The Boys # 26
Written by Garth Ennis
Art by John Higgins
Published by Dynamite Entertainment
If you're going to have all the X-Men clone joke characters be racist, why not have them be really specifically racist, instead of it be sort of half-hearted? It's still going to be offensive, which is obviously the point, but the way it is now it's just too broad and lazy, too much of the whole "black people talk like this, white people talk like this." Less Steve Harvey, more Paul Mooney. Turn the burners up, and get some really randy shit going down. This is just another issue of a storyline that needs to get moving--there's another shot of all the nerdy characters taking a shower together (Which, c'mon. It's not science. If you're going to end one issue with all of them jerking each other off, you don't do group shower next. You either do group shower first, and follow that up with jerking each other off. Raise the stakes. Everybody knows that blowjobs follow handjobs. Circle these boys up.) After getting that out of the way, there's another moment of Hughie screwing around and dodging questions with his super-hero girlfriend--and while he does have sex with her, Ennis misses the really obvious joke, which would have been for him to fantasize about the group shower he just saw while he's fucking his girlfriend. The issue closes with another moment where the Butcher guy implies that he's getting ready to do something violent. Absolutely everything else is all talk, and while the Mother's Milk portions seem like they have potential, they also seem like a copy of the earlier "Hughie hunts homophobes" story--and the X-conversations are too embarrassed to drop the pretense and go full on hate speech. The whole comic--it's like jerking off while wearing a condom. Who does that?
Detective Comics # 852
Written by Paul Dini
Art by Dustin Nguyen, Derek Fridolfs & John Kalisz
Published by DC Comics
Probably the greatest event comic cross-over of all time, because it only bothers the cover design and leaves the story inside completely untouched, Faces of Evil could go down as the best marketing decision that DC has made in years, since the last time they made a good one, which was probably killing Superman. They don't even have to make connections between the Faces of Evil books. They just institute a cover style, and leave the insides alone. Inside, it's attempt number god-knows, but-too-fucking-many, from Paul Dini to find some way to make Hush a character somebody would want to read about instead of Maxi Zeus or Orphan Killer or a monkey that solves crime. Which, sure, some people probably do want to read about Hush, but some people also let their kids eat paint chips so they can change diapers for forty years. One wonders if Dustin Nguyen knew what he was signing on for when he took the job of doing the art for one of the top tier DC Comics--he probably thought he was going to get to do something entertaining, and that it was going to be about Batman. Instead, he just gets to be involved in a now six month long attempt--with no end in sight--to tell stories about a villain who has nothing to offer except a fan base made up of people who dress like him for Halloween.
Hellboy: The Wild Hunt # 2
Written by Mike Mignola
Art by Duncan Fegredo, Guy Davis & Dave Stewart
Published by Dark Horse Comics
Hellboy stories of late have the tendency towards blender comics, where the various standard types get thrown in, mixed around, and dispensed. Same consistency as the last, but a different taste due to the new ingredient. (More pig monster this time, less snake lady.) What makes it stand out from it's contemporaries, when it does stand out, is the level of craft involved--the delivery of background information is compelling, the art is top-notch (with Duncan Fegredo clearly having moved from Mignola fill-in to qualified replacement) and the comic--which is actually somewhat shorter than usual--being a fuller read than the ones it competes with. Due to the general lack of any distinct and recurring characters besides Hellboy--basically every monster or helper robot that shows up always sounds the same and behaves like the stock character they are--as well as the general repetition of Mignola's obsession with various versions of Monster Manual standouts, it's rare that continuity Hellboy is as interesting to read as it's sister title, the B.P.R.D. At the same time, The Wild Hunt, as well as the previous Corben mini-series, marks a sign that things are moving in a new direction. While still playing out the whole "what is Hellboy's purpose and what will he do" stuff, it's becoming more of an experiment in world building; where Hellboy goes in his world, so follows Mignola's imagination. If the art weren't as nice as it is to look at, it might not be a ride worth taking on such a frequent basis. But it is nice, hell, it's great, and it's matched by a back-up story that reads like it was cut from David B's Babel series. (Minus all the whiny "life in France was hard so I lived my life in books" stuff.)
The Punisher # 1
Written by Rick Remender
Art by Jerome Opena & Dan Brown
Published by Marvel Comics
Wouldn't it be nice if there were more comic book characters like that Chris Brown guy? He sure can dance. People seem to like him, and he had some pretty successful songs last year. You look at a populist list of songs, like last years Billboard top 25, and there's like three white guy songs on there, and one of them is that terrible Coldplay song. The others are some white guy at a piano doing what Timbaland tells him, and some band called Finger Eleven. And everything else? Cool looking black guys and women. Lil Wayne, Usher and Timbaland, Rihanna and Alicia Keys. Chris Brown, hell, he's on like four or five of the 25 biggest songs of the year. Yet it's time to do another number one comic book, and you get yet another Punisher comic. Another moody white guy doing the same old "look how many times I read that Batman Versus Superman comic that Frank Miller wrote" thing. Run fast, talk in terse thought bubbles about how much preparation you had to do to beat the Sentry character, say things like "I've only got one shot at this" and there, you have it, another comic book. Bitch, please.
Secret Six # 5
Written by Gail Simone
Art by Nicola Scott, Doug Hazlewood, Rodney Ramos & Jason Wright
Published by DC Comics
Taking a page from Dennis Lehane and then changing the page so it reads "throwing bricks" instead of "throwing bowling balls", this issue has two stories--one that happens all the time, because it's in Sin City or last years Black Panther or 24 (it's called torture the stoic badass)--and the second, which is about what happens when you watch the rest of the Six hang out in a hotel room throwing up and making decisions. While this is probably the least funny of all of the issues so far, and it's a little generic at times (will the team rescue their kidnapped teammate? check yes or no.) it's decent enough. That's how Secret Six works though--it's the same level of pleasant soap operatic check-in that everything else is. You just pick whether you want your flavor to involve Catman or Cyclops.
Zap Comix # 1
By Robert Crumb
Published by Print Mint, 1967?
You know, all the regular Crumb stuff in here is pretty great--the sick, fucked up humor stuff, the grossly offensive stuff--but the thing that really stands out, mostly because it's not something that makes up a big portion of his work (at least the work that's reprinted in those extensive Fantagraphics comic and sketchbook collections) is the portion in the middle of this, the part called "Abstract Expressionist Ultra Super Modernistic Comics." It's not like the Whiteman stuff, or the fucking "Eat Nigger Hearts" advertisement at the close, where you've seen it 800 times and read 800 things about it, and heard Crumb talk about why he did it, or what it meant, or etc, or so on. The "Abstract" portion is just that--a hodgepodge of really kick ass art, connected in a way that defies explanation. It's probably not Better Comics just because it lacks the scholarship (or Talk) that the other, more well-known stuff has, but it's still Crumb that you don't see a lot of, making it Crumb that seems kind of fresh and new. It's also really fucking cheap.
-Tucker Stone, 2009
Wait, isn't Hush just Darkman? And wasn't Darkman just Sam Raimi's rejected Shadow script where he changed the origin so he wouldn't get sued? Waitasecond was that asshole walking around with the sledgehammer at NYCC last year supposed to be Hush?
Posted by: Sean Witzke | 2009.01.12 at 00:57
They should have 100 Bullets' Milo, The Unknown Soldier, Hush and Darkman all team up.
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2009.01.12 at 09:58
...to fight the alchemical hotsex of Rebis.
Posted by: TimCallahan | 2009.01.12 at 19:35
Rebis, of course. Jesus, this is ridiculous. Does Marvel have a bandaged face character who wears a trenchcoat? Even if you make Rebis count for all the various Negative people--ugh.
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2009.01.12 at 22:49
Newman Xeno, too. And Willem Dafoe in Once Upon a Time in Mexico. And... jeez there are a lot of these guys.
Posted by: Sean Witzke | 2009.01.12 at 23:04
The earliest example I can remember of the bandaged-up protagonist was the old Bogart/Bacall noir, "Dark Passage." I'm pretty sure that's what 100 Bullets was referencing, at least.
Posted by: Richard | 2009.01.13 at 04:58
I love the idea of Hush leading all of Gotham's children dressed like mummies in some sort of Pied Piper thing off of a pier. They should just remake Hush as the new King Tut. That'd be way cooler than this crap.
Still, as lame as this issue was, it was miles above the hilariously-failed-shock-and-awe of the Heart of Hush arc.
And I sort of smiled at Catwoman's pun on the last page, but then again I'm abnormally vulnerable to godawful puns.
Posted by: David Uzumeri | 2009.01.13 at 11:50
I kind of admire Dini's chutzpah at brazenly lifting Patricia Highsmith's Ripley for his villain. Call me over-optimistic, but I think there's some potential pulp fun in a sociopath impersonating Bruce Wayne.
Oh, & the first bandaged protag was the Invisible Man.
Posted by: Aaron Strange | 2009.01.13 at 13:26