The Factual Opinion

The Top 25 Albums of 1983: #11

Malcolm Mclaren
Duck Rock

When Sex Pistols’ svengali Malcolm McLaren first heard hip-hop, he equated it to “the black punk rock,” which may account for the not-quite-racist-but-still-makes-you-feel-kinda-weird name for his first album.  Duck Rock is, essentially, a hip-hop and world music mix-tape.  McLaren’s actual, musical contributions to the album remain mostly unclear.  As the mastermind behind Duck Rock (or, at least, the person who took credit for it), though, McLaren proved unnervingly prescient:  “Double Dutch” and “Buffalo Gals” became major chart hits in the UK, signaling rap’s overseas commercial viability; the album forecasts pop music’s mid-80’s obsession with African sounds; the framing device of the World Famous Supreme Team’s radio show that weaves in and out of the album created a mold for both hip-hop album structures (like De La Soul’s 3 Feet High And Rising and De La Soul Is Dead) and mix-tape influenced albums (like Sublime’s 40 Oz. To Freedom); Duck Rock’s open mind toward the sounds that could sound good together influenced luminaries like Timbaland (world music) and OutKast (the album ends with “Duck For The Oyster,” an actual hoe-down); plus, a handful of the studio musicians who worked on the album—including former Buggle Trevor Horn—took some of their between-song noodling and used it to kick-start The Art Of Noise.  So McLaren had his finger on the pulse of a generation not once, but twice—first with punk rock, then with Duck Rock—which not only gives him a solid edge over Col. Tom Parker in a Celebrity Death Match, but gives us one of the most wide-reaching, genre-overhauling, anachronistic albums of 1983.

-Marty Brown, 2007

The Top 25 Albums of 1983: #12

The The
Soul Mining

What must life be like for the tender The The fan?  Do they cry out everytime Radiohead gets mentioned that The The was out there in the new wave days making Art Rock for people who hate Art Rock?  Does the Cure, another effete band with some seriously sentimental vocals, make The The fans blister with rage?  What about when people start talking about how completely over the top ridiculous that album Dusk was?  (Okay, that's insane.  Nobody who listened to Dusk doesn't already know how good Soul Mining is.)

That's the thing about Soul Mining--it's short as hell, and the band who made it is still around, furiously chugging gallons of spring water so they can keep urinating all over their memory--yet Soul Mining is so damn good that it doesn't matter.  (Since you probably don't know the album, imagine if Nickleback had recorded Appetite for Destruction, in it's entirety, before Guns N' Roses had.  And then everything else they made was just regular, shitty Nickleback recordings.)  That's what Soul Mining is like--it's not just better than The The's entire catalog, it's a damn perfect recording on it's own.

-Tucker Stone, 2007 would like to inform The The that they should handwrite a thank you card to the band !!! to thank them for coming up with the new champion in irritating ass band names to write down.

Comics Of The Weak

Justice League of America Wedding Special # 1
Written by Dwayne McDuffie
Art by Mike McKone & Andy Lanning
Published by DC Comics

Why does this need to be a # 1?  Does that really increase sales?  Prove it.  Not with the proof where you describe how being a # 1 always increases sales.  Prove it with this issue.

This is the sort of comic that McDuffie seems to do well at, as it's not far removed from his work on the Justice League cartoon, a judgment based on total ignorance on his work on said cartoon.  There's the villain team-up, with it's requisite two-page splash of all the bad guys participating in this version of the team-up.  As per usual, the big name guys are up front, and the remainders are positioned based on their obscurity level.  At this point, who still gets excited by these?  And why?  These team-ups always fail.  Always.  Everytime.  Who cares?

Besides that, there's some relatively funny banter regarding who's going to pay for the strippers that Green Arrow doesn't want, and then some terrible speech balloon placement between some characters.  And then a dramatic last page statement.  It's nothing that hasn't been done before, and it's nothing that isn't always done, every time a comics company decides to marry two characters.  Which makes it acceptable, i suppose, to somebody.  Just not me.

Suicide Squad: From The Ashes # 1
Written by John Ostrander
Art by Javi Pina & Robin Riggs
Published by DC Comics

At this point, this series seems to be an "Untold Tale" of the relatively successful Suicide Squad comic, a team blessed with an excellent name and damned with predictability. After all, somehow this team is going to become the one who already showed up over at last weeks Outsiders issue.  Which means this a comic that openly embraces the whole complete predictability that nearly ever mainstream comic pretends to subvert.  Still, Ostrander has more experience with the Squad than anybody else (as he's the first writer to watch the Squad end in publication oblivion.)  Considering the success of the Thunderbolts comic at Marvel, which wholeheartedly embraced the Squad's plot--just like the Squad stole from the Dirty Dozen.  Obviously, a far more entertaining comic would just be a straight up non-superhero comic like the Dirty Dozen.  Since that's not going to happen, here's hoping that this book will be more of a sequel/spin-off of the superb Checkmate series that no one seems be purchasing.

Ultimate X-Men # 86
Written by Robert Kirkman
Art by Yanick Paquette, Serge Lapointe, & Karl Story
Published by Marvel Comics

Tiresome, bland work--this reader has already given up on Ultimate Fantastic Four, and it looks like Ultimate X-Men is the next to go. Over and over, the whole thing with a book like this is that it demands the reader to argue with that part of the adult brain that says--you gave up on this dumbass shit when it was the regular continuity, why the fuck are you going back down this road?  It's the same tired ass goof-ball fuckery.  What's to be gained?  There's some comics that have earned some chances--Iron Fist had a story that wasn't to this readers taste, and sometimes New Avengers is just beyond moronic.  But they're, most of the time, pretty entertaining ways to kill some time.  Very few super-hero books end up competing alongside Ozu and Mann for aesthetic prizes.  Most of the time, they're just an alternative to a rerun of Law & Order, or My Two Dads, or a book by Ian Fleming.  It's not as if people (this reader included) are choosing a shitty Fantastic Four comic instead of starting on Proust' Sodom & Gomorrah.  (It's not that they don't read Proust, don't get sand in your panties.  It's that the two don't fit the same hole, or need, depending on how sensitive you want to get.)  That's fine too--sometimes we'd rather watch Jaws than sit through Visconti's Leopard.  It's not the end of the fucking world.

But in the case of Ultimate X-Men, it's not even worth the time--Ultimate X-Men has, after a pretty entertaining beginning, turned into the same lame shit that dragged down the regular X-books--it's just a love affair with itself.  Month in and month out, it adds a little more obscura to the trivia pile, introduces another couple of characters, revamps another revamp, and it's down to dwindling returns.  It's a comic for nobody--so why buy it?

Ultimate Power # 7
Written by Jeph Loeb
Art by Greg Land & Jay Leister
Published by Marvel Comics

Guess what i am?  A comic that no longer makes any sense.  If this came out in any remote sort of timely fashion, it might come across as believable that Jeph Loeb had known where it was going, and what was going to happen.  Considering that it hasn't, and the Jeph Loeb this reader has gotten to know over the course of a six month fight scene in a Wolverine comic that resolved itself by saying that brunettes wolf-people always hate blonde wolf-people, Ultimate Power # 7 is still a remarkable travesty of terrible storytelling.  The only way this book could be entertaining would be if you turned the page and there was an explicit drawing of Spider-man taking Nick Fury into his mouth. 

Oh, can we say we hate Greg Land?  Have people started saying that openly yet, the way they finally did with Rob Liefeld?  'Cause Greg Land? 

Hate him.

Stormwatch: PHD # 11
Written by Christos Gage
Art by Andy Smith
Published by Wildstorm/DC Comics

Stormwatch: PHD is on it's way out, and wouldn't it be nice to say it's going down swinging?  It's not, though.  The art looks like it's drawn by somebody who's late for dinner, scrawled by a guy half-standing up on his way to go out the door.  The story seems loosely connected to something that happened in the last issue, but maybe not, and who cares, and I'll see you later.  And just in case you get bored, a police station blows up at the end.  It's too bad that this book didn't catch more readers--and it's too bad that the entire Wildstorm line has suffered such a serious abortion of a revamp.  The only bright spot seems to be that at least all those comics writers and artists who apparently didn't want to do the work won't have the opportunity to waste anybody else's time.

Ghost Rider # 15
Written by Daniel Way
Art by Javier Saltares & Mark Texeira
Published by Marvel Comics

Next to Iron Fist, there's nothing that Marvel puts out that's as much stupid fun as Ghost Rider can be.  Safely put, Ghost Rider isn't really much of a character--he's just a 14 year old's drawing that shows up every month and does random shit.  In the case of Daniel Way's version of this pre-pubescent scratchbook, random shit is defined as killing different physical embodiments of the devil, which works out to be funny, violent, and ridiculous in a totally pleasurable fashion.  After all, since the Rider is just killing different satanic hosts all the time, the comic is free to go pretty much anywhere, and do anything.  If it was issue number 245 of that, it would be stale--but it's only issue 15.  There's enough meat on the bone yet. 

BPRD: The Killing Ground # 2
Written by Mike Mignola & John Arcudi
Art by Guy Davis
Published by Dark Horse Comics

BPRD is becoming the Godfather 2 of comic books--the sequel that's better than it's papa bear.  Don't get it twisted-it's not there yet. Hellboy was this good before--it's just not this good now.  But if Mignola, Arcudi & Davis keep this up, it won't be too long before the BPRD becomes the tattered trade on the shelf where a copy of Wake the Devil used to be. 

Punisher War Journal # 11
Written by Matt Fraction
Art by Leo Fernandez & Francisco Paronzini
Published by Marvel Comics

It would be interesting to figure out how much control over this book Matt Fraction actually has--his work on Casanova and Iron Fist makes it clear that he's gotten a grasp on making a monthly comic regularly entertaining.  Yet, for whatever reason, his War Journal work is a constant stream of mis-fires.  This issue, which consisted of three intertwined stories of declining quality seems to be based around plot contrivances that don't really come across as anything but plot points for other comic books.  While that isn't necessarily something anybody who reads Marvel comics isn't used to, it's so clear that Fraction is better than this that it begs the question: why put him on the book at all?  It's just a waste of his talent, and speaks to the sort of editorial idiocy that's currently crushing the majority of DC's output.

DMZ # 23
Writing and Cover by Brian Wood
Art by Riccardo Burchielli
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

Brian Wood does one-shot stories better than most people do long story arcs, including himself.  This issue is yet another solid work, and stands alongside his map of New York or his early "Ghosts" story as the best of what DMZ has to offer.  While some readers seem to prefer keeping up with the trials and tribulations of Wood's journalist protagonist Matty Roth, this writer will always argue that the best things DMZ does is when it barrels down the life outside the frame--and this issue can serve as a case-in-point.  The story of a graffitti artist, a guy who's singular obsession has remained untouched by the civil war that's savaged his hometown, it's a story with a surprisingly touching conclusion, and it's a story that's told well--which is what Vertigo should be doing anyway.

The New Avengers # 34
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Lenil Yu & Dave McCaig
Published by Marvel

Far more interesting than the Skrull storyline that it will birth, this issue of the New Avengers is another talk-heavy relationship issue that cements why Bendis should really find work in television: the least interesting thing about these characters is that they have costumes and super-powers, and the least interesting parts of the comic are the attempt to create tension with a cliffhanger.  While it will always be mildly entertaining to see Wolverine (or any character) shot in the testicular area, it's not the thing that anybody will remember from the comic.  Actually, what will they remember?  Did Dr. Strange get laid in this issue?  Oh no, it was the talking.  The talking was funny.

Ultimate Spider-Man # 113
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Stuart Immonen & Wade von Grawbadger
Published by Marvel Comics

Ultimate Spider-Man is a comic that, on occasion, can straddle the line of being more than just a good super-hero comic.  Most of the time, it's just a damn fine comic about Spider-Man.  Lately, it seems to be spinning it's wheels--maybe it's time for the writer to turn the reins over to someone else?  It's not a bad comic, but the Ultimate line does seem to be dying on the vine, and it would be sad if it's strongest book--which Spider-Man has always been--went down the same lethargic path that the line's version of the X-Men has carved.

Daredevil # 100
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Michael Lark, Stefano Gaudiano, Marko Djurdjevic, John Romita Sr, Al Milgrom, Bill Sienkiewicz, Alex Maleev & Lee Bermejo
Also reprints Daredevil # 90-91
Published by Marvel Comics

It sure looks like it's going to be a big deal, doesn't it?  A big fat comic book with a full page of pencilers, all underneath the banner of Brubaker?  And yet, all that it is meandering riff on those issues of Batman where Scarecrow sprays him with some hallucinogenic gas and he wanders around seeing his dead parents.  Sure, Brubaker ups the nasty by having Daredevil beat the hell out of innocent police officers, but this issue doesn't really offer much beyond that.  (Excepting the murder of another one of Daredevil's ever-dwindling supporting cast, and the even that is only a surprise because it's the reporter friend, and not someone who's made the mistake of having sex with Mr. Blind Lawyer.)  Although the art is nothing to sneer at, it's just as painfully disjointed as can be expected, used only to distinguish that what Daredevil's seeing isn't real.  It's also another case where you remember that Sienkiewicz can be good, but only when he's giving enough time and freedom to make it work.  (Where's Big Numbers, you lazy fucker?)   Still, Bendis had an issue like this--a big "important" issue that consisted of way too many artists, and it didn't send his run off the rails.

-Tucker Stone, 2007

The Top 25 Albums of 1983: #13

The Wipers
Over The Edge

For a dyed-in-the-wool pessimist, Wipers’ Greg Sage is a bit of a softie.  “Why do people hate each other?,” he sings on Over The Edge’s “What Is,” “Why can’t it be just brother and sister?”  But, while those questions may sound like direct descendants of the free love ideals of the late 60’s, in Sage’s hands they speak more about isolation and longing than about togetherness and harmony.  That angsty tug of desiring closeness—from a lover, from society, from one’s fellow man—and believing oneself unworthy or incapable of it pops up all over Wipers’ third album.  Over The Edge was the follow-up to their breakthrough, Youth Of America, and you could string the two album titles together to paint a pretty accurate portrait of the characters that populate Sage’s songs: Youth Of America Over The Edge.  Like Minor Threat’s Ian MacKaye, Sage sounds like an old soul trapped in a teenage mind-frame—on one song he’s “Living in Doom Town,” in another, “Only the good die young”—and, as a result, Over The Edge turns out an album-length skateboarding soundtrack.  Behind every kick-flip lurks the possibility of broken bones.

Largely forgotten among the indie rock and post-punk trailblazers of the early 80’s, Wipers proved chiefly instrumental in the development of the Seattle-based sound that became grunge in the late 80’s and early 90’s.  Mudhoney, Alice In Chains, and, yup, Nirvana all picked up both the innate longing for contact in Sage’s tunes, and his incredible ability to write what were essentially pop songs with a punk rock sensibility.  Amongst their 1983 peers, however, Wipers’ sullenness stands in stark contrast to the aggro punk that dominated the time.  It’s almost as if Sage predicted or pre-empted his own band’s outsider legacy.  On “The Lonely One,” for example, Sage practically lays out Wipers’ mission statement: “For all the lonely ones, who live life in the dreams/ It's so cold and lonely outside, so it seems./ So you keep on searching, anyway./ Maybe you'll find someone tomorrow, cuz you haven't today.”

-Marty Brown, 2007

Boudu Sauvé Des Eaux (Boudu Saved From Drowning)

Directed by Jean Renoir
Screenplay by Jean Renoir & Albert Valenin
Based on the Play by Rene Fauchois
Starring Michel Simon, Marcelle Hainia, Charles Granval & Severine Lerczinska
Released in 1932
Available in the US from Criterion

Time hasn't treated the old comic actors that well--whether one likes it or not, and most of their fans don't, Chaplin and Keaton aren't paid much attention to anymore by the masses.  Even Jim Carrey seems to have hung up his rubber-faced shtick, while the current vogue for dry improvisation and a healthy collection of wigs shows no sign of abatement.  That's not for anyone to say that's a good or a bad thing: comedy isn't like drama in a lot of great ways, and while it's sad that most people born today will never check out A Night At The Opera, that shouldn't mean they suffer character assassination at the hands of those who do.  (They should just suffer never getting to see A Night At The Opera.)

Michel Simon played at being a real actor, and he eventually found success at it--and many will tell you he found it in Boudu.  Luckily, those people don't work here.  Like our previous installment in the Great Directors category, this film is just better than a trifle, and far from a masterpiece.  It's early in Renoir's sound days, but for whatever reason, it's quite unlike his later literary adaptations in that there's a lot less of the type of exploration and experimentation.  Instead, Renoir's direction and screenplay play it straight, and the meat of the film lays on the shoulders of Michel Simon, who, unlike his director, chooses to do whatever he feels like with the material he's given.  At the time, Simon's performance was treated with some rapturous response, and although film criticism wasn't dealt with substantially during the early 30's, Simon's work was something acknowledged with a decent recognition for it's uniqueness.  It deserved it--and in a professional, theoretical manner, it still is something quite special.

It's just no longer that entertaining, and it's uniqueness suffers under the weight of the last 70 years--after all, the overweight, ignorant clown has since been done far better.  Watching Boudu's wrecking of the kitchen, or his bizarre seduction of his saviors uptight wife, one automatically begins to compare his work to John Belushi or John Candy, and the comparison leaves Simon's work seeming quite amateurish--and the truth is, that it is rather amateurish.  That's part of it's charm--much like the film itself, it's an interesting diversion, a valiant effort by intelligent men to create art out of a play written for the unwashed.  And therein lies the basic problem--as a worthy piece of exploration into a director who's best work stands among the greatest films of all time, it's not an unpleasant film--no, but all that aside, it's a comedy that just isn't very funny.  The argument has been made, and made again and again, that Boudu is really about an attack on the dishonest sentiment and inherent cruelty of the middle class towards those who refuse to acknowledge it's mores, that's a reading that I refuse to endorse--because that's a reading of Renoir's greater works, and one that Boudu can't support.  Even the vaguest of similarities requires a ridiculous amount of intellectual gamesmanship for this film to stand alongside Rules of the Game in thematical agreement.  Still, it is Renoir--and bad Renoir is going to be far more rewarding than anything else that pops up at the local multiplex for the next...well, let's say 19 years, just to be polite.

-Tucker Stone, 2007

Comics of the Weak

Outsiders: Five of a Kind: Metamorpho & Aquaman #1
Written by G. Willow Wilson
Art by Josh Middleton
Published by DC Comics

That's got to be a fake name.  Gee Willy Wilson?  There's no way that's real.  A word about the "art by" tag, that's especially applicable to this issue--"Art by" on this site means the penciler and the inker.  (And if Art Thibert and Klaus Jansen haven't taught you yet, inkers can make or break pencils.)  "Art by," when it's used here, doesn't include colorists--not as an insult, just because--well, the only people who care about the distinction don't read anything here anyway.  Most of the people who read these little diatribes don't even know what an inker is.  That's the way Factual Opinion likes it.  I'd bet that, due to our lack of interest in advertisement or regular posting, Marty and I are on first name basis with at least 94% of our readers.  That being said, this comics art was all by Middleton, somebody i don't believe I've ever seen.  It's excellent work, rather like blasted animation cells.  Good superhero art--probably wouldn't work for anything but this sort of stuff.  He also does his own coloring, and he's great at that too. 

Oh, and the story is the least irritating of all these one-shots so far, mainly because it features Metamorpho, and he's a character who every comic writer seems to be able to pull off.  I've read a lot of bad comics with Metamorpho, but I've yet to see someone not write the character well--even when it's stupid book, old Rex Mason still stands tall.  It might have something to do with the name "Rex Mason."

Birds of Prey #109
Written by Tony Bedard
Art by Nicola Scott & Doug Hazlewood
Published by DC Comics

Nothing excites a reader more than to sit down to a comic that one already has tremendously low expectations for, only to discover that reading it brings about such a repellent feeling that the thought of eating one owns shit begins to be more and more attractive.  Hey. DC.  You know what no one, ever, in the world wants to read in a crappy superhero comic book?  Two girls yammering on and on about whether or not one of them should get married.  The only thing that makes this comic a triumph is that it has a really cheesy scene of two lesbians in bed together.  And why?  Not because it's sexy.  It's not.  It's unsexy.  It's the opposite of sexy.  Fire hydrants are sexier.  No, the lesbian scene is great because every time there is a lesbian scene in a comic book, no matter how moronic, all the creepy bigoted assholes on comic book message boards get really upset, and they write these long essays on message boards and blogs about how awful it is to show homosexuality in a comic book.  It's great.  Those essays are like those notebooks they find in John Doe's apartment in Se7en--except instead of the ravings of a sociopath, it's like the diary of a retarded Baptist preacher.  Every nasty thing that you've ever thought about conservative Christian zealots gets proven true, in flying colors.  By the time anybody reads this little paragraph, this little paragraphs writer is going to be lolling around in an opium den wallpapered with some of the craziest shit this little internet can provide.

The Legion of Super-Heroes
Written by Tony Bedard
Art by Dennis Calero
Published by DC Comics

Tony Bedard doesn't get a lot of love in these offices, which isn't really that fair.  He does, after all, seem to be the go-to guy for short comic arcs between big name writers and artists.  It can't be that flattering, to be the guy who's brought in solely because Big Writer #12 needs a few months to work up his story arc, and DC doesn't want people to forget that they publish a Legion comic book.  Still, Bedard does kind of ask to get kicked in the nuts--he should know that having Tenzil Kim around, and not having Tenzil eat lots of shit--that's just asking for it. 

Either way, he's been building up to this, the issue where the reader finally gets to see Matter Eater Lad eat some motherfucking Matter--and as confusing as the story has been, it's still hard to screw that up.  All you have to do is hand the script to the artist and say, "There.  Page Two--have the dude in the sunglasses eat shit."  Bang!  Comic gold.

Green Arrow Year One #4
Written by Andy Diggle
Art by Jock
Published by DC Comics

Hey, did you know Green Arrow was a junkie for like a total day or two?  'Cause he totally was.  Hey, did you know that Avu Lanu Lau'ava means "green arrow" in some island language?  Totally does.  In other words, blah blah Jock art good, Green Arrow comic tolerable blah blah.

 

The Immortal Iron Fist #8
Written by Ed Brubaker & Matt Fraction
Art by David Aja & Ray Allen Martinez
Published by Marvel Comics

Excellency defined.  After last months attempt to make up an old Asian myth, the comic returns to it's prior glory, setting up another big story arc that promises to maintain, and probably exceed, the threshold of batshit crazy fun that the first six issues showcased.  Much like the Japanese long form television serial programs that it strives to emulate, this time out Brubaker & Fraction are trying their hand at the classic tournament of champions trope:  7 fighters, one of whom is Iron Fist.  Somebody is else is named Fat Cobra.  And a big badass tournement.  If there's any justice in this world, Master Blaster is gonna show back up, they'll be a Tina Turner song with plot-referencing lyrics, and the winner will get to drive home in one of the "last of the Interceptors."

Nightwing # 136
Written by Marv Wolfman
Art by Jon Bosco & Alex Silva
Published by DC Comics

Hey, surprise!  Remember last month, when this comic was really fucking dumb, and the art was only semi-tolerable?  This month, the art was able to catch up with the writing, and the whole thing was just plain god-mangling awful.  Not to be too nasty, but wouldn't it be great if Marv Wolfman had another one of those nervous breakdown-type things that made him quit working back in the 90's?  Oh wait, he seems to be having one, he's just trying to write his way out of it.

Y: The Last Man # 58
Written by Brian K. Vaughan
Art by Pia Guerra & Jose Marzan, Jr.
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

Agent 355 gets shot and killed on the last page.  Oh, spoiler.  Don't read the first sentence.

The Incredible Hulk # 110
Written by Greg Pak
Art by Carlo Pagulayan & Jeffrey Huet
Published by Marvel Comics

Anybody who seriously is willing to believe that the Hulk has never, even accidentally, killed somebody while destroying entire cities and wrecking cars in the last 30 years of comics (or however long he's been around) probably enjoyed the hell out of this.  Meaning anybody who's a child probably enjoyed it.  Of course, kids are reading Naruto, and they've got to be better for it.  'Cause this shit was impenetrable.  And I swear to Christ, it still hasn't gotten old that everybody refers to the kid as "Amadeus Cho, the 7th smartest person in the world."  Like he's got a name tag on.  If he gets his own series, they can call it that and write it in semen on a wax tablet and I'll buy at least 4 copies.

The Outsiders # 50
Written by Tony Bedard
Art by Matthew Clark, Ron Randall & Art Thibert
Published by DC Comics

Batman has this really lame identity he uses all the time, where he puts on a cheesy John Waters mustache and sunglasses, then shows up at lowlife bars and calls himself "Matches Malone."  You know, because he's chewing on matches.  (Tangent: anybody who's ever chewed on a match knows that it becomes a nasty little wet stick that falls apart completely in about 4.6 seconds, so apparently when Batman was getting trained to do 783 forms of kung-fu, he also figured out how to shut his saliva glands.)  Anytime Matches Malone is used in a comic, it always makes me sort of feel like my brain is fighting with my skull to escape my body in a vain attempt to not be able to comprehend the sheer banality of whatever the character is supposed to be doing.  This issue wasn't much different, and this whole new direction for the Outsiders looks like it's just going to be a repetition on the old Batman & The Outsiders direction, which came out when i was still young enough to think anything that had superheroes was pretty good.

Except that even then, i knew this shit was lame as fuck, and although i probably didn't use those terms, my little prepubescent pocketbook didn't even take the time to steal it when i was ripping off the local gas station for copies of Marvel Comics Presents and What If.  Real quick, let's put that into perspective--the last time they did this dumb ass shit, i wouldn't even SHOPLIFT IT.  Why the hell am I going to pay 3 bucks for it?

Detective Comics # 836
Written by John Rozum
Art by Tom Mandrake
Published by DC Comics

It's nice to see Tom Mandrake draw Batman again.  It's depressing that he didn't have more to do here, and it's depressing that DC feels the need to waste Paul Dini's return to the DC mainstream on Countdown, as it seems to make it difficult for him to write more than 4 or 5 issues of Detective in a row.  It's not that Rozum doesn't have a knack for writing, it's just that he's clearly trying to write the same sort of short story Batman arcs that Dini's a master of, and he's just not there yet.  A valiant effort all around--but a little too amateurish for a series that should probably be in the hands of a professional.

The Exterminators # 21
Written by Simon Oliver
Art by Darick Robertson & John Lucas
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

It's got to be addressed: Simon Oliver & John Lucas are some of the nicest guys working in today's comic books.  Whatever happens with the Exterminators, the offices of the Factual will always have a spot for any work they do, and they're the new "buy on site" creators in out little Amazon world.  Another great issue of a comic that never seems to dabble in low points.  As Lucas has pointed out, some people seem to be quite turned off by the basic grossness inherent in a comic chock full of rodents and insects, but if you can tolerate 'em, you're doing yourself a disservice not reading this book.  The recent switch at the Factual with how comics are reviewed has meant that a comic like this isn't getting the type of long-form review that it deserves, but as long as it's being published, I'll always be giving it high marks--and not out of loyalty, but because Oliver has a voice, he has a plan, and when it comes to The Exterminators, he's clearly never going to disappoint.  Great stuff.

The Boys # 10
Written by Garth Ennis
Art by Darick Robertson
Published by Dynamite Entertainment

I wonder if people who don't like the Boys also don't laugh at Johnny Ryan.  They're not the same, but the thinly veiled contempt both have for the sacred cow worship of nerd gods does have the same impact: it's like watching the Sound of Music and hoping against hope that the Von Trapp family won't escape at the end, and they'll be a real nasty Paths of Glory type execution.  (Sing your way out of a firing lane, bitch!)  While no Batman fan may really want him to rape and mutilate Robin, it certainly would be hilarious if he jerked off in Alfred's ear canal.  The Boys is just giving us what we want--they're just fucking around.  Since when did that become a problem? 

-Tucker Stone, 2007

The Deadly Companions

Directed by Sam Peckinpah
Screenplay by Albert Sidney Fleischman, based upon his novel
Released in 1961
Currently available upon multiple DVD & VHS formats.
Starring Brian Keith & Maureen O'Hara
Also Featuring Strother Marton, Chill Willis & Steve Cochran

Sam Peckinpah's first feature film couldn't exactly be called a trifle, although it's certainly far from a masterpiece.  It's a cheap, mildly formulaic Western film that, excluding a couple of sequences, would seem out of place alongside the other 13 movies he went on to direct.  Still, it was Peckinpah's first foray to the screen, following a routine stint on television shows like Gunsmoke and the ill-fated Westerner, and in that light, it's more of a successful experiment than some of the legendary directors later failures.

Using a cast of regular Western actors, Deadly Companions is a pretty simple narrative--a couple of no-account criminals team up to help a mother take her deceased sons body across dangerous terrain to bury him alongside his long-dead father.  The trips difficulty stems from the fact that Brian Keith, the groups much-loathed leader, is responsible for the death of the boy, and that the remaining criminals have little interest in assisting him in his self-imposed feelings of responsibility.  Sounding a chord that resonates through nearly all of Peckinpah's later work, the producers of Deadly Companions wouldn't allow Peckinpah to explore the potentials of the body itself--which may have formed part of the mans interest in the realitively dull narrative in the first place.  13 years later, when filming the trials and tribulations of Benny and a decaying head in his Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia, Peckinpah was finally able to showcase the basic problems inherent in transporting a dead body through the hot desert sun--in Deadly Companions, this is dealt with in a few short lines, and ignored from there on.  Excepting this, Peckinpah was mostly left to his own devices, although many viewers may assume that the shoehorned in love affair was forced upon him, it's really more just a nod to the demands of a cheap genre piece.  (A similar relationship that seems out of place appears in Sam's Major Dundee, when Charlton Heston's crazed title character begins to pause at moments in the film to declare, with a straight face, his feelings for a woman who seems to have appeared solely to hear his bizarre pick-up lines.)  More often than not, Peckinpah was successful at presenting intimate relationships between platonic men far more believably than he was at depicting those that involve men and women.  There are exceptions, like the previously mentioned Alfredo Garcia, and the Ballad of Cable Hogue, but for the most part, Peckinpah seemed unable to capture anything that might be mistaken for a Richard Linklater film.  (Or even John Hughes.)

The only other thing worth mentioning about Deadly Companions is that it's a relatively difficult movie to find if one is interested in seeing it in anything like what it appeared as in 1961.  Although multiple versions of the DVD exists in the US, all are cheap unlicensed properties, with varying aspect ratios and low-grade sound quality.  The highest quality version of the film available comes from a small German company, and that version is only playable on a Region Free DVD player.  While there are some films that are actually worth the expense of importing a foreign DVD, the Deadly Companions is really more for those fans most interested in seeing where Peckinpah got his start--and even those fans, of who this writer is one, will probably be satisfied to pay less than five dollars for the cheap American knock-off.

-Tucker Stone, 2007