Comics Of The Weak: Where Everything Was About Punching Each Other, But We Were Too Grown-Up To Care

Salvation Run # 1
Written by Bill Willingham
Art by Sean Chen & Walden Wong
Published by DC Comics

Sean Chen's art isn't going to be the draw for this comic, that's for sure. As our resident female reporter here at the Factual put it: "That looks like some shitty cartoon from the 70's." Still, crappy art hasn't hurt Willingham's sales that much before, and there's clearly some kind of market that DC keeps grabbing with these interminable examinations of the Flash's "Rogues Gallery." At this rate, it's not going to be that surprising before they start doing mini-series about the Weather Wizard. The plot is basically the same as that Ray Liotta movie from a few years back, which should tell you hard DC's working to keep up with trendy new readers. (Actually, considering the average age of most DC readers, referencing a shitty action movie from the early 90's is pretty prescient.) For those less well versed in Liotta, Willingham has thrown every useless and unknown villain on to some faraway planet and left them to fight, or form a commune, or starve. It's sort of like Lord of the Flies, if all the kids were wearing form-fitting spandex and didn't end up blowing each other. (7 issues to go for those who are looking for some hot action.) Willingham also was able to pull off getting permission from the Bat-editors to use the Joker, so he's sure to eventually kill some of these twerp characters. None of these things bode well for a good read, but that probably won't stop this thing from being successful enough to do it again. Long-time DC readers are nothing if not predictable, and this is the exact sort of averagely done crap that flies right into their long-boxes.

BPRD: The Killing Ground # 4
Written by Mike Mignola & John Arcudi
Art by Guy Davis
Published by Dark Horse Comics

The first of what became multiple books this week that were pretty much non-stop fights from cover to cover. This being the Mignola's B.P.R.D. universe version of fight week, it was the only one with the real ability to surprise, as Mignola seems to be the only writer currently working who's not only willing to let his characters lose, he occasionally lets them die as well. It's not that he's bloodthirsty, it's that Mignola is committed to telling pulpy monster stories, and unlike DC and Marvel, he likes their to be actual stakes to the scares--which means that somebody is gonna die. Mignola's commitment to putting out more books lately has meant spreading himself a little thin--the recent Hellboy series was a bit of a letdown, and Lobster Johnson has been a little heavy on the silliness. All that being said, Killing Ground has been a pleasure so far--a straight up locked house monster story, with a wry mix of quippy dialog and completely insane action. On top of that, Guy Davis has finally made the book completely his own--at this point, it would be Mignola's Abe Sapian that would look out of place here.

100 Bullets # 86
Written by Brian Azzarello
Art by Eduardo Risso
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

Azzarello has been heading down a pretty frightening road as of late--in the last issue an entire family was executed, children and all, and in this one, the Minutemen wreak out a particularly horrific violence against others guilty of the similar crime. On the surface, the story has only the mildest connection to the larger tale that 100 Bullets is far into the midst of, it as after all, Azzarello you're dealing with--and as always, it won't be until the book finishes that all the pieces will fully make sense. (Possibly, not even then.) Risso's work is as solid as ever, and while it's clear from some critics that his work is an acquired taste, even his haters can't argue that his consistency in every issue is a skill that very few artists can claim. There's very little on the stands that's as dark as the Bullets, and while that's not a good reason to love it, it's certainly going to be a gaping hole when the book finally finishes.

DMZ # 25
Written by Brian Wood
Art by Daniel Zezelj
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

Brian Wood is either working his way towards another one of those big six-part storylines that he likes to try with this title, or he's finally grasped what anybody who loves this book has been saying: DMZ works at it's best when it's a done-in-one chapter that focuses on the people on the sidelines. Even though last month's excursion with the failed suicide bomber wasn't, honestly, very good, Wood's best work has been when he ignores his journalist main character and goes deeper into the little world he's created. Like the proud graffiti artist tale in issue 23, this is another strong chapter focusing on a tough Chinese gangster who used the battle for Manhattan to cement a Don Corleone type relationship over a few city blocks. While a future relationship with Wood's reporter is foreshadowed in the final pages, the majority of this issue is just a backseat look at interesting characters doing interesting things--and considering that comics only have 22 pages in which to operate, that's no mean feat. The presence of such an outrageously talented artist like Zezelj only increases the pleasure.

Ghost Rider # 17
Written by Daniel Way
Art by Javier Saltares & Tom Palmer
Published by Marvel Comics

Not funny, just random and stupid this time. Ghost Rider is just a dumb ass fun book, and it dangerously treads the line every month between what it does best, which is watching a flaming skeleton kill demons, and what will eventually kill the title (as it always has before), which is try and tell some type of story that neccessitates either character development or believability. There's nobody who could pull off making Ghost Rider into something like Queen & Country, Preacher or even Punisher Max, and it's completely bizarre why writers always think they should try. It has been said before, and it never gets old: you are writing a comic book about a skeleton that is on fire and rides a flaming motorcycle. Stick to point A-point B type stories. Point C? Beyond your reach.

New Avengers # 36
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Lenil Yu
Published by Marvel Comics

Pretty much just more of the same which most people don't mind eh whatever. We liked the last issue, even though we were supposed to be really upset and perturbed by what happened in it. This issue was just a lot of dipshit fakery and nonsense. Boring with a knuckle sandwich. If you like Lenil Yu, then this is still a worthwhile book to read, but this comic surely reads far better in a collected format--it's gotten so "decompressed" that half of the book takes place over the five minute periods that 24 usually use as commercial breaks. Oh, and there's also a long conversation that takes place between a naked Spider-Woman and a clothed and threatening Wolverine in the shower, and there probably isn't anything that's quite as pleasurable as being a man, reading that passage, and not finding it arousing in the slightest. It's so clearly designed to titillate and sexualize that when it fails, it feels almost like earning a merit badge.

Punisher War Journal # 13
Written by Matt Fraction
Art by Cory Walker
Published by Marvel Comics

This was pretty hilarious. People seem to complain about this comic a lot, but Matt Fraction is probably the most individual voice Marvel or DC have had around in a while. When is the last time Spider-man's irritating banter was actually funny? The last time somebody thumped the Punisher on the head and called him a "Tiny Monkey?" When is the last time anybody got called a "Tiny Monkey?" Although the basic bones of the story has been done before--a bad guy is keeping other bad guys locked up in cages in a warehouse--this comic has some of the out and out silliest dialog of anything Marvel has published. It also has one of the best little killed-that-guy moments ever, when a silly conversation gets punctuated by a sniper's bullet delivered by the main character. As it goes, War Journal has become a totally hit or miss title--sometimes it's really fun, and sometimes it's a painful blow-job, wrapped up in teeth. This issue? Sugar cane rum.

World War Hulk # 5
Written by Greg Pak
Art by Klaus Janson, Christina Strain & John Romita, Jr.
Published by Marvel Comics

Aww, was World War Hulk a letdown? If you were reading it for resolution or change, and not just for John Romita's excellent artwork, than yes, it probably was. As was made clear from the first issue, the character that nobody, anywhere, ever, likes showed up and acted like a fucking dick, and so did the Hulk, and so did everybody, and then it was almost over with nothing changing, and then there was a dumb plot twist that answered the question of why a spaceship explosion destroyed an entire planet, and then, some characters died that nobody except nostalgia freaks care about, and then there was a deus ex machina that made you wonder why people are ever scared of the Hulk, and then it ended by saying the Hulk was kind of, sort of, but not really, dead, and then there was an ad for two new Hulk comics that will come out later, one of which will be written by Jeph Loeb, who's a total fucking tool, and drawn by Ed McGuiness, who draws comics that should probably feature Voltron and talking rabbits.

Random Observations:

*Was there anyone in World War Hulk that didn't act like a total penis?

*If all Iron Man had to do to stop the Hulk was shoot him with lasers, than why didn't he do that a long ass time ago? Why was "send him into space with a really difficult to set-up-lie" the first choice, when the laser idea obviously didn't even require Iron Man to dress up in his Iron Man outfit?

*If there's anybody out there who's upset by the death of Miek or Rick Jones, those people should really reexamine their life choices up until this point. And they should reexamine those choices will sleeping on the fucking highway.

*It would be really fascinating (in a painful, horrifying way) to have had this comic drawn by Michael Turner, or Rob Liefeld, or Todd McFarlane, or Don Kramer, or any of those artists that the Factual Opinion hates so much.

All-Star Superman # 9
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Frank Quitely & Jamie Grant
Published by DC Comics

The problem with writing what is arguably the best version of a straight-ahead spandex superhero comic book, like, ever, is that it has nowhere to really go but down. It's not like Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely working seamlessly together is going to be a non-starter, but it's also not like a comic about a superhero that plays totally by the classic rules can last for very long before it becomes, you know, a comic book about a superhero. If comics were treated as a disposable commodity, than maybe that wouldn't be true--but the compulsion to keep them, the non-stop reprinting that occurs doesn't serve them very well. When you're always a second away from reading a better version of the exact same story you just read, than how is any of it going to be that great? Of course, the whole behavior towards comics seems to be that it's never about whether something is "great," it's always whether it's "good enough" or "not that bad" or "not as much of a piece of shit as Anita Blake, which is a comic for people who find Anne Rice and Dean Koontz too fucking deep." So, yeah, this was kind of not that great of an issue of All-Star Superman, except for the part where Clark lit the bully's hairpiece on fire. That was the stuff. Everything else kind of made you wonder why it took so long for something this much like the first 6 issues to come out. Does Frank Quitely weave his own paper? What's the deal?

Batman & The Outsiders # 1
Written by Chuck Dixon
Art by Julian Lopez & Bit
Published by DC Comics

What's up with these one-name creators? Bit? What kind of asshole calls himself "Bit?" This is the first of what's going to end up being about seven hundred or so comics written by Chuck Dixon, a creator who has never met a book he couldn't make totally mediocre work out of. He's got his fans, and, unlike people who like modern Chris Claremont, that's totally understandable. Dixon is a reliable writer, who never attempts to operate outside his comfort zone, who writes comics that come out on time, and he maintains long runs. For the most part, if somebody has been reading DC's output on any extensive basis, they have read a lot of Dixon. The only way to dislike the guy's work is to have read quite a bit of it. That's when you start noticing that, although Dixon hangs out on titles for fifty issues or more, no one ever experiences anything approaching character development, that the dialog is nearly exactly the same for any and all characters, and that he never, ever, takes anything like what a 8 year old might refer to as a "chance."

All that reliable blandness shows up here in Batman & The Outsiders, yet another attempt by DC to make an edgy, real world, proactive strike force out of it's third tier spandex kids. Didn't we already do this? Like in Justice League Elite, Justice League Task Force, Extreme Justice (that was their real name!), and the original Outsiders? Yeah, pretty much. None of those lasted very long, and unless something pretty drastic happens here, neither will this one.

Green Arrow/Black Canary # 2
Written by Judd Winick
Art by Cliff Chiang
Published by DC Comics

That should make people complaining about Black Canary no longer under the control of Gail Simone shut the fuck up. They'll still be able to complain about Judd Winick's treatment of the Amazons, but the regular whipping boy for everybody with too much time on their hands certainly did a fine job of painting Black Canary as a lady who-don't-take-no-shit. She's still a pointless character with no real personality, but at least she's not getting exploited in this issue. (That service is performed by antagonistic HIV positive ex-prostitute Speedy.) The thing that's going to be a curiosity about this title is what sort of stories it wants to tell when the main crew gets back to whatever city it is they live in. Do they plan to fight purse-snatching with a four-person squad? There must be an actual death on the way. And shouldn't Speedy start bloating up from her HIV medication? People who buy into the theory that Judd is somehow committing some great public service by writing a character into having the virus don't seem to recognize that he needs to move the concept forward a bit for it to have any actual meaning. At this point, her HIV-positive status has about as much importance and believability as buying into the concept that Canary is some model of feminist idealization.

Nightwing # 138
Written by Fabien Nicieza
Art by Don Kramer & Wayne Faucher
Published by DC Comics

Don Kramer is such a terrible artist for super-hero comics. Receding hairlines, bizarre facial structure, incapable of even the most basic fight scenes and a total absence of continuity within a panel. Really hideous work, in a field where hideous gets plenty of face-time. This was another non-stop fight issue, and even though it had terrible artwork and gave way too much credit to faceless hordes of ninjas, it still ends up being the best issue of Nightwing in almost three years. (And only three years because three years is all this reader could remember of this terrible comic book.) After all, shit actually happened, even though it was a stupid ninja fight. "Shit actually happening" isn't something that's been used to describe this particular title in a long time. While this old school Batman cross-over will probably end up sucking some of the life out of the big-tier Batman and Detective issues it shows up in, it's certainly going to add some life back into Nightwing. It would still be idiocy to think any of that will stick around when the thing ends, and Nightwing gets back to the only thing it seems to do well: being a total vacuum of awful to anyone involved in it.

-Tucker Stone, 2007