The Factual Opinion

Comics Of The Weak: All Things Are Replacable

The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror 15
By Tim Hensley, Matthew Thurber, Kevin Huizenga, Jordan Crane, Ted May, Sammy Harkham, Will Sweeney, Jon Vermilyea, Ben Jones, John Kerschbaum, Jeffrey Brown, C.F. & Dan Zettwoch
Published by Bongo Comics
"Printed by World Color Press Inc, Montreal, QC, Canada 9/16/09 in the forest of unshed tears"

"This is all Matt Groening's Fault yet all our hands have been stained red and swollen while his remain hairy, unkempt, and idle".

That's how it opens, this thing, this comic book. You'll see a leg, decapitated head, a hand: The Couch. Because you don't know or you do, improvisation works like this: a fluctuating wave pattern trapped inside a defined box. The boxes definition does not stem from the artist. The requirement--the purpose of the improvisation--determines the walls and its rules. The artist is then to madly fluctuate within, creating something that bounces off all the edges, doing and imagining, most of all, being: whatever they want, their skills, at their best.

It's why improv comedy is often terrible, it's why licensed work is often terrible, it's why work-for-hire is so often a failure. Not because of the limitations placed by the editor--although sticky fingers and mandates can destroy, the problem, the failure, often lays in the limits the artist places on themselves. That's not a criticism, although stupid, weak artists see it as one, so used they are to the defense of "their fault", "their rules", "not mine". It's not a criticism because the glory--when glory is achieved--belongs to them. Not the tools, not the owner, never the rules. The creation--wonderful, new, fresh and ultimately, courageous--belongs completely to them. You don't want another Treehouse of Horror after you read "Boo-tleg". You want whatever Ben Jones has to give.

This thing? This mash-up of Kramer's Ergot, indy creators and Simpsons? This is a triumph, but it's also a rebuke. It's a comic that laughs in the face of the weak, those that use the greed of corporations to excuse their cheap hackery; it's a comic that snaps a finger into the eyes of the lazy reader that handicaps their pleasures; it's a piece of art that puts to the lie the power of the tastemaker. It's aesthetically resonant in a way that almost no anthology is, a cohesive mass of story that crashes through a pinwheeled vision of right now and right then, a brilliantly illustrated and extraordinarily dialogued piece of comics as work, comics as art, comics as pure cocained genius. It will have "favorites", as contributors like Jones and May are almost unstoppably funnier than anyone surrounding them, but the entire enterprise is ultimately a complete success by nature of it's fervent, bleeding passion. It's a production that stinks of care--for the reader and the paymaster, yes--but mostly for the men who took an opportunity and used it to create risk. 

There will be few like these. Some will decry that it has not found its audience, when the initial sales return a story of trash and fodder stomping Treehouse's numbers off the charts. But at the end of it, art will win.

It always does.

Superman Secret Origin # 1

Written by Geoff Johns

Art by Gary Frank, Jon Sibal & Brad Anderson

Published by DC Comics

Hopefully, there's an adorable 9 year old boy reading The Diary of A Wimpy Kid, and he'll physically grow into a man's body, get a job working in comics of such popularity that he can write his own ticket, and then he'll reveal his dream project: re-inventing Greg Heffley so he looks like Zachary Gordon. He'll re-write the stories of his youth while seated across from his artistic cohorts, occassionally holding up his hand in wait of an accompanying clap, a high five for awesome, just like Jolly Johns and Frankly Frank must have done here, with their pointless, creepshow Superboy, a child with the skull of a dead man screwed onto the body of a prepubescent girl. This comic may not be the worst thing ever--that would probably be the comic that your neighbor just finished stapling together, which is about how hard it was when mommy forgot the morning hug--but its definitely a top contender in the DC Could Sell Some People Anal Fissures If Geoff Asked Nicely contest.

New Avengers # 57

Written by Brian Michael Bendis

Art by Stuart Immonen, Wade von Grawbadger & Dave McCaig

Published by Marvel Comics

Somebody should tell Bendis that black men are capable of responding to stress in more than one fashion.

Blackest Night Superman # 2

Written by James Robinson

Art by Eddy Barrows, Ruy Jose, Julio Ferreira & Rob Reis

Published by DC Comics

This comic opens with the phrase "This Morning". Normally, that prepares the reader for a series of sequences that are set during the morning. The artist helps contribute to this by drawing said series during the period of time that one refers to as "morning", i.e., daytime. So why is the first line of dialog, "Thanks for staying open late"? That implies that the local barber--who responds to the line by saying that he'll stay open as long as possible to keep his customers from "looking like hippies"--usually stays open overnight, closing his barbershop in the morning. The next panel consists of a solitary boy saying "Simon, come downstairs, dinner's ready. Not hungry Mom...." One would assume that the child is speaking to his mother, except all of the dialog--the "come downstairs" and the response "Not hungry"--is attributed to the boy, through the standard usage of word balloons. 

Oh--why is dinner being served in the morning?

That's the first page of the comic, the first three panels. The last page of the comic is Martha Kent saying "It's on!". She says this because she is preparing to fight a zombified Lois Lane Black Lantern in a cornfield. With a torch.

It was more fun feeling sorry for the people who make this shit back when you could honestly believe that somebody actually read them before they went to press.

Fantastic Four # 571

Written by Jonathan Hickman

Art by Dale Eaglesham & Paul Mounts

Published by Marvel Comics

They changed that "final solution" credit they gave Lee & Kirby, if you care. That was a pretty boneheaded thing to do. Now it's "greater than the sum", which is only upsetting if you start thinking about what it would look like if those two had actually made a baby with their body parts. Reed still looks beefy, the art is still shiny and off-putting, but the story is sort of interesting, especially if you know somebody who read the Time Traveler's Wife, because that makes you wonder if all of these Reed characters are occasionally giving each other a quick tug whenever the need arises, since they've all apparently abandoned their wives to live in a magic nerd compound where they fix things and lobotomize an infinite number of Dr. Dooms. Back in the 80's, one would have been considered weird for obsessing over the sexual behavior of comic book characters, but nowadays, you have to think about this stuff in advance just to keep yourself from experiencing the sort of surprises that would bring a half-digested lunch by for a return engagement with your tender lips. (You could just not read them at all, but that's how all the fucking snobs win.)

Conan The Cimmerian # 14

Written by Timothy Truman & Benjamin Truman

Art by Joe Kubert, Timothy Truman & Tell-A-Graphics

Published by Dark Horse Comics

The first four pages of Conan are drawn by Joe Kubert, and the last three pages of the comic are drawn by Joe Kubert. That makes for a total of seven pages, despite the text on the cover that says "Featuring Guest Artist Joe Kubert" without mentioning that he doesn't do anything but those seven pages. That's irritating enough, but the strangest part is that the seven pages aren't used to form bookends to the main story. It's just Joe Kubert starting the story, and then it's not Joe Kubert continuing the story, and then it's almost over, and then it's Joe Kubert again. It's also unreadable, but that's sort of the point of Conan anyway.

Dark X-Men: The Confession # 1

Written by Craig Kyle & Chris Yost

Art by Bing Cansino, Roland Paris, Edgar Delgado & Brian Reber

Published by Marvel Comics

There was some comic that came out that said, in so many words, that if you wanted-nay, needed- to read about what it was like when Cyclops told Emma Frost about stuff and Emma Frost told Cyclops about stuff, you should wait until this one comes out and buy it. It did that on the second page? The silly thing about that idea was that Cyclops was going to tell Emma Frost stuff she would already know about if she read the X-Force comic book, and Emma Frost was going to tell Cyclops stuff he would already know about if he read that Bendis comic where Alex Maleev drew Namor like an alcoholic sex criminal. But anyway, it came out, and it took two writers and four artists to do what some amateur historian was able to handle in about two cups of coffee time over at wikipedia.

Giant Size Wolverine Old Man Logan # 1

Written by Mark MIllar

Art by Steve McNiven, Dexter Vines, Mark Morales & Morry Hollowell

Published by Marvel Comics

Part of the reason this comic book is "Giant Size" is because it has a bunch of filler back pages in it, one of which is, no shit, the cover of the comic book that It Also Is, meaning you have one page that is just like the cover, because it is the cover. There's also this really intricate page of Steve McNiven's pencil work, which is probably included so that the book's defenders can point at it and say "Look at how fucking hard this guy works, that's why the book's schedule ran off the rails so spectacularly." There's no real argument to the contrary, McNiven clearly puts in a lot of work. There's all kinds of fucking detail here, when people get their shit cut open, when they get their arms sliced off, when people get eaten alive and then rip their way out of people's stomachs, when people rip a mid-air cow in half with their claw hands before putting on a duster and cowboy hat and riding off into the sunset with a Lone Wolf Hulk Baby in the horse-y version of a carseat--shit, there's a lot of goddamn detail to the whole enterprise. Like--McNiven obviously spent some time on this thing, getting up in the morning, working all day, going to bed, repeating the process. One almost wishes that Millar had done the same, but he was clearly too busy not coming up with anything beyond Oh Shit Dude, What If Venom Was A Dinosaur Pass Me The Bong I Just Shit Brain Gold, and you can't blame him for that.

Oh wait. You can, can't you?

-Tucker Stone, 2009

The Virgin Read: Spider Breasts

Each week, the non-comics reading Nina Stone picks out one random comic book based off her own made up criteria, reads it, and then writes about that experience. While she's been doing these columns for awhile, she's only successfully managed to remember and keep up with one series. This week, she picked Spider-Woman # 1.

Spider-Woman # 1

Written by Brian Michael Bendis

Art by Alex Maleev

Published by Marvel Comics

Tits. I mean, really, that's the first thing anyone sees on this cover. Center on the page, in full light (unlike her head and shoulders which are in the shadows) are 2 large red breasts. Spider-Woman's costume seems to be made out of latex. Are breasts the only thing that make Spider-Woman different from Spider-man? I know I'm about to delve into some heavy generalities to raise a few questions - so please forgive me. But I couldn't help thinking about the differences between men and women and how they might write a superhero differently. 

In this comic, we have Spider-Woman, and she is suffering from a lot of emotional baggage. Her parents were terrorists (thank you so much, Bendis, for the mid-story recap. I thought that was well-done and gave me all the info that I was beginning to wonder about), who were than murdered in front of her. She was then seduced into working for that very organization, finally broke free and fought for the Avengers, and then was fully taken advantage of by the Skrulls and lost everything as a result - her friends, her reputation, her life. Yeah, I'd be pissed, too.

But I have to say, as a woman picking a comic because it had a female lead--and maybe a little bit because the name "Bendis" is one that has stuck with me, as I've enjoyed some of his comic books before for these columns, I was disappointed to find it going down the same dark, gritty road that most of these super-hero comics go. And although I realize that this is all sorts of unpolitical correctness to say, I found this to be very much a boy's story. For boys, by boys. And while it might not be a completely exclusive way, it's not what I want to see out of a female superhero.

I went to good ol' wikipedia to find some basic info for me to work off of. I looked up "femininity" and it says a few things I'd like to pull from: "femininity principally refers to secondary sex characteristics and other behaviors and features generally regarded as being more prevalent and better suited to women, whether inborn or socialized. In traditional Western culture, such features include gentleness, patience, and kindness." And that feminine attributes "are often perceived as being associated with personality traits such as nurturing, life-giving qualities, creativity, and an openness, or yielding, to other people."

In looking up masculinity, the whole entry was written in a different manner.  The subheadings in the Femininity entry look like this:

The entry for masculinity, on the other hand, looks like this:

Just interesting to note. (And by interesting, I mean the depressing kind of "interesting".)  I bring this up because the femininity entry is all about attributes and qualities. And so, one would think that when making a female super-hero, one might emphasize those qualities in a woman, aside from her physical characteristics, and make them the thing that make her super. Rather than her being beautiful with large breasts but with masculine attributes. In wikipedia are explained as such: "Cicero wrote that "a man's chief quality is courage." But that's it. There's no more mention of what masculine traits are other than physical ones. Although there is this: "Ancient literature goes back to about 3000 BC. It includes both explicit statements of what was expected of men in laws, and implicit suggestions about masculinity in myths involving gods and heroes."

Let's be clear about something: I know that going to wikipedia and picking out random quotes and using that as the basis for criticizing a comic book isn't really research or anything. But I'm not about to take a college class in feminine/masculine attributes to better strengthen my take on a super-hero comic that I didn't think much of beyond "it's kind of entertaining". As far as I'm concerned, my amateur reaction to this is built on amateur research, but that doesn't make it any less honest. I don't think that going to wikipedia and finding something different would have made me like Spider-Woman # 1 more, and it certainly isn't about to change my general feeling about the comic. I'm just looking for better language with which to describe that general feeling.

I'm writing all of this to say that when I reach for a comic about a super-hero woman, I actually want her to be the epitome of femininity with her feminine qualities being her strengths - not another man who happens to have female body parts.

How would I write that? I'm not entirely sure. But maybe she has the power of healing and of so much nurturing that that in her presence, villains weep and confess or just want to be near her rather than fight her. I don't know. That sounds pretty terrible. But I'm not a writer! I'm a girl. I'm a girl who when seeking out girly things will watch The Notebook, twice, and not just because Ryan Gosling is omigodwowryangosling. I'll do something like that, silly, stereotype-y, and I'll love every minute of it. And I'll choose that over a war movie every day of the week. I'm not saying I'm every girl. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with war movies. I'm just saying that I lean toward movies that highlight the aforementioned feminine qualities more than the masculine one(s). I'm not going to apologize when my behavior--my feelings, my desires--happen to match up with the sort of stereotypical woman that some men--and other women--want to make fun of. Preferring something touchy-feely over something violent doesn't make me weak, it doesn't make me any less of a feminist. It makes me, me.

All this being said, though, I ended up enjoying a lot of this comic. At first I felt out of the loop, but am happy that I got to get a full recap of the backstory. I'm definitely intrigued as to whether or not that really was Spider-man or if she just beat an alien to near death. I think my only problem is with the art. Not so much the art, which is really realistic, but the coloring. I'm not sure what the yellow color running through her arms is supposed to be - you know, that part in the beginning when she's getting angry and tensing her arms and shaking her fists. And at the end, is that green that I see around Spider-man's mouth?  I'm guessing it's supposed to be green skin popping through the mask, since that answers the alien question. But it wasn't clear, it seemed like it was straddling the line of skin and vomit. Am I being left in suspense or do I have my answer? Kind of weird.

-Nina Stone, 2009

(Due to the holiday, Sunday's Comics of the Weak was switched with the Virgin Read so as not to violate the rules of the Jewish God.)

Music of the Weak: The 100 Greatest Songs of the Millennium (So Far) - #30-21

PREVIOUSLY: #200-101 – The newbies and also-rans.

#100-91 - Introductions, yacht rock, epic narratives, Elvis tributes, and one-man Canadian supergroups.

#90-81 – Jazz revisionism, shady fact-checking, Muppetized gangsta rap, and the no pussy blues.

#80-71 – A ragtag assembly of pop stars and other hate-able entities

#70-61 – More pop music, Australian pop, bedroom pop, Kanye West, and the decade’s greatest use of drum machines

#60-51 – Sex, suicide, misogyny, and a brief appearance by Amy Winehouse

#50-41 – 8 songs that deserve your attention, 2 songs that probably already have it

#40-31 – Dylan covers, guest spots and banging camp

30. The Chemical Brothers – “Star Guitar” (2002)

The story ends with The Chemical Brothers losing. In the halcyon days of “electronica” hype, Tom Rolands and Ed Simmons garnered the musical equivalent of “breakout actress,” when all the rock magazines pegged them as the forefront of the predicted dance-music takeover—or, at least, that’s what they did when they weren’t fixating on Keith Flint’s inverted Mohawk. By the turn of the century, everyone knew that electronica as a commercial prospect was a dud. Though the Chems continued to put out staggering albums, their brand of rock-structured rave songs didn’t have much of a place in the musical climate. By the end of 2001, Daft Punk had dropped Discovery, and merged electronica with pop—of both the Van Halen and Kylie Minogue varieties—while Timbaland and UK Garage tricked out R&B with dance beats, and vice versa. In January of 2002, The Chemical Brothers released Come With Us—arguably, the apex of their discography—to mass indifference. Nestled at its heart, “Star Guitar” is a hypnotic hymn to electronica’s promise, that pays homage to that scene’s hallmarks—raves, beats, and ecstasy—while it mourns their passing. It’s no wonder that the song’s central lyric, “You should feel what I feel/ You should take what I take,” reads like an enticement, but sounds like a regret.

29. Beirut – “Postcards From Italy” (2006)

The decade teems with stories of dudes recording masterpieces in their bedrooms, from The Postal Service to Bon Iver, but no other window box-grown song rings with as much wordliness as Zach Condon’s “Postcards From Italy.” As most listeners’ introduction to Beirut, it’s a great trick—a strictly Balkan sound in a strictly indie rock package. Three albums in, it turns out it’s just about Condon’s only trick. And it’s still great. After tons of successful tweaks of the same formula (“Nantes,” “Elephant Gun,” “My Wife, Lost in the Wild”), “Postcards From Italy” still soars above the rest of Beirut’s catalogue. Along Condon’s with back-story—he was a student at the University of New Mexico when he recorded his debut album, Gulag Orkestrar—the title, horns, and plaintive voice actually evoke a kid imagining himself in Italy, rather than really being there. Subsequently, it’s the transporting quality of the song that resonates so deeply.

28. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – “Maps” (2003)

It’s tempting to think of “Maps” in broad strokes—as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ signature song; as a commercial crossover; as the last great power ballad—but “Maps” succeeds because of its component parts. Yes, Karen O rings every ounce of truth out of each time she implores you to stay—each, “I love you,” each “Wait!” But Karen’s bloodshed performance could never have flown without her bandmates. Nick Zinner’s guitar playing sounds like an icicle forming, while Brian Chase’s drums rumble louder than a mastodon, or a Mastodon. The end result has a nearly tribal impact, as if the music keeps pushing and pushing toward an enormous external revelation, but Karen O goes in the opposite direction, digging for an internal one buried deep within the confines of the word love.

27. Aesop Rock – “No Regrets” (2001)

“No Regrets” is literate rap the way that the work of Dr. Suess is literate literature. At no time does Aesop Rock ever give away that what he’s doing is even the least bit artful, yet the song tells an immaculate three-act story, and drives toward a truthful and compact moral. The beast gleefully snatches two samples from different songs off of the Last of the Mohicans soundtrack—some Enya-baiting vocals from Clannad’s “I Will Find You,” and the violins from Trevor Jones’ “The Kiss,” which producer Blockhead echoes with turntable scratches—and affixes them to a simple loop of guitar plunking. The real show, though, happens in Aesop Rock’s rhymes, which may eschew the rules of grammar (he begins, “Lucy was seven and wore a head of blue barrettes.”), but do it in service of concise storytelling. Lucy grows up as a reclusive weirdo, but spends day and night drawing. On her deathbed, she reveals, “I've never had a dream in my life/ Because a dream is what you wanna do but still haven't pursued/ I knew what I wanted and did it till it was done/ So I've been the dream that I wanted to be since day one!" Like the best children’s books, “No Regrets” illuminates something new about life every time you hear it.

26. The Strokes – “Last Nite” (2001)

Critics and fans fell all over themselves and each other on the release of The Strokes’ Is This It, dredging up novel ways to compare the band with Velvet Underground. Yet, the band carves “Last Nite,” their most enduring hit, out of Motown and Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers’ “American Girl”—two of the most patently uncool influences you could cop to. Singer Julian Casablancas attempts to untangle his feelings for his girl and comes up an empty-handed 23 year old driven by leftover teenage angst. He goofily lists the people that can’t understand how he feels—girlfriends, himself, spaceships, grandsons. Kids three generations from now will still fail to understand him, that’s how bent up Casablancas is. At the end of the day, he’s still vague about whether or not he’s walking out on his girlfriend, but for all its lyrical wormholing, and bubblegum aspirations, “Last Nite” is still the kind of American tune held together by duct tape and a Huey Lewis-style guitar solo, constantly threatening to ride off the rails, but the rails have padded walls on either side. In other words, it was an instant classic.

25. Fatlip – “What’s Up, Fatlip?” (2000)

Self-loathing is not just the best source of comedy, it’s damn near the only source of comedy. On his first post-Pharcyde single, Fatlip takes rap self-loathing to hilarious new lows. He alludes to getting kicked out of his former group for allegedly using crack. He suggests that you probably think he’s gay before calling himself a “bitch-ass nigga.” Then, he tops it all by attempting to reprise The Pharcyde’s biggest hit, “Passin’ Me By,” and sounding like a 64 year old homeless dude. On a deeper level, “What’s Up, Fatlip?” is about trying to hold yourself together while every single thing in your life is in shambles. For him, that manifests itself in the chorus, “Who am I fooling/ When they be like, ‘What’s up, Fatlip?’/ And I say, “Coolin’,” but it’s also revealed in the sound of the song itself. Allegedly produced by Fatlip using the moniker “Edy Crahp” (or Pharcyde spelled backwards), the track kicks off with a sound like a cartoon missile falling to earth, and features fragmented drums and piano that seem to deconstruct themselves as the song progresses.

24. Róisín Murphy – “Sow Into You” (2005)

23. Ghostface – “Save Me Dear” (2004)

It was a good decade for horns. Since sometime around the decline of the Minneapolis sound, horns had been scarce commodities in pop music. Everything was all classic rock guitars, frigid beats and recognizable samples. You had your “The National Anthem” and your “The Whole World,” sure, but those were the exceptions, until, sometime around “Crazy in Love,” the bubble burst and the warm humanity of a dazzling horn section became fashionable again. Though they come from two disparate sources, Róisín Murphy’s “Sow Into You” and Ghostface’s “Save Your Dear” showcase two of the best, post-Rich Harrison horn samples of the last ten years. On “Sow Into You,” producer Matthew Herbert grafts the song’s entire rhythmic backbone to his trumpet line, drawing parallels to big band music as well as house. Murphy weaves in and out of the horns, singing through them as if she were enticing a lover through the bars of a jail cell. Ghostface similarly gets out of the way of his source material, Freddie Scott’s “You Got What I Need” (famously used for Biz Markie’s “Just a Friend”), rapping inside and out of liberal samples of Scott’s vocal—and those horns. The result is one of the rare Ghostface joints where the production nearly outshines the rapping itself. Maybe that’s because Ghostface produced it.

22. The Exploding Hearts – “Throwaway Style” (2003)

Summer flings can often contain as much drama and excitement as a full-fledged, year-spanning romance. There’s something mystical about them. Or maybe it’s just a mild euphoria created when the sun fries your brain cells. Either way, summer fling songs can be some of the most potent pieces of music out there. Why do you think Grease’s “Summer Nights” has had such an extended shelf life? It’s not because of the songwriting, and it’s not because of John Travolta.

On “Throwaway Style,” The Exploding Hearts marry the summer fling song with one of the other most irresistible forces in rock music—the “Walking on Sunshine”/“Modern Love” rhythm (see also #26)—to create a juggernaut of giddy romantic promise. The song begins with the girl out of the picture, after singer Adam Cox has helped her pack for a move to Seattle with her boyfriend. He still sleeps at their old campsite, and the song is built around a sly, flirty plea for her to come back: “I know our love is over/ Unless you come over.” Simple stuff, but in Cox’s and The Exploding Hearts’ hands, it becomes an opera of innocent passion—at turns sad, joyous, and beguiling.

21. Junior Boys – “In the Morning (Feat. Andi Toma)” (2006)

The other day, I discovered that Ridley Scott soundtracked the duration of the movie Aliens with the sound of human breathing, just below noticeable levels, in order to create an foreboding tension through the entire film. Breath is a pretty astounding thing. On “In the Morning,” Junior Boys build a three-part breath sound right into the beat, and it makes the song sound like a physical experience. A Cybotron-checking keyboard riff cascades off of a forward-marching, insistent rhythm, while Andi Toma of Mouse On Mars makes a veritable pop star of himself with his vocal performance. But it’s the insistence of breath that takes “In the Morning” to its level of greatness, as if Toma were a one-man chain gang building a road in the middle of the club toward the break of the first daylight.

-Martin Brown, 2009

Television Of The Weak: Nobody Cares About The Past

This week we've got Hung, Mad Men, and due to the scheduling mishaps last week, a whole shitload of other stuff. Plowing? Forward.

Hung – “A Dick and a Dream or Fight the Honey” by Martin Brown

Over the last ten episodes, we’ve seen Jessica pathetically fight for the love of her children, withhold sex from her husband, and put up with Ray’s enduring affection for her. Yet there’s always been the lingering question of “Why?” Why does this character even appear in Hung, when her storyline runs parallel to the main one, never crossing over? Why are we expected to care about Jessica’s relationships with her kids, husband and ex, if those relationships have absolutely zero impact on the action of the show? Why did the writers build an entire, second supporting cast around Jessica, including not only her nebbish husband, but also her egregiously stereotypical, omnipresent, money-hungry mother?

Anne Heche has done fine work with the role of Jessica, and the writers have not made it easy on her. In “A Dick and a Dream” alone, she fields pussy talk while a vaguely ethnic masseuse spreads her legs open, and makes the emotional leap from unsatisfied housewife to high class trick in two scenes. As it turns out, the only reason Jessica appears in Hung is so that she can mistakenly hire Ray as a prostitute. Turns out the show has pinned the culmination of the first season on this moment.

Over the last ten episodes, Hung has consistently chosen plot development over character development. Typically, a show should introduce a crisis (Ray needs money) that our protagonist must deal with (so he becomes a prostitute), and let that play out (hilarity ensues as Ray learns everything he needs to know about women. As a sex worker). The joy is in watching the protagonist struggle through a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. Hung introduced its crisis, and then compounded it over and over without ever resolving anything, over the course of a whole season. Ray needed money, so he became a prostitute, but then he needed money more, so he became a prostitute more. Here we are at the season finale, when the season’s arcs should be tidying up, and things should be set in motion for next season, but they’re still introducing plot points out of nowhere. Ray’s going to be laid off. There’s honey in the walls of his home. And, oh yeah, he still needs more money.

The basic—The MOST basic rule of drama is that characters undergo a change between the beginning of the play and the end. At the end of the first season, neither of two main characters have changed a bit. Ray is still dealing with his problems in the same way, by charging into them without thought or ability. His house burns down, so he rebuilds it himself. He needs money, so he takes a get-rich-quick course. He’s got a big schlong, so he has to learn how to use it. But that was all in the first episode. In “A Dick and a Dream,” he’s still hacking away at those same issues. Little progress has been made, only complications. For her part, Tanya hasn’t gained an ounce of spine since deciding to become a pimp. We’ve watched her beg and flail all season without progress. Her latest complication? Her house is infested with flies. So fucking what? That’s not even a good metaphor.

The supporting characters fare even worse. Hung still feels the need to establish Lenore as a villain by having her let her dog poop in a playground. Here’s the twist: She doesn’t clean it up! Jessica’s husband has an awkward scene where he buries his face between a female patient’s legs—ostensibly, to reveal the sexual tension between them; but, really, it’s because someone decided that Hung should be a middle-aged corollary to Entourage, with Lauren Weedman subbed out for Alexis Dziena. Then there’s the scene where Ray’s kids hug because Damon’s boyfriend has walked out of a date with him. It’s preceded by him saying, “Can I have a hug?”

All of this brings us to that moment they’ve been building toward all season, when Ray’s supposed to knock on Jessica’s hotel room door—ex-husband and wife turned prostitute and trick. Ray spots Jessica before she goes up to the room, puts everything together in his head, and calls her on his cell phone. She in her room, he on the other side of the door, he tearfully tells her that she’s a good mother. The show obviously intends this to be the moment where we see Ray’s growth—but that growth never happened. If this turn of events had been character-driven, if it had been the result of Ray and Jessica’s emotional journeys over the course of the season, it might have had some resonance. Instead, it feels contrived.

At the end of the scene, Ray decides not to knock on the door. So, basically, they’ve spent an entire season building up to the moment when Ray’s real life will intersect with his prostitute life—using every machination and coincidence in the book to get us there—and then they avoid it.

Hung has had a rocky first season. It began with a gimmicky premise, but showed promise in the hands of Alexander Paine. The first few episodes didn’t really know what to do with themselves, introducing tons of supporting characters, and fragmenting into tons of tiny plotlines. After a couple of episodes, it found some focus—and, for a second—a voice, after introducing Jemma, a trick with potentially complicated motivations, and stripping away most of the other action. Then it swiftly ditched the Jemma plotline after a four-episode arc, began introducing a ton of other new characters (Pierce! Tanya’s mother! Horny Patty!), and, again, had no idea what to do with itself. With “A Dick and a Dream,” Hung hustles to tie up as many loose plot-points as it can, or jettison them in preparation for a potential second season. But, without true character development, the show still has no real center. Ten episodes in, and I still have no idea what the fuck Hung is really about.

Mad Men - "Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency" by Sean Witzke

Christ, someone get this kid some acting lessons. I've had it up to here with this Cindy Brady shit. Motherhood was all kinds of fucked up back then - which isn't to say that it's not all fucked up now, but it's a little less blatantly condescending to the kids. I do like that Betty's extent of caring about her kid is giving her half a speech and a Barbie. She's not a bad mother, but she clearly would rather have a nanny and says so. I don't blame her, I don't like Cindy Brady either.

The British bosses are coming to shore things up, people are pissed and scared shitless - everyone even has to give presentations on the day before July 4th. Roger Sterling and Don Draper get a shave together, by order of the their boss, because they aren't getting along. While there, Sterling tells a story about his Dad dying really offhand - moments of color like that that makes me wish this show would throw plots away altogether. Joan Holloway is leaving on the same day. Joan's brick of a husband is drunk, he just found out he's never going to make surgeon (he has "no brains in his fingers"). Joan sleeps on the couch like a cat, and still looks that way without her makeup. Turns out that great life she had lined up isn't going to work out, shock. The British show up, played by smarmy asshole #1, smarmy asshole #2, and the dad from The Nanny. They tell everyone that they're not getting promotions and they now have many more bosses. "One more promotion and we're gonna be answering phones", which is probably the only good line that Pete Campbell will get all season. Don Draper is teased with a possible cross-atlantic position ("Look at that, the suspense is killing him") but turns out that was just a tease. Jared Harris gets shipped off to Bombay, or I guess in real life Fringe? 

Poor bastard either way. 

The shithead new boss' smarmy foot gets all Steve-Buscemi-in-Fargo'd, which is nice I guess - there's a backstory to it but it involves Ken Cosgrove so I'll spare you the boredom. Fat Communist Bearded Guy gets a bloody dress shirt for the deal. Joan and Peggy have a final conversation, where they finally make a kind of amends - Joan roundaboutly tells Peggy she's proud of her. Conrad Hilton calls up Don Draper, which marks 35 minutes in where I actually start giving a shit about this episode, and that's after seeing Joan Holloway sleeping like a cat in her nightie. Don Draper tells Conrad Hilton he doesn't work for free, maybe the baddest shit that has happened this season. That's what you want from a show about the 60s, two unblinking hardasses talking about nothing in the most dynamic way possible. The inherent drama, the whole sociopolitical angle that the show is in large part about is completely pushed aside for plot-points this week and the show suffers. When we finally get Draper explaining to Hilton that he works one opportunity at a time, it's clear that this is the closest we'll get to Stringer Bell in s3 Wire or Hearst in s3 Deadwood. The way that Don talks IS his act of violence, IS the compelling television. I'd rather watch that kind of tv, one guy talking with enough power to destroy someone and the inherent threat that, yes, he can and will do so any time he wants. That's really scary, really fun. The integrated "advertising history" commercials in Mad Men are the advertising equivalent of having whatever product they are selling you in your face. This week it was Clorox. In the final scene we get Don Draper and Joan Holloway's only real scene together in the entire series - and the two of them sit there laughing about the poor jackass who just got crippled, and then she kisses him goodbye. For the final scene, turns out that Cindy Brady is terrified of reincarnation, and the episode is full of references to death ("I feel like I was just present at my own funeral and I didn't like the Eulogy" is Harris' final line ), and we see that naming a baby after a dead Grandpa probably needs to be explained to your dumb lisping kid. Don Draper responds by telling her that our destiny isn't written and we control it ourselves, and Betty responds by telling her . "That's okay, honey. Everything's fine." Both of them are wrong.

The Office - "Gossip"

Looks like it's going to be one of those "yikes that was uncomfortable" seasons. The last season of The Office was--was it good? It all runs together. It ended at a picnic where Stringer Bell was really mean to everybody, which was pretty much his modus the entire season. The dream of Stringer appearing on the Office was a good one, but it ended up being a string of episodes where he was just fucking mean, and while it's fun to watch Michael get his knees taken out from under him so consistently, Michael is never going to lash out with any real menace. It's all about feeling sorry for him, or laughing at his failure. Stringer's nowhere to be seen in "Gossip", which is another "Michael fucks things up, fails to fix them" episode. It was also a rare Stanley focused episode, which is only a treat until you remember that Stanley is somewhere around Phyllis in the "most interesting non-Michael character to focus on". But it is what it is: the Office, and it's back. It's still pretty funny.

House - "Broken"

There wasn't any real way that Broken couldn't disappoint--House has proven, time and again, that it will not reject formula no matter how stale, and that it can be a bad show even when Hugh Laurie is doing a great job. Still, it had to work extra hard--like, steal everything it could from Cuckoo's Nest hard--to dismantle guest appearances from Andre Bragher and "Artemis" from It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. (Apparently that women's real name is Artemis? Kind of impossible to find anything touching in that dance number, considering the sight of Artemis playing a bohemian dancehall number is the sort of thing that the Artemis character on Sunny In Philly does all the time for laughs. Sure, meta is the thing nowadays, but for fuck's sake, how meta can you get?)

That isn't to say that they weren't pleasures to be found in the bizarrely implausible situation House ended up in. (He fucked Lola! He's got a cool new haircut and some rad t-shirts!) But at the core of it all, it was a record scratch back to the 'quo, and it felt like hell watching the writers shit on part of the characters core appeal: which was that there being nothing wrong with being a selfish asshole when you're fundamentally open about being one. House can be crazy, sure. Go with that. Go with years of drug addiction wreaking their toll. But--apologies? C'mon. Make him sane, and make him sober, if needs must.

But there's already enough shows about wimpy doctors.

Sons of Anarchy - The First Three Episodes of the Second Season

So this is a show, huh? Kurt Sutter runs it, he wrote all the episodes of the Shield where horrible things happened to female characters, and he showed up as a guest star a couple of times. (He was the Armenian mobster with the foot fetish. Who cut off people's feet?) Anyway, Sons of Anarchy is...well, it's about bikers, it has some really bizarro casting choices, like Hellboy, Henry Rollins, Peg Bundy, the fat cop from Batman Begins who some people ARE SURE is an overweight Tom Waits, even though he's not, and at least one of the guys from Braveheart. Oh, and a guy from Deadwood. Man, nobody really watched Deadwood even by HBO's we're-committed-to-this-just-kidding standards besides casting directors, huh?

Sons of Anarchy is pretty gross and strange--it's got hardcore violence, a gang rape, butt shots during sex, and yet the main actor isn't very good at fake kissing? There's a parody of Mad Men, a porno movie called "Meek Men" where Don has a woman spank him with a high heel shoe, and the "big finish" is that she shoves the heel into his asshole--what kind of porn movie is that? Probably gonzo orgasm destroyer, but why hasn't anybody mentioned that before? Basically, Sons of Anarchy is something you watch when you're hungry. Not for the shoe, but for food, and it's too late to watch something that requires intelligence or class. Go figure. It's catchy?

Project Runway - "Fashion Headliners"

See, this is the kind of shit that Project Runway doesn't do enough of. Making clothing out of newspaper ain't as strong as the old car part challenge they had--the one where most of the designers cheated and used seatbelts--but it's certainly got more potential than yet another "make a cocktail dress or, you know, a dress, some kind of dress, use fabric" adventure.

The Eastern European woman from the American South didn't realize that "Time to change" was totally played out around the Democratic Primary, but that's what Tim is for. Subtly, softly, kindly, he tells you that you're a moron. She scraped by, but wow: not for long, huh? She seemed nice, but I've always got a soft spot for the "this is my last chance, my children are older than some of the people who I'm competing with" women. Never the men, though. 

Dear old men who still talk about dreams,

Why do I hate you so much?

Sincerely,

Bewildered In Poughkeepsie.

Some people on the show don't like Irina, but that "some" includes people like Nicolas, who is a real piece of work himself. A 90's version of punk rock? Why don't you eat piss and buy a Panic At The Disco album to soundtrack it, piss-eater? The designers do all agree that the real scum is Johnny, who was doing a crossword puzzle instead of working on his dress. His second dress? Because a steam machine exploded?

Although we still don't have a lot of personalities that aren't just "reality show abhorrent", Logan is a pretty attractive man who has a very wistful smile and pretty eyes. Don't know if that makes you a good designer. Does make you somebody worth keeping around as a contestant.

Johnny mentioned that he "don't really care what other designers think of me" which is just about the most untrue thing that Johnny could say. He clearly only gives a shit about what other people think of him. Anytime somebody says something like that, what they mean is I Hope Everybody Likes Me, Why Don't They, Oh God, Maybe They Will If I Relapse.

Both Michael Kors and Nina Garcia are unavailable, but Tommy Hilfiger--who is crazy, racist and about as fashionable as a used condom--is filling in. He's joined by Eva something something from Desperate Housewives, which is still referred to as a hit show, despite the severe paucity of breathing audience members it commands. They pull it together enough to send Johnny home, the show bursts to life for the 11 seconds where Tim Gunn treats him with disdain, contempt and then, for maybe the first time ever, talks shit about him behind dude's back, and then it's back to...whatever it usually is. Bitching? Or that's this, isn't it.

-Tucker Stone, Sean Witzke, Martin Brown, 2009

Come And See!

If you're in Maryland this weekend, it's probably because you're going to be at the Small Press Expo, which is at a hotel called the Marriott. (Or you live in Maryland?) If you're not too busy looking at comic books you'd like to buy, but not really, maybe someday, for free, when they're as good as Blackest Night: My Erect Penis, you should check out this panel that Tucker Stone will be moderating called "Humor In Comics". Not because Tucker's on it, but because Matt Furie (Boy's Club!) is on it. And Emily Flake (The New Yorker! Lulu Eightball!) is on it. And Lisa Hanawalt (I Want You! Stay Away From Other People!) is on it. And Sam Gaskin (Fatal Faux Pas! Sugar Cube! Call All My Dogs!) is on it.

One of those four is worth your time. All four at once?

That's like, four times worth your time.

*There's also a comics criticism panel with Jog (awesome!) Chris Mautner (holy shit!) Douglas Wolk (he wrote a real book!) Rob Clough (also a big deal!) Sean Collins (he likes Beyonce!) Gary Groth (wait, seriously? That guy doesn't even have a blog.) and Bill Kartaloupos (this is all his fault). Tucker is on that too, but only because none of those other dudes have the Fucking Courage to read Tyrese Gibson's Mayhem, and there's a rule about that kind of stuff.

The Virgin Read: That Part Where Ace Says "I Broke It" Was Pretty Wicked

Each week, Nina Stone picks out one random comic book based off her own made up criteria, reads it, and then writes about that experience. While she's been doing these columns for awhile, she's only successfully managed to remember and keep up with one series. This week, she picked Beasts of Burden # 1.

Beasts of Burden # 1
Written by Evan Dorkin
Art by Jill Thompson
Published by Dark Horse Comics

As you may be aware of, Monday nights are when this little column called the Virgin Read is generally published. And to be honest, Monday nights are, more often than not, when they are written. I've gotten better--I usually have the comic read before Monday, but sometimes? Sometimes it all happens in a that furious rush between work and dinner. Quickly reading, trying to crystalize my experience into words, wondering how to spell "crystalize", and so on.

After a long and lovely summer hiatus, my teaching schedule began again today. It was a great day, but I'm all kinds of wacky-tired, and on my way home thought to myself, "Oh Shit. I have to read my comic and review it tonight. And somehow, I have to do that before House starts, because I'll be damned if I'm missing the crazy season premiere."

Is that enough personal stuff? Do you like the wizard that I keep behind the curtain? 

Okay, Beasts of Burden. First things first: how lovely that in my tiredness I didn't find myself stuck choking down some nonsense about post-apocalyptic-zombie-superheroes. (I mean no offense if that's your thing, it's just not mine. I probably should, at some point, read one of those. I almost did. There was a zombie super-hero comic where Iron Man was surfing on an eagle, and that caught my eye. But then I looked inside and wanted to go to bed for the rest of the day. I assume I'll be given more chances? There will be more of those, yes?) This though, this Beasts of Burden comic book? I didn't have to worry about any of that. I had 20-something delightful pages of doggies and kitty cats! On principle alone, this comic is ALL right with me. In practice, I found even more reasons to like it. 

See, I can deal with frogs falling from the sky and forming into one giant demon frog if from the get-go we're dealing with talking dogs. I didn't know that was a rule that I had in my brain, but....it is, I guess. If you want frogs falling from the sky/giant evil frog, then this particular reader needs you to open with talking dogs. Know what I'm saying? Because if you do, explain it to me--I still can't fully understand why that was my initial reaction to the frogs, but it was. I saw the frogs and said "you've earned it, comic book."

I love each and every characterization of each and every animal, be it dog, cat or frog. There's a perfect mix of the human and the animal drawn in their facial expressions and body language. I'm a sucker for this stuff--the way these animals look on the page matches up exactly with how my head believes they would act. The dialog, their appearance--it's basically, and I don't mean this lightly, perfect. All of them make sense. In all of my acting experience and for all the times that a girl wants to have more lines, my favorite role was as the elephant, Big Mary, in the play of the same name by Mark Medoff. I had zero lines. I was on stage the whole time, had to have a complete emotional life and simply express it via body and face. So cool.  

There's something about using animals and great art depiction in a story--it's just a fantastic way to get kids interested, too. It's easy to follow the pictures and it made me want to read the words. Everything about this comic is inviting. When I was at the store to pick my comic this week, it was one of the easiest times I'd ever had. It felt like I'd found something made just for me. (Which made it that much nicer to see that there were so many copies of it, because that obviously means that it isn't made just for me. People want this type of story--I'm not going to feign an understanding of the business, or place a stake in it, but I hear enough about it to know that something like this even existing, being available--that's pretty special.)

But although it's good for kids, it's not just for kids. By the end I felt like I was reading Harry Potter meets Buffy The Vampire Slayer all in animal form, except that I liked it more than Buffy. A gang of neighborhood animals who are now Junior Apprentice Watchdogs (and a Watchcat), who use cooperation and "dogged" determination to destroy a giant frog demon. I mean, can it get any better than that? 

If you're not big on cute comics, this is not for you. Because, dude, this is CUTE. But if you're wanting something that's just completely different, something that just feels and looks special, but is actually good enough that none of that "specialness" really matters, then you gotta check this one out. I really liked it.

-Nina Stone, 2009

The first ten pages of Beasts of Burden # 1 are available at the Dark Horse website.

Comics Of The Weak: Why Was Tupac So Mean To Larry Holmes Was It Because He Hated Him

Archie # 601
Written by Michael Uslan
Art by Stan Goldberg, Bob Smith--really? & Glenn Whitmore
Published by Archie

Archie doesn't have an age recommendation on it. It should. The age recommendation would be a limit, and that limit would be determined by this question: Do you know how babies are made? Because if you know that babies are made with things called "dicks and vaginas", you really shouldn't read this thing. Not because it shows the actual coitus--it doesn't, it's one of those panels with hearts exploding out of a closed door--but because Veronica is pregnant by the end of the comic, and that means that Archie--somehow, someway--ejaculated his semen into Veronica's body. That's something that happened in between the panels. Somewhere between pages 20 and 23, Archie's penis got hard, Archie put his penis inside Veronica, his little weird face contorted into a death mask as he pumped his pelvic regions toward the part of her body where the legs meet, and then he came inside her. And those actions got her pregnant.

That's really fucking gross. If you don't know how babies are made, you don't think about that kind of stuff when you're reading Archie 601. But if you do? You can't not think about it.

Pluto # 5

By Naoki Urasawa

Published by Viz

The thing about going dark is that you run out of ways to get darker, everybody knows that. They got some show on FX about gun-running bikers, so you know what they had to do to come up with villains? They had a bunch of Neo-Nazi types gang rape some guys mom. That's where you'll end up when you go dark--gang rape in a warehouse, with the guy who used to sing "TV Party" leading the charge. The other thing that happens is that going a completely other direction ends up being courageous, because it's so opposite what people's dollars seem to imply them wanting. And that's how we end up with Naoki Urasawa fighting with Amanda Conner for the title of "ballsiest", which is the real fight that 2009 has been all about. Amanda's spent the better part of the last three months doing a Supergirl comic that's working to redefine the medically allowable amount of cute, and Viz has responded. Here, they say. Pluto 5. Look upon this kitten. Read its meows. Ask yourself: can you handle this, you masturbating blood soaked comics reader? Can you handle the adorable? Because if you can't--well, shit. There's a whole world out there, and they'll find this kitten soon enough. And kittens? Kittens get people fucking laid. At the end of the day, that's where the next generation comes from anyway: people who do it. And when the biological clock starts buzzing, nobody chooses the dude who giggles at gang rape. Not if there's a suave cat into kittens 'round the corner.

Amazing Spider-Man # 605

Written by Fred Van Lente & Brian Reed

Art by Mike Mayhew, Yanick Paquette, Javier Pulido, Luke Ross & Mark Farmer

Published by Marvel Comics

If there's a worse Amazing Spider-Man cover this year, it'll only be because they're currently printing about seven hundred Amazing Spider-Man comics a month, counting all the fucking variant covers and second printing covers. But it's still gonna be a tough fucking battle, because this is some of the ugliest shit they've smacked on a cover in awhile, and barely any of 2009's Spider-Man comics have had nice covers. You gotta give them some kind of respect for the fact that it's a pretty accurate cover, in that the comic underneath it is 100% fluff, just page after page of the sort of soap opera shit that makes one grasp how difficult it must be to actually write a soap opera, because the twists and contortions of this nonsense are enough to make that cage fight season of the O.C. approach Shakespearean depth in comparison. There's a break for Spider-Man to fight some robot suit people who crowd him the same way all the ladies do, but they eventually decide he's a pretty proper dude. So maybe the message is some kind of bros before hoes, Parker just needs more bros, something like that? Yeah, maybe. Or maybe Parker just needs to get himself into a comic where the writers don't set all the women at the level of "shrill martyr".

Brave and the Bold # 27

Written by J. Michael Straczynksi

Art by Jesus Saiz & Trish Mulvihill

Published by DC Comics

It must be a real pain in the ass to go from working on something like 100 Bullets to this, to have to respond to the question "hey, what are you working on these days" and have the response be "a fucking Brave and the Bold issue where Batman gives his rough approximation of the scene from Saving Private Ryan where Tom Hanks croaks 'Earn this' while Matt Damon nodded his head". If only this could've been a little bit longer, and they could've included the Straczynski version of the scene where the old man stands in the cemetery going I tried so Hard I did I made babies and paid Taxes I hope that's what you wanted Guy Who Died omigolly Human Life is so precious and america and stuff now i gotta get back to a comic book blog's comment section to argue about health insurance and patriotism holy shit im so fucking valuable look how i use my time

Vengeance of Moon Knight # 1

Written by Gregg Hurwitz

Art by Jerome Opena & Dan Brown

Published by Marvel Comics

What does Moon Knight need vengeance for, exactly? He chooses to dress the way he does, he says things like "I wanna be on Broadway" without anybody putting a gun to his head...all his problems are his own fault, y'know? Does he want vengeance on the general comic book reading audience, who haven't showed up for his adventures in the amount necessary to continue publication of such adventures? He's got a butler, he's rich, he's crazy--what the fuck does he want out of people? For them to forget about Batman, the character who does all the same things Moon Knight does, albeit with less overall shittiness? If anybody deserves vengeance, it's Jerome Opena, because he really should be given better comic characters to illustrate. 

R.E.B.E.L.S. # 8

Written by Tony Bedard

Art by Andy Clarke & Jose Villarrubia

Published by DC Comics

Is there a rulebook somewhere that says that all spaceship stories have to involve some moment where a group of people do something to their ship or themselves that convinces a giant computer (or hive brain) that they are part of the alien overlords? You know, so that they can sneak onto the planet/mother ship and get down to the business of--whatever, fighting alongside muppets to blow up towers, shit like that. "Giving it a virus", like they did in the Jeff Goldblum movie. They should get some amendments to that rulebook, because anything that shows up in Jeff Goldblum movies--The Fly doesn't count, that's a Cronenberg movie--should never get re-used unless Goldblum's involved. Same reason Bret Easton Ellis shouldn't get to write anymore, because Goldblum in Igby Goes Down--that was the kind of Goldblum performance that rendered all future Ellis books moot. And Igby Goes Down wasn't even an Ellis book in the first place! That's the kind of power Goldblum's got. His mark never fades.

Daredevil The List # 1

Written by Andy Diggle

Art by Billy Tan

Published by Marvel Comics

Whereas the last two guys to handle Daredevil started off their run on the character by doing something "unusual" for the character, Andy Diggle's run gets the unhappy blight of having to do the one fucking thing that no comics writer should ever have to do with the character: a Bullseye versus Daredevil throwdown where Bullseye points out that not killing him is tantamount to helping him kill others. It's like giving Batman to somebody and then saying "oh, you gotta do Year One real quick, don't worry, nobody remembers that Miller/Mazzucchelli thing". But that's the hand Diggle got dealt, and he got "tie it into the current status quo" as well, which was the one thing that the Daredevil title hasn't had to do for what, like 200 issues? What's the last tie in thing they did in this comic? Fucking Secret Wars? Hell, they had Daredevil show up in Civil War and the regular comic chugged along just like normal. 

Was nice of Billy to do such a crappy job on art though. It's almost like he's trying to deflect attention from his brother or something.

Batman & Robin # 4

Written by Grant Morrison

Art by Philip Tan & Jonathan Glapion

Published by DC Comics

In the last issue, Damian was arguing that it would be more accurate to refer to the comic in which he appears as "Robin & Batman", and considering how ineffectual Batman is in this issue (especially cast against the much more effective, and funnier, Robin) there's some value to that little aside. That's good, that the little things have value, since that turns out to be the only thing memorable about this comic--the little things, like when Grant Morrison does his version of the Geoff Johns Read More Comics Reference by calling out to Frank Miller's All Star Batman. (Hey! Thanks for buying stuff! Let me get you more!) Otherwise, you're just trapped inside a comic where buckets of dark ink have been poured across the page, a dead, black world where Commissioner Gordon sucks his lower jaw inside his mustache and Alfred walks around with the back of his head nailed to something so far off panel that he looks like he's going to ask Eddie if he's okay. It's bad art, sure: that was expected. But it does a neat trick, something that Quitely either obscured or didn't have to deal with in the first three issues: this is another mechanical story about why Batman matters--he doesn't--and it's devoid of joy, lacking in ambition. It's weak, and it's old. Considering where Morrison started--with a hairy chested playboy who fell out of a sky of comic panels so that he could dance with manbat ninjas--that's a pretty sad left turn. Like him or not, the most valuable thing about Morrison's stuff has always been that he wrote comics that nobody else could. Like Ennis, Moore or Miller, you could pick Grant's work out of a blindfolded line-up--good or bad, they were different, they were personal, they were his. Batman and Robin # 4? This?

This could've been written by Bruce Jones.

-Tucker Stone, 2009

Music of the Weak: The 100 Greatest Songs of the Millennium (So Far) - #40-31

PREVIOUSLY: #200-101 – The newbies and also-rans.

#100-91 - Introductions, yacht rock, epic narratives, Elvis tributes, and one-man Canadian supergroups.

#90-81 – Jazz revisionism, shady fact-checking, Muppetized gangsta rap, and the no pussy blues.

#80-71 – A ragtag assembly of pop stars and other hate-able entities

#70-61 – More pop music, Australian pop, bedroom pop, Kanye West, and the decade’s greatest use of drum machines

#60-51 – Sex, suicide, misogyny, and a brief appearance by Amy Winehouse

#50-41 – 8 songs that deserve your attention, 2 songs that probably already have it

40. UGK – “Int’l Players Anthem (I Choose You) (Feat. OutKast)” (2007)

On its own, the sweet spot in Willie Hutch’s “I Choose You”—in which a woozy trumpet bisects a tangle of male and female voices—could elevate any song savvy enough to sample it. Not content to take the easy route, producers DJ Paul and Juicy J of Three 6 Mafia spend the length of “Int’l Players Anthem” amplifying the strength of the sample, mining it for every ounce of mystery it contains. Subtle rhythmic and instrumental changes carry the song from one verse to the next. Andre 3000’s kicks it off with a hall-of-fame cavalcade of free associative puns, but his raps are secondary to the way he weaves in and out of Hutch’s vocals, augmenting both Willie’s lines and his own. From the very first “So…”, he lines up his words with Hutch’s extended notes, creating something as close to harmony as you can get without singing. The drums drop in alongside Pimp C’s battering ram of a second verse; Bun B follows with similar rigor. When Big Boi drops in to bat clean-up, his usual hard-hitting cadence sounds downright nimble. With so many voices—the masterful performances by UGK and OutKast, Hutch’s soaring hook, and the female choir behind it—“Int’l Players Anthem” could have easily turned out to be a cacophonous mess. Instead, it’s that rare posse track where a multitude of voices are each distinctly heard all at once.

39. Rjd2 – “Smoke & Mirrors” (2002)

2002 saw the release of Rjd2’s Deadringer, Moby’s 18, and DJ Shadow’s follow-up to the monumental Endtroducing…, The Private Press. On their respective albums, Moby and DJ Shadow each got caught chasing his own tail. 18 put forth a diluted version of the gospel-plus-keyboard-preset sound that netted Moby so much notoriety with 1999’s Play. The Private Press found DJ Shadow scrambling after the distinctive instrumental hip-hop sound he’d invented on his debut. Rjd2, on the other hand, spent most of Deadringer trying to out-DJ Shadow DJ Shadow—and, for the most part, succeeding. With “Smoke & Mirrors,” he steals Moby’s vocal sample M.O., appropriating Marion Black’s bluesy “Who Knows” for the song’s first half, and the languid introduction to Chris Williamson’s “Waterfall” for the second. He affixes each to a loping rhythm, bookends them with moody instrumentals, and adds flourishes like mariachi guitar or a beat that sounds as if the drummer is struggling to keep up. All of this builds “Smoke & Mirrors” into a haunting elegy, beating each of his two predecessors at his own game.

38. Ted Leo/Pharmacists – “Timorous Me” (2001)

It’s no accident that Ted Leo and the Pharmacists structure “Timorous Me” in the style of a Thin Lizzy song. Phil Lynott’s greatest trick was conjuring nostalgia for the present moment. In “The Boys are Back in Town,” when the boys usher in the end of spring by rolling into Dino’s Bar and Grill to drink, fight, and hear their favorite song on the jukebox, it feels like a moment etched out in history—though, in truth, it’s a relatively mundane homecoming by Sons of Anarchy standards. On “Timorous Me,” Ted Leo evokes Thin Lizzy’s nostalgia in order to observe how it affects his present relationship. Leo presents a series of vignettes. The first recalls Jonathan, a childhood friend who he spends some of his adult time remembering, even though he’s not sure why. In the second, he describes the song’s muse, Timory, a fan who made a deep impression by merely singing along from the crowd of one of his shows, wearing his T-shirt, and shaking his hand after he got off stage. The last verse reveals that Leo’s reminiscing about Timory and Jonathan while driving with Jodi, in silence, wondering what’s on each other’s mind. Leo’s fondness for his memories of Timory and Jonathan leaves Jodi “dwelling in the quiet space left behind.” Amongst the dueling guitar solos, hand claps, and Celtic instrumental breaks that lift toward Thin Lizzy-like wistfulness, that nostalgia for the mundane present proves heartbreaking.

37. Lyrics Born – “Bad Dreams” (2003)

When I can’t sleep—say I’m stressed, or have a mild fever, or both—many times I’ll have a single song playing on a loop in my head. Something that would be pleasant in real life, like, say, The Beatles’ “What Goes On,” turns into a nightmarish drone, blurring the line between my resting and waking, making me unsure I’m doing either. Lyrics Born can’t sleep either. “Bad Dreams,” his song chronicling (another) long night fighting for just a couple of hours of slumber, replicates the feeling of sleeplessness by patching together a handful of otherwise pleasant sounds. Clipped female voices chirp oohs and aahhs. A funk organ punctuates each of his thoughts, never quite coalescing into a full-bodied rhythm. Lyrics Born raps with studied deliberateness, frequently breaking into monotone singing. He tosses and turns, worrying about a laundry list of troubles, none of which, refreshingly, have to do with his rap career: “Got burnt by women/ Partners in business/ Landlords and tenants/ Got served by creditors.” By the time the song hits its turntable scratches and obscured laughing, it has already achieved a hypnotic state. Finally, as the beat slows to a crawl and morphs into an alarm, you feel as if you’ve trudged through a sleepless night yourself—except, this one would be worth repeating.

36. Felix da Housecat – “What She Wants” (2004) 

In the early years of the decade, Felix Da Housecat established himself as one of the pioneers of electroclash—which had all the novelty of establishing yourself as one of the pioneers behind the pet rock. This was a genre doomed to a brief shelf-life from the outset, as its major artists tended to pile gimmick upon gimmick in order to generate an audience that may or may not have been manufactured in the lab by Urb Magazine. Felix da Housecats’ own compositions were formal, if fun, pieces of rigid automation. They echoed Kraftwerk and early Detroit techno, with frigid chanteuses taking the place of the robot voices. Across his breakthrough album, Kittenz and Thee Glitz, he inherited some of his influences’ self-awareness, but even his winking carried the weight of electroclash’s pretense. The thought of Felix da Housecat ever producing something elastically funky could not have been further from his work in the early 00’s, which makes “What She Wants” as much of a revelation as it is a musical beast. The rhythm section sounds as if someone just threw a bass guitar into an inflatable bouncing room, and guest singer James Murphy contributes something to the introduction that I can only describe as throat-scatting. “What She Wants” showcases one of Murphy’s best-ever vocals. He’s free of the self-consciousness that usually defines his work, and it inspires him to contribute a loose, playful performance to a song that had no shortage of fun to begin with.

35. My Morning Jacket – “Wordless Chorus” (2005) 

“Wordless Chorus” is the perfect example of a song that makes good on exactly what it promises. My Morning Jacket strip mine Blood, Sweat & Tears’ white boy funk into a couple of keyboard pulses for the opening of their 2005 album. The band had already built a substantial career by sound-tracking sunsets with freewheeling guitar wank and operatic folk torchsongs long before they released the watershed Z. Within seconds, the Kentucky natives reintroduced themselves as a different kind of force—one that improved upon the Neil Young-indebted successes of their earlier work, forging ahead with a new version of Americana as supple and sexy as it was rustic. On the verses, Jim James tosses aside beef-provoking rhetoric such as “We are the innovators/ They are the imitators” like it’s fortune cookie wisdom, driving toward the part of the song that earned the marquee placement in its title. When James nails his wordless chorus falsetto, it’s the type of payoff that most bands work toward their entire careers. As if it were flowing from the mouth of a river, James pushes his voice to such otherworldly extremes that he can only top it with the countertenor equivalent of a guitar solo, buttoned with a quick Elton John flourish at the end.

34. Madeleine Peyroux – “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” (2004)

Bob Dylan spent the better part of the 00’s attempting to connect the dots between his own songwriting and the blues and country music that presaged rock & roll. To that effect, he’s spent his last trio of albums penning anachronistic tunes, playing the riverboat gambler, and rocking a funny little mustache. In one gorgeous swoop, Madeleine Peyroux’s cover of Dylan’s “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go,” from 1975’s Blood on the Tracks, places Dylan in a completely different lineage—directly descending from George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Irving Berlin. Peyroux strips Dylan’s already simple harmonica and acoustic guitar arrangement down to its barest essentials. An upright bass repeats a single note. Skittering snare drums whisper under a delicate piano. Small bursts of guitar punctuate the lines with short phrases. But the real coup is the way she exposes the hope behind Dylan’s portrait of lovers drifting apart—turning the end of the relationship into an enchanting, even desired, thing. She turns “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go” into Dylan’s version of “They Can’t Take That Away From Me” by recognizing that—as someone who describes impending loss by invoking Verlaine, rhyming “Ashtabula” with “Honolu-lah,” and describing Disney-esque “crickets chirping back and forth in rhyme—he must have been having at least a little bit of fun.

33. The Hold Steady – “Banging Camp” (2005)

One of the most literate lyricists in rock, Craig Finn rattles off line after line of well-crafted, quotable prose. On “Banging Camp,” he twists an old aphorism into “I grew up in denial and went to school in Massechussettes,” finds the internal rhyme between “camp” and “bank,” and, in a three-part build that would give Shakespeare shivers, describes his protagonist, Holly, as half-naked, three-quarters wasted, and completely alone. The band backs Finn with music that’s somehow both unassuming and arena-ready; it rides on a danceable punk riff that makes room for a buried horn section, frantic background harmonies, and a Boss-worthy drum breakdown. Finn and the band work in perfect synchronicity. When Holly takes a hit of nitrous oxide, and Finn promises her, “when you wake up again, you’ll be high as hell and born again,” the band pauses for a moment, to imitate her blackout. In the recesses of The Hold Steady’s rich catalogue, “Banging Camp” doesn’t call a whole lot of attention to itself. It may not have the name games of “Knuckles,” or the majestic sweep of “Stevie Nix,” or the story arc of “Chips Ahoy!,” but it doesn’t need any of that. With every detail attended to by Finn and the band, “Banging Camp” is the consummate Hold Steady song.

32. Christian Falk – “Dream On (Feat. Ola Salo & Robyn)” (2006)

Without its lyrics, Christian Falk’s “Dream On” would still have been a fantastic track of rave-spiration, with the drum-circle grinding away at some ever-ellusive epiphany as its electronic squiggles fly closer and closer to the stratosphere. Robyn threatens to tip the saccharine quotient, but never quite does; it’s Pixie Stix for dinner, but after you’ve had a late, healthy lunch. Once, you factor in the words, though, “Dream On” becomes a different thing altogether. The basic structure shouts-out a potential dedicatee (hustlers, low-lifes, snitches) and allays his or her worst fears (“you won’t be backstabbed, double-crossed, facedown, teeth knocked out lying in a gutter somewhere”). Maybe it’s a face-value exercise in empathy. Maybe it’s a satire of the gooey-good feeling generated by ecstasy, at least half a decade after it was fashionable. Maybe it’s a marketing ploy aimed at the underutilized Swedish, pop-loving vagrant population. Whatever its motivations, “Dream On” is ephemeral and hilarious precisely because it hones in on the language and fictional population of outsider art, and blows it open with uplifting melody. Pigs and fucked up interns now have their own rallying cry. Plus, you can dance to it.

31.  Sufjan Stevens - "Chicago" (2005)

In the twenty-some-odd-year run-up to Sufjan Stevens’ Come On Feel the Illinoise!, indie rock acted like it was absolutely terrified of giving its songs any sort of emotional arc. Any one line from “Chicago,” that album’s best and most fully realized song, could inspire a whole new Joseph Campbell book. Stevens’ songs are at their best when he puts some serious muscle behind them. With “Chicago,” he throws down the gauntlet immediately. The arrangement sounds like Steve Reich’s 18 musicians playing the opening to “Baba O’Reilly,” and he begins the song by singing, “I fell in love again.” Then the friggin’ choir sings. It’s as if Stevens is trying to make up for decades of indie rock boredom and anger by going way over-the-top with delicacy—which seems like it should be a contradiction in terms if “Chicago” didn’t prove that it wasn’t. What’s more, he pulls it off. Sure, there are uncomfortable moments of Stevens accompanying himself on the xylophone, or claiming, “If I was crying/ It was for freedom/ From myself/ And from the land.” Nobody really believes that the dude is sitting in the back of a van, crying about freedom. But when he sings, “I made a lot of mistakes” immediately after, it rings with some of the deepest truth of any song this decade, like the line was birthed from the same ether that created Shakespeare’s genius, or John Donne’s. He couldn’t have arrived there by mumbling, only by swinging for the fences.

-Martin Brown, 2009