Batman #687
Written by Judd Winick
Art by Ed Benes, Rob Hunter, Ian Hannin & JD Smith
Published by DC Comics
Are Ed Benes and Ethan Van Sciver having a line-drawing fight or something? Do they get paid by the "lots of shit" panel? Sure, DC was nice enough to jam that hideous looking "A Cry For Justice" preview in the back of the comic to remind you how much worse things can get, but still--who gets off on this kind of art? Everybody's face looks like a vandalized pancake. Speaking of "A Cry", you can't put it past Judd Winick on this one--he was clearly reading his comp copies of RIP and Final Crisis and fuming "why isn't there more SADNESS, why aren't they throwing in scenes where Nightwing weeps on the balconies of Wayne Manor while Alfred cries and puts his hand on his shoulder, This Is Golden Opportunity Stuff". The call came down the pipeline, we're guessing. What a fucking weird ride this shit has turned into.
Written by Andrew Kreisberg
Art by Scott McDaniel, Andy Owens & I.L.L.
Published by DC Comics
Batman: Confidential seems like a golden opportunity for DC to capitalize on what they used to do with Legends of The Dark Knight, a comic that hid oddball stories of varying quality by people like Eddie Campbell, Mike Mignola and Ted McKeever amongst a million-and-one "the time when Batman met Vicki Vale" fables. Instead, they keep using it to tell thoroughly generic Batman stories where Bruce Wayne is still Batman, hiring whatever artist has a couple of weeks of downtime--which would explain McDaniel, who used to be the primary artist for the Batman and Nightwing titles, and is now fondly remembered by anyone who had the misfortune of sitting through the Tony Daniel show. At least this issue of Confidential takes the proactive measure of trying to end itself on every page, so that it never has to reach an (inevitably awful) climax. It's all just editorial hari kari with a lot of yelling thrown in there. Sexy.
Written by Ivan Brandon
Art by Marco Rudy, Mick Gray, Jack Purcell, JP Mayer & The Hories
Published by DC Comics
This is the only Final Crisis Aftermath special that had any potential out of the first four that dropped, excepting the non-Wildstorm version of The Intimates that has ChrisCross instead of Camuncoli and Lee on art. It's still got potential, which is weird, because it's a six issue mini-series and this is the second issue, so you'd imagine that it might be time for the potential to turn into pay-off, but hey, maybe that's just the way it's going to roll. Art has its problems, problems that are somewhat aggravated by a panel design based around "large objects placed on page" as if that's all graphic design is, but the constant tonal shift might actually work in favor of a story that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense beyond "Did you ever see the Prisoner? Oh. Well, you should. Anyway, this dude is crazzzy."
Written by Jen Van Meter
Art by Andy Macdonald & Nick Filardi
Published by Marvel Comics
Sometimes the intern grabs stuff because he thinks that the title alone will convince The Factual's Nina Stone to read it, because the intern is a fucking moron. Case in point, this piece of shit Miss America Comics, which she wouldn't read because "it has an ugly cover." The inside art isn't that horrible, although it seems to mistakingly believe that drawing a super-hero costume so that it appears to be made out of cloth will somehow make everybody shit their pants and go blind with praise. So the costume looks like it's made out of cloth. So what? There's about 29 bigger problems that a lot of super-hero comics have more obvious than the spandex shortcut school of generic figure drawing. Hell, part of the success of super-hero comics is based around the fact that the artists rarely have to deal with drawing anything that isn't a generic figure drawing, that's how companies get away with paying dick money to whatever ass clown wants to continue doing the same thing he was doing when he was 15, which is doodling Batman punching his abusive stepfather. "Leave the boy alone, you....JEERRK." Oh, and why does Miss America get a front story if they aren't going to put old Miss America back-up stories in the comic? Were her comics that stupid? They must have some serious problems if these dopey Whizzer reprints were the preference.
Written by Victor Gischler
Art by Goran Parlov & Lee Loughridge
Published by Marvel Comics
This guy, the guy who wrote this comic, he's got a doctorate. It's in English, but still. You could have a doctorate in new age prenatal vitamins and that would still make for a better comic book dinner partner than...oh, whoever everybody complains about, god knows it's not worth keeping up. John Byrne, Peter David. A dead raccoon. Anyway, yes, so on, everybody generally accepts that this title should have shut down when Ennis realized he could make more money at Dynamite fucking around with his old 2000 A.D. crew. But hey, Goran Parlov, he's back, and his version of Frank Castle looks like a hot air balloon attached to bowling pins, that's fun, right? Anyway, for that one page alone--and if you've read this, you know the page, it's the one where the hillbilly rapists cannibals show off what their friend "General Lee" can do--Frank Castle The Punisher # 71 just proved why that dumb as fuck "let's go to Mexico" and that "Crank without personality or wit" shit was worth publishing. They were holding the Punisher place at the store until Goran Parlov could draw that page. Comic books: they may just jerk you off badly for a full twelve months, but eventually something might happen.
Written by Chris Yost
Art by Ramon Bachs & Guy Major
Published by DC Comics
Tim Drake is the third DC character to take up Robin, but he was never that much of a "character" to begin with. He showed up becase DC's weird "let's make Robin unlikeable and possibly a murderer" thing hadn't worked out very well, so they created this dweebish little turd who figured out Batman's identity by watching whatever they call Hard Copy in the DC version of pre-Wheel of Fortune television. Because he was a vapid hyper-observant geek with little personality to go along with his carbon copy Dick Grayson face, he turned into an icon, one of those rare post 70's mainstream characters that was popular enough to merit a succession of series, none of which gave him any recognizable quirks. He was sort of like that weird Scott McCloud argument about the appeal of Charlie Brown's expressionless face, except Tim is a full character devoid of definitive traits for anyone to identity with. To top it off, they gave him a remix of the old fairy tale standard, a wish fulfillment version of parentage where he had the freedom to wander aorund the world because his actual parents where off on sex tourism cruises while he moved in with a playboy billionaire with a habit for picking up black-haired wards. Of course people loved Tim. Tim was anything the reader wanted, because Tim was a claymation construction that said "if you read enough books and get really obsessive about backflips, you too can move in with Bruce Wayne and learn fancy Bat-karate." All that makes him the perfect comic book character, really. He doesn't have anything specific for any creator to fuck up, and the readers--who by the time Tim came along where made up of people who were mostly fans, practiced at mental rewrites anyway--fill in the blanks themselves. They got to own the guy, because the guy was whatever they needed him to be. That's why Grant Morrison barely used him, and that's why he's not Robin anymore. Because who really cares about Tim anyway? Fans? Grant Morrison doesn't care about fans, he cares about writing comics. (That doesn't immediately make them good, that just makes Grant Morrison easier to love.) Now that the dude is out to pasture, DC has to do something with Tim though, because hey: nobody cares about the quality of faceless adventure kid's comic, they just care that faceless adventure kid has one. This is that something, or, to be more accurate, this is the current version of that something. It's Chris Yost getting the chance to do his own version of the only-works-as-a-joke-now monologuing that Alan Moore wrote for Rorschach, or Hammet wrote in this, or Westlake wrote in that, where the main character keeps mumbling to his brain and the reader about how many fingers you have to break to find out where they sell ice cream snadwiches. It's hyper-violent nonsense, and it has crying girls on the first page. It's got enough interesting panel sequences that you can't just call it amateur night. It's never going to work. Nobody wants to read about somebody's idea of Tim Drake. They want to read about their own. He's the thing that fan fiction was invented to worship. He's nobody. That's what makes him somebody.
Written by El Torres
Art by Gabriel Hernandez
Published by IDW Publishing
Although the opener of this comic makes it seem like it could be distilled into a groan-inducing "somebody with Sixth Sense type powers solves crimes" kind of blurb that calls back images of a shitty off-brand take on the shitty off-brand show that Patricia Arquette either currently or used to inflict on people too far from the remote to save themselves, the story pretty quickly takes a turn for being something a little weirder about halfway through. Although the potential of figuring out why townies would want to murder a sweet old lady who bakes cookies can just as easily be squandered on the rocks of some kind of grody home invasion flashback, this little series might actually turn out pretty good. Art's nice too.
Written by Jason Aaron & Daniel Way
Art by Adam Kubert & Tommy Lee Edwards
Published by Marvel Comics
Somebody could probably start a blog based solely around super-hero characters crying and have a really good time with that. Not the reading part, because it's always crying over meaningless or incredibly gross shit. Not the drawing part, because it invariably gets screwed up in the coloring and all somebody has to do is say "it looks like sperm" and then you're stuck with an image impossible to escape. Not the "character development" part either, because it rarely has anything to do with something that will take up an actual story, it's just a lame shortcut to "meaning something". But yeah, if all you were doing is posting scans of the panels where Wolverine's eyeballs hold the tears back from actual exit down his face, that would probably be something fun to look at. Anyway: Wolverine #74. It's one of those comics that makes you wish you could just call something "really fucking gay" without that being turned into a three hour discussion on how some words hurt people. Harvey Milk!
-Tucker Stone, 2009
I've always wondered what it would be like in a post-apocalypse having to drink water out of a toilet. Judd Winnick's Batman answered that for me. Now, at least, I know I can do it, though I might zone out every once in a while.
Also, I hope Tim Drake dies when this series ends. He's just no fun.
Posted by: Sharif | 2009.06.14 at 22:03
Bang on the nose with Winick Batman.
Tim Drake's my favorite Robin, though. That's not saying much, as I don't like any of the other Robins at all, except Carrie Kelley, she was the shit, but the early early Tim Drake stories were some of my first comics ever, so it's like that. But he was only consistent under the pen of Chuck Dixon, and has since had any semblance of characterization torn asunder, so they might as well turn him into Nightwing-lite for no discernible reason, right?
Posted by: Bill Reed | 2009.06.14 at 22:31
That was possibly the single best comment on a superhero character I've ever seen, with Tim Drake. I actually now understand why I like the character. I was going to be like, "Now that's not fair", but then the further I read I was like "Oh my God he's totally fucking right."
This was a really good week.
Posted by: Chris Jones | 2009.06.15 at 00:54
I don't know if this is a genuine mistake or a purposeful one, but Dustin Nguyen drew Wildcats Version 3.0, not the Intimates. That was Giuseppe Camuncoli. As the internet's resident Casey obsessor, I feel the need to point these things out. Not so much because I care, but because I get the impression that others think I should care. I see others point out things like this when it's their weird little obsession and assume I should do the same thing. However, I don't actually care that much. People make mistakes, they remember things wrong, why is it my responsibility to point that out just because I read a bunch of comics by that writer?
...this had nothing to do with anything. *shrugs*
Posted by: Chad Nevett | 2009.06.15 at 01:19
Nah, genuine screw-up. Is fixed!
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2009.06.15 at 06:35
Nice post-Tarantinoesque reviews but needs more F-words and perhaps a smoky photoshopped logo of the actual review, add horns or something just to get into the vibe. Thanks. Oh and a shameless plug http://wereviking.wordpress.com Zephyr -- a superhero webcomic in prose.
Posted by: Wereviking | 2009.06.15 at 08:58
Wow, that is exactly what I've always thought about Tim Drake, only put better and with fewer "um"s. Great stuff!
Posted by: plok | 2009.06.16 at 18:02