The Factual Opinion

The Top 25 Albums of 1983: #8

AC/DC
Flick of the Switch

It says something that at multiple points during the list-making process, one of the Factual's writers seriously considered this album as a possible contender for the number one spot.  (It says that writer may need to grow up a little bit, and accept that just because an album is a non-stop joy-fest, a milkshake made solely out of the devil and raw sugar, that doesn't mean it's an artistic masterpiece.)  Flick of the Switch is considered one of AC/DC's lesser works--few of these songs are played live, only three were released as singles, and neither of those went on to the heights reached by "Highway to Hell" or "You Shook Me All Night Long."  In an even nastier slight, the album (combined with the still painful memories of Bon Scott's 1980 demise) earned the band the "8th biggest disappointment" award from notable music publication Kerrang. 

Wait a second--Kerrang is a terrible publication that caters to idiots who like Korn.  Anything they hate is clearly quite good.  Let's reassess.

In recent years, Flick has finally started to get some of the appreciation it deserves.  A self-produced album full of incredibly powerful, timeless rock anthems that have never been utilized as the NBA highlight reel soundtracks they were born for:  We're talking about a song called "This House Is On Fire" that will make you question whether your house is really on FIRE, because, as Angus informs us, the "Flame is gonna burn in."  We're talking about cop with a gun who's running around insane in Belgium--were you planning on taking a trip to the home of the Dutch?  Angus thinks its a bad idea, and he wrote a song about it.  It's called "Bedlam in Belgium."  On top of that, if you've ever craved a non-stop rock fest that's explicitly designed around the theory that women crave men who are premature ejaculators that will not only brag about this usually embarrassing trait, but said women will allow themselves to be "dictated" too, by "big dictators" after one finishes up in a scant matter of seconds, than "Guns for Hire" is probably the only track that will fit the bill.  (Before you start mentioning Jason Mraz, remember that the description said non-STOP rock fest, not a ballad.)  AC/DC was never a band that either contributor expected in the top 25 albums, much less cresting the top ten--but here it is, and it's a ridiculously fun throwback to a time period where this sort of music wasn't enjoyed as a guilty pleasure, but as a party prerequisite. 

-Tucker Stone, 2007

Comics Of The Weak (Bonus Round)

In the ever constant attempt to make the site more timely and more consistent, this Comics Of The Weak is extra long, as Tucker tries to get us up to snuff with two Weaks worth of the Comics.  Even more books doesn't mean Even More Better.

Lobster Johnson # 1 & 2
Written by Mike Mignola
Art by Jason Armstrong
Published by Dark Horse Comics

Mignola may have spread himself too thin, adding another series to his little Hellboy/BPRD universe with this latest mini-series featuring the oddly named "Lobster Johnson."  While it's always a pleasure to read a comic where the main character threatens to attack evildoers with "the overdue hand of justice" (meaning he's going to burn them with his Lobster's Claw),  the character isn't really something that cries out for its own comic book.  Two issues in, it's unclear whether this is supposed to be one of those omnipresent "fun romp comics" where it's more about everybody (readers and publishers) winking at each other across the store aisle, or if Mignola has something literary or arty (or whatever you call comics that are worth 3 bucks) planned for the character.  The art is by a newer addition to the Dark Horse stable of "artists who aren't as great as Mike Mignola, but still better than most of the guys at DC,"  and it is seeped in the sort of nostalgic pulpiness that Mignola's writing requires to take seriously.  At this point though, this is a pretty meager work, and it's so derivative of Hellboy that it reads as the comic equivalent of Models, Inc.  If there's one thing Mignola's Hellboy universe doesn't need more of, it's nefarious Nazi villains who team up with snake monsters.  Ninja villains might be nice.  Or pirates.  Not a lot of pirate villains in comics.

The Vinyl Underground # 1
Written by Si Spencer
Art by Simon Gane & Cameron Stewart
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

Si Spencer writes a television show called Torchwood, which, if the previews are an accurate portrayal of the show, is totally awful and unwatchable.  Vinyl Underground, his new Vertigo comic, reads more like a press release about a comic book that might also make an awful television show, with each of the main characters (four by the close of this issue) introduced with long-winded dialog boxes where the reader finds out that A) these people are really boring, so boring that one of them has to tell us about how he's sober now because he embarrassed his dead football star father when he nailed two girls and got name-checked on Page Six B) one of them is a asthmatic, autistic, psychic ex-con survivor of molestation and C) one of them is named Juicy Lou, an "arsonist and nymphomaniac porn virgin, the only on-line porn star that never goes all the way."  To add to that delightful description, which made this reader want to vomit my brain out of my eyeballs, Juicy Lou is also a genius at forensic science and she has incredible fighting skills.  The other girl is black--you know, because the three white characters need about 700 character traits, but black people are totally black and therefore interesting.  They don't need personalities or anything.  They just need to be, well, you know.  Black.  Although I have zero interest in ever reading this piece of shit beyond this issue, I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that someone acknowledges her race in every issue that this thing runs.  By the end of the comic, the team is thoroughly ready to go solve some crime by sending the solution to some detective along with some Otis Redding albums, because that's what cool, hip individuals do.  They listen to Otis Redding (on vinyl, get the title? How clever!) while solving crimes and then send the info to the police.  Along with a copy of the album, so the detective can see what kind of mood this little Stereogum version of the Scooby-Doo gang was in when they were drinking chai lattes in their clubhouse.  Which they actually refer to as a clubhouse.  Jesus.

Metamorpho Year One # 1
Written by Dan Jurgens
Art by Dan Jurgens & Jesse Delperdang
Published by DC Comics

Considering the amount of hits this website gets, it's a fair assumption that no one at DC noticed that i'd made the now completely incorrect proclamation that comics writers never mess up the Metamorpho character a few weeks back.  With Metamorpho Year One, that's been proven totally incorrect: Dan Jurgens can't write Metamorpho well at all, which is sort of ironic when you consider that Dan Jurgens is the guy who wrote that whole Death of Superman comic series that your cousin (who doesn't like or read comics) owns all the issues of, because he thinks he's going to pay for his kids college with them.  (Your cousin is an idiot.)  You'd think Jurgens wouldn't be able to screw up the DC Comics equivalent of tee-ball.  But man, watch him go!  Note to DC: characters who have origins as dumb as Metamorpho don't need an origin story.  The guy just touches a meteor.  That doesn't need six issues to tell.  It's just "Hey, Meteor" and Boom goes the dynamite.  That's like three panels.

Action Comics # 856
Written by Geoff Johns & Richard Donner
Art by Eric Powell
Published by DC Comics

Eric Powell is still something of an unknown factor here at the Factual Offices.  We understand he writes a comic called The Goon, which is well liked by people who have some alright tastes.  A copy of Satan's Sodomy Baby, a nasty piece of filth that was pretty entertaining is the only piece of his work that's been read by this writer.  This issue of Action is his second, handling art details for the Johns & Donner team, a team notorious for starting a second storyline without actually finishing their first one.  As with that first aborted story, the comic itself is light on the dialog and heavy on the action, which means you can read it in about thirteen seconds.  It's also about Bizarro, which is a really bad call when you're following up a scant few months after Grant Morrison wrote about Bizarro, because he's, you know, better at writing.  Still, if Donner & Johns have taught comics readers anything in the past year, it is that they could care less about finishing a story, much less writing one that is worth anyone's time.

Detective Comics  # 837
Written by Paul Dini
Art by Don Kramer & Wayne Faucher
Published by DC Comics

This month of Detective showcases the return of Paul Dini after a few months away, where he apparently got drunk, forgot how to write a comic book that anyone would enjoy reading, and then turned in a script anyway.  Don Kramer, who's probably a really nice guy, or at least better be, since he can't draw for shit, took that script (and it's a real page turner) and threw some pencils on the page, all of which feature a bunch of characters no one wants to read about, and then DC sold it to this reader.  Lots of fun stuff here, if by fun you mean the Riddler teaming up with Harley Quinn, Batman not showing up until the final page, and a bunch of guest appearances by people like Catwoman's old sidekick, a reformed prostitute orphan person.  Of course, there's a bunch of half-naked women fighting in towels, so if you are one of those comic readers who can't afford Cinemax, than lock your door and buy some Lubriderm. 

Omega The Unknown # 1
Written by Johnathan Lethem & Karl Rusnak
Art by Farel Darymple & Paul Hornschemier
Based on a Story by Steve Gerber, Mary Skrenes & Jim Mooney?
Published by Marvel Comics

Yes, it's that Johnathan Lethem, the one who wrote Motherless Brooklyn.  How much he's involved in the writing in this comic isn't exactly clear--Karl Rusnak handles the dialog for a story that is "A Version of an Unfinished Dream" by Gerber, Skrenes & Mooney.  Which means it's an old comic that Lethem is redoing--which is kind of okay, since Lethem's best work is when he reworks old archetypal stories into a fresh narrative.  Still, Motherless Brooklyn was Raymond Chandler with Tourette's Syndrome.  This time his source material is an odd comic book few people remember.  That doesn't really equal Raymond Chandler as a starting point.  The art, by Farel Darymple, has more in common with the MOME quarterlies than it does with Marvel's regular fare, which helps the comic to seem less like a goofy (yet still pretty standard) superhero comic book.  It's too early in the series to be able to tell if this is going to be the sort of literary experiment that's successful--it's certainly interesting enough, but "interesting" can also work to define a comic book featuring a naked librarian who's fighting a giant cupcake.  All that being said, Factual will hang on until the end of this series, good or bad, just because there's no way Lethem can ever write a comic that's as bad as something by Tony Bedard.

Nightwing # 137
Written by Marv Wolfman
Art by Jon Bosco & Alex Silva
Published by DC Comics

There's people who are enjoying this comic book.  That's the most unsettling thing about reading it.  There's people who are actually looking forward to it when it arrives at stores.  One imagines them curled up with low-fat ice milk, which is sort of like frozen yogurt that's been boiled and refrozen, and then they take out the staple of their copy of Wolfman's latest "Please Help Me I Don't Have Any Food In This Well" version of a Nightwing comic, and carefully put the pages in a scrapbook, reading as they glue.  Then they crawl under some version of an breast cancer quilt and cry themselves to sleep while listening to ocean sounds.  Then they get up and teach your children social studies, or whatever geography is called these days in shitty Midwestern public schools.

Green Lantern Corps # 16
Written by Dave Gibbons
Art by Patrick Gleason, Angel Unzueta, Prentis Rollins, Drew Geraci & Vincent Cifuentes
Published by DC Comics

This is the 7th part of a big storyline going on in the Green Lantern comics that people will tell you that you don't need to know anything about to enjoy.  That's a hefty exaggeration.  You need to know some stuff--like what Mogo is, and what the Guardians are, and who Sinestro is, and, see.  Gone already, right?  If you know what some of that stuff is, then this thing isn't that bad.  It's big stupid fight comics, where the bad guys outnumber and outcrazy the good guys, and every issue basically ends on a cliffhanger, but it's done pretty effectively.  Considering how random quality craftsmanship is showing up on the spandex books lately, that's actually a pretty nice compliment. 

JLA/Hitman # 2
Written by Garth Ennis
Art by John McCrea
Published by DC Comics

Well, that was pretty quick.  Wasn't the first issue out about a week ago?  Either way, Garth Ennis violates enough of the standard Justice League story tropes that this short mini-series reads as a hell of a lot more revolutionary than anything else they've done since they tried to make the Wonder Twins relevant back in the late 90's.  First off, Batman gets taken out of the picture almost immediately, whereas anybody who's read JLA in the last 10 years knows isn't exactly meat and potatoes writing.  Beyond that, Superman, when rescued from the death trap of the last issue, fails to get up and go, leaving the success of the issue in the hands of Tommy Monaghan--the "Hitman" in the title.  Tommy does what no one really expected him to do--kills 12 innocent people, saving the JLA and the world in the process.  Then the comic ends with the rest of the team turning him over to the police and Superman admitting that neither he nor Batman could really be expected to handle things like World War II because they refuse to make the choices that 19 year old US servicemen make on a regular basis.  In a thinly veiled act of contempt, Garth Ennis showcases why realism and superhero comics don't mix: because there are real situations where men have to kill to succeed, and Superman and Batman don't really have the "moral courage" to get their hands dirty.  Whether that sits well with someone's political beliefs, Ennis frames it in such a way that his conclusion is basically undeniable.  In addition, these two issues are laced with enough sardonic humor to outshine the last 50 issues of the regular JLA series.

Criminal # 9
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Sean Phillips
Published by Icon/Marvel Comics

Criminal is a bit of an oddity.  Now knee-deep into it's second storyline, it's clear that Brubaker is highly qualified at writing this sort of neo-noir work, yet the man feels the itch to publish it in comic format.   Why?  A wider audience is sure to be found if the work was written for television or film, and the requisite cry that the work would be diluted and bastardized after leaving his hands doesn't really apply--each and every issue is full of pages where Brubaker professes his love for the Hollywood version of these kind of stories.  Instead, the comic shows up alongside Thor and whatever the Amazons are doing.  (Attacking?)  It's not to disparage the comic--it's quite good, and would be missed.  Still, doesn't Brubaker, like most writers, crave for a bit more of an audience?  Even if Criminal was outselling spandex books, which it probably never will, the amount of people who buy comics is never going to equal the audience a film could find.  Either way, Criminal is an excellent comic book, and one of the few that lands on a strong footing every time.

Deathblow # 7
Written by Brian Azzarello
Art by Carlos D'Anda
Published by Wildstorm/DC Comics

Here's the thing: Brian Azzarello is a pretty damn good writer.  Proof for that statement is found in his western blood-opera Loveless and his like-it-or-fuck-off-and-die 100 Bullets.  Deathblow, however, doesn't make any sense.  It's full of genius moments of weirdness: pint-sized government assassins who look like 7-year-old children, talking dogs who form a counter-intelligence group, and a crazed title character who kills muggers while wearing a homemade Ku Klux Klansman outfit, and doesn't seem to grasp that's what he is wearing.  It's got kinetic artwork that does well to make the whole thing look like an exciting super-hero comic book, even though that disguises the fact that the whole thing is soaked in so much blood that it's just shy of disgusting.

But the story doesn't make any sense--and not in that way that Justice Society doesn't make any sense, where it's dumb and the logical jumps make the reader want to cry for the sheer stupidity--but the kind of "what the hell" where you feel like pages of exposition have not only been excised, but some of which have never been written.  Deathblow reads more like some kind of a dream story, where the images embrace Freudian meanings and little of what occurs is endowed with a type of reality.  It's a comic that's most enjoyable when it's read as if it's silent narrator is a liar, as if what's being shown isn't really happening.  Either that, or Azzarello is just seeing how long he can collect a paycheck while producing a comic that has no actual big reveal coming.  The latter is more likely--the only way this entire thing is going to reach, and embrace, a sensible conclusion is if the final issue contains a scene where an autistic child is looking at a snowglobe.

Justice League of America # 13
Written by Dwayne McDuffie
Art by Joe Benitez & Victor Llamas
Published by DC Comics

If you like your Justice League to always be the same, then here's the comic for you.  It's one of DC's bestsellers, so "you" applies to a large group of people.  (Although the comics version of "large" doesn't match up to any other definition of the world.  Interestingly enough, Halo 3 apparently made $170 million on it's first day of release.  First day.  Justice League is a bestseller, and yet it reaches less people than those horrifically unsettling Tyler Perry films.   Tell me again about how comics deserve a wider audience.  No, Seriously.  I won't laugh.  Tell me again about why comics fans should be taken seriously, when this is what most of them want their comics to be like.  Repetitive, overblown tripe, laced with tedious artwork and characters discernible only by their costume and their idiotic, mind-numbing "continuity.")  This is why something as melodramatic and silly as Nana (the soap-operatic manga) sells so well and reads like it's the most revolutionary thing since penicillin.  Because the best-selling stuff that DC has is the same shit they've been shoveling out forever.

You get the comics you deserve.

The Spirit # 10
Written by Darwyn Cooke
Art by Darwyn Cooke & J. Bone
Published by DC Comics

If there's a couple of thing that don't not cry out for satire, it's Rosie O' Donnell & the Colbert Report.  That's the equivalent of making a gonzo satire out of the Airplane movies.  The source material is already dancing with over-the-top parody.  Also, Cooke is running into the same problem that Eisner flirted with in his original Spirit: when your main character is kind of a boring archetype, the best place for a writer to get creative is in the plot and villains.  Then you end up with something where the title character is an irritation, a slow-moving Cadillac surrounded by vehicles that are faster, sexier, and not driven by my grandparents.

Ultimate Spider-Man # 114
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Stuart Immonen & Wade von Grawbadger
Published by Marvel Comics

Bendis is trying to dig his way out of his most unoriginal story yet by throwing in some old tricks--big pointless fights, Peter trying to act like a grown up and a cliffhanger ending.  In the current comic marketplace, where anything Marvel touches is reprinted somewhere around 7000 times, it might serve Bendis to remember that the repetition of story that saved the Lee's & Romita's of the past isn't going to go unremarked upon now.  After all, not only did you read this comic sometime around 4 years ago, you've got a scan of it on your computer, a trade of it in your bathroom and a hardcover on a bookshelf.  (I don't personally, but that's because I donate all my comics to children with AIDS or malaria or...i'm not sure what they have.  They keep coughing.  What's coughing mean?  Tuberculosis?  No, consumption.  They have consumption.)

Legion of Super-Heroes # 34
Written by Tony Bedard
Art by Dennis Calero
Published by DC Comics

Without peer, this is one of the ugliest comics of recent memory.  Noses grow out of people's ear canals, every characters eyes are malformed and lacking in even the most drunken symmetry--best of all, the colors are so poorly chosen that each artistic misstep is glaringly highlighted.  If nothing else, this issue is more likely to be re-read and re-examined than any other recent purchase.  It's a fine example of how, with just a little effort, the mediocre can be pushed to awful.  Unlike the rest of the drivel that brings about this readers ire, this issue tried extra hard this month--and its abysmal failure is a sight to behold.  On top of that, Tony Bedard wrote it.  A true masterpiece like this hasn't been around since Youngblood.

Green Arrow: Year One # 5
Written by Andy Diggle
Art by Jock
Published by DC Comics

The weakest issue of the series yet, and the only one that has art problems.  Jock's work has never seemed this unfinished--even the cover is the worst in the mans career thus far.  It's quite possible that his first four terrific issues got him a better job, and he's just trying to get the hell out of there.  It looks like Andy Diggle is following him right out the door, too, as this issue is devoid of the bon mots that occurred in the last issue--nobody develops a horrendous drug addiction that they defeat in two pages, there's no clever "you are nature, nature is green, you have an arrow, now you have a name" moments.  Just a page after page of filler with bad line work. 

All Star Batman & Robin # 7
Written by Frank Miller
Art by Jim Lee & Scott Williams
Published by DC Comics

It seems that All Star Batman has finally started getting enough issues out to finally form some kind of opinion of the series. 

Well, I mean it "seems" that way.

It's bad?  No, it's a joke.  Wait a second.

The advised way to read All Star Batman and enjoy it is by acknowledging that it's page after page of Frank Miller's contempt for the entire genre of superhero comic books.  The most clever idea in it is probably the laughing stuff, where Batman jumps from the top of buildings, laughing hysterically as he breaks people's bones, lights them on fire and so on.  (It's similar to Paul Pope's idea from Batman Year 100, where he had the titular character wear a massive set of fake teeth to give him a frightening appearance.  Miller's version is just as unsettling, but it acknowledges that his is a Batman who seems to fully embrace the more psychopathic aspects of his behavior.)  Miller has spent the better part of his career taking the entire spandex genre far too seriously--even his finest work has always been full of a sentimental embrace of the melodramatic that irritating fans call "realism", an argument Miller (mistakenly) seems to agree with..  Again, it's yet another comic that skirts with being interesting, but only when it's treated as an object to analyze--not when it's read.  Here's the thing though--analyzing superhero comics is BORING.  Nothing exciting or intellectually stimulating comes of it--at the base of it, there's not enough going on at the base of this stuff for the product of thought to be worth the investment.  It's not that it takes a lot of effort, it's just that it takes any effort at all--and the end result is talking about something you would have been better off with not dealing in the first place.

JLA Classified # 43
Written by Justin Gray
Art by Rick Leonardi & Sean Philips
Published by DC Comics

This comic stands head and shoulders above all super-hero comics solely for the dialog between long-time ladies man Green Arrow and long-time relationship counselor Martian Manhunter.  After all those years of comics fans and creators desperate to know why exactly Green Arrow has, on occasion, cheated on his super-hero girlfriend/fiance/murderer the Black Canary, Justin Gray has finally given us the answer: it's genetic.  As anyone who's ever pursued any type of relationship knows, one of the most dangerous (and just plain impossible to predict) flaws that can collapse any future with a prospective partner is the genetic predilection for cheating.  It's a nefarious fucker, that cheating gene. 

The Immortal Iron Fist Annual # 1
Written by Ed Brubaker & Matt Fraction
Art by Howard Chaykin, Dan Brereton, & Jelena Kevic Djurdjevic
Published by Marvel Comics

The Immortal Iron Fist # 9
Written by Ed Brubaker & Matt Fraction
Art by David Aja, Raul Allen, Scott Koblish & Roy Allan Martinez
Published by Marvel Comics

Two Iron Fist comics in one day should be an embarrassment of riches, shouldn't it?  After all, the Immortal Iron Fist comic is a comic that's been pretty wonderful since it debuted, and the people helming these issues is (mostly) the same crew that's been handling those stories as well.  Still, the immediate reaction is that the content of these pages seems to be pretty thin, considering the amount of ink involved.  Instead of keeping the momentum of the Enter the Dragon meets Iron Fist story, the first of the two issues has Iron Fist lose to the so-ridiculous-he-blows-minds Fat Cobra, then peel off to hang out at a retirement home for ex-side-kicks.  Then the old people tell him stories.  This goes on for a long time, with a few breaks for stories, one of which involves pirates.  As fun as that was to write as a sentence, it was pretty boring to read, and in the end this reader wanted more Fat Cobra.

-Tucker Stone, 2007

The Top 25 Albums of 1983: #9

The Fall
Perverted By Language

Let’s step out of the Wayback Machine for a minute and ask this: Has Mark E. Smith ever had a better year than 2007?  He’s dropped two albums himself:  the well-publicized-for-a-Fall-album Reformation Post T.L.C and, as Von Südenfed, a bananafied Mouse On Mars collaboration Tromatic Reflexxxions.  Plus, The Fall’s sticky influence gets nasty all over Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Is Is EP and Liars’ incredible self-titled album, and (something remarkably like) his voice is showing up on some of the best albums and singles of the year—from LCD Soundsystem to Prinzhorn Dance School to Grinderman.  We at The Factual Opinion would like to say: Word.  You, the TFO Faithful, know that, up here in the Factual Central Offices, we love us some careerists—the Waitses and the Costellos and the Dylans.  So it should come as no surprise that Mr. Smith has carved himself a nice little place in that company.  Nor should it surprise you that he’s cuddled up right next to perennial Factual homeboy Tom Waits on our 1983 countdown.

What with all The Fall’s cultural seepage, you probably already have a good idea of what Perverted By Language sounds like—Smith shout-singing manic poetry over intrusive rock grooves—and the album also has its fair share of crafty surprises (one of my favorites is the sequence in album-opener “Eat Y’Self Fitter” where Smith rants, “Where's the cursor?/ Where's the eraser?/ G-O-H-O-H-O-I-O/ G-O-H-O-H-O-I-O/ G-O-H-O-H-O-I-O/ H-O-I-O-G-O-H-O/ What's a computer?”)  But the real pleasure in doing these countdowns is the fun you have seeing rock history through the prism of now, and no one this side of Bruce Springsteen has more cultural cache right now than Mark E. Smith—which makes this YOUR perfect opportunity to go back to the source.  Hit it.

-Marty Brown, 2007

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.)

The Top 25 Albums of 1983: #10

Tom Waits
Swordfishtrombones

Tom Waits is on those short lists of human beings that comes up every time there's a freshman philosophy class that starts dealing with the ontological arguments for God's existence.  Considering how terrible most of the ontological arguments are, by the time most God-fearing men and women get to the 2 hour mark of discussing how the big G exists solely because the perfect description of the perfect being requires it's perfect existence, as necessitated by the descriptive term "perfect," it's not the faults of their pun-loving philosophy professor that they stumble drunkenly from class, to pub, to dorm room realizing that there mama was a liar, and there Sunday School teacher an over-bearing pederast.  Luckily for those who came of age post 83, all that was needed in their ears to caress the bottle of brandy in their grubby paws was a little "Sixteen Shells from a Thirty-Ought-Six," otherwise known as one of the 15 greatest songs of all time by one of the greatest singer-songwriters to walk the Earth--oh ye of little faith and massive torment that did live on the cursed ground before 1949 (the year of the saviors birth)--where is your 20 hour Burns mini-series, titled The Darkest Blackness: Life Before Tom Waits?  As it were, Waits was already a true American hero, born out of a junkyard monkey grinder, but until September of '83, he hadn't dropped the album that let everybody know what his DNA sounded like.  Until then, he was a singer-songwriter how dropped massively entertaining mixes of blues/vocal styling that wouldn't have been out of place on any intelligent national public radio program.  With Swordfishtrombones, he moved further into the freakier aspects of his personality while utilizing pianos and strings, instruments not exactly known for their hipster-freaky-deaky credentials, and succeeded in alienating any listener who was, because they were drunk, hoping he might sing more love ballads like Closing Time's "Martha."  His catalog leading to Swordfish wasn't shabby, not in the least, but from here everything was pure gold:  even at it's most off-putting, the man went on to embody that which terrifies 99% of music--Tom Waits is an artist, and his canvas is albums that stand in stark contrast with everything that surrounds him.  Bluntly: he's one of the names you come up with when you realized Descartes was a drunken fool--Tom Waits will make you buy into the Lord.

-Tucker Stone, 2007