Comics Of The Weak: The Scanners Money Shot Is When The Head Explodes, Not The Aftermath

Captain America # 48
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Butch Guice, Luke Ross, Steve Epting & Frank D'Armata
Published by Marvel Comics

It would be really mean to dismiss this entire issue, as well as this entire three part storyline, solely because it has the most godawful drawing of Captain America in the entire run of this title's current incarnation, so hey, let's not dismiss it for that. But seriously, that's the worst goddamn drawing of Captain America in the entire run of this title's current incarnation. After nothing but well done action, rife with the sort of shit that only works when a writer is clearly enjoying himself--this time it being the toxic pleasure of seeing Namor kill, kill, and kill some fucking more, after getting a chance to see Bucky bleed and petulant-alize his way through his past, Cap remains in the category of comics that will end up being spoken of fondly whenever the reins get passed off to whomever is ballsy enough to want to follow the Bru. It's a long way away from watching a lonely Steve Rogers punch an old bag in a hidden DUMBO bunker, and as long as that final image--of a goofy looking Captain America smiling like his forebrain his been scooped out with a broken perfume bottle--is just a screw-up on the part of a creative team exhausted from drawing dead bodies and not an indication of future story development, Captain America is one of the few Marvel books worth tracking through price increase. (Just make sure you're a Frank D'Armata fan. Otherwise, you'll find this shit tough going.)

Battle For The Cowl: Comissioner Gordon "A Cold Day In Hell" # 1

Written by Royal McGraw

Art by Tom Mandrake & Guy Major

Published by DC Comics

Commissioner Gordon comics have a long standing history in the Bat-spin-off family. Gordon's Law, Gordon of Gotham, the unpublished, reportedly brilliant "I Think Of Sarah, That Bitch Was Sleazy", but this is the first one to see publication since the not-popular/therefore perfect Gotham Central came, was, and went. Gotham Central didn't rely on using the larger than life Bullock and Gordon characters as leads, choosing to focus on the semi-popular Renee Montoya and a cast of random work-a-day types--somebody must have realized that if you put Gordon and Bullock in the book, the comic automatically becomes about Gordon and Bullock, and like Poochie before him, all the characters end up wandering around asking when Gordon and Bullock are coming back, as one is fat and one has a moustache, and therefore are tots the light fantastic, Harvey and the Amazing Semen-Colored Trenchcoat, that sort of chicanery. But it's time to do a bunch of spin-off stuff for Batman, because god forbid somebody decides to check in on the Bat-universe after some time away and find comics that are in any way different from the Bat-universe comics that made them give up and go Bendis in the Orpheus Rising days. So here it is, and here it will be: Harvey Bullock yelling at a female cop for daring to call to check on her kid when her focus should be on tracking down Commissioner Gordon who has been kidnapped by Mr. Freeze. How embarrassed is she when it turns out Gordon is in a skyscraper with the words "Cryonic", a scant two blocks away, visible to the naked eye from the window of the police station? Cryonic? The word that means freezing people? No wonder Gotham Central failed. Gotham would be better off being protected by Encyclopedia Brown and the autistic kid from Mercury Rising.

Oh, and look at this.

GET IT WHEN DUDE GETS MAD HIS FACE TURNS INTO THE BAT SYMBOL OH SHIT THAT IS SO FUCKING DEEP COMIC BOOKS BE ART MUTHAFUCKAZZZZZ

Battle For the Cowl: Oracle The Cure "Home Again, Home Again" # 1

Written by Kevin Van Hook

Art by Julian Lopez, Fernando Pasarin, Bit & David Bryant

Published by DC Comics

You have to give DC credit for keeping up the whole "put as many words as possible on these Battle For The Cowl books" idea, because jesus, the book's themselves don't offer much praise-worthy content. These are the sorts of titles that make hardcore hentai look like the modicum of restraint. Of course, they also demand the sort of explanation of Why In The Fuck Anybody Would Willingly Choose To Read Something Called whatever the particular book in question is called, to which the only imaginable explanation is "hoping for a trainwreck". This can't even be explainable as being for fans of Barbara Gordon, unless people are only fans of Barbara Gordon as fetish object, which is pretty much all you can say about her here. Actually, it does have a shower scene which lovingly (ickily?) depicts Barbara's tits as entering D level territory, so maybe that is what this thing as for. Still, masturbation material shouldn't be so fucking plot heavy. Considering it's 2009 and all, one would also hope that the techno-garbage portion of the book didn't come across as deleted sequences from Sandra Bullock's The Net, a film that depicted the ordering of a pizza online as proof of our scary robot future.

Battlefields: Dear Billy # 3

Written by Garth Ennis

Art by Peter Snejbjerg & Rob Steen

Published by Dynamite Entertainment

Although the Billy of the title was never really developed that much beyond "Spot of tea, spot of whiskey, the RAF are going to take these bleeding planes and blow a gullet in the side of those blighting japanese, bob's your uncle, toffee and lady fingers", hey, the comic wasn't about him. It was about the girl, and her can't-get-over-gang-rape problems. No real surprise that it didn't blow up the spot, but it wasn't bad or anything. Hell, it's a comic that focused on a woman, the choices she made following a horrible event that wasn't depicted in the standard mainstream comic style of "Look at what they're doing to this girl, if you look away because you're skeeved you're the gross one not me", and it has a depressing--though totally earned--ending. The most highly regarded comic that came out on the same day was The Muppet Show # 1. Do the math.

Crossed # 4

Written by Garth Ennis

Art by Jacen Burrows & Juanmar

Published by Avatar

It's Captain Egg Tits and the Ball Sack Junction.

Okay, one more time. You probably got distracted by Johnny egg tits. The greatest underwear of all time.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we are floating in space.

Justice League of America # 3

Written by Dwayne McDuffie

Art by Shane Davis, Sandra Hope & Pete Pantazis

Published by DC Comics

1) Is there any wife on the planet who would respond well to a husband--a new husband at that--who refers to his time spent road-tripping in the late 70's with his coolest bro-friend as "the best days of my life"? Even if it's pathetically, stupidly true that the "best days" of one's life weren't the time period following the long-wanted happy marriage to the Love of One's Life, what kind of stupid fucking moron is dumb enough to say that to the wife's face? Try this one out, just to see. Go tell your wife that you're sorry, but you gotta bail out to go and hang with your old college roommate. See how well that works out for you.

2) When Hal Jordan refers to the time period covered in the first 31 issues as being a time period when the Justice League's activities are described as "We've done nothing", the Justice League finally, after years of priming the pump but bailing prior to ejaculation, goes fucking meta. "We've done nothing." It's true, yes. Finally, we've reached the nexus of super-hero comics: they now pull their dialog from the DC Comics Online Message Board. One can only hope that the next few issues include a debate whether or not Mel Gibson should direct Thor, whether or not anybody is watching Primevil, and why, oh why can't some guy stop masturbating and be more like Connor Hawke. Comics fans may have lost their pure white Firestorm and their Aryan Stength Blue Beetle, but finally, after years of complaining: you've won the day.

3) Oh, and here's the joke that Dwayne McDuffie was embarrassed, truly ashamed to have written, yet did anyway, because he isn't a grown-up capable of quitting a job he doesn't like or writing a line of dialog he isn't embarrassed by.

Thunderbolts # 130

Written by Andy Diggle

Art by Bong Dazo, Joe Pimental & Frank Martin

Published by Marvel Comics

Andy Diggle will end up taking over the Daredevil series in a few months, one will have to hope the change-over isn't met with the same sort of "Fucking try to make this work" idea that he was given here in Thunderbolts, where he picked up the reins of a sort-of-loved Warren Ellis run only to watch as nearly every character involved in the Ellis run would be snatched by Bendis to star in the "Are you seriously going to call that book Dark Avengers" comic/thing/ice cream flavor? Like maybe Ed Brubaker will end Daredevil with Daredevil leaving the book to become an imam and the comic will star Foolkiller, but it will still be called Daredevil, and the art will be by Brendan McCarthy fan Tim Callahan. Because Marvel was worried they hadn't fully abandoned everything about Thunderbolts that people might have bought Thunderbolts to read about, they also brought on Bong Dazo, a guy whose style of cartooning would probably work on a comic that's about what happens when Family Guy characters have sex with Adam Warren's version of manga. This guy's bulbous compass work makes Paco Medina, who will handle the Deadpool crossover issues, look like photorealism by comparison.

X-Force/Cable: Messiah War # 1

Written by Craig Kyle & Christopher Yost

Art by Mike Choi & Sonia Oback

Published by Marvel Comics

In the same way that you can't really explain away a purchase of a comic about a computer hacker who sits around playing Second Life with a guy called the Calculator by way of an overweight goth proxy, you can't really explain away a comic like X-Force/Cable: Messiah War without acknowledging that while yes, it isn't very good, it is exactly what the Platonic Ideal of a comic called X-Force/Cable: Messiah War would be like. It's confusing, ridiculous bullshit, but hey: it's about a team of mutants led by Wolverine and Bosley'ed by Cyclops, watching them sent into the future to catch up with a time-hopping Cable and his ward, a fantastic little girl New Mutant the cover depicts as having 11 inch long legs, all so that they won't be caught by a guy named Lucas Bishop that used to have a curly mullet that made Lionel Richie's hair look subtle, and they have to watch out for a guy named Stryfe, who dresses like a professional wrestler with no sense of humor mixed with the metalworks empire of King Arthur. What is it supposed to read like? Is it supposed to be for anyone besides people excited by the prospect of Wolverine leading a team of people who act exactly like Wolverine? Is there a big audience out there for Stryfe appearances that isn't going to be turned on by whatever you call this thing? It does prove wrong the stereotype that people who read super-hero comics are stupid though. Keeping up with whatever the fuck this is supposed to be about ain't easy. They probably give Harvey Awards for that.

-Tucker Stone, 2009

Comments

[Chris Jones]

I like how everyone on CBR got mad at me when I called the Connor Hawke masturbator guy a lunatic.

I guess I should have known what to expect, but it was still like, What? I have to point this out to you guys?

[Tim O'Neil]

I actually thought Bong Dazo's art was pretty fun, in an odd way. It was certainly different. I mean, come on, tell me you weren't expecting whomever drew Diggle's Thunderbolts to make them all look like some kind of dark, muddy mumblecore Carl Theodore Dreyer film, you know, the sub-Michael Gaydos thing that anyone does when the subject at hand is "grit" and "grimace".

[Chris Jones]

Also, what's the source for that whole McDuffie interview? I'd kind of like to read the whole thing.

[Richard]

I want someone to put JLA #30 in a time capsule. 100 years from now, when people wonder why comics died as an art form, some enterprising historian will have Exhibit A on display in the Smithsonian, next to a mummified Alex Ross.

And if you want the context of McDuffie's quote, it was on this messageboard, about halfway down:

http://www.thevhive.com/forum/the-v/threads/morrisons-final-crisis-contains-spoilers/2731

[david brothers]

Garth Ennis and I play this game. A new issue of Crossed comes out and I see if I can make it through the whole issue. #2 was bad enough that I actually skipped #3. I tried #4 and got like three pages in, or however long it took to see a dude getting hit in the face with a severed horse's penis, before I tapped out.

You win, Garth.

[LurkerWithout]

Don't ever change Tucker. Ok, maybe do a little less blow and tequila right before reviewing Marvel comics. Or more. One of those...

[Sharif]

I love the Conner Hawke masturbator guy! He's hilarious and a breath of honest fresh air in the comic book community.

Thanks for reviewing the Commissioner Gordon thing. I laughed a little hysterically at the store when I saw that they actually made a comic book for people who are fascinated by the Comish.

[David Uzumeri]

How the fuck could you leave out the best part of Commissioner Gordon? For the love of God, they actually reused a pun from Batman & Robin.

"Everybody! FIRE!"

"No! ICE!"

[NoahB]

I was actually going to follow the links and see what the deal was with the Connor Hawke masturbation thing.

And then I said...wait! I don't care!

It was kind of liberating, really....

[Tucker Stone]

I didn't want any cold related mentions to overshadow Abhay's Suicide Squad reference. Looks like I missed out on the other big spousal abuse scandal in JLA as well. We'll just chalk the whole weak up to cheap firewater and teastained jockey shorts.

[seth hurley]

No Secret Warriors?

It is a special book that comes along rarely.

[Chris Jones]

"It is a special book that comes along rarely."

I'm so glad somebody else noticed how ass-awful that sentence was.

[AERose]

"Andy Diggle will end up taking over the Daredevil series in a few months..."

nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I mean, no offense to Diggle but nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

[TimCallahan]

Oh.

Well, since you went ahead and announced it without my permission...

http://tinyurl.com/d2mj33

[Matthew J. Brady]

I'm going to have to look at Thunderbolts now, just to see if the art matches up to Tucker's crazy description. It'll be hard to actually get past the covers though; that artwork is some of the ugliest I've ever seen on a comic book, the least inviting imagery I can remember.

[AERose]

Oh man, the takedown on Flash: Rebirth next week is going to be EPIC.