Comics Of The Weak: Arrr, There Needs To Be More Rape On This Lesbian Pirate Ship

Rawbone # 1

Written by Jamie Delano

Art by Max Fiumara

Published by Avatar

Review By Joe McCulloch, Jog from Jog The Blog

TFO Takes No Responsibility for any Ensuing Collapse Of Jog's Career

Jamie Delano's pirate comic Rawbone is the most perfect piece of unabashed sleaze I've seen from a semi-major North American comics publisher in years. Every character is somehow horrible. The heroine is a lusty pirate queen who's seduced the nubile bride-to-be of the cruel Major John Sly, and then a nun checks on her and declares "by her heat and taste, it is sure she is no stranger to passion's unholy ebb and flow," while thoughtfully sucking her finger. There's also topless whippings by more nuns and an evil Spanish priest and the horny monkey from that one Hellblazer story, although I think the monkey's supposed to be a deformed guy? Delano writes everything like it's still 1988 and a bomb in his head will go off if every narrative caption isn't more purple than the last, except he threw out the political commentary to stuff in more irreverant "you like pirates, America, here's some fucking pirates" filth. Even "Digikore Studios" trying to murder Max Fiumara with flare effects can't ruin this one.

Okay, Back To The Regular Team.

Pluto # 2
By Naoki Urasawa
Co-Authored, Whatever That Means, by Takashi Nagasaki
Published by Viz
Original Japanese Edition by Shogakukan, 2005

SPOILER ALERT: there is no robot love in this volume.  If you came back to Pluto after the first volume, it was probably because you were digging on the part where the Jetson's maid shook her head no to the offer of our fantastic robot detective, deciding to keep the memory of her robot husband's death in her database. 0101010 01010 010100101010, oh how i'll miss you, 01010101 0 011  111 11110011100110 000. Pluto 2 mostly consists of the Astro Boy stand in, going by his Atom moniker, showing off how much better he is at pretending to behave like a human than Deckard.  Wait, Gesicht.  Not Deckard. After that, it's more robot battles, as the recently-introduced-so-he-could-die Turkish wrestler from volume 1 finds himself icepicked into the ocean by Sharon Stone circa 2008.  (Post collagen.) It's all fine and dandy, killa-me-killa complex maneuvers.  Stick around--apparently the next volume is wall to wall cock-gobbling under the benevolent eyes of the Daft Punk.  "My mother gave birth to the future. Are you ready to taste it?"

Azrael: Death's Dark Knight # 1

Written by Fabian Nicieza

Art by Frazer Irving

Published by DC Comics

Unless the credits are just a straight up fucking lie--which is the sort of thing you really have to think about, in these dark days of '09 Ponzi scheming mo-fucks--Frazer Irving didn't just ink his own pages, he colored them as well. Which, hell yeah, DC hasn't been shitting up the color of their comics lately as badly as fucking Marvel's Gradient Squadron Of Incompetent Art Hate, but it's not like the Dickstinguished Competition have been making love at the feet of Apollo either. Whether it is Irving or not, the color, the art, the fucking look:  all of it got pulled off pretty well here in a way that is awesomely/awfully rare, now that corporate comics are sending pages as fast as they can through teams of 30. Of course, Frazer is doing it in service of a comic that has the following words on the title: Battle For The Cowl Azrael Daeth's Dark Knight, which, if that isn't the Fucking Ha Ha worst title of the year so far, that's only because you have to hold the trophy until you open to the title page which adds the words Book One: Simple Sacrifices.  Like...this was clearly made by grown-ups.  Teenagers and adolescents would have put more titties in it, and the new Azrael character would've said something like "Kewl" when he saw his new kicksplode flaming sword.  So why fucking saddle it with a title that sounds like the shareware FPS you downloaded to kill time while you wait for somebody to seed a copy of The Witches of Breastwick?

Dark Avengers # 3

Written by Brian Michael Bendis

Art by Mike Deodato & Rain Beredo

Published by Marvel Comics

It's a little nitpicky, but isn't it about time that DC quits acting like a fucking nerdy hall monitor and start using real product names in their scripts?  The entire open of this issue of Dark Avengers is a way-too-long conversation between The Sentry, who has only been written well by Jeff Parker and Paul Jenkins, and Norman Osborn, who has yet to have a personality grafted onto the general "He's fucking crazy" ideal that's served as his motivating factor ever since he filled Gwen Stacy with his Fleshy Green Pump Machine. And yes, the conversation is too long, and it's between two characters that it's impossible to be amped up about, but imagine if it where handled by DC--imagine if instead of referring to Five Guys burgers, which are actually pretty great fucking hamburgers, the Osborn character kept calling them Four Jacks sliders, or Two Hammy FUNction Boxes, or whatever unfunny term pops out of your mouth after trying to take your career choice seriously after reading Blog@Newsarama posts.  For whatever it's worth, just saying Five Guys makes the whole thing seem a lot more clever than it really is, the same way that Jason Aaron Hellblazer story seems sort of genius in retrospect for having such a dead accurate fling of shit at the overrated and completely boring Adverts delivered by a Henry Rollins stand-in.

Groom Lake # 1

Written by Chris Ryall

Art by Ben Templesmith

Published by IDW

There's a comic here, a sort of X-Files story by way of raised eyebrows and "heh-heh-heh what's that? You don't know? It's a flux capacitor, asshole."  That kind of thing.  But if you're a certain kind of person, you probably just want to know what setting it is you use on your computer to make all the panels look like they have a zip-a-tone texture to them, because it's kind of relaxing, like a warm foot bath provided by a hairless eunuch who keeps his eyes downcast away from your skinny calves. The comic itself, yeah, whatever, it's fine, passes the time, IDW still does that thing where they charge 3.99 but keep all the advertisements in the back of the book and none of them feature Chris Brown smiling at you with a milk moustache as if to say "Hey, you weren't in that car, Rihanna might have had it coming, how the fuck would you know DONT JUDGE ME I DIDNT WORK ALL DAY TO COME HOME AND EAT PIZZA", so huh, quality.

Hellblazer # 253

Written by Peter Milligan

Art by Giuseppe Camuncoli, Stefano Landini & Jamie Grant

Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

Milligan is hopefully burning off the new Constantine hottie fuck toy without actually killing or dismembering her, but getting rid of her nonetheless. She never really make a whole lot of sense--how many women just kind of go "yeah, check out my new boyfriend, he's great, horrible scabs of grotesque stinking flesh dripping off him like so many Old Navy t-shirts, there's a living abortion I had years ago in my closet that looks like Mac from the classic Mcdonald's commercial Mac and Me, it's really fantastic, did you see my hair by the way it's a really hip little style that goes with my tre-hipster plastic glasses it's so great being a shapeless stereotype of the girl that comics readers want to fuck the sweat off of before saying that they need to go alphabetize their collection and do i think 52 should go before Action or after Fantastic Four and would I be willing to be addressed as Captain Sawyer from the MCU while squeezing the DCU Legends series Darkseid figure between my jigglies?"  

Nice art!

Kaspar

By Diane Obomsawin

Published by Drawn & Quarterly

Original French Edition by L'Oie De Cravan, 2007

What the fuck? Is this what we've come too? You don't need to even attempt to make the work compelling, you don't even need to utilize pacing, you just randomly publish whatever black and white cutesy bullshit you can find in an foreign country? Remember that Daniel Clowes comic "I Hate You Deeply", where there's a guy who says "i'm modest and charmingly self-effacing as sure as my name is felix!"  Yeah, this is the kind of comic that guy would write, draw or just praise to the moon. It's got a "puckish sense of humor" and it's the kind of thing that makes that whole "Why don't you geeks just read fucking Red Vomit Sinestro Corps Darkest Ring Battle and shut the fuck up about your goddamn Chai tea and collection of Billy Collins poems" argument look a lot more palatable than a future where everybody lines up to blow Art Spiegelman and his new comic about how the war in Iraq could be solved by origami lessons and the burning of mixtapes.  Jesus, this comic book is so goddamn lame. NEERRRRDDDDDS

Outsiders # 16

Written by Peter Tomasi

Art by Lee Garbett, Trevor Scott, Livesay & Brian Reber

Published by DC Comics

Sometimes you have to wonder why nobody wants to take a step back and look at the script they just wrote, a script where seven characters end up in a flawlessly logical discussion to explain, in direct, honest language, how all seven of them are sitting in a bat-shaped spaceship because it takes all of them to make up for the loss of one individual.  It's not even a story that demands "interpretation" or anything. That's the actual dialog--Metamorpoho goes through each and every member of the team and explains how all of them make up one distinct part of the presumed dead Batman. Do they have powers? Sure. Doesn't matter. All of their powers suck. It's an actual scene that delivers one message, and that message is this: whatever it is that the Outsiders require a team to handle, Batman could have done himself. That's it. If it's something that would require the assistance of--well, fuck, if it's something that Batman would have needed the Outsiders to deal with, that means the Outsiders are going to have to call for help, like from Ragman or the Spoiler or something. It's not too often that a team book is written like this--with a big neon sign that says "This is a book about has-beens and never-weres, and the speed at which losers must move to avoid thoughts of a suicide motivated by incompetence."

Wolverine # 71

Written by Mark Millar

Art by Steve McNiven, Dexter Vines, Morry Hollowell & Paul Mounts

Published by Marvel Comics

Has Mark Millar ever actually watched a road movie? Unless the answer is "yeah, Two Lane Blacktop" and nothing else, there's really no excuse for this series, which seems to think that a road story is little more than two dudes in a car driving through a carnival full of booths that say things like "what happened to ant-man" and "emma frost is still a bitch" and "the mole men are a lot grosser now."  Like, just because road stories are pretty easy to grab hold of them, that doesn't mean you should just replace the whole "tell story" act by copying the beginning of Unforgiven and then starting up a tilt-a-whirl where your characters move across a bunch of role-playing game supplements. You used to be able to count on Millar to tell stories where he'd at least avoid, or trenchantly make ridiculous, all the stupid Wolverine story tropes of "shoot him a bunch of times" and "have him say he's the best he is blah blah blah". Here, it's like watching some coked up housewife run through the living room screaming out chores for the kids to do while she watches four soap operas in separate rooms.  John Romita Jr couldn't even save this thing, and Steve McNiven's whole "personality and emotion isn't really my thing, but here's an intricate drawing of my 500th sneer" isn't doing it either.

-Tucker Stone, 2009

Comments

[Jog]

I'm constantly torn re-reading Pluto... I mean, Urasawa (and Nagasaki; pretty sure 'co-author' means co-writer, since he doesn't draw anything) are blunt/shameless enough to throw in a flashback to Not the Iraq War in which a guy confronts Gesicht by declaring:

"No terrorists here..."

"There were only..."

"INNOCENT CHILDREN!!"

While he gestures toward a bloody crib, mind you.

I guess I'd forgotten the series getting that melodramatic? Although... I guess in a way that's sorta faithful to Tezuka's Astro Boy stories, just filtered through Urasawa's own passion for emotional button-pushing...

On the other hand, this is the volume that introduces a talking, bowtie-wearing teddy bear named Mr. Roosevelt who's secretly pulling the strings behind the curtain of the U.S. government, so I can't really get too down on it. Like, they all do totally grasp the 'do anything' enthusiasm of Tezuka's kid-targeted work, and some of it mixes really well with their suspense instincts...

Some pretty awesome cartooning too... did you read Tezuka's son's essay in the back? Interesting that Urasawa wanted to use a looser, more homage-driven style at first... I think they were right to go for what they did.

[NoahB]

You made fun of Billy Collins.

That makes my day.

[Richard]

"This is a book about has-beens and never-weres."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't this always been the case for the Outsiders?

At least Tomasi is operating under any illusions.

[Richard]

isn't operating under any illusions, I meant to say.

[Tim O'Neil]

I think the thing that annoys me about Mark Millar the most is that of all the major-league hacks, he is the one who takes the least effort to disguise the bog-standard formulaic-ness of his scripts. All of these books are formulaic, even if that formula is "look like we're breaking the formula, even though we're just substituting another formula", but the degree to which he scripts his stories according to pre-digested outlines and pre-destined dramatic beats is pretty damn remarkable.

If Aristotle were yanked by time-travel into the present day, he would wholeheartedly approve of Mark Millar, even down to the whole "let's not give women any role whatsoever in our fictional universes outside of the traditional roles of the wife and mother" thing.

[Tim O'Neil]

But with that said, his unabashed predictability doesn't mean his comics aren't occasionally enjoyable. I mean, All Creatures Great and Small could have been written by a robot but it's still wildly entertaining.

[LurkerWithout]

Rawbone has lesbian pirates in it? Why the hell am I learning about this NOW? I love your analysis of this month's Outsiders' writer. Though if someone actually DID a DC or Marvel mainstream book written about a team similar to the movie The Specials I'd be very interested in it...

[Matthew J. Brady]

Nice work this week; I laughed. However, I must nitpick the notion that Paul Jenkins ever wrote the Sentry well, because even though he created the character, he most certainly never wrote anything worth reading. God, that is a terrible, terrible character who really should never show up in a story again, ever. I wrote a review of that first miniseries a long time ago, and while I probably cared more about Marvel back then, I still agree with myself in thinking that it was pretty goddamn awful, even with Jae Lee doing the artwork. It's just one big Mary Sue story, with the author deluding himself into thinking that he is just the coolest, because he came up with a guy who can do anything, isn't that awesome. No, it is not, because now you don't have any stories that you can actually tell with the character, and I think most everybody has proven that notion correct whenever they try to use him.

[bp]

I thought the first Sentry series was pretty interesting, and all the crappy versions of the Sentry that came after (including Jenkins own sequel) can't detract from that. But yeah, hooray for Parker.

Also hooray for chai tea and Billy Collins.

[AERose]

The chick in Hellblazer is the spiritual successor to Neil Gaiman's Death, who has to be the most successful blatant, crass crystallization of nerd desires ever written. Which is why I hate Neil Gaiman, because when he writes that kind of fan service I fall for it and it makes me feel dirty.

[Tucker Stone]

I never thought about Death like that, but that's probably because I'm not into chicks with obvious venereal disease.