The Factual Opinion

Comics Of The Weak: Amidst All This French Crap, We Still Have Time For These Guys, Just Not Enough Of It To Try Hard

Batman: Battle For The Cowl # 2
Written by Tony Daniel
Art by Tony Daniel, Sandu Florea & Ian Hannin
Published by DC farking Comics

Here's some new names for you, courtesy of Tony Daniel: Duffy, Dell, Bossworth, & Adam Bomb (please be the first of many new Batman supporting characters to be named after famous Garbage Pail Kids, oh god PUH-LEEZE). On the proper scale of comparison that Battle For The belongs on--this chapter's called "Army of One"--a scale populated by the miserable Gotham Underground series and the various adventures contained in those shitty annuals that Robin and Nightwing used to have, Cowl continues to have the sort of story where implication of drastic changes to the status quo occur, yet just like Gotham Underground, those drastic changes are solely confined to the comics which contain them. There's a weirdo fantasy world where maybe the last page death of Tim Drake--who went out just like his punk bitch daddy, the Drake men never could take gaping chest wounds via large sharp objects--actually did happen, and the pain will be felt for weeks, nay, months to come. Of course, those of us in the real world, the one where the many reading Battle For the Cowl are, regardless of "liking it" or "hating it", know the truth: none of this matters, none of it counts; the same way that Robin's previous 3rd degree burns that left his face a goofy copy of Deadpool's visage got resolved off panel in a timespan of hours, Tim Drake will be back on his feet to whine again, probably in weeks. Maybe next time he'll know better than to use a crowbar, god knows that Robin characters should know better. That trick always backfires. For a time, at least.

B.P.R.D. The Black Goddess # 4

Written by Mike Mignola & John Arcudi

Art by Guy Davis & Dave Stewart

Published by Dark Horse fisting Comics

The arc of Black Goddess continues to be the fastest of any B.P.R.D. series thus far, in that it's pretty much covered about two hours of actual in-scene time, all of it consisting of one extended conversation and one massive battle sequence, intercut in the same way that you'd intercut something like that, where you skip the dialog where people repeat themselves or ask where the bathroom is, and make sure you catch the part of the fight where Guy Davis draws a full splash page of a gigantic purple insect type creature that looks like a roach where the back half of the roach has been attached to the top of his head like he's Pope Roach of the Church of The Three-fingered Spiked Fist. That sort of brevity is fine for the B.P.R.D. series at this point--it's difficult to imagine that too many people would treat the Mignola-verse as "start anywhere" type reading, but even if some did try Black Goddess first and wonder why in the fuck they should care about all these random screaming people who keep dying, page after page after page, anybody who has kept up with the various mini-series at all knows that usually these monster battle pages rarely take up so much of the page count. In that vein, it's sort of a refreshing change of pace, an ideal journey in a car that usually makes a lot of turns but for some reason now has the the accelerator bricked to the floor, and the only direction is a constant forward momentum of shit-goes-crazy. And, since it is the B.P.R.D., there's no reason to believe that what happens next might not just be awful, that favorite characters might be on there way to early graves. Few comics can make the same claim.

Daredevil Noir # 1

Written by Alexander Irvine

Art by Tomm Coker & Daniel Freedman

Published by Marvel cunting Comics

Some things you just can't really believe aren't a joke until they actually arrive in a comic book store. (Like the upcoming Chris Claremont vanity X-Men project, which, if it's real, will probably cause a black hole a lot sooner than a malfunctioning hadron collider.) Some of those hard-to-believe things still don't seem real even when they do show up, because its just so clearly stupid that--c'mon, it can't be fucking real, somebody must have dosed my Pedialite with moonshine. Daredevil Noir is one of those things, a comic that is just so brazenly the same as a regular Daredevil comic from the Maleev/Bendis era, a comic that covers the exact same beats and delivers the exact same moments while barely able to pay heed to it's pre-war setting without choking back laughter, one can't help but experience some kind of grudging respect for Marvel itself, a company more than willing to hire people, give them an impossible task, and then turn, smiling to their client base and say "Here. We consider this worthy of your time." In a sense, there's some accuracy to the audacity. Daredevil Noir # 1 probably put off marathon watchings of Dr. Who by at least five minutes across the country.

Gantz # 4

By Hiroya Oku

Translated by Matthew Johnson

Published by Dark Horse bloody Manga

Originally Serialized by Shueisha, 2000

You can keep your Green Lantern vomit. This, right here? This is how you do hardcore violence right.

You do it to "gramma" right in front of her naked little grandson. (Thanks to digital art, you can just taste the eye goo, can't you?) And this thing was pre-9/11! Point and match, son.

Secret Six # 8

Written by Gail Simone

Art by Carlos Rodriguez, Bit & Jason Wright

Published by DC assraping Comics

Either it was Gail Simone's plan all along for Secret Six to take on a Moonlighting level "when these two gonna do it" subplot with Deadshot and Catman, or she's finally picked up that the subtext is totally written all over their square jawed faces, because there's really no other possible way to read the scene where Deadshot begs, like Jessica wanting Elizabeth Wakefield's sweater level begs, Catman to join him on his date with that Jeannette bustier & garter belt woman that's joined the series. Sure, he says "as a chaperone." Because he's "afraid she's gonna try an' take advantage" of him, god knows he couldn't fight her off with his "wrist-guns" or whatever those things are. But c'mon, we all know where this is going, and even if it never gets there, it's way more romantic and believable than any of Mark Millar's weird interpretation of homosexual relationships. Make sure nobody tells Amazon about this though. They freak out when dudes start batting their eyes at each other.

The Warlord # 1

Written by Mike Grell

Art by Joe Prado, Walden Wong & David Curiel

Published by DC donkeypunching Comics

So, let's see if we're all clear here. This Warlord thing worked before, back in the late 70's, lasted more than a few years. It's been a long while since that time, and since it's DC, and they don't care to actually try and compete with popular comics, like ones that people buy lots of, like shit about mutants, or magic teams made up of popular characters acting like the cast of Friends, and hardcore SWAT team superheros, they figure, hey, it's been 35 years since there was a Warlord comic, why not come out with another one of those instead? Why not try to steal away a percentage of the people who would buy Conan if it wasn't published by Dark Horse, because it's not swords and sorcery unless it's published by a REAL comic book company, of which there are only two.

That's a totally fantastic idea, a really smart business decision. Even better that Mike Grell isn't wasting his time drawing the fucking thing, because the late 70's Warlord series was really only popular because of the bang-em-up innovations in scripting. It's not like anybody gave a shit who drew it then, either.

oh wait i dont think that is true

Wolverine: Weapon X # 1

Written by Jason Aaron

Art by Ron Garney & Jason Keith

Published by Marvel herpes for children Comics

What can you say about there being another Wolverine ongoing that doesn't get said every single time they come out with another Wolverine does something ornery mini-series? It's not really fair to just dismiss them out of hand, even though that's going to be the best thing to do, 99 times out of 100. He's a popular character, people buy this shit, all five variant covers, Marvel makes the donuts, nobody cares that all the best Wolverine stories are almost always one-shots, or limited stories, that there's never, not once, been a Wolverine ongoing series with any sort of relative long term decency, he's always been a character that rises or falls totally on the basis of the creators involved. Bringing in Jason Aaron is nice and all--he did a pretty decent one-shot with Howard Chaykin a while back, a meat-grinder Wolverine story that was tolerable, if completely free of ambition, but he also did a miserable tie-in thing with some X-Men story where Wolverine had to track down that Mystique character that only crazy people care about. Bringing on Ron Garney, an artist whose style drastically improved immediately after Garney started inking his own work, certainly helps...of course, Ron Garney did a fine job on that Mystique thing too, so Woverine: Weapon X comes with the fear that it's yet another pie that looks great, while tasting of packing foam. And yes, it sort of is--another chapter in the ongoing attempts to give Wolverine the longest character biography of all time, another subheading in the wikipedia files of the "Weapon X" program, forever regarded as the worst managed secret government project of all time. It has its moments, sure, but they are the same moments of sudden claw-on-asshole violence that have filled the majority of Wolverine comics for years, and when delivered in such a technically proficient fashion, they just speak less to a comic that's even neccessary on the entertainment front, and more to the oft-depressing nature of serialized comics that two men, who could clearly be doing something more interesting, are instead stuck with yet another trip down the "a whole lot of killin' that needs to be done" road.

-Tucker Stone, 2009

Désastre Hurlant (T8): We All Stand In The Shadow Of The Beltran

Here's a little background information for you on Technopriests. First up, if anything you've heard, or anything you're about to read, interests you in the Technopriests, then be ready to pony up some dough. Some of the first volumes are easier to find in the original Humanoids publications that predate the DC/Humanoids collections while containing the same content, but tracking down the elusive volume two isn't the cheapest item to lust for. Unlike The Incal, which you can still get for relatively decent prices as long as you would prefer the original coloring (published by Marvel's Epic line) as opposed to the new "why the fuck did you do that" coloring, American reprints of Technopriests are in short supply. Why? Because it's bad, you're thinking. It must be really bad or else it would have been more popular than Secret Invasion, because the comics market is never wrong, and you can look at sales figures and see what's good, and if the Technopriests is out of print and Batman: Child of Dreams isn't, well whatever, Technopriests must suck some balls, because Kia Asamiya and Max Allan Collins' work on Batman: Child of Dreams is 29 pounds of shitbag retardation in a 3 ounce satchel, and you can still buy that anywhere, including newsstands.

Is that what you're thinking? Don't think that. That means you're stupid. 

Oh wait--maybe you're thinking that because you've read this blog before, and you remember that I've actually hit these comics before and given them shit. Yikes, nevermind that whole "you're stupid" comment. You're awesome! Who sticks around that long? I've had at least seven concubines quit in the past six months because they got sick of my heavy handed metaphors. (The last one gave me crabs!) Have my feelings changed?

The Technopriests

Written by Alejandro Jodorowsky

Art by Zoran Janjetov & Fred Beltran

Published by Humaonids/DC Comics

I'm not going to try to improve on Jog's excellent work on the coloring in The Incal series, but it should go mentioned here that the Technopriests, even more so than everything you've seen of what the Incal looks like now, is the furthest extension that is imaginable for Fred Beltran's digital coloring style. It's also probably the best example of it, even though it's not always to Zoran Janjetov's taste. There aren't "original" versions to point to as better--Beltran and Janjetov made it to look like this, and in a dream world, you can rest assured that Fred Beltran would have the entirety of the "Jodoverse" look just like this. (I imagine Beltran looks at Juan Gimenez' non-digitized work on the Metabarons and cries himself to sleep.) The Technopriests isn't complete in America, although it supposedly will be, and I haven't had a chance to track down the remaining untranslated volumes, although I recently wondered if they might have made some scanlations circuit a la Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou. I didn't find it, but I've always been a horrendous search engine wizard, maybe I'm wrong. (Although a torrent search doesn't show much either.) Either way, this is DC/Humanoids, and if we're going to stay focused--and god knows we should--then we've got to make do with what we've got, and what we've got is Technopriests Book One: The Initiation and Technopriests Book Two: The Rebellion.) We won't cover this guy, he's just being ironic.

I wouldn't go so far as to say "ah, look at this image, so indictative of the Technopriests aesthetic", mostly because that would just sound sort of tragic, as if teaming up with Jog had led me to think "why not try using words like aesthetic and indicative, people will get confused and wonder why the rape joke guy is trying criticism and then my wife will leave me", but this image--it is sort of like what you'll find in Technopriests. In a lot of places. Aesthetically. To save browser load time, I've brought it down to a manageable size, but know this: in the DC/Humanoids volume, this drawing takes up about 2/3 of the page, which means it also took 2/3 of the original, and larger, Humanoids release, which means: shit, that's a really big drawing of a space station built onto an asteroid that--yes, you're reading that sign correctly--is primarily a cheese factory. It's not the first time you'll see Zoran Janjetov's spaceship designs, many of which I'll admit to being quite charmed by--hell, Technopriests opens with weird and innovative spaceship designs, the first being one that looks like a giant engagement ring powered (apparently) by a glowing C-shaped...I don't know, something big and shaped like a C and it floats around, bisecting the giant engagement ring ship. Thanks to the text, we know the ship contains our primary hero/irritating pompous narrator, he-that-shalt-be-named-Albino and 500,000 of his most trusted (and, as we'll eventually discover) docile followers as they search for a promised land beyond the known systems, all Battlestar Galactica style. Interestingly enough, a space saga type story carrying the pretty wowzers name "Technopriests" dispenses with the notion of futuro-worship right away: Albino's goal is to "start a new society in which healthy human relationships will be valued more highly than scientific advances." Lofty goals, made a bit ironic by the next page, where Albino regales his traveling companion--a cutesy little animal the size of a rat who farts a lot--with the tale of his birth, brought about when his mother was raped by three pirates: one with skin of red, one with skin of gray, and one as pasty as Albino himself. It's always the kids who come from tragedy who hold "healthy human relationships" as the loftiest and most impossible prizes, isn't it? They sit around in therapy talking about how much they wish they were "normal", clearly never having read Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol and realizing that happy loving fathers sometimes stick sharp objects into their wife's eye sockets. Doom Patrol, oh, how you taught us so much, and saved us so much potential therapy money to spend on street drugs. And ah, street drugs. Street drugs, how you helped open our minds, lubricate our souls, filled us with wild fantasies of blood-crazy shark-man space pirates.

I love these guys. Don't get too excited, they aren't in the series for long, although this panel gets re-used in the second collection of stories, so maybe Jodorowsky and Janjetov have more planned for these lovable dudes and their plumbing wrench style weaponry. Fingers crossed!

Not knowing the process behind the creation of these comics, I'm not really sure who you give credit to for all the little touches like this--shark mutant pirates, the spaceships, etc. Either way, the Technopriests is chock full of them, and if that interests you, you can do far, far worse in the field of "weird and interesting shit to look at in space" genre. There's a lot of it to go around, and for my take--that's what makes the series fun to spend time in.

The actual plot? That's another ball game entirely.

Technopriests follows a very, very easy to follow structure, one that operates on such autopilot that it seems a shame to credit it solely to Jodorowsky, no matter how many of his noticeable tics come up. Really, he could have just handed the structural outline to Janjetov and said "repeat about 20 times, that's the best, I think" and then let Janjetov scribble out spaceship drawings for Fred Beltran to "digitize". The plot generator works like this: the elderly Albino and his spaceship of pals are en route to the promised land, and he's recording his autobiography for posterity. He'll tell his tape recorder about how he faced some unstoppable, insurmountable odds in his goal to go from unloved albino kid, product of rape, to the Supreme Technopriest, ruler of the game-creating controllers of the galaxy. Usually he overcomes the odds on the page following the page where he describes them, never by chance, always by design. (It's interesting to me that there's never any luck involved in Albino beating the odds. Not once. No faith either. He just does, like James Bond, or Batman.) Then they cut back to the present day, where the little animal thing that he hangs out with says something like "I remember that, that was awful, you were amazing" and Albino says "yes, it was awful, but things were much worse for my family". Then it's time for a story about his family, which consists of Albino's mother, his two half-siblings (one of whom has red skin, the other carrying gray, making his mother's zona pellucida the Penn Station of distinguishing rapist ejaculate). The family's initial goal, the one that his mother built a successful global cheese empire to fund, is the purchase of a totally awesome spaceship that a hired mercenary can use to help hunt down the three rapists who ruined her life. Her first mistake is hiring a mercenary who is one of the rapists--the red one--in disguise, who is just using them just to get the totally awesome spaceship. After dealing with that part of the story, it cuts back to elderly Albino, and the little animal thing says "Gosh, that was really awful for your mom" and Albino says "yes, it really was, but it got even worse later, but let's talk about me some more" and they start over again.

I'm not trying to be glib, and while I realize that Jodorowksy is a big deal, and yes, Technopriests isn't a "bad" comic per se, this is the formula that's used, and it's used over and over and over and over again, and the only thing that breaks it up is when the present day Albino has to fight off some kind of insurmountable odds, usually in the same two page length that it takes him when he's telling the stories about it when he was a kid and did the exact same thing. At a certain point--roughly around the end of the DC collection's first volume, you start getting to the point where you're looking forward more to the dynamic stuff that goes on in the flashback family stories, because at least their battles and woes produce a relative amount of drama and their status quo actually changes, quite drastically at times, whereas Albino's status quo only changes in the sense that his position in the empire of Technopriests goes up, as well as his power level and abilities. He's the equivalent of one of those Final Fantasy type video games--at first, it's hard to hack into this computer and he gets caught, but eventually he can just hack into computers by looking at them, and by the climax of the two available collected editions, he can turn himself into the poorly named "Super Albino" (who, like the poorly named heroes he's modeled upon, announces himself as if he's starring in his own late night talk show) and he's pretty much an unstoppable force of pure wish-fulfiment, capable of any and everything imaginable.

So it's bad, right?

Well, no, it isn't, not really. Technopriests is one of those thing that does end up succeeding on the strength of some of its ideas, the stuff that it throws away in the gutters of the story. It's not all stuff like the shark pirates, nor is it the "My race has retractable testicles" line, either--there's some really clever ideas going on here, like when Albino criticizes the gaming industry (an industry that pretty much controls the universe, old school 1950's subliminal messaging style.) How do they know they make successful games? How can they be sure the public will eat them all up like pudding?

They ask the fifty morons. It's the apex of test marketing, it's the culmination of advertising's soppiest wet dreams--the artist, which is a word you won't find used much in Technopriests, under the thumb of the mass fool biologically incapable of deceit, employed and plugged in to provide immediate, honest response to the work of the creator. It's impossible not to read into this, to hear the sounds of Alejandro Jodorowsky, a guy who has made it his business to make films that are uncompromisingly his own. For him, his view, this is the alternative--art by collective, engineered for profit and lazy pleasure alone--and that's why it's no surprise that those who control the profits of the Technoguild wreak out their firings with laser cannons. In Technopriests, you either succeed at making a salable product, or you get eviscerated. No retirement, no second chances. No one who supports the profit-viewpoint in Technopriests is depicted as anything less than a psychopath, monsters devoid of humanity, devoid of passion, black holes where artistic ambitions reside. The faith in marketplaces depicted here is one that is viewed by the hero--of which, truly, Albino is the only one--as pure lunacy, a disgusting prostitution of humanity's greatest ideals. So yes, you feel as if you're supposed to root for the guy and his weird dreams.

Of course, you'll eventually find out that he has long renounced physical intimacy and outlawed the drinking of alcohol and anything else that might be considered "fun", and if you disagree with him or want to bail out on the whole "go find the promised land" thing, he's going to suck your thoughts and memories right out of your skull and replace them with a placid acceptance of his own design. The shift isn't apparent, it's not even really clear to me when it occurs, when Albino goes from being the lord of all game-makers--which he is by the end of the second volume--to a cult leader with fascist tendencies. It's probably in the last volume, which DC never got around to publishing. Hopefully. That's a pretty big shift to get dumped in between panels.

Now, there's one major thing that occurs in the Technopriests that I haven't touched upon yet, and that's because it doesn't really make sense to me beyond it being A) quite similar to things that occur in The White Lama and B) extremely similar to the sorts of philosophy proposed by Descartes in his Meditations on First Philosophy, where he examines the notion that he can not be sure what is around him is real because he might just be under the thrall of an evil demon that...oh fuck it.

It's the shit they talk about at the end of the Matrix 2, fine. The guy that started the guild of Technopriests tells Albino that none of what has occurred, or will occur, is real and that the entirety of Albino's universe is a massive game, like a MMORPG game, that the guy invented. Kind of.* Either way, Albino incorporates the guy, White Lama style. It's very meta and takes up about six or so pages, off and on, throughout what's currently available. Problematically, it also doesn't seem to be that important to Albino beyond the pages where it's being directly addressed, which is exactly why I'm not really sure what to say about it. Drop a penny like that, you probably imagine that it's time to go in a new story direction, time to spend the remaining volumes figuring out how to get out to the real world and fight injustice or whatever, time for you to jump off a roof, Abre los Ojos style. Here? Not so much. Not so at all, actually. No, this isn't even a cliffhanger scene, it's just a couple of random passages, and then it's back to the farting animal sidekick, another "If you think that was bad, my sister's husband had just sacrificed himself so that their child could be dipped in the water that gave Clayface his powers." 

*Kind of, in that maybe the third volume answers some of these questions, and considering the vast importance of them to the story, the sense that all of Albino's reality is only one of an infinite series of attempts to rectify corrupt universes, that's not too ridiculous an expectation. Of course, it's also a defensive statement, as I'm sure that the third trade is great, since the Technopriests is great, and blah blah blah I should just shut up and throw stones at Titans Hunt if I know what's good for me.

In the end--or maybe I should say, in the end America is currently provided--Jodorowsky decides that Albino needs to get old, and he does one of those "insurmountable odds" portions again, this time one where the main character turns into a snake, becomes evil for a while, fights losing his soul, and eventually emerges triumphant, the only sacrifice being that he's aged 50 years. That's pulled off in the shortest portion yet, an actual text box that comes after a big drawing of Albino the snake. Seven years of fighting occurs in between panels. After that? To be continued.

In retrospect, I'd imagine that part of the reason that the Technopriests is so well-liked--and, regardless of lack of availability in the US, it is a relatively well-liked comic--has less to do with its specific plot, and more to do with the idea of what that plot is. In comic, in story--it's just a space opera, epic in scope yet Macgyver in delivery, an engine that delivers moments in boiled down segmentation. But it's got enough random ideas that do speak to greater forces at work, ideas about the fear of whether or not human beings can keep up with the pace of technological advance, ideas about whether a life lived in service of great ideals while in practice of horrendous action can remain ethical, that it ends up becoming a story that opens up questions far more involving than those of a simple "everybody is created equal" or "don't judge a book by it's cover" or "Batman & Robin can never die". I still would hope for more--but then again, that's sort of okay. We'll always have the Metabarons.

-Tucker Stone, 2009

DC/Humanoids Index
T1   Introductions & Miss: Better Living Through Crime by Joe McCulloch
T2   Fragile & The Horde here at TFO
T3   Sanctum & Transgenesis 2025 Vol 1: The Ancestor here at TFO
T4   The Incal (Preparations by Joe McCulloch
T5   Son Of The Gun here at TFO
T6   The Incal (Execution) by Joe McCulloch
T7   White Lama here at TFO
T8   The Technopriest here at TFO
T9   Bouncer, Megalex & Metal Hurlant by Joe McCulloch
T10 The Metabarons by Joe McCulloch
T11 Memories here at TFO
T12 The Chaos Effect here at TFO
T13 The Bilal Trilogy here at TFO

Music of the Weak: 100 Songs/100 Days (Part Two)

Music of the Weak set out to find 100 awesome songs from the first 100 days of 2009. Last week, we posted the first fifty. Here are the rest. It’s probably worth noting I couldn’t have done this without leaning heavily on The Fader’s blog or eMusic’s 17 Dots, not to mention the excellent Passion of the Weiss and Analog Giant, both of which pointed me toward a good handful of tracks. Also, Best of the Year So Far Lists from Sasha Frere-Jones and Michelangelo Matos. Enjoy.

An Up-and-Comer With a Distinctive Sound and a Real Chance to Be a Star: Lil’ Wayne Featuring Pharrell Williams – “Yes”

And, Playing the Role of Lindstøm’s Scrappy, Loveable Nephew: Lawrence – “Jill”

Angling For a Spot On a Mix Tape In Between The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song”: Sissy Wish – “Ya Ya Ya”

Any Band That Uses Frankenberry as Their MySpace Icon Has to Be Doing Something Right: Dorian Concept – “Upside Downslide”

Are We Ready to Admit to The Lonseome Crowded West Being One of the Most Influential Albums of the Last Couple Decades Yet: Cymbals Eat Guitars – “And the Hazy Sea”

Bassiest Delight of the Year, So Far: Shuttle – “Tunnel (High Rankin Remix)”

Best Early-90’s Throwback (Before the Inevitable Deluge): J. Period Featuring De La Soul – “Excursions (Tribute Remix)”

Best Song For Pretending You’re Back in 2004 Pretending It’s 1997: The Streets – “Blinded By the Lights (Anonymous Dubstep Remix)”

Come For the Song Title, Stay For the Cover Art: Super Furry Animals – “The Very Best of Neil Diamond”

Contractually Obligated to Whistle on Every Song: Andrew Bird – “Fitz & Dizzyspells”

Even After a Hit Single, We Still Have Trouble Proving Anyone But Critics and Musicians Actually Listens to M.I.A.: Buraka Som Sistema Featuring Deize Tigrona – “Aqui Para Voces”

File Under: Drugs; Adorable: The Black Lips – “Drugs”

First Person to Find Me An mp3 of This Damn Song Wins a Damn Prize: House of House – “Rushing to Paradise (Walking These Streets)”

“Flashbacks” is the Backpack Rap Title Equivalent of Naming a Glam Song “Rock You”: Cas One Featuring Brother Ali – “Flashbacks”

Garage Band Dress-Up is the Best Band Dress-Up: Condo Fucks – “What’cha Gonna Do About It”

Got Rid of the Whistling, But Still Aiming For Preciousness: Peter Bjorn & John – “Nothing to Worry About”

Ha Ha Ha: Kid Cudi Featuring Kanye West, Common & A-Track – “I Poke Her Face”

If You’re Going to Do Wistful, You Have to Use Trumpets: Finale – “A Pipe Dream and a Promise”

It’s Already Time For Early-Career Rihanna Nostalgia (Thanks, Fader!): Jovi Rockwell – “Tonight” 

It Was Always Secretly a Sad, Sad Song: Beyoncé, “Single Ladies (Siik Remix)”

J Dilla Recast as a Cultural Diplomat: Filastine Featuring Rabah – “B’Talla”

Kind of a Train Wreck/Kind of Awesome: MSTRKRFT Featuring John Legend – “Heartbreaker” 

Look, This Zooey Chick Only Sings Background This Time: M. Ward Featuring Zooey Deschenel – “Never Had Nobody Like You”

More Cosmic Disco Operas, Please (See Also: Kool DJ Dust’s 2008 *ahem* The Disco Opera): Afrobutt – “Banger Disco”

Most Unnecessary Name Change/They’ll Always Be The Muslims to Me: The Soft Pack – “Religion”

Not Too Late to Retroactively Slip It Into That Anna Farris Movie: Shawn Lee Featuring Darondo – “Playboy Bunny”

Now With 100% More Helium Voices: Prefuse 73 – “Preparation Kids Choir”

Odds Are You’re So Sick of Droning, Drum-Circle Baiting, Hippie Shit—But In Case You’re Not: Here We Go Magic – “Only Pieces”

Okay, Maybe They’re a Career Band After All: Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Zero”

One Reason Definitive Jux Should Stay in the Retro-Soul Game: Chin Chin – “Go There With You”

Pixies Revivalism is So Old It’s New Again: Micachu & The Shapes – “Lips”

Posse Cut That Tacks On a Deep Robotic Voice and Phone Call For Good Measure: UGK Featuring Too $hort & Snoop Dogg – “Steal Your Mind”

Reassurance That Blindly Digging Around Emusic is Time Well Spent: Woolfy – “Oh Missy (Whatever/Whatever Remix)”

Sesame Street For Pissed-Off Teenage Girls: Lily Allen – “Fuck You”

Sign That Anthropomorphizing Might Be a Musical Trend (What Up, Neko Case?): The King Khan & BBQ Show – “Animal Party”

Since Andrew Bird Has the Whistling Thing All locked Up, We’ll See What We Can Do With Humming: The Love Band – “Mmm”

Strangely, The Best Thing to Come Out of a Jay-Z/Santogold Collaboration: Raekwon – “Staten (Go Hard)”

Still Digging In the Same Hole, With Increasing Returns: Black Milk – “Dreams”

The Official 100 Songs/100 Days Cool Down: Tim Hecker – “Currents of Electrostasy”

The Sound of a Midlife Crisis, Crystallized: U2 – “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight”

The Sound of a Midlife Crisis, Exploited: Morrissey – “It’s Not Your Birthday Anymore”

The World May Not Need Another Band Who Sings About Sharing Cherry Colas, And Yet: Telekinesis – “Coast of Carolina”

Things May Be Globally Shitty, But Things Are Still Personally Shitty: Cage – “Nothing Left to Say”

This Juan MacLean Guy Might Seriously Be Going Places: Roy Davis Jr. Featuring Erin Martin – “I Have a Vision (The Juan MacLean Remix)”

This One!: Telepathe – “So Fine”

Thorniest Guitar Fuckage That Almost Makes Up For Sounding Stuck In 2004: Franz Ferdinand – “Lucid Dreams (Original Version)”

When Dudes Ease Up On All the Guest Vocals and Pop Aspirations, Dudes Can Make Some Stunning Music: Röksopp – “Röksopp Forever” 

Yeah, Yeah, She’s the New Kate Bush, Yeah, Great, Alright: Bat For Lashes – “Daniel”

Your Salve For Having to Endure Another Cover of “Mad World”: Junior Boys – “Hazel”

2009, The Year of Blinks and Blonks: Tanlines – “New Flowers”

-Martin Brown, 2009

Désastre Hurlant (T7): Open Hand, Closed Fist

The White Lama
Written by Alejandro Jodorowsky
Art by Georges Bess
Translated by Justin Kelly & Geoffrey Finch

With the possible exception of Bouncer, which I haven't read, The White Lama is the friendliest of all the Jodorowsky comics that DC/Humanoids released. It's a welcoming book, one with quite a few happy characters, friendships that last, a funny cat, and very few sacrifices made on the part of its leads that aren't with a sense of satisfied completion. But really, the thing that makes White Lama a more welcoming book than the intimidating sci-fi omniverse of The Incal and its spin-offs, or Son of the Gun's brutality, is K-Mart's answer to Stanley Kubrick, motherfucking George Lucas. Like Star Wars and Orson "I hate gay people" Scott Card before them, Lama is another glossy Hero's Journey, property of Joe Campbell. It doesn't meat all the beats, but there's enough for it to have that "This reminds me of Star Wars except I miss Han Solo" You've got an orphan, the mysterious prophecy, the takeover by evil empire, the always-awesome training sequences, the first guardian, the so on, the so forth...you know this stuff, you can't not at this point. It's the easiest thing in the world to remember as soon as you learn the terms, because so many different stories use it as the framework. Jodorowsky plays with the structure some, but mostly relies on it as a frame for him to embellish with his story, which incorporates a version of Tibetan Buddhism that plays the specifics of the faith loosely and fractures the timeline enough so it can incorporate the first Jesuits, the non-music related British Invasion and still climax with the Chinese takeover of 1950. Jodorowsky's hero--a white boy named Gabriel who is raised by native Tibetans after his own parents are slaughtered by a hired killer pretending to be a "god of death"--holds the primary point of engagement for the story throughout, growing and changing until he embraces his destiny as the Grand Lama who will prepare the Tibetans for the Chinese invasion that will scatter their faith across the world, as well as leave many of them dead.

Using the "Hero's Journey" carries the same problem that super-hero comic writers run into when it's time to tell a story about Batman punching muggers. See, there's a metric ton of mugger-punching stories, and most of the time people who have any history with the character are just going to come in with their jaw stuck out: "What you got for me? Right cross or uppercut?"  It's up to the creative crew to figure out a way to make the staid fresh again, and if they just count on a mechanical paint job, it's not going be enough. (In a perfect world, obviously, this couldn't be less true in the real one.) With comics, with the Joey Campbell ideas, you're struggling with "Jedi's are way cooler than this shit. Next!" (Hell, Pootie Tang follows the Hero's Journey even more closely than Luke Skywalker did, and except for the part where he smears cherry pie all over his face, Pootie Tang isn't a very good movie. A classic, yes, but good? Not really.) It's up to Jodorowsky, along with Georges Bess, to come up with a way to make a story that everybody already knows into something that they want to read all over again.

That's exactly what they did. They made it look easy.

White Lama opens with the Grand Lama dreaming of death, a dream that foretells the coming attacks that will split Tibet apart, and a dream that tells him he cannot be the one to lead the people through what is to come. He decides that it is high time for him to attain Buddhahood, which--as it's loosely explained here--will give him a chance to hide the knowledge that will be necessary to keep the faith alive after the attacks begin. It's an interesting, smart take on Jodorowsky's treatment of Buddhism--juxtaposing the clearness that the Lama has already attained Arahant, and therefore is choosing to return in human form solely to help other sentient beings attain enlightenment, with the later transition, where Gabriel will have surpassed even that when he chooses to incorporate the Grand Lama's personage, and relinquish what might be called the Grand Lama's "soul" for him. The choice, a sort of ingenious one that you have to work your back to the beginning of the story to grasp makes the early passages--where the Grand Lama's Buddhahood seems to be fully completed--inaccurate. The Grand Lama hasn't attained Buddhahood, at least not in the fullest sense as Jodorowsky defines it, not only because he's reincarnated (Tibetan Buddhism usually believe that true Arahant involves the end of the reincarnation cycle), but because Gabriel shows that the Grand Lama's Buddhahood can be taken even further, that it quite clearly wasn't "ultimate". It points to an interesting direction, not one that is clear enough to be defined as "this is what the story is about" kind of stuff, but still, the idea that the journey towards enlightenment is an unending one, that the self can't be fully actualized when there's still a future to be had, as the mortals involved will always die with some kind of future left to come. Of course, portions of the story point to it being one of completion--Gabriel's later savior/protector and first disciple is the last (due to a lack of potential mate) yeti on Earth, and the yeti is clearly aware that rescuing Gabriel serves as his cue that his time is soon to be over. (Jodorowsky also throws an interesting tweak into the story, making the yeti also the stand in for Sujata, the village girl who convinced Gautama Buddha to eat some milk & honey before he withered away and died. Since this isn't Tezuko telling the story, the sustenence provided by the yeti is, of course, raw meat. Compare and contrast, to follow.)

Osama Tezuka's take on Sujata

Jodorowsky's and George Bess go another direction with her

Jodorowsky's decision to include a yeti as an active character isn't just a choice made to be weird for weirdness sake, it's also because he knew that Georges Bess could draw the hell out of an abominable snowman. It's also because Jodorowsky isn't telling the story of Tibetan Buddhism, and he's not telling the story of Buddha. He's telling a boy's adventure story, and that's why he's so willing to allow his Gabriel--who Jodorowsky and Bess do frequently depict as a saint--to do things like violate the Four Noble Truths and play crazy with the Golden Rule. Gabriel kills people with his Buddhahood powers, first at his mother's crazed requests, and later--in a sequence that can really only be responded to with a sort of eye-goggled "Damn, dude", he tricks all of the evil monks into believing that they see him before them, and when they pull their weapons to strike, they strike themselves. It's bone-chilling stuff, and Gabriel's answer for it, that "It wasn't I who destroyed you..rather it was your own destructive souls!" is a base exaggeration of the ethic of reciprocity. Nasty business. (It does lead to the most kicksplode line of the volume, however: "...swords can no longer cut me. It is I who have become the blade.")

When White Lama nears its conclusion, Bess draws a two page sequence depicting what will happen to the Tibetans and their land at the hands of China's military forces, choosing to tightly place the boxes with no gutters in between, an extreme design for extreme pain, drawn in reds and blacks--angry, bloody colors for angry, bloody acts. Before they go out to face their likely mortal deaths, Gabriel has one final, Whitesnake style order:

White Lama ends with a promise, a punchline repeated twice, and that's it. There aren't any sequels, because the story it's involved with is never going to end. We'll fly as high as we can, knowing that somewhere, someday, someone else will fly just a bit further. 

"Without wavering."

-Tucker Stone, 2009

DC/Humanoids Index
T1   Introductions & Miss: Better Living Through Crime by Joe McCulloch
T2   Fragile & The Horde here at TFO
T3   Sanctum & Transgenesis 2025 Vol 1: The Ancestor here at TFO
T4   The Incal (Preparations by Joe McCulloch
T5   Son Of The Gun here at TFO
T6   The Incal (Execution) by Joe McCulloch
T7   White Lama here at TFO
T8   The Technopriest here at TFO
T9   Bouncer, Megalex & Metal Hurlant by Joe McCulloch
T10 The Metabarons by Joe McCulloch
T11 Memories here at TFO
T12 The Chaos Effect here at TFO
T13 The Bilal Trilogy here at TFO

Désastre Hurlant (T5): Like No Messing Around, This Guy Really Wants To Sleep With His Mom

It's not all Incal-verse science fiction in the Jodorowsky catalog, no matter what Jog tells you! This is a guy who tested the limits of what kind of genres he could use to write about incest fetishes, and he came away satisfied, one hopes, because...well. I don't know how much further down you want to go with that one. Anyway, that's enough of an introduction, right? This ain't The Incal, this ain't no Metabarons, and no, Technopriests is later. This is the story of Juan Solo, the baby who was found in a garbage heap by a transvestite dwarf prostitute, given a pistol to suck on like a pacifier...or, you know, something else that's got a long phallic end...and who grew up to be the risen Christ by way of South American crime.

Son Of The

Hold on for a second! I forgot something. He's also got a prehensile tail. Okay, you can start now.

Son Of The Gun #1-2, Sinner & Saint

Written by Alejandro Jodorowsky

Art by Georges Bess

Translated by Justin Kelly

Okay, Jodorowsky, I'm with you. This is the story of a boy who grew up wrong and went on to become a bearded, thorned crown wearing crucified type. You're not really taking on The Greatest Story Ever Told, are you? I've seen that movie. (Technically, I haven't seen THAT movie, who actually watches that movie?) Georges Bess is great, don't get me wrong, but you're not really going to try and outdo the Lord our God, right?

Right?

Don't worry. Don't fret your head for a second. If there's one thing Jodorowsky isn't going to do, it's the story of the Son of God. The crucificixation here, that's just a framing story, it's just the everybody-does-this-now show the end at the beginning, then work your way towards it. It's a bookend piece, and the rest of the story--how a baby with a gun in his mouth ended up making his way to a cross in the desert with a crown of thorns--that's the story that Jodorowsky and Bess tell with Son of the Gun. Now, it does have a direct reference game it plays, but it's one that predates the New Testament a bit. Oedipus. Which means....

Yes.

Incest.

I'm not going to spend too much time analyzing this little chapter of Jodorowsky's obsessions, mostly because I can't even fathom what exactly you're supposed to say about it. Analyze no, but address? No choice. Jodorowsky often has characters with weird relationships with their mothers, sometimes it goes so far as to include the characters having sex with their mothers, sometimes it's just something they want to do, sometimes it's more tangled up in the mother forcing the son through whatever degradation their control over their sons allow--but it comes up a lot. Sometimes, like in Son Of The Gun, it comes up in some pretty randy sex scenes that stop short of showing penetration, but still go a bit further then an R-rated flick would probably allow. The question seems to be, since Jodorowsky likes showing it so much, if it's really necessary to the stories themselves, or if it's just there because, well, Dude Likes It When Sons Bang Their Mom. Because really, you know--we're not talking about one single story at a time, we're talking about a healthy swath of Jodo-stuff here. Science fiction..with incest! Hardcore crime parables...with incest! Boy's pulp fanatasy adventure...with incest!

I'm pretty accepting with my comics intake when it comes to what you should or shouldn't do--I'm not going to throw down a comic just because there's animal torture or child molestation simply because, by some made-up "principle" that it's there, and That's Not Okay. I mean--who cares, you know? Just a comic. But when it comes up so frequently across the library, you start to question "Do we really need this much mom-banging?" 

In the story of Juan Solo, yes, you do. Hey, it may be icky--although Georges Bess is going to draw it in such a way that yes, it's very, very erotic and very, very understandable--but it's a huge part of the story. Question is...is this is a good story anyway?

That one is a bit tougher.

Juan's life is your standard young and angry orphan with a grudge type stuff. Here, in he's just finished raping a girl who he's now passing off to his crew. In a little nod to exploitation road work, they keep notches on the dashboard whenever they do this stuff--she's the 24th. Pretty simple, albeit grotesque, economy here. It's about this guy--this disgusting human being, born in the trash--making it to the guy on the cross. Now, the guy on the cross isn't a real sweetheart either, he's more Harvey Keitel in Bad Lieutenant, roaring at the God who he believes in just a shade more than he hates Him. Juan's religious faith is actually one of the least developed parts of the story, and that's not due to a lack of space on the part of the team. Bess and Jodorowsky had plenty of space--four albums in total, all of which made it to America in two of the DC/Humanoids preferred softcover format. There's not much indication on the comics of when or where they came from, I had to rely on the kindness of commentators to to find out that the series began in 1995. Throughout it, you can see the seams of Georges Bess figuring out how he wants to draw the story--In some places, Bess uses so fine a line to draw facial features that it looks less like pen and more like scratch work, and then you'll get to later sections where he's decided to do everything in thick lines. It's not the most welcoming art because of the constant transitioning between style, and in the service of a story full of truly awful people, it makes for an at times difficult slog. 

Still, it's the story of a kid on the way from Sinner to Saint, so you can't really be surprised that Juan isn't Chuck Chaplin, all googly eyed and steamboat dancing. Still, that mindset won't get you ready for when things get all Dick Tracy.

That isn't all, either. There's also "Pinocchio,"The Greek", "Cyclops", "Bigmouth", "Tutti Frutti", and "Elder. That's who Juan ends up crewing with after he executes his rapist gang in a successful bid to become a bodyguard for the local prime minister. I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff, and watching Juan go through initiation--torture, murder for hire and the requisite beat the shit out of all of the other bodyguards to prove his badassery--is pure gold, even more so when the requisite beat-shit scene takes place in the showers, where the reader first realizes that Juan's tail now reaches almost to the knee. From there, Son Of The Gun plays things by the book--he chops off a rival politicians head and serves it up on a platter, beats the head bodyguard to death and takes his spot, Georges Bess makes fun of Rocky...

...and things pretty much play out the way you would expect them too. Juan's reign as leader is a great success for the prime minister although it ups the savagery of the team to a level that's just savage for savagery's sake. Eventually though, Jodorowsky has to get somewhere, and having built no real reason or momentum to get there--if anything, the bodyguard team of killers portions of the story taste distinctly of something that could have run for a couple hundred issues, American serialized style--the story just abruptly takes a gigantic turn. After slaughtering his way through a group of renegades intent on killing the prime minister, led by the PM's own daughter, Juan is sent to protect the completely safe wife of the prime minister, who is so lost in her grief that she just barely is able to work up the spice to fuck Juan's brains out the first night he arrives.

There's still some violence to come, but it's mixed with erotica and degradation, all culminating in the moment when Juan discovers that the Prime Minister is his father, he was dumped in the garbage because of his tail by the head bodyguard he killed a while back, that was his sister trying to kill his dad, and blah blah blah, this naked hot lady he's been having sex with is totally his mom, icky icky poo. (He still wants to have sex with her. That's not even a question in his mind.)

If it seems like I'm just doing plot recap with sarcasm, well, that's because you're a smart reader and deserve a star. This is just plot recap, because that's pretty much what Son Of The Gun is, a story in development, a story in motion. When it slows down to try "character development", that's when you find out stuff like "This bodyguard is called Tutti Frutti because he is a homosexual wearing a pink shirt" and then you just have a couple of panels where he minces around. There's little else to it, so...moving on. Juan's decisions are never really explained--his initial seduction of his mother involves him breaking into her bedroom and standing there, his decision to abandon his success as a bodyguard to escape with his mother is tangled up in...nothing, really. He just does things, and sometimes it makes sense, but most of the time, he just. Does. Things. Often, they are bad.

Of course, he's still got to end up on that cross though. Which means that Jodorowsky had to come up with a way to get him up there, and that's where one starts to question how far out this story was planned. Georges Bess keeps changing how thick he wants to draw his lines, people's eyes start crossing for no discernible reason other than, hey, whatever, maybe they were making a joke at the time. The chronology of the story, which had at least maintained a relatively understandable pace, starts gyrating, the text starts saying things like "Months later..." and "Miles away..." and all of a sudden, Juan is a bearded alcoholic pimp, being paid to wag his tail in the air while some overweight Mexican tycoon is having sex with his mother on the top floor of a shitty desert bar. (And if you can figure out why the Mexican tycoon needs to hire a couple of jarochos to sit in the room while he humps Juan's mother, you're a comic book genius, and I salute you.) And you gotta ask: Jodo? What's going on here? You really want to make this drastic a shift in three panels?

But that's exactly what Jodorowsky wants, and this is the degredation that Juan is going to get. All of that murder, all of those rapes, pretty much every choice that Juan made? That wasn't the problem. He says it on the cross, early on "You only listen to violence!" He believes himself to be a victim of circumstances, and the pain he suffers here, the only real pain he knows, is that he has to watch as his mom fucks herself silly for food and shelter and he doesn't get to have a taste at all. She won't even touch him, but she won't let him leave. Over and over, and if you're wondering if she looks him in the eye while she's doing it, she does. That's his pain--not the murder of his sister, the exectution of his father. His mom. She won't have sex with him anymore. By the time the survivors from his old crew return, led by his adolescent brother, it doesn't even really make sense why he'd try to escape his fate. He runs, leaves his mom behind to die, ends up dying in the desert and finally gives away his gun.

Is that a facile reading of it, I wonder? Is that a surface analysis, ignoring the brilliance of a comic book writer par excellence? Well, I'm sure it could be, it is me after all. But that's what the text provides, that's what the drawings show. There's no reversal for Juan until he places his lips on the milk-heavy breast of a young mother who, like the villagers he hides amongst, believes him to be the fated tail-having saint they were waiting for. He sucks at her breast only to realize he's possibly dooming the crying infant across the room to become just like him, because all he wanted as a baby was a mother's love, a mother's sustenance. So he calls for a cross, and he screams and bitches, tells his story, and then calls out to God like Tyrese in that shitty Transformers movie. "Bring the rain", he cries. His problems? That's all on the man upstairs. Shouldn't have left him crying in the dumpster.

I'm sorry Jodorowsky, I know it's your week and all.

That's pretty fucked up.

-Tucker Stone, 2009

DC/Humanoids Index
T1   Introductions & Miss: Better Living Through Crime by Joe McCulloch
T2   Fragile & The Horde here at TFO
T3   Sanctum & Transgenesis 2025 Vol 1: The Ancestor here at TFO
T4   The Incal (Preparations) by Joe McCulloch
T5   Son Of The Gun here at TFO
T6   The Incal (Execution) by Joe McCulloch
T7   White Lama here at TFO
T8   The Technopriest here at TFO
T9   Bouncer, Megalex & Metal Hurlant by Joe McCulloch
T10 The Metabarons by Joe McCulloch
T11 Memories here at TFO
T12 The Chaos Effect here at TFO
T13 The Bilal Trilogy here at TFO

Television Of The Weak: Mommy Lives On Tuesdays Now, And She's Bigger Than Ever: UPDATED

This week--and for now, this is where Television Will Live, we've got 24, Dollhouse, House, Damages, The Mighty Boosh, Lost, The Celebrity Apprentice, American Idol & Survivor. With the Witzke, The West, The Brady, The Engelman, & The Brownstone.

24 - "12:00AM - 1:00AM"

You know, if we're gonna go all-crazy-stunt-casting this season, with the stoner from Dazed & Confused backing up the snake food from Anaconda while Glenn Morshower (the cop from The River Wild?) gets saddled with his skankiest assignment yet, why can't they bring in Morgan Freeman just to yell at the Joint Chiefs when they start questioning the orders of Prezzy Jones? All you needed him to say was "John Doe has the upper hand!" and, like California before them, everybody would have stayed away from here.

Okay, if that reads like reaching, it is, because there isn't much to say about this episode. Last night's 24 wasn't 24, it was 24 Remix, a screwed and chopped version of last week's episode, where Tony 2.0 teams up with somebody who isn't so sure about Jon Voight's plan to start an American civil war from a stormtrooper compound in Virginia, and we watch Tony carry around a suit-full-of-dead-man until he can ditch him to do some wetwork. No problems there--Tony can kill nameless mercs as well as Jack ever did, and it's been too long--two or three episodes, at least--since the audio stylings of Sean Callery (171 episodes and counting!) were accented with the glorious overdub of a man's neck cracking so hard you start to wonder if the skull should be dangling from the jugular.

*If it matters to you, the answer to "How Jack Bauer will survive being dosed with a weaponized kill-em-all", has something to do with his daughter, who hasn't seen her post-24 career take off the same way Agent Baker did. (Sorry Daniel Dae Kim, but fuck Lost. You'll always be Agent Baker to me.)

Dollhouse - "Needs" by Matthew J. Brady

You know when the opening scene of an episode sees Echo showing up at Agent Ballard's house to give him some "special information", that it's going to turn out to be a dream sequence, even before she tells him that he has something she needs and they start having sex. As the series continues, I get more and more bored of that entire storyline. But luckily, it's almost ignored this episode, in favor of a plot that sees Echo and several other Actives wake up, having seemingly regained their true personalities, if not their full memories, and attempt to escape the premises. It's an interesting premise, especially given that we've seen flashes of memories and personalities surface from these supposedly blank-slate characters over the series, so they could well have "reawakened" for real. But no, it's all part of a game, or training exercise, or something, as we learn fairly early on. The truth turns out to be kind of dumb, in that it's a pop psychological way for them to get "closure" on whatever their subconscious needs them to.

But in the meantime, it makes for a pretty exciting plot, as the Actives try to figure out where they are, what's going on, and how to escape. Echo ends up almost killing Topher, which should be nice for people that find him especially annoying (I'm starting to settle into that camp), November (Ballard's zaftig girlfriend, who kind of gets shoehorned in here, since we've barely seen anything of her as an Active) gets to mourn her dead child, Sierra gets some revenge on a guy that wronged her, and Victor gets to mack on Sierra. The best parts are the ones that involve the latter two characters, serving to highlight the horror that is being perpetrated on these characters. They're basically slaves, but possibly even worse, since not only are they being held against their will, they're also forced to perform actions and feel emotions that are wrong. The higher-ups like Olivia Williams state that they voluntarily signed up for this to get out of trouble or to escape sordid pasts, but in at least one case, they were forced into it by someone else. It's a really dark concept that underlies the sometimes goofy escapades that the series engages in.

And it looks like, despite myself (and Eliza Dushku's still-poor acting skills), I'm developing some affection for the show. It can be a lark, but it's starting to show a desire to explore the underlying morals of the concept, and while some plots are pretty stupid, the writing can also be pretty sharp. Looks like I'm on board for a while longer, at least.

By the way, the question was raised as to why that fabled sixth episode was so important, and it seems that it wasn't the specific plot of that week that "changed everything", but it did see the point where Joss Whedon gained some more control of the show and began developing it a bit more, going beyond a "mission of the week" structure to explore the characters and concept. It hasn't been completely free of bumps, but it looks like the show is finally on the right track.

The Mighty Boosh - "Journey to the Centre of the Punk" by Sean Witzke

The Mighty Boosh is yet another great export that's being brutally mishandled by well-meaning Americans. The Boosh is kind of a children's program for stoned adults and music nerds - perfect for Adult Swim, you'd think. But runtime and standards and practices have forced some drastic cuts to a show that is family viewing in the UK. And rights issues have apparently forced them only to show season 3, and at one in the morning. Basically they're screwed even though it's got crazy crossover potential. For the unfamiliar - the Mighty Boosh is kind of the damaged child of the Muppet Show, Monty Python, Scooby Doo, and Kenan and Kel. Or Flight of the Conchords but by giddy drug addicts instead of awkward hipsters. It's very funny stuff, and it's the rare BBC show that the non-geeked out masses approved of. It's not the League of Gentlemen, it's not even the IT Crowd. It had a chance!

This episode is like Fantastic Voyage, only about punk vs. jazz. And lots of jokes about Vince finding himself sexy. Well, maybe it's easier to just say what was cut out of the Adult Swim airing of this episode - Vince singing - "I did a shit on your mom I did a shit on your mom I did a shit on your mom and she rather liked it, I did a shit on your dad I did a shit on your dad I did a shit on your dad and he rather liked it I did a shit on your shit I did a shit on your shit I did a shit on your shit, irony completed". It was the best joke in the whole thing. The appeal of this show has always been a kind of standard buddy comedy - the nerdy depressed guy (Howard) and the vain fashionable guy (Vince) arguing for extended periods of time. What made it interesting was the commitment to being apologetically silly (stupid costumes, sci-fi and fantasy plots, talking animals), and doing awesome songs while they were at it. But most importantly - it's one of the rare shows that lived and died on really specific rhythms - like Python, cutting it up for American tv completely throws it off it's game. And rather than simply take things out, Adult Swim has edited things in-scene and in-conversation, and most fucked up, in-song. When I originally watched this episode, I was on the floor laughing. With this version, I chuckled a few times. It's a testament to how much this show works in moments and quick bits of dialog, and how much of a snakepit editing comedy must be. Even so, Adult Swim is fucking this up. Next week America gets introduced to Rich Fulcher as Bob Fossil, and nothing will ever be the same. Because he'll slice you, and learn how to slice others.

House – "Simple Explanation"

This week we were treated to what the producers may as well have called A Very Special Episode of House, the way they promoted it using a strategy of “Once in a Lifetime. An Episode of House Comes Along. That is So Mind-Blowing to Your Fucking Mind. That Nothing Will Ever Be the Same. For You. In Your Life. Ever.” Now, bear in mind that House normally lives and breathes by being a show that is generally better than you’d expect it to be, given its CSI-in-a-Hospital set-up. Mostly, it achieves this in two ways: In the hypnotizing performance by Hugh Laurie in the lead role, and by making his character unafraid to kill a baby or two along the way. In that respect, it could easily be a purely episodic show, where none of the show’s events would have consequences that lasted beyond the end of the episode. That’s really what it wants to be. For as many recurring storylines as House has trotted out—and they’ve tried romance, death, death in romance, switching up the romantic partners, and bringing in a cop obsessed with bringing House down because he’s a drug addict—they always inevitably return to the show’s original premise: Curmudgeonly doctor with a bad leg leads team of experts in diagnostics department, and is always right. When House started treating himself with methadone earlier this season, the producers couldn’t even tease that story out for more than an hour before returning to neutral. And that’s fine. All we, the viewers, really need is to watch Hugh Laurie’s House psychologically abuse his fellow doctors and let some people die so that others may live.

All this brings us to "Simple Explanation"—the episode of the year, as far as House’s producers are concerned. Get those Emmy statutes in the molds! After the introduction of the patient-of-the-week (Meatloaf! …Er, played by Meat Loaf), there’s a bit of “Hey, do you know where Kutner is?” “No. Do you know where Kutner is?” in the diagnostics lounge. Foreman and Thirteen go to Kutner’s apartment to see why he hasn’t shown up to work, break in, and find that he’s shot himself in the head. With a Glock? And they try CPR anyway? This ain't a Remington. It's a fucking Glock. C'mon.

The writers and producers spend the rest of the episode slapping each other high-fives. They’re totally stoked about Kutner’s suicide, because the character didn’t have any obvious reason to kill himself, wasn’t outwardly depressed, and didn’t show any warning signs. They’re stoked that Kutner was a generally likable dude, and that no one—not the characters or the audience—saw this coming. But most of all they’re stoked at how perfectly symmetrical it is that House, who typically has a logical and medical answer for every problem he comes across, has a question he will never find a satisfactory answer to: Why did Kutner do it? So the only breaks in the cynically maudlin tone of the episode happen when, in one of the hugest suspensions of disbelief that House (the show) has ever asked us to make, House (the dude) becomes “convinced” that Kutner was murdered, and makes some jokes about CSI. Of course, the producers ignore the fact that this is well-trodden ground in TV drama. Omar Epps participated in the exact same storyline on ER, for chrissake! My personal favorite suicide episode—Homicide: Life on the Street’s “Crossetti,” featuring Clark Johnson acting his ass off—also features a character convinced that the suicide victim was murdered. Tucker's is that one where Norm Macdonald re-enacted Budd Dwyer's suicide to open his never-picked-up pilot Back To Norm.

By the by, you may be thinking to yourself: “Wow. They killed off Kal Penn’s character out of nowhere. I wonder if he got fired or quit. Maybe he was being a total d-bag on set, and slipped one too many pencils down Olivia Wylde’s thong.” Nope. He’s going to work in the White House. What's more fascinating about the whole White House thing is how it didn't really become widespread public knowledge until after Kal Penn's character was killed off on a television show, which--and you don't need to be a conspiracy nut to connect the dots--means the White House was working in tandem with the producers of a television show to ensure that their press release schedule didn't grossly interfere with the American people's time spent watching said show.

Oh, and Meat Loaf was in it. That might have worked, but Meat Loaf should have looked, trembling, into Cameron's eyes and, in response to her liver-for-love proposal, said, "I would do anything for love."

"But there's no way that bitch is getting my liver."

Survivor – "One of Those Coach Moments"

Survivor typically has a 4-6 episode window in the middle of the season to launch from a run-of-the-mill season to an exciting season. The first handful of episodes tend to oust cannon fodder—people who haven’t had much in the way of character development, or those with too much character altogether (like this season’s Psycho Sandy, who didn’t know what a “pace” was and rode a person from the opposite team like a bucking bronco during one of the challenges)—and the last few episodes tend to be like the inevitable final moments of a long chess match, when you know who’s going to win but you have to play out the last moves anyway. So, the episodes where there are twelve to seven people left are usually clutch. Unfortunately for Survivor: Tocantins, we’re in episode 6 and we’re still saying goodbye to cannon fodder (this week, the blonde model). It’s no secret that at least a small contingent of the TFO TVotW crew loves them some Survivor, but the amount of updates on this season here on out are going to depend on how much the action picks up—otherwise, it’ll be a little bit like reporting each week on how well my goldfish are adapting to their new home. First report: HORRIBLY.

Damages - "Look What He Dug Up This Time"

And so Damages draws to a close, with promises of more bullshit change-up-the-plot at the last minute crazy to come. It's obviously a show with some kind of meat and muscle casting department behind it--Season 2's crew was a beast of a thing, with rare-to-television players like William Hurt and Tom Noonan showing up and ably filling the holes left by a...god, I can't believe I'm saying this, but a career-best performance by Fucking Ted Danson and the always-superb Zeljko Ivanek, who were hired to cover all the holes that Glenn Close couldn't patch up herself in season 1. Season 2 also contained a sterling performance by Timothy Olyphant, a guy I'm comfortable enough in my sexuality to admit I'll never be able to be objective about, because Holy Christ Timothy Olyphant is sofuckinghothowcanamanbethishot, that kind of thing. And that's not even covering the women! Marcia Gay Harden taking every opportunity to remind America how special ladies can be when they don't pump themselves full of bovine bacteria, only pausing in her seduction of thousands to win every battle but her last. Glenn Close, chewing on the furniture, screaming, crying and sputtering, exploding at imagined and made-up offenses, tearing apart the lives of those she cares about with her lazer eyes so that she can build a better house of cards for those who hate her to live in. Plotting further along the curve than an Al Swearengen or a Habib Marwan, imagining a world where everybody, all of them, are Out To Get Her All The Time--jesus, she'd be a shark at cards. You'd bet your house, you'd lose it all. And then, of course, there's Rose Byrne.  I mean...Rose Byrne!

...and there's where you run into trouble. Sure, she had some better moments in Season 2 than she did season 1, and while most of those were in the adorable romance between her and Timothy Olyphant, a guy who spent almost the entire season having to play both "The guy falling in love with Rose Byrne" as well as "The guy who is going to eventually have to shoot Rose Byrne in the back of the skull with a glock that he keeps in a massive gun cabinet." (Oh, and because the people who make Damages are some kind of crazy assholes, everytime Timothy Olyphant did something sketchy and weird, like play with his death cabinet of guns and newspaper clippings, there was a heavy metal guitar riff played over the dialog. That's not a joke. That's For Reals.) But beyond the romance, Rose Byrne is just out of her depth here. It's not the woman's fault that she can't steely-eye her way through scenes opposite a berserk Glenn Close, and it's not her fault that the Damages script writers are most likely to change her motives and intelligence level to fit with the various turns and twists of their seat-of-pants plotting style--but it's not like those writers are on screen for the viewer to be irritated/bored/consumed with disdain by. No, what we end up with is Rose, and Rose: you're punching way beyond your weight class. The best thing that can happen with next season, the thing that won't, but should, happen, is for Glenn Close's final prediction "She'll be back" to be utterly, absurdly wrong. Then we can get down to business: 30 minutes of Glenn and her demonic attempts to bring down the world around her, and the remainder handed off to Timothy Olyphant, who can just take showers and shoot people for all I care.

And I care a lot.

The Celebrity Apprentice - "Does This Show Have Titles?" by Sarah Engelman

I have no idea why this is happening, Celebrity Apprentice, but please don’t stop. It hurts me, I hate it, but please don’t stop. This season has been bursting at the seams with WTF?! moments but this episode leaves me dumbfounded. “Midgets?” Really? On both teams? Step right up ladies and gentlemen and view the celebrities losing their fucking minds!

The challenge this week was to create a viral internet video for ALL, whose slogan for their new line of concentrated detergent is “small and mighty.” Could this have been a social experiment conducted by the producers to see if they could get the contestants to reveal an even uglier side of themselves? I want to believe so, but the intention doesn’t matter. It happens. They go there. Both teams immediately decide to exploit little people to sell their video.

First, the new Kotu, which now includes Clint Black, Joan Rivers, Khloe Kardashian, Natalie Gulbis and Hershel Walker (who is absent for the first half of the challenge): After an initial whirlwind of arguing the team seems to settle on one of Clint’s ideas, a juvenile joke involving masturbation made even funnier by the addition of a little person. Yay! Production begins with the ladies barely able to contain their laughter as they order a little person from a casting agency. Even if I was ok with the use of a little person as the butt of a joke, which I’m not, hiring the person to act out your joke is not part of the joke.

After meeting with ALL’s conservative executives the team feels their direction is off and they should scrap the plan. Everyone except for Clint, that is. What follows is a mess of dissent when Clint decides to use his idea anyway, completely takes over the project, ignores Joan like it’s his special power and leaves the ladies with nothing to do but eat lunch, read catalogues and nap. And when it turns out the actor they’ve hired doesn’t have acting chops, Clint decides to play the role himself, further irritating the ladies because, you know, without the little person the joke isn’t even funny anymore. Its way too late for salvation by the time Hershel arrives, but he does offer this nugget, “Everybody think their baby’s the prettiest, no matter how ugly the child may be.” True, Hershel. True.

And Clint’s baby sure is ugly. The script is bad. The acting is bad. The directing is bad. The editing is bad. Of course the whole concept is bad. The only mildly redeemable aspect of this video is the hot model in her underwear, but even that wouldn’t make me want to watch it ever, ever again.

Over in the new Athena we have Melissa Rivers, Annie Duke, Brande Roderick, Tionne Watkins and Jesse James. After some initial refusal (why did you cave?!), Jesse agrees to get scrubbed down in a Laundromat by midgets wearing ALL costumes. They’ve decided to go with the word midgets because it gets more hits on the internet than little people. They also decided to ask the actors outright what they prefer. Brilliant. Maybe that’s what inspires them to include a clip of the actors cursing and tearing off their Oompa Loompa style costumes in disgust at the end of the video. All I can think is “How is this happening?! Why can’t these presumably smart and talented people see that they’re being total dicks?!” I don’t know the answer, but it sure does make for good TV.

One of the more incredible scenes plays out like this is… An earnest and jovial Jesse James high-fives the 3 actors, gathers them up in a bear hug, tumbles to the ground with them, stands, gives a big thumbs up and says, “See ya, guys! Thanks!” Cut to Jesse saying, “I just treat em’ just like they’re anyone of my other friends. You know they’re exactly the same as us, they’re just that big.” (Holds hand at knee level.) Now, I like Jesse and I don’t think he’s trying to be a dick. But just like when I was visiting my mother in some little tweaker town in California and heard “I don’t care what color she is, Tina Turner has great legs,” some things just make you sound like an asshole.

Athena also had a meeting with ALL’s executives and also thought maybe they should skew more conservative, but then they also said fuck it, midgets are funny and that’s what we’re going with. And almost everyone, especially guest judge Perez Hilton, thought Athena’s video was a hilarious success. Even Kotu couldn’t contain their laughter when they saw it in the boardroom. So success, right?

Not according to the ALL executives who thought both videos where horrible and offensive failures. Duh. So Trump decides to fire a member from each team, and I’m pretty sure I know exactly who’s going home; Clint and Melissa. But, as Khloe foreshadows, anything can happen, “’Cause he’s Donald Trump!”

Athena valiantly sticks together, and Melissa says she’s ready to take responsibility as the team captain. However, someone has made a fatal error. Trump first compliments and then fires the hell out of Tionne because she was stupid enough to voluntarily come back to the boardroom. What? Oh, no! I heart Tionne!!! Ugh. This episode is really messing with my emotions.

Then, everyone knows Clint is getting the axe on Kotu, but turns out Trump has another bug up his butt. Khloe earned a Young Hollywood Merit Badge in the form of a DUI before coming on the show and the Trumpster didn’t know anything about it. She revealed this nugget to him sometime in the last week and now she makes him sick. Delicious. I don’t hate Khloe at all, but I’m not as attached to her as Tionne, so I enjoy this surprise attack. Get her Trumpy. Get her real good. In the end I’m left feeling uncomfortable, embarrassed, anxious and a little gassy. All in all, damn fine episode. Please oh please oh please do something even more offensive and bat shit crazy in the coming weeks! I love feeling superior to Celebrities. Xoxo!

Lost – "Whatever Happened, Happened" by Zeb L. West

Is it possible to know a character too well? After seeing each Islander’s checkered past, dirty laundry, moral laxity, and outright hypocrisy, I have to admit… sometimes I just feel sick of their shit. Like watching an Uncle fall off the wagon again, or hearing your cousin is pregnant, but this time by a different father! It can start to feel like a Maurey Povich recap. During this episode, I found I was getting irritated with Jack.

While it’s been fun to see Jack’s status flipped by having Sawyer in the alpha role, his hangdog attitude feels fairly tedious at this point. He chooses to test the ‘will of the island’ by abandoning his Hippocratic Oath and refusing to come to the aid of young Benjamin Linus. The expected result of this experiment is that Ben should survive either way. If he exists in the future, then no one’s actions can supersede the inevitable. He also has fairly unsatisfying ex-girlfriendy interactions with both Kate and Juliet that just make him look like a schlub. How far our hero has fallen!

This week’s episode picks up right in the aftermath of Ben being mercilessly gunned down by Sayid. While it’s ironic that they spent the previous episode building the Iraqi up to be the ultimate cold blooded assassin only to have him fail to kill his target, I guess that’s showbiz. Newly endowed with mothering instincts, Kate has an attack of conscience which results in a plan to sneak the injured boy to the Hostiles (who Juliet seems to believe will have some mystical cure for bleeding chest wounds). Richard Alpert is there to receive the young mastermind, and ominously explains that Ben will ‘forget this ever happened, and his innocence will be gone – he will always be one of us’.

Miles plays a nice straight man to Hurley as they explore this very question, and our big hairy comic reliever tries to wrap his mind around the paradoxical implications of the time travel. If Ben was shot by Sayid, then why doesn’t he immediately recognize him when they meet in the future? Although this stops Miles in his tracks, the viewers get a little ahead of the characters, because all of this time travel only serves to explain why future Ben knows so much! And I’m still not sure why Miles offers to let Hurley shoot him, since he vehemently explains that any of them can die in the present moment. Seemed like a funny way of completely contradicting his point.

The episode focused on Kate, but mostly just to deliver her reasons for coming back to the island and to reveal the whereabouts of Aaron. While it’s been great learning the motivation for each Oceanic Six character’s return to the island, Kate’s seems the strangest. While all signs have pointed to her returning for Sawyer, the reason she stated to Carole Littleton was that she was returning to find Claire. In the flashbacks Kate has buddy’d up to Sawyer’s jilted ex-lover/apprentice Cassidy, in some kind of conman-hating first-wives club. Cassidy rakes Kate over the coals about nabbing Aaron in order to fill the void that Sawyer left, which is the catalyst for her returning the boy to his grandmother. Although Aaron is consistently adorable, I feel they’ve kept him a bit in the background so that Kate’s inevitable abandonment is a little easier to swallow.

In the episode’s most intriguing scene, Kate bends to the child’s demands for milk, and stops at the grocery store (only to discover that the controlling little bastard now wants a juice box!). Since the audience knows that Kate is bound to lose Aaron somehow, this scene is rich with tension. Will she ditch him at the grocery store? Will he be kidnapped by Ben and used as leverage to get her to return to the island? Will he be devoured by a four-toed black-smoke-breathing polar bear in the snackfood aisle? Or will he just simply be returned by a creepy blonde woman?

Next week’s episode promises plenty of drama, as future Ben awakens to wreak havoc once more!

Things I’m wondering now: What has become of Daniel Faraday? Where will Sayid end up, now that he is off the chain? Is Locke going to beat the crap out of Ben once he wakes up? Why does the statue only have four toes?!

American Idol – Top 8 Perform

American Idol started out this week with a handful of the weird-ass non-sequitors that have come to define the show. First, Ryan Seacrest introduced each of the contestants as “Born. With a dream. Of becoming a superstar.” I’m guessing he didn’t run that one by the fact-checking committee. Shortly after he announced, “This...is American Idol,” they cut to a shot of a tall, pale, bald dude sitting in the audience, staring blankly at the stage. The camera lingered there for a while. Perhaps this bald man is the Nick Carraway of American Idol, there as a cipher representing the audience. He’s doing a fantastic job. Seacrest than announced that the night’s theme would be “Songs from the Year the Contestants Were Born,” which he used as an excuse to show baby photos of the judges, and to make an unfortunate “wooji wooji wooji” sound. Upon revealing Kara’s baby photo, Seacrest mentioned, “It looks like you just made a poopy,” and the audience cheered. Kara retorted, “It looks like Simon was baby-sitting me,” which she was incredibly proud of saying, and the audience cheered even more. What the fuck is this show about again?

Right out of the gate, Danny Gokey hedged on the night’s theme by doing a version of “Stand By Me” from 1980. Supposedly, he didn’t sing it badly—the chintzy 80’s R&B arrangement didn’t help him much—but he still doesn’t have much personality. Because he is a sociopath. When Paul heaped the typical praise upon him, Simon laughed at her before saying, “I can’t stand you.”

Pretty Boy Kris Allen and Lil Rounds re-enforced the notion that no good music came out of the 80’s. Kris sang Don Henley’s “All She Wants to Do is Dance” surrounded by about seventeen audience members. This is the second week in a row that someone has been positioned in the audience, and it’s not a good look. It made Kris look like he was holding a be-in in Golden Gate Park instead of performing on the biggest show on television—then again, that’s sort of AI’s amateurish MO. Kara called Kris’s performance “jazz funk homework,” which I’m sure Don Henley would have been flattered by, since no one in the history of music has ever accused him of being either jazzy or funky. Lil Rounds basically did a predictable Tina Turner impersonation and was justly lambasted for it by the judges. Lil is our downward spiral of the season, and hopefully the voters will keep her around long enough to see how desperate she’ll get.

Why, oh why can’t we vote for Anoop Desai’s parents for American Idol? Watching Anoop sing Cyndi Lauper’s “True Colors” was painful. Around the Top 11 or so is when all of the contestants become parodies of themselves. Anoop is the guy who thinks he can be a total cheese-dick one week, and then turn around and sincerely sing “I see your true colors just like a rainbow” without there being some sort of disconnect. Scott is the guy who normalizes every song to have the same exact sound and structure. Kara commended him for “coming out and playing the guitar.” I mean, I could have come out and played the guitar.

Allison Iraheta and Matt Giraud may be the most telling about American Idol as a whole. Allison is the most consistently good singer left on the show, and she still gets very little respect from the voting audience—though, this week, the judges loved her. Matt Giraud is such a full-blown poser, as you can tell by the derby resting on his head, tilted over one eye. The producers love him. Tivo cut off Adam Lambert’s performance for me, but I can kinda imagine what it was like, so let’s just say it was awful.

UPDATE!

After pretending for a long ass time that they were going to "save" him, America decided that they had reached the limit of how interested they were in Scott MacIntyre. He even teared up while singing. But here's the thing: he teared up while singing VERY BADLY. See you later, asshole.

-Matthew J. Brady, Zeb L. West, Sean Witzke, Sarah Engelman, Martin Brown & Tucker Stone, 2009

The Virgin Read: Her Live-Blog Version of Seaguy Involves Using The Symbol Keyboard

Seaguy: Slaves of Mickey Eye # 1
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Cameron Stewart
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

???????????????

"Da fug?"

I have no idea what I just read. I don’t think, though, that I’m supposed to. Sort of reminds me of H.R. Pufnstuf. Anyone remember that show? It was shown on Saturday mornings when I was a kid, and I vaguely remember it from that time period. But when I was a teenager there was a time when they were showing it after school. And it was then that I realized it was a totally trippy show. I mean, trippy is definitely entertaining….but it did occur to me that this show may have “spoken” to and older demographic than that of the Saturday morning crowd who were on a “different level” beyond us mere children.

So, yeah, Seaguy. SEAGUY. ½-an-animal on a stick, a codependent parrot, Seaguy dressed in scuba gear but never going in or near the water, a bearded lady and her antagonistic relationship to this old skipper guy, an amusement park where “everyone” hangs out that is full of eyeballs, a smart guy with a huge head to contain huge brains with a rainbow protruding from it and his commentary on what is truth and what is real. And then….it all comes full circle? Seaguy is fed the ½-an-animal-on-a-stick and…goes insane? Or has this whole thing, the whole issue been a product of his dementia? What the hell is going on?!?!?

Seriously. I don’t know what to say. Um…..I liked the art? That was cool. Loved how Chubby the Tuna looks like he was drawn in 1963 for a separate comic book all together.

I’m guessing this is all somewhow a commentary on superheroes and our culture. But, honestly, I can’t really figure out what that commentary is supposed to be saying. And although the comic exhibits an enjoyable cleverness….I don’t really care to spend the time figuring it out. I mean, I’ve got a lot to do. Top of the list right now? Sleep. See. I’ve got a lot of sleeping to do. And I can’t waste that precious time trying to derive meaning out of this book. I'm sorry, but that's what it feels like I would be doing. Wasting time. I’m sure someone else, someone smarter than me, will do that just fine. I'm even thinking that's part of what the attraction is here--that it's the comic, sure, the comic is fine. But that the joy here must be in the figuring out. That's not really my bag. For now – I’m out.

-Nina Stone, 2009

Comics Of The Weak: Everybody Get Back On Your Sled, We're Going To Try To Do This Thing In Reverse

The Flash: Rebirth # 1

Written by Geoff Johns

Art by Ethan Van Sciver & Alex Sinclair

Published by DC Comics

So, yeah. There's this thing.

Some people really enjoy the Ethan Van Sciver style of comics artwork. Not us. It's unbearable to look at, this mishmash of insanely detailed bullshit, a comic that laughs right in the face of the density of a Paul Gulacy fight scene or a Bryan Hitch cityscape and says "Nah, that ain't how you do it. Needs more fucking lines." There's just no flow to any of this stuff, the idea that less could ever be more gets fired off in a cannon. The screw-up stuff--like the page where Barry's shirt is clearly a white button up, only to become a red button up with Flash lightning bolt--that's general super-hero comic book art fuck-up, so it's not a huge problem. It's the contempt for comics that comes through, the idea that things like a panel layout that cares at all for high-falluting art freak notions like "readability" that's so repellent about this shit.  Of course, it's in the service of a story that's even more contemptible, so in a way, it's perfect--after all, the idea that anybody might only give a shit about a Flash comic that features a fucking character called the Flash running really fast, nah, go fuck yourself you nerdy fanboy. We're giving you this dipshit back, he's our trained monkey, and if we want him to stand around and talk like a sociopath instead of wear his spandex and run, that's what you'll get.

That's not the way a whore is supposed to work. You don't pay a whore to suck you off and then let her or him determine when and how they're going to do it. You pay a whore because fuck it, you're not going to do the work yourself to build relationships, you want a no contest blow job with somebody, male or female, who will get the fuck out of the car when the post-ejaculate shame sets in, that's why you hired a whore. Here's your four dollars, Barry. You'll run now. There's some argument to the contrary, the notion that fans, comics buyers, assholes, that they don't have any ownership over these corporate products, that is isn't up to them to control the universe in which they operate, that they're just supposed to throw good money after bad story and bail out for Dark Horse if they don't like it. And yeah, that's totally true. Fuck your t-shirt memory, go buy something else. The thing is--that audience that feels they own these characters? Those people who slab comics and buy variant covers? That's the only audience that exists for Flash: Rebirth. This isn't designed to get anybody into the Flash who isn't already well-versed in the universe. This isn't even designed for people who like Barry Allen, because fucking Barry Allen comics weren't all about the sublimely moronic thing that DC calls "The Speed Force", a mystical Earth related idea that attempts to add some tremendously fucking stupid "science" to why blond guys and old guys run really fast. Barry Allen fans were into a comic that was all Silver Age crazy, with time-travel, monkeys and lightning bolts that hit "chemicals."  This isn't the comic book character that Steven Spielberg uses as props in his look-how-awesome-the-past-was movies. This is a delivery system for an expectation that no one but old people had. This isn't a comic book. It's a statement on a genre that DC created--bought and paid for with blow-jobs at the pier of not caring.

And here's the note that somebody needed to give Van Sciver 10 years ago: stop putting Hal Jordan in that brown leather flight jacket with the sheepskin collar. He looks like a fucking tool.

 

The Boys # 29

Written by Garth Ennis

Art by Darick Robertson & Tony Avina

Published by Dynamite Entertainment

Whereas last week, DC Comics provided the fan service of Hal Jordan telling Black Canary that he hated the Meltzer/McDuffie Justice League just as much as cumbersomeasspirate47 does, this week Garth Ennis provided the splashy action sequence that anybody who has ever disliked the X-Men has not-so-secretly wished for. Page after page of a bunch of stupid brain-dead personality-less mutant stand-ins getting machine-gunned, rocket-launched and flame-thrower...uh. Flame Thrower-ed? It would be giving Ennis too much credit to say "He couldn't have timed it better! They're doing one of those Really Important X-Men/X-Force/Go Fuck Your Mother Cross-over Books Right Now" because hey, it's a month of the year isn't it? When isn't there a fucking X-Men must fight to change the future of everything you've ever known about candy apples type event going on? Water is still wet, right? Sure, all that slippery tongue-lapping is sandwiched behind a predictably GEEZUS "watch the french maître d from Hell's Kitchen pick up ghetto black kids so he can buttfuck them in exchange for toys" history lesson, but hey, it's not like Garth Ennis hasn't made it abundantly clear that he thinks awful shit = funny, and ya'll sensitive pussies can ride or die, it's not like he's trying to do this child rape shit in fucking Tiny Titans, the Tale Of Tim Drake's Trip To Turkey, or Why You Should Never Smuggle Hashish In The Orient.

Agents of Atlas # 3

Written by Jeff Parker

Art by Gabriel Hardman, Elizabeth Dismang, Clayton Henry & Jana Schirmer

Published by Marvel Comics

It's a good thing the robot in this comic doesn't talk, because if he did, then this comic would have a chattering robot as well as a sarcastic gorilla mercenary, and eventually everybody would forget that there's other "Agents" because hey, there aren't many comics about chattering robots and sarcastic gorilla mercenaries on the stands. There should be, and there used to be, but now it's just this and Marvel Apes, and Marvel Apes was a really stupid piece of shit and a mini-series to boot. Writer Jeff Parker decides to go the always dangerous route of having a crying about dead family members sequence to add some gravitas to his female leads, but he deserves some credit for not writing it in such a way that it makes the reader want to kill other people's family members just to see if this is really how a human being, tight clothing or no, would react. It is still super-people crying about dead family members, but hey, can't win 'em all. Besides, this comic's opening sequence features the gorilla character fending off a bunch of machine-gun toting lunatics with a table, and the table has a checkered tablecloth on it, and while it's really, really fucking sad that something like a checkered tablecloth makes you stop and go "Hey, why the fuck don't more people give a shit about setting the goddamn scene? Why aren't there more checkered tablecloths in comic book scenes set in restaraunts?", that's the way the industry rolls along, and hey: nobody gives a shit anyway. We're all going to die, and when we do, we're all still going to hate each other because we don't share the same opinion on whether or not Spider-Man should still be married to Mary Jane Watson. Fucking tablecloth, man. "HERE SHE IS RIGHT HERE!"

Battle For The Cowl: Man-Bat "I Am Whatever You Say I Am" # 1

Written by Joe Harris

Art by Jim Califiore & Guy Major

Published by DC Comics

Is Man-Bat the "meanest MC on the scene, on this Earth"? He's clearly "not what his friends think". He doesn't "owe you a motherfucking thing". He does "hate to be bothered". 

Pfft.

Anyways, it turns out that the whole "gotta be a joke, right" of Alfred Pennyworth being handed the responsibility of running The Outsiders, Suge Knight style, isn't a joke, and part of Alfred's job is to actually hang out with the Outsiders, like...he goes places with them? And he still dresses like a butler while doing it? That butler in the Avengers doesn't go on missions, does he? And...why would a bunch of super-heroes take orders from a butler anyway? Everybody knows, sure, that the current status quo of Batman comics, the one where the absence of Batman has caused the immediate, no fooling fall of the entire city into the sort of depravity that makes the youth of 1965 Watts look like a bunch of Don't Taze Me Bro types, you know this shit ain't gonna last. There's going to be some comic, probably Battle For The Cowl Proper: The Tony Daniel Show, where the new Batman/old Batman/some kinda Batman yells something like "I don't THINK SO STEVE" on one page before appearing in a splash on the next, and then Gotham is going to be back to just being a shitty city to live in, instead of being a shitty city to live in where people cook babies on barbeque spits. But just once, couldn't the silly fill-in state of affairs stick around for a bit? Because there's an untapped source of drama in a butler, dressed like a butler, who stands around watching the D list of superheroes giving them tips earned from his formative years of being an actor. And a spy. And army medic? And the last 30 or so, where he made sandwiches and told his crazy ass boss to go to bed.

Captain America Comics # 1

Written by James Robinson

Art by Marcos Martin & Javier Rodriguez

Published by Marvel Comics

Taken as a story and script, there's nothing at all here. It's Captain America's origin, this time done in one of those 15-minutes-before-Bruce's-mom-got-shot type of stories, where the outline of a comic book character's life gets another sub-heading, this being "right after the skinny Steve Rogers got his 4F rejection letter because he's cut like a crackhead, he fought some Nazis, skinny dude style." But Marvel didn't just bring in DC's crowd-pleasing James Robinson, they also brought on Marcos Martin & Javier Rodriguez, and a comic that on paper sounds pretty run-of-the-mill ends up being something kind of special because of intuitive panel layout and whip-smart cartooning. It's even enough to excuse the horrendous distraction of what Javier Rodriguez's computer does anytime Martin provides him with a static sky to color. Hell, Martin's work is so damn good that he's able to pull off one of those Family Circle style cartoons where the reader traces the character's movement through a crowded New York City street. (The credit for that may be due to an editor refusing to allow Martin to draw a dotted line, but hopefully that was never a question in the first place.)

Destroyer # 1

Written by Robert Kirkman

Art by Cory Walker & Val Staples

Published by Marvel MAX

Nice logo design. It's been done, but it's a classic, so fuck it. The comic itself isn't obnoxious or anything, it's one of those gory action comics that wouldn't seem out of place amongst any publisher's line-up, if anything, it's just curious that it exists at Marvel and not Image. Cory Walker likes to draw blood like it's latex paint, but considering that the main character--an elderly man with a heart condition--dresses like DC's old Mad Dog character, and taking into account that the script has a lot of set pieces built around Destroyer Destroying Shit, the whole thick sheets of blood thing sort of works, keeps it from being something that's "serious comics for serious people". But that's pretty much it--old man kills shit, dresses like he made his costume out of a catcher's uniform and Army Surplus gear, it costs too much, and it reads like a freebie comic handed out at a monster truck rally. Difficult thing to gauge, it's imagined. Maybe we're all just disappointed that this was a new story about some old-ass Marvel character instead of a comic book adaptation of the paperback adventures of Remo Williams.

 

 

Jersey Gods # 3

Written by Glen Brunswick

Art by Dan McDaid & Rachelle Rosenberg

Published by Image Comics

That's a Paul Pope cover, by the way. Jersey Gods # 3 isn't that much different than Jersey Gods # 2, in that the real world dating/family argument scenes are what works to keep the comic from being a non-stop pastiche of Jack Kirby type stuff. It's sort of hard to love something that looks backwards this much, but then again, Kirby probably would have preferred that people buy new comics as opposed to spending fifty bucks on his thirty year old work--not financially, sure, but it just doesn't fit with the Kirby legend that he would look at a hardcover of something he did decades ago and say "ahh, I win." McDaid is a damn fine artist though--his Kirbyish stuff doesn't look like Kirby as much as it looks like a guy who LIKES Kirby. But still, this is pastiche, it's homage, and while it certainly could lead to something else, eventually, it probably should start in that direction sooner rather than later. Unlike some of their contemporaries, it seems clear that Brunswick and McDaid have the ability to actually make that choice. (Which, yes, is another way to say that Geoff Johns doesn't.)

-Tucker Stone, 2009