Comics Of The Weak: Here's To You, Mrs. Bethke

Batman & Robin # 3
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Frank Quitely
Published by DC Comics

It's going to be tough enough on upcoming B & R artist Phillip Tan when the chorus of snargle snargle grumblings begins, and that makes it unjustifiably mean that Frank Quitely has redesigned the Red Hood so that the character most closely resembles a hot dog shoved onto an action figure. Sure, it'll probably work out alright in the end, since Morrison's star has risen to a point where there will be plenty of supporters to argue away complaints about how an old Spawn artist has taken over DC's most successful book and drawn it poorly, but it's still a lousy thing to do the guy right out of the gate. He's already got two broken legs. No need to kick him in the balls.

Sinister Spider-Man # 3
Written by Brian Reed
Art by Chris Bachalo, Rob Disalvo, Tim Townsend, Mendoza, Sibal, Fabela & Andres Mossa
Published by Marvel Comics

Somewhere at Marvel, there exists a contract, the likes of which one hasn't been around since the days of the 'Farlane and the dawn of Omega Red. A pre-Image Comics, "don't go nowhere" kind of art contract, one that says "Whatever you want, whatever you need: name it, you can have it all." Chris Bachalo signed a contract like that, and one of the requests he made, the one that went under the subheading "Whenever I Have To Work On Throwaway Mini-Series Tied Into Marvel Events", was that, if Bachalo was expected to draw a Sinister Spider-Man mini-series, he could elect to draw the fight scene and nothing else. Talking? Whatever plot it was that Brian Reed and Marvel's editorial board came up with? None for Chris, please. Just the fight scene. Call somebody else--anybody, they don't even have to share his style--to handle that bullshit. Here's your six fucking pages.

X-Men Forever 6

Written by Chris Claremont

Art by Paul Smith, Terry Austin & Mouoe Baumann

Published by Marvel Comics

You ever seen one of those movies where a successful businessman gets divorced, and whenever he sees his kid, he brings the kid some kind of toy that was popular last year? Some book that's like four years too young for the kid? The movie always depicts the kid as sneering and saying something like "Bakugan is for babies", and then the dad's face gets a little sad even though he's got a twenty year old fucktoy and a Ferrari, and he doesn't have to waste his time with this ungrateful little shithead anymore, and could even go buy or make more babies if he really cared that much and wanted to try fatherhood again.

That's what if feels like to read X-Men Forever.

Fantastic Four 570

Written by Jonathan Hickman

Art by Dale Eaglesham & Paul Mounts

Published by Marvel Comics

There's a lot of people who can pull off the "i'll shave on thursday" look, but Reed Richards ain't one of them. Unshaven Reed Richards looks like a sex criminal, and not one of those "ha ha funny" kind who get arrested for jerking off while on a blimp ride, but the "cry cry therapy" kind. (Say what you will about Tom Strong, who Reed's being modeled after, but Tom Strong never looked like he was unsuitable as babysitter.) Then again, that's not something you can totally blame Marvel Comics for--they spent over a year thinking that the guy who did Kick-Ass was going to push this comic out of the "I buy this because I have to or I get sick" category, and all that guy did was draw mental pictures of the word one-trick-pony over and over again. Mine as well get back to basics, like, fundamental basics, and have Mr. Fantastic be all smart and science-y, that Invisible Woman wander around uselessly, and constantly put the Human Torch and Thing in positions where one wonders if they sleep in bunkbeds and talk to each other through strung-together cans.

Batman: The Brave And The Bold # 8

Written by J. Torres

Art by Carlo Barberi & Terry Beatty

Published by DC Comics

This is for kids. Well, technically speaking, at least. It's about Batman's trip to Tibet, where he teams up with a bunch of Chinese super-heroes, although they call themselves super-functionaries "to sound more humble". One assumes that the usage of Tibet is just a simple way to set it in a mountainous region so that Batman can fight yetis, but there's the disappointing side-effect that this comic might teach children that Tibet is just another random "Asian" area controlled and run by China. (They would have to remember stuff for that to happen, which makes the complaint a moot one, as children are across-the-board stupid, but abjectly, it's wholly possible that there is an exception.) And while it's true that China steamrolled in and took over Tibet so long ago now that it's generally accepted as "the way things will always be" by just about everybody capable of looking at a map, that doesn't make it any less irksome to see Batman--who couldn't be more anti-communist unless you put him in an Uncle Sam costume--never asks "The Great Ten" if they'd considered getting the fuck out of Tibet, since, you know, it isn't their fucking country.

Dark Avengers 8

Written by Matt Fraction

Art by Luke Ross

Published by Marvel Comics

In the back of a non-X-Men fan's mind, the question remains: would so many people care about something so insubstantial if the art was merely stick figures? If an X-cross over series was written that featured Anders Nilsen Monologue style of drawings, would the books keep moving? Dark Avengers # 8--which isn't labeled as an X-Men book, but sidelines the Dark Avengers characters that made the book a successful franchising of Warren Ellis' Thunderbolts run so completely that what it looks like is that Bendis wanted a brief vacation--seems to point to an answer. It doesn't fucking matter who draws these characters. Generic page after generic page, a stupid, easy-to-call plot that ignores the basic stupidity of Cyclops never explaining that his girlfriend wasn't dirty to anyone who asked, thus making him seem like a dick who just really wanted to say "Surprise, I gotcha good!", this is how one takes something people wanted--Bendis and Deodato, with hamburger jokes and rampant cocksmanship--and smashes it against the anvil of what they don't: another shitty X-Men story.

Batman: The Widening Gyre # 1

Written by Kevin Smith

Art by Walt Flanagan

Published by DC Comics

It's horrible, of course--from the art to the writing, one has to jump down to the bottom rung of 90's indie comics to track down something as fucking stupid as a Batman and Robin story where Robin wears a yarmulke and says "Now I am a man" while sort of fighting some nazi villain types. But it does point to the overall weirdness of a culture where a guy with swastikas on his clothing would go into a synagogue on Yom Kippur, massacre some rabbis, and yet never says anything that could be construed as anti-Semitic at all. That's super-hero comics for you, but still: what self-respecting neo-Nazi doesn't let loose with the epithets when he goes spree-killing at the temple? That's harder to believe than the end of this comic, which depict Batman's lips as swelling to the size of ham sandwiches within microseconds of a fist's impact. 

Wonder Woman # 35

Written by Gail Simone

Art by Aaron Lopresti & Matt Ryan

Published by DC Comics

Much like the last issue of Wonder Woman, this little chapter in the life of the one comic book character who can lay claim to being better served by cheap television producers than the comic books that spawned her contains a weird conversation about the size of Power Girl's breasts--which are big and a popular source of fetish statues, if you're asking Black Canary--along with a string of fights designed to find and rescue a guy who has swapped bodies with a mustached dwarf. It ends with Wonder Woman going home and offering to shower with some nebbishy guy, only for him to respond by breaking up with her and giving her a spear. (You have to give Wonder Woman a spear when you dump her?) If it was funnier, it might actually be worth reading, but it's just strange and off-putting, even though it's arguable that this kind of "just go with it" comics is the best thing that could happen to Wonder Woman. It's a good thing no little girls read this comic. Not because it's sexist, but because it might make them feel like failures when their adulthood doesn't closely resemble dropping acid at the mall.

The Red Circle: The Shield 1

Written by J. Michael Straczynski

Art by Scott McDaniel

Published by DC Comics

The last time that DC tried hawking this character, they called the title Legend Of The Shield and they hired some guy who draws human skulls as if they have sharp corners to them. This time, they're letting some guy who wrote a television show about how Star Trek needed to be more boring handle the scripts while some ex-Batman artist gets a chance to earn a paycheck that he can unfortunately no longer call "beneath" his time. It's a funny idea, this whole "Straczynski recreates the Red Circle universe", especially since it's just about impossible to reinvent something that's a copy of Iron Man, if Iron Man was Captain America. (Soldier gets hurt, is kept alive by technologically amazing armor that makes him look like a flag, fights soldiers). It's plagiarism 101: you can't reinvent a rip-off for very long before you end up writing the exact thing you're ripping-off, unless you throw in something completely unusual, like cannibalism or non-white characters. So Straczynski's just stuck the same thing, again, although it's set in a world where America isn't totally sure it can win ground wars, so they need to make sure they have some kind of edge so that nobody wants to fight a ground war with them. Which--well, do you really need the history lesson? Nobody fights fucking ground wars anymore. Shit, nobody dogfights with airplanes anymore, that's why Garth Ennis has to set all his airplane combat books in the 40's. But here in The Shield, its implied that America's military operates under the threat of constant ground-warfare based fighting, like with trenches and running. So yeah, okay. Like--you know how you're supposed to give things a chance? These things have no fucking chance.

-Tucker Stone, 2009

Comments

[Chris Jones]

...I like Phillip Tan.

[Tucker Stone]

It's cool. They have treatment for that now, meetings, all kinds of stuff. You're halfway there, just admitting it is the hard part.

[Chris Jones]

Hey. Hey. Hey.

You like a comic written by Tony BeTARD.

[Tucker Stone]

Correction: I like comics with Dominators in them. Creator is superfluous!

[seth hurley]

Watch your fucking mouth, I have Betards in my family.

[Chris Jones]

I'm not saying there's anything WRONG with the mentally Betarded, I just don't think they should be writing comic books, is all.

[LurkerWithout]

You're mocking Babylon5 in public? Won't they take away your Nerd Card for that? And then have a horde of "people" who pay to go to Wizard run conventions come over and break your knees with real Klingon swords and glowing lightsabres...

[Lugh]

I think Tucker's gotten a call from MasterNerd to cut that thing up already a long time ago, Lurker...

[Tim O'Neil]

I think that people who like Babylon 5 went underground a long time ago, because while it seems they were really vocal about a decade ago (even my parents liked the show when it was being run on TNT in syndication), no one talks about it anymore. Perhaps people figured out it was stupid (sorry, mom, dad), or that the Battlestar: Galactica revamp fulfilled people's need for boring sci-fi TV.

[moose n squirrel]

That is the best description of X-Men Forever I have ever read.

How does Reed Richards even grow stubble? Isn't he made out of rubber? How does rubber grow hair? How does rubber get beefy? It's all gross. Gross, gross, gross.

[Lugh]

I don't think he's really made of rubber so much as his flesh is just really pliable - still kind of gross. The rubber thing might be an Ultimate idea? No clue about that.

[Lugh]

Also, am I some sort of bad person because I don't think X-Men Forever existing is some sort of crime against Chris Ware or something? It looks like completely disposable, stupid fun that I hope is collected into a cheapo trade that I'll be able to find for 2 dollars at a used store down the line so I can read it on a flight, or while my wife is doing homework on the computer or something. Is that so wrong? Do I need to be purged now? I suppose if so, there's no one I'd like to do the deed more than you, Stone. Just... just give me a day, alright?

(The Widening Gyre though sounds kind of disjointed, if we're going to be nice. Regardless of the quality, Smith, you aren't going to manage to convince anybody you're smarter than you are, even if you just ACT stupid, by giving it a title from a Yeats poem.)

[Tucker Stone]

Whether Reed grows facial hair or not, it does seem odd that he's willfully making his arms more muscular. Does he sleep like normal, wake up and say "shit, my arms", start swelling like a Reebok Pump?

[moose n squirrel]

Are we perhaps meant to believe that he found some old videos of Namor balling Sue, and decided he needed to puff himself up?

[Matthew J. Brady]

I bet he does that cartoon thing where he sticks his thumb in his mouth and blows. That's always funny.

By the way, Bachalo drew the cover too. And your description of X-Men Forever confuses me (is the comic the gift he gives to the kid? And what's the sexy girl and car, money? I feel dumb), but I like it anyway.

And man, both Batman Widens His Gear and Wonder Woman sound bizarre as all fuck, but I'm still not interested in reading them.

[moose n squirrel]

X-Men Forever feels like listening to a middle-aged guy sadly reminisce about how awesome he used to be on his high school football team.

[NoahB]

Now I'm actually curious about that Wonder Woman comic, which sounds completely bizarre.

[Tucker Stone]

There's weird shit in Wonder Woman, but it's so watered down that you can barely taste it. I've only read these last two issues, but both have about a page or two devoted to Wonder Woman and Black Canary talking about the way women are perceived in the DC universe--simple terms, just "people rate our tits" talk--and it's revealed that all those goofy cheesecake statues are really popular amongst the population. The last issue, she slow danced with a polar bear? This time, she gets dumped by a guy who looks like he's 19? But there's also 18 pages of boring shit to deal with.

[Nathan]

I personally don't dislike Phillip Tan, I mean I wouldn't buy a book cause he was doing it, but I wouldn't blind myself after reading his work, but damn you are right on with your assessment on the Quitely to Tan transition. It's just too fucking cruel to do to a person.

Also I your FF "review" had me chuckling, now I can never look at the book the same way again.

But incidently what did you actually think of the book, you know wordswise?

[Tucker Stone]

Nathan-
It felt like old home week, except for Reed. I'd heard the Supreme comparison before I read it, but i was still kind of surprised by how far Hickman took it. The short sleeves are a little weird--actually, i'd say that I'm overall not that interested in it visually. But I'm interested to see where they plan to go with the idea of a room full of Reeds. That's a first time kind of thing. I've never really caught the FF bug.