The Savage Critic: June 7, 2001 By Brian Hibbs

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

Moderate-sized, but pretty bland week this time out – not even one Excellent. I’m now convinced that getting this out on Thursday is probably a foolish goal. So, from now on, don’t expect to see my ramblings until Friday morning. Call it 11 AM PST, to be safe. If we can get it up before then, then killer...but don’t count on it.

100 BULLETS #25: Good. The "point" seems to be getting a little clearer (I can ALMOST describe the plot now), but damn if this doesn’t have some of the best art on the stands each month. Doesn’t even matter if it HAS a plot, y’know?

AUTHORITY #23: OK. Maybe it’s the lateness, maybe it’s just that I don’t want to read about unrepentant bastards, but this just wasn’t satisfying to me. The end seemed a bit cheesy to me, as well.

BATGIRL #17: Eh. I read it an hour ago, and I really don’t have much to say about it... that’s usually a bad sign :)

BATMAN GOTHAM ADVENTURES #39: Eh. I would have liked this a bit more were it not for the obligatory fight scene right at the end.

BATMAN LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT #144: Eh. So, like it seems to me that the whole point of this arc is the last page, and the cover of the next issue? Didn’t really need the first 2 parts then, did we?

BAY CITY JIVE #2: OK. It’s actually kind of amusing. At least San Francisco is portrayed relatively accurately.

BLUE MONDAY ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS #3: OK. I really hate "American Manga", but this is pretty charming. Still, its only the pooka stuff that works well for me.

CHYNA II #1: She’s got to be a dude. *shudder* Nice art from Deodato, that actually focuses on story-telling rather than legs and tits, but the story is just yucky. Reads like Steven Grant wrote it on the can – I guessed every twist before they showed up. Awful.

CITIZEN V #3: Awful. Just awful. T-bolts is the wrong book to try and spin-off new titles from.

CRUSADES #4: Awful. This just isn’t working for me on ANY level. And this certainly doesn’t take place in any San Francisco I have ever been to. At least there weren’t any blatant misspellings like "knob hill" again. Which is especially ironic in a title where one of the leads is a FACT CHECKER. Here’s another thing: I really love Kelley Jones’ art. I also don’t mind cheesecake. But Kelley drawing cheesecake is... oh, I don’t know, chocolate hollandaise sauce, maybe. It’s just wrong.

DAREDEVIL YELLOW #1: OK. Gorgeous Tim Sale art (and FAB colors by Hollingsworth)...but the story just didn’t work for me.

DESERT PEACH #30: Donna Barr is a talented cartoonist. Whose work simply doesn’t appeal to me on ANY level. Yet I still dutifully try each new release. Ah well. One tip, though: if EVERYONE is speaking a foreign language, putting <brackets> around every single scrap of dialogue looks really fucking wrong. Eh.

EXILES #1: OK. Appealing characters, interesting (if not very original) scenario, nice art, crisp dialogue – but, ugh, too much exposition. Still, this could develop into a decent title now that the character introductions are over.

FANTASTIC FOUR #44: OK. Great art, but I just don’t care about the negative zone as a story device...or these Gideon Trust cats or that "Hellscout" dude.

FIRST #8: Awful. Couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

GREEN LANTERN OUR WORLDS AT WAR: Eh. *sigh* OK, first off, there’s a plot device here that’s IDENTICAL to this week’s Superman (also an OWAW book)...so, if you read BOTH of them, one will be fairly ruined. I read Superman first. There’s some decent character development stuff in here (though, y’know, I could do without the "Kyle’s cool because he gets to bang the green chick" scene) that would have worked better in a regular issue of GL. Not an auspicious start to a big summer crossover, though.

HAMMER OF THE GODS #3: Eh. Hot art, cold story. Nice to look at though.

HELLSPAWN #8: Awful. First off Steve Niles couldn’t write a laundry list – has he ever written an original thought? Second off Ashley Wood should refrain from ripping Sienkiewicz (that bad guy looks JUST like Perry from Elektra: Assassin)

HEROBEAR AND THE KID #3: Good. It’s charming, though the "Pencil-style" is distracting to me.

INITIATION VOYAGE #1: Heh. Well, right, I normally don’t review porno comics (what’s to review, really? "...and then they fuck!") But, I DO try to flip through everything that comes through the doors...as porno goes this is some pretty nasty S&M rape stuff, and I would have thrown it down, had it not been for.... the translation.

I think this is an Italian comic (the company is Italian anyway), but it appears to have been translated from Italian into, say, Czechoslovakian, into Chinese, then back into Italian, and then finally translated into English for us.

Check this sample of dialogue:

I just thought this needed to be pointed out for the sheer laugh factor. Oh, and as a review: CRAP!

JLA #54: Awful. Wow, what a flat flat flat issue.

JOSS WHEDONS FRAY #1: Very good. Surprised the heck out of me, too, because Buffy doesn’t do much for me.

KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE ILLUSTRATED #7: KODT is one of the funniest comics on the stands – Fantasy RPGers sitting around a table and playing...fifty-some issues into it and it gets funnier with each one. The premise of KODTIll is to retell those stories, from the characters POV. Its sorta funny (the source material is good), but the art is awful and the OOC (Out Of Character) machinations to make the jokes work....well, doesn’t. Awful.

MARTIAN MANHUNTER #33: Eh. I don’t know if I could care less than I do about MM’s backstory.

MYSTIC #13: Eh. At least I could follow this one. CrossGen is apparently Not For Me.

NAUGHTY BITS #34: OK. The Bitchy story was good, but all of the "this will be in Bitchy Strips" material seemed like padding to me. Gregory is a remarkably honest cartoonist, though.

PLANET OF THE APES HUMAN WAR #1: If this is at ALL indicative of the movie, I wouldn’t be going to watch it. Awful.

SAVAGE DRAGON #85: OK. When Erik is on, he’s one of the greats. When he’s not, he throws way too much into a comic for it to gel. Guess which this is?

SPAWN #108: OK. Issues like this make me wonder why Sam and Twitch have their own comic, though.

SPECTRE #6: Eh. DeMatteis-psycho-babble. Been there, done that. Nice art though.

STAR WARS INFINITIES A NEW HOPE #2: Good. Surprised me, too – I thought issue #1 was pretty limp. Here’s as good as a place as any for "my" Star Wars theory. (I’ve heard others state the same opinion, but I came up with it on my own): The Trilogy is about the corruption of Luke Skywalker. The obvious, first: in SW he wears white, in Empire Grey, in Jedi, black. He does the direct opposite of virtually everything Yoda or Ben tell him – and in the end when the Emperor says, "give into hate, and grow strong" Luke DOES. If Lucas ever DID make the third trilogy, Luke MUST be the antagonist.

Sidebar: one San Diego ComicCon, I smoked up with Mark Hammil, and he agreed with my theory. Sure, he might have done so to get the fanboy to shut up, but I still hold that memory as a matter of personal pride :)

Anyway, what’s neat here is that THIS Luke might actually end up being the good guy – he’s certainly paying attention to Yoda and Ben...though I wish he wouldn’t have taken the weapons into the cave...that scene just doesn’t work, since he’s NOT facing himself in this case....

SUPERMAN #171: Eh. See GL:OWAW above. One other thing, though...given the Fatal Five don’t actually exist in the current DCU, how/why did b13 create the holograms of them? That just doesn’t make sense.

THOR #38: Very nice BWS cover. Nice Stuart Immonen interior art. Same ol’ average Dan Jurgens story. Eh.

TOMB RAIDER #0: Why was this "zero"? Nothing remotely approaching an origin or prequel or anything. *shrug* Eh.

ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #10: Very Good. "Find this Carson Daly person and destroy him." Ahahahahaha. Plus the sliding down the window thing...this was just good fun Spidey.

WILDCATS VOL 2 #24: Very good. The one book Joe Casey does that I can consistently support. I really like the fact this "team" is all of two people :)

WITCHBLADE #48: OK. Less obvious cheesecake than normal, too.

X-MEN THE HIDDEN YEARS #21: Eh. The shame of it is Byrne is still a clever creator when his heart is in it. Totally absent here, though.

YOUNG JUSTICE #34: Eh. Not as funny as PAD seems to think it is.

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.

AKIKO #44
ALRAUNE #1
AMELIA RULES #1
ARCHIES WEIRD MYSTERIES #14
BRAVE AND THE BOLD ANNUAL 1969 #1
CHASTITY SHATTERED #1
DIRTY PAIR SIM HELL REMASTERED #2
INKPUNKS QUARTERLY #1
KAMIKAZE 1946 #5
KREEKY PLAYGROUND #1
LADY VAMPYRE #2
LINT MCCREE SHADOWS WITHIN SHADOWS #2
LOONEY TUNES #79
MANGAZINE #21
MARVEL POSTER BOOK SUMMER 2001
MAXION #18
PALEO TALES LATE CRETACEOUS #2
RETURN OF ALISON DARE LITTLE MISS ADV #2
SEVENTH SEA #2
TIME TRAVELER AI #19
VOICE OF SUBMISSION 2 GEHENNA#7
WERESLUT #1
ZENDRA #5

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.

2000 AD #1241
2024 GN HC ED
ALL THE WRONG PLACES TP
BENKEI IN NEW YORK VOL 1 TP
CLOVER VOL 1 PKT MIXX GN
ESSENTIAL FANTASTIC FOUR VOL 3 TP
HEARTBROKEN ANGELS VOL 2 TP
HECTIC PLANET BOOK 3 YOUNG AND RECKLESS
JUXTAPOZ JUL AUG 2001
KAZAN VOL 1 #1
KAZAN VOL 1 #2
LEO ROA VOL 1 HC TRUE TALES OF LEO ROA
MAICO 2010 VOL 1 #1
MAICO 2010 VOL 1 #2
MARTIAN MANHUNTER ACTION FIGURE
ORION AND DARKSEID DLX ACTIONFIGURE SET
RED TORNADO ACTION FIGURE
SANDMAN DEATH PRAYER CANDLE
SANDMAN DREAM PRAYER CANDLE
SPIDER-MAN TORMENT TP NEW PRTG
STARLOG #288
TOMB RAIDER PREVIEWS EXCLUSIVE VARIANT ED #2
TOMIE VOL 1 #1
TRIPWIRE MAGAZINE #5
VIDEO WATCHDOG #72
WENDEL ALL TOGETHER
WILL EISNERS SHOP TALK TP
WITNESS TO WAR

This Week’s TPB recommendation is: a very hard call. Jeff Lester would probably say Benkei... but I think I’m going to go with All the Wrong Places. Well put together story that really never got enough press or word of mouth for people to give it a look. Nice reality-based story.

Average Rating for the Week: 3.38 (of 7.00)

Pick of the Week: Hm. Joss Whedon’s Fray #1. I just couldn’t bear to give it to Ultimate Spider-Man :) Seriously, very good book – much much better than I expected.

Pick of the Weak: Initiation Voyage #1 is a might too obvious.... so the badge of shame goes (just barely) to Hellspawn #8. Initiation Voyage may be better written, however.