Tales Designed To Thrizzle # 4
By Michael Kupperman
Published by Fantagraphics
Has it been two years since a new issue of Tales Designed To Thrizzle was released? Whatever it's been, that time period is far too long. One of the funniest of the gag-comic compendiums published, Thrizzle depends neither on toilet humor or gloomy satire to deliver--it's mostly parody or dead-calm deliveries of absurd non-punchlines:
"My taco is talking!"
"Yeah, I'm Peter Falk and I got shrunk down so small you can't see me, and then I somehow got all mixed up in your taco. Now here's a message from your local church!"
"If only I'd gone to church more often, my robot might work better!"
Quite a few of the regular Kupperman crew, like Snake N' Bacon & The Bittern, makes an appearance alongside some new features, the best of which has to be the team up between Mark Twain and Albert Einstein in the cop drama Twain & Einstein Power Hour. The only thing missing is that little "beep-click-I love you" robot.
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Steve Epting, Rick Magyar & Frank D'Armata
Published by Marvel Comics
So, if the man on his left is supposed to fall, and then the Senator in the middle is supposed to dive to save the man on the right, that means that the Red Skull's plan was to kill Barack Obama? Not really sure what that was supposed to achieve, and considering that the only guarantee that one candidate is McCain and the other Obama is the coloring, which gets screwed up in comics all the time, it's just a nitpicky thing to wonder about. Since it's nitpicks, the Colbert posters are really getting obnoxious, and considering they started out being pretty obnoxious, it's just--got it. Is Ed Brubaker the most reliably entertaining writer working in mainstream super-hero comics today? Does he have any competition? Captain America: the only comic book that the Factual's editor saw somebody reading in an elevator in the past five years. Take that, Watchmen trade paperbacks.
Written by Jason Aaron
Art by Tan Eng Huat & Jose Villarrubia
Published by Marvel Comics
Following in the same school of thought that sent comics like Iron Fist and New Avengers into high sales, Ghost Rider has been handed off to a team that seems to have a real love for making, not comics, but Ghost Rider comics, and Tan Eng Huat continues to be one of two artists on a mainstream super-hero title that no one could've imagined him working on. (The other being Howard Chaykin on the abysmally written Punisher War Journal.) This is weird, ugly stuff that, while not "Totally Different and Innovative," is certainly different and innovative enough that it doesn't look like anything else that Marvel currently publishes. Totally. It also features a guy named Orb who has a giant eyeball for a head, and the lamest (yet most genius) booby trap of all time, that being the crazy creaky board that catapults a small piece of wood covered in nails into the victim. Guess who's cornea it ends up in.
Written by Keith Giffen
Art by Lee Garbett, Trevor Scott, Gabe Eltaeb & Randy Mayor
Published by Wildstorm/DC Comics
The Factual Opinion should have heeded our own warning, that the best time to bail out on Dreamwar was right after Batman was decapitated, which was also right before Dreamwar made the mistake of trying to have a cohesive plot. We stuck around to see the bad guy turn out to be the worst possible fan stereotype: Fat! White! Crying! In love with old comic characters! A creator of fan-fiction! Issue five turned out to be the one where all the joking went to sleep so the comic could get back to the business of being a bad super-hero comic team-up between a bunch of characters who never stop and say: "hey, wait a second. Aren't you and I pretty much exactly the same, except that you're gay and I don't have a discernible personality?"
Justice League of America # 24
Written by Dwayne McDuffie
Art by Allan Goldman, Prentis Rollins, Rodney Ramos, Derek Fridolfs & Pete Pantazis
Published by DC Comics
It's nothing that new to have a cover that depicts the events of an upcoming comic, although usually the event it depicts is something that happens in the issue to which the cover is attached. This one goes down that unique road of depicting what apparently is going to happen in issue # 25. How novel. Comic wise, this is another one of those stories about how the Justice League is a perfectly designed little diamond of a team, and everyone, despite how useless they might seem, will end up saving the day at some point after the rest of the team has had their collective ass handed to them by a story point. If you've read a comic where a team of super-heroes ends up surviving because one of the lesser team members proves their value, then you've read this before. The question seems to be: do you want to read it again? Would you like to read it again and have it be unattractively and blandly drawn? Do you like it when the background art is random and haphazard? Do you like comics that consist of boilerplate dialog like "Nosebleed" and "You heard the lady--hands off." Or do you just read JLA because you feel sorry for it, and you feel sorry for whoever has to draw or write it, and you don't want them to feel bad about themselves? Feelings are important. Opinions have value. If everybody held hands, then the world would be a better place.
Written by Fabian Nicieza
Art by Freddie Williams II & Guy Major
Published by DC Comics
If you're the type who keeps track of dumb credits in super-hero comics, this is one of those ones that refers to the guy who wrote it and the guy who drew it as "Storytellers," which is not as obnoxious as "Dreamweavers," but not by much. God can only hope the day comes soon were an issue of Blue Beetle says "Wanna-be novelist who shepherds adventures of corporate property." (Which is not to say that all comics writers want to be novelists, but some do. Most probably want to shepherd corporate properties.) Since Robin isn't going to be the place where anything of any substance happens in the larger Batman RIP storyline right now, much of what occurs in it is inconsequential--which leaves Fabian Nicieza able to just cut loose and write a relatively easy diversion into people punching and lying. It's not exciting, but it's simplicity is somewhat pleasant.
Written by Ian Edginton
Art by Leandro Fernandez, Francisco Paaronzini & Carrie Strachan
Published by Wildstorm/DC Comics
A continuation of the not-terrible Stormwatch series in name only, this is one of those post-revamp comics in the constantly revamped Wildstorm universe--it probably would work better if they just ran some kind of internet survey where people who cared can check boxes on a multiple choice quiz that will eventually tell editorial director Jim Lee what type of comics Wildstorm should be publishing. This, another chapter in the absurdly popular "let's set it after an apocalyptic event" plot box, probably isn't it. Still, it's certainly exciting enough that somebody in the comic says "You sicken me!" while crushing the skull of a civilian in their hand, which causes said individual's brain matter to squirt through the crusher's fingers--especially because it's not "implied" or anything, it's actually drawn that way, so the reader can see it and not have to imagine it. What do comics like this mean?
Written by Gregg Hurwitz
Art by Paul Azaceta & Nick Filardi
Published by Marvel MAX
There's an audience for this comic, a small one, that keeps up because of the dog that Foolkiller has teamed up with. There's something totally entertaining to witness the idea that a massive, man-killing dog can be trained to understand commands like "I'll kick in the front door, you cover the back. Time to move." Not simple commands like "stay" or "sic' em," but actual conversational instruction, including things like making promises and what not. Otherwise, White Angels continues to take that shitty horror movie route wherein the bad guys are simply racist thugs, with no ulterior lives or motives outside of sitting on the border and slaughtering Mexicans, (including a 6-8 month pregnant woman) and then stringing them up on telephone poles. How did they go from being rednecks with abhorrent beliefs to an active roving death squad? Was it just because the Foolkiller character needs victims that behave worse then him? He strings people up too. He even goes so far as to dress them as Native American chiefs, which begs the question: Why is a serial killing vigilante carrying around Running Bear's clothes?
Written by Cary Bates
Art by Paul Gulacy & Rain Beredo
Published by Marvel Comics
If only this comic had the courage to follow through--while it's easy to parody the TMZ-driven charnel house of paparazzi based "news," it's still sort of incisive to put Reed Richards, the patron saint of boring-ass super-heroes that haven't developed or changed in almost fifty years of publication, into the position usually occupied by people like Mel Gibson and Britney Spears. Drunk-driving the Fantasticar? A humiliating youtube video of him using his stretchy powers to touch his nose? And yet, it's just another set-up for the ingratiating submoronics of a team-up with the main characters of the mini-series, another bait-and-switch so that the appearance of the well-known can lend value to a bunch of one-note, one-trick ponies. It's not that having Reed get arrested for a DUI and having that plastered on a million gossip sites would be some high feat of comic book prowess, but it certainly would be a hell of a lot closer to "ballsy" then anything currently happening that involves Skrulls and the Battlestar Galactica bloopers reel.
Written by Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente
Art by Rafa Sandoval, Roger Bonet & Greg Adams
Published by Marvel Comics
One wonders if Pak and Van Lente meant to write a comic book that, taken at it's barest meaning, implies that God and religion are completely unimportant and meaningless, but that's what they've done. By ending the "God-fight" portion of the Secret Invasion story here, with Earth-based deities committing deicide in the dream-realm inhabitated by the Skrull god/living Bible thing before the war ends on the ground, they've taken the entire "Holy War" portion out of the argument. It's obvious to anyone that the Secret Invasion storyline, part of which has been based on the idea that the Skrulls are religious fanatics, isn't going to end here--but it sort of should, shouldn't it? After all, here's the proof that the Skrulls did have a real god. Now that real god is dead--all the thunder in the breast it brought about is over, and they should just give up. They aren't going to, this tick on the box isn't going to affect their plan in any way, so, B following A--means that god never meant anything in the first place. There's no religion anymore, just fanaticism. Which just goes to show you that, despite arguments to the contrary, when a major portion of the theme behind a story can be so easily excised without affecting the story at all, what you have isn't a story in the first place. It's an engine, designed to produce nothing but image and reaction. It's entertainment, and cheap entertainment at that.
Written by Dan Slott
Art by John Romita Jr, Klaus Janson & Dean White
Published by Marvel Comics
Why does the 568th issue of an Amazing Spider-Man comic need a two page origin recap of the main character? Isn't that a waste of John Romita Jr and Klaus Janson's time? On that note, isn't drawing the Amazing Spider-Man ongoing comic sort of a waste of these guys time? Isn't everybody supposed to be mad at Marvel for the demon marriage thing? Either way, they still publish this thing, this thing that no one around here ever reads, but it showed up and it's about the Thunderbolts, some sort of half-ass Hobgoblin, who was sort of a half-ass Green Goblin, another interminably obnoxious section with Aunt May and her trials and tribulations hanging out at a soup kitchen--why the fuck people like Aunt May is a total mystery, as any real human being would've thrown her prattling, holier-than-thou martyring ass down a goddamn well and fed her with a bucket by about the 17th heart attack, whatever, real old people are so much more interesting than this--hey, it's Amazing Spider-Man. It exists! The number on it is a number after another number that you already have! Go buy it! Nothing happens!
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by George Perez & Scott Koblish
Published by DC Comics
What exactly is the limit of fan-service that Geoff Johns won't cross? Can you pay him to clean the toilet? Will he put 'em on the glass? He's got to have the easiest job in the universe, just figuring out whatever neo-fucking nonsense he can find in the DC Archives, combine them with something from the 80's, find whatever artist he can whose art most resembles George Perez, in some cases, just hire George Perez, and then churn out whatever earth-shatteringly simple plot he can so that George Perez can draw every version of a character possible on a two-page spread and then wait for people to sit around and thank him for remembering their twenty year old childhood. Is there anything in the pop-culture wastebasket that gets left there? Legion of 3 Worlds isn't the worst possible "let me stick the tip in" fan comic ever published, that title will always be held by those things where you send in your name and a box top and you get back an issue of Superman where he keeps referring to a side character by "Your Own Name!" But it's pretty pointless shit, and it's entertaining only so far as it's entertaining to read something that's exactly like something you've read before, except this time it's about your favorite characters instead of your second favorites.
-Tucker Stone, 2008
Oi! No Economist this week?
Posted by: Juan Arteaga | 2008.08.25 at 17:48
No, unfortunately. In the interest of meeting some paying deadlines, the Economist didn't get read until this last weekend. This weeks is on track though. I wasn't sure if I should put up a "sorry to be a slacker this week" notice or not.
It was a great issue though, definitely the best cover of the year. All about Russia v. Georgia.
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2008.08.25 at 18:14
ha ha
i love tales to thrizzle
Posted by: andre | 2008.08.26 at 13:36
Just got back home from a 5 hour flight, and thought that it was interesting that 2 people in the 3 rows ahead of me were both reading Watchmen. Take that, Captain America. I was going to say hello and show them my comics (mostly 100 Bullets), but I didn't want to freak them out. All in all, I think that it is safe to say that our 4 rows worth of people took the nerd-cake for the plane (although I think that I saw some dude in a Doctor Who t-shirt in the third row).
Posted by: 10FootBongz | 2008.08.30 at 03:07