its nice to see an "espionage" comic that succeeds based on characterization rather than guns ‘n’ titties.

ROBIN #90: Eh. If you count the original mini-series, Chuck Dixon has written well over 100 issues of Robin. Exceedingly few were bad, but not a single one was MEMORABLE. I don’t really see the point of Robin having his own comic anyway. Thing is, it’s damning with faint praise, but this is perfectly adequate juvenile fiction. I just want better than THAT.

SANDMAN PRESENTS EVERYTHING YOUVE EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT DREAMS BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK: Eh. Since I penned last week’s return to the Savage Critic, I remembered one of my "missing two" ratings.... it was "YAWN". Midway between "EH" and "AWFUL", it was for a comic that committed the mortal sin of being BORING, yet wasn’t "bad", per se. This is such a comic. Plus, sheesh, $3.95?!? There’s even some nice art (ooh, Jason Little!), but its wrapped in enough of a "who the fuck CARES?!" package that price seems downright criminal. I won’t even go into the absurdly long title (that won’t even fit into Diamond’s computer system)

SCION #12: Awful. Easily the worst of the CrossGen comics, and just as violent and gory as X-Force (down below). Even a bigger misstep for CrossGen, I think, than X-Force was for Marvel – at least people EXPECT Marvel to do really stupid things in mainstream comics...

SHIDIMA #3: Awful. Fucking incredible colors, but utterly wasted on the poor draftsmanship of the art, and flat characters in the story.

SIMPSONS COMICS #58: Eh. Not quite enough laughs, and the story was too busy. My rule of thumb on Simpsons-related comics is "could this make it on the show?" This one couldn’t.

SPAWN THE DARK AGES #25: Awful. If you look at the cover, you’ve basically read the issue. Heh.

SUPERBOY #88: Eh. I’m not currently 16 or whatever, but my gut says Joe Kelly’s "hip" dialogue is about as applicable as "Fab Gear Wonder-Chick!" was circa 1967. The art is nice, the story itself is reasonably clever, but there’s something about this whole thing that just rubs me the wrong way, and FEELS like complete pandering.

SUPERGIRL #58: Eh. Again, well-crafted comic, by any reasonable standard, but it just smacks of "Look How Clever I Am" – so Buzz is responsible for Jack the Ripper AND Abe Lincoln’s assassination? WhatEVAH!

SUPERMAN THE MAN OF STEEL #114: Awful. Mark Schultz is an excellent artist (Cadillacs and Dinosaurs), but I never thought much of him as a writer. Too text-heavy, too many "happy coincidences", and way way too much "recent continuity".

TANGLED WEB THE THOUSAND #2: Eh. The first issue flat out stank. THIS issue is merely mediocre. Some reasonably funny stuff in the party sequence, but the bad guy is trite and clichéd.

TAROT WITCH OF THE BLACK ROSE #8: Crap. Jesus-fucking-Christ-on-a-big-pointy-stick! Every character has ABSURDLY large breasts, and constantly has their legs spread wide open, often fingering themselves. Wrap THAT around the utter bullshit "power of the goddess" new-age magic nonsense, and you’ve got what might be the worst comic ever conceived of. Or at least in the top ten.

TITANS #29: Awful. There is MAYBE 4 pages of story here. And IT'S NOT EVEN INTERESTING

USAGI YOJIMBO #48: Good. Not the best issue of Usagi, but even the WORST Stan Sakai (and this isn’t that) is better than ¾ of any given week’s comics.

X-FORCE #116: Good. The utter graphic detail of the violence was, IMO, way Way WAY too much for a mainstream mutant comic, and this has zero connection to any incarnation of X-Force before, and I’m not really even sure how comfortably this will "fit" with the rest of the Marvel Universe (not that that is ACTUALLY important, but still), but it does have a heart (of a sort), and it's certainly well done. I’d ALMOST spend money on it.... but not quite.

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!], and 5) Things that looked SO bad on the racks that I didn’t bother.

ARCHIE #510
BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL #57
BTVS #33
BUTCHER KNIGHT #4
CARTOON CARTOONS #5
EAGLE VOL 16 THE GENERAL
ELVIRA #97
GO GIRL #3
GUNDAM WING EPISODE ZERO #2
JEZEBELLE #5
NO NEED FOR TENCHI PART 11 #2
PLEASURE BOUND #7
TEMPLE DUNCAN
VERONICA #114
VORACIA
WEIRD SPACE #4

And, for even MORE completeness sake, here’s a list of books, TPBs, GNs, and magazines 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.

ANIMERICA VOL 9 #5
ASIAN CULT CINEMA #31
DYKES TO WATCH OUT FOR
ELFQUEST READERS COLL VOL 9D CHIEFS HOWL SC
ESSENCE ART OF YOSHITOSHI ABE
FRUMPY THE CLOWN II THE FAT LADY SINGS TP
GAUNTLET #21
IRON MAN THE MASK IN THE IRONMAN TP
KABUKI MASK
PETER PARKER SPIDER-MAN TP
POST DYKES TO WATCH OUT FOR
ROCCO VARGAS DARK FOREST HC
SCION VOL 1 TP
SIZZLE #10
SPYBOY TRIAL AND TERROR TP
TIME TRAVELER AI BOOK 2 SEXY PIRATES

This Week’s TPB recommendation is: Mm. Frumpy the Clown V2. Frumpy is NOWHERE near as funny as Barry Ween is, but it still shows a lot of Judd’s promise as a humor cartoonist.

Average Rating for the Week: 3.10 (of 7.00). Bad week for comics.

Pick of the Week: Has to be (despite the $24.95 price tag) Green Lantern: Willworld HC. If you want something cheaper.... Powers #11, if only because Bendis has the best letter’s page in the business.

Pick of the Weak: Tarot Witch of the Black Rose #8. Fucking criminal!