Remember Brevity: Jeff Tries to Jam in A Best Of/Shopping Lists.

I like "best of" lists, particularly before the holidays when people have a bit of cash and trying to figure out what to get loved ones. So I'm gonna do one even though (a) I've been more than a little out of the loop since I left the store in May; (b) my brain is still like well-chewed taffy after writing this week's reviews; and (c) my tech karma just took a massive hit, with my external hard drive unresponsive, my alphasmart wiped, and my image search for book covers (because everyone loves images) hit a snag when a page tried to install a fuckin' trojan horse on my laptop. (Oh, and what's up with our sidebar?) So I'll try to make this as quick and coherent--and as non-crabby--as possible for all our sakes. Sorry about the lack of graphics. Maybe next year, provided my laptop isn't too busy sending out Jamaican porn spam. In sloppy alpha order:

AMERICAN ELF VOL. 2: These two years of James Kochalka's cartoon diaries may be so brightly colored they'll make your eyes water, but they're also funny, sweet and profane. I hope we continue to get book collections of these even though Kochalka's cartoon vault is now open online.

AZUMANGA DAIOH OMNIBUS: I read and loved all four volumes of Kiyohiko Azuma's comic strip tales of a batch of high school girls, and hope this collection of the four volumes finds all the new readers the series well deserves. ADV Manga didn't really put themselves out throwing this omnibus together--the translation notes from vols. 3 and 4 don't reflect the new pagination, for example--but the price break and convenience of having them all in one spot still make it a great buy. Plus, it's an excuse to re-read everything all over again, which I did, and I enjoyed them just as much the second time around.

LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN BLACK DOSSIER: Black Dossier probably suffers by dint of authorial over-ambition, publisher politics, and audience expectation, but it's still a helluva book. Even though it failed to move me emotionally, I frequently took delight in the clever formalistic shenanigans, and Kevin O'Neill does landmark work. Plus, you know, a Tijuana Bible version of Orwell's 1984--how can you knock that?

BUFFY SEASON EIGHT VOL. 1 TPB: Joss Whedon brings the Buffyverse back for a TV season on paper, and it's a delight for those of us who still carry tremendous affection for the characters. While I worry the "unlimited budget" of comics may keep Whedon away from the limitations on TV he ably turned into strengths, or that the work will get farmed out the more other projects occupy Whedon's time, the first storyline was a tremendous amount of fun on its own, and a great gift for a Buffy fan (if you can find one that doesn't already have this, of course).

CRECY: I think this may be in the top five things Ellis has ever done, if not the top three--a dark, smart, rowdy educational history lesson where the author's predilection for technical knowledge and street-smart narrators meshes perfectly in showing us the battle of Crecy and its impact on how cultures make war. It's as perfectly executed as it is conceived, tremendously engaging and deeply enjoyable. Great stuff.

CRIMINAL: COWARD and CRIMINAL: LAWLESS: Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips produce two exceptionally strong stories that nail the grit, seedy glamor and understated desp all great crime stories have. Phillips' extraordinary knack for visual characterization enhances Brubaker's ability to bring exactly the right amount of information to a scene; I can't think of a current writer-artist team who play to each other's strengths nearly as well as these two.

DR. 13: ARCHITECTURE & MORTALITY TPB: Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang's playful metafiction tackles current comic book policies, the nature of belief and disbelief, and is a gorgeous-looking repudiation of what superhero books can and cannot do. It'll make you think, but it'll also make you laugh--a lot.

DRIFTING CLASSROOM: Kazuo Umezu's manga classic about an elementary school transported to a hostile dimension is bracing in its bleakness, touching in its melodrama, and masterful in its cartooning. It is also, in the very best sense, ape-shit crazy. Imagine if Lost starred the Little Rascals and somebody was dying or suffering gruesomely every fifteen minutes, and you get a slight idea of Drifting Classroom's ghastly, loopy charms.

EXIT WOUNDS: Rutu Modan's extraordinary graphic novel about a young man in Israel trying to discover the fate of his father is still the book of the year for me. The cartooning is great--detailed and evocative and open--but the writing is extraordinary, deepening the characters and the situations on every page. I really loved this book.

FLOWER OF LIFE, VOLS. 1-3: Fumi Yoshinaga's witty story of high school students and manga fans is always moving in directions you won't expect, but, really, it's the mix of light comedy and deep characterization I find so compelling. Like Yotsuba&! or Azumanga Daioh, this stuff makes me happy when I read it--it's heartwarming, which is something I'd never thought I'd enjoy in my reading material, but when it's done as well it is here, I'm helpless to resist.

FOURTH WORLD OMNIBUS, VOLS 1-3: Near-masterpieces of presentation, these collections of Jack Kirby's classic Fourth World material choose to reprint the work in order of publication. And while that has its drawbacks, particularly in the Volume Two where an extended storyline in The Forever People loses momentum as issues are spaced eighty pages apart, it pays off in Volume Three where Kirby begins to pull the threads of his stories together, and brilliant sequence after brilliant sequence begin to follow each after the next. Stunning.

KAMANDI ARCHIVES VOL. 2: In fact, reading the second volume of the Fourth World Omnibus, Marvel's Devil Dinosaur collection and this second volume reprinting Kirby's Kamandi stories in a row rendered all other comics completely uninteresting for about two weeks there. Whereas part of the delight of the Fourth World books is seeing how someone as distinctive and as regimented as Kirby was during that period still brings subtly different rhythms to each book, Kamandi entertains because it is constantly moving, keeping the title character (and the readers) from one crazy situation to the next. As far as I know, it's the closest Kirby ever got to the breakneck pacing of the great newspaper strips, and it makes for an intoxicating read. I really hope DC gets around to collecting all of these.

KING CITY VOL. 1 TPB: Speaking of intoxicating reads, King City by Brandon Scott Graham is, like Kirby's work, fast-paced and jammed with ideas, and unmistakably the work of a single idiosyncratic creator. It's deeply, deeply goofy, more than a little cocksure, and lord only knows when we'll see Volume 2, but this book reminded me of the first Scott Pilgrim book in its ability to take disparate influences and effortlessly marry 'em. I was so impressed with this book, I bought three copies to give to friends and lend out.

MISERY LOVES COMEDY HC: Somehow, by compiling the first three issues of Schizo--letter pages and all--under one cover and including an introduction from his therapist, Brunetti made me look at his comics in a new light. I already thought they were brilliant--Brunetti embodies every cliche of the unhappy indie cartoonist and transcends them through talent and fearlessness--but here they seem even more impressive, a radically brave act of self-expression. Plus, it's all funnier than hell.

MONSTER: Naoki Urasawa's sprawling suspense story is a deeply satisfying page-turner. Kinda reminds me of Dickens in its sheer narrative drive, and Urasawa's cartooning also has a love of expressive caricature. These can't come out fast enough for me.

PARASYTE VOLS. 1 AND 2: The first two volumes of Hitoshi Iwaaki's Parasyte remind me of both DC's Focus line and Marvel's Ultimate Spider-Man as a teen gains great power via the alien creature that's replaced his right arm. It might be a good book for superhero fans looking to branch out; it's certainly a great book for those of us who already have.

THE PROFESSOR'S DAUGHTER: Joann Sfar and Emmanuel Guibert's turn of the century farce about an animated mummy king on the lam with the professor's daughter is everything you'd want in a graphic novel--funny, action-packed, beautiful and surprisingly moving.

SCOTT PILGRIM GETS IT TOGETHER: The fourth volume in the series, and arguably the strongest since the first. Creator Bryan Lee O'Malley gets it together even more than Scott, taking his storytelling and his cartooning to a new level, and giving us a perfectly paced and satisfying book.

ANYTHING BY TEZUKA PUBLISHED BY VERTICAL: In the space of a week and a half, I read Apollo's Song, Ode to Kirihito and MW, and was dumbstruck by Osamu Tezuka's utter genius. MW is a crazed crime novel in which a homosexual crossdressing crime lord matches wits with the priest who is his lover with the fate of the human race at stake; Apollo's Song is a psychedelic coming of age novel in which a potential psychopath is taught the power of love thanks to cross space/time scenarios, and Ode to Kirihito (published late last year) is a surreal world-spanning medical thriller that reads a little bit like if Jodorowsky had directed a Dr. Kildare movie after Dostoyevsky did a pass on the script. They're all brilliant and insane, buoyed up by Tezuka's wide-ranging mastery of the cartoon medium and open-armed embrace of melodramatic directness. I enjoyed Ode to Kirihito the most, but I loved all of them. I guess I'm finally ready to tackle Buddha.

YOTSUBA&! VOLS. 4 AND 5: Like Azumanga Daioh and Flower of Life, a light comedy I find both heartwarming, well-observed, and mostly perfectly timed. I never thought I'd champion a cute kid comic book, but Yotsuba&! has exactly the right amount of cute, avoiding the all-too-standard saccharine crud that usually comes with it.

STUFF NOT ON THE LIST BECAUSE I (STILL) HAVEN'T READ IT: Alice in Sunderland, Pulphope, other stuff I'm sure you'll point out.

STUFF I REALLY ENJOYED THAT DIDN'T MAKE THE LIST BECAUSE I WAS EITHER TOO LAZY OR THERE WERE MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES: Jason Shiga's Bookhunter (brilliant but a bit pricey for me); Rick Veitch's Army At Love Vol. 1 (enjoyable but uneven); Empowered Vol. 1 (I thought Vol. 2 was disappointing enough to taint Vol. 1 for me); Iron Man: Hypervelocity TPB (great fun in the singles; haven't checked to see if it holds up in the trades); The Escapists HC (ditto); Devil Dinosaur Omnibus (too pricey); JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (not for everyone; haven't I mentioned enough manga?); Brubaker's Captain America and Daredevil TPBs (I'm behind); Sgt. Frog (not enough volumes this year); Beck Mongolian Chop Squad (wait between volumes hurts the pacing; otherwise brilliant); Fart Party; probably many others I'm forgetting.

Anything that came out this year (in trade format) I missed?

Second Round: Jeff Tackles the 12/12 Books (Part 2 of 2, as it turns out...)

Okay, let's finish this puppy up... HATE ANNUAL #7: I'm probably being too meta about this, but I thought it was funny that the Buddy Bradley story is all about he and Jay running dueling junkyards and battling over potentially valuable scrap metal, and this issue seems, like the last few Hate Annuals, like a collection of Bagge's odd & ends from which he's trying to get a little more cash. (Scrap, in other words.) I felt weirdly nostalgic flipping through this issue overall, with pieces like Bagge's comparison of Seattle to New York being the kind of short, funny pieces all indy cartoonists used to do, and now it seems like only Bagge (and Crumb, I guess) is still putting out there. It's really not fair to Bagge because I haven't followed his career closely at all and maybe he's got some awesome advertising or reporting gigs lined up, but he feels like he's fallen between the cracks as the indy scene has moved into its more literary phase and that's a damned shame. If nothing else, that back page shows Bagge could do one helluva Dick Cheney graphic novel bio. I'd give this a high EH--if I could've gotten into the Bat Boy strips this time around, I probably could ignore the price point and go higher--but I do sort of worry Bagge isn't living up to his potential and/or that his time has passed.

LOVELESS #21: I picked this up, along with the other Vertigo titles this week, to see if I could make some snappy generalizations about where this line was at and maybe why sales have been moribund. Since I don't follow the online news boards and no longer read Previews, I thought I might work as a relatively good replica of a casual reader, the kind that apparently aren't picking up Vertigo singles currently.

So. Like DMZ, I haven't followed this book in quite a while; unlike DMZ, I don't think I ever made it past issue #3 of this title. And I can't really critique this issue, which is clearly the last part of a storyline, any more than I could critique a movie after walking in on its last 20 minutes. But it's worth noting I finished this and assumed it was the final issue of the book altogether.

I know Hibbs has put forward a pretty good argument about Vertigo training readers to wait for the trade, but I think maybe each title might benefit as well from a little bit of marketing TLC in its own pages. If I was a new reader and picked up this issue of Loveless and concluded it was the final issue, you'd think chances are good I would be less likely to pick up the next issue since I wouldn't be looking for it. Alternately, maybe if I picked up this issue cold and was intrigued by it to pick up the trade, it might be a good idea to let me know when it's coming out, or what trades are already out. Here, despite every internal ad (except for the half pager for the Full Sail School of Animation) page in this issue being for either Zuda or a Vertigo title, there's not one scrap of information about Loveless other than the last page of the story that says "Conclusion" at the bottom in big letters.

This, then, is my humble proposal: each Vertigo title should have its own bulletin page, which would tell you which trades are currently available (so the reader knows where to start), an ad for the new trade if you're picking up the last issue of a storyline, a next issue blurb, and maybe a quick marketing blurb for the series or the storyline.

I doubt Vertigo will actually do this, mind you, and if pressed, would probably say something like, "B-b-but, The Internet!" Or, "B-b-but the reader can just walk up to the counter guy of the comic store at which they're flipping through the issue, and ask them which trades are in stock." And maybe they're right, but I think a publishing line--particularly one like Vertigo where the majority of its monthly issues are chapters in larger storylines--should make it as easy as possible for readers to know where they stand with any title they're picking up.

Okay, end of rant. NO RATING, but based on the explosions and the imagery (who doesn't love a bride with a gun in her bouquet?) seemed like it could be at least OK.

NEW AVENGERS #37: Man, Leinil Yu seems over-extended and burnt out this issue, precisely at the time Bendis decides it's time to razzle-dazzle everyone with a full-issue fight scene between fourteen-plus characters (plus illusions, plus bystanders): if it wasn't for the colorist, I don't think the middle pages would've had any sense of movement or order to them at all. And Bendis obviously tried to give the fights a sense of ebb and flow with some pages reading nothing more than "Agh!" "Ha!" "Oof!" and some pages deliberately jammed with everyone talking at once, which also helped give things a sense of momentum. I wasn't razzle-dazzled but I was entertained, and the opening and closing sections with The Wrecker helped this issue seem like more than just all middle, so I'm gonna with GOOD, even though really the art and some of those "Ha!" "Oof!" "What?" "Yes." pages really make an OK rating the more sensible decision. But I enjoyed it, so there ya go.

NIGHTWING #139: I'm amazed I forgave Fabian Nicieza the inept use of the tired Mastercard meme on page three ("Following Tim Drake and Batman's son Damian from Gotham City to Ra's al Ghul hideout in Tibet: easy. Realizing that maybe Tim has been seduced by Ra's into joing the dark(er) side: costly. Having to fight the brother I came to rescue: priceless." Honestly, Fabian, what the fuck?), but I did. It's obvious everyone involved is making the best of a bad situation that entails Robin and Nightwing fighting because that's what it says on the editorial whiteboard. So the characters spend half the time half-heartedly laying the groundwork for why they should be fighting (even though it doesn't make any sense with unbelievable amounts of horseshit like, "You can't bring back one if you're not willing to bring back everyone." (Huh?) "And you can't bring back everyone so... don't start with one." (Wha?) "But in that case--since you know you can't stop all crime...then why bother stopping any at all?" (???)) and half the time half-heartedly fighting, and none of it is really relevant to the main thrust of the crossover whatsoever. Knowing that at least the creative team is trying bumps this up to AWFUL for me, but it's a shame how frequently these Bat-Family crossover events seem to suggest "Hey, we don't give a shit about this title except how it affects Batman and neither should you." Feh.

NOVA #9: Didn't read last issue, so it's probably not surprising this issue felt off-balance to me but a dicey writing decision (the issue's big bad is a cosmic entity sealed in a massive space coffin) made worse by a worse art decision (said coffin isn't even shown completely, so Nova's big dramatic struggle is essentially him walking over to what looks like an electrified wall and touching it) makes me think even people following the title might be incredibly underwhelmed. There's a mix of fun and big ideas (who couldn't love a telepathic Russian dog who's security chief for a research station built into a severed Celestial head?), as well as popular sci-fi tropes (Nova's larger battle is with what I guess are Borg analogues which seems really dull to me but probably pushes somebody's fanboy buttons), but the execution for this issue at least knocked it down to a very low OK for me. I'm curious if this issue is an anomaly in that regard or not.

PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL #14: I don't know. It's got one good hook (Kraven has decided to start hunting and caging the Marvel Universe's almost infinite number of animal based characters) but in getting it, we have characters written at odds with their earlier appearances (there goes all that heavy duty Mary Sue-ing Ron Zimmerman did on Kraven's son; and I know I'm one of the last people to take the Mandrill seriously but it's a shame he talks like your average "bros before hos" frat boy now), characters/concepts that have been around the Marvel Universe for close to forty years destroyed on a whim (so long, Aragorn!) and a title character that appears for less than half the book (10 out of 22 pages). Writer Matt Fraction has done work I've really enjoyed elsewhere, but here he's just Frank Tieri with a better sense of humor and a deeper back issue collection. I know I've got my fanboy dander up, but I thought this was seriously sub-EH.

SCALPED #12: Luckily for me, a great jumping on issue as it's both (kind of) a done-in-one and a deliberate introduction to the characters, plot and themes of the series. What's weird is I'm normally a big fan of ultra-bleak noir stories (and this series is ultra-bleak) but this one is strangely off-putting and I don't know why. Maybe my liberal white guilt makes it really hard for me to enjoy nihilistic hijinks at the expense of a devastated culture? Although I've enjoyed other works--the movie Deep Cover comes to mind--where, as here, the undercover agent angle is used as a metaphor for the conflict of assimilation in people of color.

I don't know. This is clearly GOOD material--the writing, the art, the hook--but I honestly didn't enjoy it and am unlikely to pick up the next issue. So for me, personally, it's an EH. Considering this stuff is right up my alley normally, I'm not sure what the problem is, but if you like a good, gritty crime thriller, you should assume you won't have the same problem and check it out.

SPIDER-MAN FAMILY #6: The cover--Frog Thor on top of Spidey's head next to the phrase "What would you do if you only had One More Frog!?"--couldn't make it clearer we're in for wacky hijinks this issue but, unfortunately, I found them deeply sub-wack. Chris Eliopoulos' title story is a very sweet mash note to Simonson's "Thor as frog story" (with a much-appreciated intro page that explains the story and even tells you in which trade you can find it). However, stripped of Eliopoulos' usual light mockery, the story has no real laughs, some bad story shortcuts, and seemed a lot more fun to create than it was to read. Following that, there's a story by Tom "Belland" where Spidey catsits Zabu that seems more than a little forced (not only that Spider-Man has to catsit Zabu, but that Spidey is able to work out Zabu's emotional problems(?) and solve them by taking Zabu to a museum to see his stuffed ancestors(!)), two badly reproduced reprints, and a Spider-Man J story that leads me to further suspect Marvel is bullshitting everyone about the material being genuine material originally published in Japan. Overall, a sadly underwhelming issue, which not even Johnny Storm being dressed as a gay rodeo clown (in the Marvel Team-Up reprint) can save. Sub-EH.

STREETS OF GLORY #3: Mike Wolfer's art usually comes off as cluttered and chaotic to me, and his faces almost always seem unevoactive and off, like mannequin faces. But even if John Severin had been on art chores here, Ennis' all-middle of an issue would've left me pretty cold--most of this issue is people telling each other about the past, with a brief flash-forward to point out the entire story is something somebody is telling someone else, with a bit of manufactured conflict and a flash of blood and violence at the end. Still, the art knocks it down to sub-EH for me, and I can't imagine I'll bother looking for next issue. Maybe Ennis is better bringing what interests him about Westerns into his work rather than just doing Westerns? I dunno.

STORMWATCH ARMAGEDDON #1: I've heard good things about the previous Stormwatch series (from Johanna, I think?) so I thought I'd give it a try, but this issue was far from what you'd call a "jumping-on" issue. Operative John Doran is brought into the future by Wildcats character Void to discover what the cause of a coming cataclysm. Doran then goes on to discover one panel of information about what caused the cataclysm, and fifteen pages about what happened to him and the rest of his teammates. It's kind of like "Days of Future Past" if Kitty had ended up in the future and then proceeded to do nothing but go, "But what about Cyclops? What happened to him? Uh-huh. And what happened to Professor X again? Huh. And Beast?" I think even if I was a regular reader of the title, I'd find this underwhelming in every way. AWFUL.

SUPERMAN CONFIDENTIAL #10: Good news, everybody! DC's got an inventory issue it has got to get out of its vault and it wants you to pay $2.99 for it! I assume it's an inventory story, anyway, since it has The Forever People, Darkseid, Mantis, Infinity-Man and Jimmy Olsen but doesn't even try to pretend to reference Countdown, and doesn't serve any purpose whatsoever except to throw a bunch of characters into combat for eighteen pages without explaining who they are and what relation they have to each other. And Superman seems weirdly out of character as well, saying stuff like "What I said to the others goes double for you. Get out of Metropolis." and "That your best shot?" Considering this is by the guys who wrote the much-better Nova this week, I'm assuming something went seriously wrong here, and you know, God bless. Just don't ask me (or you) to pay for it. CRAP.

TALES OF THE SINESTRO CORPS ION #1: After enjoying Green Lantern #25 as much as I did, I found this tremendously unsatisfying. I mean, it does explain what's going on to the first-time reader and I do give it credit for that, but when each sequence (Kyle with the Guardians, Kyle and Sodam Yat, Nero and Kyle) each requires at least a full page of exposition, maybe there's something to be said for putting the pedal to the metal and dazzling us all with crazy shit. Also, the artist and/or colorist kinda blew the point of the big fight sequence--it took me a second read to figure out that Ion had taken Nero's creatures and converted them into his own. (And I only bothered because Marz, in true "explain everything in case the artist fucks it up" craftsman, explained it after I missed it.) Finally, the title makes me think this entire issue was just a solicitation fake-out so that people trying to glean the fallout of the Sinestro War from future solicits were going to be outfoxed. If so, is that the future of the direct market? A cold war between the Big Two and retailers & readers? Jeezis, I hope not. AWFUL.

UN-MEN #5: First issue I've read of this and the conclusion, I guess, of the introductory arc. It didn't do much for me, seeming both past its prime (are people still trying to get cash from the nouveau-freakshow movement?) and extraordinarily tepid (just about every third link on Warren Ellis' website is more outlandish than the stuff portrayed here) with only Tomer Hanuka's cover providing any kind of garish zing whatsoever. I guess it's great editor Jonathan Vankin could get his writing partner a steady gig, but I can't imagine this sub-EH material is gonna be the next Y: The Last Man.

WALKING DEAD #45: I like that everyone including the bad guy is running around in a panic with only the most half-assed of plans to see them through, but that's precisely when, according to zombie movie law, brains should start getting eaten. Maybe I'm being premature here, but even as the last few issues have heightened the conflict between the two groups of humans, the zombie factor has been shunted to the side. I hope that's because Kirkman wants us to forget about them and have 'em cause holy hell in the next issue or two, but it feels a bit like he's got his hands full with all the characters and their motivations at play. A highly GOOD issue, though, and I'm looking forward to the next.

WOLVERINE #60: That weird and gross Arthur Suydam cover--where Wolverine looks as surprised to be shown driving his claws through some dude's head as I am to be seeing it--doesn't really convey the warmed-over material herein. (I know I don't follow the character that closely, but does Wolverine ever end up in Japan and it doesn't end up entailing his former fiance and/or her family? And ninjas?) Oh sure, Wolverine fights ninjas in a Japanese toy store, and if Geoff Darrow had been drawing that, it would've been aces, but Chaykin's well past the point of showing off and uses the minimum amount of detail (and a shitload of diagonal composition) to pull us through. I can't really blame the guy--Chaykin, like Bagge, is a guy who seems to have fallen between the cracks for reasons I can't even fathom--but it doesn't make the book any less EH.

WONDER WOMAN #15: Very charming, I thought. I've always liked Wonder Woman as a warrior strong enough to be compassionate (remember when she used to take her enemies off to be rehabilitated through some light spanking and B&D?), and the mix of both multiple pantheons and gaudy pulp stuff here (nazis, talking gorillas) move the character away a bit from the Greek mythos I've found so stifling since WW's reinvention by Perez. The intro piece may be a bit clunky, and I was bit disappointed that out of an entire menagerie of imaginary animals, the nazis get attacked by what's either Kang or Kodos, but yeah, pretty GOOD stuff. I'd like to see more.

CRAWL SPACE XXXOMBIES #2: Finally, thanks to my poor alphabetization skills, we've got this little number which is rich in high concept (Boogie Nights of the Living Dead, basically), has all the sick, gaudy thrills Un-Men wishes it had, and has neither a sympathetic character nor a remote resemblance to reality anywhere to be found. It's OK, but, being as I'm one of those guys who preferred Death Proof to Planet Terror, not really my thing.

PICK OF THE WEEK: Gotta go with GREEN LANTERN #25--a really remarkable piece of heady, straight-up, continuity-rich, superhero whoop-ass.

PICK OF THE WEAK: COUNTDOWN ARENA #2, I guess, although the "comic book as toxic waste dump" approach of SUPERMAN CONFIDENTIAL #10 wasn't any great shakes, either.

TRADE PICK: I forgot to do this last week, which is a shame since there were a ton of contenders. (I would've gone with BECK VOL. 10, the crazy-ass BATMAN SUPERMAN SAGA OF THE SUPER SONS TPB, and the second POPEYE hardcover). This week, though, I'd go with Brubaker and Phillips' exceptional second trade from Criminal, LAWLESS. As with the previous arc, the art was luscious and the story satisfying, but I found the narrative tone and structure particularly exceptional. I hope it goes on to sell a bajillion copies.

NEXT WEEK: Maybe the whole "brevity is the soul of wit" thing will sink in!

Second Round: Jeff Tackles the 12/12 Books (Part 1 of 3, maybe?)

Last week, after reviewing 35 books, I swore I wasn't going to do that to myself again. So yesterday, I pulled the books off the rack, did a count before handing them to Hibbs, and realized I had 30. I started flipping through them, having already weeded out stuff of which there were two copies or less on the racks, trying to figure out where I could cut. And after about ten minutes of heavy-duty consideration I got it down to...27. During my final weeks at CE, I was reviewing roughly 18, so maybe I won't hit that number. We'll see.

Again, thanks to everyone who was kind enough to pitch in with the comments and compliments. They were tremendously appreciated and helped keep me going during my normally seasonally affective disordered self.

And so it comes 'round again:

ANGELUS PILOT SEASON #1: Leave it to Top Cow to figure out how to bring the super-hero origin into the 21st Century: from what I could tell, Angelus is a superpowered chick who gets even more superpowers, and now uses her new superpowers to fight the people who helped her get her old superpowers. It's the same sort of "who says less is more when clearly more is more" philosophy the inventors of the fried twinkie gave us, and you have to kind of admire it. (I also admired the savvy business acumen of the people who put together the inside cover ad for Witchblade: The Animated Series: catching the title character in mid-examination of her right breast for pre-cancerous lumps shows that the series has a sensitive side.) The script, however, is cliche-ridden, the painted art frequently awkward, and the comic surprisingly credit-free--is that intentional? Something to do with keeping you from voting online for the creator and not the concept or something?--but I guess if you like comics where super-powered waitresses recover from flashbacks by standing in their underwear and exchanging exposition with their alter egos for five pages, you could do worse...I assume. AWFUL.

BAT LASH #1: I know enough about Bat Lash to realize this is apparently going to be an "Origin of..." miniseries, but don't really know the character at all. Based on this issue, he seems frankly anachronistic, a figure from those days when Westerns were filled with charming rogues because the Western by and large skimmed over historical underpinnings. Now, where the Western is fraught with the knowledge that the West was won by guys who shot each other only when they got tired of shooting Indians and buffalo, I'm not sure you can pull it off. You certainly can't pull it off in a book like this, where Bat Lash is asking a Comanche friend how things are, and the Comanche says stuff like, "How I been? Your people take the buffalo away...drive us to reservations...your girl's rich father is even...put[ting] bounty on Indian scalps!" To which Lash replies, "Yeah, Wilder's still trying to drive my folks off our land." (Hey, sucks to be you, Bat Lash! Also, what do you mean by "your" land, exactly?)

I think it's laudable that the Aragones and Brandvold did their research, and Christ knows John Severin's work is a genuine treat to look at, but when your next issue blurb is "Sheriffs and Ranchers and BEARS, oh my!" and your last page cliffhanger is a woman's impending rape, I'd say your project has conflicting goals that make enjoying the book a more difficult task than it probably ought to be. Art bumps it up to EH, but it's kind of a wreck.

BOOSTER GOLD #5: Kind of sad that the weakest point of Booster Gold's book is Booster Gold's creator, Dan Jurgens. Admittedly, I've never been a fan of the J-Man, what with his tepid layouts, his limited range of facial expressions, and his largely generic character designs--he seems like an artist for people who find Bob Layton too avant-garde--but giving him a time-travel story that intersects with The Killing Joke (some of the most beautiful artwork ever published by a mainstream comic company) really underscored that for me. This is the first issue of the book I've read, and while I find Booster to be a very likeable hero here and the time war conceit clever, the execution of things--not just Jurgens' art, but also the whole "you can change time, except where you can't! (Unless, of course, you can!)" attempts to keep the drama rolling--is pretty uneven. If I had to guess, I'd say Johns is helping break the story beats and Katz is writing the dialogue, and while (presumably) Katz does a pretty good job, he hasn't quite mastered the "these aren't the droids you're looking for" ability Johns has to keep you from noticing a really glaring plot hole. Despite the kvetching, I'd give it an OK, but your appreciation for Jurgens' art and/or DCU continuity noodling may have you bump that rating higher.

BOYS #13: Don't know if s Snejbjerg is inking Robertson or also contributing to the art chores, but the art here is looking seriously cartoony. Like, "hey, the big Russian guy looks a lot like Bugs Bunny in that panel" cartoony. While that might be the next natural evolution in Robertson's style--and probably a good one, frankly--it kinda messes with the tone of the book a little bit. I'm not sure I'm going to make it through an Ennis monthly where it feels like there's nothing at stake. Anyway, considering what I think these creators are capable of, it's OK. Compared to most of the other stuff on the market, it's in the GOOD category. You make the call.

COUNTDOWN ARENA #2: If you've always wanted a mentally disabled little brother that would play Mortal Kombat while constantly hollering horrible dialogue he's made up for all the characters, this is the book for you. CRAPtacular, even without the reconfiguring of Apollo as a Ray-analogue, not a Superman analogue. (Yeah, nice try there, DC Editorial.)

COUNTDOWN SEARCH FOR RAY PALMER RED SON #1: This comic book could be useful to future generations as a primer in how to spot rushed artwork: basic left-to-right storytelling mistakes; lots of blank-faced blobs drawn in long shot to cut down on details; conversations being held by characters with their back to the reader; disappearing backgrounds; absence of movement...The seven panels to a page average suggests that this was a ton of work in the first place, and I expect there were some iron-clad deadlines to meet, but the art tragically failed to meet the challenge. As for the story, although it jams a lot of material, characters, ideas and motivations into one issue, none of it means a god-damned thing unless you read Red Son, like, yesterday...in which case you'd probably be pissed at how this book uses those characters and situations but ignores any of the resolutions. AWFUL, awful, awful.

COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS 20: I'm not going to brat about how the DC Countdown team can't coordinate between their own titles (the Countdown Arena pages this issue get the dialogue right but completely blow the timing, for example) but rather brat about how the writers of this issue can't coordinate their own story in the same issue. On one page Jimmy Olsen is suddenly talking about how there's a little voice in his head telling him what he needs to do, and on the very next page he's talking about how he knows how to go through a maze he's never been through and attributing that to either "a run of luck" or "more weirdness." In fact, Jimmy's got a caption that goes "(Whew)...and I thought I" and the very next caption "This weird turtle shell I've become isn't helping in that department." (I'm gonna guess maybe the words 'smelled bad' dropped out?) I don't know what people are getting paid to work on this book, but I'm guessing it's not nearly enough to cover all the future therapy needed to put their shattered psyches back together.

And, of course, what adds insult to injury is that this is DC's second weekly annual series, which means that someone ignored nearly every lesson they should've learned from 52 and thought they could pull it off by sheer charm and force of will. AWFUL stuff, and tremendously disappointing.

DMZ #26: I don't know. I admit I haven't read this book in about a year, but it seems to me this issue couldn't have been structured worse. I think it's supposed to be a portrait of a photojournalist in the DMZ that's just died, constructed from several anecdotes during her time there, but all of the cues are messed up. One early scene starts off captioned "Two days earlier" and then we're never given a time transition again. So one would think that all of the scenes are more-or-less contiguous from that point on, except there's a scene where the character takes a picture and the narrator says, "She won an award for that photo. And caught a lot of shit about it, too." So...non-contiguous? Even if you don't find yourself frustrated about the time frame for the story, the concluding lines of the story, "We live in a world of fire and death and funerals. But Kelly made us feel alive," aren't supported by the earlier incidents of the story. How'd she make "us" feel alive? By being hungover during a firefight and puking? By sitting and drinking in a locked room, refusing to let people in? By abandoning crying children, and ignoring the orders of people protecting her? Maybe a case could be made that the creative team is trying to undercut the narrator's elegiac tone by showing the opposite of what he's insisting but there's not enough evidence to really support that. Realy, I'm not trying to be a dick here, but compare this issue to Lawless, the second Criminal trade, and how the narration there leads us through an unorthodox flashback structure, and I think you'll see what I mean. This didn't work, and I gotta give it an EH, at best.

FALLEN ANGEL IDW #22: I usually don't parse comic book dialogue emphases--you know, those bolded words that typically make everyone sound like they're out of breath from running, but the kid's last word balloon "And at least the war was over there..." really needs it since the meaning isn't 'the war was in a place that's not here' but 'the war was finished in that place that's not here.'

I dunno. That's all I got, I'm afraid. If I hadn't read the title previously, I wouldn't have had any idea what was happening or why I should care. Since I have read the title previously, the only stumper was why I should care. EH character, EH art, EH script--I guess I can safely call this an EH book.

FANTASTIC FOUR #552: The Thing hammers future Doom through six intrusive pages of ads (including that annoying double-page spread for the terrifyingly named "Out of Jimmy's Head," which sounds like a classic Cronenberg film and looks like the CN's desperate attempt to capture some of Nick Kids and Disney Channel's vital "pubescent chicks who dig feather-haired future date rapists" demographic) and then the future FF show up. A little sparse for my $2.99, although maybe it lands at an effective place in the larger storyline I'm not following. It wasn't bad, but skimpy, and the FF title seems trapped in a "But is Reed a dick?" conundrum the same way the Superman books were stuck in a "But would Superman kill?" trap for a few years--even he's not, the book is static and dull, if he is, I don't want to read the character any more--and I'm not sure if Millar and Hitch are going to make matters better or worse. OK, because McDuffie knows the characters, even if he doesn't know what to do with them.

GREEN ARROW BLACK CANARY #3: I'd be scared to party with Judd Winick. Based on his current storytelling m.o., it'd all be lots of fun and booze and laughs at the start, and then, after he's had enough to drink, pow! Suddenly there's a dead stripper on your hands. I mean, this issue was probably the best handling of the stupid "there are no refrigerators on Amazon Island, so naturally every female character in the DCU wants to go there and join them despite the stupid amounts of false jeopardy they must go through to do so" idea making its way through the DCU books, and the Cliff Chiang artwork is clean and light and expressive, and then---pow! Another dead stripper of a cliffhanger. I'll go with OK because it was an enjoyable read until then and it looked great, but, uh, maybe we should make sure Mr. Winick doesn't have any access to the hard stuff when he's plotting.

GREEN LANTERN #25: Holy fucking shit. I've read other comic books that clearly wanted to catch the "big summer blockbuster" vibe before, but this issue nailed that so well I was in awe. Johns and crew pack each page with so many ideas, character bits, riffs, and payoffs big and small, I almost wanted to cheer at the end--the same way I do at $200 million movies I won't remember three weeks later. The concluding "trailer" for "Blackest Night" (coming in 2009) only confirms such a crazy, inspired, deluded aspiration and I'm really and truly knocked out by the open-throttle "dare to be cheesy and awesome" ambition of the whole thing. I haven't followed the issues leading up to this, so I don't know if all the "spectrum" lantern thing had been previously teased out but I think it was smart of Johns to ramp right up from the yellow lantern Sinestro Corps to all the other colors so quickly--this may sound weird, but I think this is the first time since "The Anatomy Lesson" I've seen a character's basic concept opened up so dramatically and to impressive effect.

There are problems with the book, I gotta say--the artists had a hard time keeping up with everything, so that over half the book looks like Perez's discards from Crisis on Infinite Earths, and, despite Johns' way with the character arc, Hal Jordan still seems like the least interesting character in his own book (to say nothing of the fact that by the time Blackest Night rolls around, everyone in the damned DCU is gonna have a power ring, making the guy even less unique than before). But overall? Holy fuck, did this seem like a concentrated hot shot of mainstream superhero insanity. If that's the sort of thing that turns your crank (and I'm both surprised and relieved to find out it can still turn mine) I think you'll also find this astonishingly VERY GOOD. Good grief.

That'll get us started, I think. More later tonight or tomorrow...

The Demon Hero as a Wounded Animal Surrounded by Fire: Jog on 12/12

B.P.R.D.: Killing Ground #5 (of 5): Or, "NUMBER 38 IN A SERIES" as the inside front cover says. All of the Hellboy family books bear this sort of double branding, since their tight continuities often have them behaving like ongoing series just as much as the individual miniseries they're titled as. Of course, that's also how storylines in most actual ongoing series work these days, but I think the approach of the Hellboy books has the added benefit of obvious break points that not only allow for the creative teams to pause, but seem to invite the occasional gap of several months, all without upsetting reader expectations.

This particular storyline, however, has been maybe the first of B.P.R.D. to tip the scale more toward 'ongoing' than 'miniseries.' It's really less a beginning-middle-end thing than a thematically-linked bundle of long-simmering plot advancements, arranged so as to suggest a mystery; the larger story inches forward, callbacks are made to several earlier issues, and this final issue doesn't particularly resolve anything, although it does come complete with an extensive backstory infodump, and a last page cliffhanger. A fairly lyrical one that neatly (and visually!) summarizes the concerns at play, mind you.

The topic has been monsters, paranoia, and the violent capacity of the self. Most of the cast came face to face with some violent inner struggle, from Abe's encounter with a once-human Wendigo from his past, Liz's struggles with the apocalyptic burden she carries, and, most crucially, Daimio's absorption into the sinister facets of his origins. There was also a counterpoint in Johann's experience with a lovely new human body, with the thoughtful wraith instantly becoming wild for simple physical sensation, to the detriment of his ghostly duties.

Woe betide those who mistake the eventual collected edition for a good jumping-on point - reading through this issue, I found myself hastily flipping around earlier stories just to get my bearings, even though all this 'conclusion' really does is try to explain some things, while the larger plot inches forward and most of the characters sorta change. Nearly everything of note that occurs will hold less impact if you're not very familiar with earlier issues in the series. Or even issues of other series - a seemingly opaque Lobster Johnson cameo in issue #4 may well tie in with the concurrently-running Lobster Johnson: The Iron Prometheus; as it was with Alan Moore's now-departed ABC line, Mike Mignola's comic book universe rewards completists.

Still, even if this issue reads like little more than a waypoint between bigger landmarks, it is a work of fine construction. There's little that needs to be said of the visceral impact of Guy Davis' drawings and Dave Stewart's colors, but it's always worth pointing out how well they cooperate with Mignola's and John Arcudi's scripts - in an issue so thick with people telling other people important things, it's great to have that long flashback interspersed with images of Johann's ectoplasmic form fading from his recent he-man persona into the mild fellow he was before, Davis' lines sketching in his dignity with a job well done. Even if we're left on a question mark while a new team presents a '40s side-story for the next few months, the details linger in a GOOD way.

Chronicles of Wormwood: The Last Enemy: Meanwhile, Garth Ennis and Avatar present a funnybook embodiment of 'unnecessary.' I liked the initial Wormwood miniseries ok enough - it was an amusing, idiosyncratic piece of humanism, using biblical figures to promote personal responsibility above reliance on established power structures... and what could be more established than God and Satan and all that? Cute, and complete.

Yet here's a $7.99, 48-page one-shot sequel, feeling awfully overextended. The plot concerns errant Antichrist Wormwood's attempts to woo back his ex-girlfriend, while the debauched Pope Jacko sends a hulking killer eunuch to retrieve Wormwood's pal Jesus Christ for the purposes of curing his AIDS. Along the way there's jokes about jerking off, icky bodily mutiliations, priests (were you aware that they like to fuck young boys?!?!), a rabbit doing human things, and that one time a guy jumped off the Empire State Building and splattered on a ledge and his severed leg landed outside of Jim Hanley's Universe. We also discover that it's nice to be a nice person!

"So basically you're saying you're a pussy now, is that it?"

"That's exactly it, Jimmy. That's the moral of the story right there."

The problem is, it's really nothing that hadn't been done already in the original series, with more panache. Now, Ennis is a canny writer, and can drag a small bit of interest out of almost anything - even a lame, space-eating recurring segment about Wormwood helping to record a dvd audio commentary for one of his television programs boasts the small pleasure of the show itself gently commenting on Wormwood's mental state. But even then, production issues betray the book; if you're going to base a multi-page routine around characters talking from off-panel, and you're not going to differentiate their word balloons by shape or color or something, it would help to have each character's dialogue come from their own distinct off-panel area. Or, barring that, at least consistent sides of the panels.

The art doesn't lift it up much. Rob Steen, illustrator of the Ricky Gervais book Flanimals, takes over for original artist Jacen Burrows (who does draw the cover, as seen above), and he does provide a few funny reactions. Plus, he and (especially) colorist Andrew Dalhouse do an impressive job of making things look sort of consistent with the original; I've always felt Avatar's use of a small, distinct group of colorists has gone farther than anything else in forging a visual identity for the publisher. But there's still some awkwardness to physical interactions -- of particular note is a lesbian kiss in which one party appears to be suckling on the other's chin -- and a general lack of dynamism that leaves the various action pages feeling detached from the mayhem Ennis is serving.

And even after all that, be aware that the story itself still doesn't quite make it the whole 48 pages, so there's also pair of two-page, religion-themed backups drawn by John McCrea and Russ Braun. Although both of actually manage to be a little funnier by virtue of not being so stretched out. Still, AWFUL on the whole.

Johanna Snickers at Black Canary/Decrepit Stud

I only read this book because I am a total fangirl for artist Cliff Chiang. The storyline, by Judd Winick, is Ass. I think everyone's figured out by now that Green Arrow isn't really dead, and Black Canary is remarkably clear-headed for someone who just a few months ago thought she'd killed her new husband and long-time love on their wedding night. But that's the problem with comparing superhero comics to real life. What would be institutionalizable fixations in our world -- no, he's not really dead, an alien or clone is impersonating him -- make perfect sense in DC world, so it's kind of hard to relate.

Anyway, BC is undergoing a trial by combat to prove she's worthy of becoming the Amazons' new fight trainer ... which I also find unbelievable. I don't care how good she is. A group of immortal warriors who've been around for millennia can take care of their own combat training, I think. But it got her and little miss idiocy onto the island. (All Speedy or Red Arrow or girl whose name is never given in the comic (although Conner is named five times) does is sit around narrating the plot interspersed with classless comments that almost give away what little the gang has in terms of a plot.)

Let's look at the pictures some more. Chiang draws a stunning, regal Hippolyta and a fiercely strong Canary. More, please.

After ripping off Butch Cassidy (it's still a ripoff even if you quote it directly), there's a chamber pot pee joke (No! Really! In the 21st century!) and the revelation that Green Arrow's imitator blew the doppelganger plan because he was impotent. ... ... I haven't seen THAT motivation in superhero comics before. Although with all that spandex holding everything so close to the body it doesn't even show as a bulge, it makes sense.

I am very impressed that, called upon to illustrate the stunning Canary dialogue "He couldn't get his engines going... even with me?" while our heroine is wearing a bra, panties, and garter belt, Chiang keeps her looking like a person. He's more concerned with expressing the figure's emotion than showing off her goodies. After too many years of Birds of Prey art that took the opposite approach, I say bravo. And he draws holes in her fishnets! (Not the ones that are supposed to be there, actual costume damage. Those things rip at the slightest opportunity.)

The dumbest part of the whole book, though... I know, it's been pretty dumb up until now, and I didn't even mention how many times old-enough-to-be-a-grandad Arrow simply outruns a whole gang of Amazons on his tail... is the ending, which I am about to spoil.

Not three pages after the touching "I knew you weren't really dead" reunion of the title characters, Connor is shot and presumed dead. By a cloud. This would have made for a more compelling cliffhanger (except for the cloud part) if the whole rest of the book wasn't about rescuing someone thought to have been dead. It's a bad writer's way of undercutting his own story by going for the cheap-and-easy "shocking" last page.

Given the previous debates over Connor ("it's possible for him to be gay, and that would be refreshing and sensible" vs. one of his writer's demented hypocrisy on the subject, where he'd rather have the character make out with his father's rapist than admit the possibility), it's disconcerting to see him chosen as sacrificial victim this go-round. Even if he's not attracted to men, it was neat seeing a character not defined by his sexuality to the point where it was an open question.

Anyway, I trust I've made my feelings known.

The title lied: World's Finest from 25 years ago.

God bless Ian Brill. After looking after our house and cat (not necessarily in that order) while Kate and I were away in the UK on an unexpected and not entirely enjoyable trip, he left me with a welcome home present: WORLD'S FINEST #283 and 284 from the halcyon days of 1982, knowing that the only thing more helpful in killing any rose-tinted nostalgia for my childhood than a trip home to see family would be comics from when I was eight years old.

Don't get me wrong; I actually enjoyed these two books, but not really thanks to writer Cary Burkett or artist George Tuska. I mean, sure, good for them for bringing back the Composite Superman (the villain in these stories) in the first place, but there's absolutely nothing inventive, fun or even that interesting about what they do with him - Pretty much, he could be any powerful, generic supervillain considering what he actually ends up doing in the two-part story. He's not even visually impressive, which is all the more impressive considering the fact that his outfit is half-Superman, half-Batman, and he glows green, Tuska's worst sin no matter how many times he makes Superman look as if he is overweight with a receding hairline (Didn't they have any editors back then who'd point this out?). Even a guest-appearance by the Legion of Super-Heroes, which feels as if it really should be impressive - Superman has to go to the future to bring back an army of superheroes to kick the bad guy's ass! - is presented in such an underwhelming way that you have to wonder whether the creators cared about anything other than a paycheck when thinking this stuff up; it's literally "Oh, whatever we have to do to fill the pages" translated onto the page.

There's actually something kind of wonderful about how crap the whole thing is. I can imagine the 1982 version of Savage Critic complaining about how half-assed the stories are, complete with "It's Okay but just imagine what Len Wein could've done with the idea" or something similar. You get the feeling that these really were paycheck books done to meet deadline, which just isn't there in comics anymore; these days, even the crappy comics leave you with the feeling that someone really did think that their work was more than just a job at the time. Also gone in these days of sincerity and pretension is the other saving grace for the two-parter: The fact that the lack of ambition means that the genre template is followed to the very letter: The bad guy says things like "Fool! Your stupidity is as great as your size! Haven't you learned by now that nothing you do will hurt me?" while the heroes wisecrack and have each other's backs in between having no discernible personalities whatsoever. There is punching, sure, but no real damage to be seen, and it's old-fashioned ingenuity that saves the day via an out-of-nowhere deus ex machina... Pretty much everything that you want from a comic like this, which manages to be both comfortably familiar and depressing at the same time.

It's reading things like this - which is twenty-five years old, and now I feel old - that make you realize that comics have been pretty shitty for years, thanks very much (and say what you like about Jeph Loeb, but his stuff is much better than this. Well, except his Wolverine run). I'm not sure if that's the greatest moral to take from the whole experience, but it's the one I'm sticking with right now, at least.

All that we see or seem: Douglas reads two not-a-comics from 12/5

I've generally been enjoying Following Cerebus a lot, and I say this as somebody who was a hardcore Cerebite all the way up to the end of the series but drew the line at "Collected Letters 2." (I scan Sim's blog every once in a while to see if he's talking about comics, and scroll dejectedly past the rest.) Some issues have been fantastic, especially #5, which was mostly about the role of editors in comics; others have been dodgier, but I'm very glad that a magazine exists that will print 100 pages of Dave Sim interviewing Neal Adams, you know? Following Cerebus #11 is very, very late--I think it's been about a year since the last one--which is pretty depressing given that Sim and Gerhard never missed a monthly deadline for their final 200 issues, and when they did blow a few ship dates--somewhere in the middle of Church & State--they went just about biweekly until they caught up. This issue's on the theme of "dreams," at least at first: there's a spectacular wraparound cover by Sim and Gerhard (apparently their final cover collaboration) of Cerebus asleep and having a nightmare, an interview with Rick Veitch on the subject of dreams and comics (I hadn't previously heard of this amazingly weird and wonderful-looking Simon/Kirby series, although I found out yesterday that Jesse Reklaw had), and a page of filler text on the subject of why most of the issue isn't quite about dreams and Cerebus.

Then things get peculiar. There's a not-especially-funny satirical piece that purports to be a dialogue with Sim about Collected Letters 2, but isn't (it doesn't seem to have any actual Sim involvement), and never makes it past the cover. (Well, we're in the same boat there.) There's an eight-page essay by Sim about the way Barry Windsor-Smith's Opus interfaces with his particular world-view, prompted by a line in the introduction to a reprint of BWS's "Cerebus Dreams" last issue, followed by a seven-page dialogue between editor Craig Miller and Sim about that essay. There are five commissioned drawings by Sim from 2006 (one of them pretty funny), from which we learn that he's having to learn how to draw bricks all by himself again. There's a letter the late Drew Hayes wrote to Sim in 1990; there's a letter from a mathematician, sighing gently at the Adams interview, followed by a photo of Sarah Michelle Gellar. This isn't even Following Cerebus, it's Following Following Cerebus, a magazine disappearing into meta-analysis of itself.

And... it's Eh for the money at best. Still, I'd happily pay twice as much for a 40-page collection of Sim's recent commissions--or, for that matter, Gerhard's recent commissions. Brian Coppola has been commissioning Gerhard to do a series called "The World Without Cerebus"--moments from or suggested by the series that don't have any characters in them--and they're predictably gorgeous. (I found out about it via Todd Hignite's post here.) Coppola's also got an online "museum" of his original art and commissions; among other things, he commissioned a Sim/Gerhard "recreation" of two pages from Cerebus #29, and it's fascinating to see that Sim didn't just redraw that scene, he partially rewrote it.

Also in the not-comics department: Alphabets of Desire, the Alan Moore text lettered by Todd Klein that Klein's been selling via his blog as a signed limited-edition print. It's apparently sold out already (there'll be a second printing next year), and its themes and namedrops won't be new to those who've been paying attention to Moore over the last decade or so: the Tree of Life, John Dee, Austin Spare. (Spare, in fact, is the guy who popularized the idea of the alphabet of desire, a form of sigil magic.) Moore's view of language is rather Whorfian, and pretty questionable at best when he starts talking about how "if we do not wrap it in the word, a concept is beyond our apprehension." (Let's not get into his description of DNA.) It's a lovely piece of writing, though, and an Excellent object (that will probably end up on my office wall)--Klein's lettering is so closely bound up with Moore's latter-day writing in my mind that they seem to naturally go together, and I'm the kind of image-language-text-sensation geek who's happy to have this serve as my version of "Footprints."

Glutton for Punishment Part II: Jeff Wraps Up His Look At the 12/06 Books.

Oy, I'm such a dink. Not only did I screw up the arrival dates of the books (it's 12/05, not 12/06) but I totally forgot to open my previous post with sincere thanks to everyone who took the time to vote on what I should do for the site this month. I really appreciated janesmith3's vote since it looked like an ASCII cylon raider, but, honestly, I'm grateful to everyone who took the time to give me feedback, both there and just below. Anyhoo, Part 2:

NIGHTMARES & FAIRY TALES #21: One of the things I regret about splitting when I did is never writing about the high weirdness that was volume 1 of "Make 5 Wishes," the deeply odd Avril Lavigne comic from Del Rey by artist Camilla D'Errico and writer Joshua Dysart: it's this book in which a lonely girl ends up with a demon that can grant wishes and the only one who can help her figure things out is her imaginary friend Avril Lavigne. It was one of those books you kinda can't believe you're reading while you're reading it and, while still not in the same league as, say, Fletcher And Zenobia Save The Circus, something so distinct you give it a pass on all of its shortcomings.

I'm tempted to do the same with Nightmares & Fairy Tales #21, since writer Serena Valentino and artist D'Errico are trying something similarly odd (Valentino describes it as a mix of Carnivale, Deadwood and H.P. Lovecraft) in this story of a traveling freak show, the heartless bastard who runs it, and a captive mermaid. Unfortunately, D'Errico's delicately sketched linework doesn't have the same impact without the lovely color work of Make 5 Wishes, and Valentino's script is relatively hackneyed; only the suggestion that the innocent-seeming mermaid might be even more inhuman and terrible than the main character gave me any inclination to pick up the next issue. I gotta go with EH, as much as I'd prefer otherwise, but I hope these creators continue to develop their chops here and elsewhere.

NORTHLANDERS #1: I'm really frustrated with myself on this book--while I really like a lot of the ideas Wood's playing with here (a story that takes echoes of Hamlet and turns them into almost a Norse version of Point Blank, a narration that subtly uses anachronisms to give the protagonist's concerns and thoughts an immediacy), I didn't actually enjoy any of it. Colorist Dave McCaig seems like he's working overtime in every panel to work some depth into Davide Gianfelice's art but it's not quite enough: the book didn't look spare as much as it did not-quite-finished. I'm gonna call it OK and let's see where it goes.

OMEGA THE UNKNOWN #3: Lethem continues to nudge this book toward its own concerns and between him, Dalrymple on art (and--Jeezis!--Paul Hornschemeier doing the coloring!), there's no denying there's a ton of talent tackling this book, but I'm still a little underwhelmed. One of the things that made the original Omega such a strange book was the clash between Gerber & Skrenes' unorthodox scripts and Jim Mooney's traditional art. And while Mooney,like John Buscema, liked working on non-traditional material, his work had enough associations and influences from his superhero work it made the material even more striking. Whereas here, Lethem and Dalrymple (and--Jeezis!--Hornschemeier!) alll seem too much in the same vein: it's a little too glib, too easy, and too superficial. What I'm trying to say is, maybe a book called Omega The Unknown would benefit from a little more not-knowingness, you know? I'm still on board, but the meter keeps moving toward EH, bit by bit.

SILVER SURFER IN THY NAME #2: Simon Spurrier obviously took the time to put himself through Silver Surfer 101. So even though I disagree with The Silver Surfer suddenly being able to astrally project himself (don't even get me started on how it messes with previous contuity, let's just agree the last thing The Silver Surfer needs is yet another vaguely defined power and move on), I'm not even gonna bother. Similarly, although Tan Eng Huat (and ace colorist Jose Villarrubia) aren't really anywhere close to following the moves from the Kirby/Buscema playbook, they're working their butts off. But even taking all that off the table, the book feels really cramped to me, making me think the Surfer is one of those larger-than-life characters who needs less panels per page than the relatively steady six-per-page we get here. I'm bummed I gotta go with EH here as well.

SUBURBAN GLAMOUR #2: It's great to get a big eyeful of Jamie McKelvie's work in color, and the story is blessedly direct. I'd be lying if I didn't admit I have quibblage--for an artist working from his own script, McKelvie occasionally stages things a bit more awkwardly than you'd expect, and there's one sequence that exists for no other reason than to eat up a bit of space--and yet I found it to be GOOD fun, overall. More, please.

SUPERGIRL #24: My first read garnered me an enormous "Huh?" In part, this was while the good people at Supergirl were kind enough to have a story-based recap page, the next few pages were so disorienting I wasn't sure if the recap had stopped. The second read made quite a bit more sense, however, and I guess it makes a case for why Supergirl's discontent that's a lot less gross than what we've seen previously. But unless the first issue (which I didn't read) is a lot more action packed than the first, all the wordless pages makes me wonder if this wasn't a single issue story expanded into two. On its own, I'd generously give it an EH (if I hadn't felt so rusty with this reviewing thing, I doubt I would've given this issue a second read-through and just dismissed it out of hand), but if the first issue is especially kick-ass or sets a tone that makes this pacing more valid, I guess you could bump it up to an OK, if you wanted.

THE SWORD #3: Didn't read the first two issues and maybe that's for the best because this issue moved like a MOTHERfucker, escalating things steadily so the final splash page simultaneously lets you catch your breath and tries to kick you one last time in the gut. I liked Ultra, and thought Girls was a huge ol' mess, but if these guys can keep their control of the material as strong as it is here, The Sword might just knock it out of the park. Very Good stuff, I thought.

ULTIMATE X-MEN #88: Haven't read an issue of this book since Millar left, so I'm coming into this very, very cold and, again, am impressed with the recap page. It wasn't a work of genius or anything but it did give me an idea of the bigger picture. This wasn't a terrible issue, I gotta admit--in fact, as a guy with a thing for girls with glasses, I'll go one step further and admit that last panel of Ultimate Emma Frost made me glad I picked it up--but Ultimate X-Men has clearly become the X-Men equivalent of Beatlemania, where all the greatest hits get trotted out one after the other, or even run together in a medley as needs dictate. For example, this issue alone has Ultimate Cable, Ultimate Bishop, Ultimate Emma Frost, Ultimate Psylocke, the return of Ultimate Beast, Ultimate Phoenix, a round of Ultimate softball out at Ultimate Xavier's Mansion, Ultimate Hellfire Club and a last panel of, I'll assume, Ultimate Apocalypse (though it'd be awesome if it were Penultimate Apocalypse or something). Oh sure, Ultimate Colossus is gay and Ultimate Cable is apparently Ultimate Wolverine from the future or something, but that doesn't seem to matter as much as you'd think. Ultimate Paul is playing and singing Paul's parts, and Ultimate Ringo is playing the drums just like Ringo. In this age of trade paperbacks and CD-Roms and experimental direct comics subscriptions and bit torrent and back issues--to say nothing of how many fuckin' X-Men books are still on the market--does anyone really need this apart from the company and creative teams' bank accounts? Ultimate Emma Frost in white corset and sexy black glasses aside, I'd say no. Sub-EH.

UNCANNY X-MEN #493: See? The regular X-Men books are doing perfectly fine all by themselves at taking all the old greatest hits and mixing 'em up. As for this issue, I read it and, as you would expect from starting a crossover at Part 6, I don't really have the necessary investment as a reader for anything in this issue to have much of an impact. I liked that we got to see someone in striped pajama pants fight the Sentinels, I guess. It all seemed coherent enough even if I didn't care, however, and that's a good sign. I don't know. Issues like this make me wish Paul O'Brien had Google Ads or something set up over at The X-Axis because reading books like this make me realize what an invaluable service he performs each and every week, and he should get paid for it. Because while I feel confident saying this was an OK issue, Paul can really tell you and, to the extent your opinions mesh with his, you can bank on it. That's a valuable god-damn service.

WORLD WAR HULK AFTERSMASH: No offense to the current creative team, but if Marvel put Greg Pak on Iron Man, I think they might be doing themselves a favor: apart from the shout-out to that insane issue of Marvel Team-Up where Hercules tows Manhattan back into place, the only thing in this weak sauce that really impressed me was how well Pak handled the (presently) complex character of Tony Stark/Iron Man. However, between the above-mentioned weak sauce and the price tag of $3.99 for a book that includes six pages of promo material Marvel couldn't even be bothered to color, I gotta go with Awful. I'll assume the rest of the event wasn't this lame.

X-MEN DIE BY THE SWORD #4: I can't really give a decent review of this book since I didn't read the previous three issues, but since Chris Claremont didn't give it a decent script, I'm okay with that.

...

I kid, I kid. If you're still reading Claremont at this point, you know what you're getting (a morass of characters and plots, quips and aphorisms so hoary they're probably on a motivational poster somewhere) and you obviously either want it or feel compelled to support it. I can dig it. It's a shame that a previously unsinkable franchise like The Exiles is getting rebooted as a result of all this, though, and that Claremont--like some fanboy Captain Ahab--is obsessed with being able to finally write The Fury (or the The Fury Prime, or whatever it's called) but those are my hang-ups. But I think some messy storytelling flubs (the weirdness with Longshot's knife and invisible Merlyn, the lack of a splash page at the end when the Fury emerges so Captain Britain has to tell you what the hell is happening) would bump this down a few notches even for you, right? So I'll go with Awful and you can go with _____, and we'll both go with God, okay?

ZOMBIES VS ROBOTS VS AMAZONS #1: Well, it's dumb. And expensive. But really, really pretty. And here's only one robot (so far). I'd go with AWFUL even though, again, it's really, really pretty. Keep in mind I'm so far afield of Ashley Wood's target audience--pot dealers who like to leave comic books out on the kitchen table so their customers have something to read, I'm thinking--I should not be considered fair counsel.

PICK OF THE WEEK: My memory's a little hazy. I think it's LOBSTER JOHNSON IRON PROMETHEUS #4 and/or THE SWORD #3.

PICK OF THE--ULTIMATES 3 #1!--OF THE WEAK: Sorry, couldn't wait.

NEXT WEEK: Maybe not as many books!

Oh, and make sure you don't miss Diana's post about webcomics below, okay? I'm hoping it's just the first article of several giving noobs like me the lay of the land.

Diana Goes Digital #0: Secret Origins

With Jog doing his bit for manga, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to add even more diversity to our humble site by introducing a new regular feature: webcomic reviews! I'll be focusing on free series, starting with webcomics that have run their course and concluded - like graphic novels, they represent a complete, self-contained reading experience. After that we'll move on to ongoing series, alternating between some old favorites of mine and webcomics I've recently discovered. But before we get to the good stuff, I thought I'd start this prestigious #0 issue (now with exclusive Brian Hibbs triple-fold hologram variant cover - scratch it and it procreates!) with a discussion about webcomics as a whole: why they matter to me, why I get such a kick out of them, and what they have to offer those mainstream readers who may have gotten a bit tired of the current output.

I first discovered webcomics a few years ago, via my dear friend Jacob (who, some months later, put up his own short-lived but brilliant webcomic called NAUSEA, now sadly offline). I'd come back to comics after a long hiatus, and we were discussing genre: even then, when I was still very enthusiastic about the mainstream, I had to admit that the superheroes wore a bit thin at times. It was always such a treat to discover something like Kyle Baker's WHY I HATE SATURN or Judd Winick's ADVENTURES OF BARRY WEEN, proving that the medium could be used for more than just fights-in-tights.

At some point in the conversation, I brought up WHY I HATE SATURN and asked why we couldn't have something like that on a regular basis: no grandiose cosmic spectacles, no superpowers, no suspension of disbelief necessary - just ordinary people hashing out their ordinary lives, with all the drama and fun and sadness and joy that comes with it. Jacob directed me to R.K. Milholland's SOMETHING POSITIVE. I was hesitant at first, for the same reason I'm picky with fan fiction - in a domain without any real quality control, you're taking a leap of faith that the next story you read won't be a reincarnation of THE EYE OF ARGON. Also, there's so many of them, owing to the fact that just about anyone can write and upload their creations online - who has the energy to sort through ten thousand wank fantasies for the good stuff? SOMETHING POSITIVE was, at the time, nearing the end of its fourth year: there was a lot of reading to be done. Jacob assured me it'd be worth the effort.

And damn him, he was right.

Looking back, I can identify several factors that made SOMETHING POSITIVE such a perfect gateway into webcomics for me. First, Milholland's tone resonated with the irreverent atmosphere of the Jemas administration, but with Marvel I always had the feeling that they were holding back: it was okay to make fun of the '90s, but I R SIRIUS KOMIC NAO. Milholland rarely, if ever, restrains himself, and when he goes for shock or provocation, he always seems motivated more by self-amusement than by the desire to target a specific demographic (see: Fred MacIntire versus the Idiot Christians). It somehow felt more authentic, a more direct channeling of the author's voice than anything you'd find in the mainstream. We've all seen good stories (or, at least, good intentions) gone off the rails due to editorial interference and licensing concerns (just look at the current state of Spider-Man, or ask yourself why, as Graeme noted, the "magic reboot" gets used so often lately), and that's something Milholland never really has to deal with. When you're dependent on your readers, you have to keep them happy, and if that had been the case with S*P, this probably wouldn't have happened. Nor this, for that matter. It's a kind of creative freedom you just don't see with the big companies.

Another aspect of SOMETHING POSITIVE that intrigued me was... well, precisely that "alternative genre" I'd been looking for. Here was a dark comedy bordering on satire, with a bunch of friends - abnormal in normal ways, if that makes sense - getting together to bitch about things that annoyed them. Not something you'd easily locate at my LCS, that's for sure. And that was just the tip of the iceberg: I've read sci-fi webcomics, gaming parody webcomics, fantasy webcomics, action webcomics... I never felt boxed in as I do with the direct market, where only a very specific type of story can survive for any significant amount of time (see: every unfortunate cancellation in the history of comics from DEADENDERS to SENTINEL to SMALL GODS). In fact, based on what I've seen, I'd guess that the superhero genre is actually among the least popular in the medium: if it does pop up, it's usually some tongue-in-cheek take on the subject matter (ie: Brad Guigar's EVIL INC.) or downright subversive (Justin Pierce's THE NEW ADVENTURES OF WONDERELLA). I believe that, like fanfic, webcomics partially exist to address a lack - the extremely narrow focus on superheroes by established companies left pretty much every other field up for grabs, just as fanfic seems predominantly occupied with taking the story to places the canon can't (or won't) go.

Now, I'll admit this isn't a flawless medium - the downside to having no higher authority is that writers can (and often do) simply abandon their stories mid-way through, having simply tired of the effort. It happens more frequently than you'd think - Sean Howard's A MODEST DESTINY stopped so many times, and ended so poorly, that I'm sorry I ever read past the first book. The closest analogy would be something like the Grant Morrison/Gene Ha AUTHORITY run, aborted mid-story with little hope of resolution. Another downside is the lack of permanence - just because a work is available one day doesn't mean it'll be available the next. After discovering K. Sandra Fuhr, I was quite interested in her earlier works, UTOPIA and THIS IS HOME... except she'd deleted them. That's a whole block of an author's bibliography that you'll never find in a bargain bin.

The issue of price (or lack thereof) can also be a bit of a sticking point in webcomics. The argument tends to go thusly: on the one hand, most webcomics are free, which means you can start, stop and resume whenever you like, with absolutely no limitations. You get what may be an incredible tale at no cost at all. On the other hand, if things go sour, and you don't like where the story's going, the counter is that since you're not paying for it anyway, you don't really have the "right" to make demands. It's an iffy debate that I'm not getting into now - hell, I've always thought that even paying customers don't complain enough (though when they do, it's bloody brilliant), but it does raise the question of how you'd rate the importance of an editor: Tom Brevoort didn't do much to make AVENGERS DISASSEMBLED readable, but leaving all the creative decisions in the hands of the writer can lead to some unfortunate storytelling decisions - FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE being the most egregarious example, though DOMINIC DEEGAN: ORACLE FOR HIRE has made a few wrong turns as well.

Getting back to the whole price thing: the reason free webcomics are so important, especially these days with the digital piracy issue on the table, is because you have a ready-made alternative to amorphous, institutionalized popularity contests (Zuda) and clunky, uncomfortable efforts to lure you into paying anyway (Marvel's online initiative). And for those who prefer paper comics just because they like the feel, or because they're attached to those familiar icons such as Batman and Spider-Man, ask yourself this: how much are you willing to spend, and for how long, on comics that are decidedly inferior to, say, Rich Burlew's THE ORDER OF THE STICK or Shaenon Garrity's NARBONIC? I understand the attachment - hell, I'm still reading print comics, aren't I? - but at the same time, I could drop Marvel, DC and the rest of them tonight without feeling a very great loss. I haven't done so mainly because there's a handful of writers out there who still interest me, but if they were out of the picture? I would be too.

It's been almost three years since I discovered SOMETHING POSITIVE. I'm still reading it, along with nearly twenty other webcomics from a wide array of genres. I've stumbled onto completed webcomics that ran on a daily basis for five to seven years, huge and sprawling series I could read at my leisure, years compressed to days or weeks. I've read EXCELLENT stories.

And I'll be sharing them with you.

Glutton For Punishment: Jeff Takes on the 12/06 Books (Part 1, Maybe).

This is both caveat and invitation. Six months ago, I stopped working behind the counter at CE and reading the week's releases as they came out. It feels like it's been fifty kajillion years, to be honest. I've only read one issue of Countdown, missed two wars (World War Hulk and the Sinestro Corps War), and let entire storylines I was kinda interested in finish up without me bothering (Action Comics, Wonder Woman, Justice League, Fantastic Four). I've continued to buy some monthly releases (everything by Brubaker, pretty much, Morrison's Batman, Blue Beetle) on which I am, with a few exceptions, completely behind. Since June, it's pretty much been Kirby Omnibuses (Omnibi?), some indy books, and a ton of manga.

I'd like to think this'll mean I'll bring "soft eyes" (as the people at The Wire would have it) to these old school big-ass round-ups. But what it probably means is you'll have to issue corrections-a-plenty in the comments field, and remind me that "Ben Grimm is The Thing, not The Hulk," "Norman Osborne is still alive and running Thunderbolts" and "Geoff Johns is only writing twenty comics a month now, and not forty."

Caveat/invitation (or cavitation, if you prefer) out of the way:

30 DAYS OF NIGHT BEYOND BARROW #2: Steve Niles and Bill Sienkiewicz have a lazy-off and we're invited! While I've never cottoned much to Niles' tin ear, he's at least trying to make things easier for his artist by setting the bulk of his scenes either inside a Humvee or in a snowstorm. Sienkiewicz, on the other hand, while turning in some lovely splash pages, can't even be bothered to make the book's single action scene slightly comprehensible. (If you've read Sienkiewicz's classic work, you know he's capable of doing it and getting all the neat splashy impressionistic effects he wants.) Didn't read the first issue of this; won't be reading the last issue of this. AWFUL stuff.

ABYSS #2: A sitcom version of Wanted, this works moderately well, with decent dialogue, great pacing, and a good change-up in the plot (also, a helpful, legible recap page which, since I didn't read the first issue, was a huge plus). I'm a little over books that use analogues to shorthand relationships (and provide for easy joke fodder) but that wasn't handled too badly. Highly OK and I wouldn't mind seeing the next issue.

ALL NEW ATOM #18: Didn't read the previous issue of this, but the priorities of the ending seem a bit off: what about Atom's date? Is Head dead? It's a bummer the big hero moments push away the small character stuff, but isn't that usually the way with Marvel and DC these days? On the plus side, having an angry mob burn Atom on a Foreman Grill is a funny spin on the classic Silver Age "Atom in Peril" scenes. If I was following this book regularly, it'd probably rank on the OK side of things for me. Since it's not really my thing, it got a high EH.

ALL STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN THE BOY WONDER #8: When a comic book opens up right after the Joker has finished making sweet love, you know it's gonna be weird. Although, actually, the rest of the book is relatively straightforward, slow-moving, and cameo-jammed; it's like it was written by Jeph Loeb on elephant tranquilizers. The only other notable bit of weirdness about it is Batman's interior narration concerning Dick Grayson, which sounds a bit like if you cast Marv from Sin City in the Adam Sandler role in Big Daddy: "Damn. This brat's starting to get to me. What am I doing, playing father? This is the dumbest move I've made in my whole life." Huh? Sadly, not insane enough to be more or less than EH.

ATOMIC ROBO #3: Every time I read that title and it doesn't say "Atomic Hobo," I die a little. The pacing falls apart a little--okay, a lot--at the end (there should at least be a "To Be Continued---?" or something before launching into the back-up story, and the back-up story has no real kick to it unless you know who Jack Parsons is), but writer Brian Clevenger has a nice, rambley way with the dialogue and Scott Wegner's art seems simple and clean without being lazy (although I might've felt differently if this book had been in black and white). Like Abyss, the high concept seems a little too clear to me--it's a robot Hellboy only much sunnier, basically--but, like Abyss, I can see myself picking up another issue if I come across it on the stands. Oh, and I also really appreciated the text page here, too. OK stuff.

AVENGERS: THE INITIATIVE ANNUAL: With the possible exception of the guy who goes on military maneuvers in his wifebeater, this is all pretty intelligently crafted, less a typical Marvel annual than the sort of Secret Files thing DC was so big on not too long ago. What's weird to me, though, is how un-Marvel the approach to the Initiative is--with the possible exception of The Liberteens (an amusing Young Avengers style take on the Liberty Legion), these characters feel like they could be characters in the Wildstorm universe, or Shooter's New Universe, or half a dozen other generic superhero universes. Having the Avengers logo slapped on the logo only makes that stand out even more for me. It's highly OK at least, but it didn't instill me with the faintest desire to see the characters again, because I feel like I've already seen them twenty or thirty times before, and that's kind of a bummer.

BATMAN #671: I've been pretty underwhelmed with Morrison's run on Batman so far--that lovely work by J.H. Williams on the Black Glove story arc was the best case of lipstick on a pig I've seen in some time--but this issue makes me think I just shouldn't expect more than some clever jokes and a bunch of the good ol' kick & punch. Taken purely on that standard, this was pretty OK. In fact, considering it's part 4 of a 7 part inter-book crossover, it's really highly OK. It's still not kung-pao'ing my chicken, though.

BLACK SUMMER #4: First issue of this I've read, although I'm aware of the story's hook thanks to our pal The Internet. Juan Jose Ryp's art is always initially lovely but there never seems to be a lot of signal to go with all the noise, and while it makes for a pretty kick-ass street fighting scene, the following airfight sequence loses, rather than gains, tension as a result. Although I'd say this was mighty EH, it was also more interesting than the last three Authority reboots I read.

BLUE BEETLE #21: I tried to read this with an open mind, but guest writer Justin Peniston has still got a ways to go. He opens and closes the book with the old saying "there are no atheists in foxholes," but to do so, Jaime's father explains the saying means "you have to have faith in yourself" which couldn't be more wrong. Amusing ("And that's what the old saying 'never do anal' means, Jaime: you have to have faith in yourself"), but wrong. EH, but since this is normally one of my favorite books on the market, that's more disappointing than the rating would show.

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER #9: Wraps up a pitch-perfect little arc by BKV, and if he ever decides to do a Faith miniseries, I'll be front and center. I'm extraordinarily underwhelmed by Georges Jeanty's work, however: there's a few shots of Giles where he looks like a ginormous headed Martian (the purple coloring doesn't help, I admit). Overall, though, really Good stuff.

COUNTDOWN ARENA #1: Of course, I wasn't expecting this to be good or anything, but I was still startled by how god-damned stupid it was, even by its own "Contest of Champions meets Saw" standard. Wake me when they get around to doing "Secret Wars II meets Hostel," will ya? Craptacular.

COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS 21: Second issue of this I've ever read, and it looks less like an epic storyline (or even several) than an epic excuse to cram in every secondary figure of the DCU so as to get cash from their readership. I mean, OMACs, Jason Todd, Karate Kid, Donna Troy, Batman Beyond, and the Monitors, all in one issue, plus Granny Goodness on the cover? (The last of which, by the way, I think even Kirby was never foolhardy enough to do.) This isn't a comic book, it's a mating call! And yet, when one gets down to such uninhibited pandering (as in, say, porn), what's fascinating is how fickle and impatient those being pandered to really are: like any cheesy porn, Countdown is actually really dull because the viewer, encountering a world ostensibly created entirely for them, can't help but pick it apart. (In the case of porn: there's no story; these women are creeping me out; why isn't the sex hot? In the case of Countdown: there's no story; Jason Todd is creeping me out; why isn't the art any good?) It's tempting to give it an EH since it could be much worse than it is, but pandering rarely engenders good will, which is probably why it's easier to call it AWFUL.

DEATH OF THE NEW GODS #3: Seeing Jim Starlin finally write and draw a New Gods comic is a dream come true for me: unfortunately, it turns out to be that dream where Mr. Spock won't stop making unwanted sexual advances. Seeing the guy who created the second best rip-off of Darkseid (with George Lucas arguably creating the first) finally get his hands on Darkseid should be fun and exciting, but instead I kept noticing how everyone in this book looked like they had to poop. So much squatting! It's like Starlin decided to draw Kirby poses but show them from new angles to highlight how unnatural they are. There's also some bullshit about fighting artificially created parademons so the heroes can destroy indiscriminately without worrying about taking actual lives. Lame, lame, lame. It's like paying money to watch Eric Clapton cover a Howling Wolf blues tune and seeing him not only blow the melody, but shear off a fingertip on a guitar string. Depressingly AWFUL.

EXTERMINATORS #24: That faux Kurtz scene amazed me by transcending simple parody--there's a great panel of the character staring with a despair and horror that that tells more than just the exposition he's delivering--and using "Heart of Darkness" as a way to comment on how cruise lines continue the evils of colonialism is really sharp. But once the focus is changed from "colonialism" to "patriarchy," the theme, and the story, falls apart as you read it. (Like, why would the guy go onshore to get his whores and rock when he could stay on the ship?) One of the few times I've read a book and wished it could get a do-over: I think I'd like the next draft of this a lot more than I did this one. EH, in the end.

HOWARD THE DUCK #3: This has a lot going for it--Templeton's script, like classic Gerber scripts, is a mixture of social satire and sheer absurdity, and Bobillo's art is wonderful to look at, particularly in panels when Howard looks a duck version of Harvey Pekar--but also kind of misses the boat in some fundamental way I can't put my finger on. Templeton nails Howard's "only sane person in a world gone mad" positioning, but it's Howard's unique mercurial reactions to that position (angry, depressed, bemused, weary, self-pitying, resigned) that make the character who he is, and the Howard here is maybe a little better adjusted than that. (I also think that Howard worked better on the fringes of the MU, rather than so front and center). So I don't know how to rate it: It's OK, but it also feels a bit like a big mistake.

HOUSE OF M AVENGERS #2: As long as you can get over the creative team's utter misunderstanding of The House of M premise (if I remember correctly, Magneto isn't able to retcon all of reality, which is why Wolverine remembers the truth when he gets his memory back, and why Hawkeye flips out after reading the back issues in the Daily Bugle's morgue--it's a precarious half-universe Magneto and Wanda have set up and the history doesn't go very far back), it's pretty darn good. Mike Perkins' art is glossy but expressive (although occasionally very stiff), and Christos Gage puts a lot of depth into his B and C list characters. There's some plot-hammering, sure, and, depth of character aside, I'm not really sure why we're supposed to care about this alternate reality spin of events, but as a Marvel Elseworlds kind of thing about characters only me and a few other '70s nerds would care about, it's GOOD stuff. Baffling in a "why is this on the market?" kind of way, admittedly, but Good.

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #15: Haven't bothered with the book since Meltzer left, but this issue at least, thanks in part to the art team and McDuffie's script, reads like Meltzer without all the Mary Sue date rapery ("Come on, you really like Red Arrow, don't you? Don't you? Come on...") which makes it both much more readable and less interesting. It would've been nice if there'd been at least one establishing shot to let me know where this was taking place since there was, at most, two panels with any sort of visible background in them at all, but whatever. Seemed like a pretty vacuous wrap-up but I didn't read the first three (or four?) issues setting it up so maybe I'm wrong. EH.

JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #11: Might be the Alex Ross influence, or whatever nine million other deadlines he has going on, but Geoff Johns is usually better at having issues of his books read like actual issues and not just collections of cool scenes. I mean, we've got a cosmic treadmill sequence, the JLA and the JSA checking out Kingdom Come Superman, Power Girl crying, the JLA apparently fucking off because we never see them again, the JSA inspiring people by flying around like a Macy's Day parade float, we're introduced to Judomaster and three or four potentially embarrassing ethnic supervillains, there's a fight, Kingdom Come Superman thinks Judomaster should be arrested because she won't talk to people, Kingdom Come Superman and Power Girl have a touching scene together, then people find a body and Mr. America shows up. In the past, Johns was pretty good at traditional storytelling (something in the fight between Judomaster and those villains would make KC Superman realize he has to reach out to Power Girl) but this is frustrating in its "and then this happens to set that up, and this happens to set that up, and this happens because Alex wants an exploding Japanese fat man, and you can figure out why they're all in the same book." I'm loathe to call it AWFUL, but when I remember what this book was like in its previous run (particularly before issue #50 or so), I get very sad.

LOBSTER JOHNSON #4: I'll be picking up the trade on this. Hadn't bothered with previous issues since the Hellboy spin-off books usually don't do it for me (and I'm always suspicious of characters that sound like someone's nickname for their penis), but goddamn if artist Jason Armstrong and colorist Dave Stewart don't drive this baby to Awesometown. Mignola is also on his game here with a script that leaves plenty of room for big action moments, and he's got a nice way with the dialogue, so that when the villain says of this request for 369 dragons, "That will be the number of my army," you get that "hey, it's the pretentious-speaking bad guy" jolt without it just sounding like recycled Dr. Doomisms. VERY GOOD stuff and, like I say, I'll be getting the trade.

MIDNIGHTER: Some spiffy political subtext, brings back a character and ideas from Millar's run, filled with a lot of bloody violence, and has about the only plot hook (who was the Midnighter before he became the Midnighter) I can see being left to play with the character. Apart from a bad storytelling slip (Midnighter breaks the surveillance camera in his room, but a previous page shows that's he's being watched from multiple angles), there's not anything to bitch about. If Chris Sprouse was still on the book, I bet I'd even give this sucker a Good--but a combo of the art not doing much for me and being burnt out on the character puts it at highly OK for me. If you still like the character, however, you'll probably like this.

ROBIN #169: A real and ongoing problem with the bat-books--and with nearly all superhero books these days--is that the writers treat character motivations like switches they can turn on and off whenever they want. Not that I follow it that closely, but Tim Drake is fine with being an orphan except when he isn't; is the most level-headed member of the Bat-Family except when he's the most headstrong; and the least threatened by all the other Batman successors, except when he is. I'm okay with a gimme or two--Tim is obsessed with restoring Conner because he can't bring back his family, for example--but the conclusions Milligan comes to here about Robin's character seem like perfectly rational ones made by someone who hasn't bothered to read up on the character much. Which is all my long-winded way of saying: felt plot-hammered and I didn't care. EH.

ULTIMATES 3 #1: Weird and desperate even by Jeph Loeb's current storytelling standards, and I'm kinda shocked by the hubris at signing on to a book for which he has absolutely no affinity whatsoever. I read somewhere that Loeb had no interest in playing with political text and subtext as Millar did, but all that's leaves him with is making explicit the erotic bits and pieces Millar left more or less implicit, and the usual Loeb "here's a full page reveal of a surprise cameo" trick. The scenes are shittily paced (Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver leave the room and don't come back when something crashes through the wall five seconds later), the characterizations are off (the Ultimate Thor is using faux Shakespeare speak, Ultimate Wasp acts just like 616 Wasp, Ultimate Captain America is a sullen prude), and new characters are introduced without the slightest bit of characterization. It's all genuinely terrible stuff, but, amazingly, still not as bad as the overly dark, stilted, sketchy art. I mean, check out that first splash page where Thor is apparently punching himself through a wall, or where Valkyrie would be leaping off her winged horse if it wasn't thirty feet behind her, or that sequence where Quicksilver apparently chases a bullet after it's missed Wanda (rather than go after the shooter) and the bullet is beside him in one panel, behind him in another panel, and moving in a completely different direction in another. By the time Millar and Hitch were finished with their run, I had lost already lost interest in reading The Ultimates, and this issue still made me all but weep tears of blood. True CRAP, and an embarrassment to everyone involved. Yikes.

WET MOON, VOL. 3: Fetishistic plump girl cheesecake intermixed with ultra-banal dialogue--kinda like if Larry Clarke was into chunky girls instead of shirtless skater guys. And while Ross Campbell's work is formidably realized, with detailed characters and an ear for conversational nuance, it also felt aimless, obsessive, and incapable of insight (which is why I prefer, say, R. Crumb's and Dave Cooper's and Los Hernandez Bros' material as it rises above mere chunky girl obsessions). The craft makes it an OK book, and it wasn't an unpleasant read, but the unsavory onanistic qualities make it hard to really recommend.

***

Whew. I've still got another twelve books or so to go, but lemme get this out into the world and give my brain time to recharge, 'kay?

"Do you enjoy flirting with pain, my little hedgehog?": Jog could have bought this off of any magazine rack around, 12/5 or not

And that's not even the best line to be found in the publication under review today, dear old Heavy Metal, which released a new issue to comics stores this week. No, the gold cup can only go to this fearsome remark, dropped by a street tough in the middle of a mugging:

"Be calm and in a few minutes you will have the possibility to stay on your own and do your oscene acts!"

Maybe I've just been oscenely spoiled by the proliferation of manga, but I do kind of expect a higher quality of translation these days, particularly from what's still a highly visible, accessible forum for European comics in English. Maybe the most visible. I'm not saying that all manga translations are great or anything, but I can't recall the last time I found myself tripping on the dialogue, or scratching my head over what was supposed to be happening on a given page because the words weren't quite matching the pictures. That still happens with the non-English portions of this magazine, and it's really too bad.

I will say that that story I got the above example from (Friends, by Davide Furno & Paolo Armitano) was noticeably worse than the rest of the issue, but even the other pieces manage clunkers like "Now we are going to have some. Nobody can jerk me around and get away with it!" Oh well. Anyway -

Heavy Metal (Jan. 2008): The main feature for this new issue, which is what I'll focus on, is the 62-page debut of a brand-new series from artist Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri, best known for the eight-volume Morbus Gravis series of sci-fi sex comics starring a young woman named Druuna.

Druuna, in case you're not a seasoned reader, doesn't always wear so much clothing. This may well be the key to her international success, although Serpieri's knack for detailed, fiercely hatched and scratched environments may hold its own appeal for admirers of realist fantasy illustration.

That's what's at the fore of Hell (Les Enfers). Written by Jean Dufaux (of the series Raptors and Dixie Road, both in English from NBM), the album does sort of fudge the Dirk Deppey test for quality in Heavy Metal licenses, in that the human naked breasts don't show until page 33, although demonic nudity is prominent by page 5. Accordingly, there's a good deal of story in place, although most of it amounts to scene-setting.

The plot concerns political and religious trouble in a fantasy Venice. A ruined old man passes away, but not before entrusting his young daughter with a sacred artifact the family stole a few heads ago: three magical keys, each of which will unlock the hidden door to the afterlife, but produce a unique result. One will open Paradise. One will reveal Hell. And one will lead to absolute nothingness, which doesn't sound like a great deal either.

Aided by the old man's servant, a long-haired dude with strange secrets and a desire to dress in a cloak and mask while out looking for trouble, Our Heroine grows up to be La Luna, champion of the common folk against the theocratic reign of Sancti Aura, "the right-wing inquisitors" (think they're villains?), led by her wicked uncle (a guy with wires sticking out of half his metal head with a flesh face stretched across the front), who also wants the keys. As does Galadriel, a chalk-white male/female demon who's supposed to be watching the sacred door, but mostly scowls and gets easily misled.

Oh, and for a little extra topical kick, the Catholic-type inquisitors are expecting Islamic-style guests for a holy/magical technological Great Duel for the hearts and minds of the citizenry. Uncle Robot's big trick is to rip off an index finger, fire delightful cartoon lightning into a hole, and summon Moloch, a nuclear(?) warhead with tentacles.

(pardon the non-English illustration)

It's all very flush and socio-political in that European-pop-comics-that-tend-to-get-licensed-by-Heavy-Metal way, and actually fairly intriguing. I suppose the problem is that Dufaux has so much premise to knock through, that the whole story seems like an extended prologue, with the cast's basic motivations just barely sketched in by the close, which makes me wonder how future volumes of the same length might deepen these individual characterizations without knocking the pace out of wack. It doesn't compare well with a similar religion/politics series from a famous Italian smutty artist also running in Heavy Metal - Borgia, by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Milo Manara, which has a way of blowing through years of history with exploitation verve and a deeper, more convincingly cynical take on human and divine affairs.

Still, we've got Serpieri, and he lavishes attention on what I can best describe as Renaissance-fascist decor amidst obsolete future tech, and his characters have a way of remaining expressive despite the heaviness of their detail. Well, save for La Luna herself, who sometimes seems lacquered like a piece of furniture in the Druuna tradition - it's more fitting to heap such gloss on the heroine's posture if you're doing a male-targeted sex comic, since she's the obvious focal point of everyone's attention anyway, but a story this involved with place needs plenty of grit to get on everyone. OKAY.

Oh, Jeph!

Jeph Loeb is an odd writer -- he knows his fanboy moments, he's good at spinning out big wacky ideas, and he writes a lot of commercially successful books. Yet (regardless of positions on WIZARD's "hot list") he's barely the kind of writer that people specifically seek out -- it's far more fair to say that he manages to work with some of the best ARTISTS in the business, and so he has "heat by association" -- and, as a general rule, I find that (unlike, say, another "Big Idea" generator like a Grant Morrison) he seldom knows how to end his stories or to find something PAST that "big idea". (Your mileage, as they say, may vary)

On the other hand, I think he's an extremely nice guy, and everytime we've ever run into each other at a convention or something, he's always been extremely gracious and friendly, even if I've recently panned something he's written.

Let us hope that continues after today, for I come not to praise Caesar...

ULTIMATES 3 #1: seems to me to suffer from a somewhat normal "post-Millar" syndrome. Millar is, above all else, a showman who tries to come up with the biggest boldest ideas he can. I'd say we've seen this somewhat before, with THE AUTHORITY. What on EARTH can you follow Millar's run with? Basically, you can't. The stuff is so big, so apeshit, there's nowhere else to run with it.

People with really long memories can remember my thoughts on the end of Millar's first ULTIMATES arc (I said something like "Right, well, that's it, can't top that as a superhero extravaganza", which got me a semi-nasty "are you kidding me?" email from Mark Waid), and I still think that's pretty true -- in making a story so big and "contemporary", there really isn't a lot of places that are left to go.

In fact, I tend to think that both THE AUTHORITY (both Ellis' and Millar's runs) as well as THE ULTIMATES were very much "of their time", and trying to continue on, in the same vein, is almost certainly a doomed proposition. That's not to say it couldn't possibly be done -- anything is possible -- but that it probably makes more sense to come up with something else than to try and follow those acts.

But Jeph largely just follows what Millar established in ULTIMATES in ULTIMATES 3, without a whole lot of new ideas thrown in. Yep, these are pretty loathsome, amoral characters, but it's reasonably easy to overlook that as long as their foes are even worse, and there's enough 'splody to distract you.

In U3, there doesn't really appear to be any especial threat, other than the characters own amorality. Oh sure, someone gets shot, and there's a not-particularly-conforming-to-ULTIMATE-SPIDER-MAN-Venom attack that goes nowhere, but other than that it looks like a team full of death-seekers, libertines, junkies, and incest participants casting around waiting for a threat to emerge.

Structurally, there's not much in this first issue to bring me back for another.

Joe Madureira is another mystery to me -- I never really got the appeal of his body of work, and his, shall we say, lackadaisical approach to production always grated me the wrong way. I can't say, based on the work here that I would have necessarily even have guessed this was Joe Mad -- it doesn't look a whole lot like BATTLE CHASERS, really. What I wonder is how much of the art is actually the colorist, Christian Lichtner (who really really likes earth tones)?

It's been selling well enough, so far (though way below the last Millar/Hitch issue for us), and, of course, we're hoping and praying that enough of this is actually completed so that all five issues will come out when they should (The Ultimate Universe CAN'T afford another scheduling fiasco like U-2 became. Or even UltPOWER or UltVISION or the dreaded UltWOLVERINE/HULK) But what I really came away from this work feeling was that the Ulti-verse really feels like it is past its expiration date here. It hasn't gone sour quite yet, but there really isn't anything unique or compelling about it any longer.

Overall, I'd have to say EH, which is far less than you'd want for your Big Tentpole Comic.

***

Meanwhile, in things that Aren't Comics, I really have to comment on the conclusion of the second series of HEROES, and this seems like a good enough place to do it because the final episode said "written by Jeph Loeb" on it.

All of the goodwill I had for this series coming out of the first season (despite its very weak ending) has pretty much evaporated as the show made a series of increasingly poor decisions over these 11 episodes.

(there's definitely SPOILERS here if you haven't watched these yet [Jeff Lester])

First off, in a world-building environment, one of the key things which kicks out the legs of dramatic tension are things that are "too powerful" -- good examples are the powersets of Peter or Sylar, who can basically "do anything" to the point where it seems to me the only possible things that can stop either is each other (and even that seems sorta iffy). I thought it was a really good move to have them both depowered at the start of the season, but since then they're back more powerful than ever. I don't judge that this is going to yield any kind of compelling story for all of the REST of the characters -- what good is being able to talk to computers, or shoot lightning or mimic Jackie Chan if the guy in front of you has all of those powers, plus 9 more?

The other bad storytelling idea they added was cheap and easy resurrection. Yow, talk about sucking the air out of the room. This is a terrible terrible idea, and one they need to jettison first chance next season (if there is one) -- have the resurrectees gain something horrifically debilitating, as the "super blood" takes over their natural blood or something. Because otherwise, there aren't any cliffhangers any longer -- Nathan can be up and around in about 90 seconds, since Peter has BOTH the Claire- and Adam-strains of immortality now.

But above and beyond the "outside" elements which will render this world as something you can't care about, the biggest sin this season has laid out is False Jeopardy, both of the physical and emotional kind. "Such-and-such is dead!" followed 10 minutes later by "Ha! They're not!" sucks as storytelling. Spending so so much time on Claire's emotional traumas when they too are resolved away (through one of the death's), or appear to act contrary to the arc already established (ie Flying Boy's apparently complete reversal of his motivations -- "Robot or Alien?") is completely sloppy and lazy.

I mean, when a quarter of your penultimate episode is "oh no, I've lost my backpack!", followed up by a fake-death cliffhanger than a 4-year old could write their way out of (Duh, Jessica is back), you've gone seriously off the rails.

I also completely resent the plothammering going on here -- which works even less in a movie image than it does on a comics page. Like, for example, why in God's name is Peter completely ignoring Hiro when Hiro has proven himself to Peter already? Even if he feels like he HAS to, why is he trying to use TK to rip open the safe wall, when he has BOTH DL's intangibility power (remember they established him using it to break Adam out of "jail" in the first place) and Hiro's teleporting power? Other than the fact that the writers needed to get Adam into the room too?

Or, why would shooting Nathan change a thing when both Peter and Parkman have the SAME information? In fact, wouldn't the live-on-TV shooting give even MORE weight to there being a Shadowy Conspiracy? It isn't like Peter can't prove pretty definitively he has flashy powers (Parkman's are "less visible", fair enough) -- in fact, wouldn't his first action to be to scoop his brother up and FLY to the nearest hospital? I can't possibly see how the shooting could solve a single solitary thing for The Company.

Or Sylar in the alley. While they get "cute points" for the Popeye callout, if the first 30 seconds of the next episode isn't him soaring back to Mohinder's office and slaughtering the cripple, the little girl, the chick that everyone hates, and Dr. Emo, I'm going to be screaming in frustration.

But I have to say that the dumbest bit of plothammering of all probably had to be Hiro's "revenge" on Adam. Oh sure, clever little image, except for the fact that he's DESECRATING HIS OWN FATHER'S GRAVE DOING SO. If it was some trailer park American trash, then maybe I could let that slide, but with the importance they established, and the Japanese cultural imperatives, that makes NO sense, none, zero, zilch. 'sides Hiro, of all people, should know that you have to actually kill the badguy for it to work -- clearly Adam will eventually get out of there, even if it takes 100 years. He's apparently got nothing but time. If Uma Thurman can dig herself out of her own grave (and you KNOW Hiro was at KILL BILL on opening day...), then surely Vandal Savage can do so as well...

This has been an AWFUL season, with a completely CRAP final episode. To the point where I very much doubt if I'd bother to watch a third season at this particular moment in time.

And I'm the goddamn Target Audience!

What did YOU think?

-B

Scars on 45: Douglas tries the quick-hits thing with a bunch of 11/29 releases

I haven't really done mini-reviews here before, but this is the Season of Experimentation, right? Crime Bible: Five Lessons of Blood #2: Obviously I'd be biased toward this comic, but it really is Very Good: a crisp, done-in-one espionage/romance/psychological thriller-type story about Renee Montoya/the Question infiltrating a crime-cult-operated brothel for wealthy Beltway types in Chevy Chase, MD. Very densely plotted, too--it takes place over the course of two months, and a whole lot happens, most of it nudging forward the overall themes of the series. It's also worth noting that the tone of this issue would've been very different with a male protagonist and everything else the same. (And that Montoya's background gives her a stronger connection between sex and guilt than other people have.) As I mentioned when I reviewed the first issue, The Question is a vehicle for stories about the character's self-exploration, and I kind of love the idea that the crime cult is forcing her to commit what she knows are sins (in the name of doing good) so that she can better understand herself.

One little production note, though: if word balloons are supposed to include unintelligible text (to indicate a not-quite-overheard conversation), it's probably wisest for that text not to be the Photoshop-blurred word "unintelligible," especially if it's still pretty much intelligible.

Love and Capes #6: This is apparently the final issue for now of this fun little series, produced singlehandedly by Thom Zahler, although the text piece at the end promises more to come eventually. The blurb on the cover calls it "The Heroically Super Situation Comedy Comic Book!," which makes it sound slightly more formulaic than it is; it's essentially a romantic comedy about a celebrity dating a non-celebrity, with a superhero angle to make it a little more lively. (The action stuff, including an alien invasion this issue, all happens off-panel; the plot this time concerns the Superman-analogue the Crusader's girlfriend hosting a signing by the Wonder Woman-analogue Amazonia at her bookstore, and gnashing her teeth over the fact that Amazonia's book is partly a kiss-and-tell about the days when she used to date the Crusader.)

Zahler's got a really nice sense of narrative flow and design--I'm particularly fond of his "translucent" speech balloons--and if we have to have computer color modeling in comics, I'm happy to see some of it look like this, with a lot of tones and textures that look more like cel animation than old comic books. It's Good stuff, but I also wouldn't mind a bit if Zahler let these characters' stories end here; most of them don't have a lot of life beyond being breezily written stand-ins for familiar icons, and I'd like to see what he could do outside this set of formal constraints.

Batman #671: I missed the first three parts of "The Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul," and found myself a little lost at the beginning of this issue, but also drawn in, mostly by Tony Daniel and Jonathan Glapion's artwork--they're copping the Neal Adams/Dick Giordano style in a few sequences (cf. the image of the Sensei on the first page, below--that "chunky" line is a total Crusty Bunker effect!), and it looks great.

What we actually get plot-wise, though, is a lot of shouting and fighting. It's Okay, and Batman gets to be a total badass in the climactic fight scene, but compare this to, say, All-Star Superman and it's evident that Morrison's writing a tone--Batman the Badass Hairy-Chested Love God--rather than a story. And I'm wondering where the impetus and plot for "RRaG" (not to be confused with "RRAGG" [at 5:03]) came from: was it at all Morrison's and/or the other Bat-writers' idea, or was it dictated from above?

I'm also wondering if Morrison actually knows what happened in the sequence in 52 #30 he keeps suggesting he's going to expand on. The solicitation for this issue promised that "the secrets of Nanda Parbat are revealed," and the solicitation for #673 also says it "revisits Batman's life-changing Thogal ritual in the caves of Nanda Parbat." Of course, the solicitation for #665 claimed "we learn what really happened to Batman inside the cave in Nanda Parbat when he underwent a seven-day Buddhist isolation ritual to purge his negative karma," and unless I skipped over a few pages, we didn't. The retreat involved in the practice of thogal, by the way, seems rather arduous, especially since it's seven weeks rather than seven days--scroll down to "The Bardo Retreat," near the end--but "attaining the rainbow body" is a bit like becoming a New God, don't you think?

Marvel Atlas #1: And here I was, thinking this was going to be some kind of sequel to Agents of ATLAS. It's actually an Official Handbook sort of thing, with straightforward text infodumps about every real and fictional country in the 616 Universe's Europe and Asia. Perhaps there will eventually be an ATLAS Atlas. (Not to be confused with "Hatless Atlas".) Not nearly as entertaining as it ought to be, despite sentences like "Italy is home to the Mafia and the Maggia" (and a we-wish-we-could-spell-this-out bit of the Ireland entry: "in ancient times Scathach approached a recently orphaned girl, who vowed to the goddess she would only ever love a man who could defeat her in battle"). Where there isn't a lot of Marvel Universe detail, space is filled in with generic world-atlas pieces of information; where there is, piles of stories get referred to glancingly, in a phrase or two. Title and issue-number references (for things other than fictional countries' first appearances) would've made it a bit more useful; as it is, it's not terribly readable, and not much of a reference tool, either. Eh, on the whole, and it's strange that the second issue won't be out until March.

Abhay Reminds You That Feline AIDS is the #1 Killer of Domestic Cats

Chewing over a theme that keeps popping up for me: I played a videogame recently entitled Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. It’s famous in game circles for its postmodern themes; essentially it’s designed to assault, insult, and berate the gamer for even wanting to play a sequel to Metal Gear Solid. This is amply reflected by the level design: after the gamer completes each level, the narrative states that the completed level was inconsequential, and the gamer’s efforts were frivolous. At one point, the game explicitly tells the gamer to shut off his Playstation. Finally, at the end, the gamer’s decision to finish the game is described as a sign of his obedience to power, and his lack of humanity.

It’s a pretty gnarly video game.

Metal Gear Solid 2 is funniest when it mocks the former game's sentimentality. My favorite moment in the entire game involves the player character’s romantic foil, nicknamed EE– after you repeatedly save her life, she dies anyway in the arms of her brother instead, while finally admitting her incestuous feelings for him. As she dies, she pleads: "Please call me Emma."

Her brother refuses her dying wish: "What's wrong with EE?"

And on that romantic note, she croaks. Even the supporting characters aren’t allowed catharsis from the game! Her brother mourns her: "I'm always the survivor. [a wolf howls in the distance—despite the fact the game is set at sea!!] Why, wolf?"

Narratively, the gamer’s player-character only achieves success and catharsis by rejecting the narrative of the former game (as more thoroughly explained here). The gamer is rewarded for his efforts by being increasingly disassociated with the player-character; the more you succeed, the more you watch your player-character grow progressively disillusioned with the game itself. The finale is the main character’s escape from the artificial narrative of the game, from the genre, from video games, and most of all, from YOU.

One of the characters in the game is named Peter Stillman, cribbed of course from Paul Auster’s City of Glass which comic book fans all know and love thanks to the masterpiece adaptation from Paul Karasik and Dave Mazzucchelli. I reread the book last summer, after having not looked at it since it came out, thanks to the recent Picador reprint. Goddamn, you know?

City of Glass: a detective mystery story with no solution. No mystery. Gradually, no detective.

The Comics Journal placed the adaptation at #45 on its 100 Greatest English-language Comics (and uh: Al Hirschfeld drawings) of the 20th century list. Personally, I think it could have been a bit higher on the list, but... It’s defeated on the list by Ghost World, Dick Tracy, Plastic Man, etc. If you want an example of lovable cartoon characters trumping formalism and narrative sophistication visa vi audience affection, that might be grist for the mill. Of course, you’d have to care where it ended up on some list, which ...

There’s a great quote from Paul Karasik about the book’s use of the 9-panel grid:

[It] looks like a jail cell door. That's it! We'll use this grid in all sorts of ways in the first half of the book to reinforce this rigid structure that Quinn has locked himself into. Bit by bit we're going to break down the grid in subtle ways. As his sanity leaves, the drawing itself will start going off-kilter. Mazzucchelli, in an old interview with Indy Magazine, says something similarly quotable:

Most of the comics I made before City of Glass have cinematic tendencies — and by "cinematic" I'm referring to the way each panel creates a kind of mise en scene; and the way the sequence of panels — often without narration — evokes a linear progression of time. (Actually, I dislike comparisons between comics and movies, but this is the clearest way I can describe what I'm thinking of.) Paul thinks of comics in much more graphic terms — drawing as symbol, cipher, icon...cartoon!

That interview includes “cinematic” test pages for City of Glass. They’re disastrous in comparison to the final product: they’re regular old comic book pages. The final product is so dense, challenging, disconcerting, ultimately ecstatic. For any comic book fan, I don’t see how City of Glass would be anything other than an ecstatic experience with its frequent metamorphoses: image becoming icon becoming image, text playing off image playing off text, and so on. Je-sus. What other word is there as the camera prowls about, and visual metaphors multiply, and layer builds upon layer, as the main “character” dissolves right before our eyes both visually and textually, what other word is there but “ecstasy”? Not good-piece-of-chocolate ecstasy, but…

I feel silly even talking about it-- everyone’s read that book, right? But: characters escaping from their narrative, expelled from their genre, flung from conventions...

Pick up issue #11 of Casanova, on stands this week-- dude, there it is again:

The issue mirrors #2 of the last series: a character meets his/her literary forbearer, gets naked with them, and— Ha-Ha— kills them. Characters violently reject the future that genre and convention would create for them. Inside the narrative, time is echoing for the characters, and outside the narrative, the book is echoing itself for the readers. I guess Hermetics might mutter something about “as above, so below” or whatever, but I don’t know any Hermetics. Oh, there’s more regret this time than last time around. It's a bummer in #11.

Still: all in the context of an arc where the title character has disappeared from the narrative of his own book. The other characters try to fuck and kill their way through the normal spy-whatever without him, but four issues later, it’s not really working out so hot, is it? When any of the characters stop and pause, doubt floods in. If this arc is about gluttony, the characters are all in that gap between gluttony and pleasure.

Question for you: Is Zephyr the “bad guy” for wanting and doing the same things Casanova did in Vol. 1, i.e. to kill her progenitors, deny her father, escape into a new family, escape from a comic book that’s not quite about her? Are Cass’s friends the “good guys” for wanting to drag Casanova back into their world of empty genre thrills, even after all it got him was a trip to the hospital? Which side are you on?

Extra credit: Do you get a little teeny-tiny shiver from the shift on the first page from the rocket launch to the scuba scene? Is that something we all get? Is that a big reason why we still read comics? Is there a word for why we like that? When a fingerprint becomes a library becomes a city becomes a cupcake sandwich in City of Glass, do you just want to throw your fist into the air and howl like the illogical wolf from Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty? Can you buy cupcake sandwiches? Is that a thing? That should be a thing. I think I just invented a thing.

I could wring another couple paragraphs for the very enjoyable, very similar Umbrella Academy too, droning on about the rather obvious ways that fits in. Or I could talk about J.M. DeMatteis and Paul Neary’s Captain America Issue 297, my favorite comic when I was a kid and the second comic book I remember buying. It was about Captain America being trapped by Baron Zemo in a machine that recreates the adventure where Bucky dies for Cap, in order to drive him crazy with the memory of his failure; instead, Captain America escapes the machine by saving Bucky in the false reality instead—achieving victory only by defying the previous narrative.

But you get what I’m talking about: that theme, man, that goddamned theme.

Escape. Dissolve. Disappear.

You know? It’s everywhere. It keeps turning up like a bad penny, or the number 23, or ads for that movie about the number 23. And I happen to subscribe to the school of thought that what we notice in what we read, what we respond to, often says more about us than about the work itself… So plainly, this is all my subconscious trying to tell myself something, albeit via Playstation games, cheap comic books, bubblegum wrappers. And that something … that something… that something is what? What is it? I’m experiencing a feeling of a need to escape the present strictures of my life...? The walls are closing in? Time is fleeting? Madness takes its toll? That I’m easily replaceable both at work and socially? That I don’t even know how I got here, and I’m just looking for a way out, and … and… and—and – and--

Dfjsdafjkadfjadk;fj;asdklfjl; asdj/asdfjak— #####@#Okay, then, fuck em all-- First, you have to burn off your fingerprints using hydrochloric acid-- Is hydrochloric acid something you can buy? -- Fuck it, you can use a rusty knife-- Tetanus can’t stop you-- the fingerprints are coming off -- they can find you with your fingerprints—creditors will hunt you down-- the credit card companies own dogs-- they collect your urine when you’re not looking-- you have to start reading David Ickes-- Sell everything in your apartment-- anything you can’t sell gets burned—you’re going to burn this mother to the ground—oh wait, it’s probably a breach of your lease agreement to burn things in your apartment—and you won’t get your security deposit back—They always screw you on the security deposit-- How is that legal? -- GO OFF THE GRID -- You take buses to a different city-- grow a beard-- use only cash-- the streets will be your bathroom-- the streets will also be your university-- the University of Bathroom will be your alma mater—your official transcript will be printed on toilet paper and it’ll be printed in feces -- (probably your own!) -- that way no one will ask to see it twice—you’ll have diplomas made at Kinkos-- then burn the diplomas-- then burn down the Kinkos just to be sure—shave off the beard---find a job where they don’t ask too many questions on the job interview-- Pot deliveryman-- Working a counter at a leather corset store-- Head of FEMA-- zciuiopzsfgfsgaahfgnmhm— Read Catcher in the Rye on your days off-- You’ll play an acoustic guitar for tips-- play Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins -- Write for a Freegan blog named Rude Not Bombs-- yeah, yeah, be a Freegan-- That’s kind of a step up from Comic Book Fan, right? -- It goes Wiccan, Comic Book Fan, Frotteurist, then Freegan-- that’s a deuce—- hide your pubic hairs in library books-- get food and clothing out of dumpsters— Jodie Foster probably likes you-- the next time anyone hears from you, your name will be Roger Thornhill and you’ll be an anonymous leather corset salesman who smells like a dumpster and you’ll probably have severe burns over 23% of your body-- Except – noone – will—hear—from—you—

… On the other hand, I really do want to find out who the Skrulls are. I bet Black Panther’s a Skrull. Getting married? Joining the Fantastic Four? Does that sound like the Black Panther to you? When he could be out in Wakanda, enjoying the fruits of his Vibranium mines, straight chilling? Come on. Come on, now. What does he have to do, take out a billboard on Highway 90 that says “Kl'rt the Super-Skrull is my Co-pilot”, people? Am I right, here? What a total Skrull that dude is. That dude? Skrull. I gotta get up early for work tomorrow.

But after I find out about Black Panther, then that whole “off the grid” pubic-hair thing is on. Yeah... Win-win. Thanks, Casanova.

"WHO WANTS IT FIRST?!": Jog on the disreputable tales of 11/29

I love a good theme post like I love a good meal. Which reminds me that I'm going to have to trudge through tomorrow's ice storm to get food.

Speak of the Devil #3 (of 6): Back in July when I reviewed the first issue of this, Gilbert Hernandez's sex-horror trash film in comics form, I qualified my then-lukewarm reaction by noting "I expect better as it collects itself." Reviews of works in progress operate as analysis in progress. My qualms with the debut stemmed from Hernandez's use of a spread-out 'cinematic' style to start up a larky story, making it seem especially vaporous.

Well, it's now halfway through and Hernandez has provided some condensation; the initial masked night romps of young Val -- popular high school student, and a peeping tom with a special interest in her exhibitionist stepmom -- have given way to several plot complications, and the flighty joy of Hernandez's wide panels is accordingly replaced with tighter, troublesome panels. As always, the artist is in total control of pacing (both in-issue and across the wider story - this guy knows how to serialize), and even toss-off sequences are rich with storytelling technique - there's a swell page of back-and-forth conversation where each speaking character is kept off-panel, to express their lack of connection in spatial terms. Nice.

The story, oh... there's graveyard sex and older women bedding young fellows and teenage lesbian tension between gymnasts and half-dead infants kept in drawers. Hernandez's ever-building tension climaxes with a nice midpoint explosion of violence, and it'll be something to see where he takes things from there. I do still think this sort of stuff would have been better delivered as a single book, like its similarly conceived, as of now far superior sibling work Chance in Hell (one of the best comics of the year, btw), or maybe in the larger chunks Love and Rockets will soon be providing, but I can't deny the cumulative effect brewing. I'm having a GOOD time.

Foolkiller #2 (of 5): Of course, maybe I'm just a ghoul, and a sucker for exploitation nonsense. This latest issue of Marvel's MAX update for the Steve Gerber concept sees writer Gregg Hurwitz recounting the origin of the new Foolkiller, Michael Trace, who has two evident skills: (1) getting members of his immediate family killed; and (2) making shitloads of money by sheer chance. As a boy, Michael shoplifted some comics, then told a lie about his crime - this resulted in his father being shot and killed. Later, as a troubled young man, Michael walked into a casino and won ten million dollars on his first try at the slots. Ah, the tides of fate.

But I think the part where I really started grooving had Michael practicing his katana moves during a board meeting of the corporation he founded with his winnings, only pausing to ok the use of cheap alloys in their automobiles. Alas, those alloys go into a car driven by Michael's own dear mother, causing her to fatally crash... into a busload of innocent children!! It's like Spider-Man's origin is this guy's mutant power! We also get the origins of all of Foolkiller's stuff - his tattoos, his staff, his dog (complete with the pup getting bigger and meaner with time) - it's comprehensive!

The tone is strange, with tongue-in-cheek moments that'll probably only register to those who'd dig the content were it totally straight. I suspect the tortured 'fools' theme won't help - the title character delivers a long speech over the last quarter of the issue, and I could barely even parse it. On the other hand, Lan Medina's art is the best I've seen from him (is Andy Troy coloring from pencils?), every panel full of rich grot. Still OKAY, but maybe it's just me.

People always come home: Graeme Dares from 11/29

I'm not sure whether it's a sign of my age, or the quality of the comics he's appeared in, that I can remember at least three different attempts to reboot Dan Dare that I've read (Plus an additional TV series that I missed, thankfully) before this week's DAN DARE #1. Of all of those - including Garth Ennis's latest one - I still think that Grant Morrison and Rian Hughes' Dare: The Future is the best one, mainly because it works as something other than nostalgia for a character and era long past. Or, perhaps, because it works as commentary on nostalgia for a character and era long past (as well as Thatcher's Britain, which is in itself a character and era long past. That, definitely, is a sign of my age).

It's the nostalgia that drags down the newest version of the character for me. Part of it is intentional, of course - Dare's recreation of a safe fantasy version of England that's stuck in the era in which he first appeared is, after all, shown to be unreal towards the end of the issue - but there's this whole additional level of, I don't know, belief in some ideal of masculinity and heroism that the book is built on that just feels not only old-fashioned but outdated. The idea of Dan's stoic, silent self surviving the moral decay that lesser mortals (including his former sidekicks) have fallen prey to, leaving him as the one character who can save the day not from the aliens but from everything, feels not only like something from another time, but from nostalgia for another school of storytelling whatsoever; the John Wayne archetype that drove other Ennis books like Preacher. And, for all his genre faults, Dan Dare was never a Western, leaving this new version as something that's potentially interesting, if miscast and more hollow than it could be.

(Artwise, since I rarely mention that, I should point out that Gary Erskine's work is solid but unspectacular - His line, at this point, has become so similar to Chris Weston's, even as his draughtsmanship isn't as static nor as realized - but there's something missing in the way the book looks. It feels familiar in the wrong way, as if we've seen it all before, but elsewhere, as opposed to coming back home to something from childhood.)

It's an Okay attempt at bringing the character back, even as it misses out entirely what made him an interesting character to begin with.

A Pilgrim's Progress: Jeff Gets It Together and Finally Reviews Scott Pilgrim Vol. 4.

A lot of things impressed me about Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together, but what really caught my attention is how different it is from the previous volume, Scott Pilgrim & The Infinite Sadness: whereas vol. 3 is jammed with action (it's only 13 pages into vol. 3 before someone gets punched with a bionic arm) and veined with character interplay, vol. 4 grounds the humor and emotional relationships in the foreground and keeps the action sequences very short until the end: it's as assured in its pacing as volume three was messily ambitious, and there's nothing unresolved here that isn't clearly laying groundwork for a later volume. By the time I made it through the final thirty-plus page climax which neatly intermingles fight scenes and emotional confrontations, I felt vol. 4 was the best volume of Scott Pilgrim since the first. That being the case, why did it take me a month to review it?

Back when I reviewed volume three, I wrote the book made me "wish O'Malley hadn't been staring down the barrel of a blown deadline so he could've taken the time to really fine-tune the material." Vol. 4 gives me that wish in quasi-Monkey's Paw-ish spades: the darn thing feels as tightly structured as a Hollywood movie, and that amazingly satisfying finale works the same way a finale works in really good action movie--with the final action sequence and the main character's emotional arc resolving simultaneously.

Unfortunately, as with many a good action movie, that satisfaction may come as a result of some potentially dishonest manipulation. "Oh, hey," Scott says at one point to an old friend he's showing around, "maybe I should have mentioned that my friends are retarded douchebags," which is sadly more-or-less true. Although Scott's friends in the past have had varying levels of patience for his general cluelessness, occasional whininess, and stretches of passivity, in SPGIT, they act less like friends than annoyed older siblings stuck taking care of a younger sibling. While it leads to any number of great lines (After Scott gets a job for doing little more than vowing to work hard, his friend Kim says, "Scott, if your life had a face, I would punch it. I would punch your life in the face.") and increases the drama of the final confrontation, it also adds a slightly unpleasant tone to the book. In the past, I've thought of Scott as a well-meaning but self-absorbed tool, and O'Malley goes to great lengths here to set me and others like me straight and show Scott for the genuinely sweet guy he is, but it comes at a bit of a cost. At one or two points during my first read-through, I found myself thinking, "Uh, am I the only one having fun here?"

I hope not, because the book is so filled with delightful tricks and jokes and charming details--eight bit captions and video game references, depleting thirst and pee meters, directional arrows, dotted paths a la Family Circus, panels of people laughing pulled straight from Charles Schulz's Peanuts, inventories of pockets and shopping carts, ellipses becoming a character's wide-eyed fear of speaking--one would like to think O'Malley had at least some fun in creating it.

[I've been casting about for a way to organically work in how much O'Malley's art has grown between volumes and I'm not having a lot of luck, but if you go to just about any page of SPGIT, you'll see how impressively rich in detail the work has become. The page that got me was the first one at Sneaky Dee's, where one panel has five main characters in a booth, five other clearly delineated bystanders, the Sneaky Dee's logo, and even clearly discernible food on some plates, a task I can't even contemplate accomplishing for a book published in digest size. And this richness in detail in no way clutters up O'Malley's clean and focused storytelling, which is doubly goddam amazing.]

But even if one does suspect O'Malley wasn't having oodles of fun working on this, this volume of Scott Pilgrim is a pretty massive win, the kind that would have Entertaiment Weekly titling their review, "Bryan O'Lee Malley Gets It Together." And if this volume's achievement comes at the cost of feeling a touch too professional--one tiny step closer to Scott Pilgrim's Well-Crafted Product--there's no way O'Malley can be faulted for that: in the course of giving us nearly 800 pages of material in a little over four years, it's only natural O'Malley's powers of craft will begin to catch up--and perhaps even exceed--his generous talents and ambitions. Whatever happens, Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together is absolutely Very Good work, and definitely worth your time if you haven't yet picked it up.

The Old and the Late: Jog is standing here with the comics of yesterday, 11/29

The concerns of several nations are churning in the funnies tonight, oh yes. Lock and load for relevance, gang. Wait, does that mean we shoot it? Let me think this through...

Dan Dare #1 (of 7): The start of what may be a handsome Virgin Comics outing for the venerable British space hero, and a most refined example of today's large-scale corporate 'name' hero adventure, with a stately pace that still conveys its straightforward plot effectively, an appreciation for spectacle that doesn't cross the line into filmic thrall, and a somewhat nuanced take on what icons of older values can mean when set down in a current world perhaps looking after different ideals. Nothing quite daring, but it knows what it's doing.

Yet writer Garth Ennis isn't just adept at hitting the beats of big hero comics; he grasps the nature of Dan Dare as a war hero, albeit one of space, and accordingly deploys some the grizzled-yet-elegiac tone of his military tales. It's more War Stories than The Boys, or even The Punisher MAX, with a fiery battle amongst spaceships poised like cannon exchanges on the high seas, and familiar supporting characters chafing against civilian roles like fictional combat lifers tend to do. Artist Gary Erskine is at his most appropriately starched, with Dare's famous zig-zag eyebrow as stiff as his upper lip; it makes for occasionally awkward battle, but conveys much taciturn pride.

Central to it all is Ennis' Dare, called back by a craven politician to once again face the wicked Mekon. Of course, he's prepared to embody the old national values most others have forgotten. Again, that's not a fresh take on its own -- it's a stock Captain America approach, for instance -- but Ennis cannily plays up the eerie nature of a devout man of a different era, one fit to construct a simulacra of an idealized past and just stare at it. Ennis' soldiers inevitably face their killing hearts, but his Dare's appeal is his frightening backbone. Highly GOOD.

Doc Frankenstein #6: This, meanwhile, reads like the leftovers of a different Ennis - it's a comic so eager to shock the religiously sensitive that its cover loudly announces the blasphemy inside. Moms across the land may disapprove!

At this point, it's pretty clear the story is aiming to be a pop parable of the US struggle between faith and reason, with 'balance' maintained by suggesting that heroic, misfit-lovin' man-monster rationalist Doc, who might be Jesus' brother, or at least an allegorical stand-in, needs to accept the magical/spiritual things, lest he become as damaging as those awful, murdering, hypocritical moron fuckhead Catholics and fundamentalists, which kind of get combined into an omnishit Christianity of BAD.

For this issue, writers Larry & Andy Wachowski mostly have a sexy magic pixie tell the truth about God while a tortured Deacon -- he prays with his eyes closed, gang! -- sputters about his beliefs with all the conviction of an agnostic toward the end of a Jack T. Chick tract. This means many pages of Yahweh tromping around as a violent lout, saying dirty words and drawing out the nasty implications of the Good Book, as I'm sure you've seen somewhere before. Meanwhile, the quirky little kid character is quirky, and other characters kindly explain Doc's motivation.

It's boring, but I did crack a smile at: (1) warlike Yahweh dressed as He-Man; (2) the Ark of the Covenant used as a missile launcher; and (3) Our Lord doing a Tex Avery horny wolf homage as he spots the Virgin Mary. The writers may have suggested those jokes, but it's the high spirits of artist Steve Skroce, stretching his bright superhero realist style just far enough into cartoon elasticity, that adds all the zip. He's enough to drag this from the pits, but it's AWFUL nonetheless.

Killing Time: Jeff Talks Movies Instead of Reviewing Books.

A review for Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together should be forthcoming sometime soon but I keep coming up with new ways to put it off (if you download Sid Meier's Pirates from Gametap, expect at least five hours of your life to disappear in flash). Like today, for example. There's no reason I couldn't sit down and organize my thoughts on the book, but instead I'm gonna review a few movies I saw rather than, y'know, being true to the purpose of this blog. I apologize. (On the other hand, it's probably foolhardy to try another comics-related post on the same 24 hour period as Jog's awe-inspiring Jademan essay, so maybe this will work out best for all involved.)

COMEDIAN: Accomplishes the more-or-less impossible task of making me like Jerry Seinfeld again. During the height of publicity for the "may be the Gone With The Wind of talking animal CG movies and I'll never know because I'd rather die than watch it" Bee Movie, I found myself wishing the guy would just...go away. Go far, far away. And that's part of what makes this documentary kinda interesting--despite Seinfeld's name and mug plastered all over nearly every inch of the DVD and case, the man's barely in it.

Oh sure, he's in it--the majority of the film focuses on Seinfeld building a new routine after retiring his old set and talking comedy with fellow comedians (with the remaining third or so of the film covering the counterpoint of young up-n-comer Orny Adams on the cusp of his career moving to the next level)--but it's not the smirking, bemused, low-key Jerry Seinfeld we're used to seeing (and, in my case, pretty damn sick of). No, the Jerry Seinfeld of Comedian is a glassy-eyed, queasy looking junkie, chasing the comedy dragon from nightclub to nightclub, working his material up from six minutes to fifteen to thirty, comparing notes after hours with other comedians who similarly look gassy and uncomfortable. At one point, after a less-than-stellar set, someone tries to reassure Seinfeld by saying, "Well, you looked like you were having fun up there," to which he tersely replies, "Yeah, that's the job." And although Seinfeld flies from gig to gig in private chartered jets, and spends time at his house on the Hamptons, it's clear his material possessions don't mean half as much as the strange, ephemeral high of making people laugh.

Although it doesn't go as far as one would want in showing how spectacularly fucked up and insanely neurotic stand-up comedians can be, Comedian nevertheless shows a world few of us are exposed to, and a flip-side to celebrity, without condescension or bias. It's highly OK, and certainly worth a rental.

DYNAMITE WARRIOR: The action setpieces and Tony Jaa's athleticism in Ong-Bak and Tom Yum Goong (released here as The Protector) impressed the hell out of me, but it was the out-of-control insanity of 2004's Born To Fight that made me vow to check out anything done by Thai production company Baa-Ram-Ewe. That movie--an astonishing mix of propaganda flick and Die Hard featuring athletes and poor villagers kicking the shit out of mercenaries and soldiers--stars Dan Chupong, a guy who makes the charisma-light performances of Tony Jaa seem positively Brandoesque in comparison. (On the other hand, Chupong spends so much time in mid-air you're convinced he lives there.)

Chupong is also the lead of Dynamite Warrior, but whereas Born To Fight is like a Thai John Woo flick (and Ong-Bak and Tom Yum Goong are like Thai Jackie Chan flicks), Dynamite Warrior is a Thai version of that other Hong Kong film staple, the batshit-crazy historical wire-fu flick.

Set at the turn of the 20th Century, Chupong plays a mysterious rocket-riding hero who appears out of nowhere and kicks the shit out of corrupt water buffalo rustlers and herders, looking for the man who killed his parents. He finds him, but of course the man is gifted with immense magical powers, as well as the ability to turn two of his henchmen into monkey and tiger-possessed strongmen. In order to defeat him, Chupong needs the menstrual blood of an evil wizard's virginal daughter (well, sure, who doesn't?) as well as the assistance of an untrustworthy hare-lipped tractor salesman.

I was willing to forgive Dynamite Warrior an endless number of sins (Chupong is an utterly binary actor, capable of only expressing determination or befuddlement, making his love scenes pretty hilarious; the plot makes even less sense than my summary conveys; and there's tons of not-particularly-funny broad, vulgar comedy) but for this: the action scenes aren't a tenth of what you'll find in Ong-Bak, Tom Yum Goong, or Born To Fight. There's a lot of the cheats you get from a wire-fu flick, with people flying halfway across a meadow at each other while dynamically pumping their arms, but additionally shots of blows being thrown are cut away at the moment of impact to show someone reeling backward.

I mean, it's not terrible if you like this kind of thing: even if they might be wire-rigged, Chupong does some truly spectacular flips and leaps, and the scenes where things go truly nuts (like when the tiger guy and the monkey guy start chasing a rocket-powered wagon) are enjoyable in a "Hey, you've got to come see this!" kind of way. But by the standard of previous Baa-Ram-Ewe flicks, Dynamite Warrior is pretty Eh--unlikely to be the sort of thing you and your friends will gleefully pass around.

DAN IN REAL LIFE: Oh, god. This is the sort of thing you go see with your wife on "Date Night," and afterward spend almost as long bitching about it as you did watching it. Steve Carell is Dan, a widower advice columnist with three feisty daughters. They go to the annual family reunion where, on his own in the nearby town, Dan meets cute and falls in love with Marie (Juliette Binoche), who he later learns is the new girlfriend of Carell's younger brother (Dane Cook).

The funniest thing about Dan In Real Life is the title, as the filmmakers--apparently test-tube specimens raised in a lab with only nutrient tubes and a copy of Final Draft to sustain them--have no actual experience with real life whatsoever. Dan's interactions with his daughters, the scene where Dan and Marie meet, and particularly every scene with Dan's family lacks any ear for dialogue or eye for verisimilitude one would expect from someone given money by investors to make an indie film romantic comedy. Dan's family, in particular, seem less like recognizable human beings and more like labrador retrievers wearing human skin, jumping up and down whenever anyone suggests an activity and running about the kitchen yelping indiscreetly.

Also, the tone is really, really off in the film, with topics like grief and death and familial betrayal being treated like the perfect jumping-off points for cheap one-liners and awful acoustic songs warbled by some indy folk dude who's clearly spent more of his professional career worrying about hair conditioner than chord progressions. It's as if the filmmakers were told that the film was going to be marketed overseas as Little Miss Sunshine 2 and to film accordingly.

I don't know what other romantic comedies are out there for people to go to on date night, but avoid the Crap that is Dan In Real Life and go see them instead. Honestly, even watching a calf get hit by a heavy mallet for forty-five minutes is a more enjoyable cinematic experience.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN: As a fan of both the Coen Brothers and of Cormac McCarthy, I couldn't be more pleased with this flick which adapts McCarthy's recent novel to the screen (I haven't read it). Not only is it a gorgeous, taut film packed with sharp dialogue, it feels to me like a culmination and canny distillation of many of the Coen Brothers' thematic obsessions--particularly in its portrayal of dead-eyed assassin Anton Chigurh (brilliantly played by Javier Bardem). If you've followed enough of their films, you know they usually include a terse, violent sociopath who enjoys inflicting pain (and they usually have a connotation of being foreigners as well--I'm thinking of The Dane from Miller's Crossing, Peter Stormare's Swede in Fargo, even the German anarchists from The Big Liebowski, as well as Goodman in Barton Fink, Tex Cobb in Raising Arizona, and M. Emmett Walsh in Blood Simple) but Chigurh overwhelms all of them with his awful haircut, his creaky voice, and his air-compressor M.O. Although efficient in everything he does, he's terrifyingly and hilariously incapable of understanding humanity, and humanity is similarly unable to understand him. (Also, he steals the coin-flipping gimmick from Two-Face, so you gotta love the guy.)

Like I said, I haven't read McCarthy's book but I assume Chigurh's horrific larger-than-life attributes come directly from there, as one of McCarthy's ongoing themes are the powerful forces capable of indiscriminately crushing all men, good and bad, strong and weak. Similarly, the very strange turn the movie takes in its final quarter strikes me as straight from McCarthy--not only does he refuse to treat people's mortality with any sort of sentimental escapism, but he's just as likely to end his stories with characters ruminating on visions and dreams that run the terminator between hope and despair.

And yet, again, what's great about No Country For Old Men is that it's very much a Coen Brothers movie, with the ending not unlike that of Fargo, where Frances McDormand's character, like Tommy Lee Jones', can do little more than ponder imcomprehensible evil while taking comfort in the ability to love and be loved by others.

Whether or not the end of the movie succeeds in opening the frame up on its genre conventions and pointing to their larger implications on life and civilization (it didn't entirely work for me), the first three quarters of No Country For Old Men is a remarkable crime-thriller, a violent game of hide-and-seek taking place across small towns and great plains, and absolutely unmissable. I still haven't seen Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, which a lot of people have recommended to me, but No Country For Old Men is Excellent stuff, and currently my pick for movie of the year.

Randy Newman's Faust was more impressive: Graeme looks at, spoils, One More Day from 11/29.

So this is how I found out who the bad guy was in "One More Day". I picked up a copy of THE SENSATIONAL SPIDER-MAN #41 and started flipping through the back of the book, wondering what pointless background material they were putting in this issue to justify the increased price, and there was a reprint of an old Silver Surfer comic which had nothing to do with Spider-Man whatsoever. Now, don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against the chance to read old Stan Lee and John Buscema stories, but it was so out of place that I'd wondered if Marvel had just given up and started putting anything in the OMD books, just to make sure that they hit the revised revised shipping dates. Instead, there's a caption below the cover of the Surfer issue, announcing that it's the first appearance of the bad guy behind the whole Spider-reboot shebang.

Yes, this is the issue where we finally get to the whole meat of the One More Day story, and in terms of meat, it's stringy, tasteless and drowning in cheese, just like my mother used to make.

It's not enough that the whole concept of One More Day doesn't really make sense as a Spider-Man story - "If you could magically heal your Aunt, would you?" is just a wee bit too removed from the whole despite-your-powers-you're-only-human-so-try-your-best aspect of "With great power comes great responsibility" for me - but now that we finally get to the whole magical reboot offer, even that doesn't make any sense on it's own. We literally get (spoiler) Mephisto showing up out of nowhere and actually literally says "I want your love... I want your marriage." It's a good thing Spider-Man interrupts him there, because I believe the next line was going to be "I have no reason to want your love, or to even get involved in your life, but, you know, Joe Quesada really, really doesn't want you guys to be married and he's the editor-in-chief, so..." It's a crazy, nonsensical scene - Mephisto has no motivation to be there or make that offer, other than a generic "Well, he's the devil" one; even his stated reasoning - "I want that which gives you joy, that which sustains you in your moments of greatest despair" - doesn't make sense because, dude, why does he care about Spider-Man in the first place? Doesn't Mephisto normally go up against Thor or Ghost Rider or someone? And more importantly, if what he wants is to undermine Spider-Man's moral center and security, then he'd let Aunt May die, not offer this cut-rate Faustian bargain.

(Yes, I know; this way, Spider-Man and Mary Jane have to choose between their marriage and letting Aunt May die and huzzah for more guilt for Peter, but Mephisto still has no reason to be in this story making that offer in the first place. It's the Chewbacca Defense as applied to getting Spidey out of his marriage.)

And another, smaller but still annoying, thing: Since when did Marvel solve all their perceived problems with dumb magic reboots? Just as DC completely undercut the dramatic tension in their superhero books with all of the continuity reboots, Marvel's doing the same with these smaller individual magic fixes. Editorial doesn't like the direction of the X-Books? That's fine; have Wanda magic them all away! Joe Quesada doesn't like Spider-Man being married? That's fine! Mephisto can show up and magic that away as well! It eats away at what little reality these books have left, if that makes sense; I'm now waiting for someone to magic the Skrulls away at the end of Secret Invasion, or bring Captain America back to life (That could even be the big finish of Secret Invasion - "I will take the life-force of all these Skrulls and use them to return America's greatest hero to life!" "Are you sure you can do that, Dr. Strange?" "Yes, Iron Man - - Because you have learned humility").

Maybe I'm just cranky, or maybe thinking about this book too much because it's not coming out weekly as planned - it's pretty much a means to an end, anyway, with everyone really just waiting for the Brand New Day relaunch - but this was lazily put-together Crap. There is one good thing about it, though; Joe Quesada's artwork has really pulled itself together in this issue, and there are some nice-looking scenes throughout the whole thing. Maybe all those delays had some purpose after all...