Comics Of The Weak: According To Takashi Miike, That Was Real Vomit

Batman # 678
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Tony Daniel, Sandu Florea & Guy Major
Published by DC Comics

So you've got Final Crisis, which is sort of a comic mixed with an easter egg hunt for references to Seven Soldiers, Kirby's 4th World, Flex Mentallo and a dash of JLA, and yet it all sort of works.  Then you've got a Batman story which is an easter egg hunt as well, for references to all kinds of Bat-arcana, which is a bit more difficult and sort of like watching the Criterion version of Band of Outsiders, using the strange "visual glossary" special feature, where you can watch only the parts of the movie that details all of the cultural references and wordplay that was inserted into the film's narrative, and watching that will take almost as much time to watch as it does to watch the movie.  The comic itself is a struggle between the two main ideas of RIP--one of which is sort of the same basic story that was created to break Batman's spine (bad guy and team have a plan to break Batman down mentally) and Grant Morrison's other idea, which is that everything that's happened to Batman (the character) in all those years of Batman (the comic) has actually happened to the current Batman.  So RIP becomes a have your cake, have all of the cakes, eat them, and then go to the internet to find out what all the ingredients were.  All of the problems that Grant Morrison's run have had are still there, obviously Tony Daniel hasn't all of a sudden become Frank Quitely, and the comic itself reads as bombastic as possible, with roaring proclamations from each character every few pages--yes, it's entertaining, after a fashion, but it's not an immediate entertainment.  There aren't a lot of super-hero comics that come across with this much ambition, with this much lunacy--and for what that's worth, it's a successful diversion from the norm.  But that's the thing, isn't it?  How much does the regular Bat-fan want a diversion from the norm?  We can't imagine that's the majority--and while not having a majority like it doesn't mean something is bad, hell, a lot of people like the Sandra Bullock Crash, and that film is complete fucking shit, yet all of that does make Batman RIP seem like a story whose consequence, whose attitude of importance, is one completely without merit.  No matter what Grant does here, it's hard to believe that any of this will be acknowledged by anyone else.  The further along it goes down it's rabbit hole, the harder it is to believe that DC is going to have the Bruce Wayne here be the same Bruce Wayne that leads the Outsiders and eats on piers with Wonder Woman.  Which of course, shouldn't have anything to do with whether it's worth reading.  But it doesn't help.

Nightwing # 146
Written by Peter Tomasi
Art by Don Kramer, Sandu Florea & Nathan Eyring
Published by DC Comics

Nightwing is so goddamn strange.  It's the comic equivalent of that I Am Sam soundtrack, where a bunch of middling to bad musicians got together and did middling to bad covers of Beatles songs, all for the sake of  a terrible movie that was poorly edited.  Tomasi's work is better than that, sure, Dakota Fanning doesn't appear at all in Nightwing, he's just writing a relatively inoffensive super-hero story with terrible fucking tools, since Nightwing has no real adversary or purpose when he's divorced from the books he usually participates in--there's just no reason for this character to be doing anything.  There's nothing to it--he doesn't have Batman's obsessive grip on a barely remembered tragedy from his youth, he doesn't have the brainwashed worship of ethics and justice that gets Superman out of bed, hell, Nightwing doesn't have feelings at all.  The stuff that makes the most sense for the character is the thrill-seeking silliness when he goes skydiving or hang gliding, but that only makes up about one panel of the story.  The rest is all standard superheroics, ending with a weird idea that Superman should help build an Oklahoma City style memorial for dead super-heroes.  If that little twist was in The Boys, it would be treated as an off-hand joke; in the mouths of DC's mega-heroes, it's just tasteless.  So what we're saying would fix Nightwing (the title) would be if NIghtwing (the character) went on more extreme sport adventures while having feelings about it. 

The Boys # 20
Written by Garth Ennis
Art by Darick Robertson
Published by Dynamite Entertainment

When collected in the trade format, it's probably going to be the violence and nasty humor that punctuates most of the conversation--this issue is one that's short on both, being mostly (as Kevin Church so aptly put it) "How To Make Entertaining Comics Information Dumps" with a little dash of a big dick contest between Butcher and the Superman-pastiche.  The comic is gearing up for what will probably be one it's more difficult-for-some -to-stomach issues, as it's getting ready to deal with the events of September 11th, so it's probably for the best that this is a slow back-story issue--after all, Ennis is the same guy who lovingly depicted the assassination of the current US President a few years ago, and God knows that 9/11 is going to be just as tough of a beast to satirize.  While The Boys occasionally has the tendency to read like the long-gone DC series Hitman with all gloves set on fire, there's some nice stuff that happens in the title behind all the blood and vileness, continuing to make it the best i'm-so-sick-and-tired-of-spandex book on the stands. 

Astonishing X-Men # 25
Written by Warren Ellis
Art by Simone Bianchi & Simone Peruzzi
Published by Marvel Comics

John Cassady's absence couldn't be felt more strongly if they'd hired Toby Keith to handle the art details--there's probably some long form explanation for why Simone Bianchi's art is so unattractive, most of which probably comes under the heading of "what the fuck is this guy even trying to draw" but we'll just leave it at "ugly shit, in color."  Warren Ellis throws together some left-over dialog from Transmetropolitan/Fell/Stormwatch for the Beast and that little girl, mixes it with a Jenny Sparks Emma and decides to save the plot for later, even going so far as to end the issue mid-conversation.  Which is totally in his right, since the whole issue is a bunch of conversations anyway--any hopes that this version of the X-Men was going to be like an A-level Nextwave is out the window.  Just yap yap, it's the X-men as a toy poodle, there you go, have at it.

Punisher War Journal # 21
Written by Matt Fraction & Rick Remender
Art by Howard Chaykin, Edgar Delgado & Jesus Alberto
Published by Marvel Comics

It's been months since Fraction's War Journal made the switch from dirty black comedy Punisher to serious Punisher involving old X-Force characters, and it continues to be a totally baffling decision.  While no one is expecting this stuff to behave like the MAX contingent, there's really no good reason for this comic to be this bad, but holy Christ it is.  It's as if Fraction & Remender went through the archives, tracked down all the Punisher stories that weren't successful enough to keep the series from getting canceled, and decided that was the model they were going to follow. "Here it is!  Complete shit!  Copy it immediately!"  If the goal was to create something off-putting, then it's a success--there's really nothing else that occurs, beyond the opportunity to see Marvel file Howard Chaykin in the same category as Steve Dillon which must be labeled "talented individuals whose time we like wasting."

Secret Invasion: Front Line # 1
Written by Brian Reed
Art by GG Studios, Giuliano Mondi, Marco Castiello, Barbara Ciardo & Amerigo Pinelli
Published by Marvel Comics

Odd art credits in this--it's actually referenced as Art by GG Studios and includes somebody named Giuliano Mondi as the "Team Coordinator."  It still ends up looking similar to most of what Marvel puts out, only with extra panels where it's just characters against a complete white background.  It's not offensive, or anymore cumbersome than any seemingly computerized super-hero art, but the white background panels are odd looking.  Story-wise, this entire comic is reminiscent of that scene in Armageddon where the actor who played Long Duck Dong has a cameo in a cab driven by that actor who used to have a show on ABC's TGIF night.  It's just "normal" people dealing with the Marvel universe.  They've been publishing this kind of shit for years--the earliest the Factual remembers was the original Gotham Nights series, which was a real piece of garbage too--and it hasn't gotten any more interesting.  Independence Day isn't that great of a movie, and it wouldn't be any better if you just cut all the scenes where there's fighting and aliens and left all the parts where Jeff Goldblum gets drunk and kicks a trashcan.  It'd be shorter, but it would still be dumb as shit.

American Splendor # 4
Written by Harvey Pekar
Art by Darick Robertson, Ty Templeton, Dean Haspiel, Rick Geary, Greg Budgett, Gary Dumm
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

There's more cohesion then the previous issues in this run of American Splendor--it's still meta-comics about a guy coming up with ideas to make the comic you're reading, so enjoyment is dependent on how close you like your eyeballs to your navel.  Darick Robertson gets a chance to draw here, and it's rather pleasant to see someone whose work is a little less Haspiel, if only because Haspiel seems to be drawing these in the five minutes at night before he goes to sleep, yet he's still sort of the go-to Pekar guy sheerly by constantly showing up.  Altogether, this is probably the best issue of the series, but it's lacking the sense that there's real effort being put into the project itself--all in all, this second Vertigo series was just a  banal personal information dump from a man whose life is completely lacking in conflict.  It's great that things are going well for Harvey.  But it sure isn't that fun to read about.

Chas: The Knowledge # 1
Written by Simon Oliver
Art by Goran Sudzuka & Matt Hollingsworth
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

How much does the regular Vertigo reader know about the "knowledge" anyway?  The offices here have framed original prints of Michael Apted's Up Series, so we're all well-versed in the arcane, yet absolutely remarkable, nature of the education of British cabbies.  While it's great to see Vertigo give Simon Oliver some more time after the cancellation of Exterminators, publishing a comic about a side-character from Hellblazer is a real odd choice, even odder, it's a side character who doesn't really ever do much in Hellblazer besides get pissy when people make fun of his wife.  Hopefully this is a mini-series that's being published because Oliver had a story he really wanted to tell--otherwise, it's just odd to find out that Chas was a character DC thought really needed more explanation.  He's a cabbie in a shitty marriage, with the worst possible best friend in comics.  We wouldn't imagine that needed five comic books to deal with.

Northlanders # 7
Written by Brian Wood
Art by Davide Gianfelice & Dave McCaig
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

Whereas DMZ comes with an almost 100% guarantee that it's lead character won't die, regardless of how whiny and obnoxious he behaves, Northlanders doesn't carry such a predictability with it--remember the big nefarious guy who has been wandering threatening and foreshadowing shit regarding the hapless Sven?  Well, fuck that dude, he is totally dead in all the dead ass glory of a Davide Gianfelice splash page, and with him are a whole lot of other people, and Northlanders has gone ahead and jacked its status quo.  If this is the way Brian is going to roll with this series--a nasty few issues that only look like a slow build because they weren't as saturated in blood as this ode de carnage, then it's one that more people should be looking into.  Nasty, hellacious shit, and to all those people who called it emo-Vikings?  Ya'll are fucking insane.

-Tucker Stone, 2008

Comments

[Matthew J. Brady]

I don't know if Northlanders really has any sort of status quo; the next storyline is supposed to take place a couple centuries later. It seems like they're going for a series of stories linked by the theme of "Vikings (emo or otherwise)".

[Dirk Deppey]

Vomit, hell. According to Takashi Miike, that was real semen.

[Sean Witzke]

Shinya Tsukamoto's semen.

[The Beast Must Die!]

Hell you just made me want to buy Northlanders.

A lot

[Blockade Boy]

A hearty "HAW!" to your comments on Simone Bianchi (and also a great sense of relief that somebody else out there actually feels the same way as I do about him). Apparently he's a fan favorite, but I'll be darned if I can figure out why. He's like Simon Bisley, minus the irony.