Comics Of The Weak: Shit, I Wish Your Mother Had Clicked "Close Tab"

Strange Tales II # 1
By Kevin Huizenga, Frank Santoro, Dash Shaw, Kate Beaton, Rafael Grampa
Published by Marvel Comics

It didn't get mentioned that much the first time Marvel went down this road, but the first Strange Tales mini-series was mostly a piece of shit, completely shown up by the Gary Panter contributions to Omega The Unknown (which had proved that Marvel did have a few people still connected to their courage) and the Simpson's Treehouse of Horror (which showed what independent creators could do with companies that actually understood the definition of the word "freedom"). Now, the first attempt at Strange Tales wasn't a piece of shit the way a lot of Big Two comics are in terms of lacking anything interesting to look at, it was a piece of shit the way anything always is when better, more expansive versions of what it offers are available online constantly, for free. This time around, things seem a bit different, like the people involved are involved for more than just generic jack-off reasons, that there's an investment being made in taking a chance. Some of it is still just a rough hewn example of their more interesting non-Marvel work--Kate Beaton, for one, delivers little more than a funny reminder to check her website (which most people are certainly doing already)--but there's very little here that calls back to the first time Marvel tried this, which was when they basically published a longform themed sketchbook of the indie world. There's a lot of praise being heaped on the Grampa thing, and while that's all well-deserved, it's Dash Shaw's passionate mash-up of Spider-Man that seals what Santoro, Huizenga and the aforementioned Grampa all toy with. In a few pages, glaringly unlike anything Marvel publishes, Shaw mixes a variation on his (let's call it what it is, "weird") obsession with kitschy reality television against Stan Lee's classic Peter Parker positive-speak, all of it married in the all-too-telling image of our hero and his adventures being thrown away with the trash. And if the point wasn't clear enough, it's verbalized right on the page: The dumpsters is where this genre fucking thrives.

Return of Bruce Wayne # 5
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Ryan Sook, Pere Perez & Mick Gray
Published by DC Comics

It's kind of hysterical that DC and Grant Morrison had the opportunity to see Marvel fuck up the return of Captain America, by publishing multiple comics where Steve Rogers wore a black spec-ops bodysuit and stood on the tops of buildings watching heroes do shit before the Reborn mini-series concluded, and yet still turn around and manage to fuck up their own Return of Bruce Wayne shindig in the exact same fashion. All the evidence has been there for months of what was going to happen, and they still went ahead and chose to fuck it up anyway. Here's your unfinished, late as hell mini-series by the marquee names (plus a fill-in dude), released alongside a stack of one-shots, all of which feature Bruce Wayne, in a black, spec-ops bodysuit, standing on top of buildings, watching heroes do shit.

Edge of Doom # 1
Written by Steve Niles
Art by Kelley Jones & Jay Fotos
Published by IDW

You've got to admire the balls out courage it takes for IDW to look at the consistent failure of new horror anthology comics to find an audience and still decide "fuck it, we'll do a bunch of them anyway, and we'll make them even longer". Hell, if you look at the way they describe this issue, you might even think that Edge of Doom is actually a mini-series based around one story. (It isn't.) On the other hand, maybe you're just looking into this thing because it's Kelley Jones, and you're one of those people so sick of Tony Daniel/David Finch Batman drawings that you've actually started wetting the bed for the old Moench/Jones Fuck The Government paranoia years. If that's the case, here you go: it's a Tales From The Crypt riff on Gulliver's Travels, with a curious nerd who gets his eyeball yanked out by tiny arrows.

Amazing Spider-Man # 645
Written by Mark Waid
Art by Paul Azaceta, Matthew Southworth & Javier Rodriguez
Published by Marvel Comics

While the previous installations in Mark Waid's performance piece on Spider-Man featured what one assumes is his preferred version of the character (the simpering crybaby with wisecracks aplenty), this chapter cuts to the other Spider-Man, the one that imitates Christian Bale's Batman for some reason involving feelings. So look and behold, as Peter Parker silently terrorizes all of his villains before snapping the Shocker's wrist (or something). Cast your eyes upon the requisite reverse-homage to old Spider-Man comics, this one being the "I must hold up this thing that is heavy", and this time, it's all like, scary and shit. It's a lot of fun, because it's not any fun at all.

Superman # 703
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Art by Eddy Barrows, J.P. Mayer & Rod Reis
Published by DC Comics

The general rule for whenever Superman and Batman get together is that the one who is right is always the one whose name is on the cover. If Superman shows up in a Batman comic, he's going to act like a self-righteous tool, and when the reverse happens, Superman will be thoughtful and human, while Batman will shoot his mouth off like a gloomy Dead Can Dance fan with an inferiority complex. And--well, you can't fault Straczynski too much, he certainly shoots for accuracy in his attempt to make Superman seem thoughtful, he just misses the mark because of his primary failing, which can be summed up by remembering that he's a tedious, boring writer who comes up with concepts that he never bothers to fill out with actual characters or dialog. (Which is why he's best served by television, where he can count on a crew of people to fill in all the gaps that he leaves behind.) In comics--specifically, Big Two comics, a place where any creator with even the vaguest "celebrity" is given free rein to embarrass themselves as much as humanly possible, up to and including taking business advice from beef-addicted morons in jean shorts--a writer has no crew to turn to, as DC and Marvel have spent the post-Image decades feverishly dismantling the idea that the people drawing these things could possibly understand storytelling themselves. Instead, they have this: a writer who believes himself automatic genius, no help required. God forbid anyone reads these things and sees the banality that belief produced.

BPRD Hell On Earth: New World # 3
Written by Mike Mignola & John Arcudi
Art by Guy Davis & Dave Stewart
Published by Dark Horse Comics

While the return of the BPRD's most dangerous unresolved subplot has gone a lot differently than what might have been predicted, the bigger surprise is how committed the Arcudi/Mignola duo is to the whole "Hell on Earth" concept. While the damage foretold in the trilogy that brought the new status quo forth was extensive, the continuing collapse of our home planet hasn't stopped, and everything must go. And yet, after smartly delivering a one page scene of destruction that left thousands dead, this issue dived out of the apocalypse window entirely, choosing to focus on our two heroes (and there aren't many left), as they 36th Chamber their way against one stand-alone monster. It's frequently claimed that serialized comics run out of places to go after they go big and loud, but Arcudi and Mignola prove that to be a song of laziness. All this issue is, when you boil it down, is a stripped to the gears fight scene: two dudes, one bad guy, and a pick-up truck full of weapons. It's been thrown to Guy Davis and Dave Stewart, those guys have continued their streak of doing things perfectly, and when you're finished, you're fat with satisfaction.

The Invincible Iron Man # 31
Written by Matt Fraction
Art by Salvador Larroca & Frank D'Armata
Published by Marvel Comics

If you ignore everything that goes into the actual reading of these Iron Man comics, like the horribly inhuman drawings and the obnoxious "people talking to each other, about nothing, forever" structure, what you've got is a comic that's supposedly about one of the top ten smartest people in the Marvel universe, and that's an actual list that someone is paid to keep track of. So what is the smartest man obsessed with doing? What kind of plan for changing the world do we get from a genius who fetishizes his alcoholism when he needs to teach his ex-girlfriend shitty metaphors?

He makes a car that looks like a clunky cross between a Lamborghini and a Toyota Tercel. That's this bozo's vision of the future: an ugly two-door sports car with a fucking blower on top. Here's another word for that: starts with q, and it rhymes, sort of, with "taint".

Green Lantern # 58
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Doug Mahnke & Christian Alamy
Published by DC Comics

Since "hope" is basically a kid's game, a gamey concept as realistic as Santa Claus or peace in Israel, Geoff Johns had no choice but to pick a fourteen year old girl as its physical agent. (The only thing more hopelessly stupid than a fourteen year old girl being, obviously, a fourteen year old boy.) It's still Johns, so the girl happens to be the latest victim in a string of kidnap/murders at the hands of what looks to be a young, mustached Professor Ivo, and the whole story is really just a sideshow, plot events tied up in finding new ways to define boring old Hal Jordan. (He's into hope, but afraid of it, and the cliffhanger ending is the Flash questioning Hal's choices in running buddies.) Basically, it's another routine Green Lantern comic--scream-y, weird, and dull.

Gantz # 13
By Hiroya Oku
Published by Dark Horse

While the charm of the Gantz crew fighting dinosaurs wore off quite a bit when it become clear that Oku's obsession for detail meant that every single way-too-intricate drawing of dinosaurs was going to clash with his studio's way-too-intricate background drawings of buildings, thus resulting in some of the densest, most unfriendly panels this series had so far (and the action has been plenty confusing before), it's endlessly amusing when a forty-year old nebbish screams lines like "I can feel the lust for life within you! You're strong! You have the strength to survive anything!" Gantz isn't alone in having a complete lack of internal life--that's pretty much every Robert Kirkman comic, honestly--but unlike the this-is-so-serious Walking Dead, the Gantz translators seem to understand that the only way to handle something so egregiously ridiculous as a bunch of idiots in scuba gear ghost-fighting gigantic dinosaurs while E-cup porn girls idly stand on the sidelines (and a panda bear shows up for some friendly wrassling) is for absolutely every single line of dialog to be delivered with a zero tolerance policy towards sarcasm, self-awareness or maturity. If these chapters took any time to read, the high pitch might make one deaf. As it is, it's one of the reasons why Gantz--the most sterile masturbation action fantasy that wasn't made by the Wachowski Brothers--remains so consistently gratifying. Whether it's good or bad, this is what pride actually looks like, and American comics could take a lesson: apologies are for high school kids.

I Am An Avenger # 2
Written by Greg Rucka, Sean McKeever, Paul Tobin & Jacob Chabot
Art by Michael Lark, Stefano Gaudiano, Matt Hollingsworth, Mike Mayhew, Rain Beredo, Nathan Fairbairn, David Lopez, Alvaro Lopez & Jacob Chabot
Published by Marvel Comics

According to this comic, Steve Rogers attends the funerals of American soldiers who die in conflict with Epic Marvel Crossover Events. Lucky for him, only one soldier died in Siege, lucky for you, that only makes one ridiculously maudlin funeral scene involving Captain Fucking America to read. Here's the message it delivers: it really sucks to lose a family member in a pointless secret super-hero war, because it means the funeral is going to be completely overshadowed by the gigantic super-hero creep who wanders around and says "geez, i'm really sorry, America Pledge of Allegiance eagles" while you're trying to say goodbye to somebody killed by Daken (the Dark Wolverine!). Nothing's worse than crying your eyes out while those eyes are looking at something that your brain is totally convinced you should be laughing your ass off at.

Slam Dunk Volume 12
By Takehiko Inoue
Published by Viz

It's probably unfair to call this installment in Inoue's basketball manga "more of the same", since it does include a couple of new plot twists (the coach does something! the bad guys have their own crazy dude!), but that's pretty much what this volume is: more. The feelings are there, stronger than they might have been previously (the team captain reveals he's been dreaming of the coming game, every night, for three years), but Inoue's decision to replicate our leads exactly in this new opposing squad makes the story read more like a meta-comic about practice than the sudsy testosterone melodrama that made the previous game (which was also, like, A Really Big Deal) so deliciously painful to wait on. The one saving grace that remains is found in the final panel, when the team's silent assassin takes to the floor and mutters "you all talk too much". While previous volumes have shown what this enigmatic fucker can do, as well as providing Inoue with his most aggressive opportunities for action drawing outside of Vagabond, the tease is enough to postpone abandonment a little bit longer. 

Daken Dark Wolverine # 2
Written by Daniel Way & Marjorie Liu
Art by Giuseppe Camuncoli, Frank D'Armata & Onofrio Catacchio
Published by Marvel Comics

The best anybody could hope for with a character as ridiculous as Daken (the Dark Wolverine!) was that a comic focusing on his exploits would look nice (because it's Camuncoli, one of those rare artists D'Armata doesn't seem to be able to entirely cripple) and that it would be funny, because...well, fuck dude, it's about Daken, he's the Dark Wolverine. He's bisexual and has pheromone powers with which to tease, tantalize and turn on both sexes. He has a flowy mohawk. Ultimately, he's the end result of a lack of imagination, sure, but that's the rule of the day in all super-hero comics when children are involved (except for Cable, who is the end result of a lack of imagination PLUS gigantic guns and metal, and those can fix lots of things, the same way drawing all your characters with gigantic letter V's bisecting them can fix lots of things). The first issue of this series seemed to be a general step in the right direction--Daken fucked a girl, fed another girl a strawberry, there was a great fight scene, Daken humped a midget, he yelled at buildings--but this issue goes in another direction, one that incorporates weird cringing comedy, bullshit Wolverine tie-in crap nobody cares about, and shows the one thing you don't want to see in a comic about a sleazy cornball with sexxxy powers, which is the part where he acts embarrassed. Bad form, and bad tidings as well.

Warlord of Mars # 1
Written by Arvid Nelson
Art by Stephen Sadowski & Adriano Lucas
Masturbation Fodder Variant Cover by the one-speed master
Published by Dynamite

They should really dole out the licensed comic adaptation deals once a year, in a high school gymnasium. You could invite all of the bloggers who aren't too busy taking pictures of themselves standing next to a oversized model of a X-Wing Fighter, Five Guys could cater it so that nobody fucks up and loses any weight, the whole thing would be a pretty sweet deal for genre freaks. Everybody would get draft picks based off how shitty their taste is, and then things would be a little more fair, and it could possibly result in more exciting comics as result. Like, instead of seeing a bunch of big tier creators doing Dark Tower for Marvel while the scrub list manhandles the Phantom, you'd get Jacen Burrows adding his plastic rape faces to Halo: Bonghits while Brendan McCarthy draws hallucination panels into Tarzan crap.

Thor # 616
Written by Matt Fraction
Art by Pasqual Ferry & Matt Hollingsworth
Published by Marvel Comics 

There's a lot of problems with Thor comics right now, and while most of that is tangled up in the fact that there's just too fucking many of them for any one person to possibly care about one of them in great magnitude (except for the one that's for kids and yet happens to be most popular with people who aren't actual kids), but that's more an industrial problem than it is one of content or form or any of those other words that gets thrown around when there's nobody getting fired to blog about. The real problem with Thor comics (besides the Ultimate ones where entire scenes get yanked from Hellboy: Seed of Destruction), is that Thor's primary villain gets all of his primary villainous opportunities directly from Thor, because Thor is really fucking stupid when it comes to the guy. Over and over again, this is the nature and planning of every modern Thor comic: a bunch of people says "Hey, you really shouldn't trust Loki, he's a bad guy", Thor says "nah, he's my bro, shaddup" and then Loki reinstitutes slavery or fingerbangs Margaret Thatcher against her Iron Will, and then Thor has to hit Loki with a hammer or lightning or whatever, and then there's something with Frost Giants while Loki licks himself clean and comes up with another plan. That's the cycle, over and over again. How do you root for that? How is that entertaining? It's not like Thor is being a moron in the way that a guy in a Failblog video is being a moron, he's not slipping on banana peels and falling into custard. He's just an idiot with a hammer that he never uses. What's pop art about that?

-Tucker Stone, 2010

Comments

[Chris Jones]

"...the only way to handle something so egregiously ridiculous as a bunch of idiots in scuba gear ghost-fighting gigantic dinosaurs while E-cup porn girls idly stand on the sidelines (and a panda bear shows up for some friendly wrassling) is for absolutely every single line of dialog to be delivered with a zero tolerance policy towards sarcasm, self-awareness or maturity."

You have been REMARKABLY precise about the mechanisms which make things good or bad over the past few months.

[Debaser]

By the third Daken (The Dark Wolverine!) I was in tears.

Well done.

[Mory Buckman]

"Free rein" does not have a G. Thank you.

[AComment]

I don't know, America needs to learn the true meaning to pride in stupidity?

[Michael Lapinski]

Re: Thor, agreed on most counts. But, when Thor works, creators can really groove on him. In more recent memory, check out Mike Oeming's Pre-JMS "Disassembled" arc where an un-stupid Thor totes around Loki's head to the end of existence and ends the reboot loop until, you know, he's rebooted.

[John Fellows]

"In comics--specifically, Big Two comics, a place where any creator with even the vaguest "celebrity" is given free rein to embarrass themselves as much as humanly possible, up to and including taking business advice from beef-addicted morons in jean shorts--a writer has no crew to turn to, as DC and Marvel have spent the post-Image decades feverishly dismantling the idea that the people drawing these things could possibly understand storytelling themselves. Instead, they have this: a writer who believes himself automatic genius, no help required. God forbid anyone reads these things and sees the banality that belief produced."

THIS. But with bells on.

[NoahB]

I almost didn't read to the end for the usual I-have-not-read-any-of-these-comics-and-have-no-desire-to-ever-read-these-comics reasons...but I'm glad I did because the Margaret Thatcher line is positively golden.

Oh wait...I did read that Gantz issue. Almost forgot.

[Sharif]

Oh, so Iron Man built that fucking car? About time. Hasn't the green-car been the focus of the last eleven issues? Every time I glance at an issue of this comic, Tony Stark is babbling about the car either to himself, to the press, or in boring HR scenes with new employees.

Did Maria Hill show up? Are they ever going to follow up on her rape, or does environmental awareness trump gender studies?

[Chris Jones]

*spit take*

When did Maria Hill get raped?!

[John Pontoon]

It's odd, I approach most of this stuff from a completely different angle than today's smart kids. I appreciate the pockets of excellent craft and don't fret the pervasive imperfection. This leads to a life of satisfaction.

I can equate it to politics. I keep voting for the lesser of two evils, then maintain a lovely spot in the finest sand for my head, in order to not be unhappy pretty much all of the time.

I think about when I was 19 and realized that when I was older, I would not feel All This Passion And Anger so strongly, because everybody mellows with age and I - exceptional though I am - am still just somebody; and I said, "Fuck you, older me. Eat shit. You suck." Now I can reply, "Yes, but I approach happiness."

The bowling conundrum: In a bowling alley, many people explode with ecstasy at a strike. I shrug; it's just a strike, so what? So am I the fool, or are they the fools?

[Matthew J. Brady]

Man, that Green Lantern is rough reading, isn't it? For some reason that I haven't yet been able to search inside myself to determine, I read the "Rage of the Red Lanterns" after finding it at the library, and after cringing my way through it, I intensely regretted the time and mental energy spent. I would say it was aggressively stupid, but that's not true, since that would probably be entertaining (see comments regarding Gantz above). Instead, it's just banal, a bunch of pointless drama about aliens and their magic ring powers whining about pointless nonsense that nobody on God's green earth should give half a shit about. People seem to love it for some reason, but damned if I can figure out why; it's ugly, boring, idiotic trash. Fuck Hal Jordan, and the green horse he rode in on.

[John Pontoon]

What a maudlin mood I was in this morning - repetitive, too! Hey, 11-hours-ago me, your taste is crap and you're a pussy!

[Sharif]

Chris,

http://oi56.tinypic.com/fqb05.jpg
http://oi55.tinypic.com/2vccoz7.jpg

[James W]

"The last comic I read, there was a lot of rape and crying. Kinda harshed my boner for fun, you know?". Wow.

[Dave]

ahahaha jesus christ larocca's art. if it wasn't for the words in that first page I'd never be able to tell she wasn't enjoying it.

glad to see I haven't missed much from dropping invincible iron man after the first issue.

[seth hurley]

I still don't see the rape, Sharif. SHOW ME THE COMIC BOOK RAPE.

[Dan]

Wait - Iron Man has actually had different issues all these month and it wasn't just the one issue rewrapped in a truckload of variants? I'm glad I jumped off when I did if that's the 'pay off'.

[Chris Jones]

I mean, that's rape-y, definitely, certainly in the rape ballpark, but I don't know if it's 100% Kosher rape.

[Sharif]

I agree it wasn't a Kosher rape. The Controller is too impotent to use his real penis. It was a post-human rape. Tucker, weigh in! It's also not Fraction's problem anymore since Bendis owns Hill now. If Bendis can show Jessica Jones berating herself and discussing Rick Jones porn while on the toilet, he ought to be able to address non Kosher rape. Fraction can stick to alternate sources of energy. I did love the invocation of the Casanova quote. It's as if Fraction wrote his own point by point sell-out program. I bet if we went back to his online column with Joe Casey, the Basement Tapes, we'd find plenty of other reversals.

[seth hurley]

I love calling people sell outs almost as much as I love comparing people to Hitler.

[Chris Jones]

All the superheroes meet up with the Controller in prison and are like "Listen, you've gotta make your rapes more defined, we're all pretty confused".

[Chris Jones]

Also, wait, is post-human rape to rape what post-rock is to rock? Is the Controller the Godspeed You! Black Emperor of rapists?

[Sharif]

Matt Fraction is a worse writer than Hitler, Seth Hurley.