Comics Of The Weak

Birds of Prey # 110
Written by Tony Bedard
Art by Nicola Scott & Rodney Ramos
Published by DC Comics

Sometimes comics don't even come across as if they're written for actual human beings.  They're so clearly designed to just fill some time, to just exist as a commodity available for purchase, that it betrays the unspoken agreement between the purchaser and the company--you, the company, pretend you're at least trying to tell good stories, and we, the consumer, will pretend that we're actually enjoying them.  When one reaches that point, a point Birds of Prey doesn't just reach, but somehow pretends it's about to perform cunnilingus on, one has to wonder what the hell happened in one's life that one ended up even being one of the few thousand people who willingly paid for the privilege of Tony Bedard taking a dump in one's brain.

It's been said before, and too often not to own up too, that I really shouldn't be buying Birds of Prey.  It is time to heed that siren's call.

Captain America # 30
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Steve Epting & Mike Perkins
Published by Marvel Comics

Whenever Captain America does return, which is still something that idiots like to pretend might never happen, what's going to happen to the little stable of characters he's built up in his absence?  Taken as a whole, they make for a better Captain America comic book than Captain America did.  Hell, this issue wasn't even that bad, even though it pulled out one of the hoariest comic book cliches of recent memory, that being the "bad guy knows a secret word that makes good guy unconscious, but doesn't use the opportunity to SHOOT GOOD GUY IN HEAD WHILE GOOD GUY NAPS."  (Not much is as irritating as the thought of sweaty comic fans sputtering out long-winded explanations explaining why villains constantly ignore golden opportunities to kill their arch-foes, whereas same villain seems to have a non-stop Louisville Slugger of a hard-on to kill their own henchmen.)  Brubaker seems to, for the most part, have dispensed with the semi-useless and wholly obnoxious tactic of massive chapter title cards every 2nd page or so with this issue, which means the comic to block text ratio has increased in comic favor, and he's still writing the book as if it's totally up to him whether it's main character ever returns--all these things make for a decent read, even when it's basically just helping a mind near destroyed by the banality of Birds of Prey.

Checkmate # 18
Written by Greg Rucka
Art by Joe Bennett & Jack Jadson
Published by DC Comics

There's a sneaking suspicion on the part of this reader that Checkmate may, in all honesty, be just a nerd-continuity heavy book that's written well, as opposed to Countdown, a nerd-continuity heavy book that's written poorly.  That it's not really different from the pointless endeavors found in those pages.  That, all things being equal, the best thing for Checkmate is to get itself canceled before it ends up hitting about 50 issues, at which point there will be around 15 or so people who still know what's going on, and at least 7 of those people will be working on creating it.  After all, the reality of DC Comics is that, as much as Rucka's doom & gloom plotting may fool you, nothing of serious consequence is going to happen in the pages of a book that not very many people feel the need to read.  While Checkmate is still only 18 issues into it's run, and it's been pretty great for most of that, it's never going to live up to the heinous stuff it keeps alluding to--those are the storylines reserved for books that actually move off the shelf.  Whether that bothers anybody is going to determine whether the book keeps showing up--and considering how many people seem to care about a comic featuring Captain Carrot, that seems...well, unlikely, at least.

Green Arrow & Black Canary Wedding Special # 1
Written by Judd Winick
Art by Amanda Conner
Published by DC Comics

Can you really say anything about this that hasn't already been observed by anybody who read it?  Disregarding what the internet might say, which I'd imagine is something along the lines of "what was that?",  it's neither the herald of storytelling apocalypse, nor is it whatever the extreme version of "good" might be.  It's a bad comic book, yes, but that doesn't exactly mean much anyway--even when a comic book with superheroes gets called "really good" it's still doubtful that the book will get reread anytime in the near future.  The wedding comes and goes, basically in paint-by-comic-number fashion, then Black Canary wears some ridiculous lingerie, which, for the sake of full disclosure is less revealing than her nimrod costume, than she stabs Green Arrow in the throat with an arrow.  Because it's nearby, and he goes crazy.  Disregarding a whole lot of stuff (like why she has to go that far, when DC has spent the last 10 years telling anybody who cares that she's this totally amazing hand-to-hand fighter and seems to be able to get out of situations exactly like this without resorting to lethal violence, like, ever, or why there's arrows in the bedroom, or what exactly this means for that comic coming out soon called Green Arrow & Black Canary) it's not even that revelatory of a sequence.  It's such a mercenary, mechanical ending to an otherwise 100% standard story that the whole thing seems to exist solely to irritate the type of fan who still has the ability to experience irritation.  In cases like that, where everything about a comic is completely neutral in execution, where every aspect is completely devoid of a cogent narrative voice, this reader just boils it down to one question:

Is it likely that Black Canary will have sex with the corpse?

The answer to that will determine whether the next issue gets purchased.

Hellblazer # 236
Written by Andy Diggle
Art by Leonardo Manco
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

All Hellblazer stories are kind of the same, and John Constantine's fictional Earth seems to only be populated with some really nasty, selfish people.  A big part of the reason this comic is such a consistent breath of fresh air is that very few of these stories are good enough to repurchase in the trade paperback format, but when read alongside something as abysmal as Birds of Prey, a superhero comic that has the nasty talent of making something entertaining bad simply because it's the same playing field, it feels like a circus strongman is holding you close to his hairy chest and telling you, in a voice that sounds like Zangeif and smells like potato moonshine, that "everything is gonna be A.O.K."

Also, the cover of this one has a dog pissing on a dead body.  While that never appears in the comic, it's the sort of image that helps relax the mind.

JLA/Hitman # 1
Written by Garth Ennis
Art by John McCrea
Published by DC Comics

Garth Ennis is currently experiencing a sort of mid-career renaissance, as people with strong stomachs and a sense of what satire is supposed to feel like (hint: it fucking HURTS, nancyboy) are finding his work in the Punisher: Max series and The Boys to be to their liking--hey, sorry Aquaman & Firestorm got canceled, maybe they shouldn't have sucked.  Did you see how well The Boys is selling, by the way?  For whatever reason, the Ennis lovefest went into a decline after his widely read, and pretty effing great, Preacher series met it's conclusion.  It's not like he went away--he just wrote war comics, which, because they feature real people doing real things, don't appeal to grown men who like their heroes in tight spandex.  Thanks to Ennis resurgence, and probably due to DC's poor handling of his Boys comic, Ennis has returned to his mildly successful cult series Hitman, a comic that he did before people knew his name well enough to buy his work on sight.  The first of a two issue mini-series, JLA/Hitman sees Ennis showing a bit of a lighter touch, although the comic is still sure to infuriate fans who get angry anytime they see the Flash treat Green Lantern like a 9-year old with mental retardation.  For the rest of us, if there is a rest of us, you also get a chance to watch Ennis refer to the 90's era of DC Comics as "pretty lame." 

Robin # 166
Written by Adam Beechem
Art by Freddie Williams III
Published by DC Comics

There's nothing new here--Beechem has old-school Robin dealing with his incredibly vapid gallery of bad guys, all who seem to only exist for the five minutes it takes for Robin to kick them in the face.  By far, and by far meaning Leaps and Mo-Fucking Bounds, the thing that serves to be the most interesting thing that's going on the pages of this comic, is that Robin is going against Batman's wishes and joining the local high school tennis team.  Will Robin's skills as a crimefighter translate to skills on the tennis court?  So far, the answer is a resounding "no, they won't."  What could Adam Beechem have in store for our intrepid, 16 year old hero?  Could a trophy be coming his way?  Will there, in the veins of the Green Arrow Wedding Special, be a Robin Tennis State Finals Special? 

Pray, dear reader.  Pray until your eyes bleed.

Wolverine Origins # 17
Written by Daniel Way
Art by Steve Dillon
Published by Marvel Comics

The only sensible reason to purchase this comic is Steve Dillon--the stupid-fun magic of Daniel Way's work on the Ghost Rider series doesn't make much of an appearance in these pages, and while that probably is mostly due to the importance (read: financial) of Wolverine to the Marvel company, Way has to bear some of that blame for failing to make one of the publishers more iconic characters entertaining enough to at least be called "interesting."  It's become clear (as if it wasn't immediately) that the Marvel press releases predating this "Origins" series that there's no intention for this comic to explain anything about Wolverine's past, that it exists solely to tell stories about Wolverine that don't have to deal with the characters current status in Marvel's continuity.  That's not a bad idea, necessarily: Wolverine regularly appears in something like 10 or 20 comics per month--keeping up with his actual fictional location is a herculean (yet completely unrewarding) task.  Having a comic that allows the freedom to place Logan anywhere, at anytime, could allow for a corresponding freedom to tell some decent stories.  Instead, Way seems to have not gotten the memo, trying to incorporate some sort of historical reference point for Wolverine's current status by telling stories that have some sort of tangential connection to whatever nonsense the character is involved in during the present day.  Case in point: Wolverine struggling with his relationship with the now-deceased Captain America?  Then Wolverine: Origins will tell a completely needless tale of the first time the characters teamed up.

For years, DC Comics ran with a similar idea with it's ubiquitous Batman character, in an up and down series called Legends of the Dark Knight.  It worked as well as a series of that nature could, and if anything, should be the model for Wolverine: Origins.  Operating off the mentality that talented creators could tell good Batman stories if they weren't beholden to the fictional history of the character itself, the quality of Legends was solely dependent on the quality of it's creative teams, which changed on a consistent basis.  For whatever reason, the book was canceled, only to be reborn in the form of Batman: Confidential, a book that is actually more similar to Wolverine: Origins--now, the stories are supposed to make up a part of the characters past, an idea which is absurd (and stupid) on it's very face.  After all, neither Batman nor Wolverine need anymore stuff jacked into their history--if anything, they need far less, a lesson that only Grant Morrison seems to understand.  (His take on Batman, over in the monthly series, operates as if Batman has a history, but it's completely unimportant, the key is to focus the stories only on the one the reader is currently reading.  Any references to the past, while entertaining to the fanatic, are used merely as window dressing and not as actual hinges for the plot mechanism.  The result is something that reads the way a good comic should:  entertaining and interesting, without a feeling that one is late to the party.)

World War Hulk # 4
Written by Greg Pak
Art by John Romita Jr, Klaus Janson & Christina Strain
Published by Marvel Comics

There's this great Milk & Cheese one-pager that Evan Dorkin did where the aforementioned duo (a milk carton and a slice of cheese that walk, talk, drink, fight & curse) jump from panel to panel screaming "Let's GO!" while killing or maiming anyone in their path, all the time repeating the phrase to varying degrees of volume. 

That's exactly what World War Hulk is supposed to be like.  And at moments, like when Mr. Fantastic is running around punching shit, it works fine.  (Actually, because the art is John Romita & Klaus Janson, it works great.)  But every time somebody feels the need to stop and chat, and every time it cuts away from fighting, the comic just stops dead.   Greg Pak did some pretty decent work prior to this series when he was doing his version of Spartacus featuring the Hulk, but he's stopped using Kubrick as a model--and he's ended up with something that's a lot more like Michael Bay.  Obviously, that's not a bad idea if you want to sell something--there's a lot more people out there who saw Con-Air than did Eyes Wide Shut, and those people are more likely to buy comic books anyway.  (Because they're fucking IDIOTS.)

Comments

[egan]

good reviews, but michael bay didn't direct con air. don't know who did, and don't care enough to go look it up.

[Tucker Stone]

Egan: you're exactly right, it wasn't Michael Bay, it was Simon West. He directed Tomb Raider & The General's Daughter, so the point is still vaguely accurate, although Eyes Wide Shut probably beat General's Daughter financially.

A prize for you.

[egan]

sadly, it didn't. for all of Kubrick's genius, his film's couldn't even rival low-rent John Travolta thrillers at the box office.

[Roberta]

"for all of Kubrick's genius, his film's couldn't even rival low-rent John Travolta thrillers at the box office"

And how sad is that??? I mean, wtf has Travolta ever done that was of any real substance? I can think of decent works he was in, but I can't name 1 that was good BECAUSE he was in it.

[ben]

white man's burden?