The Factual Opinion

Comics Of The Weak: Chuck Dixon's Life Is Based Around When Peggy Sue Got Married, True Story

h Abe Sapian # 5
Written by Mike Mignola
Art by Jason Shawn Alexander & Dave Stewart
Published by Dark Horse Comics

And so the Drowning ends, just as it began, and as it was in the middle: convoluted, muddled, and altogether boring.  It has its fans, it has its art, and it will eventually have its decently selling trade paperback collection, and yet it will never have that thing other series in the little B.P.R.D. universe possess:  a story worth telling.  In the offices of the Factual, this comic is the veritable definition of  disappointment--it's a comic we thought we all would gather together to look forward to, and ended up only looking forward to it ending.  If this is the sort of thing that Mike Mignola feels he must put out to maintain interest in his growing franchise, than to that we say:  we're more than willing to wait a couple of months at a time to see what kind of magic weird shit the rest of the crew is doing.

Detective Comics  # 845
Written by Paul Dini
Art by Dustin Nguyen, Derek Fridolfs & John Kalisz
Published by DC Comics

Well, it's difficult not to enjoy a comic like this.  The opening sequence alone, where it's revealed that Batman, a chimpanzee who dresses like Sherlock Holmes, the Riddler, Barbara Gordon and a random police officer enjoy sitting around and solving crimes online in a internet chat room is actually pretty damn clever and more interesting to read than yet another mundane fight sequence.  After all, if there's one thing that super-hero comics have taught us, it's that you should always pat them on the head whenever they do something new.  The remainder of the issue is a facile portrayal of the consequences of random bank robberies by costumed villains--admittedly, it's not like any Batman fan would cheer to read a story about civilian grief, and Paul Dini is doing as much as he can with the short page count.  Once again though, it's a bit questionable why super-hero comics feel the need to shanghai the very real horror of a murdered wife and the resulting homicidal husband, finally capping it all off with suicide.  It would be one thing if it was in Daredevil, a crime comic disguised as theatrical spandex, but instead it's in a book that consists most often of a stunted version of Batman The Animated Series.  Imagine if you will, a cartoon that ended with brain splatter, and then imagine that said cartoon came on after Ducktales.

Nightwing # 145
Written by Peter Tomasi
Art by Rags Morales & Michael Baer
Published by DC Comics 

Only a few of the staff here have seen Thomas The Train Engine, but they've given us the understanding  that it is accurately and explicitly described as "A show where people stand around and wait for a train to go by, and the train is called Thomas."  Nightwing is pretty much a super-hero comic cut from that same cloth.  It would be the height of dishonesty to claim that, in its pages, "Nothing happens."  But it can accurately be described as "The same thing happens, over and over again, and it never fucking changes, no matter how many times the reader spikes lysergic acid into their testicles." 

Robin & Spoiler Special # 1
Written by Chuck Dixon
Art by Rafael Albuquerque, Cris Peter, Victor Ibanez
Published by DC Comics

To those who have a lurid, practically obscene fascination with Chuck Dixon's imaginatory explorations into the minds and lives of teenagers, welcome to 2008, otherwise referred to as "The year where cake is delivered weekly."  Safely put, there's no spandex scribe with less of a comprehension of a teenage mindset on the planet, and reading the dialog and adventures of a Robin & Spoiler Special is akin to a drug addict being given fifteen pounds of uncut peruvian flake.  There's just so much to deal with, not the least of which is the excitement of dealing with it for days on end--what else will Stephanie write in her diary?  Will Robin break up with the Zoanne girl?  What happened to the tennis team?  Will they keep "creeping?"  Since when do police cars rampage at empty warehouse trespassing?  Why do the intimidating tough kids at a public high school play with water guns?  Wait, water guns?  Gangs have water guns now?  Somebody stole our copy of The Greatest Generation.

Trinity # 1
Written by Kurt Busiek & Fabian Nicieza
Art by Mark Bagley, Art Thibert, Scott McDaniel, Andy Owens, Allen Passalaqua & Pete Pantazis
Published by DC Comics

The Factual Opinion rarely is able to get a universal consensus to no longer to pay attention to a comic book, hence the constant appearance of Nightwing and Batman Confidential, but the team did jump the last weekly book less than a quarter of the way in, so all Trinity has to do is last past the eleventh issue for it to win the not-as-shitty prize.  It's off to a terrible start, as it becomes the second issue in two weeks where the most powerful heroes in the DC universe have a boring brunch where they talk about the dreams.  Safely put, if you can synopsize a plot, and it's about people talking about their dreams, what you have is something no one will ever want to read, including the parents of the writer.  Every time somebody starts a sentence with "I had the weirdest dream last night," the earth itself lets out a sigh and accelerates the melting of polar ice caps.  Dreams are fucking boring, boring, boring.

The Boys # 19
Written by Garth Ennis
Art by Darick Robertson
Published by Dynamite Entertainment

There's a lot to love here.

Criminal # 3
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Sean Philips
Published by Icon/Marvel Comics

Whereas this is the last of three issues that Ed Brubaker refers to as "standalones," what it really serves to be is the third chapter in the painting of the murky backwaters of the crime story universe that served as the setting for the tremendously good Lawless and Coward stories in the first volume of Criminal.  Tracing quite a few of the alleys of the first two issues, this is more of the same kind of bleak, mean stuff, this time in the voice of Danica, one of those crime archetypes: she's hot!  So hot men lose their heads!  But she's got problems!  The real draw of this series is never going to be the innovation of the crime genre: it doesn't seem to be Brubakers bag to use the form for anything new, not that there is anything really wrong with that.  No, what makes this worthwhile is getting to see what Sean Phillips is going to do with his art--for that alone, Criminal is worth the time.  But if you've spent a decent amount of time with any of those authors published by the original Black Lizard imprint, and you know how to track down a Samuel Fuller flick, yes, you know these stories.  But you haven't ever seen them quite like this, and for that, Brubaker and Philips deserve the accolades they get:  no matter what Hollywood would have the public believe, solid genre work is hard to do well.  These guys may be hitting the same marks as Dashiell Hammett, but they hit them well.

DuoStar Racers # 1
By T P Louise & Ashely Wood
Published by IDW

Sort of the kind of thing that's really appealing if you like your art shit to just be cool and hip, but pretty much sort of like a narrative combination of a shitty diary entry from teenagers enamored with the idea that because they are poor, what they say matters, and the first couple of minutes of Akira without that crazy/obnoxious/sort of awesome breathing music where Japanese bikers are screaming at each other.   Ashely Wood comics:  if they aren't written by Joe Casey, then they pretty much just feel cool and look nice.  They, however, read like shit.

The Invincible Iron Man # 2
Written by Matt Fraction
Art by Frank D'Armata & Salvador Larroca
Published by Marvel Comics

Matt Fraction's Iron Man series continues its attempt to make an Iron Man script that's quirky enough to overtake the gaudy hideousness of Salvador Larroca & Frank D'Armata, an art team who's never found a panel they couldn't make more unattractive without coming to your home and cutting out your corneas:  quick analysis, Fraction fails again.  Maybe there's a script out there that can overtake the worst extremes of computerized colors and lazy background renderings, but that script will probably try to fix the Ultimates 3, the comic this most closely resembles in being ugly, toneless and completely fucking stupid.

Omega The Unknown # 9
Written by Jonathan Lethem & Karl Rusnak
Art by Farel Dalrymple & Paul Hornschemeier
Published by Marvel Comics

The plan for Omega seems to have been allowing Jonathan Lethem to do whatever he would like, than allow Farel Dalrymple to do even more of whatever he would like, to publish it to a tiny increment of sales, and wait for the trade paperback to come out so that a bunch of people desperate to read something that isn't totally boring and about some assholes boring life could praise it as the next step in the marriage of super-hero comics and art cum literature.  Still, nine issues in, and all that's been produced is something that's a valiant attempt to out-weird Steve Gerber and some great, downright fantastic work by Gary Panter. Somebody, somewhere, tell comics to stop trying to be cool.  The fact that nobody reads the Bible in Williamsburg doesn't make reading the Bible in Williamsburg indy-rock.  It just means you're an asshole.

Punisher War Journal # 20
Written by Matt Fraction & Rick Remender
Art by Howard Chaykin & Edgar Delgado
Published by Marvel Comics

Somebody should give Howard Chaykin a prize for drawing the least intimidating ninjas of all time.  While "The Hand" has never really been that fearsome of an organization to begin with, somehow Chaykin has figured out how to draw them in a technically accurate fashion that only serves to make a fight scene featuring them look almost as silly as if Punisher was trying to survive a knock-down drag out with the cast of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Douchecoat as performed by a dinner theater company.  Once again, the greatest minds of our generation took a shot at doing a Punisher comic that didn't have a Max tag on the cover, and produced something that Garth Ennis would've dealt with in a one panel monologue.  Punisher War Journal: it isn't the most unnessary comic currrently being published, but that's only because any award would give it too much credit.

Secret Invasion # 3
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Lenil Francis Yu, Mark Morales & Laura Martin
Published by Marvel Comics

This issue of the big Marvel event cross-over is pretty similar to an issue of DC's event cross-over, Infinite Crisis, specifically whatever that issue is where Superboy pulled a Scanners head explosion on that Pantha character.  While there's the requisite nods to maintaining a certain level of this-is-sort-of Battlestar Galactica, with worse acting, most of the meat of this really short but expensive comic is devoted to reading about a bunch of characters you'd know if you read Young Avengers as they die, or get fucked up in ways that look fatal.  That's pretty much it, except that it's not as gross, making it less likeable.  In a lot of ways, this is a comic that will show you what it looks like when people stop trying.

Ultimate Origins # 1
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Butch Guice & Justin Ponsor
Published by Marvel Comics

If you have a comic imprint that used to be a lot more successful, in part because it tried just to fuck around and tell riff-y type stories with no real designs on long-range continuity, and then you were trying to figure out how to increase the sales, then you might get retardedly drunk and think it's a fine idea to come up with some type of story that combines all that stuff into a "universe" that has a "fabric" and everything is "connected."  Of course, all the Ultimate plans could've been thrown out the window if they just eyeballed what's happening at DC, which is a bunch of people not reading their comics while those that do say things like "Gosh, I sort of completely hate this," and the entire reason is the exact problem mentioned above. Instead, they're grabbing the one Ultimate writer who hasn't fucked up his book yet and asked him to fix what went wrong with all the other ones.  It, of course, prominently involves Wolverine.

H.P. Lovecraft's Haunt of Horror # 1
Original Stories and Poems by H. P. Lovecraft
Adaptation, Story, Art by Richard Corben
Published by Marvel MAX

News of a new Richard Corben book doesn't come by that often, for our money, not often enough.  While this is a bit light on the excitement, it's certainly got that raw nothing-else-looks-quite-like-it quality that makes anything by the man worth looking into.  So if all Richard wants to do is jack around with old Lovecraft and insert the actual text to the stories he's adapting, well, it's far prefarable than having to see him pull a Steve Dillon and draw pictures of that old Punisher villain who's arm-gun fired biological bullets. Gross!

-Tucker Stone, 2008

Great Directors: Robert Altman Goes Country

Nashville
Directed by Robert Altman
Written by Joane Tewkesbury
Released in 1975

When it comes to eerily prescient, Robert Altman's Nashville has a couple of doozies.  None other than the New York Times implied that the film was the inspiration for the assassination of John Lennon, and if you remember Ross Perot at all, the fictional  presidential candidate Hal Philip Walker seems produced out of a time machine.  All things being equal, neither of these are more than footnotes to Altman's classic tour de force.  One of the best American films of the golden age of American cinema from one of the greatest American directors, Nashville is one of those movies that suffers from just about universal acclaim--well, except for some overly sensitive country musicians, who think the "satire" of their art is "too harsh."

While nowadays, Nashville may come across as dated, especially when you see the moon unit costumes that Shelly Duvall wears, it's actually a film that serves best as a superb time capsule of a place, a moment--not just of Tennessee and country music, but of a time period when Hollywood was allowing some incredibly talented filmmakers the money and access to pretty much do whatever they wanted.  Robert Altman had already pulled off one of the first of the decades great films when Mash forced its way out of a tumultuous production, and he'd begun operating at a herculean pace since.  Then, in 1975, out came Nashville--a film with 24 distinct characters, a hushed tones plot loose enough to incorporate them all, a script that allowed and forced improvisation and, of course, songs written and recorded live by the actors themselves. 

There's no way in hell that it should even be watchable.

Instead, it's a masterpiece of both ensemble film making and editing-as-film-construction.  Every character is fully realized, down to their ugliest and most beautiful--whether it's Henry Gibson as the proudly arrogant superstar, or Lily Tomlin's heartrending gospel-singing mother or a womanizing Keith Carradine who's almost dripping in sexual heat.  Even from a purely physical standpoint, none of the actors look like they've ever looked before, nor would they ever look like this again.  On top of that, they can, all of them, fucking sing--hell, Carradine won a justly deserved Oscar for his "I'm Easy."  (Although it must be said that part of the reason "I'm Easy" is so well remembered is in no small part due to the performance of Lily Tomlin, who could've probably cracked the glass on the front of the camera if she'd wanted too.)

The film opens with a somewhat torturous patriotic song by Henry Gibson, a man dressed like a cross between Evel Kenievil and Liberace--but before you notice his outfit, one needs a few minutes to take in his sideburns--they stretch down his face so far that they're probably a sentient being.  From there, Altman begins introducing his characters--Gibson's long-suffering business manager son, a terrible young BBC reporter born with a charmless, cackling laugh in place of any self-awareness or class.  As the camera follows these two into another recording studio, Lily Tomlin is found leading an all-black gospel choir, and   the movie progresses this way throughout--people crossing over into rooms, a political agitprop van traveling the city, Jeff Goldblum in huge glasses, until finally, almost forty-five minutes into the film, all the characters have been given a bit of time to make their presence known.  There's a thru-line leading to the film's climactic political fundraiser, but it's more of a chronological study of the city and its denizens than anything else--there won't be a final insert of anyone saying "and that's why I invited Ned Beatty to the party, because he's my cousin!"  Carradine might run into everybody, he might not--Jeff Goldbum might be more than a carnival magician on a stupid motorcycle, but whether he is, the film doesn't say.  It doesn't need to either--unlike other films with a kaleidoscopic viewpoint, Nashville isn't about inter-connecting relationships, any more than it is about anything in particular.  It's just a city, full of interesting people at interesting moments, on their way towards a tragedy.  Some of them, like Scott Glenn's near-silent Army vet, will be more affected by the climax of the film than others.  Some of them, like Lily Tomlin, will reach their emotional crux a full half hour before the close of the film.  It's not about "bringing them full circle." Nashville isn't a machine of plot, but it's a film cloaked in the texture of real life--the individuals that might make for the most important moments of a person's life are just meaningless bumper cars obstructing the paths of others who know them in the vaguest terms possible.  Near the end of the film, when a distraught husband tries to make clear to his niece that her aunt has passed away, she slips away into the arms of another strange man, one of many that have found in her a willing companion in her short visit to Tennessee.  It's these kinds of intersections that make up an entire film, an entire story--women and men, not desperate for love, but desperate to fulfill their own desires.

When Nashville reaches it's close, a film that is already overstuffed with brilliant performances tops even those, with a brutal, confusing death, and a crowd of people lost in their desires to grieve, while at the same time in staunch refusal to succumb to anything, to anybody, that wants to weaken them.  It is there that Barbara Harris is to be found--ravenous, practically frothing at the mouth, and near lost to her own fantasies (it's easy to imagine she hasn't eaten anything, or slept, since early in the film when she runs from her truck-driving husband.)  Through the accidents of circumstance and tragedy, she ends up with a microphone in her hand, and after a wrenching few moments of confusion, closes the film with a uproarious take on Keith Carradine's "It Don't Worry Me."  It's an almost physical rebuke to the prospect of surrender, and it's one of, if not the, strongest moments in an altogether perfect film.  It's also Robert Altman making clear the mission statement that would carry him throughout his life and career--that regardless of circumstance, funding or an ignoring public, his concern is his art, and nothing will stand in his way for long.

-Tucker Stone, 2008

Next time in Great Directors:  A really bad film by Robert Altman, which, in a total shocker, isn't The Company or the one with Tara Reid and Kate Hudson.

The Virgin Read: Somebody Asked Her For This

Fatal Faux-Pas
By Samuel C. Gaskin
Published by Secret Acres, 2008

I just had the wonderful honor of receiving one of the first publications from Secret Acres, Fatal Faux-Pas by Samuel C. Gaskin.

Now, this is my first experience of someone asking me to review something.  I was (am) a little nervous because, well, as you know I'm the resident Virgin to Comic Books.  So, my taste for something is usually visceral and emotional, and honestly somewhat less than critical.  My fear stems from the fact that I have such little experience with comics that I have nothing to compare and contrast with.  No true knowledge of fine arts, and sometimes the pop-culture references can go right over my head because, well, I'm old.  I am.  I mean, I'm coming late to the comic book party.  Real late. 

Okay, now that I've gotten all the disclaimers aside, as well as some mild self-deprecation, I want to take it all back because I want you all to trust my opinion and review of this.  This was a totally enjoyable read – severely clever, very funny and even sometimes poetic.

To my first point, the visceral and emotional reaction.  The first thing that got me was the "Rock, Paper, Scissors" passage, which was an autobiographical tale.  I love that, in a matter of frames and very few words, I learned about an entire relationship, an entire summer, and its impact.  And yet it's so quiet.  It reminds me of Anders Nilson (and there goes my fear of having nothing to compare this to), who's stuff I love.  This quietness within the art, the leaving space for emotion and/or contemplation, if one so chooses to experience those things, is really beautiful.  And let me tell you what, too --  I laughed out loud while reading this book.  No, not out loud at home.  Out loud.  On the train.  Several times.  See, that's when you know something is really funny – when ones normal sense of self-consciousness (and self preservation) is thrown off like a dirty shirt, in the name of humor.

I rarely read comics on the train.  (Well, I rarely read comics.)  And so, after laughing out loud, the woman sitting next to me, nosey little missus that she is, decides to read over my shoulder.  Right when I'm getting to the first of two penis pictures in the whole thing.  Of course.  And although normally I'd get really uncomfortable that someone was seeing that I was reading something with pictures of dick sucking – I actually didn't care.  In fact, I kind of hoped she was offended – because she was annoying.  And that part of the comic, was really, really hilarious. 

And as for pop-culture references – Hello!  I was right at home!  How old is Sam?  Was he in my class?  We've got everything from Fonzie to Saved By The Bell to Herzog to Spider-man to Harry Potter mixed with Black Sabbath.  I am so happy.

And so once again, I have the experience where picking up a comic – this comic Fatal Faux Pas – made me laugh, gave me a break in my day, and helped me to relax and lighten up.  It's better than a cocktail.  I'm looking forward to reading more.  Thank you to the guys at Secret Acres for the opportunity and to Sam for sharing his art.

This review was based on a complimentary copy from the publisher.  This comic will be available at the Mocca convention in New York City, as will other items from Secret Acres.

-Nina Stone, 2008

Economist Versus Idiot: Proving That Crime Paid Well, For Thirty-Five Years

-Due to some of the most irritating computer malfunctions imaginable, this Economist piece had to be re-built from memory the evening it was posted, so it's a bit shorter and rougher than I'd prefer.  In the interest of punctuality and usefulness to whomever reads these pieces, since at least three people do, I decided to let it go and put it up.  As always, print editions of the Economist are available, free of charge, at their website.  Apologies, and I think I've got enough set in place now to prevent that from happening in the future.

The World Last Week

-Lebanon elected a Christian parliamentary president.  Something tells me somebody should tell American Christians that.  Hey, no judgment.

-They don't fuck around:  "Somalia remains virtually ungoverned."  But I thought...oh, wait, yeah.  Black Hawk Down had a sad ending.  I was thinking of King Ralph.

-Ethiopia drops a death sentence on their former ruler, hiding out in Zimbabwe.  Don't worry, dude totally deserves it.  But try getting Mugabe on board for the idea of a "court of law."  It's like trying to watch that K-Pax flick without muscle relaxants.

-Dude, hopefully you can find a picture of Canada's former foreign minister's girlfriend (the one who got him fired for sharing his secret government documents with biker gangs) that doesn't showcase her cleavage.  Because The Economist apparently couldn't.

-Some dudes got into Myanmar to help out, after General Than Shwe was forced to meet with the United Nations secretary-general.   You have to chuck the UN sec. his propers on that--instead of saying, "Look, I've been calling, he won't answer,"  which was totally, hilariously, true, the motherfucker just hopped on a plane and showed up at Shwe's office.  That's some commitment, especially considering the way the American media likes to paint the UN as a bunch of weaklings.  (Which, if you look at the Sudan, they still kind of are.)

-Russia shoots down a Georgian spy plane.  It ain't the USS Cole, but don't expect that area to be getting even better in the coming months.

-100 countries say no more cluster bombs, because they keep destroying civilians arms and legs and killing kids.  Russia, America and China are all like, "Dude, I totally dig killing kids." and vote to hang on to them.

-Well, for now, Big Oil beat the Big American Royal Rockefeller Family.  Still too much of a fight between the grosser aspects of America to be excited.

-Looks like InBev, the guys who make Becks and Stella, are looking to takeover Anheuser-Busch.  All that stands in their way?  Rednecks who hate Belgium.

-Hey, I think they made a mistake here--did 97 million people vote in the American Idol finale, or were there 97 million votes.  It isn't the same, is it?

Leaders

-Well, here's the first in what is as the cover implies, an oil-heavy issue.  There's all kinds of stuff here worth checking out, it's basically a check-up from the neck-up, so if you want to know what's going on with Texas T, the black gold, then here's your source.  They take the piss out of some sound bites, point out some of the irritating contradictions of oil transactions, and then a dude takes off his pants.  Wait a sec

-Wow, Gordon Brown used to want people to call him the "Iron Chancellor."  Any likelihood of that has gone out of that after the tax handout to cover his own tax changes.  Iron makes a good waffle iron, but it don't make for...oh jesus that's not even funny, I'm sorry.

-Huh, it's surprising that Japan is still doing the whole payment-by-age thing (where your salary goes up as long as you stay at a company, regardless of how well you're doing.)  I would've thought that era of time depicted in Michael Keaton's Gung Ho would've eliminated such silly, and poorly thought out, policies.

-One wonders how far outside Iran has to look out their door to decide whether it can rely on the promises being made if it stops enriching uranium.  I mean, the group making the swears includes the same cats who also said that Iraq had yellow-cake, right?  Nobody is saying that Iran with bombs is a desired outcome, but it certainly isn't like they can toss their trust out right about--well, what, the last 20 years?
Oh no that's right never.

Letters

-Well, everybody rolling up with a correction and complaint this week does it in a classy fashion, so all my contempt is then lathered up in a sudsy white foam and laid at the doorstep of Deucalion Rediadis.  It'll be there when he gets back, after "reading your articles in the print edition late on a sunny Saturday morning on a beach near Athens."  Back, wall, yours, first:  when the revolution comes.

United States

-Just a reminder, now that everybody has their two candidates to pick from:  if you don't live in a swing state, you can just as easily support your candidate by writing "bring back lou gehrig's disease" in your grandmother's ashes all over your ballot.  Thanks to the electoral college, what you think doesn't really  matter!

-So, "Kate from Baltimore bought a three-foot-tall light-up ice cream cone with her stimulus check."  Hopefully, Stephen, from Brunswick, Georgia will stop by and show her the new Smith & Wesson he picked up and she'll remember that, just because George Bush told you to go hog wild, he didn't mean for you to be a total freakshow idiot with your $600.

-I fully acknowledge that Scott McClellan's tell-all book probably has the actual newsworthiness as that unauthorized biography of Tom Cruise that claimed Katie Holmes had been impregnated with L. Ron Hubbard's frozen sperm, but it will probably also be just as funny.

-Lexington decides to throw an article about Bob Barr, the Libertarian's presidential candidate out there, and I can't help think it's in the hopes for bragging rights if the moon collapses and Barr actually has some kind of impact that can't be described as "negligible."  That being said, everybody get ready to look at those pictures of Barr licking whipped cream off of a stripper--because you know the National Review keeps those close at hand.

-So, if house prices are now falling faster than they were during the Great Depression, all I want to know is which trains I have to avoid so as to avoid seeing tin-roofed shantytowns.  I'm sad enough as it is.

The Americas

-Everybody in South America is on an arms-buying bonanza, and no one else is invited!  Chile, which is the skinny one on the bottom left to those of you who went to an American public school, needs tanks and submarines and F-16 fighters!  Venezuela needs 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles because they're basing their military strategy on Metal Gear, I think.

-I'm all for racial harmony, tolerance of other faiths, but I really can't see why a Sikh boy needs to bring his ceremonial dagger to school everyday.  Of course, that's just one of the many reasons why I'm not on a Canadian court of law.  Because they totally think it's a great idea.

-While it's not exactly party-causing news that Pedro Antonio Marin has died, if that helps to bring down the FARC guerrilla army and get that Ingrid Betancourt woman home (or any of the hostages), then yes, I will have a quiet little celebration.  This shit has gone on far too long, and I no longer care if any governments considers any of their demands rationally.

Asia

-Does there happen to be a lot of articles in the world about countries running out of truck-drivers, and desperately getting the immigration department to let more in?  Because this one about Australia can't be the only one.  That's got to be a widespread problem.

-North Korea continues to come up with more reasons why they're a fucked up and sad place to be a human being--this edition includes: counterfeit iPods, fifteen refrigerators and counterfeit American money.

-Buddhist charities have it easier than Christian charities, partly because they make things more difficult on themselves than Christians:  they don't yap about their faith, they pay their own way, volunteer for extensive training, and physically bow to the people they help--instead of handing boxes to Burmese militias and saying, "Ya'll promise to git that to them dying people now."

-Man, that's the dumbest hat I've ever seen, and I work in Soho.  I would've given you two weeks to get the hell out of the royal palace too, Mr. Former King Of Nepal.

Middle East and Africa

-So, if they're asking Ehud Olmert to resign over bribes, can't they at least tell you what the bribes were for?  (I think they did last week, but that Economist copy has already been re-gifted, along with chocolate fingers.)  All that's here is talk about "campaign finance" and "personal loans," but he had to do something for it, right?  That's the way bribery works.

-What kind of party does the Japanese government host when they're trying to earn the natural resources of Africa?  Hope it's better than the party that the Chinese and Indian government threw.  Or the ones every other superpower plans.

Europe

-When Yulia Tymoshenko and Viktor Yushchenko team up, they form like Voltron and everything in the Ukraine goes together like cake and icing, but when they fall out with each other?  People in Parliament fight it out, Mike Tyson style, and everybody in the country sits around wondering why they can't elect leaders who know how to behave like fucking grown-ups. 

-It's nice that the European Union is dithering around trying to figure out how they want to deal with Russia, but this article could use a little more, or any, information on what Russia is doing about dealing with the European Union.  Then again, maybe this is just more of a hint of how little, reputable information is making its way out of Putin's hands and into the public forum.

-Regardless of your feelings about Danish censorship and religious cartoons, it's altogether disheartening to read that 2/3 of Muslim college students plan to bail out of the country after graduation.

-Charlemagne skirts controversy while writing out about various reasons why there aren't more women in top-level European Union positions, proving once again that when there's a brainaic at the wheel, somebody can talk about any frenzied issue without resorting to polemic and ignorance.  That being said, it's unsurprising that more women aren't interested in late night binge drinking sessions with a bunch of loser politicians, which is apparently how a lot of European Council members like to do their job.  I'm all for getting tore up after work, but doing work while you're at it?  Especially when you have an important job?  What's really depressing about this column is that more men want these jobs.

Britain

-Let's keep the ticker running, here's oil article number two:  Will high oil prices tip the economy into recession?  If this were Family Feud, I'd be stealing Richard Dawson's alcohol and laughing myself to the right answer to the question.  If you can't guess it, you're dumber than I am--and i'm a complete fucking moron!

-Oil article number three drops all over your face and brain:  even though they've known that the North Sea was running out of oil since 1999, nobody thought to prepare the British economy for when it finally started being a serious problem.  Hey, preparation, where'd you go?  C'mere.

-British police can hold suspects for 28 days without charging them.  America, New Zealand, Germany? Two days.  Gordon Brown has already tried to push the number to 90, which failed to make it through Parliament--there response was somewhere around the area of "Holy shit dude, have you lost your mind," so now they're going for 42 days.  Wha?  Seriously.  The fuck?

International (Mommy Won't Let Us In The Leader Section)

-Why aren't you up front, big article about spankings?  Oh, because nobody really gives a shit about spankings.  Child abuse, now that's a big ass deal, and you might totally get up front if you were all about child abuse.  But no, you're all about spankings, and no one cares.

-And why isn't this up front?  Well, maybe because it's a horrifying article about the rampant sex abuse of children by aid workers in Sudan, Haiti and the Ivory Coast.  (The aid workers were with, wait for it, make sure you're ready to get upset and cry some:  Save The Children.)  Yes, that's right!  And to make it worse, the piece is coupled with the findings of repeated patterns of rape by United Nations peacekeepers from Nepal.  That's right!  Some UN peacekeepers decided that the situation in Congo five years ago wasn't bad enough, so they made it even more fucking worse.  Wait, don't stop, there's more!  UN peacekeepers will also raping children alongside aid workers!  AND there is no workable system in place to punish the guilty.  Hey!  Where'd you go?  You can't go live on another planet--this is the one you're stuck with!

 Business

-Oil article number four, which is probably the most intensive of the group-whereas the leader article will fill your conversation with expansion on talking points, this is the one that gets down to the nitty gritty stuff.  It's still totally readable, and here's something I didn't know--Iran is sitting on barrel after barrel of the "heavy" oil, which is used for heating fuel, that sort of thing, whereas everybody is freaking out for "light" crude, which is what makes petroleum and diesel fuel.  Iran would totally love to sell it, but it's cheaper and in large quantities, so refineries are finding it more profitable to focus on the "make-my-car-go" kind.

-Well, to wrap up oil talk, here's one on the differences in worldwide fuel taxes--next time that irritating asshat at work is telling you all about "How much I paid at the pump dis morning" you can throw it back in his face and point out that Germans and Brits are paying double that.  If you say it enough, maybe he'll eat a bullet and you can get back to looking for a shareware download of Legend of Zelda on your work computer.

-If I had money invested in a private-equity firm that was looking to buy a big-ass Ferris wheel in Vienna, I would move that money into a company less tied to being a bunch of 9-year-olds.

-The nicest thing about Communist China right now is that it's a big laboratory for massive industrial reorganization--you can't get this scale of entertainment when you have all those rules of ownership shit.  Six companies, contolling $244 billion in revenue, 600 million mobile subscribers and 360 million fixed-line companies, will be collapsed into three.  They announced that shit on a website. Here, that would be like Nike saying they were going to eat the state of North Dakota on a Piggly Wiggly bulletin board in southern Alabama.  (Where you go to find a babysitter, you know what I'm talking about.)

-Damn it, these fucking poor people don't have any food, or stable governments, or decent hopes for the future!  We've got to get them cell phones as soon as possible!

Finance and Economics

-Should Societe Generale still get to be a company after one of its employees lost $7.2 billion?  When a low-level trader ganks a company that bad, shouldn't they just kind of close up shop and move on to shoe manufacturing? 

-Hey, everybody who's so smart and wonderful and wears suits all day, even when they sleep upside down in a clamshell, here's a Buttonwood column I didn't comprehend about "The puzzle of low Treasury-bond yields."  You heard it here first--I am dumb.

Science and Technology

-Hey, they should call this the "good news" section this week.  Completely untouched by oil!  First off, the Phoenix landed on Mars, and it's wandering around looking at shit!  That's pretty much it--sure, there's all kinds of scientific discovery type jazz on the way, but hey!  You don't need to know that!  We landed on Mars!  Take that, weird conspiracy nutjobs!

-While there's lots of studies that propagate the myth "Girls bad at math compared to boys, kick boys ass on reading," recent studies show that when you balance the studies out for sex discrimination, turns out girls are just as good at math as boys, whereas boys still kind of suck at reading.  So, yeah, the ladies?  Smarter than the gents. Well, that's not all good news, I mean, lots of people I like have a penis, and I think they read fine, but the math thing is pretty great.

-Dude!  There just might be a vaccine for cancerous brain tumors! 

Books and Arts

-Gustav Klimt, as talented as he is, has never really done that much for me.  Partly due to a personal distaste for most of his fans, I'd assume.  (I saw way too many college dormrooms with that fucking "Kiss" painting overseeing a vomit bucket.)  That being said, the new show in Liverpool though sounds pretty amazing though.  Amazing enough for a trip to see it?  Well, just don't fly American.

-Why the Economist has it out for suburbs this week is something only the gods could explain, but their main complaint with the state of French cinema, found here, seems to be that there aren't enough French films that explore the "harsh banality of life in the suburbs."  Hey guys--maybe nobody really gives that much of a shit about the 'burbs.  There's not much you can say better than that crappy Tom Hanks flick.

-Sebastian Faulks has recently come out with a new James Bond adventure, licensed by the Fleming family.  While I can't pretend that I'm that interested in a hard-cover book of Bond's adventures, as I'm sure it's not a novel that will take more than three hours to read, the Economist seemed to like it.  They also liked Indiana Jones though, so their taste?  Suspect.

Obituary: Robert Vesco (Probably?)

-Interesting one this week out--an obituary on a guy who may, or may not, have died in November 2007.  He's spent a large amount of time wandering the parts of the Earth that allow financiers who's empire was built on fraud--as the article points out, we know for sure it was at least $224 million (in 70's dollars, today that means about $1 billion), we think it's probably closer to twice that, and that information is coming from the same group of people who weren't actually capable of catching the dude for 35 years.  So, in effect, you've got one of the most successful examples of crime paying a massive amount and then the successful criminal dying of natural causes in an island paradise. 

-Next week in the Economist: a really shitty Photoshopped cover!

Off The Shelf: Welcome To The New World Order, Which Is Less Preferable Than Serialized Manga From 1967

Aztek The Ultimate Man
Written by Grant Morrison & Mark Millar
Art by N. Steven Harris, Keith Champagne & Mike Danza
Published by DC Comics, 2008
Originally Serialized by DC Comics, 1996-97

Economically, twenty dollars for a collection of ten comic books is some kind of a deal, but there's almost nothing here that makes this any different from any of the other comics that attempted to create a new super-hero and failed to capture an audience.  The art, by penciler N. Steven Harris and inker Keith Champagne isn't very attractive or innovative--if anything, it's an excellent example of a 90's comic book--strange clothing choices on the non-hero characters, a similarity between all the facial features, and a blocky, confusingly rendered depiction of action sequences.  It's all completely routine stuff, and it shouldn't be hard to grasp why DC is publishing the series in a collection now--just look at who the writers are.  There's only a few moments where the Morrison and Millar touch show through--a moment when the poorly named Aztek avoids fighting Green Lantern and acknowledges the idiocy of those routine excursions whenever heroes meet, the revelation of a secret organization stretching far back into human history (classic Morrison Illumanti wanking) and, in a moment that acknowledges Millar's love for the "realistic" touch, Batman asking Aztek if he can take a look at the technology that makes Aztek's suit work.  But this is a collection of ten comic books, and it's barely interesting to read if you're looking for entertainment--looking for moments where these two hugely successful writers to show off isn't worth the time, or money, expended.

Dororo Volume # 1
By Osama Tezuka
Translated by Dawn T. Laabs
Published by Vertical, 2008
Originally Serialized in Shukan Shonen Sunday, 1967-68

The newest in Vertical's line of Tezuka reprints, Dororo is a one of those wandering swordsmen type stories that work so well in both the Japanese and American manga market.  Interestingly, this forty year old story doesn't betray it's age in the slightest--there's a simplicity to it that's pretty much timeless.  The enjoyment factor is going to be tangled up in your taste for the genre, and your attraction towards Tezuka's work.  If you like his style of storytelling--an expanding cast of irregulars, all with their own petulant desires, a tendency towards short tempers wrapped up in the A-plots surrounding a hero with a large amount of problems but little personality--then you'll find plenty to enjoy here.  While we prefer the more bizarre imagination found in manga like Drifting Classroom or over-the-top soap operas like Nana, Dororo is such a fine example of shonen manga that it's worth reading just to see Tezuka creating something for the wider population.  Basically, this isn't a big deal comic trying to change the world, it's a popcorn read for a rainy day.  It's a manga for when you can't find your copy of Ghostbusters, and you've got time to kill.  (One other thing-Vertical continues to only be outshined by Drawn & Quarterly's reprints of Yoshihiro Tatsumi's work in the cover design department.  Dororo, as object, is a beautiful piece of graphic design.)

Faker
Written by Mike Carey
Art by Jock
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics, 2008
Originally Serialized by Vertigo/DC Comics, 2007-08

Here's the thing--there was a time where the art was the only thing that mattered in these types of comics.  When only the true obsessives were paying attention to who wrote the things, because they had to get the next issue of McFarlane or Liefeld, and nobody really gave a shit what it was he was writing.  Jock is somebody who would've flourished then--even with the most basic of scripts, you can count on him to do exciting shit.  Here, even though he's drawing no spandex characters, even though all of these characters look like they're being pulled from victim status in the latest studio horror flicks like Prom Night or  Chainsaw remakes, he's doing exciting stuff.  Nowadays though, the kick is to talk about the writer, those guys are the stars.  (Yes, that's reductive, and people were yapping about John Byrne and Keith Giffen back when Spawn started up, and yes, nowadays people jack off all over Alex Ross, but hey, this is us, we don't back shit up, we thrive on the reductive.)  So Faker gets judged, not on the content of Jock, but on the story that Mike Carey is telling.  And what story is that, Mike Carey?  Because from this side of the ocean, this story looks like it wanted to be one of those studio horror flicks with a nondescript cast of white twenty-year-olds.  Every characters personality is described in the broadest strokes--the tough-as-nails hottie who blackmails professors after she seduces them with threats of rape accusations, the airhead guy who all the girls can't resist, the tough-minded dude who keeps the band together--this isn't writing, it's not a story, it's an introductory paragraph on a screenplay.  It's a way to spend some time that isn't church, or Die Hard 4, or reading Superman slash-fiction.  It's a comic book, the most basic kind, and the kind that doesn't do, or say, anything new.  (Well, it does say that not everything Vertigo publishes can be as good as Preacher or 100 Bullets, but that song is just about playeddafukout.)

-Tucker Stone, 2008

Music of the Weak: We Would Like To Be Consulted Before You Make Any More Changes

Black Kids – “Hurricane Jane”

No no no no no no no.  Didn’t punk rock teach us anything?  When it was a free download on their MySpace page, “Hurricane Jane” fucked around and landed in our 2007 Secret 50.  That song was resplendent in its badly-recorded amateurism—a perfect lost Cure song with a blatant twist on a harrowed song topic (“It’s Friday night and I ain’t got nobody/ What’s the use of making a bed”).  You should have scooped up that version when we told you to.  The new version of “Hurricane Jane”, released as a single in anticipation of Black Kids’ forthcoming debut album, is an experiment in seeing how much damage you can do with a handful of production tweaks.  The last time a song fell this far on its transition from demo to debut, it ended up on The College Dropout.  The intro to “Hurricane Jane” becomes more staccato, and turns a guitar noodle from some dude who doesn’t really know how to play (Awesome!) into a “Hey, I meant to do that” moment (Horrendous!)  The back-up vocals turn from ghostly to garish, and the keyboard accents now sound like Star Trek sound effects.  But the worst offense occurs with Reggie Youngblood’s vocals, which transform from a wispy, sullen voice-in-the-wilderness to an over-articulated Robert Smith impersonation that somehow manages to be over-confident and self-conscious.  Black Kids, you hurt our feelings with this one.

Sigur Rós – “Gobbledigook”

When Sigur Rós released Takk… in 2005, their career path seemed entrenched.  That album was initially kind of lovely—especially when compared with its predecessor, the secretly awful ( )—but only diverged in subtle ways from their blueprint.  It had no staying power, and all of a sudden Sigur Rós, like Nas, had a one great album every ten years average.  Then, out of nowhere, they drop “Gobbledigook”—easily their best single since “Svefn-g-englar”—which removes just about every element that made their sound iconic.  The laconic, dreamy guitars have been replaced by relentless tribal drumming.  Yes, they still sing in (presumably) Hoplandic, but there are multiple and varied voices, and chants.  Chants!  The video clip, also on the website, features naked people frolicking in the wilderness.  (It is the 40th anniversary of Hair, people.)  All of this sufficiently blew our mind.  Sigur Rós: Now with 100% more drums and nakedness.

Wire – “One of Us”

Dude, this sounds just like The Futureheads Elastica The Rad Soundtrack Wire Britpop!

The Hold Steady – “Sequestered In Memphis”

We love The Hold Steady’s Boys and Girls In America, but we admit there’s something steadily holding* us back from loving it as much as we would like to love it (that ever happen to you?)  Presently we think that this is the reason:  After the incomparable Separation Sunday, Boys and Girls marked a progression toward sounding like, you know, other bands.  They still kill it live, and their songs are written within an inch of their life, but we want the Craig Finn who wants to party on the problem bus, not the Craig Finn who just wants to walk around and drink some more.  Knawhutimean?  “Sequestered In Memphis” sounds like another progression toward someone else’s sound.  Finn’s lyrics are vague retreads—he’s been to the same bathroom with that girl like 500 times now—and the hook is forgettable, especially when compared to other Hold Steady lead singles “Chips Ahoy!,” “Your Hoodrat Friend,” and “The Swish.”  We appreciate the slight nod to the fact that they’re dudes in their mid-thirties playing to dudes in their late-teens (Of Memphis: “I went there on business.”)  And we are equally sure that there will be plenty for us to like in the upcoming Stay Positive.  I mean, there are horns.  And we love horns.  But still, we worry.

*Sorry.  Had to be done.

Jay Electronica – “Bitches & Drugs”

There’s no real way to get around telling you how much we enjoy this song without dropping a shit ton of references to artists it reminds us of, so we’re just going to go ahead and do that now:  Wu-Tang, Public Enemy, Madlib, MF Doom, Craig Mack, Busta Rhymes, and Eminem’s Insane Clown Posse skits.  How’d we do?  There’s also a lengthy British Invasion-style intro which sounds both ballsy and completely unnecessary.  We would also like to note that the song (or at least the video, which may in fact get cut off a tad early) doesn’t have much to do with Bitches, and it has nothing to do with Drugs.  We don’t particularly mind that, but if Jay Electronica is actually trying to capitalize on some search engine fall out scuffuffle, he should have called the track “Bitches & Drugs & Porn.”  We do like his way of thinking though, and we intend to apply it to our own little endeavor here:

Music of the Weak:  Now with 100% more titties and cooter.

-Marty Brown, 2008

The Virgin Read: She Likes The One A Lot Of People Complain About, And Surprises Continue

Batman # 677
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Tony Daniel & Sandu Florea
Published by DC Comics

As I was riding home on the train, knowing I would be reading and reviewing this comic book tonight, I started to approach it differently in my mind.

At this point, I know a little more about comics than I did before.  So, I wanted to be a little bit fresher in my perspective.  I was thinking that there may be many people, of all ages, out there who upon seeing the last Batman film – or in anticipation of the new one – will pick up the Batman comic.  And if someone did such a thing, would they understand this comic without knowing much about the current storyline, or would they feel totally lost and on the outside of things?  And if it has nothing to do with any movie Batman storyline, would said new reader find it interesting? 

And in thinking about this I realized what an expectation I'm setting of the writers.  My expectation is that they be so talented that they both move forward their current plot, and still include all of the information necessary for a new reader to feel comfortable and interested.  And, of course, the crème de la crème, the way in which they explain the information that "everybody else" already knows should in no way seem contrived or forced.

In all those Harry Potter books I was always delighted with and annoyed by this task, simultaneously.  I was happy that J.K. Rowling would throw in the summarizing statements and reminders about what had happened in the previous book – because it'd been a year since I'd read the last one – but I'd also be annoyed in the obviousness of it.  And I always wished there would be like an asterisked footnote at the bottom that would say, "if you remember the plot and drama of the previous book, skip this part and proceed to page 43. "

So, anyhow, I think that is part of the the art within the art.  Finding a way to recap without insulting, or irritating, your current audience.

So, how'd I enjoy this book?  Well, I think it does a fine, fine job of the aforementioned task.  I mean, I generally know who Batman is and who Alfred is.  Anyone I didn't know was introduced, and then the explanation of who they were or what they might truly be up to came within conversation in a very natural way.  I guess I'm just excited to say, I got it.  I got that the Black Glove knows Batman, that he has some direct access to his biggest weakness (its like the Superman-Kryptonite thing; but that's a device that doesn't usually get used in Batman, right?)  I got that part of the plan is to not only convince the world that Batman is actually crazy and/or schizophrenic, but to attempt to convice him of this too.  And we see him stay strong and see through the plan, and then we witness him start to weaken.  I don't fully know who Jet is, she's got enormous breasts poppin gout of her button up, collared shirt in an only-in-comic-books, way, gorgeous hair, long legs, heart-shaped ass – thus depicting in pictures and via Batman's emotion, that he totally digs her.  Which, therefore makes him vulnerable. 

And then, its not enough that Black Glove actually gets to him – but they beat Alfred!  It looks like to death!  And I know that this Alfred looks nothing like Michael Caine, but Michael Caine is who I think of at every mention of Alfred.  So, they're beating Michael Caine!  To a bloody pulp!  Oh, no!

And so, ya know what?  I'm a little hooked.  I want to know what happens.  I learned enough through the book to get caught up, and I want to see how it plays out.  Is Jet a kind of double agent?  Was Black Glove using her?  And does she know it?  What's happeing to Batman?  And furthermore, what's going to happen?  Will the world believe all the stories of craziness?  Will he really die? 

And what about Alfred?  Why are they doing that to him?  Will he live?  Oy vey.

And so, Grant Morrison jumps the high bar that this new reader inadvertently set, with ease and panache. 

And how's the art?  Well….I can't really say.  I mean, I follow it.  Its enjoyable.  There's nothing that is bad that takes away from the story.  It fully supports it.  There's a big focus on facial expressions.  And, well, it reminds me of when I first moved to NYC and was taking voice lessons.  I was supposed to be emoting – feeling the song.  And the teacher said, "Nina honey.  You need to take an acting class.  What you're doing right now is face dancing.  You need to learn to act."

Face Dancing.  Hee hee!  So, I mean, I don't know anything about art.  I can't draw. Period. And if you're trying to show a persons changing emotional landscape, I'm sure this is the way to do it.  It just reminded me of the "Face Dancing Episode."

Okay friends.  That's all for now.  Thanks for reading.

-Nina Miller Stone, 2008

Comics Of The Weak: First Phoning It In Joke Gets A Lick On The Face

With the Uncanny X-Blog a scant few hours away, The Team At Factual Agreed that Comics of the Weak, if left to be handled in the usual fashion, would not do justice to the week in comics.  So, like all the powers of nature, Comics Of The Weak is taking a page from the Girl Talk album and pulling a mash-up:  It's a Stunt Casting, with the Virgin Read handling the Questions, and the Comics of the Weak team handling the answers.  The subject? 

All of the books.

The Virgin Read:  Let's start with The New Avengers # 41.  Do you hate Secret Invasion as much as I do?

The Factual Opinion:  It's fine for what it is.  It's supposed to be a big cross-over with a bunch of...I don't know, I don't really care.  [The New Avengers] was a boring portion of it.  It's all about "what was going on" in the Savage Land.  It seems like what Marvel is doing with all these side issues is telling you back-story, stuff that happened "months ago" whereas the Secret Invasion mini-series itself is going to be what's happening right now.  I don't know, it's hard to get excited about that.

Virgin:  I was looking through the pages, I didn't read it, but it looked to me like Spider-Man fell into a soft-core jungle porn.  Is it as good as that?

TFO:  No.  That would have been a much better comic.

Virgin:  Dan Dare.  It says Dan Dare but there is a woman on the cover.  That is not Dan Dare, true or false?

TFO:  Not Dan Dare.  She's his second-in-command that he pulled up through the ranks to put in charge of some hardcore military flying.

Virgin:  I'm not familiar with this comic.  It looks a little science-fiction-y.

TFO:  Yes, the opening part was more science-fiction-y than it usually is--it is about aliens and stuff like that--but the military stuff is usually pretty great.  Garth Ennis does that military stuff pretty well.  I was bored with all that alien shit, but when it gets into straight-up military operations...Ennis does that stuff better than anybody else working right now.  When he's at his best, he can be on par with the classic war stuff.  It's a good series.  I hadn't realized I missed an issue of it, I thought I'd been keeping up.  I guess I did, because I didn't understand where it started.

Virgin:  Is the alien stuff in this better or worse than the alien stuff in Indiana Jones?

TFO:  I don't know.  I found the alien stuff in Indiana Jones to be...really fucking stupid.  I don't find this to be really fucking stupid. 

Virgin:  So it was better.

TFO:  There wasn't a Spielbergian "let's make a family!"  Oh, fathers and sons, they're always estranged.

Virgin:  Good.  Daredevil, The Man Without Fear.  Is he still without fear?

TFO:  He's just a whiny-ass motherfucker.  Well, he has to be, because they have to play out this whole "My wife is CRAZY.  She's never GONNA GET BETTER." kind of thing.  I don't know that he's scared.  He's a mopey son of a bitch.

Virgin:  So he's a man without fear, but not mild depression.

TFO:  He's not a man without angst.  It's not Daredevil: The Man Without Angst.

Virgin:  Question from me, because I read one issue of this:  is he still wearing his glasses inside his house alone with his wife?

TFO:  Well, she's in the crazy hospital now.  I don't know, I'm not sure why I don't look for that.  That was a good point.  I think he is.  I think there's a portion where he's at home when some lady shows up to talk to him and he's wearing glasses.  He's also cleaning the house with bleach, and it's burning his nose?  Or something?  I feel like that would be an all-the-time problem.  People clean with bleach on a regular basis, it seems like that should be a constant complaint.  Then again, whatever.  Who gives a shit?

Virgin:  The Immortal Iron Fist i've never read...

TFO:  That's not true.  You read it, you didn't like it.

Virgin:  I did?

TFO:  Yeah, you said it didn't make sense, because it jumped from story to story and had different art.

Virgin:  Hm.  Didn't leave a lasting impression.  It had the same thing, I opened to this page where I felt like I fell into soft-core porn, but this time with really skinny ugly people.

TFO:  I'd say they are more muscular than they are skinny.

Virgin:  Well, they're...what's the word?

TFO:  You see that she's gigantic.  She's like eight or ten feet tall, and then the other guy gets big.

Virgin:  She's ropey.  Is that it?  Ropey.  It's not attractive for porn.

TFO:  I don't think there are a lot of ropey actors for porn.  You know, I've seen some gay male porn, and those guys--sometimes those guys are pretty skinny.  But in straight up vanilla porn, you don't see a lot of ropey people.

Virgin:  I don't call porn "vanilla."

TFO:  I just mean heterosexual porn.

Virgin:  I was kidding.  Ms. Marvel, "If you're nasty."

TFO:  What does that mean?

Virgin:  Remember?  From that song..."It's Janet.  Ms. Jackson, if you're nasty."

TFO:  What?  Why would I remember that?

Virgin:  I don't know.  I do.  So what's up--is this somebody that women who read comics like or hate?

TFO:  I don't know that there's enough of a fan-base for there to be opinions about her.  I could be wrong.  I don't know anything about her.  The thing is, I've never actually kept up with one of these Marvel cross-over things, where you read all the "spin-off" issues.  I knew I wasn't going to do it for DC's Final Crisis, because that's burned me before.  I learned my lesson--but I know it's not going to work out this time either.  I'm just giving it a try.  But it's all going to be shit garbage.  Which is what this basically is:  it's the definition of shitty, awful, terrible super-hero comics.  Whatever-I read some thing that this is going to cost a boatload of money at the end of the year but hey, who fucking cares?  Ms. Marvel is terrible.  I don't know why anyone would want to read this, ever.

Virgin:  Then I won't.  Moving on to All-Star Superman.  I know that you like this particular comic.  Do you still?

TFO:  Oh, yeah, it's great.  I guess, because it's nearing the conclusion, that this was a little less playful--which is kind of what attracted me to it originally.  It's "serious" or whatever you want to call it.  There's just a little meaner play this time.  There's still great moments in it, it's still the best regularly published super-hero comic.  At this point, I'd hate to see it written or drawn by anybody else--even people I like.  It's one of the few comics that's actually worth buying.  This is one of the few that getting it piecemeal is actually preferable--i've never read it in trade, but I imagine that would be kind of an overload.  It's great, maybe a little less "welcoming" then previous issues, but then again...it's a two-parter, it's getting ready to end.  The second part will be the conclusion of the series, although there are supposed to be some specials, down the line.  They won't be drawn by this guy, Frank Quitely though.  Which is kind of sad, I liked the idea that All Star Superman, was this singular creation by these two men.

Virgin:  How long have they been doing it?

TFO:  That's the 11th issue, but it's taken a long time for it to come out.  I think it's three years ago, four years ago?  I don't actually know when they started it.  It was a while ago.

Virgin:  Ultimate Spidey. [#122]  How are the kids?

TFO:  It's a done-in-one kind of a story.  Which is fine, they don't do a lot of those, so it's nice when they do--makes for a nice change of pace.  It's funny that this and All Star Superman are right next to each other, because I'd say that these are the best...well, maybe not the best, although All Star Superman is inarguably the best super-hero book--but Ultimate Spider-Man is consistently one of the most entertaining in that strain of super-hero kinds of comics.  The art is consistently good, and the writing, I happen to think, is pretty consistently good too.  This issue may have felt pointless, in a way, it seems like it just existed to have this one conversation near the end.  Even then, it still happens to be pretty clever--hell, you've seen it a million times.  Spider-Man gets in a crappy situation, gets out of it, Mary Jane is worried about him...

Virgin:  World keeps on turning.

TFO:  It's the same-old, same-old.  But that's kind of the stock-in-trade of Ultimate Spider-Man.  I don't think it's trying to do, or be, anything special.  It's just trying to be an entertaining comic--and that's fine.  It's fine to want to be a popcorn super-hero comic.  It does that, it does it well.

Virgin:  Northlanders.  This is the Viking comic, right?

TFO:  Yes.

Virgin:  It looks very biblical.

TFO:  I don't think the Vikings have much to do with the Bible.

Virgin:  Just the way it's drawn.  It reminds me of Moses.  Right there, with the long hair and the beard, all against a sweeping landscape.  He looks like Crazy Moses there.

TFO:  There's a regular Moses and a Crazy Moses?  Do you mean like when he comes down from the mountain with a shining face?

Virgin:  Exactly, yeah.  Brian Wood does this, right?  And he does Local?

TFO:  Uh-huh.

Virgin:  So this is very different from that.

TFO:  Yes.  He also does DMZ.

Virgin:  Do you enjoy Brian's full scope as a writer?

TFO:  Well, he's relatively...for me, maybe he's been around for 40 years, but he's relatively young, and he's relatively new, especially to these serialized mainstream comics.  Like Northlanders, DMZ.  Before that, most of his stuff, Channel Zero, that was all indy.  But yeah, yeah I do.  I think Northlanders is a pretty entertaining book--I mean, this is only the 6th issue.  I don't think it sells that well, maybe it does, but I don't know why it doesn't.  It's far more interesting than most super-hero books.  But then again, it isn't that far removed from Ultimate Spider-Man--it's not trying to be anything more than a really bloody book about Vikings.  He's done his research.  The thing that he's done that I think is sort of interesting, is that the characters talk as if they were talking now.  They saw "fuck" and "shit,"  that's one of the conceits with it.  So it's kind of like Soprano's crossed with Vikings, I remember a bunch of people saying that about it.  Somebody else said something about it being "emo-vikings" which I don't think makes any sense, because I've never read any issue of it were I thought any of the characters were similar to the Promise Ring.  I can't think of a single emo-band that consisted of members who could handle a battle-axe, or would decapitate somebody and put the head on a spike.  Every emo band I've ever heard of, or seen, was a bunch of wispy skinny kids with black lipstick or were aggressively metrosexual.

Virgin:  Grant Morrison and JG Jones-Final Crisis.

TFO:  Grant Morrison's Book Two of the day.

Virgin:  So it starts with man...and then "I am Metron?"  I can't even....I just can't.  Uhhhh.  Give me one sentence on your feeling on this comic.

TFO:  I like the cover design.

Virgin: ....

TFO:  I do!  I like it.  I think it's a cool cover design.  Look, the best covers are on DMZ, 100 Bullets, those Vertical reprints of old manga, Immortal Iron Fist, All-Star Superman.  Great covers.  Except for All-Star Superman, and I'm sure this [Final Crisis] fucking thing too, stuff with great covers never sells.  It's always these shitty covers.  Like that Ms. Marvel cover, that kind of--I don't know, but the shit is always the same.  I like this design.  It's not re-inventing the wheel, but it's clean.  It's simple.  Comic-wise, it's an event.  In a way it's what I expected:  that a Grant Morrison event comic certainly doesn't read like any other event comics.  It's got all the same shit that I hate about event comics, here's all these characters, all of them are so important...and who even cares?  Who gives a fuck about any of these people?  When all you really want to do is see some nonsense happen and then see how the big guys deal with it.  Maybe somebody gives a fuck about Libra, or Mister Flame.  Anyway, they killed Martian Manhunter, supposedly.  Which if, they're really for real, killing him, then hey--I don't give a shit.  I could care less about the Martian Manhunter.  I liked him when I was a kid, but now I don't know him, he doesn't make any sense.  I don't care.  I don't think I've liked him since I was a child.  I don't dis-like him, I just don't care.  It's certainly different--it's odd.  It's an odd way to do an event comic.  It's arty, I don't really understand how it's going to co-exist with the DC Universe,  how it's going to co-exist with all the shit they've been doing for the last two years, three years, four years, everything leading up to it. 

It's completely unreadable if you are somebody who had never read comics before.  If you're somebody who just saw Batman Begins or Superman Returns, and said "I want to read DC Universe 0 and Final Crisis 1."  This would be completely incomprehensible to those people--I mean, sure, there's some freak out there, who might do that, they might jump on just to do it.  But those freaks are a complete deviation from the norm.  Final Crisis is completely for the fan, that at times it's almost off-putting.  It'll probably be more "respectable" than Secret Invasion.  But at the same time, I think Secret Invasion might be more what the readers want--they want to see punch-punch-punchabunch, everything must change.  This is more "let's play with the fictional fabric of the super-hero archetype." 

Virgin:  I want to digress for a second--you said "Martian Manhunter" and that reminded me that you mentioned some hero guy who's name started with an M--it wasn't Martian Manhunter....

TFO:  Matter-Eater Lad?

Virgin:  Matter-Eater Lad!  What happened to him?  What's he doing?

TFO:  Nobody has the balls to use him.  They're all a bunch of pussies.

Virgin:  Anyway.  Giant Size Astonishing X-Men!  Alright.  Here's your question:  Are these X-Men in fact, "astonishing."  And if not, give me five other adjectives to describe what they are.

TFO:  I don't know how to answer that.

Virgin:  Either pathetic, or extreme.

TFO:  Horny?  Angst-y?  Buffy-ish?  I don't really want to do this anymore.

Virgin:  You still need two more.  I asked you a question.

TFO:  OK.

Virgin: And...

TFO:  Did I say moody?

Virgin:  Okay.

TFO:  Wait, that's all you want to say about that?

Virgin:  Yes.  Batman: Gotham After Midnight, the first issue.  Now, there's another Batman, but that's getting reviewed by me.  How many different Batman titles are there?

TFO:  I couldn't tell you.  They have the regular books that come out twice a month.  Batman, Detective Comics.  But he shows up a bunch of other places, and then every once in a while, almost every month, they have some kind of random mini-series that comes out.  Oh, they also have Batman: Confidential.  They usually have this kind of off-shot book, like this.  I just read it because it's Kelley Jones.  He used to draw Batman, years ago.  He draws the cape really funny.

Virgin:  It looks like rocks.  Is that the cape?

TFO:  Yep.  All the blue stuff is the cape.  It's great, totally ridiculous.  It's weird, different--not super-weird, just weird by super-hero standards.  As a story--look, it's got fucking chapters.  Why are there chapters?  Who gives-a-fuck.  Why chapters?  Shit is twenty pages long.  But still.  I like looking at the cape.  He draws an interesting cape, that man. 

Virgin:  I'll give him that.

TFO:  Oh, and at the end a bunch of strangers kill Batman.  Which I always thought would be the best way to kill Batman.  I always thought it would be great if Batman, or any super-hero for that matter, that would be the best way for them to die.  Hit by a car, or getting shot by somebody that doesn't mean anything--instead of it being an arch-villain, have it be the no-name criminal who just gets the drop on Bruce Wayne and puts one in his brain.  That would be great.  That would be an awesome comic.  It could be written by an eight year old child, and drawn by a...I don't know, another eight year old child.  Especially if they stuck to it.  Bruce Wayne is dead, forever.  Because he got shot by a mailman.  Not a villain called "The Mailman."  Just a regular mailman.

Virgin:  If it was just an accident.

TFO:  Oh, that would be even better.

Virgin:  Like his gun just went off.

TFO:  Why would the mailman have a gun?

Virgin:  1985.  I flipped through it, because I was in high school in 1985.  I flipped through it, because I was in high school in 1985.  It looks like it's a comic book about people who like comic books.

TFO:  That's pretty much what it is.  The premise is that it's a world where they have comic books, it's pretty much our world, it's 1985, and somehow the villains have come...

Virgin:  Come to life.

TFO:  Not come to life, they came through a dimensional portal--it would be so much more interesting if they did come to life, like that old A-Ha "Take On Me" video.  They stepped out of the comics.  But now, they came through a dimensional portal, and the lamest thing...well, maybe it's not kind of lame.  It's kind of genius--Dr. Doom, the Moleman and The Red Skull live in a house.  It's like "the haunted house" on the outskirts of town, in the woods.  Which is kind of an amazing idea:  "Who lives in the old Crosby mansion?"  "Dr. Doom lives there!  With the Moleman, and the Red Skull!"

I just like the idea that they're there, and they share a bathroom.  An old creaky haunted house.  "I gotta borrow the car, guys."

Virgin:  Like a Scooby-Doo kind of thing.

TFO:  Yes.  That part is pretty great, actually.  The rest is just..."oh the terminal uniqueness of the comic book fan.  They are the only ones with the imagination to save the world...."  And that's just....puke, who cares.

Virgin:  They're the only ones who really believe.

TFO:  It's like Kick-Ass, more jerking off to the idea that you're so special because you read comics, you're more special than people who do sports, or people who watch movies, or people who read Harry Potter.  It's just--Fuck You.  It's just a goddamn hobby, just a way to spend your time.  You're not any better, or more downtrodden, than anybody else with the money available for luxury time.  Nobody gives a shit what anybody does on their downtime.  They just want you to not show up late for work, and not forget their fucking order at a restaurant.  No one cares how special you are.

Virgin:  You're just telling people what they need to hear.

TFO:  Hell, nobody needs to hear it.  I think they just want too.  It's more of that "I like comics, and that makes me different and special."  Fuck you, you're fourteen.  Whatever.

Virgin:  OK.  Little rage. 

-Tucker & Nina Stone, 2008