Punisher War Zone # 4
Written by Garth Ennis
Art by Steve Dillon & Matt Hollingsworth
Published by Marvel Comics
While the Frank Castle portions of the story are pretty much operating on the same auto-pilot that the first three issues did, Punisher War Zone is turning into one of those odd little comics where the A plot can be as nuisance-ridden as it pleases, so rewarding is the throwaway B plot. An obscenely irreverent study of a lesbian cop disconnected from responsibility and rife with anger management issues so endemic they could probably form a doctoral study if they weren't so endearingly sexist, Garth has somehow made what initially sounded like a gear-changing shift backwards towards corporate gladhanding almost rewarding. While it's still a grossly expensive comic whose ending was telegraphed by the close of the first issue--only a month ago--it's an entertaining version of that. But seriously: don't do this again. Or at least not in the hair.
Batman # 684
Written by Denny O'Neill
Art by Guillem March
Published by DC Comics
While Guillem March deserves a pat on the back for reminding Batman readers what a fight is supposed to be drawn like, no amount of technical mark-hitting can redeem this nonsensical place-filler. The conclusion to a two-part story that began a few weeks back in Detective Comics, written by old soul Denny O'Neill, he of the "used to run the Bat-shop" fame, it's nothing more than a completely mundane Nightwing story. Since "really good Nightwing" stories still end up being "pretty terrible comic books", you can go ahead and fill in the blank on what a "mundane" one feels like. (That being said, it'd be an interesting little sidestep for somebody to come up with a list of all the "really great" jewel thief comic stories have ever been written. It's not a premise that screams awesome.)
Captain America # 45
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Luke Ross, Butch Guice, Rick Magyar, Mark Pennington & Frank D'Armata
Published by Marvel Comics
Five artists involved, none of them wanted to fix the couple of panels here where Captain America turns into a Pez dispenser, bouncing around at the end of some trenchcoated bad guy's arm like so many ventriloquist's puppets. The only major spark of surprise that comes across in the script is when a couple of security guards discuss the mystery of hair plugs. Here it is, a not-great issue of the Brubaker Captain America: these don't come along too often. Not the best way to start off a year, but it's a three-parter, it's over, brush it off. Especially the part with Mr. Trenchcoat.
Final Crisis: Secret Files
Written by Len Wein
Art by Tony Shasteen & Alex Bleyaert
Four Pages by Grant Morrison & JG Jones
Published by DC Comics
The only good origin for the Libra character would be a comic where everybody stands around laughing at him for carrying a fucking scale in his hand while he sputters out "leave me alones" like Casey Affleck in that Jesse James Done Got Shot flick. DC and Len Wein disagree, and despite the fact that they'd already reprinted the character's only other appearances sometime last year, they're worried you didn't get the message (that Libra is a irritating cock in a cheesy outfit impossible to take seriously) and have done yet another one of those "new drawing of old story with some new dialog" comics that everybody loves, just flat out fucking loves so hard they want to rub their tongue across the upper lip when they pull away from fumbling make-out sessions. Luckily, they were able to tear Tony Shasteen anyway from the bad idea club that's currently churning out some X-Files tie-in comics for Wildstorm, the company that can't, because if there's one thing shitty Final Crisis tie-ins can't live without, it's more Colorform style drawing. This is the sort of art that sends you running to the refrigerator to check and see if somebody stole your John Stewart magnet for tracing purposes. Somebody turn down the stove on this pile of shit: it's done gone and boiled over.
Justice League of America # 28
Written by Dwayne McDuffie
Art by Jose Luis, JP Mayer & Pete Pantazis
Published by DC Comics
Page 1-3: A lizard is wearing a pimp medallion and his name is Payback. Because, you know, whatever. They are in a big house, which for some reason has a table that looks really old and beat up. Luckily, that's the table that Batman gets thrown into. All the pictures on the wall are drawn like mirrors, because the artist doesn't want the walls to look boring, but he doesn't feel like drawing pictures in the frames. So instead it looks like there's a bunch of tiny mirrors. This is supposed to be something that the reader ignores, along with how useless the Firestorm characters powers are, since his magic cage gets destroyed immediately, and his magic ball and chain gets turned into a weapon. Luckily, the room is about the size of a football field-nothing gets broken besides the old table Batman broke with his body. [If you only read Justice League of America for Batman appearances, you should probably stop doing that, also, he only appears on these first three pages unless you count advertisements, one of which is for that embarrassing Mortal Kombat game that exists solely so that DC comic book characters can have other fictional characters to point out and say "Ha, you used to be more popular than we were Scorpion, but now everybody thinks you're a big pussy!"]
Page 4-5: The Justice League is facing off against the Shadow Cabinet. All of the characters have no pupils, because, again, whatever. Also, it becomes clear that too many people in super-hero comics wear red.
Page 6: Talking is boring. Superman grows pupils, which he uses so that he can roll his eyes at the Green Lantern character. Black Canary gets pupils too, so that she can stare vacantly into the middle distance. Then she wakes up in the next panel and decides to stare at the reader. At this point, the artist decides that Black Canary is wasting her eyeball powers and her pupils disappear.
Page 7-8: Everybody talks and tries to intimidate the others by growing pupils. Except the Flash. Vixen is given a lazy eye, probably because DC is racist?
Page 9-16: This is all fighting, and Flash gets pupils for one panel, but otherwise it is pretty standard stuff. The Shadow Cabinet has a member who wears a bowler cap. His name is Twilight.
Page 17-18: Superman goes on a date with some guy. In the middle of the date, for absolutely no discernible artistic reason, one of the panels is turned 45 degrees. Important plot points are revealed. [Actually, that's a very loose usage of the word "important." Another description might be "shit is talked about."]
Page 19-21: The fight continues, and then some guy tries to fly away.
Page 22: Hawkman shows up, and he has apparently been running around in a briar patch.
Punisher War Journal # 26
Written by Matt Fraction
Art by Andy MacDonald & Nick Filardi
Published by Marvel Comics
Less a comic, more a note of apology: "I couldn't ever really figure out how to make this work", Matt Fraction, 2009. And with that he's out, this series will soon be taken over by Rick Remender, the man who could, the man who won't: Punisher War Journal, RIP. While it's even begun to irritate the offices of the Factual to have to turn to one writer, over and over again, to point to how the Frank Castle character can be done "right" (right defined as "not a comic of shitbaggery") it's the case, all over again, there he is, Mr. Garth Ennis. A few years back, in one of those web-based interviews designed to make the reader believe that the interviewed creator was genuinely full of excitement that a publisher had dangled a check in front of them, said check attached to something like Stormwatch, Ennis mentioned his belief that most comics writers didn't really like the Punisher, and yet tried to come up with something for the character to do despite a basic disgust that they were, you know, working on the fucking Punisher comic book. If you can make it through this issue--an issue that has some serious printing/photoshop problems, unless it was designed to look as if all the colors bleed into one another, giving everybody the appearance of their faces melting, last-ten-minutes-of-Scanners style--there you'll find something that certainly looks that way: a sequence where the once subtly-retarded Rhino goes full blown Mice and Men (just looking after the pigeons, "Those purty birds") and spits out some Life Lessons like he's Tom Hanks, the roof is a park bench, and dumbass old Punisher is an elderly black woman. There's a piece of credit to be given, sure, but it's a mild one: most of the time, when a super-hero comic wants to teach the sort of lessons in morality best reserved for Rick Warren, it's directed at the reader. At least this little bon mot of morality was directed at the guy wearing spandex who has a gun on a tripod.
Ultimate Hulk Annual # 1
Written by Jeph Loeb
Art by Ed McGuinness, Marko Djurdjevic, Dexter Vines & Danny Miki
Published by Marvel Comics
It's too bad that the only people who will ever interview Jeph Loeb are the type of blow-job purveyors that lack the imagination, integrity, or intelligence to ask him anything beyond "how did you get so special" and "is it hard being a genius" types of questions. It's too bad because that's pretty much the only way you're ever going to find out why exactly he felt the need to write this comic, which is an oversized story about how that random Wonder Woman clone/satire/parody/fill in whatever smart word you use to explain away Marvel's attempt to piss on Mark Gruenwald's memory character getting sent on a Hard Traveling Heroes tour of America, which takes her to the same Waffle House that the Hulk goes too, which results in a fight, which culminates with the two characters fucking on the final page. The only rewarding thing about this comic might be that it sort of proves a weird truth, which is that despite what some feminist critics might argue, super-hero comic books aren't more tasteful when they do sex scenes in black-out panels. While it would have been just as shitty a read if you'd had to see Zarda's sweaty body riding Hulk reverse cowgirl, it actually would've been hellaciously less disgusting. The way it is now, the reader has to imagine something, and that's just fucking irresponsible.
Wolverine # 70
Written by Mark Millar
Art by Steve McNiven, Dexter Vines, Morry Hollowell, Justin Ponsor & Mark Morales
Published by Marvel Comics
While every issue of Mark Millar's Logan as William Munny story has read like an extended version of the Watcher intro page that used to precede Marvel's What If? comic stories, #70 is the chapter where he and McNiven get down to the business of doing what they must assume everybody wanted to see in the first place, which was the sight of Wolverine killing every single one of the X-Men in a nasty little blood frenzy. Considering that the fight ends with Wolverine eviscerating that irritating (teenaged?) Jubilee character before laying his head down on the tracks in front of an oncoming train, sobbing all the way, you'd be hard pressed not to argue that the creators weren't absolutely correct: Pretty Much Worth Seeing, if only because it answers the hypothetical "would it be disturbing to see Wolverine kill Jubilee with his claws, or would it just be kind of amusing" with a resounding "ha, that is sort of funny." If it wasn't for the last page, where the story returns to old ass Logie and his buddy, blind ass Hawkeye, trading crotetchy old dialect that even Mr. Get Off My Lawn would have had rewritten, it would be just about the best issue of the storyline thus far. That, however, is still not saying much.
-Tucker Stone, 2009
Jewel heists - uh, dude? Diabolik.
Posted by: Sean Witzke | 2009.01.04 at 23:44
Point, yes. Still--you had to go back to 1960's Italian comics, that sort of helps my case as well.
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2009.01.05 at 00:05
"At this point, the artist decides that Black Canary is wasting her eyeball powers and her pupils disappear."
Wow...that's absolutely awesome! I'll honestly be chuckling at that all day....
Posted by: Kenny | 2009.01.05 at 08:50
I was impressed by how many of the stories in Bat-Manga involved the theft of jewels or fine art. That seemed like such an old-fashioned plot device.
Posted by: Matthew J. Brady | 2009.01.06 at 12:01