B.P.R.D. # 5
Written by Mike Mignola & Joshua Dysart
Art by Paul Azaceta & Nick Filardi
Published by Dark Horse Comics
The climax of the best the mainstream pamphlet market has to offer (besides All-Star Superman) and it is, no surprise, the throw down to teach throw downs about being fucking down. In this corner, some tired, scared, yet courageous and hard as nails soldiers, and in the opposite corner, two giant fucking gorillas with massive lightbulbs in their heads that allow them to be remote controlled by a Nazi brain in a robot spider body. And in case you're all like "man I don't like gorillas", there's a smaller monkey, probably some kind of Curious George type of monkey, and he's handling the controls on a missile launcher containing a bunch of Nazi vampire zombie--and that sweet little bundle of crazy is aimed right at America. Luckily, the military men have a little girl who looks like a Hummel figurine on their side. Jesus, that's a good comic.
Batman # 676
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Tony Daniel, Sandu Florea & Guy Major
Published by DC Comics
Well, for a first issue of a major cross-over, this isn't altogether as horrible as some of the other parts will probably be--this RIP storyline is going to cross-over through the always terrifying pages of Robin and Nightwing, and god knows what will occur there. Art wise, Tony Daniel still hasn't figured out how to draw a character doing anything beyond physical movement--there's zero indication what any of these characters are feeling or thinking from a purely-visual standpoint. Textually, there's some clues--Alfred seems oddly jealous of Batman's new girlfriend, Robin is behaving with a maturity and sense of humor this reader wasn't aware he even possessed, the Joker is a creepy creep from creeptown and he has a gift certificate for gross. Most of all, or worst of all, there stands a Batman at the center, one who isn't just vacant, he's almost non-existent. Nothing to kill, this guy is already dead on his feet. Excepting the moment near the middle of the book, when he mentions to Robin that he should give a homeless woman the "couple hundreds in the dash," this is a Batman that has had all personality and pathos hollowed right out of him. Overall, it's still unusual enough in it's own Grant Morrison has-a-plan fashion to make it better than previous issues, but then again, Batman has never been that great of a series anyway. As always, comparing it down the history of the 675 before it is a mugs game. Of course it's better than the worst of them--but that doesn't really make it good, y'know?
Batman Confidential # 17
Written by Fabian Nicieza
Art by Kevin Maguire & I.L.L.
Published by DC Comics
It's Kevin Maguire, yes, which means it's one of the few super-hero comics that does enough with that constantly ignored and universally missed thing called "facial expressions" that, at times while reading, the fucking thing is almost revelatory--who knew that swinging through rooftops was difficult yet exhilarating? Not anybody who's stuck with the other 99% of artists working on spandex books. Sure, it's just a story about Batgirl chasing Catwoman for the entire book, and since it's the first of five issues that means absolutely nothing else happens but the beginning of the chase--yet still, Kevin Maguire. Reminding you that something can be done with jaws and lips besides bleeding. (Ending at a nudist club is a bit of a letdown, but only in the sense that, for 20 pages one is going "Hey, a fucking kid could read this." Oh well. It's not like a kid was going to anyway.)
Gotham Underground # 8
Written by Frank Tieri
Art by J. Calafiore, Jack Purcell & Brian Reber
Published by DC Comics
As awful as this is, here's more of the same, this time with much less talking. Instead, it's a punch-a-bunch festival and the Vigilante has a VIP pass for Batman to break his motorcycle helmet mask with old school right hooks and a nearby brick wall. In brighter news, all of those characters they've been introducing for the last seven issues decided to quit being characters. Hopefully, that will be the last time anybody has to read about a female Bane--not because there's anything wrong with a female Bane, but just because those massive cordons of veins bulging off out of her breasts makes no biological sense and it was just rank to look at. Can J. Calafiore draw, like, at all? Is he going to start soon?
Green Arrow & Black Canary # 8
Written by Judd Winick
Art by Mike Norton, Rodney Ramos & David Baron
Published by DC Comics
It only took seven issues for Cliff Chiang to realize that a monthly comic wasn't to his liking, and it's respectable enough that he's left GA & BC to find a new artist in hopes of it maintaining a consistent shipping schedule. As a replacement, the team of Norton and Ramos lack a bit of the attractiveness that Chiang was dropping in such a (seemingly) effortless fashion, but they certainly aren't as bad as some of DC's worst offenders--actually, it would be dishonest to even call them average. They really aren't that bad. That kind of hurts to say. It sounds almost complimentary. Well, the story still sucks.
Titans # 2
Written by Judd Winick
Art by Joe Benitez, Victor Llamas & Edgar Delgado
Published by DC Comics
The argument of high versus low culture is one that we don't have much interest in-not because we don't have an opinion on it, we do, we just don't have any patience, tolerance, or interest in any that differ from our own. That's the thing needed most when you decide to have one of those debates about whether or not Harry Potter has a much cultural value as the Goldberg Variations. You need to care, or at least have some modicum of respect for the person who's disagreeing with you. (Or you need to just like arguing with people who you think are dumber than you are.) That's the bag, the game, the mise en scene, understand? Anyway, just to get around to the point, which is what there is to say about Titans, it's this: this reads like something you can get off a comic book message board. Even more specifically, it reads like a story that comes off a Teen Titans fan message board, on a "Unauthorized" Teen Titans website that's run by one or two people who also print their own 'zine, about the Teen Titans. Now, some people are going to say, hey, that's fan fiction, isn't it? Isn't that fan fiction? Isn't fan fiction sometimes really good, like even better than the real stuff? To them we say...well, we kind of already covered that, didn't we?
Casanova # 14
Written by Matt Fraction
Art by Fabio Moon
Published by Image Comics
Casanova's been around long enough now that the series second story, of which this is the conclusion, that it's going to be compared to the first story, and in that case this one has been a bit more up and down then the first, but that's in part due to the fact that the first one was just so out-of-the-ether clever and unusual in comparison to other comics, because it was the first one, and you didn't know what it was going to be like, so with the second one, now you have a barometer, something to cast it against, so it's easy to forget that this comic, this series, that's it still cheap, and it's still well put together, and it's still the best thing Matt Fraction writes, or wrote, or has written, depending on how you want to word it, and it's quippy, or funny, and really fucking imaginative and creative, even though it's not for everybody, but it's pretty goddamn much for anybody, so this was pretty good, and long, longer than usual, but still cheap, and it looked really great.
Captain Britain & MI13
Written by Paul Cornell
Art by Leonard Kirk, Jesse Delperdang & Brian Reber
Published by Marvel Comics
Having no relationship with any of these characters and either of these creators, this comic actually turns out to be fairly entertaining, mostly due to the sheer unwieldiness of the entire thing. There's Gordon Brown, being himself, meaning someone who we're hard-pressed to believe the majority of the audience will recognize, here's some female super-hero with some type of Flash like powers ripping the throat out of a bad guy with her fucking teeth, then there's this, some of that, and the title character gets killed on the last page...what is this thing? It's a comic about a British super-hero team, controlled directly by the government, and the launch of it will be tied in with the whole Secret Invasion mini-series. So it's trial by fire kind of stories, with the entire issue being a "build a squad" thing while also lots of killing. It's a weird book--the "everybody please buy this" nature of Secret Invasion means that characters like Spider-Man and Hawkeye aren't going to be depicted out-and-out slaughtering the alien invaders, but in something like this Capitan Britain thing, it just doesn't matter, we guess. Not that it's offensive--like all super-hero violence, this shit is just too cartoony to be gross. In a way, the idea that British super-heroes are totally content to exterminate the alien religious zealots trying to take over Earth is sort of clever. It doesn't make any real political statement, in fact, it's at odds with American behavior in times of conflict, but it's still relatively "oh, huh". Since nothing of any real importance in the Marvel universe happens outside of the US, Paul Cornell has the opportunity to write whatever he wants. And what he wants is, for now, a comic where women that look like a K-Mart version of Hawkgirl rip people's throats out with their teeth.
The Last Defenders # 3
Written by Joe Casey
Art by Jim Muniz, Cam Smith & Antonio Fabela
Published by Marvel Comics
Kieth Giffen bails out for this issue, maybe for the series. It's not super-noticeable, which leaves the question of what he was doing in the first place open-ended, but hey, it's not like this was a comic in desperate need of two writers anyway, right? Hell, it's just a fucking mini-series about a bunch of no-name C-level heroes fighting some random bad guys in New Jersey. And in comic books, much like life, there aren't shit to say about New Jersey that doesn't sound like an apology for not being New York. So here you go, with the most pathetic twist you can imagine--this no game having super-hero loses his team, is ignored and unappreciated by his didn't-need-saving and not-interested-in-dating pal, and decides to hire people to form a new squad of losers. He pays them, to be his teammates. Does he give benefits? Probably not, and they have to provide their own costumes. If it wasn't for Godland, we'd think that Joe Casey had just completely given up.
Secret Invasion: Fantastic Four # 1
Written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa
Art by Barry Kitson, Mick Gray, Paul Neary, Scott Kanna & Christ Sotomayor
Published by Marvel Comics
Similar in fashion to the Captain Britain thing, this is another Secret Invasion cross-over that comes straight out of the serial television style of content delivery. There's nothing here that's going to expand the comprehensibility of the Secret Invasion series proper, instead this is the sort of extra-curricular storytelling designed for those who are going to want to know when and how their favorite super-heroes were replaced by Skrulls. Although this is only the first of what, if history proves correct, will be a vast swath of spin-off mini-series, it's probable that they will all follow the format presented here--take the pieces off the table, focus specifically on a select few A-listers and collect income. Anything that's "important" to the larger story won't happen here--instead, this turns into those cheap webisodes that shows like 24 and the Office make to supplement the interest of the more voracious fans. It's not as schlocky as that horrible 24 show for cellphones that had 1-minute episodes, but that's pretty much only because Barry Kitson seems to be pushing his art away from the squat figures that he's been doing for the last ten years. Actually, if it wasn't for getting a chance to see Kitson do something somewhat fresh and new with his style, there'd be nothing else to say about this comic: the dialog is stilted and heavy on exposition, the characters on display are probably easily recognizable to Fantastic Four fans and no one else, and it's lack of consequence aborts the potential for any real drama. In other words, it's a Fantastic Four comic book. Who gives a shit?
Wolverine # 65
Written by Jason Aaron
Art by Ron Garney & Jason Keith
Published by Marvel Comics
Jason Aaron probably can't be blamed for not giving this story the actual climax that would have made it more memorable--in the end, whether he's being groomed to be the next Brubaker or not, it's not going to be up to him to actually kill off perennial X-Men antagonist Mystique. That's an editorial call. While this story was far too repetitive than it had any business being, considering the scant amount of issues involved, it was a relatively stable Wolverine story, and it was probably really appealing to fans of the character. Of course, that means it's a completely disposable super-hero comic book, and a merely average one at that. In other circles, like television and film, when something is average, it might actually be pretty decent but here, that means it's like eating nails while watching a dog fuck your sister. Theoretically.
100 Bullets # 91
Written by Brian Azzarello
Art by Eduardo Risso
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics
An excellent seat-filler of an issue--in a lot of this issue, the plot comes across less like an integral part of the 100 Bullets story and more of a nod to the long-time reader. One of the longest running dynamics of 100 has been the "attache case with untraceable ammunition," and it's been put to bed for such a long while now that this reader couldn't even tell you the last time it was a major part of an story. With only nine issues left in this series, it remains to be seen how much (since it definitely won't be all) of the subplots Azzarello will be able to take to conclusion. To be honest, it's been a while since we'd even thought about the attaches--as important as they were made to seem in the first 40 or so issues of the book, they've faded into the background, and it wasn't until this issue that we remembered how nice it was for a book to utilize such a utilitarian plot device to reach so many different conclusions. Of course, it's also been a while since Risso has been so explicit in his depiction of violence, and he continues to be one of the best artists in the industry for delivering the "shock" panels. Either way, 100 Bullets continues to be the one prime example of why Vertigo still matters--this is one of the most consistently rewarding series they've ever published.
DMZ # 31
Written by Brian Wood
Art by Riccardo Burchielli & Jeromy Cox
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics
Riccardo Burchielli's art usually gets some back-handed attention here at the Factual, an unhappy truth related both to our own basic impatience with reading all these stupid fucking comics and an inability to compliment someone without it tasting like surgical waste. That being said, Burchielli's opening splash pages of the remains of New York City as a helicopter cruises in is some of the strongest and most attractive piece of industrial architecture as art that's been seen anywhere in this series. A lot of DMZ has suffered, in our op, from the drive to keep the series so low to the ground--at the end of the day, refuse covered streets in New York City all look so similar that the work Burchielli puts in becomes a bit uniform. It's not his fault, if anything, it's a statement on how well he does the job of drawing the same shit again and again, and having it still look like the same shit. But when given the opportunity, as he at multiple points in this issue, one gets a chance to see how talented he truly is. The final page, where the flash of a sniper's bullet appears like an infant star exploding on the roof of a building, is one of the most definitive pieces of work in the entire DMZ series thus far. We always knew it would take something really fucking great to knock the "Ghosts" story from the top spot in the DMZ library--maybe "Blood In The Game" is the one.
-Tucker Stone, 2008
Matt Fraction seems to inspire the goofiest reviews from you, whether it's this ridiculously long run-on sentence, or that "dubstep" thing about Punisher War Journal (Motherfucker) a few weeks back. I got nothing to add, I just thought it was notable.
Posted by: Matthew J. Brady | 2008.05.21 at 11:38