Comics Of The Weak: You've Got To Put Your Faith In The Tech

There's been some problems at the factory.

Seems to have gotten repaired. 

Okay, comics, these are still sort of newish.

Gantz Volume 9
By Hiroya Oku
Published by Dark Horse Comics

Most of the time, Gantz is a comic that's about violence & gigantic, bigger-than-you're-thinking-right-now titties. (For the uninitiated, the bits on display in any single volume of Gantz make Power Girl's chest look like she stole hers off of a six year old Chinese boy.) In volume 8, all this breast fetishism was explained in an essay by series creator Hiroya Oku, where, in true iconoclastic fashion, he admitted that he liked to draw big boobs because big boobs are the best boobs, that he just loved looking at them as often as possible. But after all that honesty, Oku decided to confine his drawings of back-snapping cans to the chapter breaks in Volume 9, relying instead on the delivery of wall-to-wall action. While the initial sequence--a one boy battle against a tribe of superpowered alien dwarves--isn't much more than an anime storyboard, the closing half, set almost entirely in the boy's high school as the last alien survivor physically tears apart thirty-odd innocent civilian children, makes for a decent chunk of nasty exploitation. Gantz is fucking mean, gnarly shit, but it's yet to reach the point where the shocks don't bring surprise. It gets even better when you realize that the main character in Gantz is the true heir to Peter Parker, and that this--sleazy violence in Matrix jumpsuits--is where you turn if you're looking for a contemporary Spider-Man comic. It's 2010, and responsibility is an advertising tagline. Nowadays, a fresh-from-puberty kid with great power would use it to kill anybody that messed with him (every volume so far) and fuck Angelina Jolie (which he did in volume 8.)

Invincible Iron Man # 24
Written by Matt Fraction
Art by Salvador Larocca
Published by Marvel Comics

Poor Jim Rhodes. Guy's series gets cancelled due to being horrible, and when he has a chance to show up in the Iron Man title, he ends up about as useful as when Scatman Crothers traveled all the way to the Overlook in the middle of a whiteout only to catch an axe square in the chest. Sure, Jimmy still got some panel time, and sure, Salvador threw out a couple of close-ups, but in the end, all Jimmy got to do was lay on the floor and gurgle out some mucus bubbles.

Unwritten # 11
Written by Mike Carey
Art by Peter Gross, Jimmy Broxton & Chris Chuckry
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

It's a good thing one can't figure out anything about a writer's personality by reading their work, because if you could, you'd have to admit that 99% of the people who write comic books are way too fucking obsessed with Nazi Germany.

Scream Queen: Sand & Fury
By Ho Che Anderson
Published by Fantagraphics

Scream Queen is a dark, violent horror story that provides a contemporary update on a folklore standard. Oddly enough, it's not being published by Vertigo, but one cound venture a guess that's because it's willing to frankly depict sexual intercourse. It's a good comic, hampered a bit by the choice to mix digital replication and more standard pen & ink art with some manner of willy-nilly concern that's undoubtably obvious to a few, but completely indiscernible to most. None of that really matters though, as this will be read, for the most part, by a group of people who will pretend that they aren't actually reading a horror comic that shows the nipple, but something far, far, more important.

Superman: The Last Stand of New Krypton # 1
Written by James Robinson & Sterling Gates
Art by Pete Woods
Published by DC Comics

If you took all of the shitty Superman comics from the last twelve months--don't worry about trying to separate the issues, they're all of them horrible--and you mixed those issues with a floury paste, DC Comics could feed all of the people starving to death in North Korea, and you wouldn't even have to remove the staples. (Kim Jong Il has them eating grass and animal bones, giving them the steel stomach of a Kryptonian.) And yet, DC continues to pretend that these comics have another use. It's disgusting, insensitive, and a little bit racist.

Mr. X Wolverine # 1
Written by Frank Tieri
Art by Paco Diaz, Guillermo Ortego & Ulises Arreola
Published by Marvel Comics

Here it is, that watershed moment when a plot device stops being useful and joins its brothers in the cabinet of Seen It Before, Better. There was still some muscle attached to bone back when a Howard Chaykin drawn Jigsaw excitedly told Frank Castle how much he loved him, but between here and there, this trick bled out on the floor. Frank Tieri tries to spin it up a bit by never putting the hardest phrase to fake between the lips of Wolverine, but in the age of digital, everything dies a lot quicker. Have fun at the funeral, Mister X.

Ultimate Comics Spider-Man # 8
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Takeshi Miyazawa & Justin Ponsor
Published by Marvel Comics

It used to be that you'd read Ultimate Spider-Man comics just to get some kind of Spidey fix so you could have something to talk about whenever your buddy Todd came to visit, since the only thing Todd cares about is Peter Parker and those terrible short novels that Chekhov wrote, and one thing takes less time to deal with than the other. Amazing Spider-Man was just too much of a pain in the ass, and it was ugly to boot. But now, Amazing Spider-Man is a consistently gorgeous comic, containing some of the most expressive art that Marvel publishes, and while the stories just meander around, they're easy enough to ignore. Meanwhile, Ultimate Spider-Man has reset its comic to half-ass in appearance while dispensing the same teeth-curdling inside jokes that the whole Ultimate Comics existence was intitally intended to avoid. That's time for you, but it's also the point: it's never a good idea to stick with anything for too long, especially not when its primary ambition has always been to out-cute a picture of wrestling kittens.

The Mystic Hands of Dr. Strange # 1
Written by Keiron Gillen, Peter Milligan, Ted McKeever & Mike Carey
Art by Frazer Irving, Ted McKeever, Marcos Martin & Frank Brunner
Published by Marvel Comics

The classic criticism of Dr. Strange--that everybody wants to write him, but nobody wants to buy him--is probably a lot less true than it is that drawing a good Dr. Strange comic is fucking hard to do, it requires skills and time that no other Marvel character is going to demand, and right now, Big Two comics are going through a phase where writing is the big dog. That'll change, and while it hopefully won't result in a return to the days when there was a collective agreement to pretend that Todd McFarlane was a moral beacon of integrity, there will hopefully provide a chance for Marvel to put a Strange in the chamber. If and when, they can throw this little ditty out as an example of what to do right.

Criminal: The Sinners # 5
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Sean Phillips
Published by Icon/Marvel Comics

While the main plot never really stopped reading like a season finale to Rescue Me, and the art always came across a bit rushed, this particular installment of Criminal did introduce the possibility that the Brubaker/Phillips team might someday deliver some kind of military story, and all things being equal, that's worth looking into. War comics are better than all the other kinds of comics.

Breaking Into Comics The Marvel Way # 1
Written by agggh
Art by bleaggghh
Published by Marvel Comics

Jesus, this is like getting punched in the face by mediocrity, and you'd think that a concept wouldn't have a good haymaker, but this shit actually hurts. It's not the content that's the problem--the content is just anthology standards, you could accurately call this thing "Marvel Comics Presents" or "Web of Spider-Man" or "What If: The Power Pack n' Stuff"--but the title, the way the entirety of the "interviews" all translate to "i met some guy and he hired me, that guy is like Jesus but more into burritos", it's fucking hilarious. Why not just put a parenthetical after that ridiculous "Breaking Into" title, something like "you have to follow Marvel execs on Twitter, also draw, are you good at kissing ass, that helps", and then you can just publish a bunch of full page advertisements for other Marvel books. This costs money? Who does that money go too?

S.W.O.R.D. # 5
Written by Keiron Gileen
Art by Stephen Saunders
Published by Marvel Comics

Mmm, he was totally awesome!

-tucker stone, 2010

Comments

[Matthew J. Brady]

I must not have been reading Ultimate Spidey during the good years, because I'm enjoying the current stuff, what with Aunt May's crazy house of super-teens and such. Sure, the latest thing was all about Ultimate Rick Jones and wrapping up Bendis plot threads that were laying around, but it wasn't bad. That's kind of always been the Ultimate thing anyway, right? Make some lame reference to Marvel continuity that only lifelong nerds will get, then pretend that it's actually the "accessible" series that anybody can read?

Also, I need to read me some fucking Gantz already.

[david brothers]

I want war crime comics.

That can either be a comic about war crimes or crimes during wartime, either/or. Just make it pulpy.

My favorite part of that Iron Man issue was how Larocca totally blew the reveal that Rhodey had been shot with completely crap storytelling. D'Armata, too, put his worst foot forward.

[Deco]

I want a Kelly's Heroes comic: wwII combat crime caper, b/c I don't think it gets better than that

[seth hurley]

Sinners would have been a lot more interesting if it started at it's end as a riff on The Last Detail.

especially since Tracy never ended up dead on the beach at the end of the previous Get Carter riff.

[Tim O'Neil]

The best use of the "I love you, archenemy" motif I've ever seen was in an Electro story published in the adjectiveless-Spider-Man series in the years immediately after McFarlane left. It was a real mind-fuck at the time. Then DeMatteis did it with the Chameleon in Spectacular a few years later. The Chameleon hasn't been right since.

[david brothers]

That was Jenkins, rather than DeMatteis, unless Cham has announced his love twice: http://www.4thletter.net/2009/09/i-love-you-peter/

And yeah, those stories only go so far, like the old "If you kill me you're worse than I am!" bit.

[Jog]

I love Gantz. It's the Matrix by way of the Kinsey Reports.

[Tucker Stone]

Did you read the essay in volume 5? The one where Oku claimed he may have been the first artist who blurred an areola to give the nipple a sense of motion?

[Jog]

Oh yeah! Like... I do sort of presume Oku's "playing up" his persona to an extent, like not necessarily acting as a full-blown author character but... intensifying his delivery for special impact. The John McClain/Marty McFly fan art sequence pushed me over the line on that one... in the later volumes (don't have 9 yet) the editors' content adopts the same raised eyebrow expression as some of the stuff in the back of Golgo 13, which suggests a maybe wider-than-Oku comfort with the series' absurdities. It's not a joke, I don't think the series is EVER a "joke," like how Garth Ennis might do it... it's more of a joy from indulging, and being ashamed of nothing, and wanting to share how nice it is to not be ashamed of things.

Plus, I mean... he's an artist who's self-inserted into earlier stories, so he's built a character to further groom, I think... I'd REALLY love to read his guy-guy attraction farce.

[Tucker Stone]

I'm betting you'll catch a taste of guy-guy soon enough, that's got to be in part the reason he's introduced the gigantic yaoi guy. Bring on the drunken make-outs.

[Dave]

Believe me, the "gigantic yaoi guy" was introduced for something far more amazing than that.

I don't want to spoil too much, but let's say there's some astounding racial sensitivity on display in an upcoming story arc.

[Jonathan Nolan]

"bring on the drunken make-outs" totally fits the "bring on the dancing horses" eighties song.

[LurkerWithout]

The Eggo shortage was truly a dark and troubled time in American history...

[Jonathan Baylis]

Ted McKeever doing Dr. Strange! Is that worth looking at?

[Chris Jones]

Jonathan, I feel like you sort of answered your own question.

[Mario M.]

I wonder what happened to Paul Jenkins that changed his style so much

[Jonathan Nolan]

Also- on the cover of the marvel be one of us whatever the f-ck book, those are totally NOT spider legs. Arachnid maybe, but not spider. They look like the legs of a louse or a tick. Fascinating subtext there.

[Lugh]

Breaking into comics the Marvel Way:

1a. Work at another comics company for like 8 years, including DC, become a success there.

1b. Become successful writing any other medium.

2a. Draw a Marvel Adventures series, when you're proven that you won't totally fuck up, be allowed to draw a "real" comic, probably an obscure miniseries and when you've proven again that you REALLY won't fuck up, get put on a flagship title or a crossover or something.

2b. Write a moderately well-selling mini-series for Marvel, get given the reins to a flagship series for a couple of issues, become one of the seven guys in their rotation.

[Tim O'Neil]

You know, I thought that whole Chameleon thing was in the tail-end of DeMatteis' Spectacular, with Luke Ross on the art - somewhere hereabouts:

http://www.comics.org/issue/60170/cover/4/?style=default

But it is entirely possible I am misremembering because boy howdy do all those late 90s Spider-Man comics blend together into one putrid mush.

[AComment]

Um. Gantz ended in like 1998 or something. Srsly.

Please get with Evangelion Reloaded the Squickening or whatever the kids are reading nowadays. Srsly.
You Are (Not) Alone! Placing (not) within parenthesis carries great portent!

Also, who gives a fick about Peter Parket Spire Man, srsly? I mean srsly. Spdrsrsly.
Terminal Choice did a fair remix of I Kissed A Girl but that doesn't mean I give shit.

[AComment]

Also: SPOILER ALERT
Gantz ends with shit. Some stuff happens and blah de blah nothing you just spent twenty volumes reading matters a shit. Har. The aliens will come and rape humanity anyway blah blah irreverence.

[Lugh]

Goddamnit Tucker look what you did, talking about Gotham City Sirens that one time attracted all the 4channers.

[Chris Mautner]

Srsly?

[Nathan]

as much I personally liked the past year in Superman (minus Action), I have to admit your Last Stand review was god damn hilarious.

[Lugh]

That's what I like about this site - often it insults things I like, but I laugh anyway. It helps me to get past myself and see my taste as the personal, subjective thing it is.