Comics Of The Weak: Maybe They'll Be More Popular If You Included A Kleenex Covered In Alfred Pennyworth's Real Tears

Developments:  One of the Factual Opinion's team took on a side gig.

Back to back, apples to apples.  This changes nothing.  Well, it might dilute quality.

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

Usually when a mainstream-y floppy style comics is solid and good, it's because it met expectations.  It promised to be cool, with a cover that was explosive, with a last issue cliffhanger, with a dynamic team of creators--it filled voids where something good needed to be, but the voids were carved by us.  Every once in a while though, a serialized story delivers a chapter that just trumps it all, a slice of cruel that tears its own way in, jumps up and starts waving around a gigantic, engorged erection and everybody realizes that they've been napping at their desk.  "What's he doing?  Jesus, that's a massive, beautiful cock.  I'm not even into cock, and I just want to hold that thing, just for a minute.  It looks warm."  That's this, right here:  Black Goddess number 2.  Walk up that mountain of snow, throw it back to Eisenstein and show us the team:  "I didn't come alone."  There's that clash of worlds, a Zen monk who laughingly plays the children down the hallway to the minotaur, and the minotaur turns around and says he's not the worst thing you can imagine, but yes, the worst thing is coming.  In fact?  It's right outside, and this time, you're probably going to lose.  Yes, we've had a lot of "last chance to survive" stories, in fact, that's what makes them so goddamn tiresome in the first place--you keep beating the end of the world drum, eventually we're all just going to want the end to come.  Here, Black Goddess:  the first time this year that somebody--Arcudi, Davis & Mignola--made you believe that the consequences were heavy, and that a real crisis is still possible.  As the letters page makes clear, what comes next--it's going to be really bad.  Hu-fucking-zah.

Batman # 686
Written by Neil Gaiman
Art by Andy Kubert, Scott Williams & Alex Sinclair
Published by DC Comics

Is it really surprising that Neil Gaiman's take on Batman is a boring mash-up of Canterbury Tales by way of the Sandman series, with a general dash of Grant Morrison's everything-in-Batman-comics-is-real?  Not unless you haven't read any Neil Gaiman comics in a while--this is the same guy who took a Jack Kirby concept and the art of John Romita Jr and was able to pull off boring, teeth pulling crap, to say nothing for the mongoloid "high concept" idea to write that 1602 piece of shit.  For whatever reason, here it was, yet another comic with prize-winning moments of interest--like the page where an Andy Kubert Alfred became something far more resonant of the Joker of the past--getting smothered under a blanket made out of old, tired ideas.  It's one thing when Bill Willingham decides to make a Vertigo series out of a moment in Sandman that served as a nod to Canterbury, and a complete other thing when it's the author of Sandman himself, serving as little more than a big name item glossed on top of the "wait and see" moments comics readers live in while they wait for Bruce Wayne to return.  It's lazy bullshit, that's what it is:  throw a name-check to Alan Moore, revise an old script that was already published, and get it to the Kubert guy.  This right here?  It's what they call mercenary work, and there's a reason why everybody hates mercenaries.  It's because they don't believe in anything.  Oh, and Newbery awards?  They gave one of those to the fucking Bridge To Terebithia.

Hellboy: The Wild Hunt # 3
Written by Mike Mignola
Art by Duncan Fegredo, Guy Davis & Dave Stewart
Published by Dark Horse Comics

The Wild Hunt is one of those series that finally puts to pass what the main slippery complaint there is with Hellboy since the character bailed out of the B.P.R.D.  It's slippery because the craft--from Mignola lateraling to Fegredo--is so fucking strong, so fucking clean, you'll know the warthog God, and you'll have faith in him too.  But the story?  The story is this:  it's the Fugitive, or the Hulk television show, or anything else where a guy wanders the world, avoiding a past and taking a break from his future, ending up in a million and one variations on the Seven Samurai style "help the locals" script.  Wild Hunt--like the Moloch one-shot, the Crooked Man story and Darkness Calls--is yet another chapterized segment of pornography, a fuck scene that begins with no plot and fails to have a cum shot.  It ends the way it began--a black out screen while thrusting occurs, and when the next volume arrives, it picks right up with thirty more minutes of raw pumping, pumping, pumping.  Nothing but a thrust, no noise, and then...to be continued.  Fuck that.  Daddy needs his protein.

Incognito # 2
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Sean Phillips & Val Staples
Published by Icon/Marvel Comics

If you're going to draw a mad scientist, from now on, Incognito # 2 is probably the bar you're going to have to hurdle.  That's one gross ass looking motherfucker right there, ain't it so?  Cutting into some dude's brain, looking all fucked to the up, that's some nasty, some gritty and some grime.  It's like somebody watched the Incredibles and said "what about the killers?  Screw this fatboy daddy shit."  What do you want here?  Incognito:  comics for haters, made by men.  Virgin Read liked it.  Turned to the domeplex, said "Gruff.  Gruff as a mug.  More, please."

Nightwing # 153
Written by Peter Tomasi
Art by Don Kramer, Jay Leisten, Sandu Florea & Roney Ramos
Published by DC Comics, but not any fucking more!

And so goes the 'Wing, off into the sunset.  Honoring itself in truest fashion, Don Kramer turns in more drawings of Dick Grayson that hearken back to his first few months on the title--what's wrong with Nightwing's face, the reader asks?  Is somebody standing in the wings, stretching his face out, like that part in Ichi the Killer that we always watch through our fingers?  Did he inject collagen in his temples?  Who, oh who, are these dinner plate people?  That's your first clue they haven't been on board for 153 issues--get 'em!  In the annals of final issues, this is one of those ones that doesn't even pretend to close a chapter, except for throwing off the house that Dick got and the insert of a new rule for the character: "no more day jobs."  He's back to mentioning how being a gypsy helps him get through stuff, stuff like his terrible haircut, and he's back to being a moody creep who cries like somebody has poured wax down his face:  ladies and gentleman, the day of Batman-lite has returned.  It'd be a lie to say this is a title anyone will miss--Dickie Buttshit Grayson is sure to be a-coming round the bend in something just as bad--but it should be noted that it's pretty fucking rare for a comic to have lasted this long, and yet to have absolutely no notalby good story or successful run to point to in it's entire history.  Nightwing never, not once, had a Frank Miller on Daredevil style moment, it never had a guest run by Jim Lee, it never had anything--it survived solely because it was available.  It was the comic book version of when you make one of those infinity models out of strip of paper.  It was the Shit That Walked.  Want more proof?  Why not check out what Nightwing thinks about when he's examining his purpose in life:  he imagines the moment when Bruce Wayne's parents got killed, mommy's pearls and all, and inserts himself into the scene as observer.  The guy is so fucking boring that he obsesses over the most important moment in somebody else's life, and even though it's his fantasy, he's just watching it happen.  That's what we're saying goodbye to here. 

R.E.B.E.L.S. # 1
Written by Tony Bedard
Art by Andy Clarke & Jose Villarrubia
Published by DC Comics

First things first:  if you've ever wanted to see what it would be like if somebody combined Kevin Maguire's facial explorations with that Civil War guy's style of line-work, this is pretty much the comic you've been waiting for.  Unfortunate that it's on a follow-up to that never-really-mattered concept of a space force that protected various planets but wasn't the Green Lantern Corps, but hey, it's DC Comics.  Meeting you halfway is sort of their stock in trade, here in these halycon days of "figure it out yourself, we hate working here" comics.  After being unceremoniously fucked out of the Outsiders series they had apparently hired him to rebuild, it's Tony Bedard on script, and while this is nothing but the faintest praise, it's actually his strongest work in years--credit due, given.  It's still about one of those Brainiac characters, which roughly translates to "easiest character to write dialog for" ever, considering all the guy does is act like a prick towards everyone while internally telling himself private jokes, so hey, what are you going to do?  Read it?  Go for it.  Just don't expect to like it much.

-Tucker Stone, 2009

Comments

[Chris Jones]

I'm going to have a review up for that Batman issue on the site I work for soon, also. I'm refreshed to see that somebody else didn't like it that much-one would think there would be a little more tension at the funeral for the fucking Goddamn Batman. I don't care if it's supposed to be "ethereal" or whatever, that's not an excuse for everyone acting bored.

Alfred's story kicked ass, though.

[Sean Witzke]

The Gaiman Batman - my mom read it. She loves Gaiman, reads everything he does (novel-wise). This is someone who hasn't read a comic since she read Casper in the 70s. And she got to the sketchbook section and started asking me why the inking was so terrible in the finished issue.

[James]

" Oh, and Newbery awards? They gave one of those to the fucking Bridge To Terebithia."

Coraline's a very good book, though. Better without the illustrations.

[seth hurley]

So, Nightwing has had 53 more issues than 100 Bullets and still couldn't find it's cock with the help of it's pastor.

Jesus.

[Dan Coyle]

"So, Nightwing has had 53 more issues than 100 Bullets and still couldn't find it's cock with the help of it's pastor."

It probably could with Devin Grayson's help. If she wasn't intent on keeping it for herself. SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! SNAP! I WENT THERE! BETTA RECANIZE!

[seth hurley]

Is Devin Grayson Dick Grayson's sister?

[Jim Kingman]

I've read about you, Tucker Stone. You began reading comics with Justice League Detroit! It explains so much. By the way, the JLD is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year! Any plans?

[Tucker Stone]

Huh. It's their 25th?

Tonight, my wife will call me "Paco" while we copulate.