Comics Of The Weak: He Didn't Work All Day To Come Home And Eat Pizza

Batman The Return # 1
Batman Incorporated # 1
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by David Finch and Yanick Paquette
Published by DC Comics

It's beyond useless to care about certain things with Grant Morrison Batman comics anymore. Art will never matter in them, it will always remain their most unreliable component—sometimes good, occasionally great, but almost never will it operate with the same direct fluidity of exchange that can be found in those of the writer's contemporaries. The team that created WE3 is gone, they'll return in name only, and whatever wall it is that came flying up after Seaguy is here to stay. (At least, one hopes, until Seaguy himself returns.) And while that lack of connection is what will eventually doom this portion of its writer's legacy, as one can't help but imagine that the eventual digital camps of not-us readers will reject the forced consumption of so much of this Bat-work that the ramshackle nature of its serialization engendered, choosing instead to grasp for more cohesive objects that those devices will better serve, it's fruitless to mourn it any longer. The Andy Kubert Batman is never coming, and all of the cuts that have worked their tiny compromises across the last (almost) five years will only grow into crevice if they are stared at much longer. If there was a plan, it's gone now, and this is the new thing, a beginning, again.

It's not a particularly bad one. Exploiting an always popular sequence, the one where Batman collects his most trusted charges and adorns them with the description of his new world—there's a reason this scene shows up so often, going back through the days of Brubaker & Rucka to Grant and Dixon, stretching even further, there's a clear magic that so many disparate Bat-writers find in Bruce, with his cave, telling his children of the world he plans to create. (Even Miller used it to great effect as the perfect ending to a story, eventually realizing it could serve as perfect beginning as well.) And while Morrison has to know—because he's read them all by now, his fan-knowledge entered Geoff Johns territory back in RIP at least—he's still smart enough to endow a scene we know to be a lie (because these plans never play out the way Bruce always says they will, that's the oldest lie in Batman, it's that old man joke about using plans to make God laugh, a joke Morrison may, the scene seems to say, have finally gotten) with a sense of gravity and weight. It starts with A Return, the comic practically screams, and of course—being drawn by David Finch, an artist whose best efforts are so clamorous that his obsessed rendering is more reminiscent of a bludgeoning than it is drawing—it has to do so to be heard. And while the promise of Incorporated is, so far, of a slighter kind, it's an affectionate one. Stupidly erotic in that clambaked way all super-hero romances always are (someday, an actual romance will occur in a post Romita Sr comic, and the world will crack in half with its long-buried demand), laced with a cheekier version of the Johns remember-this school in its I Bought Bat Manga Too, Just Like You silliness, Incorporated shucks off all of the unnecessary (and stupidly self-imposed) importance that the last few years consistently failed to deliver upon with one deft swoop, literally. Swinging across the city, knees tucked up like the Robin he can't handle, here he is: a super-hero, with his girlfriend. They're gonna fight some crime now. It takes work to fuck that up, and the desire for that work is one that, hopefully, has finally been extinguished. This is a collaborative product, and his ambitions were too great for the words alone to suffice. 

Hellblazer #273
Written by Peter Milligan
Art by Giuseppe Camuncoli, Simon Bisley, Stefano Landini, Trish Mulvihill & Brian Buccallato
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

Merrily marching its way towards oblivion—jane, just admit it—and just as happy as could be while doing so, Hellblazer 273 (or 219? or 183? or 116?) is the joint for classy sex scenes. Not classy because their content is one that exceeds those found in whatever escapes Rob Zombie's pen, but termed so due to their ever present craft: these, friend, are the sorts of drawings of the beast with two backs that can be said to be somewhat hawt. Nipples will pop, demurely so, leaking from vantage points no human eye could provide, while the rectal cleft of a beckoning rear end winks from Simon Bisley's pen. There's story, sure—a better one than John's had in a while—but it's the porniness that will live in memory most. In the thrust of the ongoing debate, let it never be forgotten: this is what the kids are looking for. To be 14 again!

Thunderbolts # 150
Written by Jeff Parker
Art by Kev Walker, Frank Martin & Fabio D'Auria
Published by Marvel Comics

After a meager dance in cross combine insurrection, Thunderbolts returns home, a sorely missed Kev Walker in tow. Being anniversary time, the issue devotes itself to a rough trade (meaning painful, meaning without request) appearance by the Has A Movie Or Soon Will characters, who seem to have shown up just to make sure that Marvel's commitment to treacly lines about heroism are available in all team titles, regardless of their necessity. Thankfully for some, Jeff Parker is willing to throw as much of his wit into the mix as these on-demand comics allow room for. A frog dies, not so man can live, but because frogs, no matter genre's demands, are stupid, stupid creatures.

Superman # 705
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Art by Eddy Barrows, Wellington Dias, JP Mayer, Eber Ferriera & Rod Reis
Published by DC Comics

With our Straczynski adventure coming to an abrupt, abortive close, one's left with this, the much-heralded story behind a justly ridiculed-on-first-sight cover. It's about a boy, a Superman fan, whose abusive father seems to have gotten his personality off of that old Public Service Announcement where a man beat his wife off screen upon discovering that she had called for delivery instead of home cooking a meal. It's always a sight to behold, in comics or elsewhere, when something as horrific as a wife-beater serves as pure entertainment, and make no mistake: even the most sensitive are going to roll their eyes at this gaudy thing. Ultimately, there's little that can be said about this that hasn't been covered in every conversation that its dwindling number of readers have already said to one another—it's as bad as you could imagine, as accidentally hilarious as one could have hoped. In the service of singing its praises, one thing can be said: it takes a lot less time to read this shitty comic than it would to watch that J-Lo movie, even though the J-Lo movie has better special effects.

X-Men # 5
Written by Victor Gischler
Art by Paco Medina, Juan Vlasco & Marte Gracia
Published by Marvel Comics

Super-hero comics almost never flow. They have these parts, some of which function, some of which don't, and their occasional success—as entertainment mostly, although art remains a lurking potential, if one that's rarely realized—depends upon a mixing of those parts, one that hopes to force their mongrel nature together. They'll ask you to believe in a language, to gauge them as seamless mixtures of words and pictures, but that's something they rarely achieve, which is why those that provide successful immersion so often get overly praised, even when the speakers know that what they're reading isn't very good. Mostly, they're like this: something you glaze through, sliding across their surface. Some panels may strike out and demand a gaze, while others go neatly ignored, especially when the text goes bawdy. These Gischler X-Men comics are the worst kind of that, an eye bleeding read where images cannot land, stories that seem disassociated from the illustrations surrounding them, more like a novel, with frontispiece illustrations that have wormed their way into every paragraph. Words that won't stop talking, pictures without traction. It's about Cyclops and Wolverine, and how they work together by keeping the other one in the dark.

That's called irony.

Superman/Batman # 78

Written by Joe Kelly, Jack Kelly & Amanda McMurray
Art by Ed Benes, Pete Pantazis, Brett Booth & Andrew Dalhouse
Published by DC Comics

Two stories here, the first one about the title characters. It's a fan-fiction favor, a story where two super-hero fans narrate a possible battle between Batman & Superman. It has its moments, but it's one of those things that strives so hard to be “fun” that it ultimately turns into the reading equivalent of the forced smile you throw on when an extended family member tortures a predictable joke into an unbearably long monologue that points to an as-of-yet unknown stand-up career best left in fantasy. The second story—which isn't the draw, unless you're the type of person who scans the bottom line of text on covers, desperately searching out C-list character appearances—focuses on Power Girl and Huntress, the only DC heroines who could give the unfortunate Zatanna a run for her money in the “half my fans crave nude drawings of me” department. Drawn in that Art Thibert/Marc Silverstri style that's usually found in crass Top Cow trash, over-written in gloom-soaked, self-referential overdubs that would seem like cries for psychiatry were they to appear in a high-school diary, this is a comic, defined only due to its constituent parts. In the rest of the dictionary, it's just another piece of shit.

G.I. Joe Future Noir Special # 1

Written by Andy Schmidt
Art by Giacomo Bevilacqua
Published by IDW

This is an eight dollar black and white comic book, which is an interesting (and a bit cruel) way for IDW to respond to the occasional complaint that they “flood the racks” with shitty GI Joe comics, because this way they can sneak out really long mini-series in an intensely short period of time, that time hopefully being short enough so that the “whoa, this is really terrible” word won't leak out to the readers who might be willing to give a chance to something even though they've been “giving it a chance” for so long that they've de facto created a company (IDW) whose only output besides those horrible Craig Yoe books and Parker comics is the exploitation of the cultural nostalgia for 80's toy advertisements. Because, of course, this is terrible—the equivalent of copying dialog off of a Nintendo 64 cutscene, combined with art that struggles towards competency in the few panels that could seriously be considered “finished”--but hey, at least it's really fucking long. The good guy gets distracted by the bad girl's leather dominatrix outfit! Also, it's in the future, and apparently women still have the same hairstyles they do today.

Deadpool Max # 2
Written by David Lapham
Art by Kyle Baker
Published by Marvel MAX

The dichotomy of agreeing that most Big Two comics writers are following a Soderberghian 1-for-them, 1-for-you path is that it allows for the tacit agreement that Big Two comics are themselves responsible for their failings, and the oh-so-holy creators would do better if they could, but they can't, you know, it's super-heroes, there's obs-tackles. And yet—Kyle Baker! Either ignored, pedestal-forced or dishonestly sloughed off, the guy does what he likes, how he likes it, over and over again. Like Fugazi, another culture-product factory that's been lionized in part so that others wouldn't have to follow, Baker produces work, enjoys doing so, and never has to apologize. Is his Deadpool MAX the greatest work of his career? Of course it isn't. It's kind of crap at times, as all Deadpool comics are, because the character is pretty much just Spider-Man with murder powers and more jokes, only half of which even take a shot at being funny. But it's unapologetic, profoundly committed work, the kind that Marvel has spent a generation crushing the hunger for. It's a comic about understanding what the “free” part of freelance means, and unlike the things that outsell it, it's courage isn't a forced story point. It's written on every page, for all to see.

Green Lantern # 59
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Doug Mahnke, Christian Alamy, Keith Champagne, Randy Mayor & Gabe Eltreb
Published by DC Comics

Cover to cover, what you've got here is a conversation between Flash and Green Lantern, with a short break so that one of the many aliens that this comic features can talk to those other aliens that someone besides me can look at and not immediately struggle with a brain that goes “elderly smurfs elderly smurfs wonder if they shit blue in a bag these elderly smurfs”. Except for that one break, this entire comic is a conversation wherein Geoff Johns pulls out as many of the stops as his longbox memory has access to, all in the service of proving that Hal Jordan's basic personality is somehow different from Barry Allen's basic personality. He fails, but that's okay. After all, their costumes are different colors. In DC Comics, just like the Care Bears, color choices actually relate to emotional states.

Osborn # 1

Written by Kelly Sue DeConnick & Warren Ellis
Art by Emma Rios, Jose Villarrubia, Matt Wilson, Jamie McKelvie
Published by Marvel Comics
You Can Get A Temporary Tattoo With This Comic, But Why Not Go For Face-Painting, As You're Five 

Why is it that comic book characters and real life gangster rappers and normal people on twitter always say things like “I never back down from a fight. Never. Never ever.” Who are these people who live their suburban lives quoting Gladiator? Do they also make “sluurp” blow job jokes? (Is that what that is?) Anyway, Emma Rios: she can draw some shit, she's done it before. Hopefully she'll get the chance to do some of it before this talk-talk nonsense thing is over. It's five issues, it'll probably come up later. The back half is Warren Ellis, doing the 913th riff on some blond woman who says things like “people who should have been made to pass a competence test before they were born”, which hey, that's new, Warren Ellis has a mouthpiece character for him to remind you how stupid all of you are, you people, oh so stupid, you're all so dumb, so stupid, I wrote this at a pub, here's a picture of some sexy teenagers, look how I singlehandedly created the persona of all modern comics writers, so on. It's a nifty trick—not the “everybody is so dumb except for us” thing, but the way Ellis has been able to build an entire career out of saying “everybody is an idiot except for us”, and then he's just used that career so that he can repeat some variation of that phrase, forever. It's kind of like blogging, sure, “you're all a bunch of fucking morons, but i'm not” is pretty much the modus for—well, everything these days, if you think about it, even the I Don't Have A Facebook Account and I Canceled My Cable and I Use The Library 'tude is the same as Here's My Movie Review, Fuck Your Mother In The Face Dot Com and that's not even getting into Stop Downloading, which is: you get it, it's all the same. But usually people grow out of it, they mellow out. Have a kid, figure out where to buy Sara Lee Coffee Cakes, that sort of thing. But Ellis: jesus. He's all Friday Night Lights committed to this same-old-shit thing, it's like he has to keep up the shtick for health insurance or something. You'd be impressed, but jesus: you're going to have to read Gravel and things like this just to know it's happening.

-Tucker Stone, 2010

Comments

[Chris Jones]

ARE Craig Yoe books horrible? All I know is he did one about Joe Schuster's BDSM comics, which struck me as sort of vulgar, not in terms of subject matter but that it seems pretty disrespectful to someone who obviously obviously OBVIOUSLY didn't want anyone to know he did those things.

[Lugh]

"Then maybe he shouldn't have done them in the first place!" is the modern age's credo, Chris.

[David Uzumeri]

"Here's My Movie Review, Fuck Your Mother In The Face Dot Com"

Pure poetry, Tucker.

[Kieron Gillen]

"It's a nifty trick—not the “everybody is so dumb except for us” thing, but the way Ellis has been able to build an entire career out of saying “everybody is an idiot except for us”, and then he's just used that career so that he can repeat some variation of that phrase, forever."

Tucker... you are aware of the Irony here, yeah?

KG

[Tucker Stone]

I'm aware of the irony, but being an audience member isn't a career, Kieron. Neither is blogging.

[Chris Mautner]

Where does one go to buy Sara Lee coffee cakes anyway?

[Jones, one of the Jones boys]

In defence of IDW, they *do* publish the Library of American Comics, which is bringing us Little Orphan Annie, Dick Tracy and Lil Abner, among others. The Annie reprints are particularly well designed -- the subject index at the back is a *great* idea; I wish every other "classic" reprint would replicate it.

That said, I've never read anything else published by IDW, because it all looks like dogshit.

[Tucker Stone]

Totally forgot about the Library, there is some good stuff in there. Rip Kirby!

Chris: asking the wrong guy. Yankees are too good for pecans, I'm thinking.

[rev'D.76]

A fuck to the yes for the Kyle appraisal. My god but the man's as dedicated today as he was back in during Classics Illustrated / Justice, Inc...

[D. Peace]

Straczynski's SUPERMAN run fails for me not just because it's a dull premise (although it is that) it's because the notion of superhero characters solving "real life problems" is so stupid it's actually offensive. I was, at one point, naive and young enough to think there was something interesting or noble about attempting to talk about actual issues in this context but I've come to realize it just diminishes said real life issues by placing them in such a preposterous context. I recently opened up an issue of this SUPERMAN run just out of curiosity and saw Superman holding a guy upside down and making him apologize and REALLY MEAN IT that he's sorry because he felt up someone at a restaurant and I had this Garth Ennis-style fantasy where a character with an ounce of dignity and sense who wears his underwear on the inside of his pants beat the tar out of Superman and dealt with this creep in a way that makes sense relative to actual society. Superman represents a Beaver Cleaver worldview and is best left to just punching aliens for the entertainment of children. That's it. Having him take on child beaters is like having Aslan the Lion show up in the pages of an Elie Wiesel novel where he defeats history's greatest monsters by farting magic rainbows at their faces. It's completely offensive to the magnitude of the issue at hand to juxtapose it with a cartoon character and Superman as a construct is entirely ill-equipped to deal with real issues... he can either punch a monster to the moon or he's useless. That's all he's built for.

Oh, and the scripting is bad. Oh, and the dialogue is bad, too.

[D. Peace]

Oh, and if Kieron Gillen truly wanted to call you a hypocrite, he would have quoted this part:

"But usually people grow out of it, they mellow out. Have a kid, figure out where to buy Sara Lee Coffee Cakes, that sort of thing."

Are you admitting you're an adolescent? Grow up and mellow out, Tucker.

[Michael Moorcock]

I guess it's just me but even though I agree with you most of the time, Mr. Stone, you seem like the Denis Leary of comic reviewing, smugly sneering and shouting "I'M AN ASSHOLE I'M AN ASSHOLE I'M AN ASSHOLE" over and over again

[Lugh]

I think Superman and his like can be used metaphorically to deal with certain real world issues. For example, futurism, etc

I don't understand why writers always go for the same tired negative stuff whey want to write about "reality". Maybe I DO want to see Supes dealing with something "real", for lack of a better term, but I really don't want to read about him pontificating against heroin. Square peg, round hole.

[dan]

The problem with Superman comics isn't him punching wife-beaters so much as that what should be a simple, enjoyable story about Superman punching a wife-beater becomes this drawn-out joyless exercise in Superman being as much of a douche as he can be and judging the hell out of everybody he can judge in a way that never fails to remind you that this dialogue is actually coming from a fat fuck whose major contributions to humanity are a shitty science fiction TV show and an ugly beard.

Meanwhile I think in Action Comics, Lex Luthor tells the cutesy goth Death from Sandman to go blow a horse, so I mean, there's the kind of thing a guy could maybe actually get enthusiastic about.

[Nick]

There were a lot of flaws in Osborn (you pointed out the stupid slurp blowjob joke and the Ellis backup, I would add that the female journalist was extremely annoying and unfortunately appears to be the lead foil for Osborn) but ... DeConnick's scripting of the prisoners and Osborn himself was very good - their dialogue had an imagination and snap that took me by surprise. I'm intrigued by her potential as a new writer.

[Lugh]

I dunno, Dan. Lately it seems that JMS both trimmed his beard and took off his sci-fi writer cowboy hat. My main problem with him now is that he looks like your friend's annoying dad who tries to be your best friend.

[moose n squirrel]

"I think Superman and his like can be used metaphorically to deal with certain real world issues. For example, futurism, etc"

In what sense is "futurism" a "real world issue"?

[Lugh]

In the sense that the future is coming and we have to figure out how we're going to deal with it. How isn't the future a real world thing? It's this kind of attitude that makes the 'issues' dealt with in superhero comics nothing but child molestation and drugs, and maybe impotence, if we're lucky.

[AComment]

There are real world people who are futurists? At some point Superman had vague connections to 1930s futurism (Kryptonians as Super-evolved humans), so you could turn the next HyperCrisis into a metaphorical story of man's troubled relationship with the Modern Project in Postmodern times.

[AComment]

I should add that I think Superheroes are too obsolete and Modernist as concepts to be very useful for exploring actual, current futurist issues.

[Lugh]

Yeah, heroism is SO last century.

[fod_xp]

Ellis has been unreadable in recent years, ESPECIALLY his Astonishing X-men run. Ghost Box was absolutely garbage all over.

[Sharif]

Trust me, Tucker. fod_xp is a problem. Delete him now. You don't want him a regular at your blog.

[jo.anne]

omg...you're associating and mistaken two different words-future and futurism. look into it,jesus..i can hardly see how you can relate the concept of futurism with the world's real issues..god, if you were talking about terorism, discrimination, poverty,etc i would've understood.

[Chris Jones]

I dunno, I wouldn't consider being called "The Dennis Leary of comic reviewing" to be an insult of any sort.

[Chris Jones]

GOD

[Lugh]

uh preparing for the upcoming future is a real world problem. just because sci-fi is for nerds doesn't mean humanity should pretend the future is not coming. and i'd rather see superheroes being used to deal with that sort of issue than stories about superman having liberal guilt.

I would, Chris. Leary is smug and unfunny.