The Savage Critic: July 31, 2002
By Jeff
Lester
Welcome
back, my friends, to the Bud Abbott-only version of the show that never
ends—Bri’s on his way to San Diego, so he asked
me to fill me in. Next week, we should try another tag-team column
that so many of you seemed to enjoy. This week, though, it’s all me.
Before I get to the books,
I wanted to mention that anyone in the S.F. area between now and October
13 should really check out the exceptional show Fantastic!
The Art of Comics and Illusion, running over at the Yerba Buena
Gallery. Two regulars at our store, Paul Candler and David Robson,
did the bulk of curating for this awesome two-story salute of alternative,
indy and local cartoonists. Impressively inclusive and extraordinarily
well-designed, I’m still reeling from the opening of this. My secret
prayer for this show (that they’d squeeze in Jess’ comic collage masterpiece
Tricky Cad) went unanswered but that doesn’t make this any less
an absolute must-see.
And, to balance out the comix
connoisseur yin with some fanboy yang: Hey, Hibbs! What the hell?
DK II #3 comes out and you flee to San Diego, leaving me
to try to review it on my own? Curse you, Hibbs! Cuuuuurrrrse Youuuuu!!!
Ahem. There. Now, then:
Let’s review some funny books.
30 DAYS OF NIGHT #2: First
issue of this was good, second much less so. Templesmith’s art is great
for atmosphere, but lousy for telling what’s going on. And it feels
like after Niles’ first inspiration—vampires
in an arctic city without daylight—he’s got nowhere else to go. This
is over in another issue? It’s barely started! Awful.
ACTION COMICS #793: Well, they didn’t bungle that as badly as I thought
they would have…but it still struck me as letting iconography and fanboy
sentimentality do all the heavy lifting, rather than characterization
or genuine emotional involvement. Eh.
AVENGERS #56: Kurt’s last
issue isn’t really fish nor fowl, but that’s okay. The accounting side
of the story is shtick, and I would’ve liked it if it had actually had
a story to it, but I get the feeling that it was just one of those ideas
Kurt really wanted to do before he split. I’m sure it’ll work fine
for the Avengers crowd. OK.
BATMAN GOTHAM ADVENTURES
#52: Used to be my favorite Bat-title a few years back. But either
this is an atypical weak issue, or Scott Peterson is getting sloppy.
Bane’s going to organize an army of kids and never, ever suspect that
Batman will send in Robin? What planet is this? Awful.
CEREBUS #280: Annnnnnddd
we’re right back to wackyland. Is Dave paralleling his/Cerebus’ examination
of the great religions with his examination of great comedy influences?
Or is he just lobbing one well-done (if dated) caricature after the
next as the necessary sugar to get us to take the metaphysical religion?
Hulk’s head hurts. Good.
CODENAME KNOCKOUT #15: Like
watching paint dry…if the paint was wearing a little miniskirt and you
could look at its panties. Awful.
DARK KNIGHT STRIKES AGAIN #3: Um, wow. Did I just read the largest
budget corporate sponsored underground comic ever published? Cuz I
think I just did: if there was a single epater le bourgeois
moment that Frank missed, it’s beyond me. I could talk about all the
fancy-dan moves Miller breaks out so we don’t confuse his band of terrorists
trying to overthrow an evil and corrupt American government with the
9/11 types who believe themselves to be doing the same thing (I always
assumed this was one of the reasons for the big post-9/11 delay), but
I’ll just leave it at admitting I was appalled by being touched at the
dual tribute to Captain Marvel and the WTC. At least the delay allowed
Lynn Varley to get a handle on the coloring—parts of this were astonishing
even when it seemed Miller was deliberately making his drawings look
like something you’d see carved onto an elementary school desk. I don’t
doubt a lot of people will find this whole project the car crash of
the new millennium, but issue #3 makes it seem like the whole thing
was intended less as a sequel to Dark Knight Returns than Harvey Kurtzman’s
Superduperman. Not everyone is as perverse as me, but I thought this
was Very Good.
DARKCHYLDE LAST ISSUE SPECIAL:
I never picked up an issue of this before, and now I know why. There
was the merest flicker of competence in the writing, and the art was
“good” in the way Witchblade art is “good.” A tearful dedication page
on the inside front cover and a well-intentioned essay page on the inside
back cover make me feel guilty for calling the book crap—but clichéd
writing, dull, pointless scenes and stilted characterization still qualify
as crap to me.
DORK TOWER #19: The cooking recipes were
a cute idea, but the “story” is moving so slowly, I’m starting to think
it’s just a joke to Kovalic. Maybe that’s why the humor seems more
fannish and tired with each issue I read. Eh.
FLASH #188: I don’t read
this regularly, so I’m assuming stuff that made no sense was because
I don’t read the book regularly. But the Flash teaching himself how
to build a bridge and then doing it in under a minute? If he was Superman,
maybe, but The Flash carrying a girder over one shoulder? Sorry, but
no. Eh.
GOON COLOR SPECIAL #1: : I was gonna bitch about how this beautiful
art was being wasted on some pretty sophomoric humor, but then I actually
laughed out loud. So much for bitchin’. More lines like “Looney old
people who play in the mud…is there anything they don’t know?” and I’ll
end up a fan. Good.
HAPPY #2: More than half of this didn’t measure up to the bitter brilliance
of the first issue of Josh Simmons’ Happy—the autobio comix satire was
long, unfocused, and only amusing at the end. But everything from “The
King of The World Makes A New Friend” on was either well-rendered, disquieting
or both. If Simmons can keep himself away from glib cynicism, he could
be a genuine talent in the field rather than the next Johnny Ryan.
Good.
HAVEN THE BROKEN CITY #8: The first issue I’ve read of this, and I
found myself incapable of caring hardly at all. That one double-page
spread on pages 8 and 9—the suburbs adjacent to the space city—was genuinely
lovely, but it’s flanked by twenty pages of cookie-cutter characters.
Eh.
HELLBLAZER #174: I thought
this whole storyline was one big load of horseshit, honestly, but Marcelo
Frusin is such an astonishing comics artist it almost doesn’t matter.
As long as guys like him and Eduardo Risso and Richard Corben have got
Azzarello’s back, nobody’s really going to notice how lazy and precious
the actual stories are getting. Good, because, hey, I like dem
pretty pictures as much as the next guy.
JASON & THE ARGOBOTS
#1: Some problems with focus hurt this one right out of the gate:
the lead character’s little sister has more personality, more dialogue
and is the focus of the first three pages. Unsurprisingly, she ends
up being where my interests and sympathies are. Unless Jason gets fried
in the second issue and she takes over the book, I would say this is
a big problem. Then there’s the whole “whoa” thing, which is a separate
headache unto itself. The art’s okay, though, and the little sister
scenes were good, so I’ll let this slide with an Eh.
JLA #68: All set-up and
jibber-jabber. And the one good widescreen moment—Tempest dismissing
an entire ocean and all its inhabitants—was crammed into an itsy-bitsy
panel on the bottom of page nine. Doesn’t bode well for the whole “Hunt
for Aquaman” storyline. Awful.
JUGHEAD #146: A reasonably
clever lead story about Jughead being a film extra during a barbecue
scene (he can’t stop offering food prep advice). But I don’t think
you should ever name a character “Beef” in a Jughead story if you’re
not going to give us a red-hot gay sex scene. I mean, think about it.
OK.
LADY DEATH DARK ALLIANCE
#3: I almost feel sorry for John Ostrander, doing a cheap Chris Claremont
imitation with a story that reads like an old Justice League tale: “Crisis
on Earth-Stripper,” perhaps. I would feel sorry for him if I didn’t
feel more sorry for myself, and even sorrier for the poor bastards who
will buy this before they read it. Bonus points for a cover that was
printed an issue early and has next-to-nothing to do with the story.
Crap.
LAND OF O #1: Ugly for ugly’s sake, well-rendered
and complete unconvincing: like Johnny Ryan if he could draw. Ivan
Brunetti, what have you wrought? Crap.
LITTLE GLOOMY #6: For a first time reader, an incomplete summary page
is almost worse than no summary page—the whole “real Gloomy” and “fake
Gloomy” interchange on the first couple of pages would’ve been funny
if I had known there was also a fake Gloomy. Instead, I was pretty
baffled all the way until the real Gloomy appeared, and by then it was
probably too late: the titular character seemed like someone who thought
she was funnier than she actually was. Kinda like the book, sadly.
Eh.
LONE WOLF 2100 #3: This “re-imagining”
of Koike’s and Kojima’s Lone Wolf & Cub is lot like Tim Burton’s
“re-imagining” of Planet of the Apes: that is, it’s a cynical and sloppy
money-grab. What hurts is I liked Francisco Ruiz Velasco’s charmingly
direct Battle Gods, and it bums me out to see him on this slapdash project
(whose faux-Dreamwave colors were too dark in many places). I pray
this fades away and Velasco gets a shot at something decent. Awful.
MAGIC WHISTLE #7: I guess
you either dig what Sam Henderson does, or you don’t. Luckily for me,
I do. The story about the man with the biggest penis in the world was
kinda tiresome, but I thought Beatnik Cop, at only one page, was hilarious.
Good.
METAL HURLANT #1: An okay
group of stories, although the one with the lion dude was kind of dumb.
I worry that this will end up being like the old Heavy Metal—preachy
and with boobies—except without any boobies. Still, not bad for the
price and the short story by Pierre Wazem was gorgeous and charming
and quaint, something the old Heavy Metal never was. OK.
MYSTIC FUNNIES #3: You wonder
what those idjits who go on and on about the American Pie movies would
think of an eye-popper like Super Duck, the Cockeyed Wonder. For me,
though it’s one-pagers like “From Cradle to Grave” that make it all
worthwhile. Overall, it’s not Crumb at his strongest, but that’s still
better than 85% of what’s out there. (Good compared to everyone
else, OK compared to Crumb’s better work: how’s that for equivocating?)
PARADISE X #4: Paradise
X #4: I am still just enough of a Marvel Fanboy to appreciate these
damn things that can only be called gnostic texts. Most of them are
dull as hell, but this “true” origin of Wolverine (which you only need
to have read early New X-Men issues, Origin, Earth X and most importantly
Devil Dinosaur, an eight issue series by Jack Kirby from the late ‘70s,
to understand) was pretty damn cool. And he’s a changeling too? Dude!
Very Good for anyone who’s been reading Marvel Comics for 25+
years, awful for everyone else.
PEANUTBUTTER & JEREMY
NEST & WINDOW EXCHANGE: Very cute, kinda fun, but not $2.95 worth
of cute and fun. And I’m a Kolchaka fan. Eh.
REX MUNDI #0: Good art, a nicely understated art approach. Only real
slip-up was a Brother Matthew story that was like watching grass grow,
followed by an exhortation to “Read the bone-chilling investigations
of Brother Matthew online.” What, you mean there are more breathless
adventures of a guy meeting people in train stations and giving them
jewelry? Gosh. Still, a decent debut and worth watching. Good.
ROUTE 666 #2: Now that’s
a summary page: everything I needed to know, legible and clever. The
art, although bland, was largely effective but I had a little trouble
feeling scared by the world’s clumsiest werewolf. And I can already
tell the market’s going to have suffer through a whole slew of “snarky
girl vs. the supernatural” books, thanks to Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
Considering I’m tired of them already, this isn’t good news. Eh.
SAMURAI JACK SPECIAL #1:
Thanks to San Francisco’s crappy
cable company, I don’t get Cartoon Network, but I’d heard good things
about the Samurai Jack series, so I picked up this one-shot. Let’s
just say there won’t be a lot of good things said about the one-shot:
the first 20 pages alone felt like they were trying to cram in three
volumes of Lone Wolf & Cub, and the storytelling remained slapdash
and confusing throughout. And why is a show that’s being lauded as
“original” and “different” seem like Frank Miller’s Ronin and Jack Kirby’s
Kamandi as filtered through the Hanna-Barbera housestyle? Original
and different for TV, I guess. Awful.
SHADES OF BLUE #8: For the
first two-thirds or so, this teen girl superhero book (which kinda looks
the Daria TV show) more or less worked. But the last seven pages were
badly put together, and seemed like vamping to squeeze another issue
out of the storyline. Somewhere between Eh and Awful.
TOMB RAIDER #23: I had no idea what was going on, but at least John
Ney Reiber made me care about Lara a little. Eh.
WASHOUTS #1: I really wanted to like this—maybe it’s the early Love
& Rockets influence which I’m always a sucker for. But I found
it dull and amateurish. Sorry. Awful.
WITCHBLADE #57: Jeezis, 57 issues this has been going on…just like
with the X-Files, any lazy shortcut the writer can come up with is justified
by the “mystery” of the Witchblade, and nothing has to make a lick of
sense. No wonder they still haven’t revealed anything—it’s so much
easier to not have any rules to play by. Crap.
WOLVERINE #179: I get the
feeling this is the start of the new team’s tenure but it reads like
a fill-in issue. Nobody has any personality whatsoever, whether or
not they’re possessed by the evil shaman whoziwhatsis. Only halfway
decent art keeps this from seeming like it was totally cranked out by
the yard. Awful.
WONDER WOMAN #183: Would
I have been so bored if I hadn’t been so confused? I think it’s likely
I would have. The art’s fine on a panel-by-panel basis, but weak as
hell with the storytelling. And why hasn’t anyone learned the cardinal
rule of the new century? No matter how you try, a conclusion where
somebody downloads a techno-something into a computer is never, ever
dramatic. Eh.
X-MEN UNLIMITED #37: Okay,
I can buy that if you put every single Wolverine variant in one room,
they’d fight. Okay, fine. But if you dump all the other X-Men variants
together, they’d instantly start kicking each other’s asses? Only on
Planet Lazy Storytelling, my friend. Nice art, and I smiled once or
twice, so Eh.
X-STATIX #1: A surprisingly
weak relaunch if they’re really interested in pulling in new readers—it
really only re-introduces the ideas and the themes of the book (and
in a witty two page shower scene, the inter-personal conflicts), but
not the characters themselves. And nothing really happens, either,
which probably also isn’t the best way to go. Don’t get me wrong:
this is one of my favorite monthly books, but I’m already reading
it. Also, as much as I like the art on the back-up, Blair Witch pastiches
expired two years ago. Can’t give this more than a Good.
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, either because there was only a copy
or two on the rack, I was really bored just by thinking about reading
it (hellllloooo, Crux!) or I didn’t see it. Tigers of Luftwaffe #10?
Hell yes, I’d read some weird-ass thing like that for free!
CRUX
#16
DECOY #1
DEMIS STRANGE BEDFELLOWS #2
GET CARTER LAST DRAGON SCOUT #1
HIGHWAY 13 #7
LAUGH DIGEST #177
LORELEI VOL 2 #1
NIGHTMARES AND FAIRY TALES #2
RADISKULL AND DEVIL DOLL #1
SCION #26
SUPER MANGA BLAST #23
TIGERS OF LUFTWAFFE #10
USAGI YOJIMBO #59
X-MEN EVOLUTION #9
ZENDRA VOL 2 #1
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. [For some reason, Hibbs always
leaves in the merchandise in this list, which I think is pretty funny.
I was tempted to pick the Lord of the Rings Two Towers 17 month locker
calendar as my TPB of the week just to razz him.]
AMAZING SPIDER-MAN REVELATIONS
TP
ANGEL LONG NIGHTS JOURNEY TP
ANTE GENESEM VOL 1 HC PROPHET
ART OF COMIC BOOK INKING VOL 2 TP
ASTRO BOY VOL 5 TP
BATTLE POPE PRESENTS VOL 1 TP
BELTRAN PIN UP GIRLS FROM AROUND THE WORLD HC
BTVS UGLY LITTLE MONSTERS TP
CATWOMAN SELINAS BIG SCORE HC
CINESCAPE SEP 2002 #64
COMIC BOOK ARTIST #20
DIE FABRIK GN
EDGE #4
EGOMANIA MAGAZINE #1
GIRL GENIUS VOL 1 TP
GRAPHIC CLASSICS VOL 3 HG WELLS
GUNDAM THE ORIGIN #2
JUNKO MIZUNOS CINDERALLA GN
LONE WOLF & CUB VOL 23 TEARS OF ICE TP
LOTR TWO TOWERS 17-MONTH 2002 2003 LOCKER CALENDAR
MAD ARCHIVES VOL 1 HC
MARVEL VISIONARIES GIL KANE TP
NAUGHTY BITS VOL 6 BURN BITCHY BURN TP
NEW X-MEN VOL 2 TP IMPERIAL
PSH SERIES I AQUAMAN & BLACK MANTA
PSH SERIES I GA DR MID NITE &GA ATOM
PSH SERIES I GA STARMAN & THESHADE
PSH SERIES I GREEN LANTERN HAL JORDAN & SINESTRO
RANMA 1/2 VOL 20 TP
RED STAR VOL 2 NOKGORKA TP
SMALL FAVORS VOL 1 TP
STAR WARS DARKNESS TP
STRANGERS IN PARADISE VOL 11 BRAVE NEW WORLD TP
STRIP SEARCH TP
TERRY MOORES PARADISE TOO VOL1 TP DRUNK DUCKS
TRANSFORMERS ARMADA 2003 CALENDAR
TRANSFORMERS GENERATION ONE 2003 CALENDAR
WEREWOLF APOCALYPSE CHILDREN OF GAIA GN
WIZARD COMICS MAGAZINE #132
WRITE NOW #1
This
Week’s TP recommendation is: Whoops! I had
given it to Marvel Visionaries: Gil Kane (see original bracketed
paragraph below) because I frankly didn't have tiem to read anything
else (I know, I suck). But then I got to the store and read CATWOMAN
SELINAS BIG SCORE HC which I thought was fuckin' fab. I'm a biiiiiigggg
Richard Stark fan, so I was pretty amazed to see that Cooke had more
than just a passin' familiarity with the "heist gone wrong"
Parker books that Donald Westlake wrote under his Stark pseudonym; indeed,
the book is a top-notch spin on the Stark books and is also a good Catwoman
book--and a good Slam Bradley tale to boot. Top that off with some great
pin-ups, and you have hardcover that I honestly think is worth the whole
25+ bones it costs. And that great Darwyn Art!! Sorry, Gil--but if you're
a crime fiction fan, this sucker is a gotta have.
[Original pick: A completely
openly biased choice—Marvel Visionaries: Gil Kane. I’m a big
Marvel fanboy, as I mentioned above. So much so, I wasn’t going to
give this the nod because it had none of Kane’s amazing sword and sorcery
work (I know, I know, licenses—but isn’t John Carter in the freakin’
public domain?). But they threw in Kane’s personal favorite of his
Marvel covers, a very brief Two-Gun Kid story and the origin of Iron
Fist, and I just couldn’t resist.]
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