Green Arrow & Black Canary # 1
Written by Judd Winick
Art by Cliff Chiang
Published by DC Comics
Well, she doesn't have sex with the corpse. She does keep it in one of Michael Jackson's old hyperbolic chambers in her basement for a whole month. That's some kind of fetish at least. There's not much to say about this issue--the art is by Cliff Chiang, and he's still riding high off his work with Brian Azzarello on Dr. Thirteen, which was way better than the last Nazi Vampire Gorilla comic that anybody read. He's got a nice little cartoon style, that's pretty easy on the eyes, although everything starts to look like an animation cell after a while. It reads like all Judd Winick's stuff usually does--like a DC comic that wouldn't be out of place in 1989 if it wasn't for the occasional use of the word "bitch" and lame Dr. Phil jokes. Then again, I think there used to be Donahue jokes in the Giffen Justice League, so maybe it's exactly like 1989. Oh, and why does Batman use a red chainsaw to perform an autopsy? Wouldn't Batman just have nice surgical equipment? This reader gave up on watching ER sometime around 15 minutes after Juliana Marguiles attempted suicide the first time, but since when does anyone use a fire engine red chainsaw to open up the chest cavity? It's funny to look at, especially because Batman is wearing a butchers apron over his costume, but it's so out and out ridiculous that it comes across as a really lame joke--especially in the context of a comic that's taking itself way too seriously.
Justice League Classified # 44
Written by Justin Gray
Art by Rick Leonardi & Sean Phillips
Published by DC Comics
The format for comics creations, as it is understood by the public, is something like this: writer writes a script, gets it to the artist or artists, then it goes through some kind of hideous computer colorization, then it gets published, etc. However, this issue of JLA Classified throws those well-known facts into a curious light, as this comic book was clearly drawn, inked, and colored before any script was written. Leonardi & Philips drew a bunch of pictures, passed it off to Justin Gray, and he wrote whatever dialog he figured might match up with the drawings. All after the fact. That's the only explanation for this story.
Batman: Confidential # 10
Written by Michael Green
Art by Denys Cowan & John Floyd
Published by DC Comics
This is great--if there's one thing non-comics readers hate, it's when comics super-fans walk out of crappy ass superhero movies and talk about how they would have been better if they'd stuck to the crappy ass comics more. Whereas the obvious truth is that the best superhero movie is never going to be as good as an out-and-out great movie that has nothing to do with comics whatsoever. Batman: Confidential is going to be a comic that Batman-lovers hate and complain about more than anything in a good long while. Awesome. Don't get me wrong, from any standpoint, this comic is pretty much a piece of shit, from the heavy handed opening quote from Hamlet to the soon-to-be-the-Joker character taking a John Rambo level of physical damage, yet still continuing on to swim through some type of chemicals for over four minutes (because, you know, he tells you that it's four minutes) and then popping out and talking about a bunny rabbit in the moon. None of that is what's going to make fans the angriest, that title belongs to the plot point where it's revealed that Batman hires some thugs to kill the man-who-would-be-Joker, and is therefore, in some sense, responsible for the Joker's existence. It's just all too weird to be believed. Denys Cowan has drawn some pretty great stuff in his time--some pretty decent Detective Comics in the 90's, the album art for the GZA's incredible Liquid Swords and some really intricate work for the ill-fated Milestone line that DC put out years ago. His work here is pretty ugly, but that's probably because he's crying while reading the script he's been given, asking himself why Method Man never calls him anymore.
Suicide Squad #2
Written by John Ostrander
Art by Jaui Pina & Robin Riggs
Published by DC Comics
Apparently, the comics trope of "i have a codeword that makes regular people my willing slaves" is making a comeback. The one used here is the second in less than a month. Gosh, that's never going to get old. This issue is all about how to solve the whole Iraq war--according to John Ostrander, if one wants American servicemen and coldblooded Persian terrorists to get along, they need to be forced into situations where they have to fend off angry Velociraptors and Pterodactyls. Good to see DC is dealing with the important issues facing the country, with nary a bit of humor to lighten the message. Somebody should really point out that it's not that hard to throw a little levity in the mix--between this issue, Batman Confidential and the Green Arrow thing, it's starting to seem like comics writers are fancying themselves as Earnest Hemingway, and not, you know, comic book writers.
Green Lantern # 24
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Ivan Reis, Oclair Albert & Julio Ferriera
Published by DC Comics
Another balls-to-the-wall action comic with bloodshed on an epic scale, this latest issue of the Authority...wait, no, Ultimates...no, that's not right. Oh, yeah, Green Lantern, that's the 2007 version of every comic since the Authority figured out that if you make it big and bloody enough, it'll sell. Just in case you've read this Sinestro Corps series for a while, and you've started to forget what race the writer was, Geoff Johns is nice enough to have a black character say something so asinine that you'll remember that Geoff Johns is so totally white that he's almost translucent. "All I have to do...is stay black." Right there is the main reason it's so tiresome to read criticisms regarding the lack of good minority characters, be they gay, female or, basically, non-white. No, it's not cool or grown up or "21st Century" for comics to be full of straight white males. But I'll be damned if there's anybody who's got the ability at DC right now to write anything but pale boys, Vertigo notwithstanding. If that "stay black" is the best they can do, then that road to equality is looking a hell of a lot longer, and a hell of a lot uglier.
Wolverine # 58
Written by Marc Guggenheim
Art by Howard Chaykin
Published by DC Comics
Wow. Keeping up with Wolverine comics is kind of amazing. So not only does the Angel of Death, Azrael, like to show up at wars and kill people with a sword while wearing a wearing a magicians cloak, but Wolverine beat the hell out of him in 1905. And every time Wolverine dies, his soul goes and has a soulfight with the Angel of Death in purgatory, and up until now, he's always won. Except that for time his 74th girlfriend died in his arms right before the soulfight. It's like Guggenheim is worried about how nobody liked that Green Arrow Wedding Special, so he wanted to make sure we remembered what a shitty comic is really like, so that the hate would be somehow karmically lessened. The weird thing is that I know he's doing it, yet it still pretty much worked. As in, after I read this, I started to enjoy the hackwork of Judd Winick a whole lot more.
Stormwatch: PHD # 12
Written by Christos Gage
Art by Andy Smith
Published by Wildstorm/DC Comics
"Bang? Yeah, look, we're not going to need you on this one. I know that we had a talk, a few months ago about how the last issue of Stormwatch was going to go down, but then Doug Mahnke skated out, and we had to hired this guy Andy Smith, and he's sort of a low-rent version of Mike Mckone, who kind of sucks to begin with, so we figured, that, you know, since nothing in the issue is really that interesting, we figured we'd go with whimper this time. Tell you what--we'll give you a call if Grant Morrison ever writes another issue of Wildcats."
Punisher War Journal #12
Written by Matt Fraction
Art by Ariel Olivetti
Published by Marvel Comics
Well, instead of continuing the last issues mediocre dive down the crap tunnel, Fraction and Olivetti decide to take a quick pointless detour through New York, where the Punisher decides to kill massive bug monsters with, in order, two chainsaws, guns, a "gun that shoots swords," another couple of guns, another chainsaw, and, in the final portion, by wielding somebodies arm while the dismembered arm holds a sword. That, my friend, is how you write a comic book that people would actually want to read. Of course, now that this issue is in the can and on the shelf, it's going to make it that much worse when Fraction gets back to the double-B Boring shit that he started up on the last issue.
B.P.R.D. Killing Ground #3
Written by Mike Mignola & John Arcudi
Art by Guy Davis
Published by Dark Horse Comics
You really can do a plot synopsis of a BPRD issue in about a sentence--example: Wendigo loose in the compound! Of course, there's more going on here than that, but it's all mood and nuance, and how does one describe mood and nuance? BPRD is just good stuff, and it's currently operating as "good stuff" on a regular basis. Hell, it's about a Wendigo, and that Wendigo being loose in the compound.
Ghost Rider # 16
Written by Daniel Way
Art by Javier Saltares & Mark Texeira
Published by Marvel Comics
As always, if a comic book has an old lady getting decapitated by a flaming skeleton biker, than that means it was worth it to go to a comic store. The guys in charge of Suicide Squad could take a lesson from the Ghost Rider series--you don't have to try so hard. If mainstream super-hero comics were supposed to be Malone Dies, they'd be published by Grove Press and you'd have a Nobel Prize. But your job is to write about people who join something called the Suicide Squad, and about flaming skeletons killing old ladies. Chill the fuck out.
The New Avengers # 35
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Lenil Yu & David McCaig
Published by Marvel Comics
Bendis continues on his odyssey of rewriting himself, this time by reenacting his first Daredevil storyline with super-villains instead of low-rent mafia thugs. While he's clearly found a muse in Lenil Yu, an artist who's style is surprisingly well suited for superhero comics, New Avengers is still, 35 issues in, a comic that reads like the instruction manual to a video-game featuring the characters. It's arguably the best team-up comic out there (as long as you ignore nostalgic fans who make out with Geoff Johns' JSA and tell you that Power Girl is a model of "female empowerment"), solely because of, and not in spite of that. After all, team-up comics are never long or well-written enough for the characters to have any relationship beyond "salacious banter" and "weepy respect" as they have to delve, with every issue, into some kind of battle-beyond-all-reason-and-consequence. Bendis is merely writing the thing that everybody wants, the thing they claim they don't get enough of: a comic that has all the cool kids doing cool shit, and talking all cool while they do it. While this issue doesn't feature any of those cool kids, it serves, like the portion of his Daredevil run that it stems from, as a mildly interesting aperitif, where all the bad guys team up to make money and not get caught. Which is why it's far more interesting to read than DC's current villain team-up over in the Justice League: super-villains are never going to succeed at winning in comic books, but they do, however, succeed at stealing. That means something can actually happen in New Avengers. It's not much--but then again, it's superhero comics. You'll drive yourself crazy asking for more.
The Exterminators # 22
Written by Simon Oliver
Art by Darick Robertson & John Lucas
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics
Simon Oliver's strange epic insect comic begins taking a turn for a strange epic insect war comic, and Darick Robertson is still hanging around, giving a D-sales comic some star power. Oliver's made the decision to have a few characters team up with the various monster-sized beetles and roaches that form the "bad guys," a choice that ensures that there's some talking going on both sides. (Because, you know, roaches can't talk.) When compared against most of the comics on the stands, Exterminators invariably comes out on top, a feat in all parts due to the strength of Oliver's writing--and although this six-parter is starting to drag a bit, as you can only shoot giant roaches with shotguns so many times before it gets kind of redundant, that dragging you hear is just the sound of a really great comic missing a couple of beats as it nears it's second year of continuous publication. As always, it's the only Vertigo series that deserves to be mentioned along the lines of Lucifer, 100 Bullets & Preacher--it's just too bad no one seems to be willing to read it to give it that chance.
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