Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Michael Lark, Stefano Gaudiano & Matt Hollingsworth
Published by Marvel Comics
Although there's an actual Daredevil comic buried underneath all this color, it takes a bit of work to find. It's mostly about the color purple and how much it hates the color red, so much so that it totally wants to kill the color red, and you're all like "hey purple, you know that red is a part of you, you're just hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself my man." Green and yellow make an appearance before getting skeered off, mostly it's just purple, and purple is really angry. Maybe it's angry because what had started off being the best Daredevil story since that one where Punisher went to prison just to hang with Blindy Ican'tsee has turned into the umpteenth "The Kingpin Has Stupid Plans About Stupidity, Come See" comics. Don't fuck with purple, Kingpin. Your own grave, that one.
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Billy Tan
Published by Marvel Comics
Sigh. The last time one of the characters in New Avengers had a full page spread of their face that sticks in the memory, it was Luke Cage and his "i'm going to kill my baby for filling a diaper, the-way-babies-do style". This time, it's a two-fer, with Hawkeye cum Ronin squinting so hard that a black hole forms somewhere in his upper sinus region, sucking the flesh inward, expressly for the purpose of strengthening his statement regarding how he's going to kill Norman Osborn. Unfortunately for those who might take that page for the oh-so-serious implication it seems to crave, Hawkeye actually looks more like he's really grossed out in a think-of-the-children way regarding a particularly odorous garbage can, and his wife/girlfriend/whoever that mundane character is that is supposedly a female despite looking like a plastic doll has a confused look on her face that seems to say "if you're so upset it by the garbage, change out of that baggy Ronin outfit that you'll never grow into, because you're an adult and no longer growing, and take the. fucking. garbage. out." Oh, and Dr. Strange has been replaced by a black guy. Your blood pressure on that is determined by one of two factors: one, you actually think Sorceror Supreme is a position in the Marvel universe that matters, or two, you actually think of Brother Voodoo as a character who empowers black people. Either response is wrong.
Written by Dwayne McDuffie
Art by Ardian Syaf, Eddy Barrows, Don Ho, Ruy Jose, Dan Green, Jack Purcell & Mark Propst
And Pete Pantazis. Basically everyone available, DC just wanted to get this one finished.
Published by DC Comics
One of the things they do in super-hero comics to confuse the reader into believing that a character absolutely no one on Earth cares about is as important as the super-heroes who get movie deals, is to put the character up against a villain that is portrayed to the reader as being a horrifically big deal, a villain of such terrifying power that it would be insane to believe that any hero on the planet could defeat them. Then, before the conclusion, the reader gets treated to a reminder of how fucking great super-teams are, because these odds against them, oh shit, they'd make regular people like you and your bitch mom and your drunk, abusive father cry and run away, leaving fat plumber holes in the wall, just like a Warner Brothers cartoon. Thank god the Justice Avengers of Uruguay aren't crybaby scaredy pants like you, you fucking little bitch, we'd all be dead if we were. (Go Army, beat Navy) After that requisite you suck/they don't moment, the writer can turn things over to the aforementioned character that no one likes, said character saves day, Holy Shit We Had No Idea Character No One Likes Is Awesomely Powerful, Will Change Inherent (read: accurate) Feeling Of Disinterest Bordering On Contempt, Thank You Comic Books. In this issue, lucky McDuff's last (seriously, who wouldn't be happy about losing a gig under the conditions he did? It's like DC admitted for all to see "if you have an opinion of your own, you should ply it somewhere else, only-wanna-be-cogs need apply"), the character you hate, but are supposed to like, is portrayed by Dr. Light # 2. In the villains place is a guy whose true apperance is revealed to be not terribly stupid by villain standards, making it that much worse when said villain (Starbreaker) showcases his preference, which is to look like the master of ceremonies at Cirque du Soleil. Tune in next month: this comic is going to be terrible!
Written by Joe Casey
Art by Nathan Fox & Jose Villarrubia
Published by Marvel Comics
One of the problems with living in a free-market competition based economy is that you go to grocery stores where you have something like 150-odd types of breakfast cereal to choose from, and your choice is mostly dictated by the arbitrary decisions your parents made when raising you, or your willingness to buy into the advertising campaigns of Kashi over the advertising campaigns of Honey Bunches of Oats. It's only a technical definition of a problem, in that it wastes a certain portion of your time to pick one, and honestly speaking, if the choice was made for you, it isn't like the time saved is going to be time dedicated to accomplishing or solving problems, you're probably just going to sleep more, or watch a few more minutes of Predator 2, because you are an American devil, and American devils are about as useful as rectal warts, especially the grad school types. But there is an attraction towards having just one option, or maybe three, a sort of Cereal with sugar, Cereal that is healthy, Cereal with sugar version 2, Extreme. Big two comics are like that too--there's a pretense towards a freedom of choice expressed by stacks of new books coming out every wednesday, but really it just comes down to this: do you like it when they're really violent and about "bad people" or do you like it when they're only kinda violent and about preachy sentimental "good people"? In a perfect world, there'd be less options, and there'd be only a few varieties to choose from, and, optimistically, there'd be other varieties of options, like comics about dinosaurs fighting for civil rights in Australia, or better comics about dating. If they ever went that way, Nathan Fox would be the right choice to illustrate one of those hyper-violent comics, becasue the guy is fucking great, and he should be given an Eisner award for being the first guy to do something interesting with the Human Torch since Jack Kirby. (I.E. drawing him as a shit-beat-out-of-him-sack-o-meat.)
Written by Stuart Moore
Art by C.P. Smith & Rain Beredo
Published by Marvel Comics
While there's still a fourth issue of this series to go, and in that fourth issue the story will probably have to revert to Logan-form, with the character finding some version of "justice", this third issue continues to serve up the Wolverine-as-failure take, and it remains unique because of that. Whether it's the brutal craziness of him bringing his "knives" to his own fucking wedding proposal, or the portion where he collapses from drunken exhaustion so that the Noir version of Sabretooth can laughingly say "I love this guy", reminding the reader that this Wolverine isn't the one they remember, the one who can lower-jaw-mope his way through obstacles, this is Wolverine-as-pathetic loser. For that, this comic remains the only one of these Marvel Noir stories anybody around these parts has enjoyed reading. That may not make it necessary, that may not even make it good, but considering the non-stop onslaught of undercooked and shoddily planned Wolverine comic books that spray out of Marvel's ass like an explosion of blood-covered lettuce, it's rather pleasant to see something as mercenary as "What If Wolverine Was Sam Spade, Only Far Stupider" being granted some actual passion on the parts of the creators. This might be paycheck comics, but so is an eight page Judge Dredd story, and plenty of people have done solid work with those.
By Michael Avon Oeming
Colored by Lee Loughridge
Published by DC Comics
They still publish this Spirit thing, even if Darwyn Cooke, J. Bone & Sergio Aragones aren't involved, even after the Frank Miller Spirit movie failed to catch a whit of attention beyond intellectually perceptive types with convincing arguments. They even make it look nice, in a hermetically sealed chamber kind of way, with a Kevin Nowlan cover that's as technically attractive as it is completely bloodless. (The Spirit is falling asleep while The Spirit is running, slowly, toward the reader, his mouth locked in a rictus of idiocy. He'll get there. Slowly.) Inside, it's Michael Avon Oeming, so bored that he not only fails to conceal that his plotting is a less murderous version of Yojimbo, he has one of the characters address this very fact early on. "You ever see Yojimbo?" Then do that, Spirit. Do that. And so he does, and you're supposed to praise the effective done-in-one, because that's what Cooke was doing, and you're supposed to praise the honestly clever riffs on Eisner's title plays or the bravura splash sequence only surpassed in the week's ambition by the weirdly wonderful Detective Comics, and yet--what is it? What is it that's wrong here? Saying it lacks in passion would be dishonest and cruel, there's too much lust for more room on the page to deny the excitement. Say mercenary money work, that denies the opportunity for artistic control that a one man creation allows. Maybe just "not for me", move along.
Written by Ivan Brandon
Art by Nic Klein
Published by Image Comics
This comic might work better if it didn't have the number "2" on it, that way the reader could pretend the reason they don't really know who any of the characters are is because the series has been running for years and gosh you have to just dive in at some point, that's how shitface # 9 learned about comics, why you gotta have everybody hold your hand for fuck's sake, you stupid stupidhead, why don't you whine some more and read some comics for babies, stupid babies, not like us grown-ups who figured out the green lantern corps without even looking at wikipedia once, you dumb shitty shithead, man won't somebody open a comic store where they don't even let these dumb assholes in here while we're gaming fuck YOU man, no FUCK YOU. Art's nice and all, but Viking keeps not being as awesome as it feels like it should be, because seriously, what the fuck is this comic about? Is it about Viking the concept? Which apparently means facial hair and bad familial relationships? More dead children please. Less names to learn, as well.
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Mike Deodato
Published by Marvel Comics
If you've ever read the letters page to the Powers comic book, which Bendis used to write, you already know that the writer has a pretty foul sense of humor, which is something that this office regularly gets behind. In point of fact, the main reason to dive into the Avengers Universe of Comics is to look for those moments where Brian's writing lends itself to the sort of gross out jokes that always popped up in Powers, which is a comic he still owns but doesn't write anymore. For instance, Dark Avengers opens with Namor (who is a jerk with super-powers) and Norman Osborn (who is a jerk without super-powers, we think) having a dick measuring contest that eventually turns into a dick smashing contest, where each of them use verbal hammers to hit each others ego-cocks while the reader waits to see who blinks first. After that, there's one of those "kill all the bad guys" moments that are so popular in super-hero comics nowadays, because they roughly appeal to both sides of the political divide--stupid racists who think that the world would be better off if the Middle East was "turned into a parking lot", and stupid liberals who think that depicting said atrocities in fiction will somehow convince the still-deciding crew into jumping over to their side.
Written by Andy Diggle
Art by Miguel Sepulveda & Frank Martin
Published by Marvel Comics
This is one of those comics that spends the majority of its time trying to prove that people who say "the characters actually matter" are wrong, that all spandex clad things are either hero or villain flavored, and thus anything can work in the low-range story machine. It's trying to prove that you don't need Batman when you can have Ratman. That would be worth doing if those people (assholes) were interested in the 133rd issue of a title that seems to change modus operandi about every 2.5 years, but those people (snobby pricks) aren't, because those people (virgins) are too busy finding new ways to rearrange their bookshelves so that all their Seth comics are close enough to each other that a random visitor will say "what are these fine looking hardcovers, I quite enjoy sucking the cock of fine looking hardcover owners what you didnt know i was a dirty slut because i dress like hedda gabler i am totally a dirty slut lemme see that dick oh Its So Big and You Have Such Good Taste In Reprints." No, the only people (also virgins) buying Thunderbolts are people (nerds) who remember that there was some time period where Warren Ellis had the characters do something where the characters didn't all talk like Spider Jerusalem and that seemed really exciting at the time, becuase hey, range & Warren Ellis. That's crazy! Now Thunderbolts is about some people you've never heard of and Nick Fury is mad at his webcam. Maybe somebody keeps calling him a homo.
Written by Daniel Way & Marjorie Liu
Art by Gisueppe Camuncoli, Onofrio Catacchio, Marte Gracis & A. Street
Published by Marvel Comics
One of the most fun things to do when you're a skinny male hipster douchebag and you're stuck somewhere with a overtly testosteroned homophobe is to flirt like your ass will fall off if you don't flirt every couple of minutes. While Dark Wolverine might be trying a bit too hard, there's no denying the simple pleasure in reading part of a Marvel comic where the character turns to the dopy Venom character and offers him a night of sexual pleasure. Dark Wolverine isn't the kind of thing that has any legs to it whatsoever, and it will probably go South soon enough. But if it doesn't, and seeing Wolverine turned a somewhat prissy dipstick who wanders around manipulating everybody around with his mutant pheromone powers becomes the norm, we're going to have a hard time not calling that progress. Not for real life or anything. Just in super-hero comics.
-Tucker Stone, 2009
I think you mean "Brudder" Voodoo, man.
What the fuck is that guy even still DOING here?! It's 2009!
Posted by: Chris Jones | 2009.06.29 at 00:06
"No, the only people (also virgins) buying Thunderbolts are people (nerds) who remember that there was some time period where Warren Ellis had the characters do something where the characters didn't all talk like Spider Jerusalem and that seemed really exciting at the time, becuase hey, range & Warren Ellis."
What about people who remember that there was some time period where Kurt Busiek had the characters do something where the characters were FUCKING AWESOME? I mean, srsly. None of those awesome characters have been in the book for years, however, except for Songbird, who is the most underrated badass in comics.
I thought Zodiac would be another unreadable crossover garbage, then I saw the name "Joe Casey" on the cover. Imagine my surprise that it was really good. Have no idea where this one is going, which is pretty neat.
Also: Dark Wolverine, surprisingly not-sucky. Have to admit I did not see that one coming. But the fact that the book is basically about Daken gaslighting Bullseye is pretty cool - not a lot of books about supervillains as merry pranksters.
Posted by: Tim O'Neil | 2009.06.29 at 00:27
I should probably mention that I am totally NOT KIDDING about that Songbird thing. I still have daydreams where Captain America FINALLY asks her to join the Avengers a la Avengers Forever. Perhaps Songbird was Busiek's baby as much as Luke Cage is Bendis', but dammit if he didn't sell the character. He sold it so well old-skool Bolts fan are STILL waiting for her to get her due as something more than Norman Osborne's patsy.
OK, I should shut up now. I have spent way too much time thinking about this.
Posted by: Tim O'Neil | 2009.06.29 at 00:30
Well, I was going to buy that Melvin the Monster book because I love John Stanley...but now I want some of that Hedda Gabler action too.
Posted by: Jones, one of the Jones boys | 2009.06.29 at 01:39
You've seriously gotta improve your writing. This is getting silly. I mean, look at this sentence you've barfed up:
"One of the things they do in super-hero comics to confuse the reader into believing that a character absolutely no one on Earth cares about, including said character's creator and family, is to put the character up against a villain that is portrayed to the reader as being a horrifically big deal, a villain of such terrifying power that it would be insane to believe that any hero on the planet could defeat them."
What is it we're being "confused into believing" about the character? All this verbiage, and you forgot to finish the thought! Maybe if you wrote shorter sentences, you'd be able to keep track of them in your head. Or maybe you should try reading through these posts before posting them.
Posted by: Mory Buckman | 2009.06.29 at 03:56
man what the fuck.
Posted by: AERose | 2009.06.29 at 04:23
T: Ha on Zodiac/Dark Wolverine, exactly. Don't know if they'll stay good now that they've been lost the low expectations going on, but both of those comics can get pretty far on the art. As always, I'm impressed that old Avengers comics inspire such rabid love, and yet: I don't know why I should care about Songbird.
J: Enjoy!
A: I know!
C: Exactly!
M: Yeah, guess I should fix that. Do me a favor and keep taking it personally though. Yikes, you.
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2009.06.29 at 07:32
That's the ol' Asperger's talking.
Posted by: Marty | 2009.06.29 at 09:19
Well, that's an interesting question, to which I don't have a good answer. The fact is, affection for a character like Songbird is dependent on knowledge of / affection for 10+ year old stories.
They were very good stories, mind you: the premise of the original Thunderbolts book - a premise long since abandoned - is that the team was composed of villains who had pretended to be heroes for a while, but whom basically decided they actually liked the idea of being heroes and tried very hard to change themselves for the better. Keep in mind this was the late 90s - a particularly fallow and cynical period in which a book like Thunderbolts, being an essentially hopeful, character-driven melodrama, could really thrive.
In the space of about fifty issues or so Songbird went from being a Z-list supervillain - she started out as a pro wrestling-themed villain with sonic powers named Screaming Mimi, which is about as lame as it sounds - to a powerful, confident and assertive heroine, and additionally, one of the very few who didn't walk around with her tits hanging out like a Nelly video. (Imagine that - a superheroine with a B-cup! It boggles the imagination!) But because Thunderbolts was never a prime franchise and was actually canceled twice, and additionally because the character's patrons - Busiek and Nicieza - moved away from the company for a while in the early 00s, she was more or less stuck in limbo. So instead of joining the Avengers or striking out on her own, she's stuck as the last remaining remnant of the original concept, even though her personality and character arc do not in any way fit what the book has become. It stopped making sense a long time ago why she would have stayed with the team when she could have joined any number of less psychotic organizations. However, it seems Diggle might actually like the character, to judge from her appearances to date in his run, so who knows.
So, basically, yeah: in order to care about Songbird you have to have a good memory for a fairly obscure patch of late 90s continuity. If it took me three paragraphs to explain the character's core concept, it's no surprise she's not popular since most of the audience for the current Thunderbolts probably have little or no recollection of the original run. It would be lazy writing if the book depended on this knowledge to ingratiate the reader with her current status quo, but as it is the character's original premise isn't even mentioned anymore, leaving the reader to wonder if Ellis ever even read the original series or just plugged her in as "generic heroine #6" from central casting.
Posted by: Tim O'Neil | 2009.06.29 at 10:57
RE:Songbird
Tucker, you should check out the miniseries, Avengers Forever. Busiek/Stern writing. Pacheco/Merino on art. Hella good. Great Songbird stuff.
Posted by: Zebtron A. Rama | 2009.06.29 at 12:00
Avengers Forever is like the pinnacle of continuity-porn-as-story, it being the first comic I ever bought with extensive footnotes on the back cover. But it's drawn real pretty.
Posted by: Sean Witzke | 2009.06.29 at 12:23
Mory. I have something to tell you.
When I'm with other people, I know who I am: I'm not them.
But when my life consists of sitting at a computer 12 hours a day, who am I not?
And when my self-reflection is writing this blog, which keeps pulling more and more of myself into it indefinitely, then how can I be anyone?
Posted by: Chris Jones | 2009.06.29 at 12:23
I really dug the Busiek/Nicieza T-bolts, too. I'm pretty sure I didn't care about Hawkeye or the Avengers before it started, but he was pretty awesome by the end of it. Tim's absolutely right.
Nicieza wrote a good Captain Marvel, too. I love the bit where he takes Monica Rambeau's codename again and they get into it.
Posted by: david brothers | 2009.06.29 at 12:24
Chris, why are you quoting my blog? Sorry, I don't get it.
Posted by: Mory Buckman | 2009.06.29 at 15:49
No, it's cool, I'm just making fun of you.
Posted by: Chris Jones | 2009.06.29 at 17:01
so Wolverine is gay now?
Posted by: seth hurley | 2009.06.29 at 18:06
Speaking of Monica Rambeau, why isn't NextWave still being made? Stuart Immonen should only be allowed to draw NextWave at Marvel, anything else is just wasting his talent.
Posted by: Kenny | 2009.06.29 at 18:23
I LOVE me some Nathan Fox, but I'm not sure the Human Torch should be drawn like he's missing teeth- kind of harshes his status as a hot dude who gets all the babes. Remember the days when DC would just draw over Jack freaking "The King" Kirby's version of Superman's head because it didn't fit their ideal, well-marketed version of Superman's head? Yeah, maybe Marvel should have had someone white out the gaps where it looks like Johnny Storm played a couple seasons in the American Hockey League.
Posted by: Joe Willy | 2009.06.30 at 09:54
Damn, you're on this week, Tucker.
I picked up The Spirit for some reason (Oeming), and you nailed it on that one. It's got some nice images, but the story is so damn standard. How many pages did there need to be where a guy describes the gangs, their styles, their territories, etc? I haven't been reading that series since Darwyn Cooke left, but it seems like the problems are really showing through. There was a reason Eisner limited the stories to seven pages. Cooke managed to find a way to make issue-long stories work, but it seems like everybody else should give up trying. Make each issue a jam issue, with three teams doing short stories; that would be the way to go.
Posted by: Matthew J. Brady | 2009.06.30 at 10:06
The Spirit's cancelled, with Brian Azzarello doing a Doc Savage mini. I mention the Doc Savage mini b/c Doc Savage will be in an alternate universe where he'll interact with the Spirit, Blackhawks, and some others. I think I remember them wanting to get the Shadow, too. Not sure if that's happening.
But yeah, it's Azz, so it'll be cool. Rags Morales is drawing.
Posted by: Jake | 2009.06.30 at 16:41
this has been one of my favourite reviews to read this year.
cheers.
-d.
Posted by: Damon Blake | 2009.07.02 at 06:25