The Factual Opinion

Comics Of The Weak: Could've Used Something From Image or Dark Horse This Godforsaken Weak

Batman & The Outsiders # 5
Written by Chuck Dixon
Art by Julian Lopez, Bit & Marta Martinez
Published by DC Comics

Huh.  Why is Katana dressed like that?  Does she even have a costume anymore?  She seems to be wearing something different in just about every comic she appears in.  This title is more of a curiosity than anything DC's currently putting out--it features no one of any economic importance besides Batman, it doesn't seem to have any connection to other DC titles or major story lines, the writer who wrote a five issue mini-series leading up to its inception was unceremoniously removed and replaced with Chuck "Always Lukewarm, All The Time" Dixon, and as each issue rolls in, it tells frenetically paced stories about C-grade super-heroes knocking down doors and attacking various office complexes.  Every couple of pages, it cuts to Batman dispensing orders so you can be reminded he's there--which makes it even dumber, somehow, since the only plan ever seems to be "knock down doors and/or walls inside office complex."  It isn't like Batman needs to actually be there, or that these "plans" of his are extraordinarily difficult to memorize.  On top of that, one reads it and wonders what, exactly, the plan was for this series in the first place--assuming that Tony Bedard (the original writer) had one.  None of these characters (excepting Metamorpho, possibly) have any sort of personality, they never have:  Geo-Force, Grace, Katana--they're some of the best examples of characters kept in existence solely to be used as future gravestones in later stories.  The best guess is that it exists so that Batman-addicts will have something to buy on the weeks when his other three titles aren't out, and this series is preferable to Batman & The Katzenjammer Kids.

Checkmate # 24
Written by Greg Rucka and Eric Trautmann
Art by Joe Bennett, Jack Jadson & Santiago Arcas
Published by DC Comics

Well, if there was ever an issue of Checkmate that serves both as a reason why A) the title is pretty fantastic and B) the title is almost completely unsuccessful, then here it is:  this is so far down the road of being completely impenetrable that the only way to make it more confusing and obtuse to any fool stupid enough to pick it up for the first time would be if every page was coated with black latex paint.  If you've kept up with Checkmate for a while, and you also can remember the difference between DC's Kobra and the Destro one (admittedly, that ain't much, DC's just lacks ninjas) and you can remember obscure members of Doom Patrol, the Justice League, and you don't mind a comic that, at times, looks like a Wikipedia entry on Star Trek characters (from a design standpoint) then sure, you're going to get a kick out of this.  Otherwise, you fit into two groups--people who are reading this solely because it's the closest you're going to get to new Queen & Country or people who make it about 3 pages in and say, you know what?  You guys are fucking nerds.  Case.  In.  Point.

Justice League of America # 19
Written by Alan Burnett
Art by Ed Benes, Sandra Hope, Mariah Benes, Ruy Jose & Peter Pantazis
Published by DC Comics

One of the excuses for liking this sort of garbage that gets thrown out sometimes is that it's "like a soap opera."  In all frankness, that's a defense that gets thrown out by people who would probably buy a comic featuring technical drawings of the Batmobile, but it is an "argument in a pretty basic form.  Still, the difference between a "soap opera" and this, the Justice League, is that if you're not looking at a soap opera, you can still pretty much tell just by listening whether someone is a woman or a man, whether a character is "nice" or "ridiculously evil,"  whereas here--there's nothing.  The most basic ability to distinguish the characters is only found in whatever version of spandex they happen to be wearing (or, in all the women's case, barely wearing.)  It's just drawings of action figures moving around against drawings of the most basic locations--a room, a cave, a spaceship--and the dialog is just given to whomever is being drawn at the time.  There's nothing here--not a spark of excitement in the hands of the creators, no sense of importance or craft in the story being told--the best description is that this is a packet of colorful nothing.  It cost three dollars.

Captain America # 36
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Butch Guice, Mike Perkins & Frank D'Armata
Published by Marvel Comics

Well, that's certainly not the ugliest cover in history, but it's the ugliest cover in the history of this series.  It looks like the sort of thing that gets painted on collectible dinner plates, which we imagined are probably still being hawked on Nickelodeon.  Some things never go away, regardless of their lack of explainable existence.  Beyond this dipshit fan-art cover, we find the continuation of the story that everybody, excluding all those newspaper writers, saw coming.  Steve, the original Captain America?  Well, the bad guys dug his body out of the icy grave that Iron Man put him in--which we all knew he would, so it's not worth getting excited about.  Or surprised.  It's just comics, and nobody is dead forever, and nothing goes un-resurrected, and this was probably the plan from the get-go, and who fucking cares, anyway?  The least interesting part of this series was when he died, it's always been about Bucky, the Winter Soldier, the new Cap, the call-him-what-you-will, he was always the star.  He got to shoot some people here.  It probably made him feel really good.

Foolkiller # 4
Written by Gregg Hurwitz
Art by Lan Medina & Andy Troy
Published by Marvel Comics

Having a bald, coughing dweeb show up after one of those phone calls where a crimelord-type says "bring in the nasty-person-who-intimidates-even-me."  Really?  The best story thing this Foolkiller series had going for it was its constant willingness to go way over the line of taste and predictability: shoplifting comics getting a father killed, katana swords in the boardroom, schoolchildren and mothers dying in fiery explosions--all that wasn't exactly "good," but it was at least reliably "fucked up."  Like when you meet a moron who reads only Chuck Palaniuk and watches Tony Scott's Man On Fire and calls them "amazing" because they're "So Fucked UP!"  But we've seen well-trained midgets fighting before, Hell, we've seen it in Green Blowjob Arrow for chrissakes.  And we've seen this coughing dweeb before too, in The Yellow Bastard.  Fuck, we've seen them all, haven't we?  Oh well.  The dog gets to kill some more people, and somebody needs to take a step back--what a dog.  Ever tried to work with a dog that has hurt people before? That's some real shit. 

Ghost Rider # 21
Written by Jason Aaron
Art by Roland Boschi & Dan Brown
Published by Marvel Comics

A small-town sheriff with a foul attitude and a world weary outlook on law enforcement.  A side character getting sliced up by an just-introduced crazy dude.  Ahh, Preacher.  Wait, no Ghost Rider.  This is Ghost Rider, right?  Because I could've sworn that I already read this, when it was called Preacher.  Oh, the difference is the nurses.

The Immortal Iron Fist # 13
Written by Ed Brubaker & Matt Fraction
Art by Kano, David Aja, Tonci Zonjic & Matt Hollingsworth
Published by Marvel Comics

Iron Fist is somehow, someway, managing to continue being one of the best super-hero comics on the market--in part because it's dissimilar from the rest of them, because it refuses to back off it's main "you have good kung fu" joke-like premise, and in part because it reads like a throwback to something that people keep claiming they remember reading--but they don't seem to ever have any examples, now do they?  Why Iron Fist is so good is up to better critics to tell you--here we're content to say "it just pretty much is."  It's a weird little jump, to finish reading an issue of this and then to look at what else Marvel released on the same day--more Spider-Man comics, more confusing X-Men comics, more Really Serious And Important comics like Cable and what not.

Wolverine: Origins # 23
Written by Daniel Way
Art by Steve Dillon & Matt Milla
Published by Marvel Comics

When they started this series, it was with a lot of posturing that there was going to be an exploration of Logan's recently remembered past--hence the "Origins" in the title.  Since then, it's been a whole lot of ugh type Wolverine adventures, all of which have only served to make Wolverine's convoluted and confusing past even more convoluted and confusing.  (Whatever psycho is out there doing the heavy lifting on Logan's Wikipedia entry?  Go outside.  This ain't worth whatever you're sacrificing.)  Yet here we are, three issues into the Greatest Wolverine Story Ever Told, and we mean that shit f'reals.  That's why it's capitalized.  Because this--a long-form Tom & Jerry cartoon where Deadpool and Wolverine trade quips while dismembering and eviscerating each other, hiring actors to help fake a baby in danger, dropping a Grand Piano on a giant X--holy shit, this is the story Wolverine comics were invented to tell.  For anybody who's ever almost thrown up after reading this character say "I'm the best I Is At What I's Does," this one, tender friend, this one is for you.  Respect Knuckles.

-Tucker Stone, 2008

No Pictures: Ian McEwan Buried A Few Puppies At Some Point

Saturday
By Ian McEwan
2005, Published by Doubleday/Random House

You can only be startled by an Ian McEwan book a few times--whether it's the gut punch in Atonement's epilogue, or the twist of violence that takes over The Innocent midway through what had been a quiet parable about security--eventually you'll start to grasp that while McEwan's books start off with a culture of solemnity, they'll eventually envelop the reader with a shock.  Whether it's an almost uncomfortably cruel lie or an explosive cafe murder, McEwan's books embrace the twist, and after you've learned of his love, you'll spend the rest of his books waiting for its arrival.  While Saturday's is more intense than some, it's one you can see coming.  What makes Saturday worth reading isn't the tension though, as with any McEwan, tension is window dressing.  Saturday succeeds on the brilliant success of another of McEwan's classic loves--that of hollowing out the mind of men to study, in as intimate fashion as possible, the way the mind works when dealing with everything it comes across, from the trivial to the blood-soaked. 

Speak, Commentary
By Jeff Alexander & Tom Bissell
2003, Published by McSweeney's Books

Not a book worth owning, not even a book worth reading more than once, Speak, Commentary is little more than what it's back cover dictates--it's fake movie commentaries about science-fiction films by people like Noam Chomsky, Ann Coulter & Dick Cheney, with some Star Trek freaks for a bonus.  While some of it is pretty hilarious, it's the type of hilarious that never plays well for a crowd, and the type that won't produce laughs on the retread.  On the positive tip, it is far less navel-gazing than most of what the McSweeney's contingent currently puts out, and it's almost completely devoid of precociousness.  (Excepting the idea behind it, that is.)

Amsterdam
By Ian McEwan
1998, Published by Doubleday/Random House

Amsterdam is one of Ian's award winners, and it's easy to grasp why--not as uncomfortably dark as his earlier work, and any reading of the Booker Prize winners displays their lack of interest in blood-theatrics.  Where Amsterdam fails isn't in its lack of nastiness--no, the problem here is in the inability of it's main characters to outshine the ones on the sideline.  The highest of praise can go to the passages of the book that explore the morning a wife decides to risk humiliation to protect a cross-dressing husband--it's a masterpiece of dining room drama that also serves to make the near constant complaints of the two men in Amsterdam's leads that much more irritating.  Still, Amsterdam helped to pave the way for Atonement & Saturday, and for that at least, the book is worth a gander.   Remember gandering?

Strangers on a Train
By Patricia Highsmith

There's quite a bit of Strangers on a Train that doesn't need to be there--huge paragraphs of spastic descriptions of rooms and clothes, hair and smells that only serve to showcase the nervousness of a first time writer.  Still, Strangers on a Train is an excellent piece of genre work, and it's obvious why Hitchcock found such success with his film version--this is a story that's impossible not to finish, and the overblown descriptions aside, it's a frighteningly good book from someone who was rarely acknowledged for her massive talent.  (While she was alive, that is.  Now her various publishers behave as if everybody was reading her.)  While Highsmith is too dead now to enjoy the benefits of the beautiful paperback editions of her work, one hopes that she at least enjoyed these stories when she wrote them.  After everything is done here, people will still be reading about Bruno and Guy for the next hundred years.

-Tucker Stone, 2008

Comics Of The Weak: I'll Take That Tangent To Prom, By God I Will

Abe Sapien: The Drowning # 2
Written by Mike Mignola
Art by Jason Shawn Alexander
Published by Dark Horse Comics
Preview it here

There's more going on here then there was last time, but this is still a mini-series that seems even more inconsequential then Lobster Johnson, if that is something that's even possible.  Hey, did you ever wonder how Abe Sapian felt after Hellboy left the Bureau For Paranomal Research & Defense?  Did you think he was sad about it, and worried that he wouldn't be able to cope now that his friend and leader went away to Africa?  You were right!  Here's a mini-series about the fish-man and those exact feelings, and we'll throw in a snake creature as well!  There's got to be something more interesting to say about Abe Sapian then this--oh, that's right, there was, it was called Garden of Souls, and it came out last year.  (That's not to slight Jason Alexander's art--as much of a retread as this mini is turning into, Alexander has a real flair for the creeps and the crawls.  But ye, this story be dull.)  As boring as the Drowning was, there's still something great to be said for Mike Mignola.  Keep reading.  Just not this comic.  Keep reading the reviews.

B.P.R.D. 1946 # 3
Written by Mike Mignola & Joshua Dysart
Cover by Mike Mignola
Art by Paul Azaceta & Nick Filardi
Published by Dark Horse Comics
Preview it here

And here's another layer of wet cement slathered all over the monument that is Mignola's B.P.R.D. being the one little corner of the mainstream comic world that never disappoints.  As slight a work as the off-shoots might be, the B.P.R.D. proper is consistently an immense pleasure to read.  The art, while leaping from various different able hands, is a joy by itself--Paul Azaceta, even more so than Mignola, looks to have cut many of these pictures straight out of wood.  (Possibly a sturdy oak?)  It is also admirable that, after so many stories, Mignola still refuses to try to do anything beyond tell ripping yarns about the various ghosts and beasties, and the people that attempt to stand in their way.  Hell, there's a little girl that's a host for some type of Satanic demon who quotes Hamlet to Sgt. Rock-style soldiers in an attempt to--what?  Calm them?  Creep them the fuck out?  The main A plot is hinging around a Nazi attempt to breed vampires coming to catastrophic results after World War II.  The B plot surrounds the aforementioned little girl, the devil that she truly is, and her feelings regarding owls.  What's not to like about that?  Oh, how about the editors of the B.P.R.D. responding directly to the still-whining jackasses who won't read Mignola's work unless he draws it?  It's in the letters column.  You're welcome.

Batman: Confidential # 14
Written by Tony Bedard
Art by Rags Morales, Mark Farmer & I.L.L.
Published by DC Comics

There's a couple of odd missteps here--a purple hand, in direct contradiction of any possible human skin colors, and a scene where two nervous cops fire point blank at Batman and Commissioner Gordon with what appears to be automatic weapons, the result of which is both that A) no one gets shot and B) neither cop is reprimanded, but beyond that, this is pretty much exactly what's been happening for the last 13 issues of this series:  anemic stories regarding the most trivial aspects of Batman's past, like "the time he met Lex Luthor,"  "the time the Joker killed some people" and now, "the time he met some cop-killer's understudy."  While there's always going to be a lot more of a cogent argument for the dilution of the Batman brand by focusing on the production of ugly t-shirts and those obnoxious action figures, this series is continuing to rapidly turn itself into a fine example of why Bruce Wayne is totally over-exposed.  Of course, the same thing could be said about the entire decade where his adventures seemed to consist of ice-skating and fighting circus bears, so maybe Batman is just impervious to bad stories.  Or taste.  And bears?

Gotham Underground # 6
Written by Frank Tieri
Art by J. Calafiore, Jack Purcell, Mark McKenna & Brian Reber
Published by DC Comics

It is curious to this reviewer if there are really going to be readers who react to the final pages of this issue with something like horror--while we assume that comics fans are smart enough to know that, regardless of what the surrounding characters said and what's depicted as happening, Nightwing (who is shot in the chest at close range, if you care) is not in any danger of actually being dead.  Or even hurt that badly.  Why should everyone know this?  Well, because Gotham Underground has, and is, so completely full of completely bizarre additions to the DC universe that it clearly has to be a story that is going to be totally ignored by anybody who ever wants to write future Batman comics.  They can't really expect anybody to accept what's been presented here--a four page spread of 33 new villains, all of whom are in some way correlated to other (still alive and available) villains.  In some cases, the villains are just gender-reversed versions of other characters, like the disturbing female version of Bane--complete with vein covered breasts and a ponytail that looks like it may have been removed from an actual pony.  In some cases, it is just a lame update of a costume and a change in race.  Although this is presented with complete sincerity and seriousness, there is just no way this series can be anything less than a strange joke, the sort that will elicit a grimace of pain after it gets explained.  Like the Reader's Digest Humor In Uniform page, or...what's that one called?  Life In These United States?  That one isn't funny either.  Drama In Real Life though, that shit is the bomb.

Green Arrow & Black Canary # 6
Written by Judd Winick
Art by Cliff Chiang & David Baron
Published by DC Comics

In the same way that Batman Confidential provides an anemic, toothless venue for boring blueprints of ideas about Bruce Wayne to be presented, Green Arrow has become a series made up of issue long explorations of five minutes in the lives of Green Arrow & Black Canary.  A one minute fight and conversation takes 7 pages, ten seconds of Ollie's rage fills two, and then the remainder of the comic focuses on about 3 and a half minutes of a van ride, a motorcycle ride, and a crashed spaceship.  And that's all.  It takes 22 pages to do that--not because there is a lot of dialog or anything, but because that's all there is to it.  Some time passes, one or two things happen, and the comic ends with the zany reveal of some 1940's looking aliens wearing matching uniforms.  Oh, and Green Arrow, we guess, calls people he is mad at "Butt monkeys."  Which totally would make sense, if, I don't know, Green Arrow was an eight year old at recess.  Either way, Cliff Chiang is done with the book in one more issue, according to the sort of people who claim to know about that sort of thing.  We will be too.

Madman Atomic Comics # 7
Written by Michael Allred
Art by Micheal & Laura Allred
Published by Image Comics
Preview it Here

There's this band in New York called The Big Sleep, opened for the Baltimore super-crew that is Wilderness a couple of years back.  The Big Sleep, while having nothing to do with Raymond Chandler, is pretty much fifteen kinds of badass--a three piece that plays mostly instrumental music designed to crush your brain, they are the sort of band that takes the stage and proceeds to straddle the line between "so loud that it hurts" to "loud enough to remind you that your just one human being on the planet, and are basically useless in the greater scheme of our shared spinning globe."  So they pretty much, when playing  live, will rectify any ambition you had to be more important than anybody else, because by yourself, you couldn't create something of that jackhammering power, no matter how many quotes you can remember from Fanon's The Wretched Of The Earth. They got some more non-New York exposure recently, as their latest album has made the rounds of the internet tastemakers, which means it's time for that this-never-gets-old talk about how just because somebody in Kansas City who's 14 likes the same band you've been holding close to your secret vest for a couple of years, that doesn't mean that their new album sucks.  But you know what?  Some of the songs, the ones where they feel the need to sing?  Those songs kind of suck.  The first three tracks are all about kicking your fucking ass, and starting a military movement on top of your kicked ass.  Then track four drops, and the lady starts singing, and she's got a decent voice, and the lyrics are ethereal enough to be inoffensive, but jesus, it just doesn't really work.  Madman Atomic Comics?  Same goddamn thing.  Madman, even when it's just a round-about bad issue like the last one, is a comic that, silly or bland or whatever, needs some dialog.  Otherwise, it's issue 7--silent but for sound effects, all whimsically and colorfully drawn--and an agonizingly boring piece of shit.  If all you want out of a Mike Allred comic is pretty pictures, then here you go.  But if you want to read something Allred-ian you'll enjoy, stick to the back issues and hope he's warming up a keyboard.

Fantastic Four # 555
Written by Mark Millar
Art by Bryan Hitch, Paul Neary & Paul Mounts
Published by Marvel Comics

Has there even been a comic book or science fiction story where a giant, indestructible robot has been devised for good but hasn't turned to evil?  There are stories where bad robots turn good, and there are stories where bad robots stay bad, but the good robots?  They go evil every time, don't they?  It makes a vague sort of sense that they would, because a good robot doing good probably wouldn't be that interesting--hell, they had to give Robocop those contradictory rules in the first movie just to make him interesting.  Remember the ED 209, that big walking thing with the guns?  It didn't even have a personality, all its most compelling traits stemmed solely from the animal noises it made.  But still, if you're just going to follow the regular story points of Big Robot Is Now Evil, How Can Mankind Stop This Frankenstein-like Turn Of Events, then why use a Big Robot at all?  It's just--hell, can we say boring again?  Every week, the Factual fights the temptation to use a thesaurus and come up with another phrase besides "boring as shit" or "double-B boring" and the rarely used, but well known "bored to tears."  We're not tired of bland yet, that's a good one.  Anyway.  Mark Millar continues his love affair with the Thing spitting out catchphrases from a Dr. Phil desk calendar, the Human Torch is hip! cool! and so with it! and Reed Richards is still, after the last forty or fifty or however many years, not capable of seeing the emotional consequences that result from his obsession with science.  You'd think that a man who can make a nuclear reactor would comprehend that the warmth in his bed isn't produced by fusion or Onsager reciprocal relations, it's through the love, and presence, of a "good woman."  Yet look at him go, chasing that never-to-be-caught magic of science!  Oh, Reed.  You may be Mr. Fantastic, but you certainly aren't Fantastically Understanding.

The Last Defenders # 1
Written by Joe Casey & Keith Giffen
Art by Jim Muniz, Cam Smith & Antonio Fabela
Published by Marvel Comics
Read Douglas Wouk's Review Instead, Here

For some reason, Joe Casey and Keith Giffen have gone crawling through the detritus of the Marvel universe, grabbing hold of some of it's most ephemeral strands, and come up with a six issue mini-series to tell about it.  Creating a new Defenders, they've called it the Last Defenders, and it consists of She-Hulk, Nighthawk, Colossus and the Blazing Skull.  Although this reader has never heard of the Blazing Skull, who is a sort of squat overweight Ghost Rider, he "used to bust nazi heads," which makes him somewhere around 70 years old.  Considering that Joe Casey and Keith Giffen are both talented writers cursed with a recent history of writing great comics that no one wants to buy, it is sort of awe-inspiring that Marvel is letting this project go ahead.  And letting them set it in Hoboken, New Jersey.  And letting them use the Son of Satan.  While the first issue isn't anything that'll make anybody wet their pants, there are so many things about the ideas behind this that are completely incongruous and designed to fail that, the actual comic notwithstanding, this is pretty much the greatest bad idea so far this year.  And it's still only March, so FUCK YES.

The Mighty Avengers # 10
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Mark Bagley, Danny Miki, Allen Martinez & Justin Ponsor
Published by Marvel Comics
Read Douglas Wouk's Review Instead, Here

If it wasn't for the letter columns and web presence that Bendis maintains, he'd probably be a far more intriguing individual.  His comics would still bring about the same basic reaction, but wouldn't it be sort of fascinating not to know that he's a foul-mouthed, pop-culture obsessed man-boy with a completely out-of-proportion love affair for the work of David Mamet?  God, if Bendis ever gets the chance to sit down with David Mamet, that's going to be maybe the greatest thing ever.  It'll be like when they pulled down the Saddam statue for the media, except it'll be the collapse and destruction of a basic part of his idol worship, and it'll happen inside Brian's brain.  Mamet is such a...ugh, such a horrible human being to be around.  Just awful.  Oh, so about Mighty Avengers--yeah, like if you didn't know what Bendis was into from his constant natterings about what he's into, you'd just go to the store, read a guilty pleasure Ultimate Spider-man, and then read a guilty pleasure New Avengers, vomit, and then you'd see something like this latest issue of Mighty Avengers, which was by far the best issue yet--which is sort of like being the nicest rapist in Bosnia-Herzegovinia.  Too far?  Maybe too far.  But seriously, (we mean it, seriously, let's Be Serious about the Mighty Avengers) seriously:  this entire issue hinges on some understandings of time travel that make you want to write a letter to Iron Man care of the North Pole that is just a card with Snoopy on the front as the Red Baron and the inside it reads Frankie Says RELAX Iron Man, you. are. not. real.  And Dr. Doom turns out to be the most fun and most wonderful person to be trapped in the past with, and the Sentry behaves as he always does when he's being used solely as a plot device, meaning his behavior makes-no-sense-like-AT-ALL, but that's okay, because at this point the Sentry is starting to become more like a tire, or a tumbleweed, or the Energizer Bunny--he just shows up, he rolls through a comic book and you wave at him and go back to making out with Dr. Strange.  He's sort of like a homeless person who is homeless through being crazy and poor, instead of rich, which means he gets to play drums for U2.  If you could read this stuff, on a regular basis, and yet couldn't ever find out what Bendis looked like, or acted like, or what he fought with Gail Simone about (hint:  It was about who takes themselves more seriously, and both of them lost.)  then you'd probably enjoy your Bendis comics a lot more, just because he'd live in your mind like a cool uncle, or a mildly perverted grandad who dents cans of green beans for a discount and says things like "Jennifer Connolly?  Nice set of LUNGS on that one!"

Wolverine # 63
Written by Jason Aaron
Art by Ron Garney & Jason Keith
Published by Marvel Comics

Is the cover of this comic supposed to look like a real wanted poster, or is supposed to look like a wanted poster that you buy at Coney Island or the County Fair?  On that note, what sort of crimes do they usually list on those family wanted posters anyway?  Can you tell them?  Do they (carny folk) have rules in place to prevent somebody from taking it "to far?"  It seems unlikely that you couldn't sway the mind of a carny with money.  Anyway, the Virgin Read handled the first issue of Jason Aaron's regular run on Wolverine, and then somebody who pretended to be Ron Garney showed up and told her to re-read the issue because she didn't "get it."  In the interest of maintaining a decent relationship with one of our most consistent of contributers, we'll take the Virgin's side and admit that we were a bit confused by the dynamics of the last issue--however, there was no such confusion this time:  Wolverine was in Kansas City in the Roaring 20's and it was a heady time to be a degenerate scumbug with claws in his hands.  Or at least, that is what we learned in this issue, along with the requisite scene where Wolverine babbles endlessly about how he's been "shot a lot over the years," as if that's something that doesn't go without saying, as if it's something anybody cares about, and as if saying that doesn't pretty much make the reader go, yeah I know, that's why I read this goddamn comic, because I get off on you being hurt you whiny little six year old.   Maybe not so much that last part?  Maybe not so much.  It's sort of amazing that Jason Aaron is setting this comic in the present day, in the Afghan mountains, and it's all about Wolverine planning to assassinate someone who's gone "too far this time" but instead of that being, oh, i don't know, you know, c'mon, we're not going to say it, no, it's Mystique, who, if we're not remembering our Mutant History correctly (and we're not, because we don't care) wasn't Mystique a member of X-Factor like two years ago?  She must've done something really bad.  Was it as bad as when those...you know, when those?  In New York?  That thing?

Atomic Robo # 6
Written by Brian Clevinger
Art by Scott Wegener & Ronda Pattison
Published by Red 5 Comics
Recommended by Matt Brady

Atomic Robo: meet M. Butterfly.  Sure, there's stuff there, basic stuff, that's pretty great--John Lone's performance, while at time veering into caricature, is still pretty likable throughout, even in those moments where one just wonders what exactly was going through his head around the time the marriage hit six years.  Also, just as everybody kind of wonders when exactly Jeremy Irons figured out that his wife was actually a dude, this reader wonders when exactly the Atomic Scientists who follow Robo around are going to realize that they have some dangerously ridiculous jobs, and should just take the civil service exam and see if the department of Parole has any placements available.  Following around a quirky robot with a taste for big fights isn't exactly a position that will guarantee a future not full of broken legs.  In other words, if you're looking for more cartoonish version of Hellboy, with a funny robot instead of one of the devil's relations, then you'd probably get a kick out of Atomic Robo.  It straddles the line between adorable enough to be totally wonderful and so adorable you might need to take some insulin.  Your call.  We thought it was pretty satisfying.

DMZ # 29
Story & Cover by Brian Wood
Art by Riccardo Burchielli & Jeromy Cox
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

It's been a little while since the DMZ did a six-parter, so this is a welcome return?  Maybe?  We'll see.  As was pointed out by a reviewer who's taste usually veers towards the mundane and awful, there might be a vague real world connection between the latest character addition to the DMZ world--a smooth cat with a strong base of support who's quick with the polemic, yet non-verbal enough to leave more critical minds wondering whether there's any actual ideas backing up his ability to motivate a crowd.  The opening pages let us know that, at some point, our protagonist is going to be lugging around a machine gun (while still wearing his "Press" hat, which points to a lack of objectivity, but oh well, that couldn't last forever, right?) so we know that at some point, this story is going to leave the realm of "vote for the people's champion" and end up in the "nasty people are gonna shoot that people's champion."  Wood's series has earned enough cred at this point that it's a bit useless to try and fill in the blanks for him, but even with that being said, if this story does end up being one of those tragically short-sided metaphors where a holier than thou motivational speaker (with a cool hat and a fresh outlook) turns into a sacrificial lamb, it's going to be a disappointment.  But hey, after the turn for the brilliant that Northlanders has taken, and all those solid done-in-ones that DMZ has had, there's no reason to even consider giving up on this series yet.  Besides all that, Burchielli is in for the win for this storyline, and, alongside Daniel Zezelj, he's the best artist DMZ has had.

-Tucker Stone, 2008

Stunt Casting: Kate Zimmer Will Eat The Justice League, New Frontier And All

UPDATE:  Kate Zimmer's recent project, Estee Lauder's Sensuous is featured on the cover of the March 14th Women's Wear Daily.

Take a look at the article here. 

Once again, Stunt Casting returns with the gracious and ever-so-caustic Kate Zimmer, as she sits down with Darwyn Cooke's this-isn't-just-for-the-money, really, Justice League: New Frontier Special.  This interview was conducted at the Factual Opinion's satellite offices in Manhattan, under the auspice of some of the worst house music that's ever existed, and a cultured amount of alcohol was involved on the part of the interviewee.  Your interviewer, as always, was the unnamed Factual moderator, and he/she was cold ass sober.  What follows is that combination, plus Post Its, Darwyn Cooke, Bruce Wayne, Justice League's New Frontier, and why love is a chumps way out.

Kate Zimmer: Do you like all my notes?

The Factual Opinion:  I do like all your notes!  I'm kind of excited about the fact that you have that many notes.

Zimmer: [Laughing] I keep trying to imagine what the people in Starbucks were thinking.  I went to Starbucks and was between a guy who was obviously writing a screenplay and two people who were on break from an office job, and I was reading a comic book and putting Post-It notes all over it.

They Get Into Her Personal Life

TFO:  Very serious.  What sort of experience do you have with comic books?

Zimmer:  Almost none.  I used to watch the Batman comic series after school with my brothers.  I have four brothers who read a lot of comics, and I would check them out once in awhile--but I was a girl, and not that into them.

TFO:  The animated series from about 10-15 years ago?

Zimmer:  Yes, it would have to be, because I was around ten years old.  I think it was called the Dark Knight series.

TFO:  Did you know that there was a connection to the writer of this comic when you picked it?

Zimmer:  No. Not at all.

TFO:  Oh. Well, that was sort of how he got his start.  He was an animation guy for them.  I think so.  I don't really know the story, but that was how he got his start, that Batman show.  [She does not care, but kindly listens anyway.]  Do you remember what your brothers read?

Zimmer:  I don't remember, no.  Like this [Justice League] has a really simple cover and I remember that their's had...you know, they were like the novels.  They were really thick and would have really intense illustrations on the cover and they usually involved something being undead.  Or something like that.

TFO:  So it was horror?  Were there super-heroes, or stuff like that?

Zimmer:  No.  It was horror.

They Get Into The Super-Hero Talk

TFO:  You were quick to select this against all the others, and it seemed like you picked it based on the fact that it was the "Justice League."  [Editors note:  When Kate picked her comic, she looked at all available and then went "Oh!  The Justice League!  That one."]

Zimmer:  [Laughing]  Totally!

TFO:  Why that one above all the others available?

Zimmer:  Because there wasn't a lot of information on the cover and I got to guess what was on the inside.  So it was "Justice League" and I figured that is an old-timey name, like a throwback to the 30's, but they'll be battling crime in the modern era.  I don't know--did that translate?  And I really liked "Justice League."

TFO:  Were you looking for something that was tied into super-heroes or where you just looking for whatever, just any cover?

Zimmer:  I assume all comics are tied into super-heroes.  Even like the one about the guy who is undead and goes around fighting crime.  I mean, like there's the one, American Splendor, but even that guy is a hero, right?

TFO:  He's just old.

Zimmer:  But he's the hero of the story.

TFO:  Well, he's the protagonist.

Zimmer:  And he can fly?

TFO:  No, he can't fly. 

Zimmer:  Harvey Pekar can't fly?

TFO:  No, he can't.

Zimmer:  Fuck you.

TFO:  [Uncomfortably long pause to see if she is actually angry.] They have ones that are about people having serious problems dating, and about elderly people having Alzheimer's.

Zimmer:  Oh god, I'd rather see people flying.

Back On Task/Topic

Zimmer:  You know this gun on the front actually attracted me, and I was a little disappointed that it never showed up.

TFO:  Yeah.  That comes up every time we do one of these interviews, because there is always something on the cover that never shows up in the comic.  I think that's Adam Strange.  I mean, you can't tell, but I'm pretty sure that's Adam Strange.  He is an intergalactic stud.  He was sent to a faraway planet because the men there couldn't procreate.

Zimmer:  So he dates aliens?

TFO:  Well, he's married to one.  They all look exactly like human beings.  He's got some wife that he makes babies with.  And he wears a helmet.

Zimmer:  Are all the babies sterile, like when you cross a horse with a donkey?

TFO:  Actually, the most "mature" thing they did was just that:  that he was the stud.  They never explained the actual genetic outlay that occurred after the procreation.  That's usually the way it works--there's an idea, but they're not going to follow it through.  What did you think of that opening page,  with it's explanation of 52 earths?

Zimmer:  It was great, because I thought it was going to deliver!  Especially with the racoon-skin cap, which, even before I started to read, made me go "Oh, this is totally great."  He's got a floating bubble, he's a got a coon-skin cap, he's listening to the Hi-Fi with this chick...but I don't know.  It was a little wordy to explain what they were doing.

TFO:  How did you feel about the anthology style construction of the comic?  Did certain stories stand out as opposed to others?  Did you feel there was a thematic continuity to the three stories?

Zimmer:  No.  Well...no.  Well, I really thought it would be the modern day, with just these people thrown into it, and how they would deal with it.  But it all just takes place back in the 40's.  So that was a bit disappointing, but I guess that's what ties it together.  I found the story at the end to be...actually, I just skimmed that last one.

TFO:  The Black Canary and Wonder Woman?

Zimmer:  Yes, and Gloria Steinem at the end?  Is that who that is?  "Whatcha writin' there Gloria?"

TFO:  Probably is.  Would you have preferred more of a focus?  I don't know why I wrote that question.

Zimmer:  Well, I expected it to be one story.  I didn't realize it was going to be three short stories.  I got to the end of the first story and was all, "Eh. Wha? Did..."  My question would be:  Is this how the whole comic works?  Is it these three stories every time and you're just supposed to pick up on each one, each time you read it, or is it just these little tidbits?

If You Keep Count, This Is The Second Of Many Pointless Ramblings From The Interviewer

TFO:  I don't know that this comic is ever going to continue.  Basically, there was a mini-series that was called New Frontier, and it was about this time period and all of those heroes.  It was incredibly successful.  New Frontier did so well that Warner Brothers, who owns DC, decided to make a straight to DVD movie of it.  This...well, it depends on how cynical you are.  Optimistically, this exists because Cooke was inspired to write more stories--cynically, and probably more honestly, it's an advertisement for a DVD that came out last week.  That's why that stuff [DVD information] is in the back pages.  It exists because that DVD is out there for sale.  The original thing was a full-fledged story--it had an interconnection.  It wasn't separate stories like this.  I don't even know that they are going to have more issues of this comic.

Zimmer:  Okay.  It's a little strange that it's just three stories, and they all seem to be picked up in the middle of some bigger story.  They end, but there's obviously something that's still supposed to happen, which I guess is picked up in the DVD?

TFO:  Well, how connected they're going to be is up in the air.  This ending passage right here was one panel in the actual New Frontier comic itself.  [Editors Note:  Referring to a newspaper clipping of Batman and Superman fighting.]

The Second, Possibly Fourth, Sign That The Interviewer Should Be More Professional

TFO: What age of reader...you know, I don't even care about this question.

Zimmer:  The age of reason?

TFO:  What is the age of reason?  No, alright.  What age of reader would you imagine is most attracted to this comic?

Zimmer:  I would put it as someone older.  Someone who read these back in the day.  I imagine a precocious fifteen-sixteen year old might get into this.  One who also wears a smoking jacket.

TFO:  And he drinks whiskey out of a flask?

Zimmer:  Yes.  "I don't do whippets."

Professionalism Returns!

TFO:  What did you think of the art?

Zimmer:  I liked the art.  I liked the art very much--this page though, with these really shitty cups?  That made me sad.  Those are Bruce Wayne's mugs?  They look like that?  That's ridiculous.  Beyond that, I loved all of this, just because of it totally made me believe it was one of these throw-back comics.  I liked the switch from black and white...I wish I knew more about sequential art to be able to comment on it.  All this is good.  Well, this last one--I couldn't even look at it.

TFO:  Well, the last one [Editors Note:  Kate is referring to the J. Bone Wonder Woman story] was done by somebody else.

Zimmer:  Well, yeah!  You can tell, in this first page!  Wonder Woman has...I don't know.  What is...she's got Popeye's arms here!

TFO:  I think that guys normally an inker.

Zimmer:  Gotcha. 

TFO:  Wait, go back for a second.  Bad story?  [Editors Note:  Kate's Post-It note to the second story featuring Robin and Kid Flash, simply says, "BAD STORY."]

Zimmer:  Yep.  Bad Story.  Why is Robin fighting these hot-rodders?  Then the Flash shows up, and they figure out that the hot-rodders are Communists?  Maybe I was just skimming the end or something, but it just seemed a little disjointed.  And then this one [The Wonder Woman story] I just couldn't read it.  But the first one, I liked that one a lot.

TFO:  Well, the first one is Darwyn, completley by himself.  In control of everything.

The Interviewer Moves Beyond His Pay Grade

TFO:  Okay, this question is totally going to try to be a shoehorn.  Working in the design and creative field, what's your take on the work presented here, from a technical standpoint?  How professional does it appear to you, that sort of thing?

Zimmer:  Well, it is its own genre, so I don't know if I could say how professional it appears.  [Withering look of contempt.]  Working as a designer, what we were always taught was very important...I don't do this anymore because I do bottles now...is information architecture, which is how you break down the information.  Which is SO important in these, because the reader is trying to follow the flow.  It actually took me a while to catch on that these text boxes were thoughts in their heads--the squares as opposed to the bubbles, and then trying to figure out who was actually speaking.  Then I was....wait a minute...oh, so he's more pissed, so that's got to be Batman--it took me a while to pick up on that.  Mount Rushmore looks nice here.

The Interview Showcases A Lack Of Research And Knowledge, She Pulls The Save

TFO:  On a follow up to that, you'd already mentioned this, but what about the usage of color?  Could you tell that this was for the most part--let's see if it's all--well, for the most part these [comic books] are computer colored.  It's done in the same way...you know, Photoshop, those type of programs.  Some people don't like it, some people don't care.  Here, it is an attempt to make it look like the old-time comics.

Zimmer:  Oh, because you can fake halftone patterns and stuff like that?  Were all these done on computer, or just this first story?

TFO:  It's difficult for me to tell, they don't like to advertise it.  You know, it's usually easiest to tell when they have somebody handling the colors that's listed as a company.  I don't know much about it, honestly.  This has got to be a computer. 

Zimmer:  Well, yes, those backgrounds all look like they were generated in Photoshop.  I would assume that if you're doing it through Photoshop, then you have more control over the color--especially in something like this first story, where you have all these monochromatic images.  The explosions...this part, where he is going into the Batcave and it's supposed to be much darker--that's beautiful.  I have no idea what it would be like if you were doing this on press and you were trying to manually adjust that color.  I like it.

TFO:  Have you ever had to work with this sort of art before?

Zimmer:  No, it's not something we do around here.  I went to a school with a lot of kids who were really into sequential art--I went to art school, so there were kids who were illustration majors, focused on sequential art.  There's a really great professor who teaches a sequential art course, the history of it--so I'm familiar with the mania of it.  How crazy how people are about sequential art.  But beyond that, again, I have almost no experience with it.

The Post It Notes Begin

TFO:  Did anything about the experience of reading this surprise you?

Zimmer:  [Laughing]  Well, let me go back and look at my notes.

TFO:  Yeah, that's where were going next, because we've got to deal with these Post-It notes.

Zimmer:  Yes, we need to deal with the Post-Its, because those were my immediate, "What the fuck? Shit!" reactions.  Okay, so it's all old-timey, with the language...it's almost like you could make up what you think it's going to be without even reading it.  To a certain extent, no, it wasn't surprising.  The only thing that surprised me was that Robin was out on his own.  He was fighting crime in his spare time.  He's not hanging out with these young guys, trying to be friends with them--even though he's a teenager, and they're teenagers.  Instead he's going to go "bust" them which seemed kind of dorky.  Is he a nerd?

TFO:  He's a narc.

Zimmer:  OK.  Fair enough.  He thinks he's going to hook up with this chick, which seems unlikely.  Also, this guy looks like Peter DeLuise.  [Editors Note: Yes, the guy from 21 Jump Street, Yes, he does.]

TFO:  Oh yeah, he does!  In other drawings of him, he looks like he's about 40 years old.

Zimmer:  Well apparently he's a communist terrorist, so he's got to have a little experience.

TFO:  It's funny you mention that, because Dick Grayson does eventually become quite the ladies man.

Zimmer:  Like what, after college.  Wait, does he go to college?  Does Batman pay for him to go to college?

TFO:  They had a whole period where Robin went to college, and they had a whole lot of weird stuff going on.  I've never read them, but I've read about them.  Batman goes through a mid-life crisis and moves out of the manor, gets an apartment on his own in the middle of Gotham City--Robin is off at college, dating a lot.

Zimmer:  Doesn't Batman date a lot?  He's out clubbing in this one.

TFO:  No, Dick Grayson dated a lot too.  He got into a serious relationship with a 6 foot 5 alien...who looks female.  But is really tall.

Zimmer:  As long as it looks female.

TFO:  She had orange skin.  Or green?  Different colors.

Zimmer:  Was she "passing?"  Did she say she was from Florida State or something?

TFO:  No, she was clearly an alien.  An alien super-model.  The 70's were a great time for "who gives a shit, none of this matters."

Zimmer:  Hey, Barbie did a lot of stuff in the 70's too.  She was a doctor, and a lawyer.

TFO:  Then they got to the 80's and they just killed everybody.  They killed Robin...

Zimmer:  They killed Robin?

TFO:  The second one.  They killed him with a call-in vote, back in the 1-900 days.

Zimmer:  Well, i'm glad he got to date.

TFO:  Naa, he was the second one.  He didn't date, died as a kid.

Zimmer:  So things just don't end up well for the sidekick.  Is that a general theme for the sidekick?  The sidekick just gets thrown around a lot?

Controversial Statements About Female Comic Characters!  Nevermind.

TFO:  Yeah, they got a whole thing with women too.  There's a whole meme about it, something called Women In Refrigerators.

Zimmer:  Oh, yeah, I think they address that in this last comic.  Bruce Wayne does some goofy "nyer-nyer" all uncomfortable because he's at the strip club and he runs out of there.

TFO:  It's argued that women are predominately used to amplify--you know, kill the girlfriend so that the man can be motivated to do stuff.  Rape, those sort of things.

Zimmer:  Really?  Rape?

TFO:  Implied rape.  Well, in some cases they had--well, a couple of years ago they had what I guess you'd call "on-panel" rape.  Some super-heroes non-powered normal wife.  It was done basically just to...

Zimmer:  Just to do it?

TFO:  Just to have all the heroes get really mad.  So everybody would get worried about Lois Lane.

Zimmer:  I don't think I care.

Back To Post It Notes!

TFO:  What else we got in these Post It notes?  There's a lot of them.

Zimmer:  Yes, there are.  I was supposed to sit down and edit them before I sat down with you.

TFO:  You were going to edit them?  Before your interview about a comic book with Gloria Steinem?

Zimmer:  This one was just my question because I had to go back to re-read the beginning to understand why the President wanted to take out Batman, and apparently it's because a reporter died?  Which I don't really buy...that the President has one super-hero that's on call to deal with the rest of them.

TFO:  The classic thing with Superman is that he's a...slave to the powers that be.  That's something he's always criticized....[Thankfully, we moved on]

Zimmer:  Why do they call him Kal?  Is that his Krypton name?

TFO:  Kal-el.  Yep.

Zimmer:  Fair enough.  Where does Wonder Woman come from at the end?  Here.  She just appears?  I was really bothered by that.  At the beginning, they're at this little conference, and she walks out.  Then, they [Batman & Superman] have this incredible fight, whatever, it seems like Superman is about to bite it, and then she just shows up again?

TFO:  That's comics for you.  Just their way to get around.  I mean--Wonder Woman has powers too, so maybe she could hear them fighting, maybe she was following them the whole time.

Zimmer:  Oh, and the cave was lead-lined?

TFO:  Well, that's true too.  Batman did lead-line the cave.

Zimmer:  Let's see the rest of these bad boys.  Oh, this "For an Amazon, there is no greater deed than overcoming anger and conflict with love."  Doesn't she kick ass?  Mainly?

TFO:  She's supposed to?

Zimmer:  What, is she a mediator?

TFO:  No.  She's supposed to be like a warrior queen.

Zimmer:  Then...Why?  Why would she want to overcome conflict with love?  Whatever.

TFO:  Possibly an attempt to shoehorn in a moral?

Zimmer:  Okay, this one we talked about.  But why does he [Batman] have such shitty cups if he's a billionaire?  That just doesn't follow.  Oh, and the headlines on the Daily Planet are as shitty as the New York Post.  "Not So Super?"  The second story--which again, I don't remember as much.  The first story, I remember, but the second story...not so much.  And the third story, I didn't even bother to really read.  BUT.  I did like that the Flash decided to get back at them by writing "Uncool" in fire.  [Laughing] That's when I decided that it was a bad story.  I didn't like that Bruce Wayne lost his shit [in the third story], because he's supposed to be so smooth and tortured!

TFO:  And part of him being Bruce Wayne is him being a cocky playboy.

Zimmer:  Exactly!

TFO:  Not only he should he be at a strip club, but he should be an asshole about being at a strip club.

Zimmer:  He should be such an asshole that Wonder Woman becomes interested, and then she pursues him.

TFO:  They did have a short period where they dated, but nobody ever references it anymore.  In 1999?  It didn't take.

Zimmer:  The third story was as if Diablo Cody wrote a super-hero story.  This is what it would be like.  That's the end of my Post-Its.  It's not a lot, actually. 

TFO:  How do you want to close this out?

Zimmer:  Well.  I would actually--even though I said I didn't like the three short stories--I was kind of intrigued by the Batman/Superman getting together.  "Justice League."  Now I get it.  So I would read more of that story.  The last one--I don't care what Wonder Woman is doing.  Hanging out at strip clubs?  Clearly she has better things to do.  She's an Amazon.

TFO:  It's a joke that got stretched too long.  It's really facile.

Zimmer:  Yes.  Definitely.  And they should really bring that lazer gun into the series.

-At 1 am, the day before Halloween 1980, Marcia Zimmer went into labor, delivering her only daughter by herself, on a bathroom floor. Although she will not admit to dropping the newborn, her 4th child, onto her head, all signs point to the fact that Zimmer was in fact, damaged from day 1.

As the only girl in a house full of boys, Zimmer strode to set her self apart. Spending her youth as an itinerant trombone player, baton twirler, game show champion, journalist (gateway regional high school's Gator Gazette) and philanthropist, she eventually landed at the place where precocity and creativity go to die : art school.  After incurring upwards of $ 20,000 in debt to learn such valuable skills as "you can dress your roommate in your clothes and send your conceptual sculpture class drunk and earn an A", she landed at a New York creative agency where she has focused the past 5 years on packaging and bottle design.

The Virgin Read: She Snuck Out Back With Her Original Beau

Powers # 28
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Michael Avon Oeming
Published by Icon/Marvel Comics

So, its been confirmed by my boss that no matter how many times I do this review thing, I will forever be a Virgin and this thing I do will always be called “The Virgin Read.”

And this time, I’m going back for seconds.  I have read the next consecutive issue of Powers.  Lucky for me, but not for Powers super-fans, this issue was 3 months late, and that way it can be a consecutive read for me.  Powers #27 was my very first Virgin Read review.  And you know, you’ll always remember your first time.

How can I spin the virgin angle this time?  Ah, I know.  I’m going back for seconds for THE FIRST TIME.  Awwwww yeah….

I picked it this time because, well, I saw the cover and remembered how much I enjoyed it when I read it last time…even though I didn’t quite know who everyone was.  And I thought it would be enjoyable to follow up.

Nevertheless, I spend most of the comic sort of remembering things as I went.  Ya know what?  Rather than explaining it, I’m going to try and recapture my experience below in “Nina’s Visceral Cerebral Responses While Reading Powers #28.”  The boss calls this live-blogging.  Whatever.  Let us begin:

Page 1:  Oooh…who’s that?  Oh, my god…..the tears streaming out of her eyes.  What’s going on?  Aw, someone’s there to help.

Page 2 & 3:  AH!  Holy Shit!  Oh my God!  That is sick.  Oh man…..  huh….what was happening last issue?

Page 4 & 5:  Oh, right.  That girl in that get-up.  Who was she?  Oh, yeah….he’s upset for some reason.  Oh, okay.  Retro Girl.  Oh yeah….POWERS.  Hence, the name.  Huh.  Interesting. 

Page 6 & 7: Huh?  What’s going…Oh yeeeaaah….the bald headed dudes.  Okay.  She’s got powers.  Who was she again?

Page 8: WHOA!  DAMN!   Yikes!

Page 9: Wait, what’s happening?  Is she doing something to them?  Or them to her? 

Page 10: Oh, well. Geez.  It is not going well for her.  I’m totally rooting for her though.  C’mon!

Page 11:  Oh God!  Oh no!  She’s bleeding!  Did he stomp on her?  Uch, look at those smiling bald heads.  Oh, no…..wait….what’s going on with her eyes?

Page 12 & 13: NICE!  YES!  She is kickin’ some bald-headed ASS.   Look out!  He’s got a GUN!!!

Page 14:  Already dead?  Oooohhhh….okay.

Page 15:  Ew.  Yeesh.  Huh.  Well, awesome.  She rocks.

Page 16:  Oh, stake-out van.  Like MI-5.  And the Wire.  I watch too much TV.  OH…….right.  He HAD powers once.  Wonder what that’s all about.  How long ago?  What happened to them.  Oh, anyhow….

Page 17:  DEENA!  Right!  THAT’s her name.  Its all vaguely coming back to me now.  Very vaguely,  This seems like its supposed to be totally heart-breaking.  But I don’t totally know why.

Page 18 & 19: Here we go.  Should I be nervous for her?  I think she’ll be cool.

Page 20 & 21: Ooh!  Color change!  Party time!  Do these types of places really exist?  I mean, to this extreme?  I guess so.  I feel old. Oh, hold up.  Who’s this guy?  Some high schooler?  He’s the killer? 

Page 22:  Oh, man.  She got the info and so dissed him.  Don’t know how “believable” that is in terms of her “cover.” 

Page 23:  A little allusion to back story.  Groovy.

Page 24 & 25:  Hey, man.  That guy’s green.  He kind of looks like the main dude.  Hey?  What’s that?  What’s he doing?  Blowing smoke in her mouth?  But its all crystally and vapor like…… Hey…what’s happening….oh shit…are they missing this?

Page 26 & 27: What the…???/  How?  Who did that?  What’s going on?  Deena?  OH!  Wait a second!  The super-hero-y guy again!  Trip hammer.  Yeah….how does he fit in again?  OH!  His daugher, right?

Page 28 & 29: WHAT THE FUCK?!  Why’s he doing that to her? 

Page 30 & 31: OH…..I don’t care about this part because,,,,,yeah!  Like he said!  Where’s the blond girl?!  Calista?  Calista!  Calista!

Page 32: OH. MY GOD.  Holy shit.  NO.  not like…..not to her.  FUCK. 

And thus concludes “Nina’s Visceral Cerebral Responses While Reading Powers #28.”  And my review. 
Now go read it.

-Nina Miller, 2008

Comics Of The Weak: Better Not Be Planning For Funny-Books To Fill That Hole Where "The Wire" Lived

Nightwing # 142
Written by Peter Tomasi
Art by Rags Morales, Michael Bair, Mark Propst & Sandu Florea
Published by DC Comics

Nightwing isn't out and out terrible--it's got some relatively solid moments of introspection in between the pages of punching and crime-fighting--but in the end, it still doesn't add up to something that any reader could honestly be excited to read.  It's all just a bit inconsequential and mundane, a sort of ramble through the life of a super-hero who doesn't really have much of a supporting cast beyond whatever Batman characters are guesting, coupled with fight sequences that are paint-by-number.  The cover, for instance, is emblazoned with the blurb of "Terror at 2,000 Feet!,"  a reference to a relatively minor skirmish that Nightwing has which takes place for between him and a mute zombie/botched clone/flying dude.  It also doesn't take place that far off the ground, it doesn't last that long, and at no point does Nightwing, or the reader, experience a moment of "terror."  It doesn't even hit the mark of being "apprehensive."  Of course, you can't put "Banality at 225 or So Feet!" on a cover.  (Actually, and this is always the flip--how many non-Nightwing readers might be so intrigued by such a completely un-funny and irreverent statement, and be willing to buy this instead of X-Force # 2?)  Besides the fight, there's a meager attempt at developing Nightwing's latest girlfriend, who's, unsurprisingly, completely undeveloped and in no way similar to any actual female any reader has ever met.  Art-wise, it's more of Rags Morales doing the same odd cheek-structures and gangly limbs that he's been doing forever, but he has his fans, and it's no worse than anything else that's shown up previously in Nightwing.  It's just--Nightwing, you know?  How do you get excited about that?

The Exterminators # 27
Written by Simon Oliver
Art by John Lucas
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

One of the things that always stands out whenever the Matthew Broderick classic Election comes on is how incredibly real all the high-schoolers look.  It's part and parcel of Hollywood's obnoxious casting of 28 year olds in films about high school, and their total refusal to choose anyone that could be realistically called unattractive.  Then Election comes on, and you see people with bad hairstyles, splotchy foreheads,  totally hideous fashion choices and, saints be praised, mildly overweight.  (As opposed to the frighteningly obese, who always make their way into one or two high school pictures, solely for the ridicule/pity factor.)  Exterminators, as it's heading towards it's final issue, is spending it's time focusing on the ephermeral characters it hasn't, and won't, have many more chances to develop--like a 14 year old wanna-be radical with a terribly unattractive case of acne.  The story that develops around him is pretty standard--he's having sex too young, he and his mom don't get along and his political knowledge is at the stage where a Che Guevara t-shirt translates to hard-line activism.  He's an obnoxious and unattractive teenager.  Except that, unlike the Ian Ziering rip-offs in Ultimate Spider-Man or the wooden freaks and geeks of Robin, he's a totally realistic teenager.  The trouble he gets himself into is standard Exterminators stuff-a low-rent terrorist organization trying to use him as a scapegoat--and it's all done against the art of John Lucas' fabulously ugly human beings.  Again, another issue of a series that deserved a better audience.

The End League # 2
Written by Rick Remender
Art by Mat Broome, Sean Parsons & Wendy Broome
Published by Dark Horse Comics

First things first: the lettering in this comic borders on ridiculous.  There is Nno good reason on Earth for it be as small as it is.  It's not "Cerberus is having a dream" small, but it's close enough to be totally obnoxious.  Of course, being so small could help to keep somebody from reading the dialog, which is the sort of dialog that reminds one of a nightmare about Chris Claremont scripting a first date between Deathstroke the Terminator and the every member of the Baby-sitters Club.  Like they can't go see Harry and the Hendersons because Alicia is neurotic about seeing hairy people in a dark room and Deathstroke keeps going off on a moody soliloquy about how he had to shove a sword through Jericho that time when he was the leader of the Wildebeest.  In a way, the End League reads like that, except it's also got the same plot twist that Civil War had about Thor, featuring Thor, but with a goatee, like a Simonson Thor, and there's a character who's main idea seems to be Vampire Hunter D's clothing, Rorshach from Watchmen's attitude mixed with the Saint of Killers accent and horse.  Which takes the "let's combine archetypes" to the level of "i'm not sure what i'm doing" without stopping by the train station where they sell "this will make this enjoyable to read."  But then again, it sure does cram a lot of combining everything from the last 20 years into a scant number pages, so maybe that'll turn it into a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with characters from the Impact universe.  Who knows?

Detective Comics # 842
Written by Peter Milligan
Art by Dustin Nguyen, Derek Fridolfs & John Kalisz
Published by DC Comics

Another done-in-one issue of Detective Comics that reads like a long-lost idea from the Legends of the Dark Knight series, and that's not too bad.  Enjoyment of this sort of thing is totally going to be dependent on how far down the road of tolerance for a random Batman story one is, and that's pretty much all one can say.  Nice art from Dustin Nguyen, nice dialog from Peter Milligan, all in service of a comic that should have the same problem as Nightwing, since it's just a standard boilerplate super-hero adventure, but ends up succeeding because it's told without a hint of self-consciousness or shame on the part of it's contributors.  Nobody wins awards for this kind of comic book--but it's hell of a more pleasant read than when people stay up late trying to re-invent the spandex wheel.  Ah, it's actually probably pretty terrible, and the only reason it seemed okay was because it didn't even try.  It's better than Cable # 1, that's for sure.

The Boys # 16
Written by Garth Ennis
Art by Darick Robertson & Tony Avina
Published by Dynamite Entertainment

Garth Ennis still needs the Boys to do some heavily sacrilegious stuff and deal with some really intense war comics salutes for him to have brought all his favorite story tics to the title, but this issue covered his wide-eyed "I love New York City" trick that's shows up in all his other major works.  This issue, while both light on the violence and the hardcore gross out, was one of the better Boys issues of late--Ennis seems to know that if he's going to keep dogging the hell out of everybody who likes super-heroes, he's got to ensure that his lead characters are at least likable while he's doing it.  Going the route of putting his sweetest character in what will surely be a complicated relationship with a Wonder Woman/Power Girl type stand-in, most of this issue is devoted to showcasing why watching nice people going on a date can actually be totally entertaining in a comic book, especially in the genre of super-hero comics where dates usually occur so that the Joker can kill somebody's girlfriend in a fancy restaurant.  Of course, that's how the Boys opened their first issue, so it won't be too surprising if things with this burgeoning couple go hideously and hilariously wrong, but then again, Ennis has always fully embraced a sentimental trait for letting love win a few hands.  Then again, The Boys is slated to run for about 60 issues, so the joy may not be coming for another year or so.

Dead Space # 1
Written by Anthony Johnston
Art by Ben Templesmith
Published by Image Comics

It's pretty inoffensive for an advertisement, which is what a comic book prequel to a video game is, a long-form advertisement.  Much like the last time the Factual ran into one of these, it's got art talent that exceeds it's motive for existence (that time it was Sienkiewicz, this time it's Ben Templesmith) so hopefully there's a nice paycheck coming to  Ben for this.  As stories go, there's not much that this thing can do besides set up some sort of plot that will involve some lantern-jawed hero and some massive amount of disposable cannon fodder--this issue was, for the most part, devoted to he of the jaw shaped like a lantern.  Other issues will probably feature the showcase of some form of zombie/robot/henchmen/alien horde type army, as well as whomever will serve as the level bosses.  There will also probably be a bigger focus on the type of weapons that will be used.  We won't be around to keep up.

Casanova # 12
Written by Matt Fraction
Art by Fabio Moon
Published by Image Comics

Matt Fractions back pages of Casanova are always part of what makes Casanova worth picking up in the issue format--although by and large Casanova's stories read a bit more cohesively when they're collected in a trade, both the individual issues and the collected editions are priced so low that it's one of the few comics that can't be comprehensibly criticized for trying to double dip into the comic book buyers pockets.  It's a trade off--you'll get an issue of Casanova like # 9 that didn't make a whole lot of sense but had a lot of dialog to read, or you'll get one like this latest issue, which is a whole lot of killing, but reads in about 13 seconds.  Then you take a look at the back matter, and unless you're someone who just hates Matt Fraction, hates him so much that you buy Casanova just so you can hate him more, and find yourself reading the (assumedly true) thoroughly touching story of the recent birth of Fraction's child.  Juxtaposed against the somewhat zany bloodletting of the last few pages, it's quite a nice surprise.  While we're not going to make the argument that all comics should include true and touching personal stories, fuck it, this time it worked.  A great issue of a fine series

Logan # 1
Written by Brian K Vaughan
Art by Eduardo Risso & Dean White
Published by Marvel Comics

A three issue mini-series about Wolverine doing shit in Japan is sort of a textbook explanation of why Marvel doesn't really take as many "chances" as Civil War fans like to claim--if they could get away with it, Marvel would probably just reprint the same issue of Spider-Man ever week and expend the rest of the energy finding ways to publish 300 copies of the Hugh Jackman adventures.  But hey, if Brian K. Vaughan wants to blow some time jacking off into a cup, that's apparently the way to go, and if Eduardo Risso is worried people might not want to hire him to waste his talent when 100 Bullets ends, then fuck it, publish away.  It'll sell fine, then it will come out in a twenty dollar hardcover and probably win an Eisner.  Who gives a shit, really?  Hell, take a look at the credits page--these guys aren't writing and drawing:  they're "Storytellers."  Bitch, please.

Punisher War Journal # 17
Written by Matt Fraction
Art by Howard Chaykin, Edgar Delgado & Jesus Aburto
Published by Marvel Comics

Howard Chaykin is a pretty great artist, and he's one of those artists that doesn't get treated with the recognition someone of his talent and craft deserve.  That being said, he's the wrong dude to be drawing Matt Fraction's attempts to make a funny/action heavy comic out of the Punisher War Journal.  If anything, that's been the worst thing about this series--a consistent stream of artists who are all good, but just not right.  If Marvel was taking the completely sub-moronic route of having the Punisher join the Marvel universe proper, and incorporate him into the weirdly incestuous world of the X-Men and fight alongside the pitch-black noir of Daredevil, then putting these kinds of artists on the book would (sort of) make sense.  As it is, the sort of comedy that Fraction is delivering with his War Journal scripts need something that's just a little more outside.  Whether it's going the All Star Batman route and marrying the uber-classic spandex Jim Lee art with a fucked up satirical sociopath, or to spin it on the edge and go all Paul Hornschmier, War Journal deserves something a bit more extreme.  It'll probably sell at a tolerable level with Chaykin--but Fraction's scripts, and Chaykin's talent, belong on different books.  Here-it's just going be weirdly disjointed.  (And if you need a plot synopsis on the FUCKING PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL, you're officially a goddamn monkey.  Give me a kiss.)

Northlanders # 4
Written by Brian Wood
Art by Davide Gianfelice & Dave McCaig
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

Northlanders isn't, at this point, rewriting the rules of comic books, or redefining our understanding of art--it's not embarrassing the world of fiction, it's not making all other comic writers look like mentally handicapped serial rapists either.  But considering how far it's come in just four issues--from "hmm, this might be sort of entertaining but right now it's not," to "this is getting better and who the hell is this artist again, he's great" to where it stands now as "holy shit, this is pretty fan-fucking-tastic" and "what do you know, there's nobody in it who's nice, or honest, or really just altogether decent."  It's just selfish, murderous, foul-mouthed Vikings with fucked up religious beliefs, fucked up familial bonds and fucked up ideas on how to get what they want.  No spandex, no cheeseball mysticism, no speechifying, no political yammerings, no attempts to showcase some knee-jerk heroism, just some tough ass mothers, carnage and Brian Wood trying to write a potboiler genre yarn in the pretty much untapped field of Viking tales.  It's the swords and beards version of when Marines yell "Hoo-AHH."  Hell, if this keeps up, it'll be feeding the sick and clothing the hungry when everybody is finishing up their shift at the manufacturing plant come 2013.

Y oung Liars # 1
By David Lapham
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

As has been acknowledged by people who like to complain, we're not exactly a fount of research here at the Factual Opinion, so feel free to correct us, but Vertigo hasn't published very many series with an all-in-one writer/artist, have they?  For whatever reason, this issue not being the one, that struck as a good thing--some of the most entertaining comics right now are coming from people who handle both chores.  Templesmith's Wormwood, anything by Johnny Ryan, that Nana woman--mommy likes the singular voices, whatev's.  As seems to be the norm of Vertigo these days, the first issue of Young Liars is somewhat disjointed and confusing, totally focused on telling you the characters names (and nicknames, and insulting pet names) and throwing out a random spattering of back story.  It's not superhumanly clever or groundbreaking stuff, but Vertigo seems to have stopped pretending that's it's plan of existence--now it's just shooting for being better than it's parent line, and being less embarrassing to read than Blue Beetle.  Hell, you just can't be too mad at a comic that has a Clash t-shirt on the front.  It's The Clash!  They used to be innovative and groundbreaking, and now your mom likes them and Joe Strummer is dead!  Which is sort of like Vertigo:  it used to publish Doom Patrol and Preacher.  Now?  Well, it screws around with a Vinyl Underground, and makes you want to cry a little bit.

-Tucker Stone, 2008

The Top 30 Albums of 2007: # 2

The National
Boxer

Brett Favre retired and people can’t stop talking about it.  I fucking hate Brett Favre, and nobody will shut up about how much they already miss Brett Favre and how great Brett Favre is and what a battler and warrior and leader and how can we possibly carry on without Brett Favre.  Fuck Brett Favre, and fuck everyone who comes out of the woodwork to say, "you know, I don’t really like the Packers / football / my personal uselessness, and I know you hate him, but I have to say, I sure did like watching Brett Favre play."  To which I must reply, "I hope you tear your groin muscles and your internal organs protrude through the tear and it causes you lots of pain, and that you are constantly forced to explain your pain to both medical professionals and casual acquaintances at work who want to know why you’re wincing all the damn time."  If this hatred for an athlete I’ve never met is irrational, well, it’s no more irrational than the fat men crying openly across the upper Midwest about the most overrated hick in the history of Wrangler commercials.

That, friends and neighbors, is a statement that will forever capture my personal spin on the spirit of these particular times.  Particularly because it is now published.  Reaching way back through several years of hack writing, I feel much the same about the National’s Boxer.

OK, given the extreme high regard in which I hold this album, that’s a bit of structural stretch.  I absolutely defend the comparison AND the Favre statements, but for the sake of a well constructed review, I’ll start again with a conversation piece.  I’ll also vow to get this done before the Ides of March next time.

A good friend of mine finds a way to trash the rise of the Arcade Fire every time we talk music.  Why, he argues, does everyone love all that earnestness?  It’s not impressive, and it for sure doesn’t represent the secular spirituality for disaffected graduates with little-to-nothing to really be disaffected about anymore.  To exaggerate / partially refute his point of view, this vague, millenniums-old, highly under-publicized conflict between the Western Christians and Eastern Muslims isn’t any Cold War or Vietnam or anything.  And this prevailing economic fear rooted in too much TV and too many movies is some pinko blue-state bullshit that we already know all about from the Beatles.  So when you set out to bang on a xylophone in an outdoor amphitheater, you just don’t have to mean it so much, you dig?  Regardless of whether you’re with my friend or against him, it’s a dilemma.

So then we have Boxer, coming at your quasi-heavy-stress like William Blake’s Songs Of Experience.  It’s perfectly crafted pop music for the impossibly under-wizened contemporary dude (gender neutral).  This dude is disaffected by all this disaffectedness and all this love of irony and all this love of earnestness.  This dude is aware that it ALL comes and goes – and I mean ALL of it, the hair, the clothes, the trends, the issues, the relationships, the technology, the concern, the posturing, the fear, the triumph, the pain, the slipping, the bitterness, the slogans, the mantras, the sense that things done changed and fools don’t even recognize, and the feeling that it should’ve been better.  This dude has become the blogging everyman, alienated by elder Internet statesmen, SportsCenter anchors, and college kids who still get to party like it’s 1999.  This dude knows that conversations about novelty should have stayed novel longer than they have, but that everyone’s grandparents probably felt the same (like the high school umbrellas production of Our Town and shit). This dude’s time is upon us, and this album is said dude’s wheelhouse.  This album is a timeless album of resigned, patient acceptance of the full spectrum.  It’s also a brilliant and timely answer to the question, ‘meh, what can you do?’

That’s a bold effing statement.  How do you back that up?  Lyric snippets?  Comments on the vocal quality, Soul Coughing-era M. Doughty slurred ooooouuuuhs at the end of every line like the singer couldn’t be bothered to finish that one crisp?  Talk about the play between the rhythm and the melody, and it works so much better when you’re hid behind the couch together, half asleep in a fake empire, than it does when you’re trying to bob your head to Bloc Party and just can’t bring yourself to do it anymore?  Thesis, antithesis, synthesis?  Nope, actually, I don’t have to back my statements up.  I’m on internet time, baby.  I fucking finished college years ago.  Are you going to make me, dear reader?  Seriously, you?

In conclusion, if I didn’t worry about the review for the second best album of the year marring an already silly list with a little too much silliness, I’d have devoted all of the non-Brett Favre space here to the things I would fight to convince you of my love for this album.  The list would have included Russell Crowe’s gang from Romper Stomper.  Oh yeah.

-Josh Woodbeck, 2008

The Top 30 Albums of 2007: # 3

LCD Soundsystem
Sound Of Silver

LCD Soundsystem.  It's the one that everybody loves?  It's a critical consensus.  Let's talk about it as a mind-warping odyssey of electronic poetry, and allude to it's place in the future's canon of musical classics.  Let's examine it, aesthetically, against the great works of Cervantes, Brahms and Cezanne.  Do I know Cezanne well enough?  Diebenkorn isn't in that class, him I know well.  Monet?  I know Monet.  No connection though, Cervantes has obvious connection.  Brahms, that's a sucker way out, not Brahms.  Like the classical idea though, but there's not enough of a relationship.  Jazz connections are what everybody does.  Too many people write about jazz.  Don't join them. 

Make jokes about each individual song, which will be easy for some because the lyrics are so obvious, and they're easy to remember.  And hear, they're easily memorable lyrics.  You can sing along with this if you want to after hearing it through a few times.  Already sort of did that with Grinderman, should've saved it?  Can't do that twice in a row.  Can't do that ever again?  Wait for another music list.  Another one?  Jokes about "Sound of Silver" are easy, but that's probably the point, all that teen-ager stuff, it's so obvious.  Probably been done.  Ugh.

Nevermind that.  Let's turn it into one of those personal explanations of why the individual reviewing it really "gets" the songs, because of the reviewers proximity to New York City, and find some way to name-drop the people who the reviewer knows that were somewhat involved with James Murphy while he was recording.  Or just imply it.  Just write about New York, write about being bored, wanting to party, learning how to let go.  Sex.  Write about sex and the album.  Focus on the mundane aspects of listening to something that describes a life more interesting than one's own.  That's going to be depressing and too bloggy.  Obvious again.  Maybe just see if he'll let me post those pics of Murphy?  No, that would be gross.  Don't even know why that's coming up.  Not that interesting anyway: drunk and silly doesn't say much.

Wait.  Use Alex Ross The Rest Is Noise, and google, to make it sound like the reviewer really understands how music is made.  Make it seem like we're Sasha Frere-Jones, and can talk about music and how it's constructed, we can talk about 4/4 time, and chord progression, or the difference in key structure, all that stuff, while it's still not talking out of one's ass.  Still, who's that for?  What's the audience for this anyway?  Assumptions: on the fence readers aren't going to care about album reviews of last year unless they're disgusted with taste choice.  Tired of hearing about Person Pitch and how it should of been higher.  It should have been better, than it would be higher.  Better how?  Not as fun as this album.  Tried that with Fishscale last year, never really liked the way it worked.  Coming after likable stuff, good albums, that's impossible to write.  Shouldn't have deleted all the bad albums from hard drive, that might have helped.  No, then we'd have to listen to them again.

Just deal with the "All My Friends" video, and how perfect it is.  Talk about getting chills when the camera dollies back.  That way we can talk about imagery and personal emotions, we know that stuff.  That can work.  Don't watch the video again for a long while, try to maintain that emotional memory without the dilution of repetition.  Probably the only person with that reaction.  That trick has been done before.  Probably by Eisenstein, he did everything first.

No, make somebody else write it, do it like it's the comics interview stuff, where you just pass all responsibility onto someone else to do the thinking, take the bullet, and then you just type out what's tape-recorded, which still feels like work.  Who though?  Not going to be as easy to convince somebody to re-listen to album, it'll be disjointed, and it can't be somebody who's already writing.  Still like the pay a homeless person idea, but think that should be saved for a comic.  Listening to an album with a homeless person--that's going to take too long, waste of their time.  They have stuff they do, don't treat them like ciphers.

Oh, plagiarism.  Like the World War II guy, Stephen Hawkins.  No, that's not his name.  Ambrose?  Plagirize somebody really obvious too, that will probably avoid trouble.  Try to get caught, replace the review with a copy of a cease and desist.  Would've been better to just post cease and desist itself, but how do you get one?  Start a new blog just to plagirize, than anonymously turn myself in?  That could work.  Probably not a good idea.  Try to find a blog that's plagirized stuff, figure out what happened to them first.  Don't want to screw things up here for an album review.

Talk about the death of the album, or the rise of the mp3 blogs, or file-sharing, or mixtapes.  Something relatively contemporary, something that's always being talked about.  Post links to audio clips from Sealab and claim they are the songs.  This could work regardless of review method.  Hate file-sharing articles though, they're so MSNBC.  Find something else, but remember the Sealab idea.  What you find funny, not what anybody else will.  Not what anybody else thinks is funny, that's Good Will Hunting.  You.  Otherwise it's everything else.  Remember the reasons.

Just hyperlink other reviews.  Or do that old Amazon idea, where you just copy and paste all the terribly written Amazon reviews.  Especially the negative ones, the negative ones with lots of cursing, those always make music sound better.  Start early enough, you can probably get some kind of weird email back and forth between the really creepy ones.  Wait, this is good.  Go to wikipedia as well, delete the whole review, or really louse it up somehow, then keep checking to see who fixes it.  Contact them somehow, they all use chat, don't they?  They must.  They would.  But what are they going to say?  How much work would that take?  That's too much work.

Jesus, just write about how late this is going up.  When are these going to be finished?  At this point, is anybody still going to want to talk about LCD Soundsystem but me?  Focus on that, focus on how it's still worth repeating.  Is there anything in 08 yet with this replay value?  Besides Black Mountain and Dub Trio?  There's always something.  Nothing as big yet.  Was Silver immediately big?

Find the old Wire with the Murphy cover story, it'll spark something.  Make jokes about his weight?  Hard to tell, sometimes he does look pretty heavy.  That won't go anywhere.  Just mean and weird.  Too immature.  Heh, can't believe I wrote that.

Call them the new Metallica.  No one will get that.  No, the new...who?  New Kinks.  That's even less comprehensible.  Make fun of Prodigy, that'll never get old, right.  Hordes of Jericho versus "North American Scum."  Post videos?  Hate video posts on write-ups.  Link to that scarecrow getting punched in the face.  Link to E2-E4, compare and contrast.

Get drunk?  Write while drunk?  Not worth it.  Fake it?  Fake drunk is never really funny.   Never interesting.

Translate Pitchfork's review into other languages with babelfish until it's almost completely unreadable?  What if it's already completely unreadable.  Haven't looked at Pitchfork in months.  Look at Pitchfork again.  Where'd they put this album?  Make fun of Spin for their Against Me pick?  No, Spin is done.  That's pointless.  Pointless road, don't go down it.

Talk to sister.  Bought it for her, she probably can say something funny.  Can't base a write-up on quotes.

Why is this one so difficult?  Just put something up, anything.  Doesn't matter anyway, right.  No, matters, it matters.  Talk about great albums at perfect moments--Nirvana Nevermind, Godspeed F-sharp, Helmet Betty, Radiohead The Bends, Eliott Smith Either/Or, yeah, Silver is in that class.  We can't be the only one's who feel that way.  Wait, that's not it either, it doesn't matter if anybody does.  It's music, it's going to have to have that personal kind of relationship, it's going to be there even if we try not to write about it.  Write about the way "Get Innocuous" sounds when you're walking, how you walk in time to it, and you feel ashamed because why the hell are you doing that, timing your walk?  Is that a definition of "great music?"  People aren't moonwalking to work while listening to Michael Jackson.  But that happens everytime with Innocuous, right?  That's never going to go anywhere.  You can't write a whole paragraph on beat-timed walking.  Write about how it sounds in a car, really loud?  Isn't that going to be tied up with smoking while driving fast?  Not enough smokers left for that to appeal to anyone, and everyone is having babies, nobody drives fast.  Except kids, hate kids, hate them.  Hate hate hate.  Write about things. you. hate.  Write about those trainwreck assholes on American Idol, that'll really date the piece.  Fucking trash maggots, baby eaters.  Dreadlocked serial rapist, Carly the sack of trash.  Sales, none of them sell.  Murphy beat them in sales, had to.  Don't even look it up, assume he did.  Move away from that, it's going nowhere.  Now you're thinking about Tyler Perry movies, there's no correlation there.  Maybe there is?  Putting on a dress, putting on an act?  Putting on the party when the parties over?  Keyboards and drums a cowbell, but it's just a room, just a studio?  No friends are there at "All My Friends?"  No, nothing there.  All music is somewhat a lie.  All art, somewhat a lie.  Painting?  No, painting too, maybe, a bit.  Sculpture=biggest lie.  Takes too long.  People die, you're still sculpting.

None of this is useful.  It's like a dream journal of handicapped.  Dump it.  Move on.  Just keep listening to the album, everything has to be there, something is there.  Music is the answer.

-Tucker Stone, 2008