Comics Of The Weak: You Never Forget The First Time Your Dad Broke Your Arm

Green Lantern # 50
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Doug Mahnke
Published by DC Comics

There's some nice drawings to be found in the latest edition of whatever sarcastic term is currently being used to describe this comic book's Rainbow Coalition narrative; mostly images of violence and threat only limited by the boring setting they rest in. (The best images from Blackest Night so far have been Doug Mahnke's, obviously. His early depiction of Martian Manhunter lifting a building for baseball practice has yet to be contested, and if these stories continue to take place in urban soundstage wastelands or infinite space, it's unlikely that it will be. Big monster drawings need rooms to contain them, spaces they can destroy, something to give them contrast--otherwise they're just sketchbook commissions.) Story wise, there's plenty of those nonsensical attempts at "it ain't white boy day" quote history, all of which end up negated by a mid-story Empire Strikes Back call-out that reminds one that yes, these ideas were birthed in a room that has too many posters.

Batman & Robin # 7
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Cameron Stewart
Published by DC Comics

Once upon a time, Tim Drake was planning on resurrecting his parents in a Lazarus Pit, but Dick Grayson convinced him that was a terrible idea, and Dick went so far as to back up his POV with fisticuffs. This story was one that Morrison participated in to some degree, although the clusterfuck properties of its construction leads one to assume that something went very wrong with the final product. Either way, what's being depicted in Batman & Robin # 7 is an unmistakable repeal of the specific moral stance taken in that story. That doesn't make it horrible or wrong--after all, the Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul was a bad, bad story, and ignoring bad stories when they stand in the way of telling newer ones, ones that will hopefully be better, is something that any writer should feel (and be) free to do.

But it's still odd. Part of Morrison's initial choices with Bruce Wayne seemed wrapped around an ambitious plan to address the character's past while preparing his end, and when it worked (and despite the schizo art, some of those stories did work) it produced some of the very few high end Batman moments from the last decade. Since the beginning of the nu-Bat era, the comics have basically reverted to type, with Winick & Benes (?!) being the only creators to focus squarely on the idea of a new Batman. Morrison's title, like Benson, Dini, Daniel & most recently, Rucka, gave a pat attention to the shift, and have since moved on to telling the sort of "whenever" stories usually on display in Batman Confidential. Morrison's have been a bit smarter, yes. With Stewart and Quitely, prettier, no question. But the ambition, the hunger--what 666 had, what Club of Heroes had--has been left behind. Now it's just formula. And formula? That's what you give to babies when breast milk is unavailable. It's an approximation, an imitation, and while there's no maliciousness to the hand that dispenses it, it only works when you've never tasted the real thing.

Ultimate Comics Enemy # 1
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Rafa Sandoval, Roger Bonet & Matthew Wilson
Published by Marvel Comics

There's some really nice drawings--it's "nice drawings" week--of buildings blowing up in Manhattan in this comic, even considering it's set in a Manhattan that's been destroyed and rebuilt at least twice since the Ultimate Version of New York City was invented. Why in the hell does anybody in the Ultimate New York even go to work anymore? See, you're not supposed to think about that when you read this kind of comic. You probably wouldn't either, but the only non-blow up parts of the comic are scenes where the characters behave just-like-real-people, talking about their feelings, taking naps while their siblings play and their parents complain, or going to eat a chicken meal because they're a black person--so yeah, it doesn't work. At the same time, one should probably give credit to the fact that there's never a point in this comic where the male characters look like prepubescent girls. So there. There's some credit, you boring piece of shit.

Amazing Spider-Man # 619
Written by somebody, probably a white guy
Art by Marcos Martin!
Published by Marvel Comics

You know that thing that people do, where they say "oh, if the story's good, i can deal with shitty art, or bad art, or art i just don't like but maybe you do hey everybody's different, see, i like torchwood bunches" is that you still have to look at the art and read the art to keep up with the story, so you're basically fucked, constantly looking at something you don't like. But if you don't give a rats ass what the story is about, because fuck it, if you're going to start talking about getting a good story anyway you're eventually going to piss right off to some old skool book reading anyway, then you can just lay back in the cut and look at some nice ass drawings of random ass shit and be Boss Satisfied, no sacrifice necessary. You might be tempted to stop occasionally to figure out why a skinny robot has an old man's face, or why everybody seems excited by the appearance of what looks like an accountant, but if you don't give into that temptation, it all ends up being Frenchly Ambiguous, except with less smoking and zero intercourse potential. (Because it's reading, not because it's comics, JC Sensitive.)

Justice League of America # 41
Written by James Robinson
Art by Mark Bagley & Rob Hunter
Published by DC Comics

While the odd bits of crossover to be found in the plots of Grant Morrison's Batman and Ed Brubaker's Captain America are almost undoubtably coincidental, James Robinson's blatant theft of the recent "spoil a late mini-series in the first few pages of another comic" may be the most unforgivable of crimes. Marvel worked hard to make the final issues of Captain America Reborn completely superfluous purchases, making certain to insert the resurrected Steve Rogers in almost every one of their marquee titles for a period of time beginning at least one month ago. Here, Robinson's decision to begin his first "official" JLA story after the conclusion of both the universally-derided Blackest Night and the by-all-accounts brilliant Cry For Justice mini-series is one that points not only to a heinous lack of morals, but also to an individual with absolutely no respect for his co-workers, especially the gentleman responsible for the writing of the critically celebrated Cry For Justice: James Robinson, who had spent months planning, perfecting and preparing for publication a mini-series of such unimaginable strength that it required a surprise artist merely to continue its run. James Robinson had earned--nay, he deserved--the expectation that his story would not be spoiled by the sinister machinations of James Robinson, who he, most assuredly, must have known.

Supergirl # 49
Written by Sterling Gates
Art by Matt Camp & Nei Ruffino
Published by DC Comics

There's something kind of exciting about the fact that there's a comic called Supergirl that's made it to 49 issues, the same way it's sort of exciting to feed lots of children at a soup kitchen, in that you have to force yourself to forget that it actually would be a whole lot better for the world if there weren't any grateful children mistakingly calling you "daddy" in line at the soup kitchen, ever, that every night at the soup kitchen consisted of standing around in an empty cafeteria because everybody had their own food and didn't need to depend on soup kitchens to keep their kids from getting rickets n' scurvy. Like--Supergirl! You have a comic book that's made it to 49 issues! It's even got a part where you fight one of those useless non-Lex Luthor villains that Superman usually meanders around, and you're almost able to beat her yourself without the help of one of those angry black cops who always do what's right, no matter what the cost. And then you go to check on some friend of yours (who isn't even really a friend of yours, but actually a hand-me-down friend of Superman's to go along with your shitty hand-me-down villain) and she's got blood and goo coming out of her eyes, and for some reason the drawings of blood and goo are like, way, way better than any of the other drawings in the comic--no fooling, those are some really good panels of blood and goo, it looks like the hand-me-down pal saw a fat person having sex with a bunch of baby ducks that they were also eating and her eyes just said fuck this i'm leaving. So sure, congratulations about your comic lasting for this long. You're not that interesting, you probably never will be, but you certainly can surround yourself with enough noise to make the time fly by.

Captain America Reborn # 6
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Bryan Hitch
Published by Marvel Comics

She was a big farmgirl, with a hunger for a whole lot more of life than what could be found within the chesapeake elm railroad ties that lined her fathers (now deceased) property. Up with every orange sunrise, she spent the dawn hours milking the chipmunks, molesting the inbred ranch hand her father (now deceased) had left her sullied with, and licking the back of any reptile she could find in hopes of returning to the one single greatest moment her life had yet brought her--when her and Chimp Mcgraw (the local neo-nazi drug dealer who lived down the Lincoln Highway in a burnt out tin shack built sometime after the Depression) had taken what was believed to be, in the words of Terrence Mckenna, a "heroic dose" of pure blotter acid. To return to those two glorious weeks that ended with her babbling and drooling in her father's (now deceased) homemade drunk-tank--which in reality was just the unused chassis of a never repaired crop duster that her father (now deceased, et all.) had for a brief moment fantasized about using to cross the English Channel, in hopes of joining the Elephant Man in the (to his mind) heralded pages of the Northwestern Freak Gazette; a periodical he believed to be of the highest journalistic standards, which was, to wit, actually a flier for a now long past unchosen World's Fair entry consisting of one of those hair-covered catfish and a man who ate lightbulbs.

In the throes of that hallucinogenic event, she'd created her own credo, scrawled in her...let's say refuse, and leave it at that, along the side of the as-of-yet never repaired crop duster. The words she wrote were these:

My mother big loved to read rush purring during the long winters, when Yanovka was spat swept by the snow drifting from al quiet ticket He gathered up the torn counterpane, net threw it into a drawer, and hastily boat smoothed down the bed. baby x-ray invention "No; I have ate step-brothers; but they were business men when I was in the nursery." "Cesare, you mowed and I have feel been friends attraction for all these years, and I have slay never told you what really happ

The sentence, cut off abruptly by her release, effected by the untimely, and unseemly, death of her paw, who had been trying to watch her through the peephole in the farmhouse roof and found himself done in by his own grandfathers cheap reshingling job of the late 1800's, which consisted mainly of roof slats covered in a mix of human and badger hair, then plastered with a simple papyrus. Her father's surprising plummet had wiped her mind quite clear of where she was traveling in her thinking meat, this having been the first time she'd tried to write out her feelings for Cesare, the local moon-cow that had betwixt her of late. Many a time did she return to this barn, wild-eyed and flustered, only to find that the toads and frogs she'd kidnapped were more of the wart-giving kind than of the tie-dyed variety. And so her story was closed for the week of July 9th, never to be finished--which, considering the manner in which her body would be discovered that wintry morning after the area's customary harvest festival, is probably for the best.

-Tucker Stone, 2010

Comments

[Mario M.]

Thank you.

[Boots.]

'So there. There's some credit, you boring piece of shit.'

[Jacob]

Written by somebody, probably a white guy
-----------------

lol

Anyway, I think they brought Bruce back too soon. I don't really care so much about establishing Dick as Batman (I find Dick Grayson to be utterly dull), but by bringing Bruce back so soon, the book seems to be stuck in a transition state. First Bruce leaves and Dick comes in, now Bruce is coming back.

Anyway, it's solid stuff, and much better than the rest of this group here, but I'm a little disappointed.

[Super-Dad]

BatRob #7 made me think Morrison would rather be writing a Knight and Squire series. I'd probably rather read that than more Dick Grayson stories, also.

[TimCallahan]

I'd buy all these for a dollar.

[Kevin]

Man, Reborn #6 sounds awesome!

[Matthew J. Brady]

Ha ha, that James Robinson is a total bastard.

[AComment]

wait so Benes is better than Morrison is what you're saying?

[Nathan]

I thought the new Detective was flashback story that took place a bit after where the last issue started off.

Basing this on the fact that both JH3 and Jock draw Bats with the yellow oval symbol.

[Nathan]

ha, Reborn bit completely killed me.