Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
See what happens? I’m so late I get to run two columns in one day. Dig in!!
Cormorant here, you four-color connoisseurs, and we've @$$holes have crowned this latest review column with a delightful list of holiday gift suggestions from the comic book world. Not only is there something for every deviant taste out there, but Vroom Socko has taken it upon himself to provide ordering links for damn near all of 'em! Now you have no excuse not to investigate! Comic for Christmas, baby!
ULTIMATES #12
Written by Mark Miller
Illustrated by Bryan Hitch
&
SUPREME POWER #5
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Illustrated by Gary Frank
Reviewed by The Comedian
“You think this letter on my head stands for France?” – Captain America, ULTIMATES #12
“No, it stands for asshole.”
I can’t take credit for that particular rejoinder - that goes to Vroom Socko. But that sentiment pretty much sums up everything that’s horribly wrong about Ultimates #12. It’s not a total waste of time. The action is good but the characterizations are appalling. “No shit,” you say. “Get it through your thick skull that these aren’t The Avengers,” you say. Done and done. But it seems to me like The Avenjerks are actually devolving into even bigger douchebags than they were in the first storyline where it took them five issues to fight the Hulk and sell a bunch of crummy DVDs. Since most of you have probably read this issue already I’ll skip the obligatory plot summary. Not that you even really need it since nothing’s really happened in this book for the past six months. Which makes the recap pretty easy.
The Avenjerks have FINALLY begun the battle with the Ultimate Skrulls that they’ve been preparing for since almost a year ago. Thor opens up shop on a fleet of alien ships. Iron Man saves Phoenix, Arizona. And Captain America does a dead-on impression of the jackbooted thug Millar parodied him to be way back in The Authority 3 and 1/2 years ago. The fight between him and Herr Klieser is a pretty dull exercise in shitty exposition that a 7th grader could write. But that’s not really what bugged me.
What bugs me is that this is what Mark Millar thinks an “American” is, a jingoistic creep who kicks weaklings in the face and chops people in half with his shield. Sure, Klieser was the bad guy and in the earlier incident at the end of the Hulk storyline Banner had just killed hundreds of people. And NO, this isn’t the “real” Captain America we’re talking about anyway. My problem with this characterization is not simply that it’s lazy, cynical and sadistic, or even that it’s boring. My problem is that this guy, this “Super Soldier” who has all this clout and experience would surely have to be little smarter and more complex than they’re portraying him. He’s just a brutish jerkwad. And if he’s the “Super Soldier” it sort of makes sense in the context that Millar goes to great pains to make all the other military characters total creeps too. So basically, since Cap is the perfect soldier that also makes him the biggest douchebag. He ruins a great human scene with Iron Man with this same bullshit. Believe you me, I’m one of the biggest left-leaning, liberal minded people you’ll ever meet and this shock value, cynical, negative portrayal of the American military SICKENS ME. This isn’t Deconstruction of Superheroes, The Modern Age or The American War Machine. This isn’t even a big budget Jerry Bruckheimer popcorn fest anymore. It’s garbage, garbage that takes three fucking months at a time to come out.
Two years and two storylines later I was right. This book would have been a lot better as an Authority spin off called “The Americans”.
Of course, luckily for most of us there is a series being put out by Marvel that is an intelligent and entertaining deconstruction of classic heroes. Supreme Power uses the Nu Marvel pacing to its advantage since each issue actually has a point to it. Each issue does in fact feel like an episode of a made-for-HBO series. Sure it’s five issues in and the Squadron Supreme still hasn’t formed yet. At least they didn’t spend the first four issues sitting around discussing who’d play them in a movie. Straczynski is actually weaving a story here. All the characters in this book are cleverly deconstructed versions of their DC counterparts minus any deconstructionist cynicism. Sure they’ve done a lot of “Big Bad Government” stuff with Hyperion, but the character himself has gone from being creepy to being a big gullible, likable schlep that you feel sorry for. Nighthawk is one of the most-clever twists on the source material done in this kind of piece in a long time. In the real world, a rich white kid who watched his parents get blown away would probably just spend the rest of his life on a therapist couch or boozing it up with the Hilton Sisters. Making the tragedy a hate crime, the blindest and stupidest of misanthropic expressions, gives it a little more weight and levity at the same time, at least for me as a Black reader. I also like how they’ve set up the other aspect of the Batman allegory; the fact that Nighthawk isn’t just the only non-powered one and the only one that’s a hero by choice. But more importantly he’s also, as of now, the only one who doesn’t have to answer to anyone. I can’t wait to see the riff they do on The World’s Finest a few issues from now. This issue in particular wasn’t all that thrilling. I guess the showbiz riff is now an obligatory part of any deconstruction piece. The Blur and Spectrum are cool but I really wanted to see more stuff with Nighthawk or Hyperion. I’m more interested to see what’s going to happen once all these characters meet up than I could ever be about how many aliens Ultimate Hulk will rape and/or eat three months from now.
HALO AND SPROCKET: WELCOME TO HUMANITY (TPB)
Writer/Artist: Kerry Callen
Publisher: Amaze Ink
Reviewed by Cormorant
Hey, lookee here – I got a review quote listed on the back of the HALO AND SPROCKET trade paperback! Now how'd that go again? (cue harp music and screen blur)
"…a surreal blend of wonky fantasy with heartfelt reality…"
"…whimsy with a touch of subversiveness."
--AintItCoolNews.com
Alright, so I'm not mentioned by name, but I'm more than happy to let the recognizable AICN website take top billing. I didn't get into the no-pay online reviewing biz for fame and fortune (stop that laughing, you bastards!) – I did it because I love the hell out of the comic medium and wanted to find a direction for my enthusiasm, to try to direct folks to stand-out material they might otherwise miss. Well I've been fortunate enough to have a few books and house ads peppered with my quotes, but just for the record, the HALO AND SPROCKET quote is the one I'm happiest about. The reason? I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the disparity between HALO AND SPROCKET's relative obscurity (I wonder how many retailers didn't even order it?) and it's amazingly high level of quality (think CALVIN & HOBBES).
Did I just dare to invoke CALVIN & HOBBES? The patron comic strip of the modern age? You bet'cher ass I did. Now just imagine that initial year or two of CALVIN & HOBBES' run, when it was only in a few papers and relatively obscure to most of America…wouldn't you have loved to have championed it first? To have been among those lucky readers to've seen it when it was breaking out in all its brilliance? That's a little how I feel for landing a quote on the HALO AND SPROCKET trade. If this all sounds like an absurd level of hyperbole, let me note for the record that I don't think writer/artist Kerry Callen can draw quite as well as CALVIN & HOBBES' Bill Watterson, but the writing level is already there, and the clean-line art is still plenty easy on the eyes. You should give it a look. All you need to know before reading the following vignette is that the book's about a cute young woman (Katie) living with an angel (Halo) and a robot (Sprocket). And it's funny.
Click here for a sample story.
Still love that one. It nails everything that's great about the series, from the keen observational humor to the recurring theme of logic versus emotion to *ahem* Katie's cuteness in her sleepwear. Pretty cool, huh? Why not try another one? Click here for a little four-pager that was part of Slave Labor Graphics "Free Comic Book Day" anthology.
Starting to catch on to the tone? Like CALVIN & HOBBES, this series is laugh-out-loud funny, and also like CALVIN & HOBBES, it shoots for a gentler tone of humor for the most part. It's actually a welcome break in a SOUTH PARK world. I happen to dig SOUTH PARK, but I also love Warner Brothers cartoons and old FAR SIDE strips and the DICK VAN DYKE SHOW (was Mary Tyler Moore hot then or what?). HALO AND SPROCKET comes from a similar tradition of mixing the innocent and the absurd, and does so with about the best comedic timing I've ever seen in comics.
Specifics: the HALO AND SPROCKET trade collects all four issues of the miniseries of the same name. Each issue usually had two or three vignettes, giving this collections a total of about a dozen of 'em. There's also several one-pagers, a series of guest-artist pin-ups, and even a few behind-the-scenes pages in the back - pretty sweet for a mere thirteen bucks! Among the ridiculous topics of the various shorts: Katie's giddy delight in overlapping two boxes of butter crackers so that the labels spell "butt crack"; Sprocket's observation that when Katie's got a sucker in her mouth, she's in effect just drinking candy-flavored saliva ("I don't want to know that!"); and Halo's conversation with a telemarketer ("May I ask your age, please?" "My age?! I AM A SUBSEQUENT CREATION MANIFESTED FORTH FROM THE LAST CELESTIAL EVENT POINT, ETERNAL AND UNMEASURED!").
Another favorite has the trio visiting Katie's friend and her young son who just lost his tooth. The kid tells Sprocket that he's hoping for a visit from the Tooth Fairy, and in typical robot fashion, Sprocket takes him at his word and goes on to ask the kid if he can get money for other body parts. "Like fingernail clippings? Will a fairy give you money for those? You should bite off some and put them under your pillow." Later, Sprocket reasons, "It is possible, of course, that it has to be something that comes from your head. Try putting some solidified mucus under your pillow, too." Still more sage advice: as Sprocket leaves, he warns the kid not to sleep with his hands under his pillow, calmly noting, "Having no hands for the rest of your life isn't worth a dollar…" Last panel: darkened room, hilariously terrified kid with eyes as big as saucers.
So that's the style of humor the book traffics in, but as with any kind of visual humor, you really need to see it in action to take in the sharp-as-a-Ginsu comic timing. I recommend bugging your local retailer to order you a copy – hey, it's his job to order stuff for you to buy, and the trade should readily be available. Alternatively, you could keep things simple and just nab it from Amazon.com. For my part, I see HALO AND SPROCKET as the kind of comic Bill Watterson might have produced had he transitioned to the format after retiring from comic strips. If memory serves, it was an idea he actually entertained – after all, the comic book offers so much more room for unfettered artistic _expression than the regimented comic strip – but apparently he decided to continue his recluse gig and just go make paintings for himself. Bummer, but I say more power to 'im - guy definitely earned his rest. Still, that's cold comfort to we CALVIN & HOBBES fans, and if you're looking for something to fill that empty hole left in your life when the strip pulled a Jimmy Hoffa, let me tell you - you could do a lot worse than HALO AND SPROCKET.
P.S. Even those mainstream whores at WIZARD magazine love HALO AND SPROCKET. Personally I hate those guys, but on those rare occasions where I find myself recommending the same titles (CATWOMAN, SLEEPER, etc.), you better believe the book is something special. HALO AND SPROCKET is something special.
ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN # 50
Brian Michael Bendis: Writer
Mark Bagley: Artist
Marvel Comics: Publisher
Vroom Socko: Ultimate Reviewer
I remember when the Ultimate line was first introduced. The very concept gave me very cold chills, with visions of Heroes Reborn and Spider-Man: Chapter One flashing before my eyes. Not wanting to further soil my memories of Stan and Jack, Steve and John, and all the work they did, I initially refused to buy the line. Then one day, I was visiting one of the finer bookshops in the area, and I came across a used copy of the first Ultimate Spider-Man TPB.
I figured what the hell.
Long story short, Ultimate Spider-Man is one of the most consistently enjoyable books I get. Bendis and Bagley are an amazing team, and while their Peter Parker may not be the definitive version, it is the most approachable one. This Peter is just as real feeling, as nuanced as any person I know. I find myself rising with his highs and dropping with his lows. And man, does he have some lows. (You people should see the gleam Bendis gets in his eye when talking about the horrible things he’s going to do to Pete. Sadist.)
This anniversary issue has an extra fifteen pages in the book and an extra .75 cents on the price tag. Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing this become a permanent situation. Bendis is, after all, a wordy motherfucker, and the extra space would be welcomed. Here, at any rate, it works. The first third of the book features a break-in perpetrated by the lovely Black Cat, with the second third being one fun Spider vs. Cat fight, and the rest of the book focused on Pete and MJ. Is the pacing perfect? Well, the break-in sequence could have been shorter by a page or so. There’s also the matter of the issue's ending.
The last few pages feature a confrontation between Peter, MJ, and MJ’s father. This bit really needed to be set up better. The only time we’ve even heard about Daddy Watson was for one panel in issue #32 and half a page here. It’s a good scene, don’t get me wrong, but it just needed more buildup.
Actually, what really makes that scene work is the dichotomy between jackass Craig Watson and caring May Parker. I absolutely love Aunt May. (Not in that way you pervs.) She continues to be the brightest light of the supporting cast, and here you see that light is being reflected off hard polished steel. I would not want to fuck with this woman.
This issue also marks the return of the letter column. Now I know that everyone in comics and their mother has a message board, and that creator/fan interaction is at an all time high, but there’s just something refreshing about turning the page and seeing comments from fans in the book itself. It adds a touch of class, whimsy, and involvement to the book, and its presence is more than welcome.
Out of all the Ultimate books, Spider-Man is the best. Not because it feels like an honest love letter to Stan Lee and John Romita. Not because the dialogue feels so natural. Not because the art is so damn good. Not because it has a letter column again. All those factors are there, but the real kicker is probably the hardest bit to pull off. The book just seems real. I’m not talking about it feeling like it’s in the real world, that’s something that never works. No, what Bendis does here is comparable to what Peter Jackson did with Lord of the Rings; he’s taken what is essentially a fantasy world and made it believable. It doesn’t necessarily have to be our world, as long as it feels like a real world.
That’s why this book is so damn good. That’s why the taste of Heroes Reborn flavored bile is now less than a memory, and Chapter One is all but forgotten. Not every book deserves to see fifty issues, but Bendis willing, Ultimate Spider-Man will someday hit one hundred and fifty. And I’m going to be there for every single issue.
AUTOBIOGRAPHIX (TPB)
Writers & Artists: Various, including big names like Frank Miller, Will Eisner, Sergio Aragones, etc.
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Reviewed by Cormorant
Autobiographical comics. They're all angsty, right? Every one of 'em about schmucks who can't get laid, who hate their job or their ex, and who generally have nothing even remotely upbeat to offer we the readers. Well, far be it from me to overly generalize, but that's the truth.
And so it was with some hesitation that I approached Dark Horse's AUTOBIOGRAPHIX, a collection of autobiographical shorts from some of the industry's best and brightest: Will Eisner, Stan Sakai, Eddie Campbell, Frank Miller, Paul Chadwick…guys like that. Big guys. The names were what wrangled me in, though I almost missed 'em as a result of the somber Will Eisner cover that failed to play 'em up. Eisner's a great artist, legendary even, and the cover's printed on a beautiful, crisp stock of paper, but ugh - the morose colors and drab image just speak to the autobiographical clichés I expected.
But the book surprised me. This was no downer. Hell, some of these stories were actually funny and lighthearted. Matt Wagner's six-pager, for instance, is an exuberant lesson in how to cook chicken parmigiana – kick ass! Wagner, he of GRENDEL and MAGE fame, literally walks you through all the ingredients and steps, pining over the smell of garlic along the way, chastising the reader for a presumed fear of getting messy during the cooking, and generally doing a damn fine job of conveying his love of cooking. I thought his art was a little spartan in the piece, but we won't take off more than a few points for that…
So these are all short stories – two pages, four pages, eight pages…really, nothing longer than that. They're quick, punchy, and to the point. Dark Horse senior editor Diana Schutz has one of the shorter ones in her capture-a-moment reminiscence of visiting a jazz club. It's only three pages, but Arnold Pander's inky, textured art captures the atmosphere instantly, and that third page of the bandleader cracking a beaming smile as his group hits its groove…ah, there's the power of comics in an instant!
Honestly folks – this is some fun stuff. For instance, even the most ardent post-DK2 Frank Miller disappointees will have a hard time dismissing his hilarious opening yarn, a tongue-in-cheek remembrance of his cameo in the Daredevil movie as a guy who gets killed by a pen to the head. Miller writes of his arrival on the set: "The first thing I did was kick Ben Affleck's ass." And sure enough, there he is doing just that (a boot to Affleck's face, technically), courtesy of his SIN CITY style! Miller's poking fun at his own hyperbolic approach as much as anything else with the piece, but most of the others in the collection stick to the facts. Sergio Aragones (GROO) gives a witty accounting of the day he met Richard Nixon, Linda Medley (CASTLE WAITING) reflects on kids and playgrounds as she and a friend (lover?) hit the playground as adults, and two talented Brazilian comic creators I've never heard of write about an unnerving confrontation with a street gang in Paris. What else? Bill Morrison (one of the bigwigs with the SIMPSONS comics) earns some serious laughs with his self-deprecating tale of youthful obsession with the Batman TV show in the 60's. Dino-illustrator William Stout relives the tension of a day when, drawing portraits at Disney Land in the late 60's, he had to draw a kid with only one eye. And Paul Chadwick…my own personal choice for the all-time best short story writer in comics…he turns in the strongest piece in the book, a tale of his art student days and the strange happenings of the art community apartments where he stayed.
But they're all good. Damn good, and totally accessible. In fact, AUTOBIOGRAPHIX is almost a primer in autobiographical comic for people who think they'd hate the genre. I urge you to give it a try if you're one of those people. There are only two or three artsy-fartsy stories, and they're the weakest of the bunch ('cept for Jason Lutes' piece, which is terrific), and you can easily ignore 'em and enjoy the many other entries. There really is something to the intimate, personal nature of autobiography when it's done right, and I salute Dark Horse for bucking the "poor me" angst trend with a variety of stories of all types. Readers brave enough to crack the gloomy cover will be pleasantly surprised.
CAPTAIN AMERICA #21
Writer: Robert Morales
Artist: Chris Bachelo
Publisher: MARVEL
Reviewer: Ambush Bug with a bit of The Comedian thrown in for good measure.
AMBUSH BUG: I could go on and do another review complaining about the overuse of decompressed storytelling and the annoying “paced for trades” policy that inundate each and every Marvel title these days…
THE COMEDIAN: But you’re not going to do that, are you, Bug?
BUG: No.
COMEDIAN: Well, you just did.
BUG: Did what?
COMEDIAN: You just complained about the slow paced storytelling policy that all of Marvel’s books seem to have.
BUG: Right. CAPTAIN AMERICA #21 is guilty of this too. Once again, we, the people, are treated to an intro issue that could have been told in three pages. There are at least four pages in this issue alone that sport one single panel and none of the images are splash page worthy. They are, in fact, filler in order for this snail-paced issue to have the proper 22-pages to fill out a normal comic book.
COMEDIAN: You’re still doing it.
BUG: Once again, Marvel has shat forth another issue that promises a big payoff two or three issues down the line, but until then the title character (if he or she actually appears in the intro issue) mopes around and waits for the editors and the author to dole out said action, however lackluster or wrong for the character that action may be. Yes, folks, I could ramble on and on about how crappified this whole Nu Marvel situation is, but I am getting pretty sick of repeating myself…
COMEDIAN: As am I.
BUG: …so let’s just say that CAPTAIN AMERICA #21 is exactly what I have come to expect these days from Marvel, the non-comic book comic book company.
THE COMEDIAN: WRONG!!!! I liked the issue.
BUG: Anything else? This is supposed to be a @$$hole Two-In-One review.
COMEDIAN: Keep talkin’, Bug. I’ll chime in soon enough.
BUG: Okay. In this issue, Captain America gets involved in a Guantanamo Bay-type situation taking place in…Guantanamo Bay. Captain America, in costume, stops some crooks, meets a chick who looks to be a quarter of his age, has a car chase/gunfight out of costume, and then finds himself hip deep in Gitmo bitness involving detainees who have been held because of their possible involvement in terrorist activities. There was a lot of action in this book, I’ll give it that. But my problem lies in the entire concept of pitting the good Captain against such “ripped from the headlines”-type challenges.
COMEDIAN: I genuinely found the story they're setting up to be pretty interesting. It seems like Morales isn't trying to preach about America so much as use the real world context as a backdrop in the service of the story.
BUG: Well, at this point, I wish to pose a question then - Whatever happened to the metaphor in comics? Down to his core, Captain America is a living, breathing symbol of America. Right now, some of the big brains at Marvel think it’s a good idea to have Cap take on Saddam or Osama, and tackle tough issues from today’s headlines head on. Back in the eighties, he did exactly what he is doing now, yet the stories had one thing: metaphor. Take, for example, Mother Night and the Sisters of Sin. These old-school freak jobs took on Cap numerous times. They were agents of the Red Skull. They had campy powers. They wore nuns habits. All and all, pretty goofy, right?
COMEDIAN: Right.
BUG: Wrong. Mark Gruenwald understood Cap. He took this iconic ideal of what America was and pitted symbolic foes against him. The Sisters of Sin were not just a bunch of evil chicks. They represented the all of the Jim and Tammy Fayes and all of the PTL scandals of that time. Those stories were a comment on the state of America. Cap's stories were able to deal with problems that America was facing without literally spoon-feeding it to the audience by having Cap take on those problems directly.
COMEDIAN: Nope, you’re wrong, Bug. I STILL think Cap can work in a real world context. As long as he stays true to his character, a bright shining example of everything America could/should be about AND a confident one too. Rieber and Austen wasted so much time turning Cap into a bewildered, indecisive, hand rung ninny. Especially during Austen's bizarro conspiracy-laden, shitty 4th season X-Files run on the book. I say you can have Captain America fighting as many eco-terrorists, sex slave traders, drug smugglers and white collar criminals as you want as long as he's still Cap. I HOPE that's what Morales is going for here.
BUG: I hope so too, but I doubt it. Ultimately, I think it boils down to two things. Number One: The writers of CAPTAIN AMERICA and the editors behind them have no imagination anymore so they turn to today’s headlines and start copying and pasting Cap in there somewhere, which leads me to believe that (Number Two) Marvel thinks its readers are so damn stupid that even the thinnest veil of metaphor has to be thrown out faster than a pitch from Rob Liefeld. Does Marvel think that its readers are so dumb that they have to have Cap take on literal representations of poverty, terrorism, racism, and any other -ism that plagues America? It seems so. Want an example of a metaphor that worked recently?
COMEDIAN: No.
BUG: Too bad. Check out the last issue of the “Kang War Saga” in THE AVENGERS by Kurt Busiek. I reviewed it right here.
COMEDIAN: Shameless plug, Bug.
BUG: This issue came out after the events of 9-11. Instead of throwing the Avengers at Ground Zero, Busiek and co. had them suffer major losses in the end of their year long war with the time villain, Kang. This issue dealt with loss. It dealt with fallen heroes. It dealt with a menace that wasn’t easy to defeat and the ramifications that occurred in the aftermath. It was clearly a book about 9-11, but it didn’t have to say it. The writer respected the readers enough to let them form their own associations between a tragic fictional story and tragic real life events. The writers and editors at Marvel don’t seem to have that type of respect for the reader when it comes to their take on CAPTAIN AMERICA.
COMEDIAN: Well, I still liked it. I’ll be giving it a chance. But what’d you think of the art?
BUG: You call that art? What the hell happened to Chris Bachalo? I remember looking at his art on SHADE THE CHANGING MAN and marveling at the beauty of it all. Bachalo still does great panels, but I swear the man couldn’t tie one panel to the next if his life depended on it. Every time I look at one of the guy’s action scenes, I am thinking that there is a panel in between that slipped off the page and fell behind the desk. Pretty pictures are not enough. The have to tie together in some way and make some sort of sense. Bachalo’s art fails to do this.
COMEDIAN: I wasn't floored by Bachalo's art and I hope he's not going to give Cap that shitty Batman nose for the rest of the run. But it felt like New York to me and that's saying a lot.
BUG: Sure, some of the exteriors were well done, but all in all, I didn’t like Bachalo’s scattershot, cartoony, and non-sequential scribbles.
COMEDIAN: So to sum up. I liked it.
BUG: And I didn’t.
CHEAP SHOTS!
Superman/Batman #4: This is the kind of book that grown up fans like us wouldn't like but would be THE PERFECT book to give to some 10 year old. The art, the iconography - a perfect means to get some unsuspecting 5th grader hooked on comics. Sure, the storyline is asinine. The President Luthor storyline has been asinine from the get-go. That WTF moment where he kissed Amanda Waller was hilarious and the Kryptonite Steroid bit looks pretty retarded too. Still, a kid would really dig this book. – The Comedian
HULK #64: Yet another crap issue with beautiful art. Hack-job writer Bruce Jones has outdone himself with this one. This issue sports one of the single most embarrassingly stupid scenes I have read in a long time. Doc Samson (misspelled as SAMSOM in the intro page for the fourth issue in a row!!!!!!! That Axel Alonso is ON THE FRIKKIN' EDITORIAL BALL!) creates a long range rifle out of a rifle barrel and a handgun by tying the barrel to the end of the handgun barrel. In order to accomplish this, he tells the Abomination's wife to take off her shirt to tie the barrels together. So she's standing there topless while Samson whittles the gun together. The kicker is that Samson was wearing his lightning bolt shirt the entire time and could've used that instead of degrading this poor woman. This comes after last issues strip tease by the secret agent chick in order to distract the Hulk. Tell me again why chicks don't dig comics? - Ambush Bug
PLASTIC MAN #1: Speaking as a fan of the Jack Cole Plastic Man, I thought the story was okay and Kyle Baker is a fun artist, BUT if all the characters look like cartoons doesn't it cheapen Plas? Nobody (other than Kelly) really has done any justice to this character since Cole. I always hate it when they waste him as Jim Carrey w/Superpowers because to me Plas works better as a serious hero who just happens to have goofy powers. I also like Cole's Plas because he's essentially got a double secret identity since the cops are hunting Eel O'Brien. So they don't know that Plas is Eel and the crooks don't know that Eel is Plas. Baker's bringing that back too I see. I'll give this book a try but I'm not floored by it. – The Comedian
STAR WARS: EMPIRE #13: I guess it had to happen – a told-from-the-Empire's-point-of-view story that shows some honorable officers amongst the Imperials and some borderline terrorist behavior from the Rebels. Shades of gray on both sides, right? Well the story's competent, the art actually a bit above average, but to interject some purely subjective criticism: STAR WARS should never be about moral relativism, goddamit!!! The rebels are good! They blow up the bad guy Imperials who are bad! Any attempt to introduce shades of gray to a franchise that was once an unabashed update of old cliffhanger serials simply reveals how far off track Lucas has taken things. -Cormorant
THE CREW #7: Damn, I'm sad to see this one go. Priest's team of urban crimefighters is gone before it could even get started. Priest cleverly combined his truly original Casper Cole (The White Tiger and former Black Panther) character, with Rhodey from Iron Man, and a wily street spy named Junta, and did the impossible by making the black Captain America from that crap mini-series THE TRUTH into an interesting character. Sure it took seven issues to get the team together, but Priest made every issue count by adding fascinating character details and all-out action to every page. This issue brought a lot of closure for the characters, but I would've loved to see where Priest would've taken this group had he been given the chance. – Ambush Bug
FORMERLY KNOWN AS THE JUSTICE LEAGUE #6: The original run that most of us grew up on had more action. This series has been more about the jokes than the action and since the jokes are hit or miss most of the time that's not necessarily a good thing. Giffen and DeMatteis work better when they're not trying to be funny. That's when they actually are. The little bits, the character moments when the real humanity shows, like Beetle on the phone with Babs last issue and his argument with Booster this issue - that's the good stuff. But when they're trying too hard to be funny (the J-lo robot, all the stuff with G’Nort) they lose big time and it comes off too sitcomy. That said I really loved seeing J'onn, Batman and Wally in this issue being written the way they used to be. The bit with Wally and Bea was hilarious and all the bits with J'onn made me wish they'd have used him more in this series since he was the heart and sole of the original run whether he'd ever admit to it or not. If they're going to bring Guy back for the sequel I don't see why Kelly can't give them J'onn too. When Fire hugged him it made me miss the old series even more. What else does he have to do in JLA other than build stupid dream machines that cock-block Batman? DC sucks for not letting them be The Superfriends. That would have made this series so much funnier. – The Comedian
THE @$$HOLE CHRISTM@$$ LIST
**************************
“Oh sweet! The ‘Life-Sized Blow-up Antonio Banderas Love Doll!’ What a cool Christmas present!”
--Eric Cartman, SOUTH PARK
Happy Holidaze, everybody! Vroom Socko here. Just as we did last year, we @$$holes have managed to come up with several gift ideas for the comics reader this holiday season. Excluding the Village Idiot, (who’s busy addressing all the @$$hole Christmas cards,) we’ve managed to cobble together quite a list. All of these books are ideal for any comics fan, and many are a good idea for non-comics readers too. After all, what better time than the holidaze to create a new reader of them there funnybooks?
**************************
Cormorant
THE COLLECTED PALEO – Combining both my love of cool dinosaurs and hardboiled survival tales, THE COLLECTED PALEO delivers the goods like some bastard child of Mickey Spillane and "Walking With Dinosaurs." Probably my single favorite comics surprise of the year, and you can get more details in my full review of the trade here
PHOENIX: A TALE OF THE FUTURE – This is a weird 'un, but a great 'un. It's manga, it's sci-fi, it's epic, it was created in the late 60's, and it's the work of the creator of…Astro Boy! Strange? Yes, but also one of the most mind-blowing graphic novels I've read in the last decade – truly an experience. I called it "Disney meets 2001" in this review, to which I direct you for the "big picture."
TOTAL SELL-OUT – When our own Vroom Socko interviewed Brian Bendis a few months ago, Bendis called one of my reviews a "dickhead review," but I'm told my review of TOTAL SELL-OUT – in which I called the book ideal bathroom reading – actually went over quite well. Cool! I loved the book then, I still love it now, and I think it'd make a kick-ass Christmas present for all those smartass, hipster friends you've got who're a bitch to shop for. Truly laugh-out-loud hilarious and nicely-priced ta boot. Full review here.
WHITEOUT – This is the collection that introduced me to Greg Rucka's excellent writing, and y'know what? It's still my favorite work from him. Long story short, it's the tale of Carrie Stetko, U.S. Marshall, charged with solving a murder at an Antarctic military base. She's got two weeks before 90% of the base's personnel have to clear out for winter, and paranoia, violence, and some real nasty frostbite ensue. Steve Lieber's art is brilliant, unforgiving, and – just in time for winter - colder than a witch's tit. Lizzybeth did this keen write up last year, so check it out.
Lizzybeth
If, like me, you're snowed in this weekend, you're probably thinking about picking up some nice long reads for this winter. Here's some Mega-sized trades for you and your comic-loving loved ones:
Palomar: I've already raved about this trade collection here, so let me just sum up: save yourself ten years worth of collecting and pick up this 512 page collection of the complete Gilbert Hernandez "Heartbreak Soup". Ambitious, literary, and heartfelt, this is a volume to treasure.
Kabuki: Circle of Blood: The most bloody-minded of David Mack's independently-published Kabuki storylines, this trade should be required reading for DAREDEVIL fans unfamiliar with Mack's other work. Here we see the origins of female assassin/media figure Ukiko, whose mask covers the scarred word Kabuki carved into the flesh of her face, and how she came to be expelled from the Noh and to lose the little finger on her right hand (in one of the more shudder-inducing sequences of recent comics). The black-and-white art may seem less complex than his current multimedia-explosion of pages, but many of his images here have a power that he has yet to replicate in later work. 272 pages.
The Collected Box Office Poison: In my experience, the degree to which people love this series once they've come into contact with it is directly related to how much they tend to like people in general. Agree? Disagree? 608 pages of funny, endearingly characterized comics goodness.
A RIGHT TO BE HOSTILE - A BOONDOCKS TREASURY: More on the humorous side, but without requiring that you turn off your brain to enjoy fully, is this BOONDOCKS collection, an overview of four years of newspaper strips. The strip pushes every uncomfortable button in the American psyche (well okay, reading in tandem with HOTHEAD PAISAN would push every button) with its brutal confrontations of race politics in America. It's not without its missteps, but you have to admire the guy for trying to live up to trail-blazing comic strip predecessors like Berkeley Breathed while every other goddamn Sunday cartoonist appears to be in a coma. Best of all, it's really, consistently, laugh-out-loud funny. 255 pages.
Ambush Bug
Dear Santa:
Every year I ask for the same thing, but it never arrives. So this year, instead of asking for the same thing I do every year, I'm going to look at something already on the shelves. How about PLASTIC MAN ARCHIVES VOL. 1 through 5?
Ever since reading the first issue of the new PLASTIC MAN series, I've had an insatiable urge to read more about that pliable punster. Jack Cole's art is an inspiration, twisting Plas to the limits of cartoon wackiness. Today, many creators and readers forget about the comic in comic books. This gorgeous hardcover would remind them that not everything has to be grim and gritty or deconstructive to be entertaining. Each volume is fifty bucks, but they look to be worth every penny. So pretty please, I promise I'll be good this year. I know I wasn't an angel last year, but I blame Sleazy G for most of it. Give that guy a lump of coal and send me the works of Jack Cole instead.
And while you're at it, big guy, I'll give you a suggestion for your own special comic book treat. Read THE GOON: NUTHIN' BUT MISERY Trade Paperback. There is nothing like THE GOON on the book shelves today. It combines horror, adventure, and goof-ball comedy with ease. Eric Powell improves with every issue and this trade perfectly illustrates this guy's every evolving talent with the word as well as the pen and inks. This trade collects the four issue GOON miniseries and COLOR SPECIAL from Exploding Albatross Funny Books. If you like psychic seals, killer octopi, laughing dead men, drunken werewolves, and feisty guys named Frankie (and really, folks, who doesn't?) then this is the trade for you. It's pretty cheap at $15.95, so have at it.
Sincerely yours and patiently waiting for my Jodie Foster NELL with voice chip action figure,
Ambush Bug
Sleazy G
If you've got a friend who likes mainstream Marvel-style excitement, your best choice is probably Brian K. Vaughan's RUNAWAYS. This year at WizardWorld Chicago, it got recommendations from almost everybody on Marvel's panel. That's because it's one of the most interesting, well-written books on the stands this year. This tale of teenage kids on the run together after discovering their parents are a supervillain team is beautifully illustrated, fun, and has enough danger and characterization to keep even the newest comics readers interested. Sadly, Marvel's plan to publish the Tsunami books in trade collections is currently on hiatus, which could really damage this book's chances. I say get in the Hanukkah spirit--buy the eight issues published thus far and give them to somebody one issue a day. It's a fantastic book that needs (and deserves) all the support it can get, so help out a great title and give somebody something they'll really enjoy.
A lot of people seem to think it's a good idea to buy a comic adaptation of something somebody liked to try and get them interested in comics. They theory is that if they like the comic adaptation of PREDATOR II enough it'll lead them to buy more comic books. There are a lot of comics adaptations out there; adaptations of books (I AM LEGEND), movies (a bajillion STAR WARS books), TV shows (CSI)...heck, even operas (P. Craig Russell's RING OF THE NIEBELUNG). Thing is, I don't really think the theory has ever really held up. People who don't already understand comics tend to view the comics adaptation as being a pale imitation of the original source material. Knowing that, why not come at things from the other direction? If you have somebody on your gift list who really liked a movie that was an adaptation of a comic, or has expressed interested in an upcoming one, why not get 'em the source material? Your indie fans will love the work of R. Crumb or Daniel Clowes' GHOST WORLD graphic novel. Fans of blockbusters might enjoy an X-MEN collection. In anticipation of this spring's movie releases, there are also plenty o' ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN collections out there, not to mention tons of high-quality HELLBOY material. Rather than show them a watered-down adaptation of something they liked better, I say go with a comic that lets them see the movie was just a glimpse of a far richer, deeper world in the original source comics. That'll do a lot more to earn and keep new fans.
If you know anything at all about people in the goth/industrial/darkwave/whatever scene, you know that the stuff Neil Gaiman did in DC's SANDMAN series is virtually considered Holy Scripture. People who have never read any other comic books ever have tattoos of Death and wear t-shirts out to the bar with a portrait of Death on them and get Death painted in white on the back of their black leather jackets and like to dress like Death (even some of the guys) and... Well, you get the idea. There's an ugly underside to the scene, though, which is this: a lot of those people are also fascinated by the work of Brian Pulido from back when Chaos! Comics was still in business. They actually bought into the whole Lady Death/Purgatory/Other Chicks With Impossible Breasts fad. Why? Well, mostly the whole death/black latex/Hell thing. Lucky for you, these folks are easy to shop for: a buncha this crap *has* to be available for like 10 cents an issue by now. You'll feel like you woulda been better off spending the three bucks on a month-old issue of READER'S DIGEST, but they'll think you bought them something edgy and cool.
Superninja
Catwoman: Selina's Big Score. Whether you're a Catwoman fan or not, this story is for anyone that loves crime noir. Written and illustrated by Darwyn Cooke, this book is a little piece of perfection. If you haven't read it yet, ask for it. You won't be disappointed.
Squadron Supreme. See how the late and greatly missed Mark Gruenwald paved the way for Marvel's Supreme Power. It's a Marvel take on the JLA, with its own unique twist. Give it to your cynical friends who need a reality check as to how deconstruction should be done, or that old friend who is sick of Nu-Marvel.
Iron Wok Jan #1. This manga story about two Japanese protégée chefs battling to be the master of Chinese cuisine is for everyone! Don't let the wacky setup fool you. Give this to someone you want to see a whole lot more of. Because, they WILL become addicted to it. Manga crack, and you're the source.
Vroom Socko
If you, or someone you know, is a fan of the book Fables, then this book might be up your alley: The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales. No, it’s not a comic, but I don’t doubt that this is a book Bill Willingham has on his shelf. With over twenty fairy tales annotated and analyzed almost to death, this tome has enough info to enlighten several of the lesser known residents of Fabletown.
My favorite Bendis book, my absolute fave, is Fortune and Glory. I know Buzz recommended this one last year, but it’s worth repeating. It’s the funniest, craziest skewering of Hollywood, as well as an adventure of an outsider peeking behind the curtain. It’s just a massively fun book.
But if you’re only getting one gift this year, If you had to pick one comic to give somebody, make it Blankets. The book hasn’t even been out six months, and it’s already heading into a third printing. This is the single best comics experience of the year, and instantly became one of the top five comic books I’ve ever read. The praise for this book has been universal, and overwhelming. If I could, I’d buy a copy for everyone on my list. I’d buy a copy for everyone reading this. No comic library is complete without this book. Hell, no library PERIOD is complete without this book.
