Written by Bruce Jones
Art by Manuel Garcia, Travis Lanham & Santiago Arcas
Published by DC Comics
Bruce Jones hasn't exactly had the best track record in for comics that have grabbed positive attention--his run on Incredible Hulk started off with some love, then eventually deteriorated into nonsense and confusion, with a requisite drop in sales and attention-although his run did consist of the best cover designs on any super-hero comic since Jack Kirby's 4th World. Then he took over Nightwing and did some bizarre stories about Jason Todd turning into a bleach belching worm creature that everyone seems to now ignore. He followed that up with a couple of mini-series that absolutely no one read, including the penciler and printer, and now he's been given the reins relinquished by Greg Rucka and Steven Trautman for the perennial low-selling Checkmate. This being his first issue on the run, it's a pretty obvious change in status--whereas the last twenty-five issues of Checkmate have been halfway decent, this is just a horrible rip-off of a variation on the plot of Robocop, without Peter Weller and Paul Verhoeven. Say what you will though, Bruce Jones certainly is consistent: regardless of subject or publisher, he's always reliably terrible.
Written by Dwayne McDuffie
Art by Carlos Pacheco, Pete Pantazis & Jesus Merino
Published by DC Comics
If there was some way to do a blind taste test on the entire DC super-hero line, would any survey result in Justice League being picked as the top selling book? These sorts of things--team up books consisting of the big gun characters--they should be the standard bearer of excitement and fun, right? Isn't that what everybody always argues these spandex books are? That they're fun. That they're about heroes, or justice, or morality plays, or whatever bullshit excuse there is for the continued purchase of repetitive homo-erotic exercises of power fantasy. But there's nothing "fun" here, there's nothing "exciting." Instead, it's hammy attempts to have quirky conversations between people like Batman and Wonder Woman, characters that will never be swallowable as "realistic." Hell, the set-up works--it's a magic-hyper-time-quantum theory lounge for super-heroes to hang out and talk in, safe from the prying eyes and ears of....I don't know, Jean Grey or something. Then it's just them, talking, about nothing. Talking about nothing is fucking genius, when it's in the hands of a John Cassavettes, when it's coming out of actors like Paul Newman, when it's some guys on a boat trying to track down a big shark. But when it's a bunch of action figures with no personality, bullshitting about other action figures? Who cares? Who gives a shit about any of it?
Written by Chuck Dixon
Art by Chris Batista, Cam Smith, Rick Ketcham & Guy Major
Published by DC Comics
Spoiler is back, who cares. Why are the no-name bad guys from North Korea? It would actually be a good thing if North Korea was producing drug dealing gangs with ties to the US. That would mean there was some kind of opportunity besides starving to death for non-Party North Koreans. Of course, there's not, so writer Chuck Dixon is just exploiting the fear and anger of American's towards North Korea for the sake of making his comic story seem...better? more important? timely? Either way, it doesn't, and it's bad.
Written by Keith Giffen
Art by Lee Garbett, Trevor Scott, Randy Mayor & Gabe Eltreb
Published by Wildstorm/DC Comics
It's amazing to have nice words to say about something like this--but the truth is, Dreamwar is something probably a lot more people would find themselves enjoying. That is, if you'd always kind of wished that the Authority hadn't been a cast of DC "homages" and that there actually had been a comic where Superman and Batman were married and killed people on a regular basis. Here, what you get is something that's not satirical, that isn't in continuity, and it's far more thrilling than anything else DC has done with the Justice League. There's Green Arrow--and now he's dead, from a broken neck. There's the Justice Society--incinerating that retirement home from Gail Simone's Tranquility. It's just malicious, violent stuff, and it wouldn't be that far removed from a crappy fan-created mash-up, except that it's professionally put together. It looks like the kind of comic that an angry fan would create--but it's not. It's the real deal, and, while each issue will only bring us that much closer to the day when it Superman refuses to kill somebody, for now, it's the only chance anyone will get to see a bunch of DC heroes beating the holy fuck out of people in a vicious, unforgiving fashion. Hell, it's idiotic--but it's idiotic with no winking at the camera. For everybody who ever laughed their ass off when listening to some lunatic complaining that super-heroes don't behave "heroically" enough, or for those who can't tolerate grown ass adults with moist eyes talking about how reading Green Lantern in the 70's taught them to "be myself," here's the comic for you. (And don't worry--there's no plot!)
Written by Steve Niles
Art by Bernie Wrightson & Grant Goleash
Published by IDW
A mild diversion into poorly imagined pandering--basically the comic length equivalent of a personality-drained faux Philip Marlowe as a zombie idea, nothing more. Bernie Wrightson is on art details, which adds a certain level of professionalism to this dullness, but he's never given anything more to do than draw some archetypal characters wandering through the dingy fleatraps of the plot. The bar for terrible has been set pretty low this year, so it's not like She Said is setting a new standard of awful, but the overall feeling that this is a comic no one cares to be involved with producing is so tangible that, if possible, this is even more obnoxious than it's own failings provide for. A completely unnecessary section of pap, destined to be forgotten.
Written by Mark Millar
Art by Bryan Hitch & Paul Mounts
Published by Marvel Comics
What a majestic disappointment that this Millar/Hitch team-up on Fantastic Four hasn’t resulted in something that’s either really great or really terrible. Instead, it’s just one notch or so underneath “mediocre”—a thoughtlessly scripted and routine story about the Four and there dealings with the robot cosmic. Throw in a naked chick on a bed full of cash, and you’ve got something that clearly had about as much initial planning as the decision to put Geena Davis on television as the President. Unlike that miserable adventure, there’s no likelihood that Marvel will fire the team before the contract is up. Get ready for a whole ‘nother year of this unpasteurized lard.
Written by Jason Aaron
Art by Roland Boschi & Dan Brown
Published by Marvel Comics
Some comics, especially ones like Ghost Rider, don't need to have any kind of background or continuity. Shit like the X-Men does, because it grabs all it's drama from behaving like a secret club with an extensive mythology--but why do that to Johnny Blaze? No one cares where or why he has the goofy ass powers he has. Nobody ever grabbed an issue of Ghost Rider hoping that they'd get to read about anything other than a flaming skeleton just straight up destroying shit--hell, a good portion of this gets it right. There's a four way car crash with a cannibalistic serial killer from Incest Town, a bunch of psychotic nurses, a Greyhound bus and Mr. Blaze, who's hungry for killing. That's what you want out of Ghost Rider. Why ditch that for a trip into nonsensical backstory regarding that other Ghost Rider character from a failed series revamp that went out of circulation in the 90's?
Written by Greg Pak & Fred Van Lente
Art by Rafa Sandoval, Roger Bonet & Martegod Gracia
Published by Marvel Comics
The concept behind this is a hell of a lot more clever than the comic itself—mostly because the comic itself still has to nod in the direction of the Marvel universe, of which it is a part. But the concept? That Hercules would lead a team of gods onto a ship of thought & dreams to kill the Skrull gods? That’s…well, it’s dumb, yeah, but it’s dumb in a pretty great way. It needs some more histrionic dialog, some “Oh that ye shalt smite” kind of talk, but, for a spin-off/cross-over thing involving a bunch of low rent cartoon versions of mythological deities? This is sort of the best thing that could’ve been done with these characters, like, ever. Far better to read about them pulling a Little Nemo adventure than catching bank robbers.
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Khoi Pham, Danny Miki & Dean White
Published by Marvel Comics
Having served it's time as a place for Alex Maleev to ply his considerable wares, the Mighty Avengers returns to it's regular channel, that being the place where it showcases the Sentry and a bunch of other characters no one has ever cared about, ever, and never should. Although there's a hint that the flashback sequences are going to reveal a little Agatha Christie-style parlor room banter between the no-longer-undercover Skrulls, it then just spirals into the backstory of stuff that wasn't really that compelling or surprising when it was presented as "mysterious" in the Secret Invasion mini-series. This comic is the equivalent of an illustrated link on a Wikipedia entry on the cross-over event that Marvel is betting it's summer raises on. It's spandex comic writing as Mad Libs, with blanks being filled in by shit that doesn't improve the story, or help make anybody care.
Written by Daniel Way
Art by Steve Dillon & Matt Milla
Published by Marvel Comics
this comes with a comic by rob liefeld that guy sux ballz
Written by Garth Ennis
Art by Howard Chaykin & Brian Reber
Published by Marvel Comics
There’s really not a lot going on here besides some nice drawings of airplanes and the occasional hoary old witticisms. If Mr. Ennis is that interested in old school air combat, that’s great, but he might have benefited from coming up with more of a plot before throwing this thing together—that thing with the propeller was pretty fucked up in the first issue, but otherwise, there’s nothing “Hellish” about this war. Chaykin’s work here is a lot more fun and interesting to deal with than it is in Punisher War Journal. Also, the emotion shown on the cover is far more feeling than any the character has shown in the series thus far. Lies!
Written by Andy Diggle
Art by Giuseppe Camuncoli, Stefano Landini & Lee Loughridge
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics
Andy Diggle, like John Constantine, is quietly developing a mastery with misdirection over at the low-selling Hellblazer title. Once again, the implication that the main character was going to go to the wall for others has been subverted—John was just playing games all along. While most Hellblazer stories end up reading more cohesively in the trade format that seems to be the motivating factor behind keeping the Vertigo imprint alive, under Diggle, this title has become pretty rewarding on the installment plan—if only to let the cynical moments of knife-twisting gestate for a month at a time.
-Tucker Stone, 2008
It's = contraction of "it is"
Its = possessive (as in "belongs to it")
Posted by: J Mawson | 2008.05.27 at 23:59
I think someone want a job as TFO editor....
Posted by: Nina | 2008.05.28 at 07:37