The Factual Opinion

Comics Of The Weak

Teen Titans 48
Written by Adam Beechen
Art by Al Barrionuevo & Bit

As good as Beechen's work can be on Robin, there's not much he could do in this placeholder issue of Teen Titans.  It looks like it might be time for DC to start throwing somebody, anybody to try and make the book readable again--considering it's meager cast of characters and near indecipherable purpose, that's going to be a bit difficult.  It's never been quite clear what to do with a Titans comic book, not since the series glory days in the eighties and early nineties.  What is clear is that producing an issue with hideous art and focusing on a subplot involving internment camps that makes Marvel's Civil War look Proustian in comparison isn't going to win any new fans to this series.  It wouldn't be very far off base to assume that if you took Teen Titans 48 home this week, you're probably not very excited for Teen Titans 49.  Which, considering these things don't come with lottery numbers, doesn't seem like a very good sign for this series.  Recommendation? Start lacing this comic with PCP, so readers can experience a foreign sensation: excitement.

Ultimate Fantastic Four 43
Written by Mike Carey
Art by Pasqual Ferry & Justin Ponsor

What's the point of the Ultimate line if they're just going to re-invent the same story?  That's the kind of question people probably asked before the whole thing started--and it was well-answered by the excellent work that was originally put into the core titles.  As it succeeded, it brought about expansion--to the point where now the Ultimate line is heading towards the same cluster of confusion that the regular Marvel line lays in.  Ultimate Fantastic Four has led the charge--it's almost completely like the regular Fantastic Four, except now the characters look like teenagers.  Teenagers that behave like their mid-30's counterparts.  Now, for some terrible reason, the worst of the Ultimate bunch has decided to deliver the "reinvention" treatment to the Silver Surfer character.  Which they, inexplicably, already did a little over a year ago in the Ultimate Galactus min-series.  Of course, if the magical "new reader" that Marvel is having wet dreams about actually exists, then this is the comic they're looking for after watching the poorly reviewed Fantastic Four movie last week.  While that doesn't make this well-constructed and totally uninteresting comic any better, it certainly goes a long way to explain it's existence.  If anything, it's the most mercenary comic currently on the shelf--to go any further than this, you'd have to put out something called "buy this so we can make money and get you to buy more."

Ultimate X-Men 83
Written by Robert Kirkman
Art by Pascal Alixe, Danny Miki, Allen Martinez & Victor Olazaba

The Ultimate X-Men title has fallen on hard times in the last few years--gone are the limited amounts of characters, the early stages of relationships--much like the complaints leveled at the Ultimate Fantastic Four, the X-Men title has become too much like, well, the regular X-Men titles.  That's too bad.  After all, the original X-Men ran for a decent amount of time before people started to actually complain about the fact that these "mutants," who complained of being "second-class citizens" actually seemed to have a pretty thriving community.  After the initial highs of seeing all these characters enlivened with reconstituted stories and the reliving of classic stories, this title has suffered from bad art, clumsy storytelling, and an ugly willingness to add new characters with every story arc.  While 83 isn't a sign of that changing, it's still better than most of what's come before it, and it seems like Robert Kirkman might have finally settled in and started his own experiments.  Still, considering the compulsive readability of his Walking Dead title, one wonders if Kirkman is holding his best work back for a book that actually belongs to him, and filling in on this just because it keeps his name fresh.

Legion of Super-Heroes 31
Written by Tony Bedard
Art by Kevin Sharpe & Robin Riggs

It's okay if you want to revamp the Legion.  If any ridiculously overstuffed comic book needs it, the Legion takes the cake, which is probably why it gets restarted every five years or so.  But the genius of the Legion has always rested in the fact that they had a character named Matter-Eater Lad, whose only ability was the ability to eat anything, hence his gorgeously accurate name.  So when Matter-Eater Lad shows up for the first time in years, any decent human being should get the chance to see him eat something.  And that, to put it simply, is why this issue of the Legion will suck cock in hell.

Wolverine Origins
Written by Daniel Way
Art by Steve Dillon

Wolverine continues his path towards proving himself to be the Chevy Chase of comic characters.  Sure, it was cool that one time he made that one snappy comeback after he killed somebody, but that time is a ways back.  Now you just wonder what gambling debts it is he's trying to pay off.  Why is Steve Dillon drawing this thing again?  Does Daniel Way have pictures of him clubbing dolphins?

The Nightly News 6
Writing & Art by Jonathan Hickman

There's probably a more cynical comic out there, but there aren't that many in the mainstream comic shops.  Hickman has a ways to go as a writer--few of his characters have much of an individual voice, and considering his modernist take on art, it's been difficult over the past six issues to discern who is doing what, and what side they are on.  Anything that is this grossly aggressive is certain to smack of a bit of naivete at times, and the News hasn't been shy about it's nihilistic attitude towards the media.  Still, reading six issues of watching television news personalities get shot in the face with high powered rifles could've gotten a lot more boring than it did.  Hickman is too early in his career to be judged that harshly--hopefully he'll improve from here. 

The Immortal Iron Fist 6
Written by Matt Fraction & Ed Brubaker
Art by David Aja & Russ Heath

There's no Marvel or DC comic coming out right now that is as much balls-out-fun as The Immortal Iron Fist--which should only be referred to by it's full title.  Insanely over the top fight scenes, filthy over-testeroned dialog and a lead character who wears a puke green bodysuit:  The Immortal Iron Fist remains the best argument for never, ever taking this stuff seriously.  It's like a Japanese steak knife tree:  no, you don't need it.  Nobody needs it.  But holy shit, it's fucking awesome.

Hellboy: Darkness Calls 3
Written by Mike Mignola
Art by Duncan Fegardo

The only argument for buying Hellboy by the issue is that you get a chance to read letters that people wrote regarding a year old mini-series.  That and the oft-recited "just supporting Dark Horse" claim.  Considering Hellboy has another movie coming out, helmed by the Academy-loved Guillermo Del Toro, Hellboy probably doesn't need the support.  And that's why there's no good reason to watch Mignola's stories unfold over the course of months: what makes for a great afternoon read isn't really that entertaining when the rhythm is broken up into 20-odd page segments.

Daredevil 98
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Michael Lark & Stefano Guadiano

Daredevil & Wolverine seem to have the same horrific sexually transmitted disease: sleeping with them seems to guarantee death.  (This little fact, unfortunately, was actually talked about, as if it were a serious issue, in this weeks copy of Wolverine Origins.)  The surprise of this issue is that Daredevil's current wife, a totally undeveloped character who was little more than a deus ex machina holdover from Daredevil's Bendis period, doesn't actually die.  Of course, she gets dragged across town on rooftops by a mentally deranged supervillain who wears circular sawblades on his arms, so it doesn't really make much logical sense that she escapes relatively unscathed.  Still, she does, so here's hoping that her upcoming demise is being saved for the sure-to-be-overpriced Daredevil 100.  Ed Brubaker is one of the better writers in the current mainstream superhero books, but unless he starts calling this comic Daredevil and The Blind Woman He Married Because He Was Sort Of Depressed, it's time for Milla to join the ranks of women who thought it was a good idea to sleep with a superhero that a lot of murderous freaks seem to hate.  This doesn't look like the year that Marvel is going to realize that making a character blind is a shortcut for making a character interesting. You have to wrap them in leather for that trick to work.

-Tucker Stone Will Tell You On Friday About Two Comics Worth Buying, 2007

Epidemic

1987
Directed by Lars von Trier
Written by Niels Vorsel & Lars von Trier

By all accounts, you don't need to write a letter to the DVD company.  That ever-present title at the top left of the screen, the one that says "Epidemic" in blood red letters?  That's supposed to be there.  Von Trier put it there, even when this movie was in theaters.  Don't ask what it means--hell, while you're at it, don't ask what any of Epidemic means.  You'll never be happy that way.  Just trust him--after all, he's going to tell you, pretty early on in the film, that he plans to stay boring until the movie reaches the 80 minute mark.  (As he puts it to his co-star/writing partner/actual friend, "We have to put drama here.  They will want to walk out, so we give them some drama.")

Epidemic is one of those movies about movies, more exercise than film, and it doesn't serve anyone going into to expect anything more to it.  If Von Trier doesn't interest you, than don't go anywhere near this film--you'll hate it completely.  You may hate it completely even if you like the man's work.  But if you're a fan, then it's required viewing, and you'd be remiss to ignore the hour long FreeDogme film on the special features.  Everybody else should skip it--except for the last ten minutes.  Trust us--you may think you have enough screaming and crying in your life, but until you've made it through Epidemic, you're missing out.

-Tucker Stone, 2007

Even Cowgirls Get The Blues

1983
Written and Directed by Gus Van Sant
Based on a novel by Tom Robbins
Starring Uma Thurman, John Hurt, Rain Phoenix, Lorraine Bracco, Keanu Reeves, Crispin Glover, "Pat" Morita, Udo Kier and Roseanne Barr

There's a difference between bad movies: some are just bad, while some are so offensively terrible that they inspire a near physical revulsion in the viewer.  It's unfair to even place movies that are merely gross in the second category.  For example, just because you're grossed out by the eight minute rape scene in Irreversible, you can't categorize the movie alongside something like Cowgirls.  They aren't the same type of bad.  Bad is 16 Blocks, or the Assault on Precinct 13 remake.  Even Cowgirls Get The Blues is somewhere beyond those movies--or, to be more technically accurate, somewhere beneath them.  Similar to the common cliche that you can't really hate something if you've never had any liking for it, Cowgirls is one of those astonishing failures made almost completely out of objects that had worked, and would work again--yet when those objects came together in Cowgirls, they annihilated one each others respective goodness and laid bare a movie that, had films any power to damage the world they are viewed in, would have broken our planet in half.

It should be noted that, regardless of what the world may think, the offices of the Factual firmly hold the belief that all of Tom Robbins literary output belongs solely under the purview of a toilet bowl; less histrionically put, the man writes books of shit.  It's not only unlikely that a good version of a book of his could be made into a film, it's also true that any accurate representation of his works would result in a film that wouldn't be even remotely entertaining.  Considering that Gus Van Sant's version of the Cowgirls novel is oft-derided by Kool Aid slurping ex-hippies as not being faithful enough to Robbins new age horseshit, this viewer wishes that the Van Sant has just gone ahead and filmed the damn book in it's entirety.  The resulting film would have still been horrible, but at least all the blame could have rested on Robbins shoulders--as it is, the mess Mr. Portland brought to the screen is, in some aspect, partly his fault.  As a side-note, Rain Phoenix is, without any shade of doubt, completely his fault.  There's not a single director on earth that would have been foolhardy enough to give this young lady such a healthy part.  While we're all sure that she's a real sweetheart, she can barely form cogent sentences, much less act.  She's got the type of charisma that makes people fall asleep at documentaries--she's just that boring.  Watching her drop her pants and threaten a homosexual John Hurt with her "stinky, tuna fish-smelling, unwashed" genitalia doesn't help.  Honestly, Judi Dench and Glenn Close probably couldn't make that hideous scene work, but Ms. Phoenix is particularly unsuited for it.  We were all real upset about River too, Mr. Van Sant, but it doesn't mean i asked Joaquin if he wanted to clean my teeth.  I asked my dad, because he's a dentist.  Having a dead brother doesn't make anybody a great actor.

Rain may have have the excuse that she doesn't have a clue how to speak, but the rest of the cast doesn't.  All of these people, even the abominable Lorraine Bracco, have been good before.  (Well, Roseanne was only good on her sitcom, and Mr. Miyagi's career is made up of extended riffs on racial stereotypes, but still, both know how to work with a bad script.)  It's easy to single out certain performers for abuse--John Hurt has been a genius in some awful stuff, and his one-note performance here, in a role that screams for far more exploitation than he's willing to give, speaks to a lack of courage that is totally incongruent with the performer we know he can be.  His omnipresent narrator in Von Trier's Dogville is far more fascinating in one-minute sound bites than the irritating and neutered Countess he appears as in Cowgirls.  Uma Thurman learned how to make the bizarro work by the time her career took her to the Kill Bill films, and she's able to skate by here solely by using bland facial expressions, but the movie never attempts to explore what type of story can be told when it's protagonist is a numbed out cypher of a human being.  In all, only two of this films performers actually move into the realm of good, unsurprisingly enough, it's Udo Kier and Crispin Glover--two men who have the most pumped up charisma of any human beings on the planet.  (In all seriousness, isn't it about time to clone whatever is running through Udo Kier's veins?  The man made Johnny Pneumonic entertaining.  He's clearly a god.)

There's not much to say about the actual plot of the movie, which is why it hasn't been mentioned until now: because there isn't one.  There's a fight over the ownership of a ranch, settled by having a bunch of lesbian feminist cowgirls drop trough to unleash their "stinky pussies."  (Hey, if that offends you, don't blame me.  It offended me too, and I'm about as ambivalent to sexism as you can be before people start calling you a misogynist.)  Of course, then the cowgirls drug a bunch of whooping cranes with peyote, thereby cooling out "their bad vibes."  (Only in a Tom Robbins book could an endangered species be saved by this kind of pointless idiocy.)  Unexplored subplots abound, none of which are missed when abandoned.  If that isn't enough, Uma spends the majority of the film with massive fake thumbs, neither of which look very real--yet are still capable of being completely repulsive.

There's absolutely no good reason to watch this movie.  The only acceptable one that this viewer came up with is that it cemented forever the truism that Gus Van Sant's what-the-fuck remake of Psycho wasn't really that bad.  It's boring, sure.  But it's no Cowgirls Get The Blues.

Comics Of The Weak

Countdown # 45
Written by Paul Dini, Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray
Art by J. Calafiore and Mark McKenna
Published by DC Comics 

It took five people to make this thing? Not counting the cover, which showcases 11 characters, 10 of whom don't appear in the issue? Last week The Factual's resident comics reader/purchaser chose to stop picking up Batman/Superman, and this week he decided that he's done with Countdown as well. Besides the all-around "Omigod WHO CARES" of this series, we've now reached the point where one begins questioning whether one should reassess that whole love/admiration thing we had going for Paul Dini. Also, continually buying this series is going to make DC think we want more of these type of hideous comic books. While no one here at the quiet, dust covered offices cares that much about politics or Paris, we do like our voice to be heard wherein it relates to whether or not they give the non-Ralph Macchio Karate Kid his own comic series. (Game point: WE DON'T WANT ONE.)

Flash # 13
Written by Mark Guggenheim
Art by Tony Daniel
Published by DC Comics 

The first Flash comic that ever crossed the desk of the Factual was the issue where Wally West got shot in the chest and spent the next issue roaming around Heaven, which was full of all the incredibly attractive disproportionately large women that had graced DC Comics throughout the early 90's. We were young. We liked the issue. Of course, he was brought back the next issue, got a sleeker costume that was eventually ignored, and we saw no reason to keep up with the book anymore. When last years rumor, that Wally would be replaced by the complete non-character known as Bart Allen, proved true, the Factual gave the Flash another chance. It only took one--it was a terrible comic, even by the increasingly low standards that superhero comics are afforded. Here we are, a year later, showing up like a ghoul at your mothers wake...see, Bart got hisself killed. Although the pages of Flash 13 will tell you that Bart got himself killed by multiple shots to his bloody head, finishing touches provided by a good old fashioned stomping, the truth is that Bart is dead because his comic didn't sell, and his comic didn't sell because he (the character) was a dipshit. (And yes, that's a technical term.) While other comics readers might pretend that they feel sorry now, or they might pull the "goddamn superhero fans can't handle change" card, the truth is that nobody bought this book, and it was time for DC to figure out a way to make some money off a character they might be able to squeeze a movie out of. (And while it's true that superhero fans can't handle change, this just happen to be one of those times when their infantile complaints happened to be in congruence with terrible, terrible writing. Make sure no one tells them.) Oh, and if you're one of those types who feels like talking about how this issue made you realize you liked the character now that he's died like "a hero," you should probably take a shower and blow your fucking brains out. Bart Allen is dead--we're glad to see him go.

Fallen Son: Spider-Man # 1
Written by Jeph Loeb
Art By David Finch
Published by Marvel Comics 

Writing a non-Ultimate Spider-Man comic is probably the easiest comic job in the universe--all you have to do is have Peter Parker crying about all the people in his life who have died through the vaguest fault of his own. Having him cry in the middle of the night in a rainy cemetery? Genius. He makes Philip Seymour Hoffman's character in Magnolia look like Carl Weathers in Predator.

 

Justice League of America 10
Written by Brad Meltzer
Art By Ed Benes and Sandra Hope
Ridiculously Breast Cover by Michael Turner

More than one person actually works at DC Comics.  Actual adults!  Yet this is what shows up on one of their comic books?  Nobody ever says, gee guys, isn't this a little over the top?  It looks like her spine should snap in half.  There's a comic that happened underneath this cover, but the story doesn't have anything to do with the gross abuse of human anatomy that the cover promises.  I don't even look at this cover and think I'm going to be reading pornography.  I just look at it and hate myself.  That's not funny.

Robin 163
Written by Adam Beechen
Art by Freddie Williams III

These two haven't been doing Robin very long, but they've succeeded in doing the best run on the title since the Dixon/Lyle days, and those are rapidly becoming a time soon to be referred to as 20 years ago.  It's not like you can expect much from the comic--nothing of major importance is ever going to happen in it, since DC will only let those type of things happen in the pages of the marquee books or the constant stream of crossovers.  Instead, Beechen is free to write about whatever he wants--and so he's churning out relatively entertaining stuff every month.  No one is ever going to hit a comic store day of to pick up an issue of the book, but there's really no good reason to leave it sitting there if you happen to be around.  If this keeps up, these guys could be looked to to run a master class on how to write good superhero tales that don't care about being "important."  It's also nice not to see Beechen allow Robin's interracial romance turn into some kind of cheeseball "lesson" on tolerance.  We're not going to do any research, but if memory serves, there's been absolutely no acknowledgment or apology made for Robin's galpal being black, not from her parents, not from Batman, and not from any extraneous racist caricature.  They're just treated like 16 year olds with crushes.  Comic books are notorious for manipulating racial and sexual characteristics into a constant drone of MTV News style preaching, and Robin is certainly no exception, but this subplot goes on unremarked ed upon.  It's rather pleasant to see that happening, even if it is in a low selling title about a sidekick.

The Spirit 7
Written by Walt Simonson, Jimmy Palmiotti, and Kyle Baker
Art by Jordi Bernet, Chris Sprouse, Karl Story & Kyle Baker

Ah, the anthology issue.  It only took six comics to get to one this time.  That's no record, but here's hoping that's the bar.  Considering the talent behind this seat-filler of an issue, The Spirit is still 7 issues into the best run of anything DC has had in a while--faint praise, that, but praise meant kindly.  Out of the three, Simonson's is the weakest, Palmiotti's is a little too in love with Eisner's Contract With God, while Kyle Baker's serves solely as a reminder of how incredibly stupid it was for DC not to keep paying this guy to do whatever he wanted with Plastic Man.  Having Kyle Baker on a comic book just makes everything around it seem a hell of a lot better than it probably is.

Checkmate 15
Written by Judd Winick and Greg Rucka
Art by Joe Bennett and Jack Jadson

Checkmate continues to be the only mainstream comic that is telling relatively intelligent stories that have some vague connection to what the world is like in 2007, but that doesn't excuse them from a mild spanking.  Anybody who watches 24 knows that Jack Bauer is Batman, and if Jack Bauer is willing to invade the sovereign territory of an Asian nation, regardless of the danger of an international incident, than Batman will do the same.  We don't need to have it actually happen in the comic book.  Doing it in the same issue that features a character being tortured?  That just speaks to a great laziness.

The Incredible Hulk 107
Written by Greg Pak
Art by Gary Frank and Jon Sibal

What's the point of this whole thing again?  Wouldn't it be more interesting to just have the big green guy go town to town, solving crimes?  Like Murder She Wrote?

Hellblazer 233
Written by Andy Diggle
Art by Leonardo Manco

It's never a surprise when Hellblazer is good.  It may have been a while that it's been balls-out great, but it's been even longer since it was merely bad--the latest issue doesn't hit the extremes, it's just another solid issue.  Constantine dealing with the past by shoveling another vile act on top instead of making actual change--nothing wrong with that, if anything, it's more reminiscent of a "no shame in my game" attitude.  Last week, Marvel published an issue of New Avengers that posed the question (as of yet unanswered) of what to do when you've got a nasty infant with murder on the brain.  Knowing mainstream Marvel, they'll probably stretch it out for awhile and try to milk some tears.  Andy Diggle, through sheer luck, happened to have the same question thrown at his main character in this months Hellblazer--and it was answered.  By chucking the little bugger off a cliff.  It's not often enough that a grown man can pay for a comic that involves infanticide by way of the heave-ho.  Here's hoping it starts a trend.

Captain America 27
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Steve Epting and Mike Perkins

Seeing Kyle Baker and Ed Brubaker turning out quality work on the same day is a cruel reminder of how intensely stupid DC Comics can be:  both these guys used to work in your house, and you couldn't keep them happy enough to stay?  Brubaker continues a tremendously entertaining run on the title, even now that the title character is still dead.  That's a feat, especially considering his absence has rapidly begun to showcase what an empty suit Captain America had become--as each issue passes, the Captain America comic seems to be getting better because Cap isn't in it--shouldn't the opposite be true?  It doesn't hurt that Steve Epting's art is extraordinarily good, or that Brubaker's Winter Soldier character continues to have more charisma than he has any right to.  It's too bad that Marvel won't let Cap stay dead--because this comic is really going to be a tough ride when he returns.

Ultimate Spider-Man 110
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Mark Bagley and Drew Hennessy

Any eulogizing for Mark Bagley should be saved for the next issue, when his replacement takes over.  Still, it is bittersweet to look at these pages, knowing that he won't be here for the foreseeable future--forget about Ditko, Romita, McFarlane: Spider-Man will always belong to Bagley's pencils.  As per usual, Bendis turns out another brilliant comic that spins on hairpins, hits the regular marks that a Peter Parker comic requires and still manages to make the whole thing seem totally fresh and new.  Bendis already has one of the greatest pieces of long-form superhero storytelling finished up with what he and Alex Maleev did for Daredevil--it's an incredible pleasure that he still hasn't lost a step on Ultimate Spider-Man. 

-Tucker Stone, 2007