Comics Of The Weak: If You Close Your Eyes Long Enough You Can Pretend You're Just Bouncing Up And Down On A Wrought Iron Fence

Nana Vol. 14
By AI Yazawa
Published by Viz

Jesus Christ, comethefuckon.  The same artist on every page?  Boring.  All the characters are distinct and recognizable, and their behavior makes sense both within this volume and the overall series!  Who the fuck does this lady think she is?  Where's the guest artist.  Where's the guest writer.  Sure, it's important or whatever that the series comes out on a regular basis, that it's never late or anything, but c'mon, that's just take-it-for-granted shit.  Everybody knows that the longer it takes a series, the more time that it fails to show up, that's how you get a classic comic.  And on top of that, all this emotionally resonant shit happens, but it's like "yeah, whatever, you've obviously been building to that shocking turn of events, that's why it's so startling."  Fucking horseshit.  They should just throw shit out there all willy-nilly, have characters show up from out of nowhere drawn by different artists, have their two panel climax and then disappear again.  This shit is so correct and well-done--man, fuck that.  That ain't comics.

Final Crisis # 6
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by JG Jones, Carlos Pacheco, Doug Mahnke, Marco Rudy, Christian Alamy, Jesus Merino, Alex Sinclair & Pete Pantazis
Published by DC Comics

According to the writer, Final Crisis is Girl Talk mash-up as comics, with all the "oh shit I just threw up on my penis" implied by that.  Really?  Fantastic.  Too bad that a William Burroughs cut-up comic would have been pretty awesome, and this is just a shit version of that, and that means the possibly great version, one where the marquee characters can be involved, one involving Grant Morrison, one hyped and prostituted, is pretty much going to be a hard sell now that we've had the watered down and boring twaddle that is the overall Final Crisis thus far--the term "ambitious botch job" might be a good description.  When it's done right, there's moments here that work about as well as an effective movie trailer--it's just too bad that there's no movie to watch at the end.  Like, you can watch that Blade Runner Final Cut trailer, and whoa baby, it looks like a fucking great movie, right?  That two minutes of ball-filling magic?  On top of that, there's this colossally sexy flick behind it!  Of course, you can also get a kick out of watching Will Smith in the second official I Am Legend trailer, saying shit he never says in the movie, hearing music that's way better than what they came up with, and at the end of the day, the movie you get is a dumb-as-fuck two hour episode of Survivor instead of the "jesus, am I gonna love a Will Smith movie?" reaction the trailer instilled.  How nice would it have been if the Superman Returns And Is He Is Pissed moment in the final pages been if any of the characters, or any of the previous issues, showed one lick of interest that Superman was not, in fact, around?  How nice would it have been if the Tattooed Man's rise to greatness had been built by something other than a hideously drawn and poorly scripted "let's be a good guy" tie-in?  How nice would it have been if the torture and eventual sacrifice of Batman had been treated like a key factor in any of the previous chapters in Final Crisis itself--or if even Batman, the actual character, been involved?  If the Green Lantern's never-say-quit, even if it kills us, shit had been given more than a cursory "still trying" mention?  How much would any of these hit or miss, sort of cool, climactic moments had been built on a foundation that wasn't so eerily similar to Joe Matt's "cumshots only" VHS compilations?  This isn't a comic that should have been made with one artist, it should have been drawn by hundreds, it shouldn't have featured a couple hundred of characters, it should have had every possible thing DC had the license for, it shouldn't have had a couple of extraneous tie-ins that sucked ass all around, it should have stood alone, a blistering, unfriendly comic that looked at everything that Seven Soldiers, Rock of Ages and The Invisibles was and said "I'm nothing like that, I'm something new, I'm something better, I'm the thing Flex Mentallo promised was coming" and it shouldn't have pretended to kill Batman.  It should have attempted to kill itself.

The Amazing Spider-Man # 583
Written by Mark Waid & Zeb Wells
Art by Barry Kitson, Mark Farmer, Andres Mossa, Karl Kesel, Frank D'Armata & Todd Nauck
Published by Marvel Comics

So, yeah.  This comic isn't really that hard to get unless you're really desperate to have one that has a stupid cover, the sort of cover that makes you go "Wow, Ted Rall could draw a better caricature of Barack Obama then that and Ted Rall couldn't draw a recognizable version of Pac-Man."  Inside, it's a story about how Peter Parker goes speed-dating, is a shitty shitbag shithead loser and has shitty shitbag shithead loser friends, but the best part is when he shows up late and meets two girls who are getting shitfaced drunk in some dive bar.  Now, if you've ever been that guy, that guy who shows up when two girls have spent the whole night getting preternaturally wasted, then you know what happens next: you say, well, this fucking sucks, and you take the two wasted girls back to wherever it is they sleep so that they can wake up and cry in the morning, or if you're just not that close with them, or they live far away, you pay a cabbie to take them home.  Because, you know: they're drunk.  You should never leave drunk chicks at the club, unless you enjoy spending the rest of your life feeling responsible because you left a drunk girl at a club and she got herself fucking raped, or had unprotected sex with a stranger and caught a case of the HIV.  So yeah, tough shit, That's No Fun:  life would be easier if you didn't have friends.  Of course, that's what you do if you're not a shitty little shitbag fucking nerd.  If you're Peter Parker, you take one of the girls home and leave the other one, who is just as drunk, in the hands of a complete fucking stranger, even better, a fucking stranger who is a dude wearing skintight brown pants to match his skintight green t-shirt.  Because, hey, if Spider-Man can't trust a strange dude in skintight clothes with a completely wasted chick, then seriously, who can Spider-Man fucking trust?

After getting that out of the way, you get to see why this comic ended up on the news, which is because Barack Obama shows up and says "What up my homie" to Spider-Man and Spider-Man is all like "not much, this super-hero game be fresh as all hell" and than some other guy shows up and says "Boom B Clock, Lord Have Mercy" and then everybody stares at each other and realizes, hey, you know what, no, I don't fucking care if super-hero comic book companies go out of business, and I don't care if super-hero comic book artists have to draw greeting cards, because hey, this is it, this right here, and this. is. fucking. crap.  It's shit, completely fucking stupid, and not in a way that a six year old would like, and we checked on that, and the six year old said "is this a video game?  will it give me a boner?  can i have a dollar?"  Don't fucking care at all, and on an even greater scale:  care more that there's people that do.  From a business standpoint, sure:  if it gets 'em on the news, if it lines up the civilians, print a comic on the skin of a starving child, etch it into their flesh while they're still alive and begging for a sandwich.  But let's not pretend that it somehow is a good thing in any other way.  This comic is a cheap whore, and it reads, looks, and behaves like one.  Ha fucking ha, Marvel Comics.  You win again!

Batman Confidential # 25
Written by Andrew Kreisberg
Art by Scott McDaniel & Andy Owens
Published by DC Comics

You're not supposed to care about the politics of a writers or artist, because it's really mean and unprofessional and it's a surefire way to alienate yourself from...well, just yourself, because it's a silly personal hobby, it's not like you read these things in a clubhouse where Spanky won't stop touching Alfalfa's thigh no matter how many times he mentions "personal space" but if you've seen one of Scott McDaniel's action drawings of Jesus Christ, it's an image you never forget, the same way you never forget the first time somebody told you that "that was when I carried you dawg, that's why there's only one set of footprints" story--it just shapes the man's work forever.  You start spending all your time looking for Christian easter eggs in the crowd scenes.

B.P.R.D. The Black Goddess # 1
Written by Mike Mignola & John Arcudi
Art by Guy Davis & Dave Stewart
Published by Dark Horse Comics

Blah blah blah blah BPRD is a good comic although the cover designs are passing back from the land of repititious where it's tolerable and quaint into a world where the repetitious nature of black backgrounds and abe sapian staring vacantly at the reader are getting old, it's just vacant abe sapian with his vacant eyes and his sorrow and his grief for christsakes just get somebody to lay him, just get him laid, just find a mermaid or a merman or a tuna or anything, just give him something to have sex with it can be off panel but some joy in his miserable blank faced dead eyed life, and sometimes, just sometimes, it's okay if you want to use the color blue inside the comic, or the color blue inside the comic, or the color blue inside the comic, or any color beyond this (gritty purple don't count) you're starting to turn into a vertigo book with all this brown and black all the time whatever still better than a lead pipe in the eye or every issue of the Justice Society, Savage Dragon, the current Wildstorm output, the original Image output, the entire history of the Impact line, Rai and the Future Force, the sixth season of 24, and the fourth Die Hard movie and every song by the Black-Eyed Peas and if we're being honest everything that REM has done in the last ten years.  Don't rest on laurels, bitches.

G.I. Joe # 1
Written by Chuck Dixon
Art by Robert Atkins & Joe Clayton
Published by IDW

Wow, here's a keeper.  In the sense that it's like...what the fuck is this thing, it's barely readable--physically, because the lettering is just a shade smaller than normal comics, not Acme Novelty, but still too close--the art is just fucking atrocious, even on the "grade it on a curve because most of these guys use Wizard Magazine for photo referencing scale and also because if you don't grade it on a curve there's no excuse for spending four bucks", the dialog is just merciless claptrap: "You're a danger junkie.  You need a check-up from the neck-up, bro."  (That's a white guy, at least.)  The foreshadowing is like a brick to the head of an infant: ugly, loud and blatant.  "You want a better class of bad guy?" asks one character--Like one that is related to a fucking snake?  Would you like that "bro?"  It's the sort of comic that a professional comic book writer probably has nightmares about, in that they wake up in a cold sweat and their spouse has to reassure them:  "Don't worry honey, don't worry.  Chuck Dixon wrote that G.I. Joe thing, not you.  It's going to be okay.  No, I know it seemed real."

Manhunter # 38
Written by Mark Andreyko
Art by Michael Gaydos, Dennis Calero, Fernando Blanco & Jose Villarrubia
Published by DC Comics

Bleek:  But the jazz, you know if we had to dep...if we had to depend upon black people to eat, we would starve to death.  I mean, you've been out there, you're on the bandstand, you look out into the audience, what do you see?  You see Japanese, you see, you see West Germans, you see, you know, Slavolic, anything except our people -- it makes no sense.  It incenses me that our own people don't realize our heritage, our own culture, this is our music, man.

Shadow Henderson:  That's bullshit.

Bleek:  Why?

Shadow Henderson:  It's all bullshit!  Everything, everything you just said is bullshit!  Out of all the people in the world, you never gave anybody else, and look...that's right, the people don't come because you grandiose motherfuckers don't play shit that they like.  If you played the shit that they like, then people would come, simple as that.

Nightwing # 152
Written by Peter Tomasi
Art by Don Kramer & Jay Leister
Published by DC Comics

There are two pages in here where Nightwing stares deeply (or blankly, or sexually, or with his eyes closed, who knows, he keeps his mask on) into five different trophy cases, each of them with a different Bat-costume in them.  In the middle of the two pages is a full-page spread of Nightwing putting his hand on one of the cases.  That means that he stood directly in front of five different trophy cases a total of ten times.  All for the purpose of expressing his--grief?  Obsessive compulsive disorder?  Overall lameness?  It's not for the story, it's not internal to the character's logic--it's solely for the reader to experience with him, except...Nightwing isn't real, he doesn't mean anything.  His personality, over the course of--hell, not even his existence as Nightwing, but just over this series alone--makes no sense whatsoever.  He's a playboy, or he's in love with a crippled nerd, or he's in love with an 18 foot tall alien monster, or he's happy and joyous, or he's really big on identifying as an ethnic Gypsy, or he's a supermodel, or he's depressed that he's not Batman, or he's happy he's not Batman, or he's a rape victim, or he's not a rape victim but just unwilling to push girls off him when they straddle his penis in a rainstorm, or he's the guy who beat the Joker to death, or he's just a fucking chump fill-in.  He's whatever, he's so utilitarian they could call him Leatherman because it would be more honest and you could open tin cans with him if you felt like it.  So who, whatever, gives, all the time, a, like it gets asked and there's no answer, fuck.  Douchenuzzling cocksucker, man, this series will be missed.  It's what super-heroes are all about, it teaches lessons.  It's so goddamn meta, you can find it all here.

Punisher War Zone # 5
Written by Garth Ennis
Art by Steve Dillon & Matt Hollingsworth
Published by Marvel Comics

It would have been interesting for Garth to have written it so that the female police officer had to take off her glasses while hiding in the tub and listening to a mob enforcer masturbate to a copy of a magazine called Asian Rampage, which is probably the Chinese version of Highlights for Children, because it would have given Dillon a chance to do "crazy eyes", which is something he's pretty good at.  Otherwise, there isn't really anything to complain about here--you either like it when your comics are written with a bit of class and proficiency while coupled with art that adds a depth and mood that words alone can't provide, or you like, you know, the opposite.  When they suck ass and you have to make up bullshit about how they don't.  Cry it out, bitch.

-Tucker Stone, 2009

Comments

[Chris Jones]

I think that if Final Crisis had even just two more issues to expand on what everyone is doing when, it would have been even better. I thought 7 issues weren't going to be enough when I heard that was how many they had planned and Goddamnit, I was right.

I still really really really like Final Crisis, though. But it's frustrating to know that it could be even better with a little more room to breathe.

[david brothers]

Tell the truth-- did you get that Manhunter review from The Roots or from Mo' Better Blues? Doesn't change the point of the review, any, I'm just curious.

I feel like I haven't even thought of MBB in fifteen years, but TFA pretty much stays on the iPod.

[Jog]

I liked all of these, but the Spider-Man one was the best. There was a big stack of that issue at my local shop... I flipped through one, and it looked like the Obama story should have been one page, and somehow involved delicious Hostess snack products??

[Richard]

I'm really going to miss your Nightwing reviews after the book is shitcanned. Are you going to switch over to another shitty title (like something with the word "Titans" on the cover) or take it easy on yourself?

[AERose]

Man there was a time I would have hemmed and hawed over this column in the usual I-can't-rationally-disagree-but-I-do-anyway but now I just flat out enjoy it.

I suppose there must come a time where I become embarrassed by columns like these just as I am now embarrassed by superhero comics though. Am I maturing or just getting finicky?

Well, I still enjoyed Final Crisis.

All things considered, I think I'd still like to see the superhero comic book business razed to the ground, but it seems that everything is just an example of the suchness of life.

But yes, superhero comic books are terrible, terrible things.

[Dan Coyle]

Man, I know you're not into picking fights with creators, but I wish I could somehow get that Spider-man review to Mark Waid.

Just to see what he does.

[NoahB]

You are in the zone, Tucker.

[Matthew J. Brady]

Yes, the Christmas break did you good, because you are fucking ON.

[youreadouche]

Every comics youre ragging on, theres at least 10 published this week alone that are worse.

And your rant on the Obama story is a tad racist too, douche.