Comics Of The Weak: Eat Your Fucking Heart Out

Criminal # 4
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Sean Phillips
Published by Icon/Marvel Comics

Well, Criminal has no potential to lose readers anytime soon, it seems.  Another chapter in Ed Brubaker's wily revamp of the traditional crime story archetype, this one being the loser who gets one great night of sex with the beautiful stranger only to sow the seed of future tribulation, another top-notch delivery of impeccable detailed Sean Phillips art, and Criminal continues to be way better than the majority of the stuff it has to share space with.  We bought our copy at a store that also sells four feet tall Scarface dolls that talk.  What embarrassing piece of cultural waste will you have to ignore to pick up yours?  Oh, wait, maybe you're that swarthy tub of guts who buys that namby pamby shit.  (You're not, he doesn't read reviews of comics like Criminal.  He's strictly Supergirl and JSA.  I asked him specifically for the purpose of this sentence.)

Special Forces # 3
By Kyle Baker
Published by Image Comics

Make sure you save the last page of Special Forces for after you've finished the comic itself, so that you can answer the question of "Why is Kyle Baker including these gross and weird looking children in this comic" the same why your intrepid Factual team did: by looking at what has to be the most cynical thing published in a comic this year, getting a little bit sick, and then realizing that if he hadn't put those black and white pictures in the book, you wouldn't have ever known that was going on--because that's the kind of shit that no Western news outlet has the cajones to show you.  Is Special Forces exploitative?  It sure is.  Is it worth looking at, because it's completely unwilling to temper any of it's anger into something that might be a little more entertaining or attractive?  Goddamn right.

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

Simon Oliver probably has some more cleverness coming in this, the oddest mainstream mini-series so far this year, he is, after all, the writer of the only Vertigo comic to be fast-tracked into television production.  (Something tells me a television show beats a hardcover Absolute Sandman, "Neil Gaiman.")  For now though, Chas is appealing solely for the fan-service:  namely, that if you're the type of person whose read a lot of Hellblazer, you know how completely terrible and totally horrible Chas' wife is.  She's never been presented as anything resembling a complex woman--she's just fucking awful, all the time.  Appearance after appearance, she's strained the fabric of the mild believability of Hellblazer in that it's impossible to believe that someone could be so preternaturally mean to somebody and never end up shot, stabbed, thrown off a cliff, or at least revealed at some point to be possessed by a demon.  Yet, after decades of comics, she continues to be there.  Hateful, all the time.  For no good fucking reason whatsoever!  Just mean!  Now, Simon Oliver is finally giving us what we want:  no, she isn't dying or anything, she's not going to end up on a list somewhere, no, way more simple.  Chas is going to cheat on her.  Hopefully!

Robin # 176
Written by Fabian Nicieza
Art by Joe Bennett, Jack Jadson & Guy Major
Published by DC Comics

It's creepy enough that comics like Batman and Wolverine are produced pretty much so that grown-ass adults (usually white dudes) can buy them, somehow, it's almost creepier that Robin is produced for the same group.  Everybody who defends garbage like this is always quick to trot out some anecdotal bullshit about how there's a bunch of high schoolers picking up the latest issue of Teen Titans and Runaways, which is one of those warm little fucking lies that gets traded like so many stories about getting Jeph Loeb to sign your girlfriends tits at a Ryan's Steakhouse--at this point, Robin would be preferable if it would either just turn into a full-out yaoi comic where Tim Drake spends all his time fantasizing about having sex with Dick Grayson, or somebody like The Penguin kidnapped the Spoiler and told Tim the only way out was for him to wrap his whining lips around Oswald Cobblepot's stumpy member.  This comic has no balls, and it's completely unappealing.  On top of that, we couldn't convince someone to do a Stunt Casting on it because they opened it to the first double page spread and said "Jesus, that's gross."

Crossed # 0
Written by Garth Ennis
Art by Jacen Burrows & Greg Wallers
Published by Avatar

Are there too many post-apocalyptic comics that aren't as good as Drifting Classroom?  Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows say "no" and Avatar responds with a publishing deal.  While Ennis has certainly earned the right of wait-and-see, and maybe this won't be repititive and pointless, Crossed # 0 is pretty much another "didn't I see this before?  Like 800 fucking times?" comics.  It's zombies, or crazy-religious-nutjob-disease-cases who act like zombies, and the narration implies that the story to come takes place, you know, after the world gets all Walking Dead.  While Crossed # 0 is one of those "hey, it costs a fucking buck, what do you want?  A blow job?" type comics, this is one story that you've probably gotten a little bit sick of.  Oh, and Jacen Burrows still draws...you know, that way he draws.

Ultimate Origins # 3
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Butch Guice & Justin Ponsor
Published by Marvel Comics

A more honest title might be "Ultimately Needless Attempts To Make The Ultimate Line Of Comics More Convoluted Then They Really Need To Be, Since It Isn't Like Bendis Has Any Ambition To Write Every Comic In The Line," but Ultimate Origins is a bit catchier.  Some people like to read into this that it's changing the scope of what the Ultimate universe is really all about, and they seem to think that's a good thing, which is sort of hilarious:  after all, wasn't the whole point for these Ultimate things to appeal to people who had gotten sick of all the bullshit confusions of reading the regular titles?  All that aside, it is sort of fascinating to check in on something like this--the high tide of a comic imprint that's headed towards the sort of dreg bottom feeding land currently lived in by the Wildstorm universe.  It's like watching a bullet reach the point where it turns back towards Earth to find a little kids head. 

Punisher War Journal # 22
Written by Matt Fraction & Rick Remender
Art by Howard Chaykin, Edgar Delgado & Jesus Aburto
Published by Marvel Comics

While people with some taste like to come after Howard Chaykin and point out the somewhat indefensible argument that he draws people like they just walked off the set of The Legend of Bagger Vance, a movie that's probably the best argument for Robert Redford being put to sleep like a Golden Retriever that's been hit by a minivan, the biggest problem with this comic can be squarely chucked onto the shoulders of Indy Rock Superstar Matt Fraction and Mr. Irony Comes Home Rick Remender.  If you can make it through the six pages where an overweight African American version of Pac-Man tells Frank Castle "what's wrong with him" and get anything out of it other than the sinking realization that neither of these writers like writing about the main character, then you're probably on a shit load of Vicodin and wondering why your daughter is crying.

Secret Invasion: Front Line # 2
Written by Brian Reed
Art by Marco Castiello, Barbara Ciardo & Amerigo Pinelli
Published by Marvel Comics

There's a lot of great things that we should all strive to remember about Secret Invasion: Front Line--actually, theres' only one, and that is that it seems really unlikely that there will be too many more comics featuring art by a "Team Coordinator" whose job seems to be making sure that everybody at GG Studios is producing some of the most lifeless work available outside of when Alex Ross decides it's time to just publish comics that feature the actual polariods of models standing on washing machines he usually traces from.  Even then, that will probably be more valuable to spend time with then this, one of the most obnoxious of comics in the Marvel line.  Usually, there's some kind of outrage when a female is killed for the sole purpose of amping up the emotional state of the protagonist--we imagine the reason this dead nurse is being ignored is because anyone who read this piece of shit probably thought something along the lines of "Jesus, she's better off than having to hang around that creepy reporter anymore."

The Boys # 21
Written by Garth Ennis
Art by Darick Robertson & Tony Avina
Published by Dynamite Entertainment

The best thing about this issue of The Boys is the way the entire idea of this series is defined by the cover--there, you find a little boy, his gap-toothed smiling mouth hanging agape as the Superman-stand in comes to save him and the rest of the unlucky passengers in a flight on the way to infamy and death on the morning of September 11th.  Of course, when you get to that point in the comic--the point where you read the boy saying "It's okay!  We're gonna be okay!"--well, there it goes all out the window.  That's the last thing you see of that kid, as a dumb motherfucking superhero opens the plane and the little boy goes flying out into the air, and he gets to think about what a miserable failure life can be when you place your faith in the idea that life is fair, that somebody is coming to save you, and that you can count on hope alone.  That kid--he's the lucky version of us.  He's the guy who still treats spandex monthlies like they have a correlation to the real world, who still fantasizes that someday the real world will get fixed, in all it's death and complexity, by a hero with magic powers.  He's a grown adult still believing that there will come a politician who has the motives and honor of a Clark Kent, that someday we'll have a war played out like an old GI Joe cartoon where a little girl never catches an misfired artillery shell in the back of her skull on the way to a poorly funded school and everybody ejects before an explosion.  For all the flaws inherent in something like The Boys--that it's so over-the-top that it can just be heavy-handed, that it traces the similar plot devices of many of Garth Ennis' comics, or that it's humor works best among those who have a long relationship with god-awful super-hero comics--it's still going to have it's moments where it turns out pure gold.  This time, it was when comics fandom and overgrown children got sucked out of a plane and fell to their dead.

-This is dedicated to Sze Chan, a talented and sweet young woman who deserved a hell of a lot more than what she got, her family and friends, who deserved a hell of a lot more time, and for what it's worth--which is little--I wish there was something more I could've done.  Tucker Stone, 2008

Comments

[Jog]

I love the hell out of Special Forces. It's the meanest, maddest comic around. And it pulls off a really fine balancing act, I think, in that it's as much a parody of a catastrophically stupid war-action comic as a satire of current events... all the weird, quasi-superhero stuff going on, how it's carefully synched up with the story's cites to macho foreign policy tidbits... "AXIS OF EVIL MUTANTS," leading into that whole thing with mutilated children vis a vis vows against killing, tough guy 'honor'... never mind where the narrative paradigm Baker's working from obviously originates, which just adds another layer... it's kind of an astonishing work, really deeply clever but just frothing with this immediate rage... and there's jokes! Funny ones!

[Tucker Stone]

Special Forces is one of the most interesting things that I've seen this year--it's just high-octane anger mixed with the most garish cheesecake, and I think I'm going to find it way more enjoyable in the single issue approach--multiple chapters of this might deaden it's impact, whereas getting it in these short bursts over a period of time keeps it fresh. That being said--it's unwieldy and more than a little scattered. But hey, fuck it. I like ugly.

[Joe]

Wow! I accidently came across this site when casually looking up reviews on Garth Ennis' body of work. I felt compelled to chime in how friggen stupid the commentary is on this website. Why would I want to hear the opinion of someone who has know clue about what they are reading? Its not my idea of entertainment to read the musings of some bitch rant about an artform she has no understanding of. Bitch you are an outsider for a reason. Keep it that way

[Sean Witzke]

"know clue" HA!

[Jason Michelitch]

"You are an outsider for a reason. Keep it that way."

I...I was going to make a joke, but that quote is better than anything I can come up with. I think "Joe" should have that quote on his tombstone. Or maybe he should just write it in lipstick on his bathroom mirror. Or has already?

[Tucker Stone]

"Would you fuck me?"

"I'd fuck me."