Youngblood # 1
Written by Joe Casey
Art by Derec Donovan
Published by Image Comics
Jesus, REALLY? It's one thing to keep bringing back characters that have an actual licensing base, an actual financial impact outside of the comics market. But the Youngblood crew? Why do this? Shaft, Die Hard--nobody who doesn't hate these characters knows who they are! What sort of sense does that make? Seeing Joe Casey on this the week after seeing Dustin Nguyen on Detective is just too goddamn painful--that's the Wildcats 3.0 crew, right there, and here they are: collecting a paycheck. While Nguyen is doing it on the one book that probably pays decently, there's no way that Casey is being duly rewarded, beyond earning the bragging rights that come with wasting one's short life on something that is in no imaginable fashion aesthetically pleasing. Besides the fact that the question of "corporate super-hero team with a youtube channel" got answered by Peter Milligan and Michael Allred on X-Statix, there's nothing going here. While there's no real argument to be made that Youngblood is any worse than anything else, it's all just two shades of terrible anyway, it's another sterling example of talented creators tacking a "new idea" on that exact same shit as last time. Super-hero's: a tired, dull fucking industry.
Teen Titans Lost Annual # 1
Written by Bob Haney
Art by Jay Stephens & Mike Allred
Published by DC Comics
It can't help that expectations for this comic were raised so high--after all, the Teen Titans Lost Annual was supposed to be the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot of mainstream comics. A work by some great creators that the corporate overlords of DC deemed unworthy of publication 4 or 5 years ago, hiding on the shelf. Meanwhile, word gets out, and people automatically assume that DC is hiding the best thing ever, a mash-up of art/pop/awesome, and they've misjudged the market, and blah blah blah. Instead, here it is, and it's pretty much a really drawn out version of something from those Bizarro anthologies--a comic that would be great if it was eight pages long, but hey, guess what? It's 40. Which means a half-clever allegory becomes mind-numbingly heavy handed, solely because it's stretched way beyond any level of tolerability. Sorry, but this shit was better off when no one knew what it looked like--back then, we could assume it was fantastic.
B.P.R.D. 1946 # 1
Written by Mike Mignola & Joshua Dysart
Art by Paul Azaceta
Published by Dark Horse Comics
The first reason to be somewhat excited about the year in mainstream super-hero comics is, unsurprisingly, one of the few reasons why 2007 wasn't totally horrible: Mike Mignola's B.P.R.D. series is one of the few things that just lives and operates at a high level of quality. Safely put, the only reason that this series of comics isn't universally declared to be better than Hellboy (the comic that birthed it,) is because Mignola doesn't handle the art chores. That's not to discount Azaceta, an excellent addition to the little family--it's an acknowledgment that Mignola remains a singular talent, unique to this industry. One might expect to miss Guy Davis, who's handled the last few B.P.R.D. series extraordinarily well, but considering the setting of this current story (cleverly, it's in 1946, wait for it) it's actually useful to have a different artist handling these, for the most part, relatively new characters. Why B.P.R.D. works so well? That's a question for better minds. Safe to say, it does, and it's one of the few comics left worth getting lost in.
Nightwing # 140
Written by Peter Tomasi
Art by Rags Morales & Michael Bair
Published by DC Comics
Take the time to re-read it--you're not mistaken, Batman, yes, Batman the fictional character, owns the Cloisters. As in the Cloisters in upper Manhattan. Wait, what? Not only that, but Nightwing is going to be the new curator of the Cloisters, and he's going to use the Cloisters as his version of a Batcave? That's just...odd. What's even odder is that it's kind of interesting, and "kind of interesting" and "Nightwing" have actually gone together more than once in the last two months. (Of course, it's the "kind of interesting" that non-comics readers usually define as "really fucking silly.") It's not something anybody should be more than grudgingly happy about--after all, Nightwing has had a title for 140 issues, and about 80% of that time, the book was really awful. That's a pretty terrible track record for a character that, regardless of what fans say, doesn't have much traction in the non-comics reading marketplace. It's certainly a testament to the commitment of DC's editorial that they keep publishing this character, but somewhere along the way, there really should be a better argument for why this character needs his own series.
The Infinite Horizon # 2
Written by Gerry Duggan
Art by Phil Noto
Published by Image Comics
It's rare that a comic is well-written enough that the bad art is actually painful to deal with. Most of the time, bad art is matched up with writing that's as bad, or writing that's merely serviceable, and that's when "moving on" becomes the order of the day. Here, the story is so goddamn well written that the pages of pure hideousness jump out, finger your asshole and rub it in your eye. It's a real fucker. It's one thing when an artist is just consistently bad, it's another thing when it's a guy like Phil Noto, who actually has a shitload of awesome in his back catalog. Either way, Infinite Horizon? Get an inker, and a decent colorist, and get them fast. Otherwise, this is just a wasted opportunity to capitalize on a story that's effective, clever, and might appeal to people who don't masturbate to Power Girl's chest.
The Mighty Avengers # 7
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Mark Bagley, Danny Miki, Allen Martinez & Victor Olazaba
Published by Marvel Comics
A lot of pencillers like to pat Danny Miki on the back and talk about how much better there work is when teamed with him--Mark Bagley might consider the opposite. Whether it's Bagley having a tough time recovering from his 100+ stint on Ultimate Spider-Man, there's some clear problems with this issue. Mighty Avengers hasn't been much of a comic to start with--it's tied into about a million other things going on in the Marvel universe, and it doesn't help to have people's hair look like detached floating helmets, or that all the noses seem to be melting off of people's face. Still, the ugly art screw-ups do help to detract from the best possible example of a Bendis comic where, like all his haters claim, everyone just stands around talking and thinking. Page after page, this is a conversational comic about stuff that could've been dealt with in about 3 panels. Yes, the cover implies that this comic is about a bunch of Venom characters fight the Mighty Avengers, while also howling at the moon. No, that does not actually happen in the comic. However, there are a few pages where the Wasp character tries to convince the Wonder-Man character to change his ugly red-suit costume for an ugly spandex costume. (She hires models to walk in during a "mission briefing" to help prove her point.) Sound like something you'd be interested in? Well, here it is.
Ghost Rider # 19
Written by Daniel Way
Art by Javier Saltares & Tom Palmer
Published by Marvel Comics
Daniel Way finishes up his run on Ghost Rider to make way for Jason Aaron, who Marvel seems to be positioning to take up a larger role in the company. It's too bad--Way had a good run on this title, and despite a couple of glaring attempts at pushing the book beyond what it's character can provide for, it's really the best Ghost Rider comic that's ever been published. While Aaron's work is certainly top notch--The Other Side, Scalped and his Wolverine issue were all great, Way did a fine job with a difficult task, and that's commendable. There's never going to be a literary art-comic to be made out of Ghost Rider, it'll always be confined to the entertainment-style comic book, but that certainly doesn't mean it can't be well constructed and relatively consistent. For the most part, it has been, for 19 issues. While this issue isn't as funny as previous high-points, it's still an effective little piece of entertainment. In an industry like this one, that's about as good as it can get.
Green Arrow & Black Canary # 4
Written by Judd Winick
Art by Cliff Chiang
Published by DC Comics
This comic would've worked a lot better if Cliff Chiang had drawn some actual tears coming out of people's eyes. Instead, it ended up looking like those first 8 episodes of Twin Peaks, where everybody breaks down in fits of emotion, but no one cries actual tears. There, it worked, because it was a weird off-beat Lynchian soap opera, and it made it that much stronger when Ray Wise finally started producing some liquid in the second season. Here, it's just fucking strange--everybody is going through the physical motions of crying, but they aren't, you know, crying. Considering this whole issue was about the immediacy of loss, that would've been preferable. It's also such a simple, immediate thing to draw that it becomes a bit curious why it wasn't drawn. Either way, this looks like another issue that will please all the readers who don't have any problems with Judd Winick, and it will infuriate all the people that do. Here's the thing about that: there's nothing dramatically, or thematically, different about Judd Winick comics then anybody elses super-hero comics. Hell, regardless of whether or not he "understands" the characters, ignoring whether he "politicizes" his comics, Judd actually has lots of shit happen in his comics. Last time anybody checked, "shit happening" in DC comics hasn't been the order of the day in 20 years. Even lame-ass shit.
The Exterminators # 25
Written by Simon Oliver
Art by Tony Moore & John Lucas
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics
Oh hey, it's official. The Exterminators goes dark in five more issues. If it's alright with you, and no one cares if it isn't, the Factual Opinion plans to get more and more belligerent every time we talk about an issue. For now, since this is the first time reading one after the announcement, we'll just say that if you didn't buy Exterminators, you're a fucking twat. Issue 25? Really fucking funny. It's mostly set in a Heaven that, if we understood it correctly, made it clear that the Egyptians were right. (Take that, all you people who got cremated!) Meanwhile, did anything else come out that was as funny as this? Even in the same league? Nope. Not even close. Of course, some shitty Spider-Man comic came out, and Youngblood is back.
Punisher War Journal # 15
Written by Matt Fraction
Art by Scott Wegener
Published by Marvel Comics
And so begins "run out of steam day" as both Matt Fraction's Punisher War Journal and Garth Ennis' The Boys end their current story arcs on with the gauge still set at not-very-funny. Whether it's authorial loyalty or just a lack of overt disappointment, it's nice to see Matt Fraction committing to writing this series as a comedy as opposed to embracing a cowarldly attempt to turn the story into an action movie. As is made regularly clear over at Punisher MAX, a realistic, action oriented take on the character is one that's going to be incredibly dark, incredibly violent and only funny in the nastiest possible fashion. Fraction's job is a difficult one--that of writing a character that's such a standard definition of total psychopath in a Marvel universe chock full of over-emotive characters who are wearing spandex. His choice for the series, to make it a kind of lite comedy book, to have the main character speak with such constant pathos, is probably the only way to make this book work. Of course, that means that he's expected to be regularly funny on a monthly comic book, a task that's difficult enough to make it clear why most comics writers stick to the kitchen sink drama that's so aggressively obnoxious to this reader. After all, it's a far easier task to take a bunch of boring, underdeveloped super-heroes and have them fight boring, under-developed super-villains than it is to be clever and funny while still basically writing a super-hero comic. While their wasn't anything terrible about this storyline, it lost all the humor that it had when it started--topping a drunken Spider-man falling into a dumpster is, after all, a pretty nefarious high-water mark.
The Boys # 14
Written by Garth Ennis
Art by Darick Robertson
Published by Dynamite Entertainment
There's some humor here, but for the most part, it almost seems like the kind of script that Garth Ennis finished up late at night while trying to figure out what he was doing with his life or something irritatingly personal like that. This entire story arc of the Boys has been like that--just a rolling filmstrip of a non-event. It sparks up to life a bit a the end, in no small part to Darick Robertson getting the chance to draw some more comedic behavior on the part of the little creepy bulldog. It doesn't rape anything this time, but it certainly looks enough like it wants to. Anytime one reads a comic and has the thought that they would have been happier if they'd gotten to see a cartoonish bulldog rape a dead body, one should probably be a little disappointed in oneself. And there's nothing worse than feeling self-loathing. What would Norman Vincent Peale do in this situation?
-Tucker Stone, 2008
You know, I thought you were being too harsh on Youngblood since I'm a fan of Joe Casey. I was going to be all, "ok Tucker Stone, I loved Wildcats 3.0 too, but it's time to accept that it's long gone." Then I read the issue, and yeah, you're right. We don't need it.
Also, re: Black Canary & Green Arrow, since when does anyone call in Hal Jordan to practice surgery?
Posted by: darknessatnoon | 2008.01.16 at 11:34
hey pussy, exterminators sucked. period.
Posted by: shmeg | 2008.01.17 at 19:18