Ultimate Comics Avengers # 3
Written by Mark Millar
Art by Carlos Pachecho & Justin Ponsor
Published by Marvel Comics
It opens in Afghanistan, where a band of machine gun toting warlords prepare the two surviving American officers they've captured for some kind of kidnap/ransom scenario. A gigantic Man of Steel arrives and exterminates the Afghanis, including the woman. As he does so, one of the kidnap victims loudly questions his sanity, referring to the Afghanis as unarmed civilians.This isn't a comic that needs credits. You already know who wrote it. Never mind that plenty of the Afghanis are openly bearing weapons, never mind that they take credit for killing American soldiers within earshot of the survivors--Millar still toes some imaginary "what's acceptable" line, pretending that what War Machine does--dirty widescreen slaughter--is somehow different than what the actual R.O.E. provides or demands. The Ultimate America doesn't drop bombs, they drop men, that's not new. What is new is this driveling self-censorship, this whiny "sorry about that, he's obviously going too far" attitude. No. War Machine isn't. He's doing what a plane does, he's doing the job of a bomb. It's made even more blatant in the next pages, this meek childishness--there, the Red Wasp is used to depict the exact sort of violence that went censored by DC in the Authority, with the character entering Hilary Clinton's would be assassin by way of his eyesocket so that she can exit the back of his skull. Millar can get away with it now, see? That which he couldn't get away with before! And yet, he doesn't have the stones to call it what it is, to admit to the editorial message that his love for explosions bring.
Politics aside, what remains true, as much as he's derided for it, is this: Mark Millar brings action to comics. Like some kind of in-print Michael Bay--note that Jim Rhodes quite literally transforms into War Machine before attacking Captain America--there's few that are so willing to exploit the talents of their partners for the boom and crunch they can provide. And while Pachecho lacks Romita's weighty fists of meat or McNiven's OCDetail gore, it's obvious how wasted he was at DC. Crunching cars, distending meat, he draws an American super-hero comic that pulls back into the action-action race the past years have seen them secede from. It's stupid at times, sure. But for every "fuck you, brain" the plot delivers, there's also a sarcastic riff on a Warren Ellis asshole--now that Planetary is over, Millar has stolen Elijah's clothes and gave them to Tony Stark's brother--and a brief touch of openly political criticism, with the story's (American) corporate fiends brainwashing a former terrorist, making her "ours" with antidepressants and technology. (How do you beat extremist religious types in 3rd World countries? You either use a War Machine, or you give them American computers and a dose of America's pharmaceuticals.) As much as it might hurt to see, here it is, says Millar, beating at its heart, there, pumping at its core.
Fantastic Four # 572
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Dale Eaglesham & Paul Mounts
Published by Marvel Comics
Bad Shiny Norman Rockwell! Bad! Why you wanna make Reed look so beefy and weird, Photoshopped Norman Rockwell? Why you have to make Reed's dad go so far as to close his eyes when spitting out the moral? Is he Stevie Wonder? No, he's not Stevie Wonder. Stevie Wonder closes his eyes and leans back like that because he's feeling the beautiful music he's making! Nobody closes their eyes and leans back when they're telling their kid banal neo-Christian life lessons! Stop your lying, Glossy Norman Rockwell! Don't make Sue crunch down on the floor in supplication to her absent husband! It makes it seem like she was full of shit when she said she understood why her husband would rather hang out in Chalkboard Room instead of sleep in bed with her body! Don't make Sue all full of shit, Too Many Computers Norman Rockwell!
X-Force # 20
Written by Craig Kyle & Christopher Yost
Art by Mike Choi & Sonia Oback
Published by Marvel Comics
This issue of X-Force focuses on some women who all sort of look the same, but one of the women is a total killing machine, and that's fine, because boobsocked girls killing people with claws covers a good bit of the reason comics-stay-in-business, all that bullshit about "my mother's keeper" jagoff comics notwithstanding. (How many people waiting on Stitches # 2? Don't all stand up at once!) At the end, there's this mind-blowing part where the building blows up--they use one of those "blur" effects on a static image to achieve this--and then the blade-girl-killing machine screams about how she "doesn't know what to do", and it reads the way it would if the line was delivered by a Ben Stein voice-over, and then the other lady, who has these really magnificent eyebrows leans over and gives her the old pat-on-the-back. And then there's a whole page with the Postal Service Statement of Ownership--that legal thing where they tell you the average number of copies published. (It's 57,679, which means that you're about 1000 times more likely to have a conversation with a stranger about Sneeze Fetish Clips than "what happened in X-Force"--which is a pretty popular comic.)Comic is done, right? Explosion, death, tits, emotional climax of sorts, back-pat, legal indicia and advertisment for another comic (Ms. Marvel, also a tits chick who fights shit). Hell, they wouldn't put a big black box around the "it's okay, it's okay" moment and then advertise other shit if it wasn't the end of the comic, would they?
Ha, that's where you're wrong, sucka! You're a sucker, sucker! There's a whole two more pages, and only one of them is a prologue to another comic that was also released the same day as this one! Hell, the first of those two pages occurs immediately after the big black box emotional climax page! Now, maybe it was supposed to be a false climax--somebody might tell you that, hell, somebody might even try to claim that there's enough people stealing comics off Rapidshare to make X-Force more popular than hand-cumming videos of woman sneezing--but if it is a false climax, it's a really poorly telegraphed one, and nobody wins prizes for trying when you don't cost a nickel and come with advertisments for cigarettes anymore. Nope, it's just good old Marvel Comics shitting all over the people that work for them, and hey! Those cats are already doing a fucking bang up job shitting on themselves, since, you know, they're choosing to make the X-Force comic book.
Justice Society of America # 32
Written by Bill Willingham & Matthew Sturges
Art by Jesus Merino & Allen Passalaqua
Published by DC Comics
That's the long head shot collection used to introduce the sixteen characters that make up the Justice Society. It's near the beginning of the comic. Underneath their names, the reader finds out how much the bounty is on each of their lives. It's basically a nerd debate bomb, the sort of thing that will probably cause a frenzy of arguments, because some of the characters are worth more than other characters (Green Lantern > Power Girl, financially), which is sort of like DC issuing a press release that says "Wildcat is a better fighter than Dick Grayson" or "Batman is smarter than all of DC's female characters" or "Your mother is incapable of being a better lay than Ma Kent". That's about it, really, but that argument fodder is the only thing the Justice Society can offer anyway. That's what happens when you decide to model a comic book on role-playing game supplements.
Secret Warriors # 9
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Alessandro Vitti & Sunny Gho
Published by Marvel Comics
Secret Warriors is another one of Hickman's, like Fantastic Four, it's hampered by an artist that doesn't really have a strong enough style to take the carnage as far as would be preferable. Like every other comic book nowadays, it's a short portion of time expanded to fill an issue, which means it'll take all of five minutes to read. It's mostly set in the same sort of areas that run-and-gun video games are set in, the classic warehouse-type places with uniform colors. It has a big fight scene that doesn't play as much like Where's Waldo as it could. It's fine. At the end, it tells you to read more about the story by reading a comic that came out a few weeks ago. Go figure out life, is what that means.
Detective Comics # 858
Written by Greg Rucka
Art by J.H. Williams III
Published by DC Comics
It really is a testament to sumthin' sumthin' that old Detective Comics reads and looks as fine as it does. Doing another difficult past, horrible shakes, origin? For a Bat-character? Hell, when is the last time anybody thought about the fucking Obeah Man anyway? Joe Chill? Who even cares about origins, anyway? Old Frankie Frank knew that the real mix was always going to be the graven image of the bloody crucible, and Morry's Morrison did him one better with the old eight-word All Star shuffle. Here, it's Rucka, so it's another old drawing room mystery play, time again for another board settling mix-em-up. Mom, this time. Bullet to the face, and DC got hooded kidnaps added to the continuity. Still, it sure is farking pretty as hell, and it sure is impressive how much it looks-like, saints alive and all that. Wanna meet Batwoman though? See you next year, when she joins the Outsiders. (Don't even pretend it won't happen.)
Batman #692
Written by Tony Daniel
Art by Tony Daniel & Sandu Florea
Published by DC Comics
You know what never gets old? Nazis and concentration camps. That shit never gets old. Never. Everybody sees that, they just go "oh shit, party time" and then the pants hit the floor. Someday, probably pretty soon, there's going to be a writer or a celebrity or the first cloned cyberchimp that can talk, and they're going to cause a nice big controversy by saying that the sum total of awesome art and entertainment that's been culled from concentration camps and Nazis now outweighs the lives of the people that they exterminated. And Jerry Lewis is going to pop his head up, and he's going to spit those disabled kids he holds in his giant mouth out, and he's going to say "told you so, you cocksuckers!"
New Avengers # 58
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Stuart Immonen, Wade von Grawbadger & Dave McCaig
Published by Marvel Comics
You know who keeps talking in full sentences, attempting wordy one-upsmanships after punching somebody hard enough they've been sent completely out of earshot? People who make up their scripts by talking to themselves out loud in the shower. People who get out of the shower and stare at their nude, wet flesh in the mirror, and repeat whatever dopefuckingshit they said while they were gliding a soap slimed hand alongside their brown star. Then, when they sit up in bed at 4am and realize that kind of shitty filler doesn't make a lot of sense, even by the "it doesn't make any difference if these make any sense" comic book standard, they just lay back down, figuring Stuart Immonen can just draw a funny panel where Captain America bounces like a pinball. And he totally can.
Blackest Night & Green Lantern # 47
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Ivan Reis & Doug Mahnke
Published by DC Comics
Here's the line, and it's a fucker. "The Justice League is made of outsiders. The only one of us who didn't worry about fitting in was Hal. He let the rest of the world fit in around him."
Do you see it? It's right there.
What is that, if not a marriage proposal?
Look, one more time. You're not special, you're not unique. Reading comic books produces obsessives, sure, and the worst of them may be, and sometimes are, far more obnoxious than a guy who knows the ERA of every single Chicago Cubs pitcher since blacks got the vote, but the extremes don't make the industry. The surrounding world doesn't care about any of this shit. No actual amount of people thinks "comics are for nerds", and that's why no actual amount of people thinks "comics are now cool." It's tempting to give some kind of credit to Geoff Johns for his grotesquely obvious worship of his readers, even when it's apparent that said worship is actually directed inwards, at Johns himself, how impressed he is with himself and what he remembers. It's tempting to give the credit, except that none of his supporters will admit that this--not his art partners, not his contemporary action plotting--is the strongest ingredient of his success. He's incapable of writing something that isn't squealing with joy towards the attention of those that purchases his product, the equivalent of a piece of fiction that operates like that old spaceship program that let you fire guns at the screen to help your heroes. Over and over again, his characters enact the same exact central drama--they are the different ones, and they are special, and they speak in a code that can only be learned by the exchange of massive chunks of time. Did spending too much money and time on comics cut you off from life? Johns understands, and he's got your reward--something that only you could truly comprehend every aspect of, that only you can fully decode, and, if you're diligent enough, sometimes, maybe for a second, he'll turn the visage of your surrogate friends towards you, and, with a "your name here", he'll give you a tug. When it's just jacking off into a long box, when it's just a fucking orgy in the halls of memory, then sure, go ahead and call it fun. It can't be ignored that, for quite a few, it is. But when it's like this--when it not only acknowledges the self-involved fantasy of persecution that barely any comics reader can point to as being anything but self-imposed, and then trumpets that lie as its pulsating member--it's probably the most obnoxious thing the field can produce.
And no, this shit still isn't scary.
-Tucker Stone, 2009
"Hal let the rest of the world fit in around him."- Geoff Johns
"The human rectum is nightmarishly elastic."- Patton Oswalt
Posted by: seth hurley | 2009.11.02 at 00:44
My heart is giving you a standing ovation for that Green Lantern review.
Posted by: Chris Jones | 2009.11.02 at 01:52
'You either use a War Machine, or you give them American computers and a dose of America's pharmaceuticals.'
right idea but in real life it's viagra, not anti depressants...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/13/afghanistan-war-on-terror-viagra
Posted by: Tam | 2009.11.02 at 04:59
That review is why I like Millar's books so much - yes, they're stupid, but they're loud and they're full of things blowing up and they're kinda silly. They're fun for me.
Posted by: Kenny Cather | 2009.11.02 at 06:49
OK, read the rest. Your Johns review is dead on. I tried reading the Sinestro Corps War a few months ago and the first issue in the collection was both full of hero worship I wasn't buying and I couldn't understand it. Who were these jerks and why did they only talk about how much they wanted to blow each other?
I had no idea sneeze fetish existed and I don't think I'm a better person for now having that knowledge.
There's a new Chris Ware comic in the newest issue of the New Yorker. Can that count as the best comic of the week?
Posted by: Kenny Cather | 2009.11.02 at 09:30
Ah ha ha ha ha! This shit is gold. Shiny, computery Norman Rockwell is my favorite. Scale it back a little, Eaglesham.
Posted by: Matthew J. Brady | 2009.11.02 at 10:51
if FF was closer to Mad Men I think I could get into it.
A distant Reed cheating on Sue with science, a tearful Sue finding the Ultimate Nulifier in one of his drawers & fucking Namor in the Negative Zone, weasely Human Torch intimidating Alicia Masters into sex and the Thing as, I don't know, an elevator operator?
it's a metaphor see, cause he's a monster.
Posted by: seth hurley | 2009.11.02 at 11:03
Abhay nailed the form of writing Johns partakes a deep draft of here, years ago, on - I don't know - it was some board, Tony Isabella wrote there. Anyway, he reviewed the Countdown to Infinite Crisis thing and punctuated the review with "if only he could stick his dick in my mouth, just the tip", specifically in reference to the Blue Beetle's narration, re: one Hal Jordan. Just-the-tip. To combine it with an extraordinary persecution complex widdling out the mouth of a character who has a fucking museum dedicated to him... it does take chutzpah, really, you're right.
Some time later, Kyle Baker wrote the Edwina Crisis in Plastic Man ("why must society view those better-groomed and politer as somehow... better?",) and I don't know if it's too much to expect a similar pricking of the balloon this time.
Posted by: Duncan | 2009.11.02 at 11:44
Kyle Baker's Plastic Man is easily one of the best comics from either Marvel or DC in the past 25 years. It's so underrated and overlooked.
Posted by: Kenny Cather | 2009.11.02 at 13:42
Trufax.
Posted by: Duncan | 2009.11.02 at 17:26
But that's the beauty of your being so right, Tucker. On the one hand, you have the extremes; you know, the ones like me who started reading comics at age 10 in the 1970s and never let go...yeah, Blackest Night is what that's all about. And then on the other hand, hey, I allowed the rest of me to grow up, claim my little stake of responsibility out there in the real world (while purposefully holding onto that one childhood aspect), so an ongoing adult title like Scalped is crazilicious. I get the best of both worlds. DC is willing to publish them both for me. I'm willing to pay for both. So what if the Dodgers and the Angels and the Buccaneers make my sports world suck? So what if Limbaugh curdles my political sensibilities? Comics save me, man.
Posted by: Jim Kingman | 2009.11.02 at 17:43
Nothing much I can add here, but thanks for the comments.
Posted by: Tucker Stone | 2009.11.02 at 23:46
That last review...wow. Great stuff man.
Posted by: Morgan Jeske | 2009.11.03 at 13:40
Yeah, that Blackest Night review pretty much made me realize that's actually why I enjoy reading Geoff Johns's comics. It's... it's kind of depressing now, and I'm not sure why.
But anyway, kudos, that was fantastic. And the JSA role-playing game supplement line was pretty damn gold as well.
Posted by: David Uzumeri | 2009.11.03 at 14:48
wow, one actual review of ultimate ultimate comics, followed by a bunch of pointless random words.
that sorta counts as.. fuck it, tucker stone, you are terrible reviewer.
Posted by: edc | 2009.11.04 at 09:30
so terrible I forgot the a.
Posted by: edc | 2009.11.04 at 09:30
David, there's nothing wrong with enjoying the Geoff Johns style of comic writing. If you've been reading and enjoying DC superhero comics for the past 20 years, then yeah, sure, you get who the heroes are and who the villains are and I imagine it's nice to see the heroes be heroic and be treated as heroic. It's not depressing at all.
Jerks like me who are all "Ganges rulez, Marvel & DC droolz" don't understand the books because we haven't been reading all along to get why these guys are heroes or not. Hal Jordan is just another character to me, so it's annoying to me to read a bunch of other characters talk about how awesome he is.
Posted by: Kenny Cather | 2009.11.04 at 10:02
Duncan,
Here you go, Abhay in all his glory:
http://www.comicscommunity.com/boards/pop/?read=28386
Posted by: Marc | 2009.11.05 at 22:49
i have no way to understand how anyone *couldn't* be aware johns' no.1 selling point is THE REVERENCE. i mean, it's just disgusting really. disgusting, boring, very dumb and massively shit.
it just makes me so angry that people enjoy his stuff.
god i'm hungover....
Posted by: amypoodle | 2009.11.06 at 09:47
Bullshit, Kenny. If he didn't believe there was something wrong with it, Tucker wouldn't bother. If Johns didn't believe something was wrong with it, neither would he.
But we all need someone to feel superior to. That's how we've all been programmed.
Posted by: Dan Coyle | 2009.11.08 at 17:42