The Savage Critic: November 20th 2002
By Brian Hibbs

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

I’ll start with a rant, so no fancy introduction this week – I’m all beat from having to write Onomatopoeia solo this month (Jeff is wrapping up his NaNoWriMo commitment). Between this and that I’ve read at least 1000 pages of comics and/or comics catalogs, and written more than 8500 words on comics in 5 days. Kill me now.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #47: This is not the way I want to start the reviews – I’d much rather start with a title that isn’t a big stinking pile of shit. But ah well, we have the cards we’re dealt. There’s a part of me that believes that Marvel’s editors don’t actually “edit” – that there must be some sort of internal pressure to get work out as quickly as possible without regard to whether it makes any sense, or, even, if it is any good. How else can you explain this travesty? Let’s start with the most component: Spidey simply doesn’t “work” when it’s not “street level” – fighting extra-dimensional archetype-entities is a horrible misturn for Spidey. Second: I don’t want to see Spidey “lose it” – wallowing and reveling in violence as the sole solution to whatever problem. I mean, no shit, super-hero comics ultimately revolve around punching, but there shouldn’t be any joy or glee in it for Spider-Man – quite the opposite, in fact; third, I detest, and I mean FUCKING LOATHE, False Jeopardy. Add that phrase to your Savage Critic lexicon (like “All Middle”) – it’s a cardinal sin of story-telling.

Let me give you a For Example on this – the new season of 24. Kim Bauer has been running from false peril to false peril in the first few episodes... while the first season showed us that the producers of the show weren’t afraid to kill characters or permanently change them, it’s crystal clear that Kim’s abusive baby-sitting dad ISN’T going to catch or harm her this early in the arc because then it CAN’T dovetail with Jack’s story this early on. So two episodes of her running around dirty alleys in LA is wasted False Jeopardy – it can’t have any ramifications.

In much the same way, Peter’s “peril” of having his reputation “smeared” is about as perilous as having to rescue a fluffy kitten from a tree – why would he care? He’s never cared before. JMS is trying to wring some emotional jeopardy in the scenes of MJ crying and gnashing her teeth and saying “is it true?!?!” Well, of COURSE it’s not true – she, if anyone, would be aware if Peter is into “kinky sex” or was staging fights or any of the inane accusations being bandied about. So, everything that flows from this false jeopardy (which is then the balance of the plot of the story) is equally false.

Finally, I just had to laugh at the JJJ scene – “Someone find this woman fast!”, then the very next panel shows the TV he’s watching with the “live” caption in the top corner. Yeah, that’s some award-winning journalistic skill on display there.

This was beyond bad comics – this is the kind of thing people point to when they suggest comics are for sub-literate idiots. Not even Crap, this one soars all the way down to Ass.

AUTOMATIC KAFKA #5: Really, Frank Miller did this riff so much better with Nuke in Daredevil. Nice art and design, and the script was actually fun enough... but I haven’t felt déjà vu so strongly in some time. Eh.

BATMAN FAMILY #4: I still don’t know why this book is being published, but for a half-conceived Huntress story, it’s not actively offensive. Eh.

BATMAN GOTHAM KNIGHTS #35: If this stupid “Bane is Bruce’s brother” story goes on for one more issue I may have to go on a suicide mission to the DC offices. What are they thinking? ARE they thinking? It’s that whole False Jeopardy thing, really. The one saving grace of the issue is Azzarello and Mahfood’s really wonderful B&W back-up. In eight-pages they ALMOST justify the $2.75 cover price. Awful for the first part, Very Good for the second, let’s average that out to an OK.

BIRDS OF PREY #49: Again, I love Amanda Conner’s cartoony style, and I think it’s a perfect match for this book and these characters – there were a few nice character bits (Terry Moore is really perfect writer for Dinah), but, bottom line, this was a fairly forgettable story where the whole was less than the pieces. OK

CALL OF DUTY: THE WAGON #4: My intention was to skip over this, but for some reason it ended up in my take-home pile. Jeez, what a mistake. A misfire in every possible way – why do a mini supposedly about a paramedic, then not have her BE a paramedic in any way, shape, or form during the conclusion. And hell, it’s not EVEN a “conclusion” at all – it’s To Be Continued in another comic. If I was a civilian sampling comics after favorable press, and bought this, I’d’ve felt thoroughly ripped off and would decide that comics are a big fat scam. Crap.

CEREBUS #284: Three really gorgeous (and absurd) pages of beautiful women in camps, followed by 17 pages of more of the same crap that’s been hurting my eyes for the last six months. There was a point in my life where I would have insisted that Cerebus was the best comic ever, but those days are, sadly, long gone. I just pray the last storyline redeems the book. Awful.

DAREDEVIL #39: Another great issue, with Bendis doing courtroom drama that really works. Very Good.

DARKNESS V2 #1: Basically exactly the same as V1. Dale Keown’s art is really nice, but there’s not a new thing here to require a relaunch. OK

DICKS 2 #2: Really funny Ennis/McCrea work in  their potty-mouth mode.... which is pretty much what they do best. Very Good.

FILTH #6: I can’t say that I fully understand everything that’s going on (Oh, what else is new!) but giant killer attack sperm is an idea whose time has come. As it were... Good.

FOREVER MAELSTROM #1: Remember pre-crisis DC, when they’d try throwing nearly any shitty mini-series concept at the wall to see if it could stick? Like, say, Spanner’s Galaxy, that kind of thing? See? Everything comes around again. The single-most hacked out, half-baked DC comic I’ve read so far in the 21^st century. After 4 days on the rack, we haven’t sold even a SINGLE copy. Yikes! Crap.

FUSED #3: The Brad Rader art was nice-ish, but it was covered in a really atrocious color job – everything was way too vibrant for the paper. Story-wise, it’s just dragging. Eh.

GOTHAM GIRLS #4: Reasonably fun, but, really, it’s All Middle. If this had been a tighter focused 3-issues, then maybe this would have been something to talk about. As it is, I can’t muster better than OK

GRENDEL: RED WHITE AND BLACK #3: I like the experimenting with formal constraints, but, like I’ve said before, it’s probably time to retire tales of Hunter Rose. And, sadly, the two stories I liked the best were the straight comics-narrative ones. Good.

INCREDIBLE HULK #47: Will this storyline ever end? It doesn’t feel like it. This is one of the rare books where I simply can’t see where the “critical buzz” is coming from at all. Seems to me that Jones is just watching reruns of the TV show on Sci-Fi and rewriting them. Awful.

JLA #75: Lotsa yadda. Lotsa false jeopardy. Aquaman’s back. Whatever. Awful.

JLA JSA SECRET FILES: Like a good issue of JSA, can’t really lose with me by doing that. Very Good.

LUCIFER #32: Just about the only sucky thing about doing weekly reviews (besides, y’know, the hassle of writing them each week) is coming up with new ways to praise consistently solid, if unflashy, work.  Yeah, yeah, I know that Y and Fables are the critical Vertigo darlings of the moment, but Lucifer is absolutely the strongest book V publishes each month. It’d be hard to really recommend THIS issue, as it’s the END of a storyline, but really this is the book to beat, folks. Very Good.

NEW X-MEN #134: If it wasn’t for the Scott and Hank scenes, I might have given this a thumbs down – I really don’t care about any of the new students, and I almost get the sense that Morrison is creating all of these new characters to just keep his interest in writing the book. OK.

POWER COMPANY #10: I really feel sorry for Kurt on this one – the launch of the book was horrifically bobbled. He’s completely solved the early problems (oddly enough by removing the “title” character from the mix), and suddenly turned this into a almost-as-good-as-Astro City title. If this was the second or third issue of the series, everyone would be talking about it, and there’d be buckets of buzz swirling around. Instead, everyone has already made up their mind, and the $2.75 price point is like a big scarlet letter. I don’t know if there is a damn thing I can really do to help, but since I’m theoretically reaching thousands of readers each week, let me try to do a good deed and convince you to pick this book up – there are compelling and realistic moral issues being presented here, wrapped in a veneer of slam-bang hero action. Easily the best superhero comic book I read this week, this has my highest possible recommendation. Excellent.

REVEAL #1: Conventional wisdom says “anthologies don’t sell in America”, and my feeling is this is true because it’s difficult to find an anthology that you actually enjoy every page – and with the price of comics, if you’re not enjoying every page (or, well, at least most of them), then what’s the point? I also observe that most of the people who argue with that position either are on company comp lists, or enjoy some other comics-at-cost proposition. This is a roundabout way of saying “$6.95??!? Are you fucking HIGH?!?” Here’s really the full range of what Dark Horse publishes – some manga-esque material, some licensed stuff, some creator-owned thoughts – and it really ends up being neither fish nor fowl. The design is great, the material is (for what it is) reasonably strong, the production values lush... but this is at least $3 too expensive for what the market is willing to bear for this type of package. Frankly, the only feature I enjoyed thoroughly was Joe Casey’s little meditation on writing comics – sure it was a little self-indulgent, but all auto-bio comics are at core. Still, the one piece isn’t enough to raise the combined grade to over an Eh

ROBIN #108: What a strange storyline. I’m sure this’d work just fine for its “intended” audience – trouble is, the only people buying Robin are people who buy all of the Batman titles anyway, which certainly isn’t 15-year old boys, and for the ACTUAL audience, this title is superfluous. Jon Lewis has shown a surprisingly deep understanding of the characters involved, but, if I was in charge of the Bat-line, I’d kill this, and all of the other spin-offs, post haste, and do a “proper” Batman Family title, letting Jon Lewis write THAT. OK

SHANG CHI MASTER OF KUNG FU #3: More or less a rerun of previous reviews – you CAN go home again under certain circumstances, and Moench and Gulacy have picked up right where they left off. I wonder if this series will end with the actual defeat of the (thoroughly unnamed) Fu Manchu? Maybe finding a new direction for the next series? Good

SPIDER-MAN GET KRAVEN #5: Five issue later and something HAPPENS. Heck, several things happen. If this was issue #2, maybe this could have been enjoyable after all. Though, Timbi’s rape was utterly unnecessary, and, frankly, unbelievable. She and the dog should’ve kicked ass all on their own. Eh

SPIDER-MAN PETER PARKER #50: The super-hero component of the story was adequate, but what I really liked was all of the Peter-and-May-talk stuff that, actually, JMS just sorta skimmed over. Deeper questions of motivation and understanding are always a fine thing in mainstream hero work. Good.

STAR WARS INFINITIES EMPIRE STRIKES BACK #4: Talk about a big “what-evah!” This is why “What If...?” is a hard thing to sustain... it too quickly becomes, rather, “Who Cares If...?” Awful

SUPERGIRL #76: The range and ramifications of Kara’s Super-duper-powers was really fun and entertaining (“I’m trying to push the world out of it’s orbit!”), but the coloring mistake made the final bits hard to properly follow (See: www.peterdavid.malibulist.com for details), and marred the end of the story for me. Still, I’m cautiously optimistic this might be leading someplace entertaining. O... no, wait, let me give it a Good

SUPERMAN DAY OF DOOM #2: Art’s damn nice. This Sienkiewicz person might be going places! Story... well, whatever. I mean, it’s nice to focus on the “real people” casualities  of a super-hero story, but in a post 9/11 world it seems... seems... oh, I don’t know, like liberal guilt, maybe? Celebrating the 10^th anniversary of a truly awful comic book story by making it more modernly relevant just makes my skin crawl too much. Sorry. Awful

SUPERMAN MAN OF STEEL #132: You can’t just completely change the “rules” of a character and expect anyone to be happy at all. Not only did Mxy appear less than 90 days ago (one of Byrne’s best conceits for the new Superman), but this whole “It’s my moral obligation to show Superman the fun in the universe!” thing is complete and utter PC bullshit, and completely out-of-character for BOTH characters. Blech blech and more blech. Plus this had the single worst art job I’ve ever seen in a Superman book. Crap.

TECH JACKET #1: Doug Tennapel kinda did this premise more elegantly in Creature Tech a few weeks ago. That’s not really fair, I guess, but since that GN was still reasonably fresh in my mind, I can’t HELP but compare them. The other thing that came to my mind was Hal Jordan’s origin. To a degree, this here is the beginning of Image’s WFH super-hero universe (I really am not sure if Savage Dragon or Noble Causes will fit in at all, despite their participation), so if you’re interested in that kind of thing, this is ground floor. The actual execution of the work is Good, but there was a “been there” feeling I simply can’t put aside, so I’m going to downgrade the book to OK

THREE DAYS IN EUROPE #1: I was all ready to declare this charming and light and romantic and funny, until the “London!” “Paris!” thing went on way way way waaaaaaaay too long. I’m sure this was plotted out to fill a dramatic beat at the end of each issue, but the specific beat is too drawn out. What should have happened is one page each to set up the guy and the girl’s lives, one page for the exchanging of the gifts, then by page four they’re at the airport for the mix up that happens on page 22 here. Then you have 18 pages to do whatever will be in issue #2. Get that pacing under control, Antony, and you’ll be a fine writer. Despite the pacing dis, this was charming, so I’ll go with OK, with every chance in the world #2 could be a Good...

THUNDERBOLTS #74: Unlike the moral arguments of Power Company #10, these held no “weight” for me whatsoever. Perhaps they feel meaningless because they depend on a certain amount of False Jeopardy (one or more of the characters could/will be in real peril, but clearly 2 worlds, or even 1 WON’T be destroyed), and all it leads to is that old tired chestnut of “Two teams fight because of a misunderstanding”. Blech. Awful

TRUTH #1: As a character piece, perhaps even as a rumination on how blacks were treated in society in the 40s, this could be a fine piece – but this was ALL set-up. Nothing happens. Not a thing. There’s not even an ending beat that makes me think, “ooh, I need to read the next issue!”. In other words, this is a GN that you’ve only been able to read 1/6^th of, rather than an entertaining story on it’s own merits. Which is the problem with modern comics in a nutshell. YES, folks, the TP is the GOAL... but each individual piece towards that goal HAS to be a compelling read on it’s own... otherwise, why would anyone buy it in the first place? This is a lower grade than I really want to give this, but the pacing of this issue is simply not compelling: Eh

ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN #31: What I was saying about Lucifer above is even more applicable to USM – this ships bi-weekly! It’s good hero comics, and makes messes like this week’s ASM even more embarrassing stains than they are. Very Good.

WEAPON X #3: What do you call a comic where you loath every character, hate everything they do, and wish they’d all just die quickly before more trees have to die? Oh, yeah, that’s right: Crap

Y THE LAST MAN #5: Just like my criticism of skipping over what I find to be the interesting bits in a post-holocaust style book in the earlier issues, I really would have liked to know just how the Israeli’s made it to the States – but other than that, sure, I liked this issue just fine. Oddly, we must be the only store in the world where this isn’t selling like free needles at a junkie convention – this is odd because we are “the” “Vertigo Store” – sales are fine, but barely 2/3^rd of Fables or Lucifer for us. I guess the quick trade will change that a bit. Anyway, this gets a tentative Good, though, really, it could have been so much better.

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 DIGEST #194
BATTLE ANGEL ALITA LAST ORDERPART 1 #3
BLACK SUN #3
CANNON GOD EXAXXION STAGE 2 #11
CRUX #20
DUNGEON #3
FATE OF THE BLADE #3
INU YASHA PART 7 #4
KNIGHTS OF THE DINNER TABLE ILLUSTRATED #16|
KODT EVERKNIGHTS #3
LOST TALES OF ERIN

LUFTWAFFE 1946 #3
MAGE KNIGHT STOLEN DESTINY #2
POWERPUFF GIRLS #32
ROUTE 666 #6
SCION #30
SHONEN JUMP VOL 1 #1
SOLDIER X #5
SPACEHACK #2
VAMPIRELLA #14

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 #1314
2000 AD #1315
ALIEN LEGION PIECEMAKER TP
BATMAN BRUCE WAYNE FUGITIVE VOL 1 TP
CABLE VOL 2 THE END TP
CLASSIC STAR WARS A LONG TIMEAGO TP VOL 3
COMICS JOURNAL #248
COMICS JOURNAL LIBRARY VOL 1 JACK KIRBY TP NEW PRTG
DESPERADOES QUIET OF THE GRAVE TP
EXTATIQUE WITH BETTIE PAGE
FRANK MILLER THE ART OF SIN CITY HC
HOUSEWIVES & HOT MOMS AT PLAYVOL 1 GN (A)
JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE VOL 4 #17
LEGACY OF THE INVISIBLE MAN GN
LOUIS CLOWNS LAST WORDS SC
MAD MONSTER BOOK OF HORRIFYING CLICHES HC
MERIDIAN VOL 4 TP
MOONSTONE NOIR BOSTON BLACKIEGN
RING OF THE NIBELUNG COMPLETELTD ED HC
SILENT MOBIUS VOL 9 TURNABOUTTP
SPIDER-MAN QUALITY OF LIFE TP
SPIRIT ARCHIVES VOL 9 HC
TOZZER & INVISIBLE LAP DANCERS GN 
ULTIMATE X-MEN VOL 3 WORLD TOUR TP
WIZARD COMICS MAGAZINE DAREDEVIL MOVIE CVR #136
WRITE NOW #2

This Week’s TP recommendation is: not something I’m eager to do – not that it is ALL shit, but nothing here is screaming “Pick me! Pick me!” Each book is slightly flawed in one way or another. So, just because it has John Severin art, and because I’m willing to put up with nearly anything to see more of that, I’ll go with Desperadoes: Quiet of the Grave.

Pick of the Week: Because it is certainly below your radar, I entreat you to make this week’s “Sure, I’ll check it out because you said so, Hibbs” book to be Power Company #10. I think you’ll be surprised.

Pick of the Weak: Too easy this week: our first title reviewed, the wretched and painful Amazing Spider-Man #47. Shame on you!