The Savage Critic: October
9th, 2002
By Brian
Hibbs and Jeff Lester
Welcome back, my friends, to the show
that never ends.
So the way this usually works is (Well,
at least when Jeff is co-writing) that El Jefe starts reviewing every
other book, then he sends me his leads, I reply to them, and I write
the lead on the second half. Jeff then finishes it off.
But this week I read Jeff’s leads and
I went “Bastard college boy is showing off his English degree, and actually
giving cogent, useful and practical reviews. I can’t write my typical
‘Me no like dat bad comic’ stuff.” Usually, Jeff being all smart and
shit lifts my level of discourse somewhat, but I just couldn’t bear
it this week. I thought it was a pretty crummy week of comics and I
just wanted to be the lazy one and slag off on everything.
So, Jeff’s doing the reviews solo this
time.
There was really only one thing I wanted
to say, and I was going to write this little screed in my review of
Powers – but then I realized it would be half a page long, so I thought,
“let’s just make this the opening, instead” So, here it is....
One of the reasons I really like Powers
(though not, by any means, the only reason) is because it has a letter’s
page. As you may have noticed, the letter’s page is rapidly disappearing
from modern comics. And I think that’s fucked.
The letter’s page is where community
forms – oh, to be sure it is a controlled and managed community, one
that may not even give you a wide picture of what the audience really
thinks – but it gave folks like me an understanding that we weren’t
alone in our love of the funny books.
A good letter’s page reflects the editorial
or creative vision of a title – I really like the one’s that Axel Alonso
ran in X-Force. “Ugh, these aren’t the characters I remember” “Yah,
well, suck it up fan boy”; it used to be that some of the best parts
of Dave Sim’s Cerebus, or Garth Ennis’ Preacher, or Warren Ellis’ Transmetropolitan
were the letter’s columns.
After you read a really excellent comic,
you got a view into the creator’s head – they’d recommend books or music
or films or even other comics, and you felt like there was a connection
between you and the work and the creator’s who made it.
That’s a horrible loss to have them
gone.
It seems to me the argument became
“Well, with the internet, who really needs letter’s pages anymore? Just
log on line, and you can read a million billion comments by anyone!”
Which is hardly the same thing. There are times that rational discourse
requires a guardian at the gate to keep the ratios between signal and
noise manageable. I don’t go to, say, the DC message boards because
I find them hard to navigate, difficult to identify what and where the
creators/editors think is interesting and valuable conversation. Even
on a single-creator focused board (like, say, Mark Millar’s) it’s really
hard to find comments from Mark without sorting through100 chattering
monkeys who don’t know nothing about nothing, but whom are talking just
to hear their own voices babble. Honest to god, just because you can
use a keyboard doesn’t mean you should open your mouth, folks. And,
of course, half the folks on the ‘net don’t even know how to use a keyboard
in the first place. Fuckin’ people who type like Prince. U know who
u r.
What’s even worse than no letter’s
pages is trying to replace them with “hype” pages like DC’s new “DC
Insider” (or whatever it’s actually called) – most readers who purchase
super-hero universe comics don’t just read one book. And after you read
that house page once, you never want to read it again. And yet, there
it is, week after week after week, saying the same exact thing as what
it said last week.
I really detest the faux “hip” style
it’s written it. Your “mole” at DC, indeed. Not really much better than
Marvel Dawg, yo. Once upon a time, DC did have a house page that worked
adequately – Jennette Khan or Dick Giordano would write “behind the
scenes” mini-essays, and every once in a while they actually were engaging
or informative (I just ran across one from 15 years ago where Jennette
was gushing about the Watchman movie script she’d just read, and who
and what was working on it, and how we’d see it in the theatres “soon”.
Hahaha.)
I mourn the loss of our letter’s pages,
I really do. They weren’t for the company. They were for us. And their
loss wounds us in ways we can’t even see.
That’s my rant... here’s Jeff with
some funny-book reviews [we didn’t bother to switch color fonts
this week because we figured if you were reading along, you’d know everything
before this bracketed text is Bri, and everything after is Jeff].
ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #609: I laughed
at the female Galactus (but not the Watcher gag)—that was as far as
my enjoyment went for the issue. The rest of it was the hat-track of
uninvolving: Superman having uninteresting fights with unresonant ciphers
(unless you saw which Marvel character they were parodying, which made
things marginally more resonant but still completely uninteresting),
Senator Blabbity-blab talking standard “Where’s room for the common
joe if Superman’s on the scene?” smack, and Lois Lane doing something
unbelievably stupid, even though she (and we, and the creators) know
that she’d be a cretin to do it. Superman crossover comics at their
most cynical, formulaic and lousy. Awful.
AMERICAN SPLENDOR UNSUNG HERO#3: Great
stuff, but I thought the quality of Collier’s art ebbed and flowed,
at times capturing the mundane grittiness that is a soldier’s daily
life, at other times capturing an artist who has problems with dramatic
foreshortening. Still, one of the best things Pekar’s ever done, and
I hope he gets the fever to do something else in this vein. Good.
AVENGERS ICONS VISION #3: As a critic,
I feel the very least I can do is wear my preferences on my sleeve.
That way, if I don’t like something, my biases are known and you can
adjust your expectations accordingly. And I think it’s pretty apparent
that I am a very old school Marvel fanboy, the kind that can’t tell
you what’s happened in, say, Amazing Spider-Man in the last seventeen
years, but can summarize roughly every story up to issue #200. That
said, I have no idea why one would go to so much retconning of an established
Marvel character (who’s already had more than his share of bad retcon
choices) to produce something so incredibly dull. This really feels
like a reworked pilot pitch or something, the sort of thing you use
to buffalo TV executives who don’t know any better. Just a mistake
on all levels. Awful.
BASTARD SAMURAI #3: Pretty to look
at, but they wasted too much time in the first two issues, and the characters
and the situation were so minimally sketched out, either the creators
didn’t really know them, or didn’t know how to convey any weight to
them. Image Comics for the New Millennium: prettier to look at, but
just as flyweight as ever. Eh.
BATGIRL #33: Okay, this probably shouldn’t
have worked for me, but it did. Puckett sets us up expecting one type
of confrontation and then gives us another. Scott’s storytelling isn’t
so hot, but his art is interestingly atmospheric in places. And even
though the Alpha thing was handled so carelessly I’m not sure it’s going
to be a future plot thread or was just a clumsy Maguffin, I still thought
this was a very high OK.
BATMAN LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT #160:
I was much more interested in the ad for the Godzilla video game for
the Gamecube. And I don’t even own a Gamecube. Eh.
BLACK PANTHER #50: I was really afraid
Priest would drag out the “who is the new Panther” question but this
first issue was surprisingly (and enjoyably) direct. Putting aside
whether this new direction is really going to last, or if Marvel’s audience
is really going to be interested in it, I’ll just say that Fraga’s art
was atmospheric even if the action scenes were confusingly rendered,
the cop terminology was rendered well enough that I wish Priest was
writing The Precinct, and that I’ll be back for next ish. Good.
BONE #49: Pass, because I’m
waiting ‘til it’s all over to sit down with a big pile of trades and
read it end-to-end. I was going to say that Hibbs’ll let you know if
it’s anything other than very good, but I guess now it’ll remain
a mystery until the end of days.
BZZZ BEE CAFÉ #1: Hmmm. I guess if
you can imagine Steve Ditko writing an issue of Promethea as a training
manual for potential Denny’s employees, you’ll have some idea of what
this is like: one waitress initiates a potential new hire into the mysteries
of the café, with dialogue that sounds like it was badly translated
from, I don’t know, Romanian or something. “Love is felt by eating
and drinking.” “Chocolate and coffee smell of love.” “You fail the waitress
test.” “It had started? There was no test pattern noise.” I thought
this was either a straight-faced parody, or a badly translated euro-comic
but a visit to the website, www.buzzbeecafe.com, reveals it to be neither:
the author talks about this book bringing people closer to God, and
exploring the mysteries of Christ, and taken that way, the book makes
a lot more sense (with coffee and chocolate standing in for the divine).
This book is enjoyable mainly because it’s charmingly inept which I
think is too cruel a way to enjoy comix, but the amoral voyeur in me
thought this was so howlingly bad I enjoyed reading it. The cruel bastard
in me would rate this as good, but only because it was so really, sadly,
awful.
CALL OF DUTY THE PRECINCT #4: Jesus,
and I thought last issue was bad. This may be the lousiest comic book
Marvel has ever put out, ever. What’s with the flaming zombie cliff-hanger
from last issue? It didn’t happen or something? I really have to break
out that ass rating I created a few months back, because this
was worse than crap.
CAPTAIN AMERICA #5:
God, John Cassaday’s art is lovely, but this “comics writing on cough
syrup” approach to Cap just isn’t for me: it’s like if Andrei Tarkovsky
had directed that crummy Captain America TV movie with Reb Brown. This
should have been issue #3, not #5, the editor should have pointed out
to Reiber that the laughing zealot/terrorist is a cliché (and a dumb
one at that), and any terrorists that can plant bombs that estimate
an international traveler’s arrival in a building to within three seconds
should give up the terrorist life and start playing the horses. Too
damn lovely to get worse than an eh, but it probably should.
DETECTIVE COMICS #775: I really like
Burchett’s panel-by-panel storytelling, but the melodramatic body language
during the big encounter really threw off what I think was supposed
to be a passionate, but understated, reunion. I liked it okay, but
after the Bruce Wayne: Fugitive story wreaked such havoc with the Bruce/Batman
persona, this didn’t have the weight it should have. Really a shame
that this wasn’t better than good.
FABLES #6: I was a little worried about
the art change, but the team of Mark Buckingham and Steve Leialoha is
more than capable; several times I felt like checking to make sure Steve
Rude hadn’t drawn the issue. The ending may have been almost too much
of a shocker, but otherwise, very good.
GEN 13 #2: Maybe this is just my week
for being a big softie, but I didn’t think this stank as much as first
issue (maybe because there were less of those dumb-ass twins). But
it still stank, though. And that last page t&a shot was just downright
creepy. Awful.
GREEN LANTERN #155: This pretty much
points out why topical issues may never work with superhero comics,
as all of the creative team’s attempts to craft a serious look at a
serious issue lead up to…spinning the book in a new direction and making
the gay-bashing angle seem like just a plot point (which re-makes the
whole hate-crime angle trite). And although I liked the resulting new
direction initially, it bothered me when I gave it more than two seconds
of thought: Kyle is so bothered by the amount of hatred on the world
he needs to leave Earth for a while, rather than help his physically
shattered friend to go through the pains of physical therapy and emotional
trauma? Kyle, you’re a shitty friend, dude! Eh.
HARLEY QUINN #25: Pass because
the last issue was so crappy Bri and I decided to stop reading it.
HUNTER THE AGE OF MAGIC #16: As always,
intelligent work by Horrocks. I thought Tim’s emotional beats were
a little off and his dilemma a bit forced, but I enjoyed it. And I’m
always at a loss about Richard Case’s work; he does an incredibly good
job of making scenes where very little action is happening feel dynamic
without being forced, but his action scenes always seem static to me,
so this mostly-action issue suffers a bit. Not as good as usual—it
was OK.
INCAL #12: Pass because I thought
Hibbs didn’t read it, and so I didn’t pick it up. Whoops.
IRON MAN #60: Ummm…I liked Part 1
because it was breezy and goofy, but this was too breezy and
goofy. If Iron Man got his suit re-polarized, there’s no reason why
he didn’t finish things then and there, other than Grell needed to squeeze
an extra issue out of this. On the one hand, it’s obviously just meant
to be some fun, dumb comics, and I did enjoy the rapport between Tony
and Brann, anachronisms and all, but on the other hand, if I was paying
money for this, I ‘d feel like a jerk for buying it. Not truly awful,
but no way can I give this an Eh, either.
JLA #73: I said it before—one out
of every three issues seems to work for me. And this was one of the
issues that works—it helps if you get some sort of idea what the hell
the superheroes are fighting, like here. OK.
KILLRAVEN #1: Well…and please don’t
think I mean this in a way that is at all pejorative…that was mighty
gay. If the point of Alan Davis’s re-launch was to suggest that mankind
will never have a true chance at resisting alien invaders until we combine
our tiny speedos with suspenders that cross-lace against the belly,
mission accomplished. But otherwise this just reads like a very competent
retelling of the old Marvel series, with barely any of the genuine passion
that made the original so embarrassing and so sublime: the beautifully
bombastic ultra-violet prose of Don McGregor and the breathtakingly
tender art of P. Craig Russell really made the original Killraven series
from Amazing Adventures work for me, I guess because it gave the post-apocalyptic
setting a genuine air of strangeness. Here there’s not much to do but
admire how solid the premise is, how solid Davis’s art and writing are, and how small the speedos seem.
Maybe I’m just too old-school Marvel fanboy to really love this, but
this seems good; a disposably, unresonant good.
LEGION #12: First issue of this I’ve
read—I’d assumed that all the hype talking about how good it was either
just hype or only applicable to old-school LSH fans. I was wrong.
Written in a way where I gained instant empathy for the characters,
drawn in a way that doesn’t seemed cramped or crowded, this book would
be civilian friendly if it wasn’t jammed with 30+ years of DC (not just
Legion) continuity. But that doesn’t change the fact that this is very
good, and, unless this issue was a fluke, anyone with a decent DCU
background who likes good work should be picking it up.
MEKANIX #1: Sadly, this goes wrong
from the very first page—Kitty’s name is highlighted on the title page/web
page, and I couldn’t tell if that was just the editor’s choice, or it
meant that the Purity group knew that she was a mutant. This made at
least half the book needlessly confusing. The Kitty as “coyote ugly”
bartender would feel crawly and wrong if it wasn’t so laughable, and
suggests that Chris Claremont can’t seem to remember how the real world
works unless he reverse-engineers it from bad movies. Finally, I have
no idea why the Purity group seems to know there’s a mutant in Kitty’s
class, but has no idea who it is. What are they, guessing? The art’s
not too bad, so I’m letting it off with awful but I can’t imagine
this book’ll ever get any better than that.
NIGHTWING #74: Went on too long, and
the wrap-up was the epitome of “pat.” I’m glad that Devin’s trying
an angst-free view of Dick, but I’m not sure what she’s got instead
is that interesting—he kinda seemed like a jerk this issue. Bleah.
Awful.
NODWICK #17: Pass, because I
didn’t pick it up at the store. For some reason, I thought it was off
the list, too: Bri forgot to mention the “Brian sends me the template
of this column and I don’t look at it because I’m a lazy turd” part
of the biweekly ritual. Oh, well.
PARADISE X DEVILS: I’m such an old-school Marvel junkie that
I can’t help but enjoy this. I can’t really recommend it either, unless
you’re the type of person, like me, who wants to read an all-superhero
version of the Divine Comedy where an entire understanding of a cosmology
depends on if you’ve read the right issue of Marvel Two-In-One. For
those of us out there, we’ll find this good.
POINT BLANK #3: I think I’m losing
some patience here, even though this issue didn’t seem to have nearly
as much filler as the last two (let’s hear it for a lack of flashbacks!)
Part of this may be that this issue’s action scene with the cars was
so poorly staged it completely failed, and part of it may be my new
suspicion that this entire five issue mini is just a very long lead-in
to the new series, Sleeper. I sure hope I’m wrong, but even if I am,
this was barely worth an eh.
POWERS #24: Always good even if the
stories don’t really feel like they have endings these days as much
as…stoppings. Did I say good? This was good.
SONAMBULO GHOST OF A CHANCE: Since
this seems to be the year of the masked wrestler comic, what with the
lousy Big Daddy Danger and Holy Terror and all, but I find it sad that
Rafael Navarro’s Sonambulo, which I first discovered at APE many years
ago, isn’t getting more exposure in the field. Navarro takes his camp
seriously, bless him, so this tale of a masked wrestler with ties to
the world of the supernatural is presented for more than laughs. While
not entirely successful as a story (I’m not sure a new reader would
know why they should care about Sonambulo), Navarro continues to show
a lot of chops, and a wider range of references than your average comic
book. If you’ve got the yen for lovely lucha libre illustration
like I do, you’ll find this good, at the very least.
SPIDER-MAN GET KRAVEN #4: You ever
see Six Degrees of Separation, that movie with Will Smith, where
Smith plays a con man who convinces a family he was a college chum of
their son? My new theory about Ron Zimmerman is that, like Smith, he
has completely boondoggled the folks at Marvel into thinking he’s an
accomplished Hollywood veteran
when in fact, he’s really Schlubby Schlubberson from Schlubbington.
This is the fourth issue in a row that has absolutely nothing—and I
mean nothing—new or original to say about Hollywood. People who’ve watched two episodes of Action
and read a week’s worth of Variety could write more trenchant
satire than this (which is odd because Zimmerman wrote for Action,
didn’t he?). I liked exactly one panel of this—John McCrea’s intro
shot of the villains where the gerbil in the suit smoking looks genuinely
sinister—which is one panel more than I liked of the previous issues.
If this is the burden the market has to bear as a result of Paul Pope,
James Sturm and Peter Bagge getting some Marvel money, then God bless,
I guess, but this is still some mighty pungent crap.
STORMWATCH TEAM ACHILLES #4: I thought
this was much better than the first three, although it’s still not there
yet. Wright did a good job of catching the voices of the Authority
figures (their dialogue peppered with references to footwear and brand-name
candy bars) but still isn’t having quite as much luck with his own characters:
the new character, Barak, is the most sympathetic one Wright’s introduced
yet, but looks set to be shoved in the background. And Portacio’s
storytelling is still dropping the ball: look how in the flashback,
two soliders are shown, one with gloves, one not. And yet the gruesome
twist at the end of the flashback makes no sense because suddenly the
soldier with the gloves doesn’t have them on, and the one who didn’t
now does. Add in at least one more scene where Wright’s obliqueness
leaves you scratching your head, and you have a book that’s barely worked
its way up to Eh. I hope it continues to improve.
STRANGE KILLINGS BODY ORCHARD #2: All-action,
but I liked it. I haven’t read the previous issues so it suffers a
bit from “Superguy” syndrome (what can’t Sergeant Major Gravel do?)
but the velocity of it worked for me. And God help me, in these post
9-11 days, this book made me feel almost nostalgic for the days when
NYPD cops got shot full of more lead than shooting gallery bullseyes—it’s
just something you don’t seem to see much anymore, and it was strange
to see it again. Good.
STRANGERS IN PARADISE VOL III #53:
I don’t know, I think I’m in the minority about this, but I find this
book to be a frustrating tug-of-war between incredible natural talent
and an exasperating unpolishedness. For every moment of dynamic cartooning,
terrific body language, or clever pacing, there’s another moment that’s
too cute, too pat or somehow naggingly inauthentic. Consequently, I
don’t pick up the book very often, and whenever I do, I feel as if it’s
stuck in some strange Moebius loop: it feels like I’m reading exactly
the same issue even though everything about it is different. Although
maybe that’s some sort of reverse-snobbism on my part, since one gets
pretty much the same feeling picking up a superhero comic and it doesn’t
bother me much then. I guess I expect a little more from my indy comics,
and it’s a shame seeing someone as talented as Terry Moore coast like
this. Good, but it could be much more, I think.
WAY OF THE RAT #6: A nice rousing epic,
with a good opening for a sequel. A few minor flaws in the storytelling
kept me from enjoying this as much as the last three issues I’ve read
but, still, 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 (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 #528
ARCHIE DIGEST #193
AZRAEL AGENT OF THE BAT #95
BATTLE ANGEL ALITA LAST ORDERPART 1 #1
FIRST #24
GETTING THE SEX OUT OF THE WAY #1
LUFTWAFFE 1946 #2
MAGE KNIGHT STOLEN DESTINY #1
MEATHAUS #6
MEXTOR RETURN TRIP #1
MYSTIC #29
NEGATION LAWBRINGER #1
RANMA 1/2 PART 11 #8
RIPLEYS BELIEVE IT OR NOT GRIM REAPING #2
SCOOBY-DOO #65
STAR WARS REPUBLIC #46
TRANSFORMERS THE WAR WITHIN #1
TUESDAY #1
VAMPI #21
VERONICA #132
WARREN ELLIS SCARS SAMPLER PROMO
X-TREME X-MEN #19
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 #1308
2000 AD #1309
ANIMERICA EXTRA NOVEMBER 2002VOL 5 #11
BACCHUS COLLECTED VOL 7 & 8 EYEBALL KID DOUBLE BILL TP
BASTARD VOL 2 TP
BATTLE ROYALE MANGA #1
BATTLE ROYALE MANGA #2
BTVS THE DEATH OF BUFFY TP
COMICS JOURNAL #247
CUCKOO VOL 1 TP
CURT SWAN LIFE IN COMICS SC
DRAGON CHRONICLES TP
FOOT SOLDIERS VOL 3 TP
FORTEAN TIMES #163
JLA VOL 9 TERRA INCOGNITA TP
JUDGE DREDD MUZAK KILLER GN
JUXTAPOZ NOV DEC 2002
MAD XL #18
MARVEL ENCYCLOPEDIA HC
NOCTURNALS UNHALLOWED EVE TP
ORIENTAL FILM REVIEW #3
OROCHI BLOOD VOL 1 GN
SERGIO ARAGONES GROO PVC SET
SFX #96
SFX BABE SPECIAL
SHADOW STAR SHADOWS OF THE PAST TP
SQUA TRONT EC FANZINE FALL 2002
SUPERMAN BATMAN WORLDS FINESTTP NEW ED
TOMARTS ACTION FIGURE DIGEST OCT 2002 #103
TOYFARE #64
TRANSFORMERS GN TARGET 2006
UZUMAKI VOL 3 TP
VIDEO WATCHDOG #88
X-MEN VISIONARIES JIM LEE TP
Y THE LAST MAN COLL ED #1
This
Week’s TP recommendation is:
I hate picking a trade when I haven’t actually read it yet, but let’s
just say that it’s going to be hard for me to walk out of the store
this week without both Uzumaki Vol. 3 and the collected
Cuckoo Vol. 1 under my arm.
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