Comics Of The Weak: I Am So Done With You 2008, And You Can Shove Super-Santa Claus Right Up Your

DC Universe Holiday Special # 1
Written by Dan Didio and oh who the fuck cares
Art by jesus christ what a waste of fucking time quitely
Published by you guys are a bunch of fucking idiots

It's a piece of shit, obviously.  Apparently when 14 year old Dan Didio was sitting in church fondling himself under the hymnal, he was thinking "man this birth of Christ story needs some fucking Aquaman in it" and so he grew up and wrote it and convinced/forced somebody to draw it.  Maybe come Easter we can get the crucification story while the Teen Titans stand around crying and then they say "this is just like when the original Terra died" while the Son of God looks up at the heavens and screams "I'm not dying for these LOSERS, get ME DOWN."

Hellblazer # 250
Written by Brian Azzarello, Jamie Delano, Dave Gibbons, China Mieville & Peter Milligan
Art by Eddie Campbell, Giuseppe Camuncolic, Stefano Landini, Sean Phillips, David Lloyd & Rafael Grampa
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

Five stories here, the only one missing is the story of how John Constantine would handle standing in a line with a stupid idiot who stands around on her goddamn bluetooth headset and her tight as sequined fucking jeans that send her cellulite boiling over the waistband like she's a fucking tube of toothpaste while she barks random shit like "they don't even have someone here making sure people get in the right line, some people are in line because their flights got canceled but some people are just in line because they want to check their baggage and those people are in the wrong line" and you have to wonder, don't you, you have to wonder, how fucking stupid are you?  Really?  Wouldn't John want to know?  How fucking stupid you are?  Because if they did have some magic line monitor, some angry dude or pissed-off lady who has to stand around and tell six hours worth of idiots "hey, this is for canceled and this is for baggage check", then that's one less person who can stand up front at the line, deal with canceled flights and baggage check and whatever.  Sure, maybe your magic line-monitor isn't qualified to handle the problems creating the line, but who fucking knows, maybe this is their Rudolph moment, where it turns out they can do more then herd people, they can fix your problems. 

Ghost Rider # 30
Written by Jason Aaron
Art by Tan Eng Huat & Jose Villarrubia
Published by Marvel Comics

For fuck's sake, there's at least 120 people in front of me, that means there's at least 160 people in front of you, and did we need you running your mouth?  Did we?  Is that what this awful little clusterfuck of a morning/afternoon/day, needed?  A loudmouth idiot who bitches about the formation of the lines?  Hell, you don't even seem to care that your flight got canceled.  Oh, and now you're going to make your grossly obese 11 year old wait in the line, jesus christ, your kid can't get that fat unless it's biologically cursed or if you've just been babysitting it with a tub of Crisco and a motherfucking snow shovel, "eat, eat, mama wants to be sure that no one ever looks at you without recoiling in fear", and what do you say when you leave, for all to hear "Goddammit, I'm gonna find out where this line begins and where it starts."

Same fucking place, moron.  Starts?  Begins?

Same fucking place.

[Preceding reviews written on mobile device]

The Mighty Avengers # 20
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Lee Weeks, Jim Cheung, Carlo Pagulayan & Jeffrey Huet
Published by Marvel Comics

You know what never gets old in super-hero comics? Crying.  Big old weepy weep displays of the eye faucets turned full stream, a couple of panels where a trail of snot rolls down the upper lip, just wah-wah-wah, on display. Good old Mighty Avengers agrees, and they deliver the goods as only a Secret Invasion spin-off (motto:  We Never Stop With These Things!) can.  It's Ant-Man, the prep for his wife's funeral, the car ride where he gets the short version of Marvel event comics, starting with House of M and leading up until the Battlestar Galactica rip-off.  Lucky dude gets all that in just four pages! Marvel likes Ant-Man more than Ant-Man fans!  Ant-Man fans had to read about these fucking stories for years!  Then it's funeral time, where the big cry-cry is taking over by the big yell-yell, only for Thor--the dude who put this chick in the fucking ground--stepping up to remind everybody what really matters.  Empty shtick. No, heroism.  Something...three meals a day? Eight glasses of water?  Red wine in moderation?  Don't eat asbestos?  Who gives a shit.  Fuck you Ant-Man, fuck your wife.  Glad she's dead.  She was boring, and you're a crybaby.

The Punisher # 65
Written by Gregg Hurwitz
Art by Laurence Campbell & Lee Loughridge
Published by Marvel MAX

Just once, just one goddamn time, it would be nice if a mother didn't immediately tell her scared child "Keep your eyes closed" after some other random person does something disgusting and violent.  If she would see a guy save her by stabbing a drug dealer in the neck and turn to her kid and...anything.  Vomit on the kids hair, say "Hey, that weird dude in the skull outfit just saved us, look what he did, wow", anything other than "Keep your eyes closed."  Of course, that's the kind of boring ass "seen it" shit that every issue of Gregg Hurwitz's "not like Ennis, really, see how all these Mexicans talk? Shit is so especial," run on the title has been like.  Page after page of generic rip-offs from every vengeance type story ever told.  Oh yeah, there's the moment when inspiration strikes after the story ends--apparently all it really took for an entire Mexican village to stand up for themselves was for one crazy ass lunatic to roll in to town and carve motherfuckers up.  No, the prospect of rape, torture, the loss of a mother or child--that wasn't going to do it.  They just needed some white guy to get the ball rolling.  What a piece of shit comic.

Robin # 181
Written by Fabian Nicieza
Art by Freddie Williams II & Guy Major
Published by DC Comics

Ha ha ha Robin, who will you go to prom with now? Fake-ass high school or not, no girl would want to be seen with a dude who looks like the rally cap version of Two-Face!  Grit it up, you cheesy Batman stand-in, grit it up like gritting it up owes you some money!

You know, despite how gross it is that the entire back half of Robin's head now looks like ground beef has been lathered on it with a paint spackle, it's still far preferable to that dumb black hood thing he wears to conceal it.  Oh well.  Maybe his fashion sense went wherever 40% of his epidermis did.

Tonal Shift!

Thunderbolts # 127
Written by Andy Diggle
Art by Roberto de la Torre, Frank Martin & Giovanni Kosoki
Published by Marvel Comics

Neither extraordinarily well-drawn nor that well-written, yet still the comic that's ended up being the most well done version of Marvel's "get a bunch of people to beat the shit out of each other" comic output, Thunderbolts is sort of like an impressive mixtape released for free while everybody waits for the studio album.  There's no way anything will be allowed to happen here that's big and game-changing for the Marvel status quo--note how one of the characters featured here was actually killed and thrown out of a window last week, yet said character, still alive here in Thunderbolts, shows no evidence he'll be confronting Norman Osborn with all the petty anger of a jilted lover; one has to assume that Diggle has a short list of what he can and can not do with these characters.  Yet it all still sort of works, despite an ugly, limited color palate and a tendency to rely on explosive language--when a full splash page rests on a yellow and red (as well as underlined) "Kiss My Ass!", you know you're in no danger of reading something that's going to innovate fight comics.  Of course, that's exactly what Thunderbolts is supposed to be, like Mark Millar's Enemy of the State or Skrull Kill Krew, is just straight up action movie comics.  Since there's never going to be a movie made where Colin Farrell, Topher Grace & Willem Dafoe do actually team up as their movie alter-egos to kill people, that's probably okay.  It would be preferable, however, if it wasn't so dumb.

Wormwood Gentleman Corpse: Down The Pub # 1
By Ben Templesmith
Published by IDW

Isn't there a rule out there that you're not allowed to release mash-up collections of rarely seen one-off short pieces having little correlation to a series beyond existence until you've hit some kind of "anniversary" issue?  All this one-shot does is point to how much Wormwood comes across as John Constantine-as-zombie character sometimes.  Partner up "dull anthology of one-offs" with "comic designed to serialize an art book", there you go, that's a comic?  A commercial for monographs?  What a snooze.

-Tucker Stone, 2008

Over at comiXology, we're counting down the best comics of the year--at this point, you can catch picks #30-11.  The top ten will be up this wednesday. Comics of the Weak & Music of the Weak will return post-holiday, Economist Vs. Idiot & The Virgin Read will wrap up their year later this week and there's plenty more of new content on the way.

Comments

[Mithel]

Looks like somebody's got a case of the Mondays.

[Chris Jones]

I thought that the first page, with Krypto having the antlers and Supergirl bringing presents to people, was kind of adorable.

I didn't read the rest of it, though. What do I look like, somebody who buys holiday specials?

[Jog]

John would use magic!

[Tucker Stone]

In the holiday specials defense, it is kind of worth six dollars to have the one comic in history that will feature Aquaman save the Virgin Mary from pirates on a speedboat by using mind control over a giant squid and then get to see him tear up when he realizes he's the only one of the Three Kings to have not brought the Son of God a birthday/x-mas present. Like--there's no way they are ever going to do something like this again. It's a complete one-time thing.

That being said i couldn't read anything after reading the Aquaman thing. I doubt I ever will.

[Chris Jones]

0____0

Well, I can't exactly NOT read the fucking thing now.

[Kenny]

What? That's seriously what happens in the DCU holiday book? You had me at "Aquaman saves the Virgin Mary from pirates...!" Then, as the sentence continued, it just got better and better. There's not one part of that sentence that didn't have me near orgasmic. Dude, seriously, if you can't praise a comic with Aquaman saving The Savior (from pirates! on a speedboat! with the help of a giant squid!), then I feel bad for you.

Now, if only Kanye West would make a song about it.... Aquaman Walks?

[Kenny]

"the rally cap version of Two-Face"

Wow, this week's review is like Eric B & Rakim's "Paid in Full" album. There's nothing you said that isn't a classic for the ages.

I ask you, where is this in the Economist v the Idiot? Why has Econ v Idiot been nothing but blank pages for the past few weeks? Or, are the blank pages your statement on the Economist's take on India (2 of the last 4 issues, bitch!). The China v India issue was like the current event babyman's version of Batman v Superman. (Seriously, I *really* miss Economist v the Idiot!)

[David Uzumeri]

To be completely fair, there was a Joe Kelly joint later on in the issue that was actually pretty great, "Day Without Sirens." I'd recommend at least giving it a shot, since it's actually a moderately intelligently thought-out and written narrative as the thin-ass sausage inside the massive hot dog bun of fecal, excretory shit (redundancy on purpose) that was every other story.

And yeah, that Didio/Churchill joint was a once in a lifetime storm of "no, are you serious, what in the fuck was anybody thinking?" No wonder he can't edit a comic book, the dude's prose reads like --- what the fuck is this???

"I have heard of this pirate as he has heard of me. He is cold hearted and not prone to lie. I stand motionless and turn inside myself as my mind reaches out to the sea. I sense HIM close by. He has been following me for miles. Following the color and sparkles of my shirt like a glistening lure."

It's like Robert Jordan threw up all over Dragonlance novels and the result got interpreted by a fourteen year old kid trying to emulate the prose from his duct-taped-together Dungeon Master's Guide.

[Tucker Stone]

Uzumeri: I think that last little description of yours wins you a permanent spot as someone who can take over these write-ups anytime you want. Robert Jordan? Dungeon Master's Guide? That's pretty funny.

Kenny: The music countdown was like a bowling ball through the plate glass schedule 'round here, and something had to be left on the floor. Econ v. Idiot was the loser. It's coming back though, don't worry. I miss it too!

[Kenny]

I've been thinking about this as I've been killing the day at work (wow, working during a holiday week is a waste....). I think that DCU holiday book might be the best comic of the year. I was going to give my nod to Or Else #5, but nothing Huizenga did is on the level of Aquaman saving Jesus's mom from pirates. I wish every comic published could be that crazy. It's like looking into the sun without even squinting.

[Grendel]

Daaamn I hear laxatives may help?

Either that, or stop reading pathetic superhero comics? A sub genre does not an industry make.

[David Uzumeri]

Yeah, man, fuck those pathetic superhero comics! FUCK those guys! Always reading their Superman, looking down their noses at my Ganges and Love and Rockets, jerking off furiously over Michael Turner pinups. That's all ALL of them do, EVER, because they're pumped out by the Mindless Superhero Fan Factory and set loose on society to do low-level IT work at universities, slavishly buy comics they hate and repel women. That's how it works.

And, I mean, Tucker reviews superhero comics, so clearly those are the only things he reads, right? It's not like there's a link to his comiXology column in this very same fucking article that makes the otherwise clear.

Seriously, what the fuck is up with this neverending drive-by commenting mentality?

[Grendel]

David, when one seems angry, frustrated indeed constipated by the superhero comics he reads, as evidenced by these rather nonsensical statements called "reviews" it's a sign that maybe he should only bother with original material. Not things that trade on originality that was around in the 1960's.

[Tucker Stone]

hey david, wake me up when the "if you don't like it don't read it" guy is finished.

[Chris Jones]

Tucker, these people NEVER finish. That's what makes them so insufferable.

[Matthew J. Brady]

When Tucker writes this entertainingly about comics he doesn't like, I hope he never stops reading them. His suffering is my gain.

Also, am I reading you right that Robin got the back of his scalp melted off or something? That's pretty fucking crazy. I would love to see Burt Ward act that one out. In this instance, a statement like "Holy head wound, Batman!" would actually be appropriate.

[kilmoonie]

I was hoping to get some sort of commentary on China Mieville's involvement on that Hellblazer from you Tucker.

JR