Prose is a Five-Letter Word

(that title somehow made sense in my head) Like I mentioned the other day, between school restarting, working on our September DC relaunch plans, a possible store remodel, us repainting the downstairs at our house, and what seems like 47 other "big" things happening at once, I've had a less time for reading comics. It also doesn't help that giant chunks of prose have been chucked at my head recently as well!

So, below the cut, some not-comics reading, even if it is related-to-comics!

THE COMICS JOURNAL #301: I really did miss TCJ. The deeply in-depth interviews, the in-depth criticism, and really more than anything else, the investigative reporting. We don't have anything like that kind of what I think of as shoe leather reporting -- long phone calls, attempts to look at issues from multiple sides, designed to examine and protect our field, rather than to score headlines in and of itself. Rich Johnston has taken over a tremendous amount of that role, but Rich comes from the Gossip Columnist angle, rather than Paper Of Record angle, so he runs a lot of shit that's sensational for it's own sake, and, far too often that's wildly wrong or misinformed.

Heidi is mostly our Social Secretary, and the "news sites" (Robot 6, CBR, Comics Alliance, etc.) seem more interested in entertaining or opinionating then in really getting to the heart of news (which is fine -- those are consumer entertainment sites, really).

I think Spurgeon (and, let me take a second to link you to his astonishing piece on his health problems if you haven't already read it -- all of the Savage Critics wish Tom very very well health indeed!) is the closest we have to Advocacy journalism, any longer, but I'd think even he'd admit he seldom uses Shoe Leather much in the (excellent!) work that he does.

I just sometimes daydream about what could have been if the Journal's News mandate had continued to this day -- I would have loved to read their in-depth coverage of, say, the Disney deal... or could you imagine what Michael Dean might have been able to get out of the DC reboot? Yeah, woulda been nice.

Damn, but I got off on a tangent there, didn't I?

ANYway, like the Meatloaf song sez, two outta three ain't so bad, as the Journal returns in a new bricklike bookshelf format (seriously, this thing has like 600 pages!), anchored by a massive Robert Crumb interview, and a whole freakin' lot of really strong criticism. I most especially liked the Cerebus retrospective by Tim Krieder. Cerebus is one of those works that I think is 90% genius, but the bits that aren't are really really hard. It was fascinating to see Krieder go through in a few weeks, the emotional range that some of us sustained for 25 years! I need to read Cerebus again, huh?

(I also miss the Cerebus Diablog where they petered out only by #11! Come back Laura, come back Leigh! You didn't even start getting to the GOOD issues!)

Wow, digressive much?

Right, so, Journal, yes! Great great great read! I'd still love to see it be maybe quarterly in the 200 page range -- there's a lot of Interviews that could be happening, and a lot of posterity that needs to be captured -- but this is way better than nothing. VERY GOOD

One last digression, which is actually kind of properly related. As some of you may know, Amazon really erred somehow with TCJ #301, and they offered preorders at a price that was about 20% BELOW their (and my!) wholesale price. Fantagraphics assures me THEY didn't offer Amazon any kind of special deal or promotion, so that was all on Amazon itself.

Whatever, I'm not dumb, I ordered my copies from Amazon, instead of from Diamond, and chose the free (very very slow) shipping option.

We had our copies two weeks ago.

Diamond, as far as I can tell, STILL has not distributed TCJ #301 to the West Coast.

So cheaper than Diamond by 20%, AND I received it weeks earlier, go figure!

A DANCE OF DRAGONS: I've been a fan of George RR Martin's "Song of Fire and Ice" long before "Game of Thrones" aired on HBO, and I really really really wonder what they're going to do when they start getting to the parts of the book that simply CAN'T be filmed (or faked!) on the budget they'll have. As is often (but not always) the case, as good as the adaptation is (and it's really swell!), the original material is much much much better.

We've been waiting a really long time for this, book five, because of what Martin termed "the meereenese knot", where a specific character find themselves in a specific place and simply wasn't able to leave because of the nature of the character themselves.

To an extent, you can't force plot on characters - plot should always stem FROM the characters, and some writers say that strong characters "write themselves". I believe this to be true, especially in this case. This is the first one of these books where I could really see the scaffolding (surrounding Meereen). It's not just the specific character, but everyone and everything related to it. Most of the Meereen stuff, I hate to say it, even some of the bits that I LIKED (Tyrion, in particular, takes the sharpest loss he has so far on a particular ride), probably should have been chucked... but they COULDN'T be because of what happened previously, and how a strong character with a strong POV simply wouldn't let it.

The problem is solved... or, at least, is set upon the path to probably being solved, and the solution is non-terrible, but it's still a little far from good to this reader. It does make for fascinating reading, however, playing "look for the welds".

On the other hand, all of the stuff that WASN'T tied in the Knot? Awesome awesome material -- maybe some of the strongest yet. In super particular, I nearly shuddered with joy when a certain sibling showed up about halfway through the book, and this one is rapidly becoming my favorite character.

Other than the Knot (which isn't GRRM's fault, per se), I was fairly outraged that he introduced a new claimant to the throne, one, who appears is legitimate, and not just a feint of some kind. I am firmly of the mind that it is far far far too late to be doing so, given the length of the narrative (and the idea that we're finished in just two more books). It's only like three chapters worth, but I was profoundly uneasy reading those, thinking "not FAIR!"

I think that GRRM is more likely to feint about who the leads really are, and what the battle and stakes even are in the first place (I largely think that the central question of who will sit on Westeros' throne will be mostly irrelevant in another thousand pages or so), just like the big switch at the end of "Game of Thrones" itself.

Overall I want to give A DANCE WITH DRAGONS a mild GOOD, but there were absolutely parts that I thought were EXCELLENT.

(how was that for spoiler free, huh?)

As always, what did YOU think?

-B

"I am one of those losers that doesn't have a car." Comics! Read 'em with your eyes!

While I was waiting for The Boy With The Roast Beef Face to come back off holiday and restore order before the whole country turned into an indoor firework I read some comics. It's a Not Big Two Bonanza this week! Let's see what  creators unbound can give us, eh?

THE INFINITE VACATION #2 By Christian Ward(a), Nick Spencer(w) (Image, $3.50) Ever wanted to holiday in the life of an alternate you in an alternate reality? Well, now you can because there’s an App for that! But what if there was a murderer rapidly reducing the alternate yous between him and you? Got an App for that have you, pal? Thought not.

As high concepts go it’s pretty vertigo inducing I think you’ll agree. The real genius is tapping into that sexy tech gland in the brains of the young and yoking it together with the weird sense of inferiority these things evoke in the meat machines that consume them. Today’s tech is sexy tech but it’s also, maybe, dangerous tech and it’s this formless, and very human, anxiety that the core concept feeds upon. I think. Of course familiar elements are needed to ground the narrative sufficiently for readers to connect, so there’s a murder mystery providing propulsion and a romance with a mystery hot girl, paedo jokes etc.

Christian Ward’s art is inventive not only in layouts, which often hover on the border of confusion while admirably never crossing it, but also in his choice of colours. It’s well worth looking at is Christian Ward’s art. Refreshing would be the word there. Nick Spencer’s story rattles along at such a pace that while the series is clearly pleased with itself it never tips over into smugness and, crucially, the reader is never given chance to question any of it too deeply. Which is just as well. I had a few questions about stuff but that’s what happens when you show old people the future they want to know where the toilets are and where they can buy some crisps.

As inventively illustrated high concept entertainment goes this was VERY GOOD!

THE GOON #34 By Eric Powell (Dark Horse, $3.50) The Goon watches some sport, gets likkered up and has a fight. It's really, really pretty.

The Goon is Eric Powell’s comic. This means he can do whatever he dingdanged likes with it. If Eric Powell wants to waste several pages ineffectually taking the piss out of an transient media blip like Twilight then that’s what Eric Powell’s a-gonna do. If Eric Powell wants one of his characters to actually comment on what a waste of time said pages are then that’s what’s a-gonna happen. If Eric Powell wants the rest of the comic to be an extended fight scene punctuated by moments intended to be humorous and some cool images, guess what? That’s right.

Sounds pretty negligible and indeed it is but that’s not taking into account the art. Eric Powell’s art is gorgeous. Finished off in lovely washes it has a chunky cartoon quality rooted in realism that is a sweet treat for the eye. I’m a fair man, my heart still beats, so I’ll mitigate my opinion of this issue by saying that I have read Eric Powell’s BUZZARD and CHIMICHINGA! and both of those were better because both of those had an actual honest-to-goodness story. When you get art this good illustrating something of at least a little substance you get one ripe peach of a comic experience. The GOON #34 wasn’t such an experience but if Eric Powell wants to meticulously illustrate what is basically behind the bike sheds humour he’s certainly free to do so. Just like I’m free to say it’s OKAY!

USAGI YOJIMBO #139 By Stan Sakai (Dark Horse, $3.50) “Murder At The Inn” Part One.

Along with a disparate group of strangers the rabbit Ronin seeks shelter from a storm. When a murder is committed Usagi discovers that a nowhere is safe when strangers with strange motives are involved. The game is afoot! Or is it a-paw! Heh.

The peerless Stan Sakai has been working on Usagi Yojimbo since 1987. Despite its longevity it is a series rarely mentioned but when it is mentioned it is always with a large measure of respect. This is entirely fitting as through these many decades Mr Stan Sakai has pursued his peculiarly anthropomorphic vision with unfaltering commitment to his craft resulting in one of the most consistently entertaining and satisfying pamphlets to grace the racks. When he began Stan Sakai was already pretty great but as the years have passed he has quietly become a master. His art and storytelling have never taken any great leaps forward but rather have evolved slowly and surely towards his present level of subdued excellence.

I enjoy every issue of USAGI YOJIMBO for many reasons (I am particularly prone to staring at his cross hatching and I revel in the research he shares with us in the lettercol) but the principal reason is that Stan Sakai is content to bring good tales well told to the table. And there are still seats at the table for anyone who favours staunch excellence over empty bombast.

USAGI YOJIMBO#139 is pretty much like every issue of USAGI YOJIMBO in that it is EXCELLENT!

TRAILBLAZER (ONE-SHOT) By James Daily/Jimmy Palmiotti/Peter Palmiotti & Ken Branch (a), Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti, Paul Mounts(c) and Bill Tortolini(l)(Image, $5.99)

The most awesome assassin in the world turns against his paymasters and is sent back to the Old West as part of a government witness relocation scheme. When the sins of the present follow him back he’ll have to accept his past if he’s to have any future!

 This thing has a hero who is a bad assed killing machine who hires his bad assed killing skills out to organised crime. It’s okay though because he is an orphan, gives most of his money to the orphanage, was raised by nuns, only kills members of organised crime cartels and probably sorts out his glass from his cardboard when he recycles. So, he’s an okay guy! No, no he’s not, he’s a self centred piece of moral detritus that can only be considered a hero by people who think morality is as quaint and outmoded as taking your hat off indoors. Hilariously this soil bucket whines on about how all the people he has ever cared about die when all the people he has ever cared about who we see die have quite clearly died because they associate with a narcissistic killer.

Anyone with any inner ethical life will surely be left wondering about how they can get the time wasted reading this thing back. I guess you’d have to build a time machine. Did I mention the time machine? Oh, tiny dancer, get this: the US Govt develops time travel and uses it to relocate witnesses in the Old West. If the U.S. Govt had developed time travel technology I think using it to relocate witnesses would be pretty far down the list of things they would use it for. This may be because I am a twisted misanthrope and thus inherently distrustful of governments and the uses to which they put technological advances but I think it is definitely due to the fact that this idea is mind bogglingly stupid. I spent more time deciding which socks to wear this morning than the creators of this thing spent considering the ramifications of this concept. (I went for the clean ones in the end.) The US Govt develops time travel and uses it to relocate witnesses in the Old West. I just wanted to write that down again so I could marvel at its almost total resistance to sense. I would have to be carved entirely from lard to countenance such a wilfully witless premise. Still, if you can buy that I guess you might buy this. I don’t and I wish I hadn’t.

But I’m not the intended audience. I am a comic book reader and this is not a comic although it presents itself as such. The intended audience for this is composed of deal makers in the TV and Movie industries. This is a sales pitch not a comic. From the “Papermovies” branding to the creator bios which read more like C.V.s all the way through to the perfunctory presentation of the thoroughly unoriginal (or original but cretinous) concepts. This is what you get when creators pander to the market. You get the equivalent to those leaflets window cleaners push through your letter box in times of recession. Those aren’t comics either.

I disliked this because I am British and fun is alien to me, true, but mostly because it wasn’t really a comic which made it AWFUL!

CRIMINAL MACABRE/THE GOON: WHEN FREAKS COLLIDE ONE-SHOT By Christopher Mitten(a), Steve Niles/Eric Powell(w), Michelle Madsen(c), Nate Piekos of Blambot(l) (Dark Horse, $3.99)

Maybe you like Eric Powell’s IP The Goon? In which case have you seen Steve Niles’ IP Criminal Macabre (Cal McDonald)? What if they had a fight before realising they had been tricked by the real enemy and then teamed up to boot the bad guy’s jacksie? Wouldn’t that be totally different to all the tights’n’fights comics that follow this strict formula?  It would be totally different! Well, the art is better at least. Would you like to buy more? Press here!

Kind of a “Here they are, hope ya like ‘em! Particularly hope ya like ‘em enough to buy more!” deal. Given all that The Goon comes off best here as he has slightly more presence thanks to having some blatant shtick than can be easily riffed on (outdated references, comical swearing and hitting things with a big wrench) whereas Cal McDonald is…there? Despite having plenty of room to do so, as it’s hardly heaving with plot and incident, the comic fails to impart much of an idea of either character.  That’s okay with The Goon who’s basically a lively cartoon and even if you don’t do much with him you’d have to do nothing at all with him for him to be totally unmemorable. To their credit the creators of this don’t do absolutely nothing with The Goon. It’s close, though but close only counts in horse shoes and hand grenades, as The Goon might say.

This here Cal McDonald IP is…there? He does a little magic, does a little drugs (Ooooh, dangerous!) and has black hair. A bit like John Constantine in the same way that Panda Cola is like Coca Cola. On the basis of these pages Cal McDonald isn’t so much of a character as an IP waiting for SYFI to notice him. Regrettably studios only tend to shop for knock-offs if the original is successful. Cal McDonald curses you, Keanu Reeves! He damns your very eyes! Oh, on the last page Mike Mignola’s IP Hellboy turns up which seems an oddly cheap and desperate note on which to end but, hey, turns out this “one-shot” is “…to be continued!” so the only thing that’s actually ended is my interest. Probably not the outcome they were shooting for there.

So, yeah, this was just like a corporate comic and bored me quite a bit, that boredom beget irritation and then I just ran my mouth like a jackass so, y’know, on the whole I expected better but I got EH!

TIMEBELCH! By Hank Jeno (w/a) (Burning Streets, $4.99) What if you could change the course of History with kindness! What if History had other plans!

Barry Tupper is the best at what he does and what Barry Tupper does is Social Work. Despite this he is a pariah at Chistlewick Council due to his unorthodox and sexily rogue nature, which largely manifests in a tendency to deride managers as “paper fondlers” and tell clients that the IT system is a “shit counter”. On being given his third and final written warning (for using the work photocopier to print flyers for his local charity car boot sale) Barry Tupper is given a choice: Get a job in the private sector or go on a secret government mission from which he will never return.

Barry goes for the lesser of two evils and finds himself thrown through time back, back to Leonding, Austria in 1898 with one mission: make Hitler a nice man! Adept at gaining the confidence of fearful pensioners Barry has few problems in befriending the potential world immolating nutbag and commences to throw his weight behind Nuture in its eternal struggle with Nature. For the two men the next couple of decades pass in a montage of walks through russet leaves, heads thrown back with full throated laughter and beach volleyball. All seems well as Barry concentrates on distracting Hitler from the iconography of his local church, giving him painting tips, nudging him towards macramé rather than politics and encouraging the use of “How you doin’!” rather than “Heil!”.

Then one fateful day upon entering the café at which he and Hitler meet each morning Barry hears Hitler making an anti-Semitic remark to the waiter. Consumed by self-hatred at the extent of his failure Barry seizes the nearest butter knife. At the exact moment that Barry swings the butter knife in a fatal arc at Hitlers’ neck he realises Hitler was expressing his dislike of the breakfast juice provided. A beach volleyball rolls across some sand and just as it seems about to stop… SMASH CUT TO BLACK. Sad piano music.

Although TIMEBELCH is  written with all the subtlety and tact of a Marvel Event and is drawn by someone who has had every bone in his hands broken only to have them set all wrong I feel it is ripe for optioning by a major studio and thus EXCELLENT! Have your people call my people!

One of those comics wasn't real! Did you guess which?

Now I must go and stand at my window and look out at blasted England with old eyes fat with tears. Only joking, have a great weekend, everyone!

"I don't know about the cat." Comics! Sometimes they are a bit creepy!

Hey, I read some comics and then I wrote about them in a hot new style I like to call "cack-handed". If you aren't doing anything else this weekend, sugar rush, you might want to get your hands  all cacky with me?

THE IRON AGE FEATURING...AVENGERS

Lee Weeks/Tom Palmer and Ben Oliver (a), Christos N Gage and Rob Williams (w), Matt Hollingsworth and Veronica Gandini (c) and Jared K Fletcher(l)

THE IRON AGE FEATURING...FANTASTIC FOUR

Nick Dragotta, Ron Frenz and Sal Buscema(a), Jen Van Meter and Elliott Kalan(w), Brad Simpson and John Kalisz(c) and Jared K Fletcher(l)

(MARVEL, $4.99 ea)

I recall the unrepentant Scot Mr. Graeme McMillan expressed puzzlement at this series’ very existence; not wishing to be outdone I expressed puzzlement at its presence in my shipment. You’ll note my LCS omitted the Alpha issue which just goes to prove that MARVEL did a bang-up job on marketing this thing. Anyway to recap for people who don’t listen to That American guy and That Scottish guy: this is a throwback series in which Tony Stark bounces back in time to meet an assortment of MARVEL characters with each issue really being two issues with the more sales friendly characters ballyhooed on the front.

The AVENGERS one was truly heartbreaking. I really felt for Tony Stark as he milled about his colleagues unable to warn them of the dreadful future which awaited them all. To look at each of those faces and know that they were aiding you in bringing about a witless future of incessant babbling and senseless plots must have been heartbreaking for him. Lee Weeks did the art and he’s totally awesome. Lee Weeks is to MARVEL as Jose Luis Garcia Lopez is to DC. If either company let either gentleman regularly adorn their pages both companies’ quality would be immediately improved by a scientifically calculated 65%. Which I know is a fact because I just made it up. But DC are content to have JL-GL drawing pictures for underoos and MARVEL just keep Lee Weeks in a box under the stairs or something. Amazing.

Well since your future comics make the scripting on The Suite Life of Zack And Cody look like Pinter, I think you'll probably envy the dead, Hank.

Illustration By Lee Weeks/Tom Palmer. Words and irony by Christos N. Gage

The Captain Britain one was okay and successfully captured the essence of '80s Britain by Veronica Gandini using a colour palette based on watery diarrhoea. I can’t remember what happened as I've slept since then but I think Cap was a bit of a fool and it was definitely set in Alan Moore’s excellent (you heard me Mr. Graeme McMillan!) Captain Britain run so that helped. Oh yeah, the British Army turned up to help save the day, so I guess this must have been one of the days when they weren't allegedly wearing unmarked police uniforms and kicking the tar out of striking miners. Not that they did that. That's how rumours start so watch that stuff. Jesus, Britain in the '80s. Airstrip One a-go-go. Nurse!

The FANTASTIC FOUR issue starts off with a Power Man and Iron Fist appearance on which Nick Dragotta does a really first rate job. Totally tip-top stuff with cracking storytelling and beezer body language. Thanks, Nick Dragotta! The Fantastic Four part is pleasantly silly with Johnny Storm fretting about growing up (Elliot Kalan means YOU!), Tonio and Stormy visiting a club where everyone dresses as superheroes (leading to a nicely icky Sue Storm joke), meeting Drunk Tony and facing off against Doctor Doom! Reliable Ron Frenz and Sturdy Sal Buscema provided the art which is both sturdy and reliable in a manner which far too few people appreciate.

Hey, I’m old so I quite enjoyed these issues largely because they possessed a plot, everyone spoke in a clear manner and they were just really entertaining all round. Maybe it had nothing to do with my failing mind and everything to do with craft/skill. There's a thought. Oh yeah, it didn't hurt that there were panels like this:

Who doesn't love panels like that? Tories!

(Illustration by Ron Frenz and Sal Buscema. Words by Elliot Kalan.)

Of course due to recent developments I won't see how this series ends. (I believe this is called foreshadowing. C’mon and watch me now. Huhn!) Setting that aside for the nonce (for I am nothing if not a nonce) for the price of this series I could have sated the nostalgic within by purchasing a fat b/w volume of ESSENTIAL MARVEL TEAM-UP (Or ESSENTIAL MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE, I’m more of a M T-I-O man myself. High five, Ron Wilson! High five!). So although it was satisfyingly solid old-school entertainment MARVEL’s senseless pricing shoots it in the foot and makes it EH!

JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA 80-PAGE GIANT 2011 #1

Scott Hampton,  Josh Adams/Bob McLeod, Victor Ibanez, Tim Seeley, Andy Smith/Keith Champagne, Nic Klein and Mister Howard Victor Chaykin(a), Steve Niles, B Clay Moore, Matt Kindt, Matthew Cody, Drew Ford, Ivan Brandon and Adam Beechen(w), Daniel Vozzo, Thomas Chu, Ego, Richard & Tanya Horie, Chris Beckett, Nic Klein and Jesus Arbutov(c) and  Rob Leigh lettered every story much to my typing finger's relief.

(DC Comics, $5.99)

Steve Niles continues his, to my mind, unbroken decades long run of profitably confusing unoriginality, terrible prose and nonsensical tedium for horror while Scott Hampton is just tragically wasted on this pish (but his Justice Inc. backups with Jason Starr in DOC SAVAGE were several nice slices of awesome pie. Available in back issue bins – now!) And if you think that was a twist at the end, pal-o-mine, I can only say EH!

Then there’s some creepy stuff with Sarge Steel picking a damaged young woman (I guess she’s attractive; it’s hard to tell from the art) and basically building her up and leading her on even though he knows her soft young hands can never cradle his lifeless metal honker. Seriously:

This world we live in, I swear. This world.

(Illustration by Tim Seely. Words by Matthew Cody.)

It all ends with a sad cookout so I guess that makes it homely not skin crawling. Like witnessing any old dude grooming some young chick it made me feel AWFUL!

The next one is weird as it involves a Yakuza who has the magic power of shooting people really good but is only a bad man because the Yakuza are holding his son hostage. I don’t know, Yakuza Man, but if you are that exceptional at death dealing shouldn't you have rescued your son earlier? Anyway Yakuza Man dies and some JSA members (Who? Sorry, I forgot to care.) have to rescue his son who has inherited his super killing powers so we can end (actually it just stops rather than ends) with this:

You can have mine, Fumio. Then I can go down the pub for once.

(Illustration by Josh Adams. Words by B. Clay Moore.)

Because if it involves a crying kid with a gun we can all just assume that somewhere in there we all must have learnt something very special. All I know I learned was that this was AWFUL!

There’s an Alan Scott Green Lantern story which has scenes that just end rather than have a point and seems to just be there to explain that magic is called magic because it is magic. Which is magical. Victor Ibanez' art is nice though, it’s a bit Steve Pugh-y. Alas,  not even an artist as good as Ibanez can make Alan Scott’s new uniform look like he’s wearing anything other than what appears to be an exoskeleton made of lawn furniture. Still and all, art as good as this at least lifts it to EH!

The Jesse Quick one equaled the second Green Lantern tale in that both were so bland/incoherent they slid straight off the surface of my brain and pooled into a puddle of AWFUL!

Hey, if the big hand is pointing to JSA and the little hand is pointing to Howard Victor Chaykin it must be HUAC-O’Clock! Again. The script is about how even the stupidest of men can do some good or something. It isn't very good. Howard Victor Chaykin cheekily turns in a couple of pages he’s not quite finished (the hospital bed one, the supermarket one) but retains his special place in my withered heart by gifting us this goofy looking dude:

"How you doin'?"

(Illustration by Mister Howard Victor Chakin.)

Remember goofiness? I do and I say goofiness is OKAY!

Unless you are me or Howard Victor Chaykin’s mum this comic was AWFUL! Heck, even if you were me or Howard Victor Chaykin’s mum this comic was still AWFUL!

CREEPY #6

Nathan Fox, Shawn Alexander, Kevin Ferrara, Garry Brown and Neal Adams(a), Joe R Lansdale, Christopher A. Taylor, Alice Henderson, Dan Braun, Craig Haffner and Archie Goodwin(w).

(DARK HORSE COMICS, $4.99)

O! America! You guys used to be so good at anthologies! You totally did, I can tell you. All those EC comics people insist on reprinting in formats too expensive for me to purchase are printed testimony to that! And then there are CREEPY and EERIE the fondly remembered not-as-good-as-EC-but-pretty-good-depending-on-which-editor-was-in-charge-‘70s anthologies currently being reprinted in formats too expensive for me to purchase. But how are you now, America? How are you at the anthology format now? Let’s take a looky-loo at the latest manifestation of CREEPY:

Joe R Lansdale and Nathan Fox have the best offering with “Mine!” a relentlessly paced piece of grisly nonsense about a cowboy being chased by a gluttonous corpse. It works really well, suggesting the tone of Looney Tunes cartoons while never stinting on the gore. Joe R Lansdale and Nathan Fox previously collaborated on PIGEONS FROM HELL which is much better but this was still VERY GOOD!

Nathan Fox does stuff like this:

Nathan Fox – get some!

(Illustration by Nathan Fox. Word by Joe R Lansdale)

Then we have "Commedia Dell' Morte!" which is a story that mushes up clowns, priests, children, demons and murder in the hope that all that stuff will somehow interact to produce some kind of point without any effort on the behalf of the writer, Christopher A Taylor. The twist is it doesn't! Really nice Kent Williams style art by Shawn Alexander though so it’s OKAY!

"The Wreck" is notable for being largely wordless and Kevin Ferrara's art does a pretty good job taking the strain but Alice Henderson's script could have done with some tightening. Maybe just me but the twist didn't really need spelling out to that extent, give your readers some credit, ey? But all reservations aside it was pretty GOOD!

Reprint magic is provided by Archie Goodwin and Professor Neal Adams with "Fair Exchange"! So it’s hokey and old timey and lovely. I said it’s Archie Goodwin and Neal Adams which is another way of saying it’s GOOD!

Not a bad issue of CREEPY but as with most anthologies it can be pretty (ahem!) variable so I’m just talking about this particular issue when I say it was GOOD!

ROBERT BLOCH'S THAT HELLBOUND TRAIN#2

Dave Wachter(a), Robert Bloch, Joe R Lansdale & John Lansdale(w), Alfredo Rodriguez(c) and Neil Uyetake(l)

(IDW, $3.99)

Here's some craft, pals. Bet no one's buying this, besides my own bad self, but it's got craft by the bucket. It's an adaptation of a 1958 Robert Bloch (1917-1994) Hugo Award winning (in 1959) short story so right there you've got some strong craft. It's going to be an engine designed to entertain but if you bend down and put your ever-loving ear to it it's going to tell you stuff as well. Stuff about life and the living of same. Used to be you could do that; entertain and illuminate both at once.  Not bad for a genre short but when it came to genre shorts Robert Bloch knew his onions. Joe R Lansdale is pretty well informed about hollow leaved plants containing edible bulbs too. Heard tell of him? No? Go read THE BIG BLOW and get back to me, I'll wait...

...no, no need to thank me, thank Joe R Lansdale. Joe R and his own son John do a neat job on the old adapting duties. It's sweet, clean and quiet. Fact is they are pretty unobtrusive and unobtrusive is surely conducive to immersion. A thankless task to be sure unless you appreciate craft. And this is no stale antiquated tale this one. Though the bulk is Bloch's the Lansdale's and Dave Wachter pop a couple of contemporary references in there but cleverly so as not to burst the bubble of suspension of disbelief. Someone's been watching Mad Men is what I'm saying.

And Dave Wachter? I'm telling you to keep an eye on this tyke. He ain't loud and fancy like some travelling salesman who's gone when the morning comes leaving you with just a cheap bible and a water infection, no, he's a straight up straight arrow. Comes in does his job and it's only later, on reflection, that you realise how cleverly he handled that scene transition here or subtly supported the text with a slight artistic nudge there. Brings the creepy stuff good too.

It's not perfect (there are two spelling errors in one speech balloon, the thought balloons in the bird shit on the jacket scene don't work) but it's admirably restrained and honestly admirable in its emphasis on craft. So I reckon this one walks quietly and carries a big stick. Creatively speaking. In reality Joe R Lansdale is a dab hand at karate and needs no stick. I suspect if you came at him with a stick he would probably break that stick with your face. So don't do that rather buy this because although might take a while to cotton on it's really VERY GOOD!

Craft in action! Subtlety in motion!

(Illustration by Dave Wachter. Words by Bloch & The Lansdales)

Looking ahead if things go according to plan the only MARVEL Comics I’ll be discussing in the future will be DAREDEVIL, PUNISHERMAX and AVENGERS 1959. I think you know why.

(choke!)I’ll miss you Chris Samnee (sob!). You stay strong for me now, Chris Samnee.

Enough, MARVEL! Give The King his due! Pah! Enough!

(Illustration by Ron Frenz & Sal Buscema.)

(Doctor Doom created by JACK KIRBY.)

Honestly, I have no idea for a title -- Hibbs on 7/3

BOYS #57: I really have nothing to say about this issue (other than "I've become generally bored with this title, and the only thing that keeps me reading is Hughie and Annie's relationship"), but how.... bizarrely  ironic, maybe, that this cover came out the same week as ULTIMATE FALLOUT #4? Still, an EH comic. FLASHPOINT #4: Again, not a ton to say -- this is competently executed, but it really isn't buttering my bread, if you know what I mean? --  but on the meta-level, there's something, again, ironic about the notion that the universe is about to have its reality rewritten by the only true Saint of the Silver Age, who effectively has a form of Alzheimers?  Also? I found something kind of genuinely creepy about the editorial at the back of this week's DC books explaining "why" people should buy DC comics in August. *shudder*. A perfectly OK single issue.

FLASHPOINT BATMAN KNIGHT OF VENGEANCE #3: This, on the other hand, was 32 flavors of fucked up and wrong, and darkity-dark-dark, and I kind of really really liked it. It's funny, you could really say this is at least as dark and wrong as, say LEGION OF DOOM, but that nebulous ol' "craft" makes a difference, doesn't it? I thought this was VERY GOOD.

INFINITE #1: I think a story so dependent on Time Travel requires an artist of a certain subtlety to capture the difference between a "young version" and an "old version" of a character. Rob Liefeld is not that artist. Did I mention that HAWK & DOVE is the only one of the DC 52 that I have no series-based subs on, whatsoever? I thought the set-up of the comic is clever enough, and there's a sold premise here, but for me, Liefeld's art is a game-breaker. EH.

MYSTIC #1: I have no particular affection for or nostalgia about the CrossGen books, so I was very pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this debut issue -- the art suffers a bit from "everyone has an open mouth expression all the time", maybe -- but I thought the writing was crisp, and the premise somewhat interesting (though there's something about the stratified society, and just how these girls are really able to know as much as they do, that didn't add up to me), and I certainly would like to read more. Solidly GOOD.

PUNISHER #1: I don't know. There are so many wonderful things being done on the "Max" side of Punisher, that a book starring the character square in the Marvel U needs something incredibly outstanding to interest me. I love Greg Rucka's writing normally, and this seems like it might be more "p0lice procedural" than anything else, but after putting it down, I found that nothing stuck with me here at all. I'd rather have another issue of Jason Aaron's run, I guess. EH.

RACHEL RISING #1: You got to admire Terry Moore for launching ANOTHER new series less than two months after his last one (ECHO) ended -- not just that, but to be doing it in a completely different genre (Horror) this time through. Though, from the first page it looks like it is taking place in the SiP universe anyway. I thought this was a GOOD first issue, largely marred by the last page, where I kept thinking that two pages must have stuck together or something, because that last beat wasn't a "come back for more next time!" one.

ULTIMATE COMICS FALLOUT #4: This has been such an uneven, purposeless series, with nothing in this issue having much of anything to do with the first three issues at all. The Spidey segment was fine, but nothing that would lead me back to the ongoing, in and of itself. My largest problem is that this spidey doesn't seem sufficiently different (insecure, nervous wise-cracking) from Peter Parker, though let's be fair, there's not a ton one can do in 8 pages. Well, no, that's a lie, there IS a ton you can do in 8 pages, but that's not within Bendis' skill set, that I can see. Oh, speaking of Bendis! Man, I get the shuddering creeps everytime I see that photo of him in the Architects double-spread -- he looks like a drag queen whose wig has fallen off! Anyway, yeah, this reader will RAPIDLY need to see something that differentiates this Spidey from Peter Parker.

The Reed Richards story was somewhat amusing from the POV of having an anti-Future Foundation from the writer of FF, but it took me a few pages to realize that this was Reed, as he really looks very little like even Ultimate Reed.

I thought the last story was adequate, but I'm really starting to think that Nick Spencer might be completely over-rated. The art was nice, though.

Overall, an OK issue, I guess.

That's my thoughts, what did YOU think?

-B

"It's Not Like I Have Much DOWNTIME Anyway..." Comics! Sometimes I Fear Craft May Not Be Enough!

When I'm not inadvertently lying about Wally Wood creating Captain Britain I read comics and then I write some poorly judged words. Yeah, salesmanship! So, yeah, not a great week for comics, ey? Still, before I was utterly crushed by depression at the various items of unpalatable truth the Internet was souring my eyes with I wrote some words.

Trying to be a bit quicker so this is rough as a badger's backside. If it doesn't make anyone physically ill I'll try this again and thus be a bit more frequent. Everything in moderation, as my Dad used to say! Except boooshhhe (hic!), he'd add about three hours later.

Yes, it is all mainstream tights and fights crap this time. But I've plenty of other stuff to share, it just takes a bit more thought and time to digest than this stuff.

(Dear me: Shut up and just let it go! Sheesh!)

WOLVERINE #12

By Renato Guedes/Jose Wilson Magalhaes(a), Jason Aaron(w), Matthew Wilson(c) and VC’s Cory Petit (l)(Marvel, £3.99)

“Wolverine’s Revenge!” Part 3

Wolverine’s enemies gather around a TV to watch their hated enemy carve his way through a series of remarkably daft enemies. This has been happening for three straight issues now.

Another exciting issue of Wolverine: The Myth of Sisyphus! I think we get it now, Marvel Architect Jason Aaron. I think the point has been well and truly made. I’d go so far, if you’ll pardon my presumption at speaking on behalf of the entire readership of Wolverine, as saying that we’d pretty much got the point with the first issue, the one that was exactly the same as the two subsequent issues. And while we’re all here can I humbly request a moratorium on naff villains commenting on the fact that they are naff as though this self aware self deprecation somehow magically negates their naffness.  “I’m ToeTeeth, I have teeth in my …pretty lame, huh. Let’s you me fight!” It was cute a couple of times but it’s just grating now. A bit like me? I can read your mind!

I mean it’s grating in this comic because this is the third straight issue of it but its also grating because it’s pretty rife throughout Marvel comics as a whole. I just want to nip this one in the bud before it becomes as prevalent as Spider-Man telling women his spider-sense is “tingling!” (Haw! It’s funny because he means his penis! He’s telling the woman she is making his penis chubby with blood! Now she’s compelled to imagine his swollen and lightly moistened bulb trapped between his clammy skin and his taut uniform! With great power must come great sexpesting!)

Still, at least no one can complain that Jason Aaron hasn’t created any new characters. They are all rubbish mind you (but they know that - so it’s okay!) but they are all yours Marvel. Go make a movie about this bunch of sad sacks! But. But the bit where the guy makes the hobo dress up as Wolverine and then beats him to death was pretty funny. It would have been even funnier if he gave the hobo $3.99 first and his last word was EH!

(Wolverine was created by Len Wein and John Romita Snr. His first appearance was drawn by Herb Trimpe (Trim-PEY!))

CAPTAIN AMERICA #619

(Marvel, $3.99)

By Chris Samnee/Mitch Brettweiser/Butch Guice/Stefano Guadiano(a), Ed Brubaker(w), Bettie Bretweiser(c) and VC’s Joe Caramagna(l).

“GULAG” Part 4

Will Steve Rogers’ stop dithering long enough to rescue Bucky from his very Russian Hell? Or will salvation come in a shapelier guise? Surprised? You won’t be!

I don’t know, I just don’t know. It’s okay. There’s plenty of craft here. People are big on craft aren’t they? Apparently craft cures all ills. Lots of craft here. Hits the beats, does the job. You can’t complain if it’s got the craft, I’m told. It plods along and then stops right on the mark.  Art wise Chris Samnee makes everyone else look pallid in comparison no matter how many tricks they nick off Steranko. In the Not Chris Samnee bits Clark Gable turns up as the warden. Clark Gable is dead so it’s okay to steal his face it seems. These are the times we live in. When you die people take your face. Your face? Turned out you were just keeping it warm. You read CAPTAIN AMERICA #619 and it has craft so it is okay but you wish at some point it had had some life in it. If it had life in it perhaps it could wear its own face.

Oh, wait; there is one brief spike on the flatline of interest. It comes in the very final caption. This is quite clearly the result of someone coming back into the room after steaming up the John, only to find that in his absence the Totally Autonomous and Independent Marvel Architect Editorial Hive Mind has just picked Bucky, the very character he has just finished setting up a long term plot for, to be the victim of The Quarterly Death Sales Spike Lottery. Welcome to Groupthink, Marvel Architect Ed Brubaker. Welcome to Hell.

CAPTAIN AMERICA #619 has got Chris Samnee so it could never have been less than OKAY!

(CAPTAIN AMERICA was created by Joe Simon and JACK KIRBY.)

CAPTAIN AMERICA #1

(Marvel, $3.99)

By Steve McNiven/Mark Morales(a), Ed Brubaker(w), Justin Ponsor(c) and VC’s Joe Caramagna(l)

“American Dreamers” Part 1

Like a teenager on a Saturday night Captain America’s about to find out that sometimes dipping your wick can lead to violent retribution! Yes, once again The Past has returned to haunt him! While we can’t reveal our mystery villain let’s just say we almost called this one “Finding Zemo”!

After CAPTAIN AMERICA #619 comes CAPTAIN AMERICA #1 because as Mr. Jeff Lester says, “F**** numbers!” Got a potty mouth, that guy, but he’s kind to animals so it all evens out. Yes, obviously, it’s a new number one to take advantage of all the movie goers who tumble through the doors of every LCS in the land when a super-movie is parped out. Any minute now…(tumbleweed rolls across your screen)…While we’re waiting then I’ll just say that this is eerily like you might expect CAPTAIN AMERICA #620 to have been, in that it is exactly like every other Captain America story by Marvel Architect Ed Brubaker. Something happened in The Past and now Captain America must deal with the consequences in The Now!

Whenever I read a Captain America comic by Marvel Architect Ed Brubaker I find it handy to compare it to that issue where Bucky cried because he hadn’t had any Birthday cakes while he was a brainwashed Russian Assassin (CA#23.75,  “…All The Cakes That Are My Life!”). This is better than that one. But then that one was Godawful. Christ, that comic. Despite the wealth of craft I’m expected to care about what’s happening without being given any reason to other than if I don’t I’ve just wasted $3.99 (or 5 shillings and 6 pence). I mean that’s a pretty powerful stimulus but I’d prefer a creative one. I did like the way that the whole revenge thing could have been avoided if Peggy Carter had been less of a round heels. Men, Oy, such children they are! Oh, this has craft and…yes, it has craft. It’s certainly got craft. Craft, it’s got. Well done on the craft end of things, everybody.

Steve McNiven draws it. I hear people like Steve McNiven. He has craft too. He’s very popular; I’m guessing this is because Travis Charest fans need something to read while they are waiting for more Travis Charest things to read. I enjoyed the attention the colourist paid to Nick Fury’s face lines and seeing tiny wee Red Skull doing his Donkey Kong dance always cheers me up. I also enjoyed Steve McNiven’s attempts to vary his page layouts. By which I mean I enjoyed the fact that he had attempted to do so rather than I enjoyed the final results. Steve McNiven’s okay, he’s fine. He’s no Chris Samnee but, y’know, maybe one day. This was perfectly decent but at $3.99 I’d like a bit more than OKAY!

(CAPTAIN AMERICA was still created by Joe Simon and Jack KIRBY.)

(Everybody okay? Everyone make it out to the other side?)

Have a nice weekend y'all but remember - everything's nicer with COMICS!

"Hey, Title that Post, Hibbs!" -- stuff from 7/20

Two Comics, and a Film!Let's start with the film, shall we?  

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER: I thought this was a fun and charming little movie, largely living up to the promise of the trailer. Cap, himself, is somewhat one-dimensional -- he doesn't have the drunken insouciance of Iron Man, or the charming arrogance of Thor, just a lot of earnestness -- but Chris Evans plays Cap with all of his heart, and sells it well.

(If you know nothing whatsoever about Cap the character, then there might be SPOILERS below, but I'm going to assume you know the basics?)

Like THOR before it, as long as you don't go in expecting more than popcorn fun, you'll get it, and this time leavened with a direct moral message of how important it is to stand up to bullies.

While the move from Nazis to Hydra was slightly disappointing from a purist POV, it did allow us to get Big! Mad! Science! everywhere. It's hecka revisionistic, but it yielded a fun movie, so all is well.

The script has a few problems: I really had a hard time understanding why Steve was staying in costume in the field, after the first time (and, heh, that scene of "early costume" Cap sneaking into the Hydra base was rendered pretty funny with that giant flag strapped to his back), and I thought they did a really bad handling the transition from '40s to c21 -- Ben turned to me immediately and asked me "What do they mean, 'you've been asleep for 70 years'?" "Well, Ben, he got frozen in a block of ice for all of that time" "How, daddy?" And, yeah, it sure ain't on the screen.

Also, as long as I'm complaining, the staggeringly multi-culti Howling Commandos kind of freaked me out, in the same way THOR's Warriors Three did... plus, historical accuracy and Sam Jackson's race aside, Nick Fury really should be leading them, damn it! And, uh, was Jim Morita talking into a modern operator's headset in that scene?

But then there were the swell and fun easter eggs -- did you spot the Human Torch on display at the World's Fair? How about the Red Skull's translation to Bifrost? That brilliant first, foreshadowing, shot of Arnim Zola? The filmmakers know their Marvel comics, and it shows.

I'm also kind of crazy excited for AVENGERS, now, which is maybe a terrible idea knowing that low expectations is one of the reasons I have dug THOR and CAP so much. Ben loved CAP, too -- gave it his usual "10 out of 10!", though he rates them: THOR, IRON MAN, CAP. I think I vote for IRON MAN, CAP, THOR, though.

Anyway, liked it a lot: VERY GOOD.

DAREDEVIL #1: Let me get one thing out of the way first: Marvel pretty much ruined Matt Murdock with "Shadowland", and it would take a lot of hard work, time, and redemption to get him back to anything resembling a sympathetic protagonist again.

Or you could just "pull a DC" and basically just ignore all of that, and then make it such a fun and entertaining story than cynical old farts like me have their Charm Barrier broken, so we grumble and say "OK, you get away with it... this time!" (rassen frassen Mark Waid!)

A lot of the credit really needs to be given to Paolo Rivera and Marco Martin, two dynamic artists with such strong individual styles, yet who flow well from one to the other.

I'll tell you something else, as well -- I'm usually leery about letting Ben reading my current comics, there's a ton of content that he's just not ready for in modern comics, but when he asked if DD was appropriate for him, I assented pretty quickly. And he was ENRAPTURED by the book, reading it very closely for quite some time. Then he went downstairs and told mom all about it "...So, see, he's BLIND, but he's got this wicked RADAR SENSE...")

Yeah, that was an EXCELLENT comic book.

INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #506: You know when I read the scene with Stark's sacrifice in FEAR ITSELF, I thought "Wow, that's a great moment", but this issue's fully-fleshed out version really kind of wore on me -- I found the foul-mouthed dwarves to be really overdone (and that thing about "content that I wouldn't want my son to see yet" from up above? Yeah), and then when the issue ends the way it ends, well, I just thought it was too easy. I also was really troubled with not having Tony deal with the aftermath of Paris personally. I don't know, I kind of realized that I haven't really liked this book at all in months (since #500, I guess?) I'll go with a very low EH.

That's me, this week: what did YOU think?

-B

“…The Only Bear On The C.I.A. Death List!” COMICS! They used to be for Kids, y’know!

So I read a '70s children's comic about a bear. Yeah, I'd stick with the Podcast below too.

While I greatly enjoyed the U.S. Bronze Age I was, and remain, more of a fan of '70s Brit comics. Gonna talk about such a series now. It ain't exactly Howard The Duck, knoworrimean?

2000AD EXTREME EDITION #18

(Published by Rebellion, 31 October 2006,£2.99)

Reprints:

SHAKO by Pat Mills(w), John Wagner(w), Ramon Sola(a), Arancio(a), Dodderio and Lopez-Vera

Tharg’s Future Shocks: The Shop That Sold Everything by Grant Morrison(w) and John Stokes(a)

PROJECT OVERKILL by Kelvin Gosnell(w), Ian Gibson(a) and Jesus Redondo(a)

As you can tell from the above 2000AD EXTREME was a UK magazine that reprinted the most Zarjaz Thrills from the past of The Galaxy’s Greatest Comic but today we’ll be all about the SHAKO.

“SHAKO! The Eskimo Word For The Great White Bear. It Means Simply…KILLER!”

In The Artic Circle a plane carrying the C.I.A.’s deadliest weapon crashes and its cargo of viral death is swallowed by the ambling bear men will come to know as SHAKO! A desperate race is on to recover the capsule without destroying it! Civilisation vs Nature! Man vs. Bear! In the land of SHAKO Man’s destiny is DEATH!

  1. “It Was The Little One – The One Who Had Played With SHAKO…!”

SHAKO was originally presented during 1977 in thirteen weekly installments of around six pages each.  Every episode basically involved SHAKO meeting a new threat and being hurt by it before overcoming and eating it. The wider narrative involving the hunt for him lingered around the edges. Despite the necessarily formulaic nature and page limitations of the presentation the writers were able to stuff a whole load of goodies in there to keep the kids minds active. What? Oh yeah, this relentlessly brutal and savage tale was printed in a comic sold to children. I read it when I was a kid. Now, it isn’t something I’m proud of but young me really dug the sight of a polar bear washing its paws in a man’s face while the guy screamed stuff like “Oh God! The claws! Its terrible claws are tearing my soft face apart like toilet paper in the rain! The pain! Jesus wept! The pain! He’s eating me alive! Sweet Mercy…..!” SHAKO is fast paced pulp action so visceral and raw that it seems to have been chucked onto the page. This impression is mostly due to the artwork which is cheap and rushed looking. The best of the artists is Sola(?) who starts the series off with art that balances detail and urgency in just about the right measure. Things get a bit choppy after that with the next best art being that of Dodderio(?) whose work looks like a less talented Young Mike McMahon. As variable and hasty as the art may be it does manage to convey the required vicious urgency. It is also possible that a tale as mind bogglingly violent and unrepentantly trashy as SHAKO doesn’t need art that’s polite or pretty. It doesn’t really matter though as the real treat is the overheated and shrill writing. There’s real art to writing something which is at once as contradictorily awful and awesome as SHAKO appears to my age addled mind. So I’ll be banging on about the writing from here on in. With hindsight this stuff reads as though the writers really weren’t that keen on kids. Gave us some memorable comics though. In thirty years time I doubt I’ll remember CRIMINAL as vividly as this chaotically charming series. Maybe that’s because things imprint more vividly on fresh minds, maybe, but it’s probably because in thirty years time I’ll be dead. Thanks to my youthful reading though it won’t be at the claws of a polar bear. Nope, I’m not going near any polar bears anytime soon, pal. Because other than maliciously scaring the hot poop out of children SHAKO contained important lessons about misanthropy and the dangers of the natural world; sound preparation for any child. It isn’t healthy that children should be insulated from fear but it is healthy that they should fear the right things; these, on this evidence, being bears and the entirety of humankind.

2. “These Humans Were FUN!” Humanity in SHAKO is largely presented as being a bunch vile fools who are basically content to prod nature for their own amusement or profit until nature gets suitably miffed and tears off their face to wave in front of their lidless eyes like a bloody hanky. The only exception to this is a child who befriends and saves SHAKO (thus naturally leading to more deaths!). Unk, as he is known, is too innocent and unspoiled by civilisation to fear Shako and so meets him on his own terms and is rewarded by survival. Yes, I know that sounds horrible and preachy, but that’s what happens. If you want me to lie to you money will have to be involved, I have principles you know. Surprising precisely no one (particularly not anyone who has read a Pat Mills comic) the big theme/message of SHAKO is that nature=Good and civilisation=Bad. Now, no one who drives a car wants to hear that, so Mills/Wagner bury it under a thick blanket of inventive violence and research.

3. “Like All Polar Bears He Was Very Curious…” Yes, Mills and Wagner have done their research. The whole tale is peppered with instances of scientifically verified bear behaviour. Polar Bears do forage in the trash near human settlements, they have been known to fight Walruses, they do kill their prey by crushing the head in their jaws, etc. The bit where Shako cunningly covers his black button of a nose to sneak up on his prey is probably more folkloric than scientific, but it does demonstrate the breadth of their research. Not actually knowing either Pat Mills or John Wagner personally and given the curious absence of academic attention given to SHAKO, I’m unsure as to whether they read several dusty tomes by learned men with frostbitten cheeks or just flicked through The Ladybird Book of Bears. The point is they read something and worked it into their narrative. This does give the sensationalistic shenanigans some slight veneer of plausibility. Which is handy because without it SHAKO would be pulp nonsense at its most scruffily bloody and lacking in any plausibility in which to couch its polemical teeth.

4. “The Humans Were Hurting Him Again. They Must Be Taught A Lesson…” In keeping with the ideological premise Shako is a bear and he is just bearing about doing his bear thang until humanity ruins his day with its ill advised chemical weapons in easily swallowed capsule form. SHAKO’s not sadistic as such he just has different terms of reference what with him being a bear and all. Often when he is throwing people around like screaming rag dolls or rolling around on them crushing every bone in their body he is fact “playing”. Later though SHAKO does start hating and playtime is most definitely over. But to be fair by this point he’s lost his mate and cubs, wrestled a Russian(!), been shot, stabbed, prepped for surgery, escaped from a sinking helicopter and just generally been really mucked about. So the fact that he’s a little less temperate in the area of self control might not be excusable but it is understandable. SHAKO – more sinned against than sinning!

SHAKO is smarter than the average bear though; he is able to enter a house so quietly that he is mistaken for a towel by a showering Texan. (“Holy Moses To BetseeEEAH!”). And the writers are smart enough to use him as a means to give the very English love of antiauthoritarianism a good airing. This gets down even to the level of criticising the cosmetics industry. Rooting through the Texan’s bathroom cabinet SHAKO is attracted to a lipstick which is as colourful as berries but does it taste as nice…”IT DID NOT!” See, you thought I was just being sarky warky but, no, there’s subtext all over this thing! See: obviously SHAKO is in blithe defiance of the U.S. Military Industrial Complex but he also metes out just desserts to a strict schoolmarm and a ward nurse who is a bit quick with her fists. As you can tell SHAKO had no truck for authority and a pioneering attitude to gender equality; women are as bad as men and both make fine snacks.

5. “The Polar Bear Who Brought The Cold War To Flashpoint!” Well, that’s all just super, I hear you snore, but there are different societies and it’s hardly fair to tar all societies with the same beary brush is it now? It’s okay because luckily the Artic turns out to be a pretty busy place what with Russians, Americans and even the French turning up. Mills and Wagner pay particular attention to replicating the authentic idioms of each - Russian:"You speak "BAD things to The KGB!", American:"Ya there, Ellie May, Honey? " and, my favourite, French:"Sacre Bleu! Zat is one big bear,eh, Mon Ami!".

The Americans are goal-orientated and tech-savvy but fail to accommodate the difficulties and nuances of the environment in which they are battling. Could Shako be the first Vietnam analogy involving a polar bear? Perhaps. Meanwhile The Russians are blinded by unthinking subservience to dogma and the need to best the Americans. Initially they don’t know why the polar bear is of note they only know that the Yanks want it so they capture it and take it aboard their Whaling ship cum KGB spy ship. This turns out quite badly. In fact, so disputed does the bemused bear become that a nuclear interaction is only narrowly avoided. Could Shako be the first Cuban Missile crisis analogy involving a polar bear? Perhaps.

6. “The Bear Took My GUN ARM. So This Is Personal, See?” Now while humanity can be painted in broad strokes as a bunch of callous buffoons certain individuals are singled out so we can have someone to root for or someone to boo in this polar pantomime of pant soiling terror. While the characterisation is blunt as a stump it is redeemed by its brash energy. You certainly know who everyone is and what everyone wants. Jake “Foulmouth” Falmouth, for example, wants to get that danged bear so he can get that capsule for his government masters. Well, that’s his initial stance but following Shako’s aggressive appropriation of his arm Falmouth vows a sweary vow to get that dingdanged bear and kind of lets the capsule take a back seat. This is pretty much the depth of character development you’ll find in SHAKO. Look, it’s about a killer polar bear so I’m not sure how much character development you were expecting there. Falmouth is the Bad Man, The Hunter who becomes consumed by The Hunt and then literally consumed by The Hunted. Basically he’s Robert Shaw in JAWS but without John Milius’ dialogue. So yeah, Falmouth is pretty great.

7. “WHITE MAN’S Methods Have Failed To Kill SHAKO – Now I’ll Do It The ESKIMO Way…” The most sympathetic human here is called Buck Dollar (I guess Burger MacFries was taken or something). Anyway Buck Dollar is a half Inuit/half American who clearly represents the intermingling of cultures and the tension between nature and civilisation. Almost immediately Buck has a chance to finish Shako off but refuses as he recognises the inherent spiritual purity of a beast which enjoys clawing people like scratch poles. Personally as much as I am expected to sympathise with Buck I wouldn’t want him to be making any decisions my life might depend on.  Later in the penultimate confrontation Buck faces Shako with a combination of traditional spear and war cry ("MANICHOK!"). While this is thematically faithful, alas, in practical terms this is a quite frankly terrible plan and results in both parties being badly wounded.

Naturally in the final confrontation atop a mound of refuse Shako is dispatched by the power of Buck’s faith in his own heritage and his rejection of the ways of civilisation. No, not really. Buck shoots Shako with a bazooka at point blank range. Which kind of confuses the message, I think. I also think that the capsule everyone has been concerned with not damaging must have been somewhat more robust than previously thought. I think maybe someone might have shot SHAKO with a bazooka somewhat sooner really. I think they pulled this ending out of their backside is what I think. Such are the perils of writing a weekly series that can be cancelled at short notice due to poor reader reaction.

8. “AT LAST!”

And so the cautionary tale of Shako ends with Man and Bear dead in the garbage of a civilisation which is implacably and unthinkingly encroaching into the wild. Through everything Shako was true to himself. Yes, a lot of people died horribly, some children were irreparably traumatised and The Cold War almost heated up with a nuclear fire but in the end “…SHAKO DIED WELL!” When I was a child I read SHAKO and it was EXCELLENT! When I became a man I read SHAKO again and it still ain’t half bad.

Marvel's Best And Worst: Graeme Looks At Comics From 7/13, 7/20

It's been awhile, but that's because of too much work/vacation/too much work, respectively. But! Finally! Comics! Well, some of them, anyway. DAREDEVIL #1: I dropped the previous version of this title midway through Ed Brubaker's run, because it was just too dark for me (I read the collection of Shadowland the other week, and saw that I'd probably made the right decision), so the idea that Matt Murdock would essentially have to choose to actively try to be happy in this new series would've made me interested, even without the creative team of Mark Waid, Paolo Rivera and Marcos Martin. But with them, it's just amazing: Waid's script is smart, funny and tight, and both Rivera and Martin just make the book sing with their art. An Excellent debut, and I can't wait for the second issue.

GREEN LANTERN # 67, WAR OF THE GREEN LANTERNS AFTERMATH #1: It may have been ridiculously delayed and come out in a strangely paced form - although, admittedly, one that makes much more sense once you've read the first issue of the spin-off Aftermath series - but there's something about Lantern #67 that works, despite itself. Geoff Johns is at his best playing with these characters, and making them part of a ridiculously melodramatic story with weirdly compelling, slightly disturbing subtext, I think, and Doug Mahnke's art can make almost anything look good on the page. I kind of wish that he'd had time to stick around for Aftermath #1, which... isn't bad, necessarily (It's better than writer Tony Bedard's GLCorps run to date, I'd argue), but is let down by the art that kills the story by filling it with stiffly-posed, emotionless figures that bring everything to a halt (Blame Tyler Kirkham, whose half of the book is by far the worst). It's a shame, because there's a lot in the writing that I like, particularly the idea that the Guardians essentially fired Hal because they're scared of him, as well as the whole Corps being told to have a day off, more or less, because they're all in shock. If Bedard could get another artist for his New Guardians book come September, this might've been enough to get me to pick it up, but sadly, he's sticking with Kirkham. Lantern: Good, Aftermath: Okay.

SUPERMAN #713: Dear DC - I can't believe you're not letting Chris Roberson stay with this character after the reboot, especially when he gives you issues like this that demonstrate that he really, really loves the character and is doing his best to save the book from the depths of mundanity that JMS took it to. I'll admit that there's almost nothing Portland-y about this trip to Portland, OR - Clark goes to a Sundollar coffee shop, and not Stumptown? Bad show, Mr. Kent - but I loved the various suggested tales to illustrate why there "must be" a Superman. Having Jamal Igle show up with some nice art didn't hurt, either. Good, even if it'll all end in tears next month.

ULTIMATE FALLOUT #1-2: Talking of ending in tears... Am I the only person who thought that the first issue of this felt like it was created to be Ultimate Spider-Man #161? It was more enjoyable than the last few issues of that title, if "enjoyable" is the right word - Brian Michael Bendis provided the emotional punch that "The Death of Spider-Man" lacked, and Mark Bagley... well, he does his best to keep up, at least. The second issue, though, was a mess in comparison, split between three different creative teams and seeming like it: there's no cohesion or connection between the interludes, and it reads like someone's put together a preview book of excerpts instead of something that's supposed to be a story in and of itself. #1 was Good, but #2 pretty much Awful - and that's before I get to pointing out that Bryan Hitch's Ultimate Thor has become Chris Helmsworth thanks to the movie, and then wonder why a comic costing $3.99 only has nineteen pages of story.

But that's enough about me. What did you think?

Four ones and a sixty-seven: Hibbs on 7/13

Comics, comics, comics! I'm dancin' as fast as I can!

CAPTAIN AMERICA #1:  Well, the McNiven art is pretty, and Brubaker's story zips along just fine from WW2 to today (probably a smart move for audiences walking out of the WW2-set Cap film), but I have to say that this issue didn't work on the balance for me. Part of it is the "Wait, when is this happening in continuity" aspect -- Steve is Cap again, but not even a mention of ol' Buck... and, especially that graveyard fakeout means this is happening at least "three months" "from now" (Post FEAR ITSELF), but the other part is the TWO different (if related) continuity implants of the issue -- Jimmy Jankovicz  ("Jimmy Jupiter"), and the other guy, who I *think* was named "Codename: Bravo"... though maybe he's JUST named "Bravo", since what moron would have "codename" before his name? It's hard to say, really, either way -- neither of whom is really properly introduced or explaining their motivations in any significant way.

Take Jimmy J first -- there's a "bum, bah bah!" beat of "I think Jimmy Jankovitz just woke up!", without explaining who he is, or why he is asleep, or, more importantly for a serialization, WHY I SHOULD CARE if he's asleep or awake or even in existence. Jimmy is apparently "our ticket right into the belly of the beast" of some secret french base, despite looking like a nine year old American boy, but then we cut away to JJ being an old man, and nothing else happens with that thread other than him being a McGuffin what gets kidnapped.

Then there's the man who is codenamed as Codename: Bravo (seriously, I can just see... "Ah, what was his codename again?" "He is codename: Codename: Bravo!") who SEEMS to hate Cap because Peggy Carter wouldn't kiss him back in '44, and whom it is also implied somehow is a "man out of time" (jeez, how many of those are running around the Marvel U?), but who, despite saying that he wants to destroy Captain America, takes a shot at... Dum Dum Dugan instead? Allllright, nothing like an incompetent act to get your ideological villain off on the right foot.

There's also a fight that seems to take place on a freeway (rather than a surface street), where a grenade casually goes off, surely killing a civilian (or 12), and no one comments on it for even one second. Ah, what the hell, they're French, it's OK!

I don't know, maybe this will make more sense when we have the entire TP collection, but, at this point, I'm not especially compelled to even pick up #2...

Sadly, this was just modestly OK.

DEFENDERS FROM MARVEL VAULT #1:Most of the "from the vault" books seem to "just" be left over inventory, but this one, as explained in the text page was plotted by Fabien Nicieza a decade back, and drawn back then (by Mark Bagley), but they lost the plot and script in the intervening years, so Kurt Busiek stepped in to try and figure out a new story. That's pretty stunningly "Marvel Method", in a lot of ways, and the resulting comic is far more coherent than you could ever hope that it might be. I enjoyed it in a "goofy fun" kind of way, and give it a big strong OK.

GREEN LANTERN #67: I don't expect a lot out of crossover thingies, but it IS nice when they end up in such a way that mixes up the status quo significantly for a little while. I don't have any expectation that this will stick for more than a few months, and it certainly makes that hastily inserted end-credit sequence in the GL film make a smidge more sense, maybe, but it WAS a genuinely "hoo boy!" moment which made my blackened and jaded heart swell for a moment, so that, all by itself, makes me give it a VERY GOOD. I also liked the half-beat insinuation that there's something really freaky about the Indigo lanterns. The only thing I will say is that the more they try to fill in Sinestro's backstory (between the film, and that direct-to-DVD animated one, and much of this arc), the less sense it makes that he was ever "Sinestro" in the first place, y'know?

ULTIMATE COMICS FALLOUT #1: How is this going to be a six issue mini, I don't get it? More than half of this issue was just various reaction shots of supporting cast members, few/none of which seemed like they needed another page at all? It was "touching", I guess, but as "1 of 6", it was pretty dang EH.

X-MEN SCHISM #1: I dunno, I like Jason Aaron very much, but I don't think he nailed the right "tone" of an X-book here at all? There was kinda too much comedy on one hand, and not enough "weight" on the other. Liiiike... "ooh, Sentinels are scary!", then both Cyke and Wolvie are shown casually taking entire groups out with AOE attacks? Also? Kinda no "schism" on display here at all. Much like Cap, I'm wondering what my motivation to come back for #2 might be -- it isn't on the page. Eh.

That's me -- what did YOU think?

-B

“…Of the PERPETUAL nightmare of the BESTIAL LIGHT in his EYES.” Comics? Sometimes they’re so good I get a bit excited!

I’m back! And God help those with a low tolerance for self-indulgence! Or is it the guilty? It's the guilty isn't it. Wait, I'll try that again, don't go anywhere...I need a hat, a big hat...where's my hat... In 2011 DC didn’t give him a book but in 1986 they did. Let’s see how that turned out using the captivating medium of too many words…

THE SHADOW: BLOOD AND JUDGEMENT By Howard Chaykin (a), Ken Bruzenak (l) and Alex Wald (c) (1987,Titan Books, £8.95)

(Collects the 4 issue 1986 DC Comics series with an interview with Mr. Howard Victor Chaykin together with The Shades of The Shadow by Anthony Tollin)

“In a NEW VARIATION on an OLD IDENTITY…”

In 1986 there was no Internet as we know it. You may breathe into a brown paper bag until your face becomes less florid at this point. No, in 1986 people had to rely on memories. My memory didn’t include The Shadow at this point so the learned article in the back of #1, by Ambush Bug’s nemesis and ace colourist Anthony Tollin, was pretty essential. Of course being young I thought this was some post modern joke. Not, so! Mr. Tollin’s concise and edifying words were proof that a lot of other people’s memories included The Shadow. But not this Shadow. This was a different beast. One re-tooled and refueled for the crass and nasty Me Decade. A dark vengeful force unswerving in its moral certainty and simmering with violence and sexuality. He had a big hat too. It was a Shadow only Howard Victor Chaykin was fit to cast.

Having acquired the licence to The Shadow from Conde Nast DC Comics lured HVC in because he was Mr. Big Pants following AMERICAN FLAGG! - a series so decorated with critical acclaim it provoked HVC to refer to it, in his customary apocalyptically self-deprecating manner, as a “piece of shit”. Luckily everyone knows he’s just a big old kidder so this didn’t put them off. HVC had also produced comics featuring Dominic Fortune (Marvel) and The Scorpion (Atlas) set in a similar milieu to that of The Shadow so, y’know, no brainer there. A nice little ‘30s set reverential potboiler to appease the fans coming right up. Except they’d hired HVC and HVC wasn’t interested in going over old ground but rather intended to update the concept to the then-modern times so hard its eyes would water. So he did and it looked just dandy, my virtual chums.

“…You’re even more GORGEOUS than I could have possibly IMAGINED.” HVC has always been adamant that it isn’t the content of genre comics, which he seems to regard as juvenile (but…why!?!?), that interests him but rather the form, forever downplaying his draughtmanship as average but resolute in his belief that design is his forte. Having emulated his one-time employer Wallace Wood in setting up a studio of talented individuals around him HVC was now, in 1986, free to focus on his strengths, secure in the knowledge that others would fortify his perceived areas of weakness.

So in TS:B&J he’s laying the whole thing out, leaving the backgrounds to assistants and concentrating on the main figures. While in awe of Gil Kane, as any mortal should be, he was perceptive enough to identify Kane’s flaw in falling back on generic environmental elements. To avoid this he uses photo references for all the parts that aren’t fleshy. In latter years computers would ease this job but make the successful integration of elements a conundrum he still appears to be struggling with.

Which is a quite painfully tedious way of saying that art on these pages is primo-HVC. It’s the rockin’ good stuff all right. Oh, he’s in such control of the camera of your eye it might as well be on a stick his sure and steady hand is guiding so effortlessly. Of course it is anything but effortless but it seems it. Which is the trick is it not. Every page here is just a work of optical genius filled with pertinent information, consummate storytelling, great staging and a rhythm that ebbs and flows with the flow outweighing the ebb until it reaches an irresistible momentum that carries you to the end of the book. Which is a good thing as by then the plot has pretty much evaporated. “The Master seeks ANSWERS..”

Which actually is okay since plot for HVC is just a hook he uses on which to hang all the things he’s really interested in (ladies, snappy patter, women, moral lepers, dames, raised eyebrows, chicks,  intercourse, violence, frails, art deco furnishings, etc.). It’s pretty simple plot wise really; someone from The Shadow’s past is trying to lure him out of his Shamballan seclusion by offing his aged minions in a variety of inventively sadistic ways. (No, I’m still not entirely sure how you get a human body into a water cooler; looks sweet though!) Unfortunately for the perpetrator the plan is entirely successful, unfortunately for The Shadow that was just foreplay.

The series opens with a lovely bit of misdirection via a faux ‘30s intro scene , which neatly the counterpoints the sleazy evocation of The Hateties, and then it’s a string of blackly comic murders, where the vicious brutality is offset by the blaise manner of the killers, intercut with the progress of a shadowy figure, the introduction of a host of characters, some of which will manahe to live longer than a page and some horny old people. (That’s right, peach cheeks; we do the musky mambo too. Reckon on that awhile!) Following a remarkable splash page of our hero looking like distilled sex in the world’s luckiest suit (and...that page is pretty much how I look in my head) the second chapter flashbacks into a prolonged mash note to Alex Toth.

In what is clearly the finest of the chapters HVC goes all out on the graphical delights in order to do his hero proud. With all the predictability of a rom-com Toth was singularly unmoved. But he was one tough cookie that Toth, so if you only read one chapter read this. But no one just reads one chapter so read ‘em all! Somewhere in there HVC even gives The Shadow a motivation for his single minded party pooping in a pivotal panel where Kent Allard is filled with the necessary self loathing to change; a life of moral passivity has led to him scooping bags of opiates out of corpses on a strange mountain while a colossal shitheel holds a gun on him. As moments of clarity go it’s pretty effective. In that one panel Kent Allard dies and The Shadow is born. It’s a great moment in a great book; one of many.

The third and fourth chapters are less successful as HVC shows the Master’s operatives at work (note: the use of file cards as an example of how to work exposition into a narrative), it’s all a little offhandedly frantic to be terribly convincing but it is still very, very entertaining and possesses that essential momentum I mentioned earlier before you fell asleep. “LOUDER…”

Time now to consider the work of the genius of the silent cinema of the mind; Mr. Ken Bruzenak. The big thing about The Shadow is his laugh. That raucous ricochet of rapture at having just psychotically slaughtered some moral cripple or other. The laugh that strikes fear into the heart of evil doers and also suggests that at right that moment you could hang a so’wester off The Shadow’s nethers. So the man enjoys his job, whatchagonnado?  It’s important to get the laugh down on the page where no sound exists and Ken Bruzenak does it superbly with the insertion of one font line within a larger one, a stroke of genius which successfully visually represents the aural phenomenon of a booming laugh complete with echo effect. The machine like precision of the text evokes the inhuman quality of the dreadful racket and in addition it can be used to fill up entire backgrounds due to its hugely attractive visual nature. Ken Bruzenak gets the laugh down pat.

That’s Ken Bruzenak’s big miracle but TS:B&J is littered with all kinds of little miracles in the form of sound effects that act both as elements of the page design and as vital storytelling devices. They need to be seen to be believed, like all miracles. Let’s not forget that this was 1986 and Ken Bruzenak did all this by hand mind you. Designing, drawing, cutting, pasting and overlaying - all achieved without computers. The human being as creative machine; art with real heart. It’s amazing. Ken Bruzenak is amazing. With all the new tech available this incredible stuff should have been assimilated and become the norm by now. That it hasn’t is a pretty poor reflection on the perceived worth of lettering in comics but doesn’t alter the fact that Ken Bruzenak is awesome.

THE SHADOW: BLOOD AND JUDGEMENT isn’t a perfect book by any stretch but it's ridiculously strong on the craft front and pretty formidable entertainment to boot. Considering this was just a work-for-hire gig for all involved it's EXCELLENT!

(THE SHADOW: BLOOD AND JUDGEMENT is predictably OOP, as they say, but you can source the singles easily enough or there’s also the TPB. For the true Chaykin maniac in your life: the tale was also printed in the UK magazine ZONES which lasted four issues. This reproduced the splendid art at magazine size which offsets the ever present dismay of glossy paper. Also, the backup is Wein/Wrightson’s SWAMP THING which is always a pleasure and never a chore.)

Have a nice weekend all and remember: the weed of crime bears bitter fruit!

“Hell erupts and Heaven can only CRY.” Comics? Bad for your soul, but I read ‘em anyway!

I read some comics. Did a little dance. Wrote some words. So I guess this me asking, "Something for the weekend, sir?"

THE MIGHTY THOR #3 by Matt Fraction(w), Olivier Coipel/Mark Morales(a), Laura Martin(c) and VC’s Joe Sabino(l) (Marvel, $3.99)

“The Galactus Seed 3: Stranger” Galactus lolls about on the moon as Asgard engages in pointless fights and wonky dialogue and all the while the people of Broxton become ever more tedious! Also: Sif’s bongos revealed!

This month The Priest With The Least is having problems with the concept of tolerance. Boy Howdy, those Theological issues are getting a real seeing to and no mistake. Priesty and his cronies are also now drawn with a somewhat demonic aspect. Hopefully this is foreshadowing their true natures rather than just ham handed caricaturing. Hey, a boy can hope even though the lack of subtlety or nuance in this thing is pretty substantial. There’s just a total lack of attention to anything beyond the surface dazzle and bluster, both of which exist purely thanks to the efforts of Olivier Coipel. Rather than being an actual Thor comic the whole lifeless exercise comes across as a bad cover version of a Thor comic. It’s dispiriting is what it is and that makes it EH!

IRON MAN 2.0 #4 by Nick Spencer(w), Ariel Olivetti(a) and VC's Joe Caramanga(l) (Marvel, $2.99)

"Palmer Addley Is Dead Part 4" The notionally moving tale of a talented boy who fell through the cracks is eviscerated by a total disregard for the comics medium! 'Nuff said!

Oh boy, this thing right here. There are no less than 8 pages of talking heads and this follows 6 pages of a woman in a library simply gaining access to a file, reading it and being a bit upset by the contents. There are 4 double page splashes intended to be emotionally affecting but, alas, each totally fails in this due to the inept execution. Respectively these resemble: an outtake from Commodore64 version of Toy Story, an illustration to a magazine article on predatory sex pests, a scene from a fumetti entitled "When Bins Attack!" and an  advert for Lego City: Urban Shooting Playset. This is a horrible comic because it isn't a comic it's an (ineptly) illustrated TV script. One that relies for any impact on the fact that you too have seen the same generic scenes and that you will bring the emotion you felt when seeing these scenes in a, hopefully, better realised context, to bear on this pallid vacuum and give it some semblance of interest or verve. This is not a comic and so it is AWFUL!

SCALPED #49 by Jason Aaron(w), R.M. Guera(a), Giulia Brusco(c) and Sal Cipriano(l) (Vertigo/DC, $2.99)

“You Gotta Sin To Get Saved: Ain’t No God.” Paths are crossed.Secrets are revealed. Scores are settled. A decison is made.

When a character does something that’s totally out of character? That’s bad writing. But when a character does something out of character and then you realize they haven’t, instead it was you who you had the character wrong? That’s pretty good writing. If you’ve read this issue you already know what I’m talking about and if you haven’t read it you best be waiting for the trade, lovehandles, because otherwise you’re missing out on some damn fine comics. Golly, it was beautiful. I was thinking, “Of course. How convenient!”, and then I ended up with cake on my face. The cake of fools. 49 issues in and these characters are still growing and still developing in ways which, while never predictable, are entirely consistent. It’s easy to lose sight of the subtleties of SCALPED embedded as they are in the lurid and sensational aspects which surround them but they always rear up into view at precisely the right point. And the art, well, let’s just say that R. M. Guera is often close to Moebius, and that’s pretty much like being close to God. In a good way.

I may be a fool but not to the extent that I'd doubt for one second that Aaron and Guera would be totally okay with this being a TV show. Yet in the first instance they created a comic which worked as a comic. And worked very well as a comic at that. Ambitions towards other media shouldn't result in a lack of ambition in the source material. Yeah, the bit with the phone alone was EXCELLENT!

DEADPOOLMAX #9 by David Lapham(w), Shawn Crystal(a), John Rauch(c) and VC’s Clayton Cowles(l) (Marvel, $3.99)

“Bachelor Party For Bachelors” Bob’s not getting married in the morning but is that going to stop his zany scarred assassin pal from giving him a night he’ll never forget? You can bet your sweet caboose it’s not!

I’m not proud of this but I should probably tell you that the last couple of weeks I’ve been pulling a “Bobby Shaftoe” and amusing myself by substituting the word “sh*t” for the words “Fear” and “Flash” in everything I read about Marvel and DC’s annual sales spike stunt comics. See, and it’s dead clever this, you get stuff like “Sh*t Itself” and Sh*tpoint” right off the bat and then the tag lines become “Do You Sh*t…Tomorrow!” and “Everything Changes – in a Sh*t!” and there’s now a “Sh*t wave” covering the earth and, this is my favourite this one, Professor Zoom – The Reverse Sh*t!

So, y’know, I have childish aspects to my personality is what I’m getting at. So maybe the fact I don’t find DEADPOOLMAX very funny is actually a good thing? You’ll notice Kyle Baker hasn’t drawn any of this issue which is better than him not finishing drawing some of the previous issues, which has been happening quite a lot. So I make a noise like EH!

DC COMICS PRESENTS NIGHT FORCE #1 by Marv Wolfman(w), Gene Colan/Bob Smith(a), Michele Wolfman(c) and John Constanza(l)(DC Comics, $7.99)

NIGHT FORCE – they force the night to surrender its secrets! If the night needs forcing that means it’s time for NIGHT FORCE! When the NIGHT FORCE…my lonely heart calls! Oh, I wanna dance with somebody!

Ah, sweet Gene Colan.  Gene “The Dean” Colan.  Truly a unique and delightful force in mainstream genre comic art. Beyond the oft-commented upon use of shadows and light I always found his work very similar to that of Gil Kane but less rarefied and more grounded. Where Kane’s work had an operatic fluidity Colan’s was more workaday hustle. While Kane’s characters soared and thrust, Colan’s figures stumbled and lurched within a POV that was more hectic than roving. His work had life bursting out of every panel but it was the life of a bloke rather than that of a demi-god.  You could aspire to be a Kane character given enough genetic engineering and a high tolerance for pain but you probably already were a Colan character.  And although Colan seamlessly grafted his style onto all manner of genres his art possessed an intrinsic familiarity to draw the reader in no matter how fantastic the four colour shenanigans. He was The Dean. He will always be The Dean.

This package collects NIGHT FORCE #1-4 from 1982 A.D.  The issues show Baron Winters recruiting a motley group of people with sad pasts in order to prevent supernatural evil elements from ensuring the world itself has a very sad future. Baron Winters is one of those oh-so-spooky chaps that appears never to age, has a different garden every time he opens his patio doors and owns a leopard called Schnorbitz. Sorry, I meant Merlin. (Obscure reference? Check and mate.) He’s also under some kind of supernatural house arrest, hence his need for human agents who can move freely in the world abroad! So we have Jack Gold (bitter smoker with a poor employment record), Donovan Caine (a professor of parapsychology who has a wife and child who, let’s face it, shouldn’t be starting in on any DVD box sets) and Vanessa Van Helsing (a kind of psychic nuclear attack in the form of a lady). The three are manipulated into close contact via the Baron and the government’s interest in Caine’s experiments. Taking place on campus these seem to involve trying to open the Gates of Hell by stimulating Ms Van Helsing’s nascent powers via the repeated application of orgies. Which is eerily similar to my experiences of not-studying at Coventry Polytechnic. Anyway stuff goes wrong and all kind of bad hoodoo gets a-cooking!

It’s fast pulpy fun which is either enhanced or undermined, your call, by its attempts to try and inject some maturity into the whole exercise. There are references to “open marriages”, “alimony” and, while the “orgy” word isn’t ever used, it’s clear that quite a lot of people are having quite a lot of fun in a confined space via the medium of physical interaction. Sure it’s clumsy and unconvincing but kind of endearing. Of course it was all for naught as in 1984 Howard Victor Chaykin would demonstrate how to graft a more mature sensibility onto genre comics. But this was 1982 and Wolfman and Colan have a pop at it and it doesn’t really work  but, hey, they sure snuck a lot of stuff past the Comics Code.

There are many things wrong with this comic but pretty much all the worst of them are due to sloppy (re)presentation rather than the creative types involved. The last page in particular is a right horrorshow. I guess no one could find a copy of this page so they asked someone who had read it when it came out to describe it over a faulty phone line to someone with a cheap pen and the delerium tremens and then everyone just crossed their fingers. It’s bad.

And, I really don’t want to sound like Andy Anal here but, the paper stock is all wrong. Mr. Colan has gone to some effort use some exciting techniques, mostly with craft tint (is that right? That dotty stuff.), but these depend on a layering effect to succeed and they fail totally because the image just sits right on top of the glossy paper with exactly and precisely no differentiation between the layered elements. The paper also works against the inking which is too sharp for the necessary haziness of Colan’s pencils. Okay, that was probably the case in the original but the old timey soft paper would have mitigated this while the new timey , oh, look even I can’t believe I’m talking about paper stock, but that’s just how much it doesn’t work. It makes it look like Gene Colan doesn’t know what he’s doing. Gene Colan knew what he was doing but the people who assembled this didn’t. Or did but didn’t care, which is worse.

Still, it was The Dean so it was GOOD!

So, yeah, COMICS!!! Buy 'em from your LCS - I do!

"...It's not for free and it doesn't come easy. It's AMERICA!" Comics? I'm still reading 'em!

For pretty obvious reasons we don't celebrate Independence Day over here but you guys sure seem to. Just to show you that there are no hard feelings I read some nationalistic comics and wrote some words about them for y'all. Be nice if you picked up the phone sometime, America. I know you moved out but we still worry about you. Anyway it’s into the fray while the walls ran red, white and blue around me in a patriotic spray:

CAPTAIN AMERICA 70th ANNIVERSARY MAGAZINE: This is a magazine sized doohickey that’s big and floppy like my English teeth, the contents of which provoked the following responses which I am going to share with you despite your flagrant disinterest but it’s either this or I go spend some time with my family. And they don’t like it when I do that. So…

CAPTAIN AMERICA COMICS #1 (1941).

“Meet Captain America” by Joe Simon/JACK KIRBY(w) and (a)

America may be praying for peace but she's also preparing for war! In dark days like these every man and woman will be called upon to do their bit and Steve Rogers is about to find out he's going to be able to do more than most! It all starts here, Effendi!

Yes, this is the savage and mental solid Gold classic that started it all! Like most Golden Age comics reading it is like having your mind hijacked by the hallucinatory visions of an angry man who has drunk too much cough syrup. It’s rough and tumble stuff, obviously taking most of its storytelling cues from the still novel phenomenon of the cinema. If we take the birth of super comics to be June 1938 (Action Comics#1) this places Simon & Kirby’s creation at roughly the third year of the genre’s existence and so it’s unsurprising that this is pretty much like any other comic of the period but there’s clearly something special going on here as 70 years later someone’s spent the GDP of Ireland bringing the character to the very silver screen which so obviously inspired his creators: Joe Simon & JACK KIRBY. Oh, yeah, it’s: EXCELLENT!

“Captain America’s Tales of Suspense”: Being one of those text pieces I can’t actually wade through that are all like: “…But in issue 160 Cap almost met his match in the form of Terry “Eggs” Benedict who, when subjected to a concerted burst of ennui, became The Unsteady Hand Dangler. Jack Kirby left the day after. Pay no attention to that last sentence. There is no deeper meaning. There never was a Jack Kirby. We certainly don’t owe him or his heirs any money. We have lawyers. People disappear all the time. With issue 161 Cap found romance in the form of a peach from another dimension…” Some people like that sort of thing.

AVENGERS (Vol.1) #4 (1964)

“Captain America Joins The Avengers!” by Stan Lee/JACK KIRBY(w), JACK KIRBY/George Roussos(a) and Artie Simek(l)

Freshly thrust from his frozen tomb Captain America is bucking for a ruckus! The strange and swinging new world into which he has been chucked is only too happy to provide! Bonus: Namor’s oddly sexual noggin!

Sure, everyone remembers the tale of Cap’s astonishingly unbelievable resurrection but few people remember the same tale’s revelation that the gorgon of myth and legend was in fact a dressing gown sporting sentient stick of celery from beyond the stars. Funny that. It’s a pretty rocky ride from the modern perspective but on the plus side more happens in its pages than 96 years of NEW AVENGERS and the characters don’t all talk like secure unit patients.

My favourite panel this time through, for I and this tale are friends of old, was on page 10 on the top right. Steve Rogers sits on his hotel bed removing his boots while staring raptly at the TV and uttering: “I wonder if the youngsters of today, who’ve grown up with it, realise what a truly wonderful thing television is…” Judging by the state of the Marvel Architects output I think you can rest assured, Cap, that that is entirely the case. If TVs were made of meat it’s hard not to believe certain people wouldn’t be humping theirs as we speak. Let your mind rest easy on that score, Cap.

At this point JACK KIRBY is pretty much the master of every comic technique existent. He has been at it so long he is growing staples in his midriff but he isn’t about to rest though, no, he’s about to start pushing the form into whole new areas of hyperbolic bombast. That’s later though, so this is just (just!) another fine JACK KIRBY comic of the period which makes it VERY GOOD!

CAPTAIN AMERICA (Vol.1) #250 (1980)

“Cap For President!” by Roger Stern(w), John Byrne/Josef Rubinstein(a), George Roussos(c) and Jim Novak(l)

Will Cap give up being the Star Spangled Avenger in order to become the first kickboxing President of America?

Now say what you like about John Byrne (I’ll wait…okay? Feel better now?) but the guy can draw a perfectly entertaining comic. This is the one where someone suggests that Cap stand for President but he says (**SPOILER!**) “No”. It's very '80s because the characters spend a lot of time flapping their gums (so much so that one may be forgiven for wondering if they haven't been rubbing an illegal substance into them). I like the Stern/Rubinstein run on Cap (what was it #247-255?) a great deal but this is hardly representative of it. It’s only a brief run but it’s littered with Very Special Cap Moments like the one in #253 where an armed robber is cowed into handing over his gun to Cap solely via a stern talking to and a hard stare. It’s Cap-tatstic! Where as this one is just GOOD!

“Red, White and BRU” I REALLY like the title to this interview with Ed Brubaker. (Hey, if he wrote Iron Man we could have “Iron Bru!” That joke probably doesn’t travel well.) He claims to write the current Cap series. I’ve never heard of him but he sounds like the type who wears his hat indoors. I just glossed his interview but it seems like he lived on an army base like Bucky (Do you SEE! It was his DESTINY! He NEVER HAD A CHOICE!), enjoys TV shows, working for Marvel and is really looking forward to the movie. However, if little Ed Brubaker ever burst into the tent of a half-naked GI with life changing results he declines to say.  It’s good to be Ed Brubaker, I guess.

MARVEL FANFARE #18 (1985)

“Home Fires.” by Roger Stern/Frank Miller(w), Frank Miller/Josef Rubinstein(a), Glynis Wein(c) and Jim Novak(l)

No, you can’t say what you like about The Tank. My house, my rules. Love it or leave it, pal! Do you remember "Home Fires"? It’s the one where Cap discovers the hidden Evil in the heart of America: independent retailers. I kid you not. It can totally be read as Captain America versus a deranged Mr. Brian Hibbs.

It’s hilarious of course. But in the weird way of being totally hokey yet oddly persuasive that only The Tank can pull off. It left me laughing and yet profoundly moved by its strange message. Y’know If this guy ever does a propaganda comic the earth will shake and the Heavens will quail. It has to be noted that The Tank delivers a master class in narrative storytelling with page design and visual iconography that fair makes the pages hum with life and emotion. It is a beautiful and wondrous performance. In fact the final page is possibly my favourite Cap moment ever. Cap has entered a burning building to retrieve “her”. “LOOK!” cries a man with a pointing arm directing the readers’ eye to a panel which appears to be a pregnant woman carrying a burning piano. This is then revealed, via the magic of being able to effectively convey information to another human mind via the mechanism of marks on paper, to be the form of Cap himself bursting out of the panel borders triumphantly bearing Old Glory herself.

Every time I read this I find myself halfway to the recruiting office before I realise that due to my myopia I’m more of a danger to myself than any enemy, I am not that keen on killing, even less keen on being killed and I am also in fact not American before returning humbled but entertained to my life of sedentary nitpicking. It is a truly incredible comic by a truly incredible talent. He’s The Tank, deal with it, babycakes! Although later developments within the mind of The Tank lend this tale of Cap vs. libertarians a decidedly ironic cast the issue in and of itself can truly be said to be EXCELLENT!

“Flagbearers” is an illustrated text parade of those who have taken the role of Cap through the ages. It is by Sean T Collins, a living colossus who will be familiar to anyone whose brain has not been so sponged by alcohol and soft drugs that they can look at the list of Savage Critics contributors and recognise the letters of the alphabet when they are used to form names. It is therefore the best thing here not by JACK KIRBY or The Tank. I was particularly taken by the puntastic “Patriot Names”. The piece also contains a rare Frank Robbins picture of a man not sweating.

CAPTAIN AMERICA (Vol.3) #22 (1999)

“Sacrifice Play” by Mark Waid(w),Andy Kubert/Jesse Delperdang(a), Gregory Wright(c) and Todd Klein(l)

Captain America is the only thing standing between the utter destruction of Wakanda’s adamantium! Can he stop touching his shattered shield long enough to save the day?

Being the culmination of Mark Waid’s nigh interminable exploration of Cap’s surely unhealthy obsession with his shield. After several pages of Andy Kubert’s very nice but also very big pictures the two are reunited at last. It is very '90s in a '90s comic way but since Waid and Kubert are dependable chaps it still ends up being OKAY!

Both I, having read this magazine, and you, having read my insightful and coherent thoughts concerning said magazine, have, I think it would be fair to say reached some very definite conclusions about the nature of America,  the psycho geographical landscape of its people and the importance of The Dream to both. Thus there seems little need to make them explicit as this would serve only to cheapen the profundity of the conclusions we have reached.

Throughout the contents of this magazine though creators change and decades pass two things remain constant: Captain America and his devotion to The Dream. The Dream changes over time but always at its heart is Decency, the kind of decency perhaps embodied by fairly rewarding an old man for fashioning the dream life of millions and enriching the bank balance of all who followed in his footsteps. Yeah, well if nations can dream so can I, right?

Note: JACK KIRBY (Jacob Kurtzberg) was Comics made Flesh. He entered the world on August 28, 1917 and joined The Infinite on February 6, 1994. We dream his dreams still.

ABHAY: KIRBY GENESIS #1

KIRBY: GENESIS #1, by Kurt Busiek, Alex Ross, Jack Herbert, Vinicius Andrade, Simon Bowland, with characters created by Jack Kirby, published by Dynamite Comics. This was just an impulse buy for me.  I think there was a #0 issue before it, but I didn't buy that. I don't really know what the deal is with this series-- I didn't read any interviews or promotional materials for it; I kinda knew that the pitch was "Kurt Busiek writing about unused Jack Kirby characters", but that was much as I knew-- or heck, still know. I haven't even listened to the new WAIT, HELLO-- IS IT ME YOU'RE LOOKING FOR? podcast where it's apparently discussed.

I just remember liking a comic with that same "Busiek writes Unused Kirby" premise that he and Keith Giffen had done for Topps's Kirbyverse, called VICTORY. Do you remember the Kirbyverse crossover VICTORY? It's understandable if you don't. Only one issue came out, with a cover date of June 1994.

(Tangent-- The Topps Kirbyverse was one of a dozen "superhero universes" launched a week after the success of Image and Valiant, and a week before the entire market went completely to shit.  The Topps Kirbyverse, the Milestone universe, Dark Horse's Comics Greatest World, the Malibu Ultraverse, Bart Sears's Brutes & Babes-verse, the Quesada-Palmiotti ASH-verse, the second (and better!) Fabian Nicieza-edited Valiant universe i.e. the Birthquake-verse; there was one "universe" that I always wonder if I made up, that I can't find any hint of on google, where all the superheros got their powers from a lottery...?  There were more superhero universes launched in the 90's than human memory can hold.

Everyone who works in comics now is hellbent on bringing the 90's back-- crossovers, title gluts, gimmick character deaths, gimmick costume changes. But who will stand up and say "I shall be the hero who brings the Brutes & Babes-verse back to comics." I feel like when that person rises up from our midst, it's going to be a lot like the final chapter of Frank Herbert's DUNE.)

Having not read the promotional materials, I don't know if VICTORY and KIRBY: GENESIS are linked in any way-- though there is this Busiek quote from the Wikipedia entry on the Topps series: "Victory was a crossover, bringing together all the established Kirbyverse characters and reintroducing Captain Victory."  Consistent therewith, KIRBY: GENESIS #1 flashes an array of Jack Kirby characters, 99% of whom I didn't recognize, until finally concluding with the reintroduction of CAPTAIN VICTORY.

I don't remember anything about VICTORY other than (a) Keith Giffen drew it in that 90's style of his-- the cool PUNX one (Birthquake-verse forever, you guys!) not the less "commercial" TRENCHER one-- and (b)(1) that I liked it and (b)(2) that I was super-bummed there was never an issue #2. That is everything that I remember.

Besides the appeal that this may be a book that's been marinating in some cobwebbed node of Busiek's brain for the last 17 years, and the curiosity factor that has, here's what my experience of KIRBY: GENESIS was like:

1) As the comic began, I despised it. I hated the main character. I hated the world the comic was set in.  I hated what I perceived it was telling its audience. I hated the storytelling.  I thought it was just terrible.

2) As the comic ended, I was totally entertained, and totally on board for more.

I guess how I explain that is that I ultimately enjoyed KIRBY GENESIS because I was receptive to how its structure played to my conservatism.  Because it starts with everything I hate about Modern Comics, but as it proceeds, all of that hateful shit gets pushed aside as the better, more colorful, more fun Comics of an Earlier Era invade that awful reality.  I like to think this was intentional, maybe even obvious-- again, I haven't done any "due diligence" so maybe this is something about the comic everyone already knows and is taking for granted... But take a look at those first 6 pages:

(1) I spent a long time staring at the main character and asking myself, "Is that supposed to look like Jay Baruschel on purpose?" (Note: Jay Baruschel is an actor from She's Out of My League, Undeclared, and Knocked Up).    This is why I can't stand most of the "big-name" artists in comics right now-- there is nothing about photo-referenced actors in comics that I don't loathe. I'm sure someday a comic critic will rise that will set forth a sterilng essay defending this practice-- but that essay will probably be like Frank Herbert's GOD EMPORER OF DUNE, in that I will never read it out of total disinterest.

(2) I spent a long time staring at page 3 of KIRBY: GENESIS which featured a lift from the SCOTT PILGRIM comics. I love SCOTT PILGRIM but seeing anything reminiscent of SCOTT PILGRIM in anyone else's comics, especially anyone older than Bryan O'Malley is... not a good feeling that I want to describe to you using words instead of drawings of frowny faces.

(3) Jay Baruschel breaks the fourth wall to addresses the reader and tell them what a fucking loser he is. Despite being a loser, there's a female character who loves spending time with him...? I've become very suspicious of this kind of material-- no other word for it than suspicious. I just spent the first six pages of this comic suspicious that it was presenting this very noxious idea that pretending to be a pretty girl's "best friend" so that a relationship can somehow be perpetrated onto the poor girl is something that decent guys do, instead of assholes. Internet commentators  refer to this move as the "Nice Guy" move and they are not kind about it; see, e.g., XKCD's depiction of the Nice Guy. Modern comics... I want to say that I can think of recent comics that communicated dull "this hero is a nerd just like you, dear fans" messages in a way that struck me as being pandering. I want to say those exist. But maybe the comics I'm thinking of are like Frank Herbert's BONER VIXENS OF DUNE, in that they regrettably don't actually exist outside of my imagination. (Oh shit, man, that's entirely possible -- no specific examples are coming to mind tonight, at least...)

(4) The caption boxes are filled with dull nonsense about school slogans. At the end of the six pages, even the caption boxes are sick of themselves-- quote:  "I'm sorry, am I babbling? I'm babbling. I do that when I don't know what to say."

And (5) NOTHING cool happens for the first 6 pages. Nothing cool at all.

(Tangent-- Oh wait, I almost forgot-- the 90's also had the Tangent Universe, if you want to count that one, an "experiment" by DC in giving brand new characters the same names as old, iconic characters, none of which caught on.  There's an analogy lurking here to be made, but ... ).

Those first six pages of KIRBY GENESIS are a laundry list of things I am most snide about in Big Two comics right now. Until... until the Kirby characters show up. Then, all that shit stops, and the comic turns into a blast. Because it's a COMIC BOOK again. Suddenly, there's no time for Jay Baruschel and his shitty life because some lady is screaming out "You're in the presence of a Galaxy Green Apprehension Squad." Yay! And the lady from the Galaxy Green Apprehension Squad doesn't look like Pam Grier-- she looks like a fucking comic book character instead! Yay! No more attempts at pretending to be hip and young just by doing nothing else but imitating SCOTT PILGRIM. Yay! There are still caption boxes but now they have things like "An unknown codex, found in a viking treasure hoard on the Orkney Islands in 1914" in them. Proper comic book bullshit! Yay!  Old comics values save us from shitty modern comic storytelling!  Yay!!!

I like that the theme is there, on a "tickles the brain" level, though I guess I'm a little embarrassed that I enjoyed it so much, that I was so receptive to it.  What I'm describing is too conservative to get much glee out of without any hesitation. The Vaunted Past vs. the Decayed Present is a manipulative meme worth being suspicious of.  And... I, uh-- I got a little older the other day, and I've been... I've been anxious about my advancing years lately.  Like-- just anxious.  It's a silly thing to be anxious about because... It's not like I have any say, or any control over the whole aging matter. I mean, I'd greatly prefer to say that I try to  subscribe philosophically to a "time is an illusion of the senses" philosophy-- I think that'd sound way, way cooler than, you know, being anxious about arbitrary dates on calendars invented by people I've never met.   But nevertheless, the whole time / aging "thing" has been weighing on me, I guess, even though... Even though I think I'm having a good year actually, knock on wood.  It's just-- age and time, you know?  What a motherfucker that shit is, huh?  I guess this review is kind of about that actually because "old styles  triumph over new styles" isn't a theme I'd probably have been okay with trumpeting before, and so it kinda bothers me that I am now and... And yeah, this paragraph's not one I intended when we started this dance; just started rolling downhill here, guys, but... But shit, 17 years between VICTORY and GENESIS so it was probably going to come up... 17 years, dude...

There's other reasons to like the comic, though:  (1) Jack Kirby sure could make up a character, that fucking guy. KIRBY: GENESIS doesn't seem to include Skanner or Alexander the Greatest, nor the CAMAFLOUGE CORPS. Not yet, at least, though fingers crossed. None of the characters go to Jack Kirby's SCIENCE FICTION LAND, the theme park Kirby designed to help free hostages in the Iran Hostage Crisis. There's a lot a person might hope to see in future issues, with the comic.

If this comic ends with HIDDEN HARRY murdering Jay Baruschel, there will be NO END to our celebrations, you and I. Consult the final chapters of Frank Herbert's KEY PARTIES OF DUNE, to find out what I have in mind.

And of course, (2) if Busiek & co. reminding people about Kirby could also somehow remind them of what was essential about Jack Kirby, remind them how this type of comic is always going to be at its best when filled with people spitting out as many bullshit ideas as they've got in them, if it can remind them not just of the surface of his life's work but the lessons of it as well, well, hell-- maybe that'd be another debt we'd all owe, another debt to the guy we'd never repay.

"Don't Fuck With the POS", and other thoughts on 6/29 by Hibbs

Retailing story first, then into some reviews...

So, I'm in the back of the store yesterday, pulling the subs, but I can hear what's going on the floor just fine.  I hear Matt greet someone, then, in a shockingly short time -- like within a minute -- something escalates to screaming. "You're trying to rip me off!" and things like that. I give Matt a few minutes to try and sort it out, but he's not able to calm the guy down.

So, I saunter out, "Hello, I'm the owner, what seems to be the trouble here?"

Older gentlemen, probably in his 50s, with a teenager with him. He's gone straight to apoplectic, which is generally a sign that someone is lying to you before they even start, but let's listen to his story.

"I was trying to explain to this guy," the guy launches in, "that I was here a week or so ago to buy MICE TEMPLAR volume 2.1 for my son, and your store sold me THIS instead!" He thrusts a copy of MICE TEMPLAR v1 in HC in my hand. "And now he won't exchange it!"

"Hm, I see," I say, "do you have your receipt with you?"

"NO! I already told him, I lost the receipt. Your store sold me the wrong book!"

"Can you tell me who sold it to you, sir?"

"It was a guy with black hair, and he was wearing a hat."

"Interesting, because me and Matt are the only two people working here in the last few weeks, and our other employees are both women." (Matt and I are both light haired, and don't wear hats, BTW)

"Well, it must have been that guy!" he said, pointing to Matt. I feel if you're going to accuse someone of chicanery, you should at least have a clue as to who you are accusing.

"Hm, OK, give me a second, and let's look at the records. We're computerized, shouldn't take a moment. Hm, hm, well, I have a record of someone buying a copy of v2.1 on 6/18 from Matt."

"Yes, that was when it was, but he sold me this one instead!"

(After the guy leaves, Matt tells me that he remembers the first encounter, and how the customer and he had had a conversation about what if the man has bought the wrong copy for his son? Keep the receipt, Matt says he said, and we can exchange, of course. This is SOP at the store, and I thoroughly believe that Matt had that conversation with the guy.)

"We haven't sold a copy of v1 in HC since... looks like 2008."

"Anyway," I go on, "it doesn't seem likely that you thought you were buying a paperback of volume 2.1, but were sold a HC of v1. Didn't you notice?"

"No! That's what I'm saying! You're cheating me!"

"Well, sir, that really isn't possible. The computer reads the barcode..."

"It must have read it wrong!"

"That's really not possible, sir..."

"Well, that's what happened!"

"Really, sir, it couldn't have. Look, let's test it now." I scan the HC he is "returning" -- it scans as v1 HC. I scan a TP of 2.1, it scans as a TP of 2.1. "So, you see sir, what you're describing really isn't possible. Now, if you can find the receipt..."

"FINE!" he yells, throwing down the HC, "You just keep this one, and I'm NEVER SHOPPING HERE EVER AGAIN!"

"Fine by me!" I tell his back. I have little patience for liars.

What's funny is that if someone came in, without a receipt, saying they'd bought the wrong book, I'd generally be cool enough to swap it out -- there's nothing wrong with customer service; but to try and trick us with a completely different book that we haven't sold a copy of in THREE years? Man, I don't think so. When someone gets THAT angry, THAT fast, it's usually a good sign they're lying.

The open question is what was going on here: did he somehow have a second copy of v1, and thought he could get an easy 2.2 in exchange for it? What's weirdest is that in looking at our record for the HC of v1, it showed up on a periodic "haven't sold in a year" report that I ran in early May. On 5/13, I wasn't able to find the copy as I trolled the racks pulling off dead stock, so I noted that in the computer with a "Biffed out previously?" note, since, really, it should have been dealt with in 2010, at the latest (though I seldom make it all the way through the biffage list before I fill up the bins, and boxes in the back room)

ANYway, what I'm thinking NOW is that either he or his son STOLE the HC some time before 5/13/11, bought that 2.1 on 6/18, then thought they'd trade the stolen book for 2.2 yesterday. Can't prove if that's right or not, but it feels correct to me.

Either way, if you're trying to take the moral high ground when you storm out, leaving the business you are storming out of the book that you claim they sold you under false pretenses? Not exactly a "punishment", really.

Really though, the point is, don't fuck with the POS -- I can track, with a pretty insane level of accuracy, everything that I've EVER sold since 2007!

***

Comics you say? Sure, here's some!

WALKING DEAD #86: In a weird way, WALKING DEAD has entered this strange place where since it is so consistently good month-after-month, there's really very little need to chime in and say "Hey, another great issue!" USAGI YOJIMBO is like that, too, and I often feel bad that that book doesn't get more attention, too.

Anyway, this blog used to tweak Robert Kirkman a LOT about timeliness, and it's good to every once in a while jump back in and give an "attaboy!" for staying on schedule. WD isn't *quite* clockwork-same-week-of-every month, but it HAS been no-more-than-five-weeks-between-issues for the last FIFTEEN months, which is pretty damn good, especially for an Image book.

(I HAVE to note here that IMAGE UNITED? Issue #4 is now FOURTEEN months late, as of today -- and that's after EIGHT MONTHS between issues 2 & 3)

The other thing Kirkman is doing is using the power of HIS book, to promote OTHER books, and here with #86, he hits a Grand Slam, including the entire (COLOR) 32 pages of ELEPHANTMEN #1 -- which means he had to pay color prices even for his B&W WD pages... making this issue a giant 52 pages, half in color, for the same regular $2.99.

My only "negative" note on that, would be "might be a good idea to LET RETAILERS KNOW" when you do something like that, so they might have extra stock on hand to capitalize on it." Sadly, with the way that reorders work, if I place orders for something TODAY, it won't arrive here for thirteen more days.

Anyway, "another great issue!" VERY GOOD.

AVENGERS: CHILDREN'S CRUSADE #6: I'm not really sure when exactly this stopped having pretty much anything to do with YOUNG AVENGERS per se, and moved to trying to undo HOUSE OF M. I dunno, I want to like this because I really like the YA characters, and I guess seeing two of them getting back with mom is fun, and I absolutely adore Jim Cheung's art on this... but I'm bored to tears reading about the Scarlet Witch's "redemption". This is one of the few cases where leaving the character in limbo might have been a better thing. Very EH.

THUNDER AGENTS #8: I think this book suffers pretty badly from pacing problems -- just when there's a little forward momentum in this story, the issue suddenly ends. Plus the Dan Panosian art was pretty plain.

But what really prompted me to say something was the cover blurb.

Blurbed from "weeklycomicbookreview.com" it says ""IF YOU HAVEN'T JUMPED ON YET, NOW'S THE TIME."

Yes! Jump on now! Two Issues before the book gets Cancelled! Gooood Call!

(You know, to the best of my knowledge, after ten years of reviewing comics on the internet, Savage Critic has NEVER been cover blurbed on anything? Isn't that weird?)

Anyway: a very EH comic.

That's it for me this week, I think.

As always, what did YOU think?

-B

More Cowbell: Jeff on Things and Stuff.

At first, I was just going to write about Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover's Gingerbread Girl, but I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to say about it.  (Uh, things?  And, uh, stuff?) So, after the jump, Gingerbread Girl, X-Men: First Class (the movie), Star Wars Omnibus (Vol. 3), and more...things and stuff.

(oh, and don't forget to scroll down for the shipping list...and John's reviews...and Graeme's reviews?!  Holy shit. We need to learn how to pace ourselves.)

GINGERBREAD GIRL GN:  In an age where comics are taking their cue from movie and cinema, it's delightful to read Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover's Gingerbread Girl, a graphic novel about a mysterious twenty-something in Portland, OR and her odd affliction:  it's comics shot through with a big ol' dose of live theater, as every character breaks the fourth wall to address the reader about what they know about Annah Billips.  (I'm not much of a live theater guy at all, but more than once I was reminded of Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker (basis for Hello, Dolly?  I did not know that.  Thanks, Wikipedia!).)  Tobin's speeches are shot through with high-end whimsy -- "But of course that's all we really we want from someone," Annah's reluctantly smitten date says at one point, "Destroy a lover's mystery and they're less glimmering.  Throw breadcrumbs at pigeons and they'll flock to you in droves.  Throw a bread loaf at them and they'll scatter.  Crumbs of a mystique are just right. A loaf of explanation is too much." -- but they've still got nothing on Coover's delicious art, able to invest seemingly anyone and anything with charm and clarity.

Gingerbread Girl is a mystery of sorts, with the lead character believing she has a twin created from her own stripped away Penfield Homunculus, and everyone else trying to figure out if she's crazy or not.  As the above speech suggests, the graphic novel decides not to solve that mystery, but rather leave us tantalized on the edge of realization.  It's a fun choice, but one that left me feeling more than a little cheated.  I'm sure the idea is to make me look from the book's plot to its possible theme -- I'll take "narratives about narrative strategies" for $500, Alex! -- but I can't help but feel we could've gotten that and a more traditional nod toward conventional narrative climax.  One of the things this gorgeous looking book repeatedly reminds us about its main  character is that she's a tease.  It's a reminder the reader would do well to take to heart about Gingerbread Girl itself. Being teased is much more fun when there's little to lose, and $12.95 doesn't exactly grow on trees these days.  GOOD stuff,  I think?  Or maybe just at the very highest end of OK?  I still can't decide.

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS:  The last thing I expected from this movie was to be reminded of Mario Bava, and yet as the film hit hour 35 of lovely visuals, paper-thin characters and a boredom that teetered on the edge of hypnotic, it was the reference point I came back to.  Of course, I expected a movie about a young Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik Something-Or-Other-Because He's-Still-Magneto-To-Me (Michael Fassbender) recruiting mutants to fight Sebastian Shaw's Hellfire Club to have more than a dash of Brian Singeresque touches to it, so I figured there would be the usual queer subtext (tearful speeches by young teenagers about how they wish they could be like everyone else, young men with full lips and big eyes rubbing their bare arms).  But Matthew Vaughn turns X-Men: First Class into a sensual free-for-all, with ladies walking about in excessively cumbersome lingerie, diamond girls being tied to beds by the rails of the bed itself, excessively nude exploding female mannequins, and I'm not even getting into the whole Xavier/Magneto/Mystique triangle.

More than that, though, Vaughn's tremendous sense of visual flair and attention to detail makes the movie just visually sensuous: it sounds goofy, but there's a scene where Magneto plucks a submarine out of the water, and the way the droplets spun off the propellers had me transfixed. There were at least a dozen more moments like that and I savored each one of them.

Unfortunately, the movie has just too much fucking stuff in it -- it's sodden, is what it is -- showing us not just the opening of the first X-Men movie where a young Erik pries at the gates of Auschwitz, but also the scene that comes after that, as well as what Charles Xavier was doing at that point.  We not only get their meeting in mid-action scene, but the CIA's decision to help them recruit mutants, a long recruitment sequence, Hank McCoy as both versions of the Beast, a long sequence introducing the Hellfire Club...none of it is bad, exactly (except for January Jones, who in her inability to smile, talk, drink or even walk convincingly I now believe to be the genuine embodiment of  the Martian Spy Girl from Tim Burton's Mars Attacks!) but there's just no fucking room for anything to breathe.  It's three good movies jammed into one exasperatingly long and dull one, with every dramatic conflict boiled down so much they might as well been bullet points on a Powerpoint presentation.

I think if I'd seen this movie while hopped up on prescription pain medication, I would've loved its horny languor. (If it turns out that Vaughn knocked up January Jones as the rumors have it, it won't be surprising at all.  In fact, what would be surprising would be if he didn't also impregnate the script girl, Zoe Kravitz, Rose Byrne's slip, and that kid who played The Beast.) But it was a slog and a chore to make it to the end of this movie and it really didn't have to be.  Somewhere between EH and AWFUL.

STAR WARS OMNIBUS, VOL. 3:  At Graeme's suggestion, I picked up a copy of this from the library way-too-long ago and have been poking through it at the rate of a few stories a week.  These are the Marvel comics from the early '80s reprinted, covering the period immediately following The Empire Strikes Back.  As I told Graeme on the podcast, the ESB is exactly where I jumped off the Star Wars comic wagon, in no small part because it became obvious that none of it really mattered:  nothing says "we've told the creators of our licensed product nothing" like a romance between Han Solo and Princess Leia and the infamous "Luke, I am your father" speech.

Did I say "nothing"?  That is a lie, I admit it -- what really says "we've told the creators of our licensed product nothing" is reading this volume in light of the events of Return of the Jedi.  The subtitle for this volume is "A Long Time Ago..." but it really should've been "George Lucas' Galactic Twincest Follies." There are no less than half-a-dozen disquieting scenes where Luke and Leia almost kiss or spend quiet moments pondering their unspoken, but strongly felt feelings for one another.  If only V.C. Andrews could've written that "Splinter of the Mind's Eye" sequel!

But Graeme is right in a lot of ways -- these stories, the majority of them by David Michelinie and Walt Simonson, with Simonson plotting and doing layouts with Tom Palmer doing heavy finishes, are a lot like watching the original trilogy over and over again.  Curiously, even though this takes place after Empire, the only real bits the talent take from that movie are Lando and the idea of a rebellion always on the run from a seemingly all-powerful Empire. Otherwise, it's a lot of impervious imperial bases that need exploding, blasters that need blasting, feelings that need trusting, and possible romantic triangles where two of the participants are siblings.  There's probably a good reason why Marvel's creative teams continued to treat Luke Skywalker as the untarnishable focal point -- my guess is Luke, young and orphaned and full of questions and potential, was much closer to the '70s Marvel hero archetype than awesome, dashing (kinda assholey) Han Solo -- even as Lucas threw a whole bunch of cold water on the idea of Luke as hero in Empire.

Ultimately, the story I enjoyed the best was the weirdest one -- the two-parter by Chris Claremont, Simonson and Carmine Infantino where an inventoried John Carter of Mars story is shoehorned into a Star Wars story.  I've always enjoyed Claremont's infrequent work on Star Wars (pre-teen Jeff would've told you that his favorite Marvel Star Wars issues were #17, co-plotted by Claremont, Star Wars Annual #1 with art by Mike Vosburg...and also Star Wars #38 with that awesome Michael Golden art, Claremont be damned) and here he gets a chance to let his ham actor instincts dig into a story in which Princess Leia crash-lands on a world suspiciously like Barsoom, and the swashbuckling hero suspiciously like John Carter gets something suspiciously like a space boner for her.  Strong, courageous, and the survivor of brutal torture, Princess Leia is Chris Claremont's idea of a hot chick and he makes the most of the first person narration by the Carter pastiche to talk about her brave resourcefulness and sad eyes.  In its way, the story is a better acknowledgment of Star Wars' roots than what Lucas went on to do in The Phantom Menace, though the airships here show a marked similarity to what is done there.  However, because these stories were written in simpler, far less ambitious times, there's not the thorough airing out of influences there could be, where we can really get the sense of just how much Star Wars owes to Burroughs' desert landscapes, exotic princesses, alien pals and low-gravity swashbuckling.  There's just a repurposing of art, a light feeling out of topics that will later become fetish (for Claremont, anyway) and then it's on to the next.

I thought this stuff was highly OK, and in some places quite GOOD, but I guess I prefer more Cosmic Twincest Follies far more intentional and far less accidental.  It was fun revisiting what so many of us thought Star Wars was, instead of what it actually turned out to be.

FLASHPOINT: LEGION OF DOOM #1:  "My name's Heatwave.  I've got a hunger... burning in my gut.  The only way to stop it... is to satisfy my appetite."

So begins the dumbest, most inept comic I've read in a while.  It's so bad I'm shocked Hibbs passed it over for his ever-increasing number of "I Have Read The Worst Comic I Have Ever Read" columns.  Here, Adam Glass and Rodney Buchemi treat us to a tale of  non-starter supervillain Heat Wave, who starts off the book incinerating one-half of Firestorm's secret identity because he wants to fight a guy whose head is on fire.  Then Cyborg shows up and awesome dialogue like "Didn't your mommy ever tell you not to play with matches, Heatwave?" "Sure did! So I burned her to death."  Then Heat Wave makes a train run out of control by...shooting it with flames?  Then Heat Wave ends up in prison where he proves himself to be a bad-ass by breaking the leg of a dude who must have shins made out of breadsticks.  Then Heat Wave gets manhandled by prison guard Amazo, which totally makes sense because Amazo is a robot with all the powers of the Justice League in an alternate universe where there never was a Justice League.  Then there's a Hostess cupcake ad, just like we had back in the '70s, except it's eight pages long and it's about Subway.  Then the awesome Legion of  Doom headquarters shows up but here in the Flashpoint universe it's a prison for super-tough criminals but for some reason Heat Wave is put in there, too.  Then Zsasz threatens Heat Wave. Then Clue Master turns up.  Then Heat Wave kicks a dude in the nuts.  Then, later in their cell, Clue Master clutches his stomach, coughs up blood, and then Plastic Man pulls himself out of Clue Master's mouth.  Yes, Clue Master was a mule used to smuggle in Plastic Man who on the last page is standing there grinning evilly, saying "Okay, you ready to blow this popsicle stand?" as one bloody arm still juts from Clue Master's mouth.  The next issue caption helpfully says, "NEXT ISSUE:  PLASTIC MAN!"

(Finally, I know why Jack Cole killed himself. Poor precognitive bastard.)

If you're the fan of the noise that's made when someone scrapes the very bottom of the barrel, this is the book for you. I actually hope this book has 100% sell-through for retailers, because I worry it will otherwise end up being donated to a hospital somewhere and make ill and injured children lose the will to live.  This book gets the seldom-used ASS rating which is actually overrating it by just a tad.  Please don't tell me you bought it and enjoyed it.

Things That Actually Happened This Week: Graeme Really Manages To Review Some 6/22 Books

Why, if it's Monday, then it's capsule reviews. And, for once, proper capsule reviews about books that came out on Wednesday! How did that happen? (Also, scroll down for John's reviews, and then down some more for the shipping list. Yes, it's a surprisingly busy Monday here, for once.) ACTION COMICS #902: Oh, look. I really like Paul Cornell, and I can kind of see what he's going for here - The big, epic return to Metropolis and Action Comics, with Lois saying things like "He'll save us or die trying" and Superman stopping the unstoppably falling spaceship from crushing Metropolis - but... it's just not working, somehow. Everything's feeling very rushed, and the art isn't helping sell the scale of it in the slightest. I'm not sure what's wrong with it, exactly, but it's just Eh when it should be much, much better.

BATMAN: GATES OF GOTHAM #2: I'm still unsure why this is a stand-alone mini, aside from the need to get this story finished before Dick stops being Batman again. That said, it's weirdly enjoyable, if very familiar to anyone who's been reading Batman comics for as long as I have. Does anyone remember "Destroyer," in which a villain was destroying Gotham's buildings to - and this was admittedly a ridiculous moment even for 1990s comics - reveal the Anton Furst-designed architecture that somehow still existed underneath? If you liked that story, chances are, you'll like this one, because it's essentially the same plot but with slicker execution and more Bat-family characters. Maybe that's why they kept Bruce out of it, because he'd have a terrible sense of deja vu. Anyway, Okay.

BRIGHTEST DAY AFTERMATH: THE SEARCH FOR SWAMP THING #1: I'm tempted to say "What Hibbs said," but I read this after reading a comp of Flashpoint: The Canterbury Cricket, and that book is so bad that this genuinely looks a lot better by comparison. But, yes, this is a pretty Awful book, with Constantine's accent going all over the place ("Now sodd off, ye tosser!" Why's he saying "ye"?), one of the weirdest Batman portrayals in recent memory and a plot that really doesn't hang together well at all. Considering we're getting the reboot and a new Swamp Thing series in a couple of months, I really have no idea why this book exists other than to take up shelf space.

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #58: Despite the last page, I really enjoyed this issue, especially the way that James Robinson clearly loves DC mythology - He works Bob Haney's Brave & Bold story where the Atom essentially works Batman's body like a puppet from inside his head into continuity, which is easily the highlight of the issue - and there's really something great about the incredibly expansive approach he's taken to this book since taking over: Alan Scott has pretty much become part of the team, and seeing characters like the Manhattan Guardian and Knight and Squire even for wordless cameos still brings a sense of unity to the DCU that so many other books (and other takes on the JLA) have been missing. I'm not sure exactly where this story is going, with only a couple of issues left, but it's been Good so far, and it'll be a shame to lose this one in the relaunch.

SUPERMAN #712: Ignoring all the controversy about replacing the originally planned story for this issue with the shelved-for-five-years Kurt Busiek/Rick Leonardi story about Krypto dealing with the death of Superboy, I have to say: This broke my heart. Maybe it's because I had a rough week last week with one of my dogs getting a corneal ulcer, leading to many hours in the animal hospital and a very depressed dog in between visits, but this issue completely destroyed me. Krypto howling for two pages because he can't find his owners, and then running away to be sad on an asteroid? If that's not the most upsetting thing I'll read this year, I might just want to stop reading anything right now. Very Good, but maybe that's entirely my own biases.

ULTIMATE DEATH OF SPIDER-MAN SPIDER-MAN #160: Wait, that is what the logo says, right? This was... underwhelming. I don't know why, because it does do everything it promises: It totally kills Spider-Man. But it does so in such a way as make that seem not only inevitable - That was to be expected considering the title of the story, surely - but also entirely boring. There's not only any sense of surprise here, there's also no emotion... which feels surprising for a Bendis comic, especially this Bendis comic, but it's true; all the angst and anguish feels rote, and everything feels generic and (no pun intended, I promise) lifeless. For someone who's enjoyed this comic since it was relaunched - and before then, too, but especially since LaFuente and Pichelli came on as artists - this was a really depressing comic, but not for the reasons Marvel wanted it to be. Crap.

“More Water, Ma’am?”…Comics? They still make 'em and I still read ‘em!

Enter my personal four colour nightmare! Gonna make your eyes boil like eggs! Or bore you senseless. Hard to tell really. Anyway, I read some comics wrote some words - it's a story as old as Love itself! Like my face. (You look lost, stranger - The Shipping List is the next post down)

You know, without your glasses and your hair down like that you look like you'd enjoy hearing about:

PUNISHERMAX#14 by Jason Aaron(w), Steve Dillon(a), Matt Hollingswoth(c) and VC’s Cory Petit(l) (Marvel/Disney, $3.99)

“FRANK Part Three”: Then: Back from The ‘Nam Frank continues to brighten up the lives of all around him while exploring new career opportunities. Now: A wholly expected riot erupts. Will Frank learn to hate again. Will he learn to kill again? Time may just be running out for everyone’s favourite sad mass murderer…

Yes, every story element in this comic is so totally unoriginal that every scene is as familiar to me as my sainted mother’s “disappointed” face, but it cannot be denied that it still retains narrative power and wrongful fascination enough to stick a shank right into any misgivings and jerk that sucker about until the toothbrush handle snaps in half. Nick Fury is a bit of a cranky man though; I think Frank would make a great dishwasher. Keep him away from the cutlery perhaps.  Also, I hope Big Jesus’ surname is Trashcan. Oh, I see, I see how it is. It’s just David Bowie references that are Da Kewl. Fine.

Meanwhile Steve Dillon’s backgrounds continue their audition for a revamp of the Simon MacCorkindale detective/body horror series but they appear to have misheard the title as “Minimal”. It’s too late. I made that joke thirty-five minutes ago! Somewhat predictably this was VERY GOOD!

FLASHPOINT BATMAN: KNIGHT OF VENGEANCE #1 by Brian Azzarello(w), Eduardo Risso(a), Patricia Mulvihill(c) and Clem Robbins(l) (DC Comics, $2.99)

Thomas Wayne is The Batman! The Joker has kidnapped Harvey (not Two-Face!) Dent’s twins(!). How nasty will it get before someone tranq darts Brian Azzarello? Very, I'm guessing.

I really like Brian Azzarello’s Batman and the reason I really like Brian Azzarello’s Batman is because he is so very, very unlikeable. There’s no way this is accidental. Of course in regular DCU continuity Mr. Azzarello’s apparent experiment in aversion therapy is hampered by the fact that Batman can’t just machete open Killer Croc’s head like a coconut. Luckily the very special, very Geoff Johns-ian, magic of Flashpoint is that Batman can in fact do just that. So he does. So here’s Batmaniac, kids; everything everyone who ever got upset that Batman didn’t just kill The Joker has ever wanted. Now eat it. Eat it all up. Eat. It.

Mr. Eduardo Risso brings his usual experimental theatre production approach full of weird lighting sources, minimal stage design, excellent blocking and fine character acting and it is a dreamy thing indeed. This comic also has the dubious honour of having a last page so nasty the thoughts it provoked made me ashamed of my own brain. Relentlessly foul and repellent and, since that seems to be wholly the point, - EXCELLENT!

DOOM PATROL #22 by Keith Giffen(w), Ron Randall(a), Pat Brosseau(l) and Guy Major (c). (DC Comics, $2.99)

“Doomsday (No, Not Him)”: Mother of God, is this the end of The Doom Patrol? Like any of you lot care, right? Waaaahhhhhh!

I say, I say, I say, why do trade waiters read with gloves on? Because their hands are wet with the blood of cancelled comics! Bwa ha, and indeed, ha! Despite art that barely lurched above serviceable Keith “Take Me For Granted, Please!” Giffen served up a series that was loopy, clever, dense and oddly moving. Like a crab with a wooden leg. One that’s really good at telling stories, mind you.

The climax to the issue/series was a hilarious piece of rug pullery; the sort of thing that might upset some, but probably only because they forgot that in THE DOOM PATROL anything can happen and probably already did while you were separating your socks. It’s the sort of “4th Wall Breaking” that’s been going on since the ‘40s but that’s still inexplicably taken as modern and has folks breaking out “meta” (your flexible friend!) and in all likelihood blaming the series’ demise (but only if the series is sexy!) on the incredibly difficult demands it made on the poor audience (The Ben 10 Defence).

Not here, though, none of that will be happening here because Keith Giffen just thinks making smart comics is part of his job and that’s just not going to give anyone a pup tent in their pants now is it? Well, y’know what, every time I read an issue I was entertained and call me unfashionable (that’s your cue…) but that made this series VERY GOOD!

T.H.U.N.D.E.R. AGENTS#7 by Nick Spencer(w), Cafu/Bit(a), Mike Grell(a), Nick Dragotta(a), Santiago Arcas(c),Val Staples(c), Lee Loughridge(c), Patrick Brosseau(l)

“On Victoria”: What if the original Dynamo and The Iron Maiden had shacked up in suburbia? Would a panel consisting of her hand holding a cucumber make you turgid?

Oh dear, no. I rather think not. Here it is, my nightmare made paper – a whole page consisting of four panels the sum total of which is that a woman on a plane is asked if she wants a glass of water. She accepts. The only useful narrative information transferred is that she is preoccupied and reading a file about The Iron Maiden.

Enough, already! That’s a whole page up the Swanee right there. You only have 20 of these things now, y’know. Either writers today cannot see the very real differences between ALIEN: THE ILLUSTRATED STORY by Archie Goodwin and Walter Simonson and ALIEN: THE PHOTONOVEL or they think their readers can’t. You want to do cinematic comics see the aforementioned Goodwin/Simonson masterpiece or read AMERICAN FLAGG! Howard Victor Chaykin didn’t nearly kill his fragrant self breaking new ground just so you could all drive away readers with lazy tat! Nothing personal to all the talented individuals involved but this approach is helping no one because it is AWFUL!

BONUS! Courtesy of the preview of CAPTAIN AMERICA #1 here’s Steve “Did I mention the shield is quite important to me?” Rogers with Comic Book Scripting Secrets #2398:

“If I narrate something quite ordinary/but spread it out/over enough panels/by Sterile Steve McNiven/ or maybe Banal Bryan Hitch/by the time/I have finished/saying it/you will assume/you have read/something of substance.” Repeat. For ten years. EH!

Yeah, I'll probably read some more comics and, yeah, I'll probably tell you about 'em too later, see?  'Cos you can't stop me copper, see? See?

(PS Working on the scans thing but don't hold your breath is my advice.)

Thanks for letting me into your eyes!

Content w/o Contentment: Quick Capsule Reviews from Jeff

Oh, it's all in the timing.  Always.  Earlier today, Graeme and I were podcasting and all I really had read that was all recent were two comic books.  Now, less than twelve hours later, I have five (and a graphic novel I haven't yet finished).  Join me after the jump, won't you?  If nothing else, I promise to be brief.... NORTHLANDERS #41:  Marian Churchland is one of those amazingly promising artists I'm really rooting for (and her Conan is in my top five favorite Conans ) so when I heard on Twitter she'd done an issue of Northlander, I had to pick it up.

And it was pretty EH, I'm afraid to say.  I know I'm immune to Brian Wood's charms and have made it a point to stay clear of his work.  But I was surprised that Churchland's work didn't really knock me out here.  At first, I thought it was Dave McCaig's colors that use a really limited palette with some unoriginal color choices (although the work you'll see Churchland do in color, say over at her blog are similarly limited in palette she has a sharper eye for color in her own work to keep things from seeming monochromatic) or that Churchland's is nicely illustrative but very limited in its line weight. (I admit it, there are times where I run hot and cold on uniform line weight and this is one of those times where I'm cold on it.)  But ultimately, I think the problem is that Churchland is generally a very reserved storyteller: a lot of medium shots, a lot of long shots, and the close-ups don't get very close here at all.

In her debut graphic novel Beast, she proved herself to be an excellent chronicler of facial expressions made by guarded or private people, but here in a story where Birna, a young girl, must find the strength to take charge after her father has been killed, Churchland conveys the basic emotions easily enough but not the stronger emotional conflict--how she's able to take the steps from fear to resolve, or even the parts in her we see before her father's death that hint at her ability to make that leap.

While I think Wood skips over the actual drama in his story, I kinda expect that of him (alas).  It was probably an impossible task for Churchland to overcome that.  She's still got some growing to do, and I look forward to what she does next.  But I expected too much from her, and this was a still a very EH issue.

CAPTAIN AMERICA #619:  Brubaker and crew wrap up Gulag with both a tremendous sense of haste and a motivation for Bucky to escape (his part in training and awaking Sleeper agents in the U.S.) that really makes me think we'll be seeing Mr. Barnes again much sooner than the end of Fear Itself #3 would make one think.  As with last issue, I dig the almost anthology-like feel of the differing artists, and that dollop of Steranko-derived visuals.  (Though turning Joanna Newsom into the Black Widow for one panel was incredibly distracting.)  About as deep as a dixie cup, but I thought this was a GOOD read and I'll be a little bit bummed if the Bucky Cap era is truly at an end.

SECRET AVENGERS #14:  I liked this better than last issue, certainly, but this tale of two soldiers fighting mecha-nazis and their plight's connection to the Valkyrie's origin was pretty facile and weightless.  Not only is the "fear wave" angle of Fear Itself frustratingly used across the event, it's not even used in a consistent way here, where the two soldiers are cocky and fear-free in the face of their unbeatable enemy because, hey, if they weren't, that death scene wouldn't be surprising, would it? (Also, terrified people don't banter, I guess.)  And of course, the enemy is unstoppable until it's time for Valkyrie to stop one with one sword swing.  I guess I should be grateful that an entire shitty summer movie like Battlefield L.A. got reduced down to one quick issue but apparently I'm a cold ungrateful bastadrd.  This was some AWFUL filler.

FEAR ITSELF: FEARSOME FOUR #1:  Oh, man.  Once again, Marvel uses my nostalgia and fondness for older characters to take my money and shank me in the kidneys. Man-Thing, Nighthawk, Howard the Duck, Frankenstein Monster and She-Hulk join up together to make Steve Gerber return from the dead as an avenging ghoul.  It kinda broke my heart to see the first three characters so closely tied to Gerber's name handled so wretchedly. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I hated the most--was it having Howard look like his movie incarnation?  Was it having him act like a Bruce Willis character? Having an eight-page sequence of Nightwing acting like a pastiche of Frank Miller's Batman?  Having She-Hulk in the book for no reason (yet) other than have her be the typical female character in a superhero book?  (The typical female character in a superhero book asks questions for the men to answer, and crosses her arms so you know she's tough.)

I'm fascinated by the idea that this was written by (or for) someone who had a love of old '70s Marvel comics and either couldn't replicate what made them work if their life depended on it (or else had to have that worked over into "the modern style" of comics today.)  What an idiot I was for picking this up. Please avoid this CRAP work.

BLACK DYNAMITE #1:  Jun Lofamia does the art for this and if you had a thing for, say, Alex Nino back in the day, I think you'll really like what's going on here.  I loved the movie Black Dynamite and so was mighty pleased to see this gorgeous looking book on the stands, but I'm far more ambivalent about the story.  The film is such a spoof of Blacksploitation flicks that is so knowledgeable about how the genre worked that it essentially transcended its parodic elements.  The comic, like Jim Rugg's Afrodisiac, makes me really uncomfortable about how closely its parodic elements steer toward racist stereotypes.  (Also, did Dynamite really say "Can you dig it?" all the time during the movie?  He says it so much here, he seems more like The Shogun of Harlem from The Last Dragon.) Perhaps the creators of this book are as clued in to the Mandingo film genre as they were Blacksploitation and I'm missing the clever way the conventions are being twisted and re-twisted. But it felt like an uncomfortable misfire to me. (Also, a bit pricey for my blood.)  Gets an OK because of the lovely art, though.

So, you know.  As the man sez:  What did *you* think?

Bewilderment Inc: Featuring The Malingerer!

After the break I’ll be not knowing what the Hell I’m doing with some comics you probably didn’t read. Remember, kids, if you want me to stop before someone gets hurt contact Mr. Hibbs.

First though, a vain attempt at professionalism (always worth a chuckle):

Key to abbreviations:

(w) Words

(a) Art

(c) Colours (NOT colors, coloUrs)

(l) Lettering

Now let’s me and you do The Do!

CASANOVA II: GULA #4 by Matt Fraction(w), Fabio Moon(a), Gabriel Ba(a), Criss Peter(c) and Dustin K Harbin(l) (Icon/Marvel/Disney, $3.99)

The guy who writes this usually gets all the tickertape and thrown knickers but, for me, it’s the art that makes this one essential. And by “art” I’m referring to the combination of pictures, colours and letters that coalesce to create a unified whole most pleasing to mine eye in that way that, surely, only comics can do so sleekly and satisfyingly. The writing’s good, don’t get me wrong. Heck, I’m all for Kirby/Steranko S.H.I.E.L.D, Morrison  etc. being mashed up and garnished with a fat old heap of Daddy Issues (Killing Daddy makes that gumbo sp-sp-spicy!) but it’s the art that sets this one apart. Also in this issue you get both the riper linework of Ba and the complementary gaunt contours of Moon;bargain!

I was excessively pleased when the backmatter was dropped as that stuff brought to mind some guy trying to get a girl’s attention by posting her parts of himself (It was a bad time for me, okay?). But I liked the one where he interviewed Mr. Howard Victor Chaykin. So, yeah, shocker! I guess you can ignore all my whining though as according to the sub(!ha!) text of the last story he isn’t writing it for “me”! (Maaaaaaaan!). All perceived authorial preciousness aside this was EXCELLENT!

FIRST WAVE SPECIAL #1 by Jason Starr(w), Phil Winslade,(a), Lovern Kindzierski(c) and Rob Leigh (l) (DC Comics, $3.99)

Starring my personal favourite character in the recent chart-topping record-setting FIRST WAVE fiesta of success: The Avenger! His wife’s dead and so is his face! He is totally old-school pulp madness. The kind of guy who if he existed I’d want gassing like a badger but when confined to fiction really lights up my life. Look, he just wants to help criminals, really. Help them to…(shouts:)DIE! Wow! That bit was just like a film wasn’t it!?!

Oh, the story? It’s basically a graphical dramatisation of that old “To kill, or not to kill. That is the (dodged) question!” routine. The Avenger wants to kill the Big Boss. The Bat Man and Doc Savage realise that there are “complications” and “grey areas”, y’know, all that moral relativism cockcobblers that’s served us all so well recently. The Avenger hears them out but things don’t go too well and hi-jinks ensue. “The guy’s completely demented.” The Bat Man says this of The Avenger. The Bat-Man! That’s how crackers for maracas The Avenger is. Mr. Jason Starr does a great job delivering the neurosis-ago-go and Mr. Phil Winslade’s brittle jitteriness gives good pulp; the stand out panel being the one of The Avenger lurching off into the city of night undeterred in his dementia despite the failure of his (admittedly really quite poor) plan. Despite a last page that seemed unsure what it was trying to do this was VERY GOOD!

PUNISHERMAX#14 by Jason Aaron(w), Steve Dillon(a), Matt Hollingswoth(c) and VC’s Cory Petit(l) (Marvel/Disney, $3.99)

While (“They Call Him…”) Mr. Hibb’s rightly ballyhooed the great work Mr. Jason Aaron is doing on this title I’d like to shine my love light on the work of Mr. Steve Dillon. It’s not often an artist pays such lavish attention to world building but we certainly have an instance here. See, the MAX universe isn’t like the Marvel Universe; a harsher harder place is this. In the MAX Universe death, maiming or harsh language could put a crimp in your day without warning. Men, women and children are all as likely to be minced by the frightful despair fuelled grinder that is the MAX Universe. In the MAX Universe the only “mercy” comes from the mouths of polite French people. Little wonder then that the residents of said place neglect interior decoration almost totally. In the MAX Universe the only difference between your home and an abattoir is that the abattoir has more cracks in the wall. Steve Dillon knows this. Steve Dillon shows you this. And despite this it is still VERY GOOD!

(Pause for a cuppa tea.)

Due to Austerity Measures I have been rooting around in my Archive (i.e. the garage) where I found these (i.e. they fell on my head when I was moving the dead guinea pig’s cage) issues which together form a story not yet collected between two covers:

WARLOCK#1-4 (2004/5) by Greg Pak(w), Charlie Adlard(a), Sotocolor’s P. Serrano(c) and VC’s Cory Petit(l) (Marvel,$2.99ea)

It’s about realising that if God is Dead (He is. I sent flowers.) then that effectively makes you God and how you might want to think about what kind of God you want to be if you don’t want to end up with a ball of dirt studded with piles of smoking offal instead of a world. Metaphorically speaking. It’s about growing up and working out how to live in a clearly insane world without going insane. Not so metaphorically speaking. Hey, I’m not claiming it’s Teilhard De Chardin (because I don’t know who he is, mostly) or anything but it does raise interesting questions and if the answers it gives are a little pat it’s important to remember it is a comic churned out by Marvel; the very fact it even raises questions (beyond the usual, “Why are these characters talking like morons?”) is pretty applause worthy in itself.

Mr. Pak does a fine job giving the story youthful protagonists which are neither cloying nor hateful (not an easy thing), an eventful plot and some good Warlocking all round. Alas, Mr. Adlard fares less well as his natural inclination artistically seems to be towards the mundane but Serrano’s colours link their fingers together and boost him up so his art does at least graze the necessary level of awesome Warlock demands! Okay, WARLOCK (2004) isn’t even close to Roy and Gil Kane’s (sexy sweaty space Jesus) or Jim Starlin’s (Evil = Purple Afro!) but it’s still VERY GOOD!

Ha! I can see your thoughts! But, no, unless my mother has led a far more eventful life than I have been led to believe, I am not related to Gil Kane.

Next time: More flailing in the abyss!

Green Lantern: The Movie

I had to wait a little while to see Green Lantern because of scheduling issues with Ben -- he's in a crazy amount of camps, with enrichment afterwards (soccer, swimming, etc), and then weekends with his grandparents that Wednesday was the first chance we had to go together. And what's the point of seeing a superhero movie if you're not taking your seven year old?  

Before we get to my reaction, let's have his: Ben thought the movie was great. "Oh?" I asked, "what would you rate it on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the best?" A Ten.

Now, one thing to bear in mind is that Ben isn't exactly a sophisticated movie watcher -- he loves ALL movies, and when I asked him what the WORST movie he ever saw was, he said the latest Pirates of the Caribbean film, that he really didn't like that one. "Yeah? And what would you rate that one?" A Seven.

So there you go.

One thing that I would like to note, and actually condemn the movie for, is some unnecessary use of language. I recognize that the film was rated PG-13, but there's a "Bullshit" and an "asshole" in here, both of which were entirely and completely unnecessary, and caused Ben to turn to me in the theater with a scandalized hand to his mouth. I don't care about the "damn"s and the "hell"s (though sure some people might), but there's really no need for that kind of adult language in a movie pretty much custom designed for kids. Just sayin'.

OK, now to me.

The critics have not at all been kind to this film, and for some pretty good reasons -- it's pretty much a hot mess. But I'm sorta glad I read so many massively negative reviews before going because I had negative expectations walking in, and, so, it wasn't quite as bad as I feared it would be.

The movie does have two Major problems. First: there's just not a lot of real human emotional core to the film. Oh, it tries to build in a whole bunch of strands with Hal's family/daddy issues, or the triangle between Hal/Carol/Hector, but there's so little screen time given to them, and in such a desultory way, that none of it really goes anywhere or means anything. Large bits of it (like the triangle) aren't even mentioned for the first time until well into the film, stripping it away of any power it might have had. It's a shame, because there actually was a possibility of having something interesting come out of all three human character's relationships to their fathers, and how they each dealt with it, but it really amounts to no more than background noise here. Likewise all of the talk about facing fear was just a lot of blahblahblah that never tested out in any kind of meaningful way -- Hal never actually faces any kind of fear other then a semi-generic "Parallax is kinda scary looking, ain't he?".

Look, no one expects a summer popcorn action flick to give deep insights into humanity, but it seems a shame to me to have these thematic elements sorta put upon the table, and then do fuck-all with them.

The other Major problem with the film is that it's packed with two movies worth of story, and it therefore does almost nothing good with either of them. It is easy for me to armchair quarterback, but I don't see how anyone thought it was a good idea to try and have GL's origin, Hector Hammond, the Corps, AND Parallax all jammed into a single movie and expect it be compelling.

I'd like to point out that in the comics, Hal never met the Guardians until his eighth story (and then they made him forget!), and we don't meet a single member of the Corps (other than Abin Sur) until GL #6 -- I certainly wouldn't have taken Hal to Oa in the first movie. I think it would have been much stronger to stay Earthbound and to not have even a whiff of the Corps until maybe the last few seconds of the film.

There's a lot of Telling in this movie, rather than showing -- there's a throw away line about being a space-cop, but there's not even a second of "policing" shown by anyone, for example. There's also a lot of screen time frittered away on things without a payoff -- we're introduced to Hal's family, and there's a clear setup for something with his nephew, and then you never ever see those characters again; we're shown the entire Secret Origin of Amanda Waller (though one who is physically nothing like The Wall, nor who is indicated to be anything other than a scientist), but why? She, too, then disappears from the film. I hope, at least, that John Ostrander is getting a hella big check.

It's a real shame, because there's a few minutes of real visual creativity and wonder -- I really loved the sequence with the out-of-control helicopter and the racetrack -- and if more of the movie had been about the Cocky Fighter Pilot Learning To Use His Magic Wishing Ring To Fight Crime, then I think it would have had more of the Sense Of Wonder that superhero movies really kind of need.

I thought Ryan Reynolds was adequate in the role. My largest problem is that my Hal Jordan is cocky and arrogant, but he isn't Sarcastic. I also really didn't like the CGI costume, but, eh, I'm a bitter old man and who thought I would?

I also kind of can't believe what happened to both of the antagonists. Way to build a rogues gallery!

There's an extra scene in the middle of the credits. It is very very bad. It makes no sense whatsoever after seeing the backwards Earth Man single-handedly defeat the Big Bad that that character, of all the characters shown in the film, would take that action.

One last note: the music was terrible. I actually started dreading anytime the musical cues came on because it was so horrible, almost 1980s hair bands, and really inappropriate to the action. It's rare that I actually notice scoring, but this time I did because it was awful.

So, yeah, not a good movie at all, and if I were an adult seeing it with another adult (and paying ELEVEN DOLLARS to get in? Are they INSANE? Is that what movies actually cost? This is the first non-matinee priced movie I've been to in a long time at a mainstream theater), then, yeah, AWFUL movie... but I saw it with a seven year old and he had a blast (except for the unneeded swearing) and I had fun watching it with him, and, yeah if you approach it as "one and only shot to cram in 50 years of GL" then the structure of it works a little better, and, alright, charitable Dad-based me says it was a low OK.

My advice: take a seven year old boy with you (except for the swearing, those fuckers!)

Dunno, what did YOU think?

-B