The Factual Opinion

Comics Of The Weak: I Just Poured Ice Cold Water All Over Some Lady I Know

DC Universe Last Will And Testament # 1
Written by Brad Meltzer
Art by Adam Kubert, Joe Kubert, John Dell & Alex Sinclair
Published by DC Comics

So, for a little while longer, you can go to McDonald's and the paper cup for your beverage will have these "US Olympic hopefuls," pictures on them--which are not, no they are not, people who actually made the US Olympic team.  Some are, but some are people who did not make the Olympic team.  Considering that some of them are in sports where age is a factor, if they didn't make it, this was it.  This was their cup.  They are a "hopeful," and, because it's the Olympics, no one but their friends and family will be talking about them in the near future, or the faraway future.  That's what Last Will and Testament is: it's a comic about somebody that nobody probably has anything against, Geo-Force, but that nobody probably cares a lot about.  It's the sort of comic that comes out and says, hey, here I am.  I'm about Geo-Force, and I have some really popular artists handling me, and I'm written by a guy a lot of people claim to not like but still buy, and I've got a moral!  And a happy ending!  And Rocky from the old Challengers of the Unknown!  It's 2008!  Comic books!  If you can take a comic, and insert absolutely any Z-grade character into the leading role and yet that change would not change the story in the slightest, then it doesn't really have a reason to be out there wasting Joe Kubert's time.  He's a teacher!  Then again, it might stop him from unleashing more bad super-hero artists on the world, so it's a tough call.

Final Crisis: Superman Beyond # 1

Written by Grant Morrison

Art by Doug Mahnke, Christian Alamy, Rodney Ramos, Tom Nguyen, Walden Wong & David Baron

Published by DC Comics

Whatever it is that greases up all the referencing in Final Crisis (proper) and Batman so that it comes across as being relatively seamless got replaced with some garish 3-D imagery, making for the clunkiest of the Final Crisis spin-off titles so far.  (The Mahnke/Morrison pedigree keeps it a notch above the tiresome Rogues Revenge, but that doesn't exactly mean it's in the "check this out" category.)  Containing a really silly and hard to swallow opening that sends Superman off on a tour of the multiverse and spirals pretty close to Grant Morrison's house, which was near wherever the typing monkey lived, this is a comic that screams:  hey!  Look at what happened before, only this time in panel format!  There's themes here, there's references all over the place, the only thing missing was whatever it is that makes Final Crisis fun to read.  According to an eavesdropped conversation between a comic shop owner who "fucking loves Chris Claremont" and one of Morrison's editors from when he did the Filth, that something is lysergic acid?  Not sure if we believe that.  There it is though:  rumor!

Kick-Ass # 4

Written by Mark Millar

Art by John Romita Jr., Tom Palmer & Dean White

Published by Icon/Marvel Comics

Dispensing with the notion that there needs to be a story worth reading in between John Romita getting his gore-core on, Kick-Ass continues to stride closer to the moment when there is no connective thread at all, and the entire thing is a drawing of a naked 5 year old girl killing everyone she sees, while all her naughty bits get concealed by palm trees and human entrails.  Whatever.  There's going to be a movie made out of this one, and hopefully that will go the Wanted route and make all of the characters weavers.  Comics like this need more looms anyway.  Ninjas?  Please.  If James Caan taught us anything, it's that ninjas are fucking wimps.

Wolverine # 68

Written by Mark Millar

Art by Steve McNiven, Dexter Vines, Morry Hollowell, Justin Ponsor & Jason Keith

Published by Marvel Comics

In a world where Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns never existed, the spot of retired-super-hero-comes-back-as-old-man comic would've been filled by this, a comic that exists so that Mark Millar and Marvel can get something into the bookstores of the Midwest that'll sell for the next 20 years.  It'll probably work fine, as this thing hits all the same highs and lows that stories like this need to hit.  It's neither innovative, fresh, or remotely unpredictable, but then again--when is the last time that meant anything?  As is always the case, the market is never wrong, and in the end:  you get the comics you deserve.  Apparently that's a comic like this.

The Immortal Iron Fist # 18

Written by Duane Swiercynski

Art by Travel Foreman, Russ Heath & Matt Milla

Published by Marvel Comics

Well, that's that.  The answer to the question of "Is Iron Fist only good because of Matt Fraction and Ed Brubaker" is answered with a resounding "Uh huh."  While Travel Foreman's art is certainly fun to look at, whatever magic that was on this series is officially gone, and Iron Fist has returned to being a character that, without some inventive cleverness and a priority on smart entertainment, is pretty much a terrible idea to base a story on.  This series now has less in common with it's first 16 issues--instead, it's like the 90's Daredevil where he wore armor and was teamed up with an actual, wait for it, devil.

Daredevil # 110

Written by Ed Brubaker & Greg Rucka

Art by Michael Lark, Stefano Gaudiano & Matt Hollingsworth

Published by Marvel Comics

Although Brubaker has played out the scene before where somebody, in this case that wheelchair person, has told Matthew Murdock cum Daredevil that everything bad that happens isn't "about him," it's still a scene that is going to work every single time, until Daredevil quits being a whiny jackass.  How a super-hero who seems to be rich, have constant regular sex with brilliantly attractive and intelligent women, and gets to jump out of a window and through a helicopter (which looks sort of unrealistic, who'd have thought, yet, totally pimp fantastique) and yet still behave as if he's the angstiest angst-athon in the Marvel universe is one of those things you're probably supposed to "suspend disbelief" about.  Daredevil:  an entertaining genre comic about the bitchiest bitch in spandex ever.  You win a prize, every month.  That prize will look like Batman Year One, but it will taste like every post-Disintegration Cure album.

Ambush Bug Year None # 2

Written by Keith Giffen & Robert Loren Fleming

Art by Keith Giffen, Al Milgrom & Guy Major

Published by DC Comics

A certain type of person, namely the person who purchases the comics that are then given to the Factual review team, is under the obligation of buying anything Keith Giffen draws, since Keith Giffen rarely draws anything anymore.  That aside, Ambush Bug is still not really that fun to read, because then one has to give a shit, or at least know about, stuff that isn't worth reading in the first place.  This comic just needs to be meaner, or it needs to be funnier, or it just needs to be more extreme in any direction.  Satire needs bite to it--otherwise you're just doing parody, and in super-hero comics, the object itself is usually a parody already.  How do you make fun of Countdown?  Countdown makes fun of itself.

The New Avengers # 44

Written by Brian Michael Bendis

Art by Billy Tan, Matt Banning & Justin Ponsor

Published by Marvel Comics

Here's another one of those things that DC would call "Secret Files & Origins" and Marvel chooses to call a regular comic book--did you ever want to know what clones of Reed Richards did on their vacation?  Tough.  That's all we got, and no matter how refreshing it is to look at drawings of Mr & Mrs Fantastic getting shot in the head, that's all you're going to get.  That being said, it is pretty refreshing to see super-heroes get their heads blown off, especially when you realize that somewhere out there, somebody is going to pay a shitload of money so they can frame Billy Tan's original drawings of said shooting.  We want to meet that person, and we want to see what types of books they keep in the bathroom for when they got a big one brewing!

DMZ # 34

Written by Brian Wood

Art by Riccardo Burchielli & Jeromy Cox

Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

Here's hoping that Brian Wood's desire to be gritty and interesting outweighs his personal politics and that the election of a fictional non-white political leader in a warzone turns out to be a horrible mistake.  Otherwise, all future DMZ stories can be easily predictable as being straight up Democratic wish-fulfillment stories where we all read about how upper-class tax increases help bring about the end of global warming.  Next storyline is going to be about an intelligent punk rock Chinese girl who fixes FEMA with an old school mash-up of Paul Oakenfeld and the original score of Murnau's Sunrise.  Liberal propaganda: still as unwieldy as the conservative variety.

Black Panther # 40
Written by Jason Aaron
Art by Jefte Palo & Lee Loughridge
Published by Marvel Comics

While hardcore violence rarely works to do anything more than bore the shit out of anybody reading these things, as the action in comics does best when it shoots for "looks cool" and less so when it tries to "look mature," this issue of Black Panther is the best "gross shit involving eyeballs" since that old thing from EC Comics that got sand in Frederick Werthem's vagina.  Whoever it was that decided not to offer Jason Aaron super-hero work when he was first getting involved with DC should be punched in the throat.  This guy has fucking skillz.

Ultimate Spider-Man # 125

Written by Brian Michael Bendis

Art by Stuart Immonen, Wade von Grawbadger & Justin Ponsor

Published by Marvel Comics

Ultimate Spider-Man continues it's follow up on one of the best stories in it's run, the original Venom arc that had ended on a cruel anti-climax that all but said "This will end badly."  After almost 80 issues, Venom's return seems like an afterthought that might have done well to keep in the can a bit longer--despite Stuart Immonen giving the character a distinctive appearance that mixes comic-shlock with a Tex Avery cartoon, the story is one that's uncomfortably similar to the terrible Spider-Man film that had Tobey Maguire dressing like the lead singer of Interpol while Topher Grace fought against Ocean's 11 memories to eradicate any good will pointed in his direction.  While Bendis probably deserves some kind of leeway since he's also handling about 50% of Marvel's current output, his Spider-Man work might have benefited from a sabbatical.

Thunderbolts # 123

Written by Christos Gage

Art by Fernando Blanco & Frank Martin

Published by Marvel Comics

Thunderbolts seems to be turning out in the Black Panther class of Secret Invasion tie-in comics more then the New Avengers class in that what happens in it is unimportant to the larger story, and is therefore potentially more entertaining.  That's a good thing, we suppose.  Christos Gage is still a writer who has yet to work on a comic that's worth his time, but his career is his own, and if he wants to jack out potboiler action work for Marvel, then whatever, his call.  There's not a lot to really say about something like this--it's just an opportunity for guys like Venom and Bullseye to yank a page from that Ultimates story where Hawkeye and the Black Widow exterminated the inhabitants of an office building-- action comics, done well.  Bland, but not offensively so.

-Tucker Stone, 2008

Economist Versus Idiot: Ivan Drago Is Never Going Give You Up

The World Last Week

-The Sri Lankan army may have finally entered endgame with the Tamil Tigers, and despite that sounding like a minor league baseball team, they are much more fearsome.

-The president of Taiwan resigned, so did the president of Pakistan, as did Mark Spitz's record.

-Russia signed a cease-fire, said they'd bail out of Georgia, and then didn't, because hey!  They're being all mysterious.  That's how you'se get the ladies.

-Did you know that when Georgia's president passed on NATO's opinion regarding the invasion to Putin that Putin told him to "Shove it up your ass."?  Well, you know it now.

-A bunch of Indian protesters in Peru blocked the two oil and gas installations and Peru freaked out, mostly because they didn't realize they were still calling their indigenous people "Indians."

-Venezuala couldn't get a deal going with Mexico regarding the sale of Mexican owned cement plants, so Venezuela pulled a neat trick:  they took them.  I am going to use this trick to buy milk from now on.

-Al-Qaeda may have killed 43 people in Algiers, and that was at a school for gendarmes.  Really?

-Israel is letting out 200 Palestinian prisoners solely to bolster Mahmoud Abbas' authority among Palestinians, which sort of begs the question:  if you can so easily release people, for purely political motives, what the hell were they in jail for in the first place?

-Electronic Arts won't be buying Take-Two, at least not anytime soon, making the day when Grand Theft Auto crosses over with Madden to completely blow your mind that much further away.

-Guess what's doing well?  Gold.  Gold is doing well.  Avast?

-Home Depot keeps running into problems, which is what happens when people stop fixing their house because, you know, they don't have one anymore.

Leaders

-The Economist joined the rest of the magazine publishing world, including Time, Women's Wear Daily, etc, with an Obama cover and a quite a bit of Obama themed articles.  First up, it's these guys admitting that the Economist "is less impressed" with Obama's politics, as they're still holding the NATO-bashing thing against him, they're still not happy with him wanting to deny more funding to the "surge" in Iraq, and they don't like what they've seen of his tax policies so far.  (There's more, but considering that those are the three they've brought up in every Obama article for the last three months, that's the flavor of the drum they beat.)  But for the most part, this is an article about what a brilliant campaigner Obama is and what he could do to cement an election that's still up for grabs.  It's an opinion piece, yes, but it's a decent one.

-Here's one that won't get top billing, but it's pretty unusual information I hadn't been aware of:  space technology, which America used to be responsible for 80% of manufacturing, has fallen to a US share of 50%, with no end in sight.  It's not because of "globalization" or "out-sourcing," but becasue the State Department has such a ridiculously asine system of export controls that it's impossible to get a simple screw through without being checked on by a bunch of lazy goverment officials in hopes of job security.  Meanwhile, France and Canada are moving on, and the US isn't offering any carrots to bring them back.

-It's sort of hilarious to read that Russia isn't as scary as people imagine--not because it isn't true, it totally is;  their economy continues to spiral towards a crash and the population is dropping at a rate of 800,000 a year--but it's hilarious because it's sort of like looking at a burnt out crater and saying "well, they aren't as tough as they look."  Here's the thing--we're not worried about Cold War mutually assured destruction type fantasies, were worried about more Georgia's occuring in the Ukraine, more conflicts with the Poles, more death, more lunacy.  Of course it's not going to be a World War.  The goal should be not to have another Georgia.  Man up, brainaics.

-There's probably somebody in the White House who is shedding tears for Pervez Musharraf, but this has to be near the top of the "not awful" ejection of a US-backed leader in a foreign country list.  Musharraf was a friend to the US, yes, but he was a terrible president.  Not as terrible as a monkey with a flame thrower, but again:  it's not about trying not to be awful.  It's about trying to be mediocre, with a hint of okay.

-Will Morgan Tsvangirai ever get the deal he deserves?  (A good one?)  Will Robert Mugabe ever get the one he deserves?  (A really evil one?)  All signs point to:  not yet, maybe so, I wish prayer worked.

Letters

-Some pretty heavy critics show up, and I have to give them a "Well played" this week.  Top of the "you guys suck" stack would definitely be Grigory Ioffe, from Virginia, who writes in to say that the recent articles about the sorry state of intellectualism in Russia may easily be due to the intellectuals walking lockstep with the authoriarian regimes in agreement.  It's an excellent point, and one the Economist failed to realistically address.  All these guys did was say "Well, they are either in jail or they've been bought off."  Obviously, some of them are just incapable of seeing it as a problem at all.  Here's how Ioffe closes his letter, which is so pungent with contempt that I'm surprised to see it printed:  "You badly need a crash course in the cultures you are writing about."  So do I, Grigory.

United States

-The battle for Congressional seats between the Democrats, hoping for a a filibuster-proof majority of 60, and the Republicans, who are just looking to keep things as close as possible, gets a check-up via the Economist, who have subtitled the article in such a way that points to a disgust with the "arcane rules" that govern the American legislative process.  The states that get the temperature taken include New Hampshire, Minnesota, North Carlina, Virginia, New Mexico, Colorado, Alaska, Mississippi, and Louisiana.  There's only a couple of sentences of information given to each contested seat, so it's mostly just names and such.  Still, interesting enough.

-If you've an American worker who has been wondering whether or not you'll be getting enough of a raise to offset the 5.6% rise in the cost of consumer products, heres' an article about why that's both unlikely, and, if you can tolerate it without lighting your hair on fire, probably better off.  (Mostly because rising unemployment means that job safety is preferable to being replaced by someone willing to take anything, even peanuts and Saran Wrap sculptures.)  The Federal Reserve is hoping against a wage-price spiral, and is unlikely to  raise interest rates this year--but the Economist is relatively hopeful for now, saying at one point that "this may be as bad as it gets."

-There's some suspicion that John McCain might have cheated and heard the questions Rick Warren was asking the two candidates at the recent "Churchfight!" they threw in California--that would have been an unimpressively mean thing to do, considering it being pretty unlikely that Obama was going to come across as the winner anyway.  It's a debate moderated by the guy who wrote "Purpose Driven-Life" which, if I'm not mistaken, has a chapter called "All Democrats And Liberals Are Demon-Rapist Evildoers."  Actually, I couldn't finish the first chapter, and I was reading it on a dare.  Not exactly a fair playing field.

-Fifty states in America have their own wineries.  There's North Dakota wine?  That can't be very good.

-Lexington is back, and he's here to give you the background of David Axelrod, who is Obama's version of Karl Rove--with more porno mustache and less overall body mass.  For those who hate to find out that their father's greasy fingers are the ones who slipped the penny under your pillow for a molar, look away:  Axelrod came up with the "Yes We Can" slogan, which Obama wasn't a fan of, and he fought from the beginning to base the whole juggernaut of a campaign on "hope" and "change."  The only question Lexington has about the guy is whether or not he's got what it takes for the final sprint across the line.  

The Americas

-The murder rate in San Paulo has dropped enough to to make a dent in Brazil's overall murder rate, which had continually gone up since 1980.  It's still the fourth-highest in the world, which is bad, but it may go down even more when the national figures for the last few years are released.  Which is good.  There's a lot of good reasons it's happened--a better police force, stronger gun control and a changing demographic that has seen the proportion of 15-24 year-olds drop--and one particularly bad one, which is that Primerio Comando da Capital, a San Paulo gang, has succeeded in cementing their rule by killing off all of their rivals.

-Argentinian's consistent growth rate in the face of most logic has finally started to slow down, here's an article about why, about what Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is not doing to make things better, about what she is doing to make things worse, and also why none of this really means that a crash is in the cards.   So it's an article about Argentina, and it's interest to anyone is dependent on how far they want to go into learning about the current state of affairs in Argentina.  You make the call.

Asia

-Looks like Kashmir got worried that no one was going to pay attention to them, or maybe they are just capitalizing on the resignation of Pervez Musharraf, or maybe Hindus and Muslims in Kashmir will just never get along, or maybe, just maybe, freakshow religious zealots are right and the world is going to end in fire and brimstone with creeps chanting "Kali Ma, Kali MA" and i'm going to get my heart ripped out. Either way:  Kashmir!  Never, never, never go there.

-Look, if Nepal and the Maoist guerillas actually pull off the whole peaceful transition thing that they, by all evidence, seem to be heading towards, then those business negotiator guys (who set the whole thing up) should be elected president of the world, just like Zeus "Tiny" Lister.

-Weird quote from China this week:  "I don't think any country in the world, apart from North Korea, could get such a quality of performance from its actors as we did."  That was Zhang Yimou who, when not creating garbage like "The Curse of the Golden Flower," also directs the opening/closing ceremonies for the Olympics--and is apparently a big supporter of North Korea's policy of...well, what, exactly?  Starving people?  Telling them that he's 11 feet tall and can fly?

-At this point, can we all agree that Gary Glitter will never reform and maybe we should just light him on fire?

Middle East and Africa

-The title to this loving tribute to Zambia's recently deceased president, Levy Mwanawasa (natural causes) is "Why Africa needs more cabbage."  Odd enough title, but apparently political opponents had called him "the cabbage" because--well...because it was a mean thing to say?  I'm not really sure.  Anyway, Mwanawasa was one of the few African leaders to stand up to Robert Mugabe, and his death is that continent, and this world's, loss.

-Saudi Arabia has started to deal with it's rising price of food by seeking out farms in the poorest parts of the world--like Pakistan and Sudan.  This isn't going to work out well.

-Finally, things may start to change for those mercenaries in Iraq, and there might be some court of law that has jurisdictation over there basically unchecked behavior.  While the focus in war complaints seems to be on the White House, one of the most glaring problems has been the free reign given to ex-Special Forces guys who have gone merc.  All that aside, i've made a ridiculous amount of money investing in Blackwater over the last few years.  Blood!  On my hands!

Europe

-Man, you gots to check out that cartoon.  It's awesome.  Anyway, here's the thing about the Economist and Russia/Georgia:  these articles are great, but they're a timed out around Wednesday the 20th.  A lot happens in nine days when you're dealing with war, ceasefires, aggressive intentions, the new season of Dragon's Den, etc.  Don't read this.  Read today's article, which you and I both know you don't need me to link for you.

-The missile defense shield is here, and it is getting intercept placement in Poland--they signed the agreement about fourteen seconds after Russia invaded Georgia.  Prior to that, they'd been dragging their feet.  Full disclosure!  My high-school girlfriend works on this project, has for years.  She's a f'real rocket scientist!  Now, i've got nothing but nice, supportive feelings for her, she's a real princess.  That being said, the idea of spending $10 billion a year on upkeep for a trillion dollar system that is totally unproven, to the point that most involved seem to think is more likely NOT to work is completely and totally absurd. And stupid. 

-Still no regular column from these guys, which is starting to get odd.  Did I miss a notice somewhere?  He's not dead, is he?  Anyway, here's everything you may want to know about Turkey and the Caucasus, the sort of got-his-shit-together Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the magic spice that will curse us all.  Wait that's Dune, isn't it?

Britain

-God, the British really hate their airport, don't they?  And British Airlines?  This has to be the 900th article I've read in the Economist about tearing apart BAA and building more runways at Heathrow, and that's not counting all the Brit-centric articles that are only published on the web.

-The UK had their best Olympics since 1908, although the public seems to have gotten sick of the whole public funding of elite athletes policy, which is unsurprising considering how awful utilites pricing is getting in Britain.  If one has to deal with higher heating bills and paying for cyclists to get better bikes, I think gold medal bragging rights is probably on the way out.

-Bagehot returns, and brings the thunder--David Cameron is sort of amazing, isn't he?  Not that I like or would vote for him, but the way he just says "Bang this" and hopes on a plane for Tbilisi, beating his own prime minister there and behaving, well, like he's in charge of the country.  Things couldn't get worse for Gordon Brown short of him getting eaten by a gigantic golden retriever wearing a cape.

International (Human Interest Stories Bore Me)

-There are Chinese merchants in Greece, and you know what:  don't care.  Who cares?  Why does there have to be a story about this?  Why does it have to use the odd theme of the diaspora connection?  Long and boring.  Long and boring!  If you're going to waste my time Economist, why not talk about that British lad-mag that paid for some woman to get her breasts enlarged from DD to GG?  That's about as useless to know about, and it's easier to make fun of.

-People in the US go to movies, Brazil stays home and Russians like clothes.  I don't think an article this short can be any less valuable.

Business

The other topic that never gets ignored for long is the state of water--which, according to people who would know, is not good.  Here's the thing about an article like this that I think is worth looking into:  when companies like Dow and Coca Cola are purposely spending money and manpower to deal with water as if it's running out, that's an indication that's far more reliable then anything you'll hear from a politician.  Coca Cola, Dow--both companies with a tendency to plan for the future.  Both of them are pure corporations, meaning they ignore value judgments like good or bad--they focus on how to make money, and how to make money forever;  not just this week, or this quarter, or this four-year cycle, or until 2014.  Forever.  And if they are worried about water supplies, then regular people should probably worry too.

-Chinese subsidies have been criticized and condemned by the WTO for being against the rules, and that's totally true.  It's been impossible to compete over there with their protectionism, which levied a special 25% tariff on imported car parts.  So now they've come up with a 40% sales tax on cars taht happen to be gas-guzzlers, which is totally within WTO rules, decent for the environment, and keeps foreign cars in the same place they were before:  the shitter. Well played!

-Well, this can't be a good idea for some, but I'm going to buy shares in gigantic law firms, and I'll bet I get even more rich than I already am.  Awesome for me!

-Google has a Second Life thing, but no one likes it.  Google, however, does not care what you like.

Finance and Economics

-I didn't read this section but once, which means I'm not able to really distill it, but I will say that I watched Point Blank a bunch of times, and that was fun.

Science and Technology

-Some scientists are trying to breathe life back into physiognomy, which is the idea that you can predict inward character from outward human forms.  (And yes, this is apparently where the "fat people are jolly" idea may have originally came from, and let me be the first to tell you, if you don't already know:  It's not true, the overweight are no more likely to be more pleasant to be around then the skinny, the monstrous, or the LA Raiders circa 1992.)  However, there may be some flimsy evidence based on pictures of ice hockey players that men with wide facers are more likely to throw down and whip out the Queensbury Rules.  There are clearly avenues of scientific research that are far easier to major in then analytical biochemistry.

-Ha, Infra-red.  When's the last time you thought about Infra-red?  Really?  Recently?  Then I guess you don't care that they might make a infra-red solar cell.  Seriously, the last time I heard that was in one of those weird sci-fi movies the Criterion Collection puts out.  I think Robert Stack was talking about it.

Books and Arts

-Are you someone who really enjoys long, heady books abuot music, music theory, and prefers the term "music" to only define classical compositions?  Well, here's two pricey hardcovers for you to talk about with all your non-existent friends.

-How difficult can it be to write a biography of John Keats?  He died at 25, it's not like there's a lot to cover.

-Woody Allen has a new movie, the Economist likes it, and it's funny to me how all you have to do is fix Javiar Bardem's haircut and he kind of completely blows your mind in a way that makes me question previous lifestyle choices.  Oh, and Scarlett Johansson is still pretending she can act.

Obituary: Mahmoud Darwish

-Most new poetry strikes me as too cloying and sentimental, but what I've read of Darwish was never, never that.  He was a true artist that ignored the specifity of political engagement, the wages of time and wrote about the Palestine of his memory--a Palestine that had died in 1948 when his family abandoned their ancestral home in fear of an advancing Israeli military.  While a bitter anger is apparent in his earlier, overtly political work, he matured into a magnificiently subtle artist, one whose work will, hopefully, outlast the uglier aspects of that part of the world.

-The Economist Versus Idiot apologizes for missing another week.  Things look to be on track again.

Music of the Weak: Damn, Son-We Had Enough To Say About One Song To Fill A Whole Column

Jay-Z--"Jockin' Jay-Z"

There are two Jay-Zs:  The watered-down panderer who would rather brag about being able to rap like Common than prove it, who homogenizes hooks from edgier songs like a black Pat Boone, who faked emotional depth like a sociopath all over The Blueprint (and got away with it) and the reluctant artist, who stays ahead of the curve by chasing after new producers and shepherding artists like Beanie Sigel and Panjabi MC, who invests others’ throwaway hooks with multiple layers of meaning (as he does, for example, on “99 Problems” and “No Hook”), who actually discovered his own emotional depth on American Gangster. 

Interestingly enough, the two Jay-Z’s hardly ever show up to the same place at the same time.  Instead, they function as two sides to a split personality, appearing only in the others absence, possibly without knowing each other exists.  They just made another switch.  Shortly after reluctant artist Jay-Z dropped American Gangster, one of the major highlights of (any) Jay-Z’s highlight-filled career, pandering ol’ watered-down Jay-Z shows right back up with “Jockin’ Jay-Z,” a single playing prelude to The Blueprint 3.  Anyone who heard The Blueprint 2’s recycled song structures and failed ideas—like the song that sampled Paul Anka’s “My Way” because they couldn’t get their hands on Sinatra—knows that all the jokes about producing a sequel to a bloated, failed sequel just make themselves. 

There’s not anything overtly horrible about “Jockin’ Jay-Z”—you just get Hova in reclining chair, burning hundreds to light cigars-mode.  We still get some awesome punchlines like, “Haters like ‘Hov, Why you still talkin’ money shit?’/ ‘Cause I like money bitch,” but only 1/3 as many as we would if he were on point.  He could have taken Noel Gallagher down a lot harder than this: “That bloke from Oasis said I couldn’t play guitar/ Somebody should’ve told him I’m a fucking rock star.”  But I suspect that the panderer was running the boards, and he wanted to look hard without being offensive. 

For his part, Kanye West never has been above blatantly biting other producers’ styles (see The Game’s “Dreams,” patterned exactly like Fabolous’ Just Blaze-produced “Breathe,” down to the single-word title.)   That notwithstanding, “Jockin’ Jay-Z,” with its lift of Bangladesh’s enormous “A Millie” is a bit of a strange fit.  You have to give it to Kanye, he’s an incredible mimic, but the track lacks the soul that infuses his better work.  It’s funny, you don’t expect many producers to have actual dimension.  But of Kanye, we demand it.  Thankfully, Jay’s lead singles aren’t usually accurate predictors of what the album will sound like—think The Blueprint’s “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)”, The Black Album’s “Change Clothes” and American Gangster’s “Roc Boys (And the Winner is…),” or even Kingdom Come’s “Show Me What You Got.”  On the other hand, Jay-Z has consistently been an every-other-album kind of guy.  But if history has taught us anything, it’s this: just because he didn’t try this time, doesn’t mean he won’t try next time.

-Martin Brown, 2008

The Virgin Read: But Did She Wear A Thong When She Read It

Achewood: The Great Outdoor Fight
By Chris Onstad
Published by Dark Horse

Well, this is a whole new experience for me.  This is not your typical comic book.  Nor is it a typical publication.  Remember your father's comic strip?  Or your grandfather's?  The one that occurred daily in "newspapers?"  Today?

Get your daily dose of the best daily strip via the tubes, man.

Well, I've never actually visited the site.  I've had snippets read to me, sent to me, hither and yon.   Now that the first ever "trade" of the infamous Great Outdoor Fight is out, I figured:  have to read it.

How do I write about Achewood?  It's mind-blowing.  It's like nothing I've ever read.  It's laugh-out-loud funny, the real kind of laugh-out-loud funny,  not the abbreviated variety.  It's completely absurd--somehow, it's Brechtian, although I have no idea how.  It just FEELS Brechtian.  (I laugh at Achewood the same way I laughed while watching the play "Cooking With Elvis.")

Seriously,  I don't even know how to write about this comic strip in a way to make a non-reader understand how great it is, or to make a reader even more of a fan.  It's so odd, so sick, so hilarious.  I went to Dictionary.com for some definitions that might help me form this lil' piece here.  First, I looked up the following word:

REVIEW:  a critical article or report, as in a periodical, on a book, play, recital, or the like; critique; evaluation.

Well, we know that already.  What exactly is a critique, really?

CRITIQUE:  the art or practice of criticism.

Don't you hate it when definitions don't really do the "defining" thing you're looking for?  In grade school, I was taught that you can NOT use a form of the word that you are defining in the definition.  That's, basically, cheating.  Ugh.  So...

CRITICISM:  the act of passing judgment as to the merits of anything.

Well.  That is a new way to look at it.  Whereas I usually pass judgment and have a hard time defending the merits...in this case, all I want to do is sing the praises.  I have a friend who often talks about how it's so much easier to go into detail about how awful something is, and how it's much harder to write cleverly about the positives.  I completely agree.  So, let me try an exercise here:  I'm going to try and describe the merits of Achewood using some literary conventions.  Here goes!

Autobiographical Comparison:
The feeling I got from reading Achewood is similar to the first time my best friend and I laughed so hard that soda came out my nose, and then I farted, which made us laugh harder, and then she peed herself.

Analogy:
Achewood: The Great Outdoor Fight is to comic books as Steve Buscemi is to Orlando Bloom.

Iambic Pentameter:
Sporting a thong, Raymond just rocked my world.

Simile:
With a cleverness as cunning as a virgin on prom night, Achewood surprises the reader at every turn with shock and awe.

Alliteration:
With proper proportion pleasingly placed between hilarious housecat hi-jinks and absoliutely absurd ostentations of bravado boldly belabored, The Great Outdoor Fight rises rather raucously with wild wins while creating a comic that transcends tradition.

I still haven't gotten my point across.  Don't worry.  I don't need to.  It's something that one has to experience for themselves.  Please do.

-Nina Stone, 2008

Comics of The Weak: This Chewing Gum Has Milk In It

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.

Captain America # 41

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.

Ghost Rider # 26

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.

Dreamwar # 5

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.

Robin # 177

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.  

Stormwatch Post Human Earth Division # 13

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?

Foolkiller: White Angel # 2

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?

True Believers # 2

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.

The Incredible Hercules # 120

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.

The Amazing Spider-Man # 568

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!

Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds # 1

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

The Virgin Read: Everything Is Worth Precisely As Much As A Belch, The Difference Being That A Belch Is More Satisfying.

Hellboy: The Crooked Man # 2
Written by Mike Mignola
Art by Richard Corben & Dave Stewart
Published by Dark Horse Comics

I in no way proclaim to be a master of literature or grammar, or even one in a position to properly critique another’s writing.  However, I am a lover of stories in all their forms.  My favorite songs are those that usually tell some sort of linear story (my childhood fave?  "Billy Don’t Be a Hero."  I cried every time I listened to it; and loved it every time.)  I love theater, movies, great books.  I’ll admit, too, that I’ll watch a movie and proclaim it “good” if I’m enjoying the storyline – despite horrific acting

As a matter of fact, in my real life/work/career, I’ve done a lot of teaching artist work called Literature to Life – which means a variety of things, actually, but I think you can get the idea of it from the name.  One of those teaching experiences was helping first graders meet their Language Arts “goals” (as defined by the Board Of Education) by taking a children’s book and making it into a play via dramatic activity.  It of course made for great classroom fun, adorable projects – but most importantly introduced them to the very basics, the fundamentals of stories, storytelling, drama, literature, etc.  My lesson plans broke down so that by the end of our sessions together, we thoroughly examined and played with the ideas of Setting, Character, Protagonist, Antagonist, Conflict, Resolution, Beginning, Middle and End.  

It all seems a lot for a first grader, I know, but they totally got it.  Got it all.  I'm bringing all this up because I read Hellboy: The Crooked Man, (part two of three!) this week.  The reason I chose it was because I enjoyed the first in this series from last month, so much.  I hadn’t really pin-pointed why, until now – now that I’ve read this second one.

The first in this series was chock full of all those wonderful elements of story that are listed above, with the wackiest of characters in the most intriguing of circumstances.  I mean, I’m like any kid who loves stories – throw in some magic or witchcraft and I’m on BOARD!

Everything about that issue was really well established--it was the setting that first drew me in.  Next, this unlikely bunch of characters  -- why IS Hellboy here?.  And who is this Tom fellow?  Where has he been; why did he leave and why is he back?  Oh – so many questions!

So, that’s our "Setting" and our "Beginning."  Next we move to another scene, with our first of several conflicts – where is Cora?  Is she a witch?  Why is her skin here?  (ew.)

I won’t rehash the entire story this way--But all of that wonderful stuff happened and we’re only up to page 9 out of about 24 pages.  So much more happens – flash backs, "more is revealed" about Tom, his father, his history – and most importantly – The Crooked Man!  Which now brings me to the comic I’ve read this week.  Which, after the first one, pales in comparison.

Basically, I feel like we tread water here.  We’ve got, essentially, one long walk in the woods.  Not much happens –  okay, Cora explodes.  That seems big.  But I’d lost my connection to her from the last issue.  So, I don’t feel very effected by it.  All I think is “Oh, hey, she exploded into those critterlike things that I just saw in the beginning of the Hellboy movie.  Huh.  Eeeewww.”

Then we end up at the church with this blind preacher-dude who talks to dead people, and we’re surrounded by witches.  And its one of those experiences that I’m having with comic books that gets me really frustrated.  Some times a comic is so meaty – so chock full of interesting scenarios and characters and problems, and fun.  So much ground is covered – back story, current story, forward motion to a really interesting cliff hanger….

And then other comic books seem to cover all of five minutes in 25 pages.  They just drag it on out.  

I realize that this is probably by design.  I used to watch a slew of soap operas in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, and after some giant cliff hanger presented on a Friday afternoon, you’d tune in on Monday, and they wouldn’t address it again that day, at all!  They’d wait to the end of the episode and you’d finally see the cliff hanger again…but they’d back it up and show it again…maybe a little different this time.  Then they’d drag out this one moment, that one story line, for way longer than anyone had patience for.  But of course, that’s their ploy – they want you to watch everyday.

Such it is with comic books?  Such it is with Hellboy?  Maybe not to the same extent.  But I finished the book and had all my thoughts about it , and then said to myself “Ooooh.  Number two of three.”  I mean – it’s the middle.  It’s the middle, and they want you to hang on and read number three.  Well, I just think it could have been a more interesting middle.  I think we’re supposed to feel some sort of dramatic tension with all the characters inside the church, surrounded by witches, and with the appearance of the Crooked Man. See, the last issue was so good – the things that happened were so creepy! – that the middle of the story, where my first grade students learned the main conflict should begin to occur--that needed to have a bigger, and creepier and well, just better conflict.  Or apex.  Maybe even a crux.

In my opinion--this didn't.  One might not even care to read the final story after completing issue two.  Although, if there’s one thing that comic book fans are, it is loyal.  So, a fan will surely buy the next issue.  I’d certainly read it, just to see how it all wraps up.  I guess the bar was set pretty high by Mr. Mignola in the first issue, and I’m totally rooting for him to wrap it up, in the final issue with some sort of weird, creepy, interesting and clever method. I’m hoping, and  I’ll keep my fingers crossed!

Nina Stone, 2008

Comics Of The Weak: Don't Forget To Jiggle The Handle

Welcome To Hoxford # 1
By Ben Templesmith
Published by IDW

Ben Templesmith takes another dive into making horror comics, putting off yet again the sure to be canon-worthy Archie revamp he keeps mentioning in interviews, this time thankfully choosing cannibalism instead of producing another zombie comic, because even though Wormwood is pretty entertaining, zombie comics are rapidly becoming just plain oh god really.  Cannibalism though-just isn't that much cannibalism stuff out there, and the only major flicks that involve it are Alive and that thing with Guy Pearce nobody watched, so Templesmith is free to screw around as much as he likes, and maybe this will turn out well?  It's definitely strange fucking stuff, with a Russian corporation that has somehow convinced the American penal system that they should let the worst of death row inmates into a rehabilitation facility that may or may not exist for the express purpose of providing the guards with some tasty human flesh.  If that sounds like something you've been waiting for, you probably already knew this was out there in the first place; otherwise, caveat emptor.

B.P.R.D. The Warning # 2
Written by Mike Mignola & John Arcudi
Art by Guy Davis & Dave Stewart
Published by Dark Horse Comics

There's a portion in Greg Rucka's spy comic Queen & Country where a psychiatrist describes how it's her job to repair the psyche of the covert operatives until said agents reach the limits of mental health, a point in which they'll be replaced:  not something you see in James Bond flicks, excepting Sean Bean in Goldeneye.  B.P.R.D., now they're taking that and running with it:  while the plot of the Warning is sort of a catch-all clean-up, as it is now time to deal with the weirdness of the guy who keeps appearing around Liz and wreaking havoc, the real story is "how close are all these characters to the edge?"  The answer seems to be "as close as possible,"  and since this is Mignola's world that means that, unlike the majority of the comic titles this may resemble in appearance, there's a real potential for consequence.  Not just a shocking character death either--part of why B.P.R.D. has, quite frankly, surpassed it's original publication in these Arcudi/Davis volumes is because it's doing that thing that only a few other serialized dramas make their stock in trade:  these characters are changing, they're growing, they are, deep breath developing.  Not just learning a new way to play with swords, not just changing sex partners.  It's really weird.

Secret Invasion: X-Men # 1
Written by Mike Carey
Art by Cary Nord & Dave McCaig
Published by Marvel Comics

The cover of this comic says "Manifest Destiny" which probably has some relation to the fact that the X-Men moved to San Francisco, as that seems to be their thing, but possibly it also means that they plan to expand into other areas and hopefully go to war against Mexico, which could certainly make an X-Men comic more interesting.  Otherwise, it's another volume of Secret Invasion side stories by authors that aren't Brian Michael Bendis and featuring another Skrull leader by way of film cliches--Mike Carey obviously owes Renoir's Grand Illusion a debt, as the major difference between his Skrull and Erich von Stroheim is that Stroheim hid the weird chin thing underneath a metal turtleneck.  Cary Nord draws in that odd soft-computer graphic style that looks like it would go well with a comic detailing the history of Street Fighter 2 characters, but overall, this comic is less offensive then it is just mundane and unnecessary.  It adds a Nightcrawler-might-betray-them-all subplot that is sure to come to no consequence by the end, which points to the basic problem with these sorts of limited spin-offs:  the authors of these kinds of things have become so dependent on either shocking the reader on minor updates to the status quo that a mundane spin-off is now fully acknowledged to be something that's never going to contain anything of importance. While that odd Fantastic Four via little kids comic made good use of the lack of importance by telling a halfway intriguing story that didn't require Worlds Must Die, So That Man May Live, this one seems to be content to slowly rub itself to flaccidity.  Still, disappointing an X-Men buyer enough to where they won't buy the comics is about as likely to happen as it would be for Emma Frost to wear a sensible, yet fashion-forward, gray pantsuit.

Batman #679
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Tony Daniel, Sandu Florea & Guy Major
Published by DC Comics

It's sort of counter-productive that something this odd is turning out to be the best thing that's been published in the meat-and-potatoes Batman comic in years--namely, that it's a whole lot of fun for the group of people willing to ignore Tony Daniel's not-so-good art that keeps not-getting-better, willing to embrace a narrative that's more than a little confusing to some, and excited to plumb the meta framework of a single panel--this is from the Silver Age, this is a Bat-Bat, this is a classic cop thriller cliche.  Like a lot of things happening in comics--high sales on Watchmen, the end of the Ennis Punisher MAX run or an event comic like Final Crisis--this Grant Morrison Batman feels and reads more like a high-water mark: it's great, yes, sure it's fucking great, "how come you think it not great" and yet, and yet?  DC will probably rather find another way to publish something like "Hush Lives" again, probably as soon as possible.  At the same time:  679 issues of Batman.  If you've even read only 1/8or those issues, then you know how pleasant it is to be looking forward to a new issue of Batman for more than just an exercise in familiarity.  It's different, and for now: different is meaning good.

Final Crisis Revelations # 1
Written by Greg Rucka
Art by Philip Tan, Jonathan Glapion, Jeff de los Santos, Ian Hannin & Walden Wong
Published by DC Comics

Greg Rucka is sort of fascinating to keep up with, mostly because his attitude towards writing for DC seems to be that he'll write whatever the fuck he pleases about whomever the fuck he wants to, and if it doesn't sell that well, that's not his problem, he'll be back with more of it later, thank you very the shit much.  Case in point: Libra, one of the major Final Crisis villains may be on the cover, and this issue may contain some "Revelations" despite it not being written by the guy whose writing Final Crisis, but it is really all about what's happened to two of the characters from Gotham Central since they both got some mini-series that not a lot of people read--one of which most people picked up because of the Azzarello written Dr. 13 back-up story.  Will jacking these characters into the main spinal cavity of DC comics give them more success than they had previously, despite both of them (The Question & The Spectre) never being that successful even in their previous (white & male) incarnations?  Up to you, true believer.  Greg Rucka is clearly going to write about them anyway, which...hey, he fucking wants to.

The Last Defenders # 6
Written by Joe Casey
Art by Jim Muniz, Cam Smith & Antonio Fabela
Published by Marvel Comics

It's the boutique comic of animated weirdness, it's introduction is always a letter, it's goofy, it's about the son of Satan, an Aladdin's genie look-a-like from Atlantis, She-Hulk and a quiet love affair between two men and a Nighthawk costume:  It's the Last Defenders, and it's the type of comic that gets published when an editor-in-chief and the main squadron of writers are busy in the corner and no one has the time to interrupt Joe Casey and tell him what he's doing doesn't sound very appetizing to those on a diet of Spider-Man making bad jokes.  Here's the future:  this is never going to be a comic that anybody references, forms the basis of an ongoing series, or sells 300,000 copies in a trade collection.  That doesn't mean it's bad, it just makes it an exercise in "huh, what was this again?"  Eventually there will be a mini-series like this--connected to nothing but some old school Marvel archives--that's pretty great, that's different and wild, and hopefully it'll find an audience.  This isn't it, but it's pleasant enough that Marvel felt like putting out something that didn't involve Skrulls, dumb political metaphors and Wolverine.

Secret Invasion: Thor # 1
Written by Matt Fraction
Art by Doug Braithwaite & Paul Mounts
Published by Marvel Comics

Apparently Thor's secret identity is a doctor of renaissance poetry, and he knows how to deliver a baby, and he lives in the Midwest.  He also uses the word "scoonch" which he seems to think is an adjective meaning "a small amount."  (It means whatever you want it to mean, because it's not a real word.)  It's easy to make fun of all of that, because it's easy to make fun of stuff that's really fucking dumb and obviously laid on top of an existing corporate property to make the existing corporate property either relevant or deep or just interesting, despite the fact that Thor is most awesome when Thor talks really ridiculously and beats the shit out of stuff and other people with his hammer.  So yeah, "doctor of renaissance poetry" translates to "ha-ha-stupid" and delivering a baby equals "waste of fucking time" and the Midwest--well, that might be more interesting to look at then another shitty drawing of the goddamn Empire State Building, so nevermind, okay on that.  Of course, this comic, which is called "Secret Invasion: Thor" ends with Thor given his hammer to somebody else and reverting to his Doctor of Renaissance Poetry identity so he can deliver a baby in a tornado shelter, so the second issue is sure to be totally fantastic.  Especially if it's called "Secret Invasion: Edmund Spenser Fan Cuts The Umbilical Cord."

Secret Invasion: Inhumans # 1
Written by Joe Pokaski
Art by Tom Raney & Scott Hanna
Published by Marvel Comics

There's probably a real big fanbase for stories about the Inhumans that we'd all hate to alienate; that being said, anytime the Factual Opinion reads a comic about the Inhumans, we judge it's value based on how much of the story hinges on the gigantic pug/bulldog that has a tuning fork stuck in it's brain.  If the story hinges on Lockjaw, or Lockjaw is on every page, or everybody keeps going "Where's Lockjaw?" everytime Lockjaw isn't on the page, then it's a great comic book, one of the best comic books ever, and everybody should buy it and get Lockjaw tattoos, because Lockjaw is the Marvel Comics version of Matter-Eater Lad or Arm-Fall-Off-Boy, which means he's the greatest character ever.  And we're not being sarcastic at all, because we really, really love Lockjaw, and wish there were posters of Lockjaw like that old Michael Jordan poster where he stretches out his arms and it says "Wings."  This comic?  Needs more Lockjaw.

Captain Britain & MI13 # 4
Written by Paul Cornell
Art by Leonard Kirk, Jesse Delperdang & Brian Reber
Published by Marvel Comics

On the recap page, there's a thank you notice to the "Faiza Hussein oversight team," take that for what it's worth.  Comic wise, here's the issue where this series divests it's responsibilities to Secret Invasion by an act of magical genocide and earns itself a new status quo of villains.  Writer Paul Cornell continues to avoid having the characters talk in overwrought Cockney accents, which is both respectable and yet, also kind of sad:  if this comic had been published in any time period before...let's say '91, then Captain Britain would say things like "Stiff and blimey, oi wants a popsicle, oi gets a popsicle.  Cup o' tea, luv?"  That would be pretty great, and it might help a comic that has a serious potential for getting lost in way too many directions, all of them being somewhat overwrought.  Otherwise, it's pretty ballsy for the main characters, 80% of whom have been killing Skrulls non-stop for four issues and only succeeded here because one of them made a magic wish to commit instant slaughter (a magic wish carried out by an evil demon named Satannish!) to end the issue by forming a team "of super heroes.  Together because they want to be.  Who are friends.  Who support each other.  Who do not kill."  Huh?  But you just...  And now you want to...  We're lost.  What?

Secret Invasion # 5
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Lenil Yu, Mark Morales, Laura Martin & Emily Warren
Published by Marvel Comics

Since it seems pretty apparent that the Skrulls can't win when they just straight up fight super-heroes, and this issue reveals that they're highly placed in the major two organizations that control the globe, Scientology and people who watch Oprah, why did they go about this whole "invasion" they way that they did?  They've got all these sleeper agents in place around the world, in charge of groups like al-Queda and whatever business entities Paris Hilton controls, and yet they just saved all that for the two page spread?  There's all these stupid tie-ins that have the same story about some ships landing and Skrulls getting their ass handed to them, whereas this whole "look how well they prepared for the five minutes after the ships landing moment" which is to blow the whole "Secret" aspect before they've even won the fight?  There's an attitude towards this shit that any irritation expressed towards story twists is "nitpicking," when what it really is being surprised that nobody else seems to mind a story that could've, and has been, written already by every 14 year old who got bored in church and imagined different ways to fuck the prom queen.  If you can create the adventures of super-heroes in your brain, and they look like this, that doesn't mean the comic is smart.  It means you're fucking boring, and this is pandering bullshit.

-Tucker Stone, 2008

Economist Vs. Idiot: Another Edition That Is Late And Short

I'm not the only one who didn't show up on time this week-Charlemagne and Bagehot also have the week off.  Kisses to you, and magic is in the air. (Actually, your resident moron who reads the magazine was out of town and got his copy late in the game.  Back to regular schedule, but let's clear the floor.)

The World Last Week

-Well, The Economist can't talk about the Olympics, and it published at a time when it couldn't know that Georgia V. Russia was going to hit.  So here's some of the news that went under the burner when the oven exploded.

-Pakistan decided to try to impeach their President, which is a hell of a lot nicer then the way they normally change leaders in Pakistan.  Actually, punching him in the stomach would still be a step in the right direction, so make sure you send a thank-you card.  According to people who would know, you have a year.

-You'd think taking the time to study and become a professional neuroscientist might prevent someone from becoming a terrorist, but then again, you aren't Aafia Siddiqui.  She went the other way.

-Somebody yelled "Landslide" and 145 Indian's got trampled in the non-landslide confusion.  No landslide, just trampling.  Like a Pearl Jam concert, only much more tragic and without a crying Eddie Vedder.

-Rwandan government officals accused a whole lot of French officials, including the former president and two prime ministers, of actively supporting the '94 genocide.   I try not to make snarky jokes about genocide--easy to do this time, because...I mean, really?

-Italy is pulling an NYC subway station era 2002, and putting fully loaded soldiers on the streets for six-months because of "crime problems" which means that before too long, a shoplifter is going to get killed by a machine gun.  Good call, that one.

-Before you get nervous and worry that you might be one of the 40 million people whose credit and debit card numbers were stolen, ask yourself:  Don't I deserve to be punished for shopping at TJ Maxx?  Yes.  Yes you do.

-Whole Foods isn't doing well, which is totally attributed to the fact that they don't sell Sara Lee Pecan Coffee Cakes, so fuck you and change your stocking decisions, Whole Foods.

Leaders

-Can an ex-bishop from the jungles of liberation theology help fix Paraguay's struggling economy, crime, and hideous poverty?  Can anything?  My money is on no, but that's because I've basically given up.  Best of luck to Fernando Lugo.  Best of luck to us all!  Merry Christmas!  Go Steelers!  Mazel Tov?

-There's two articles this week on quite a few subjects--the cover feature on Solzhenitsyn, another double shot about a cartoon character, and then there's the Economist taking a couple of different looks at the recent Lambeth conference between Anglican Christians.  In a way, the Lambeth conference was sort of like the Civil War--the easy way to answer the question to the Civil War is "It was about slavery" and the easy way to explain the Lambeth Conference is "It was about homosexuality."  Why the Economist cares, I'm not altogether sure--they've made their point multiple times, that they support gay marriage, support gay anything, and also that they take as much of a secular position as is journalisticly possible anytime religion comes up.  The question I have with there coverage is:  Well, why talk about Lambeth at all?  The majority of the people on the outer sides of the debate didn't show, little got resolved regarding the schism, and it was mostly just another collection of various fringe lunatics screaming down any decent conversation.  It's just pomp and circumstance, and without any significant opinion to give on the subject, I wonder why they even care.  I certainly could give a shit.  Win, lose or draw--it's hard to buy into the concept that what Anglican officials end up saying is going to have much of an impact on the greater public opinion--for example, if the Pope hopped out on his ridiculous balcony tomorrow and made out with Tom Ford, I don't think that a bunch of Catholics are going to all of a sudden start watching Queer as Folk.  They'd just find a way to get rid of him and find another Pope to tell people that masturbation will send them to hell, and shit would keep on staying the same.

-This one though, well, that's just funny.  Two articles about a manga character?  From a manga that's only been translated a few times, and is no longer in print in the English speaking world?  It's not that I'm not interested to read about Kosaku Shima--if anything I'd love to read it, and would certainly que up to purchase it, but...seriously?  Two articles about a Japanese cartoon character, and the second article references that it stopped being believable in recent years?  It's like reading the Wall Street Journal and having them talk about how great it would be if the CEO of Washington Mutual acted like Bruce Wayne, but only during the years when Alan Grant was the writer, because later on Batman started taking heroin and hanging out with dead homeless people.

-Did I say that they doubled up on Solzhenitsyn?  In a way, they actually tripled.  Again, if there was an article of the week feature, which I guess there is, then here you go:  a three page write-up on the current state of Russian intelligentsia.  If you like it when you know the truth, and you don't mind the taste of a broken heart jumping out of your chest cavity, then here you go:  whether it's a bunch of artists lining up to serve fascism, or a group of people so broken by fear that they won't even protest the shocking murder of one of the few champions of truth that Russia has recently had (Anna Politkoveskaya), this is a pull-no-punches look at a place in the world that had seemed to have finally emerged from the shadow of Stalin, only to discover that it's best and brightest have either fled or become fat and lazy off the bribes of gangsters.

Letters

-Here's some testicular twisting for you, but first, background:  Georgia v. Russia started after the publication of the magazine, so the only mention of that region is a hint of turmoil later in the Europe section.  Now, you know Georgia is a sovereign state, right?  That's what it is.  It's a sovereign nation.  Now, the director of policy planning from Moscow's Ministry of Foreign Affairs writes in to complain about the way the Economist has been covering his country--part of his defense of recent behavior is that Putin and Medvedev have the "overwhelming support of the Russian public" which is a clever statement, based in the reality that the Russian public hasn't had any sort of option BUT to be supportive since they replaced Boris "The Smiling Drunk" Yeltsin with Vladimir "I Know How Good Human Flesh Tastes" Putin.  Then he goes on to say that the reason Russia vetoed possible sanctions against Zimbabwe, a country which is sort of a great example of your worst possible fantasy about fascism and horror, is that Russians "do not believe in the punishment or isolation of sovereign states."

Oh. 

So when did you change your mind, you bloodthirsty piece of shit?

United States

-Off-shore drilling and its place on the campaign table starts it off.  I'm disappointed to learn that off-shore rigs have become safe enough that Floridians don't have to live in fear of an Exxon Valdez incident, because I've never had a good trip to Florida, except for the time I hung out with a Cuban who was hand-making the tiles that would serve as the floor for the drug-dealers house in Michael Mann's Miami Vice remake.  Besides him, I don't really like Florida very much.  Oh, and neither Obama nor McCain really have a plan on the drilling yet--I mean, they've said stuff, but it conflicts with stuff they've said before, it's August, who fucking knows.  Come January, we could be drilling for oil inside Angelina Jolie's womb, nobody knows.

-Not a lot of info on the trial of Osama bin Laden's driver, especially because the important stuff (like why they let a confession that may/probably was produced by torture admissible) was redacted and/or held from observers.  That's the way the tribunals go, so it's not really a big shocker--but at the same time, you'd think the guys in charge would want to go large on the facts of this specific case.  Hiding them just makes it seem like every hardcore conspiracy has weight.  All that aside, after reading Steve Coll's excellent The Bin Laden's book, I don't have much empathy for Osama's circle of hanger-ons.  I hope the guy is guilty, and I hope that this isn't a miscarriage of justice--I just wish there was some more evidence to base that hope on--which is why they probably used a military tribunal, because "Guilty beyond reasonable doubt" seems unlikely to have been the verdict in a normal court of law.

-The write-up on old Bruce Ivins, the wacked out sunuvagun who sent anthrax around to various peeps isn't for the quick-to-paranoia--after plowing through the varied reasons why he was able to hide for so long, the first being "it was really fucking easy," the Economist points out that these sorts of attacks aren't really that difficult to pull off, and that we're supposed to count on Wal-Mart to distribute the antidote if a widespread biological attack occurred.  Really.  I'm supposed to count on Wal-Mart?  I can't count on Wal-Mart to properly lick a fucking stamp.

-The swing state of the week is Colorado, and how it turned purple.  (For those who care, or haven't already picked up on this growing trend, you call a state "purple" when it's neither red or blue, because politics have to be boiled down as simply as possible for the sort of people who base their vote on "Which candidate is most likely to kill the people who disagree with me?")  I've been to Colorado, and can firmly tell you that yes, it is very pretty.  It has many fine shops, and I saw The Prestige there in a dollar movie theater.  The teenage girls are just as obnoxious and loud as they are in New York, the chain restaurants have the same interior decoration as they do anywhere, and the locals have that same "we're the best" attitude that all locals have, even the ones in El Salvador, which is the murder capital of the world.  If you care to find out how they went from red to...goddammit, "purple" then here's your article.  If you want to know quickly, here you go:  a bunch of liberals moved there.  Boom, you're done.

-Lexington asks the question "Is America beginning to weary of 'Yes We Can'?"  He seems to think yes, and while I can't give any anecdotal evidence to back him up--because my own personal research seems to tell me that the local NYC Obamaniacs are still rubbing one out to that fearsome Rolling Stone cover from a few months ago--I do think that if the quote from Lili Haydn gets more play, then maybe some people will stop treating a political campaign for president like they're in the fucking Babysitters Club.  Her quote is this "Barack Obama is inspiring us like a desert lover, a Washington Valentino.  Couples all over America are making love again and shouting "Yes we can" as they climax."  Excuse me.  I have to cut off my penis now.  I don't think it's going to work again.

The Americas

-Hugo Chavez figured out that the way to make sure things work right in Venezuela is to give up on that whole "give the people what they want"--he's moved onto the "Here's your new laws I wrote by myself!  GET OUT OF MY NEW HOUSE OLD LADY" portion of leadership.  That's my favorite part, because it always ends in people smiling and holding hands while we listen to Mike & The Mechanics. 

-Well, that's interesting.  I've always thought those sorts of harm reduction programs Canada has for drug users were pretty useful, but apparently providing a safe place for heroin users to shoot up hasn't helped stem new HIV infections, crime, or lessened the overdose rate.  It hasn't really made it worse, but it's failed to produce any benefits.  At all.  I guess we really should just kill all the junkies.  Wait, I don't mean that.  No, really, I don't.  I like junkies.  My mom is a big time junkie, and she's the tits.  Seriously, she shoots up junk in her toes, always stealing my VCR, I love her to pieces.  I'm taking her to Coney Island next week.  She'll go score, I'll ride the Cyclone.  Awesome.  A perfect Wednesday.

-I love the solution to making saving the rain forest profitable for those who live in The Amazon.  The solution?  Just ask for money.  That's it, just say "hey, we'll cut this down unless you give us money."  I mean, I think that sounds kind of like blackmail.  But it's just so ballsy I don't think I care.

Asia

-The king of Tonga is finally giving up his powers, leading me to wonder how many places are still rocking Kings and Queens with some serious muscle.  I'm sure there's an episode of Sunset Tan to distract me from such concerns.  Shiny things!

Middle East And Africa

-There's a nice little piece here about how the Arab world feels about the American presidential candidates, especially where it's pointed out that the main reason the Arab world sort of seems to not care is that they have moved into the Bill Hicks phase of political thought, the part where you just go "The puppet on the left is more to my liking" and then you change the tone of your voice and say "Well, I prefer the puppet on the right."  Then somebody starts talking about the Green party and everybody breaks their spine rolling their eyes.

Europe

-As mentioned above, the Economist missed the start of the Russian conflict by hours, so here's their article where they predict bad times coming and lock in the right to say "Told you so."

Britain

-If you're an Olympic fanatic waiting for the games to get going again, here's an article about how horribly London is handling the whole "get ready for 2012" set up. 

-If you're not an Olympic fanatic, but you like cutesy shit, here's an article all about how a group of people are trying to get Roosevelt Island style cable cars, which apparently are nowhere near as useless as that Spider-Man movie led me to believe.

Business

-This article about the Microsoft Vista ad campaign is pretty fucking great, especially because they take the screws to them for those awful "you were using Vista the whole time" videos, and even more so because you can tell whoever wrote it really likes the Cripsin Porter & Bogusky company.  (And if you don't like CPB, then you really need to check your taste.  Anybody who hires Peter Stormare deserves a Heisman trophy.)

Finance and Economics

-An anonymous essay from a risk manager at a large global bank who takes two pages to tell you that the credit crisis isn't his fault because he and risk managers have a hard time saying no to financial chiefs.  If you read this, and you feel sorry for this whining asshole who clearly cares more about his job then any of the people who are now living in a Holiday Inn, then you and I probably wouldn't get along.  And I can cook a mean ass quesadilla, so that's totally on you.

Science and Technology

-The world of fingerprinting is finally going to be more like CSI, and something tells me that rubber glove sales are going to go up.  There's no way to distill this article, but rest assured--science is making progress!  On...you know, science type stuff!

Books and Arts

-Well, if you're going to read a story of love between an American and Maori tribesman, that's fine.  But I really don't think you should get to call it Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story.  That name demands something--well, cooler than a true to life relationship book.

-Here's a story that I'll be checking out as soon as possible--The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia, a non-fiction account of the Soviet Union's embrace of impoverished American's fleeing the Great Depression, the majority of whom slunk into "a living Hades of torture, rape, slave labor, starvation, frostbite and death, shared with millions of others."  It's the perfect antidote to a good mood, and I hate good moods.

-The Economist thinks that Tropic Thunder is a real fine film, and it recommends you go see it.  It goes o far as to say that when it's over, "you want to stand up during the final credits and clap."  Let me be the first to remind you that The Economist also thought the Indiana Jones movie was a bang-up classic.

Obituary: Alexander Solzhenitsyn

-He got the cover, and yes, I knew who he was.  Like a lot of pretentious assholes before me, I too have plowed deep into the heart of Gulag Archipelago, his magnum opus that makes most people's definition of magnum opus look sort of like penny-ante circus acts--it's safe to say that there's a really short list of people who actually put their actual lives on the line in purely intellectual pursuits, and that list has Solzhenitsyn in a proud place.  While not much of the obituary nor the cover feature dives deep into the talk show points that a years old article in the Believer hung it's hat on, here's a little bit:  He hid out inside various secluded locations to type, muting the sound of the punching keys with cotton so that his neighbors wouldn't point him out to the Stalinist hordes, he occasionally typed in the dark underneath wool blankets in the summer so that he couldn't be caught, and he committed all kinds of various thievery and lies to steal enough paper--again, because that would have led those in power to track him down.  While it's a depressing black mark that he later embraced Putin, it's also understandable given that here was a man who gave everything he could to struggle against tyranny, only to find that he was unjustly mistreated by his countrymen and embraced by the West as a weapon against his motherland.  Still-the Archipelago is one of the most important creations of the century, and his legacy will remain.  This, motherfuckers--this is what it means to be a badass.