Comics Of The Weak: No, MoCCA Didn't Jack Up The Timing, Why Do You Ask?

This week, two reviews are handled by Chicago's own Matthew J. Brady, from Warren Peace Sings The Blues.

Ultimatum #4
Written by Jeph Loeb
Art by David Finch
Published by Marvel Comics
By Matthew J. Brady

Fuck Jeph Loeb. Fuck him in the ear and make him bleed. Wait, he'd probably get off on that, so never mind. That seems like the only possible reason for this thing, which is a nonsensical orgy of supposedly beloved characters getting graphically murdered in not-very-creative ways. Come on, Jeph, leave that shit up to Garth Ennis, although even he probably couldn't square the tonal shift between Dr. Strange getting squeezed until his eyes pop out and his head explodes and Kitty Pryde and Wolverine hugging sadly (and tenderly...wait, make that creepily) about poor Spider-Man. Oh, isn't it awful that all these people are dying? Okay, let's watch as Sabretooth bites Angel's wings off. Fuck yeah, all that blood makes me so hard! Also, Magneto, who not only can do the magnetism thing, but has badass Thor powers now, gets his arm chopped off by a floozy dressed like that Gen 13 chick wielding her METAL SWORD. And, Wolverine gives Kitty a mysterious box, which might contain a reset button or something, maybe, I mean, all these characters might stay dead, you never know, right? I hope it has an actual button that is labeled "Push in the case of Brian Michael Bendis threatening to kick us all in the taint because we fucked up one of the best things the company had going for no reason." And then it will all turn out to be a video game played by an 11-year old named Jeff who does a bunch of Beavis laughs before his house is crushed by a Monty Python foot. The end.

Punisher: Naked Kill
Written by Jonathan Maberry
Art by Laurence Campbell & Lee Loughridge
Published by Marvel MAX
By Matthew J. Brady

Just stop, guys. Maybe Ennis can handle this shit, with the grim humor and the earned moral outrage, but few others can clear that bar, so really, please quit trying already. Here, the Punisher gets to stop some sex slavery and get all royally cheesed off, spouting lines like "Those are somebody's daughters up there" and letting us know he's really steamed because he tells us he's trying to keep his anger under control so he can work more efficiently. But it's also supposed to be funny, I guess; there's one of those obnoxious sidekicks who thinks it's so awesome that Frank brutally kills dudes with his bare hands, and a gruesomely goofy way to escape one of those Bond villain self-destruct timers. The damn tone is all over the place; one scene we're supposed to share the outrage at these cartoony villains whose evilness sort of approaches some horrific real-world crimes, and the next we're supposed to laugh at a girl getting fucked to death by this guy's huge cock. Swell. Is this the legacy Ennis wanted to leave behind? Actually, it probably is, but it would be nice if there were some better writers trying to live up to it.

Seaguy Slaves of Mickey Eye # 3

Written by Grant Morrison

Art by Cameron Stewart & Dave Stewart

Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

Q: Is it surprising that Slaves # 3 is as good as it is?

A: Not really.

Grant Morrison's whole thing is that he's a damn fine writer, a good goddamn fine writer, and yes, his shit will probably be kicked around for years to come. Will it be kicked around after he's hit the grave? After we have? (We'll be sooner, because our drugs are home-made.) That's his whole bag, that good comics thing. The problem with his whole thing, which Final Crisis was a good piece of evidentiary world-building for, is that Grant Morrison only teams himself up with artists who complement and bring definition to his scripts about half the time. Quitely can do it. Richard Case did it. But the lists of who can do it well can't be added upon too long before Cameron Stewart's name has to come up, and it has to come up near the top, because Cameron Stewart can draw like a fucking steroid-driven ninja with a pen that dribbles liquid lightning drawn from the pulped skull of a puppy dog. This is one of the few Morrison comics that wouldn't be better if he got along with Brendan McCarthy.

Shit, maybe you're the one with the problem.

Agents of Atlas # 6

Written by Jeff Parker

Art by Gabriel Hardman & Jana Schirmer

Published by Marvel Comics

The problem/solution with Namor in Agents of Atlas is that Namor is carved from a pretty solid block of simplicity, in that Namor is only tolerable when he's being completely intolerable, i.e. a relentlessly morose motherfucker, and he's presented here as being vaguely level-headed and into his cousin for all of her cookies and dice. Calm and sarcastic Namor might work for some, but the rest of us prefer to see him jacking shit up with a sneer of "My dick is 17 inches uncut, and yes, it will hurt". Still, complaints have to be pulled back a shade or two, because this is one of those wall-to-wall issues drawn by Gabriel "Best Last Name In Comic Books" HARDMAN, and he pretty much owns that gorilla character in a way that's going to make it difficult for any artist to catch a break. Guy's shit is like those eyewash stations in chemical factories: cleans you up down to the rectum.

The Boys # 31

Written by Garth Ennis

Art by Carlos Ezquerra

Published by Dynamite Entertainment

It shouldn't be that surprising when one of the major Boys characters dies in the 31st issue of a series that is reportedly only going to last another 30 issues or so--31 is the halfway point, and that's around the time when Ennis starts jacking up the status quo of his longer run books. But the surprise of it does hit a little weirder this time, and that's part because "where this story is going" still seems a bit removed from the whole plot equation. Maybe that's because the stories it's satirizing and riffing off of never have anywhere to go, and the Ennis satire of them isn't pointed enough to focus on those super-hero comics that do have a point? Maybe that's a mark in its favor, that Garth is using the whole rinse-and-repeat cycle as a way to comment on the never-ending soap opera of a birds-eye view of the X-Mens and Justice Leagues? Maybe it's just bad luck? Either way, the cover of this comic says Darick Robertson on the front, despite the art coming courtesy of Carlos Ezquerra. That's sort of apt, actually. There's something wrong here, and credit mishaps are par for the course.

Chew # 1

Written by John Layman

Art by Rob Guillory

Published by Image Comics

Why does there need to be a quarter-inch tall box with the words "Taster's Choice Part 1 of 5" on the cover of this comic? The idea that a near unseeable sub-title is somehow a selling point for this story, which is about a police officer who uses his "eat things and see their past" magic powers for the purposes of solving crimes, is one that doesn't even merit actual discussion. There's nothing, nothing in the universe, that can be served by including a box of that size on the cover of a comic book. It could say "this comic contains a treasure map of Spain" or "Sometimes I imagine my mother has a human dick", and it would be about as useful as its supposed purpose, which one guesses is...no, one guesses nothing, because there is no purpose in including something of that size on the cover. It's a stupid, pointless thing to have made someone do.

The comic itself is actually decent enough, a somewhat unpredictable spin on old tropes, and a comic that doesn't appear to be designed to make a shitty looking movie. There's a really nice two page spread in it. That is all.

Dark Avengers # 5

Written by Brian Michael Bendis

Art by Mike Deodato & Rain Beredo

Published by Marvel Comics

The whole joke inherent in reading Norman Osborn's whole "God gave me the strength not to be a villain anymore" rests on the notion that the majority of comic book readers watch Jordin Sparks or the Jonas Brothers yak about their fucking purity rings while thanking Jesus for the stupid, pointless awards made out of deceit and America's shitty musical taste while saying "gosh, I don't think God and Jesus give a rats fucking tit whether or not Bronson Pinchot wins an Oscar for his supporting turn in Beverly Hills Cop, no matter that Serge is maybe one of the defining character moments of the 1980's." And hey, maybe Brian Michael Bendis is right, and that joke--one that's sort of old, but still pretty apt--is one that appeals to the kind of people who keep up with Dark Avengers in its current incarnation, which is "more expensive for same amount of content". Maybe so.

Highly fucking doubtful though.

-Tucker Stone, Matthew J. Brady, 2009

Comments

[AERose]

Ultimatum exists entirely so 4thletter! can remix it. In that respect, it has more reason for being than virtually any comic from the Big Two.

[Cole Moore Odell]

So I'm reading Bill Everett Sub-Mariner comics from the 1950s, and there's one where aliens suck all of the water off of the earth, and Namor goes up into space on a waterspout to see what the fuck, and the aliens explain that they're planning to return almost all the water, except for what little they need to get by, and Namor thinks about it for maybe .05 seconds then says "No, fuck them, let them all die, keep all the water for yourselves," before it finally dawns on him that his entire fish family will also be killed, so he changes his mind, but he returns to Earth all kinds of pissed off that none of the asshole humans will thank him properly for getting the water back, which would have happened anyway without him, only sooner.

I really, really like that Namor.

[awb]

That's Namor's appeal. He's an incredible asshole. Why that's appealing I have no idea but it works for me.

[kilmoonie]

What makes Ultimatum especially annoying to me (aside from the fact that I buy it, like a retarded moth to flame) is that given the set up of you can do whatever you want here, kill whomever you want and set up a whole new status quo with these Marvel characters and instead of something really cool/interesting -- you know, things you CAN'T do with the "real" characters -- we get this: A comic that reads like a zine a few 13 year-olds stapled together because they really wanted to draw the Hulk and Wolverine and Tits.

And Jesus Christ- 17 inches? Wouldn't 12 inches have been sufficient? His speedos couldn't handle either to be honest. They are tiny and green, unless of course it retracts into his abdomen like an orca.

JR

[David Uzumeri]

The Beavis laughs comment is appropriate, because Jeph Loeb managed to pull the word "bunghole" straight out of the 1990s for this issue, and somehow decided it'd be appropriate to have it spoken by a Samuel Jackson analogue character of pure, unfiltered cool. How fucking out of touch is someone - especially somebody who works in the entertainment industry - if they think the word "bunghole" is still in use by anybody other than stoned-ass twentysomethings rewatching old Cornholio episodes of Beavis and Butt-Head?

[Matthew J. Brady]

Ha ha, I forgot about the bunghole thing, but that makes it even better. I was just imagining Loeb sitting there and doing that heh heh heh laugh while writing that shit down. Dude, I'm working on subconscious levels or something here.

[caleb]

Wait, so it was just a plain old metal sword? I've been flipping through new issues of Ultimatum to see who eats who, and I saw a scene where Valkyrie cuts off Magneto's hand with a sword and as I was putting it back on the shelf, I thought, "Well, I bet it's a magic sword, or a special super-hard plastic sword, and the scene was just to show how smart and bad-ass the good guys were, to have tricked Magneto."

But it was just a metal sword? Oh man, I bet Magneto feels stupid.

[Matthew J. Brady]

I don't know, is it supposed to be magic? I really have no idea what the status of Valkyrie is in the Ultimate universe. Or the regular Marvel universe, for that matter. But after she cuts his hand off, he uses his powers to take it away from her, so it certainly seems pretty stupid of him to let that happen.

[Jim Kingman]

Whenever someone, anyone brings up the name Brendan McCarthy, I immediately think of those fantastic covers he did for Shade the Changing Man back in the early, early 1990s. And that awesome American Scream storyline by Milligan and Bachalo. And how Shade actually got better when it became a Vertigo title. But I digress. I bought Red Robin #1 at the comic book shop today, and forgot about Seaguy #3. Sad. Very sad.