Comics Of The Weak: The Only Power I Need Is A Power Bottom

FF # 1
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Steve Epting & Paul Mounts
Published by Marvel Comics

There's something--"admirable" isn't the right word, honestly, neither is "interesting"--about the way Slappy Hickman keeps ratcheting out the gears of the Fantastic Four, like an obsessed cartoon mechanic streamlining an engine, parts a-flying every which way. Gone are characters, the uniforms; under his hand, even the letters are fair game. Underneath bland covers that answer the brain tickler of what it would look like if an Alex Ross obsessive finished a John Cassady convention sketch (hideous n' sickly), you'll find what seems to be the past and future Hickman ideal: multiple splash pages of mid-to-high end website design, which is what settles for art amongst those whose dvd collection ranges from Shaun of the Dead to Spaced. Maybe that's this future's foundation: stories made up of charts and font exercises? 

(Then again, if the alternative is reading about old dudes with goatees and ponytails mustered alongside precocious children who fail to address Doom by that paid-in-blood PhD, maybe charts n' Helvetica should be the way to go.)

Batman Incorporated # 4
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Chris Burnham & Nathan Fairbairn
Published by DC Comics

Some of the text diarrhea pages in this one look like they might could've used some editing, but it seems the job of a Batman editor is just "make sure lots of shit Batman titles are available at all times", so you can't really pretend that anybody failed to live up to their job description. There's at least two other shitty Batman books out this week, and last week there was one--if anything, it's like clockwork over at the house of garbage. (That is not the actual name of the publisher, you can call them: Does this have Batman in it? MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.) When is one of these Batman Inc comics going to deal with the horrifying state of things in Gotham City? When is one of these cities going to stand up and say "no, we don't need a Batman, we're doing just fine without the Joker shooting infants in a cellar, you can keep the fancy swing chains and combat boots". On the other hand, this comic is certainly drawn by Chris Burnham, and he has clearly seen a Frank Quitely comic before.

Neonomicon # 4
Written by Alan Moore
Art by Jacen Burrows
Published by Avatar

"I'd just jerked it off because my pussy was sore, and I needed to pee, there on the side of the pool. It started sniffing my pee and then...I'm sorry. Is this bothering you?"

Now, some people are going to get offended because that line is a callback to the rapeython that took up a good portion of this comic's running time. And some people, well, they're just going to get offended because that first group of people are getting so bogged down in being offended by the rapeython that the second group can't have themselves no serious discussions about Big Al's intentions with writing this little Lovecraft 2.0: Better Than That John Carpenter Movie ditty. 

Me? Well, here's the thing: I know that ain't no real lady, and that weren't no real rape, and this story has about as much to do with the patriarchy type of conversation as that story where the old man in the jumpsuit declares Martian Law and then everybody proceeds to hit the pretty fella in the jumble sack. And I know that talking about Lovecraft and Big Al's intentions with all that raping and sexifying and grotesquerizing is a conversation that can only be affected by the offense of others if you're trying to have it in a place you probably shouldn't, like a message board or a public pool, so I'm not much bothered by that neither. But I will tell you straight up what I do not like, which is the fact that that sentence above--the part where she says "and I needed to pee, there on the side of the pool"--is that. I think that's a dumbass way to write that sentence. And I think the fact that Jodie Foster's first name is misspelled on the same page, right underneath the aforementioned "my pussy is sore" bon mot is dumb as fuck, and it makes me all sad and mopey like to think that the next conversation about Alan Moore (the one we'll have after ya'll get done talking about whether or not he should read fucking Scalped, or the one where he acknowledges the supremacy of Geoff Johns skills as a badass writer of badass high five Green Lantern comics) is going to be about the fact that Alan Fucking Moore is too goddamn lazy to look up the proper motherfucking spelling of Jodie GoddamNNED mothefucking foster's FUCKING NAME, and how would that have affected his usage of RAPE AS A FUCKING PLOT POINT because MAYBE HE WOULDVE SEENALLITTLE PUBLIC SERVIE ANNOUNCEMENT BROUGHT TO YOU BY ACADEMY AWRAD WINNING ACTRESS JODIE FOSTER NAMED THE ACCUSED NOT COOL DUDE NOT FUCKING COOL AT ALL

Captain America # 615.1
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by the Breitweisers
Published by Marvel Comics

Jesus, you skip a few of these things after the publisher itself starts admitting that, yeah, even Brubaker is bored at this point and it all goes sideways. Like--remember how there was all that work put into making Bucky seem like a good fit for the Captain America title, and it actually made sense after a while even though you (meaning you, I don't know, you, I mean you) didn't think you'd ever really have an opinion about "Who Should Be Captain America" because that wasn't in any way distinguishable from the "Is Diana Hot Enough To Melt Butter On Her Carcass" kind of bullshit? Remember that moment when you were willing to ignore those hideous--and everybody knows they were hideous, sweet jesus why won't anybody admit they were hideous, does no one remember what happens when the German intellectuals didn't speak up at the first scene of horror--Alex Ross covers that looked like tin foil wrapped around a crazy mailman, just because you actually were enjoying the story of a character named fucking Bucky?

Welp, according to this, you're a stupid asshole. Only old ass blond Steve Rogers gets to be Captain America, you stupid asshole. And while yeah, you shouldn't take it personally, here's the kicker: the only reason you care is because you got asked to take it personally at the very beginning!

Batman Streets of Gotham # 21
Written by Paul Dini
Art by Dustin Nguyen & Derek Fridolfs
Published by DC Comics

This is a piece of shit comic about Hush and other who-fucking-cares characters, like Jane Doe and Italian people, but at least it's the last piece of shit of this particular iteration for the time being. Maybe someday a guy like Geoff Johns will come along and write a story arc solely focused on the Joker murdering all of these shitty side villains. They could call it "Clearing House" or "People Make The Best Fire Hoses". Until then, it's nice to know there's still a place at DC for people to write long love poems to shitty supervillains in the form of ongoing super-hero Batman comics.

Ultimate Comics Doom # 4
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Rafa Sandoval
Published by Marvel Comics

It's hard to figure out what the fuck this thing was or is supposed to be, beyond maybe the writers at Marvel got mad that Jeph Loeb was the one who got to buttfuck the Ultimate characters into oblivion, so Marvel decided to let Mark Millar and Bendis write their own versions of buttfucking the Ultimate characters into oblivion? Unlikely. Marvel doesn't make decisions like some kind of omnipotent voice, and there's no way that the most overproducing versions of Marvel's overproducers actually have the time to keep up with comics they aren't directly involved in the creation of, so they'd have no real way of knowing what happened in those Jeph Loeb comics. PS Ben Grimm marrying Sue Storm is the opposite of romantic, in point of fact, it would arguably be less gross for her to have sex with her brother, or maybe even a corpse.

Invincible # 78
Written by Robert Kirkman
Art by Ryan Ottley, Cliff Rathburn & FCO Plascencia
Published by Image Comics

This is one of those aftermath/epilogue comics that come out after a larger super-hero storyline concludes. They're designed to be advertisments for the series in general, but since current practice dictates that no super-hero comics are planned any further out than a couple of issues (at best), they're usually advertisements for the next couple of months. In essence, it's the equivalent of a television show mixing the "previously on Nazi, Testicle Strangler" recap with the "on the next episode of Nazi, Testicle Strangler" trailer and letting that serve as an actual episode. And since the only thing interesting about Invincible is the hardcore violence and that gigantic white bipedal tiger who kills things, you would do well to give up on Invincible for awhile, because it is apparently going to be about how his girlfriend got pregnant (or maybe just fat?) while he was away. Don't believe it? Here's an example of what's to come: there's a reveal that a character is gay, which we are told to think of as not being a big deal, and that always works especially when the writer and editor spend the first few paragraphs of the letters column talking about how having a gay character isn't a big deal and really, you should look at the cool way they didn't big deal explain it in some big deal panel in the middle of the big deal comic. It's the equivalent of somebody writing the phrase "I've got a few black friends" and then constantly adding sentences around it in hopes that it can be smothered to death with more words.

Uncanny X-Force # 6
Written by Rick Remender
Art by Esad Ribic, John Lucas & Matt Wilson
Published by Marvel Comics

This issue is actually way better than the previous issue, which almost drowned in a bathtub due to a single inch of trying too hard, but maybe I just feel that way just because there's a part in this one where a Deathlok totally breaks the tip off of an arrow and kills Hawkeye with it, which is total ironic poetic justice because Hawkeye is the one who shot him with that exact arrow. Also, a key part of this story hinges on the idea that the world would be an actual utopia if all super-heroes were murdered and resurrected to serve as the undying zombie slaves of smart human men, and that's an idea with just enough real world relevance to push one past the parts where the comic is sort of The Adventures of Fantomex, painted by computers. No matter what, the answer to the question "How many times do I like seeing Deathlok Steve Rogers cry and then commit suicide" is always the same: lots and lots and bunches and bunches.

Deadpool Max # 6
Written by David Lapham & Kyle Baker
Art by Kyle Baker
Published by Marvel Comics

While all of the Deadpool Max issues so far have benefitted somewhat from their connection to other issues, this is the first time one has come out that's expressly tied into the other issues in a way that almost--but not quite--makes those other issues necessary for comprehension. Don't be fooled: fuck comprehension, and fuck writing, you're reading this for Kyle Baker and Kyle Baker is somewhere to be found on every page. Enjoy this one while it lasts, there's no way in hell Marvel has the taste to keep it going.

Ultimate Comics Spider-Man # 156
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Mark Bagley
Published by Marvel Comics

The grossest/funniest/creepy part of this comic is the part where Mary Jane and Peter Parker talk about how they don't understand why they split up in the first place but golly are they oh so glad they are back together now, and it's gross/funny/bleagh because that's the part where you remember that Mark Bagley and Bendis are also back together again and snide snide foo foo snicker snicker men kissing such 'n such. It's actually not too bad of an idea to have that kind of scene though, because reminding you that this is Bendis doing Archie will distract you from the part where Captain America starts dropping life lessons by riding around on one of those motorcycles where you have to lay down on the seat (imagine someone telling you anything serious in an authoritative voice while laying down on a motorcycle) and taking Peter to a cemetery to say "someday you're going to die, because we all die, like soldiers, and I like to fuck soldiers" or something to that effect because who can pay attention to what grandpa has to say, I watched the part of Saving Private Ryan where old Matt Damon cried and said "hope ya'll dead Barry Peppers like how i fucked and made babies, i did that fuckin' for you" and that was one time too horsefucking many if you ask me. Captain America. Fuck Captain America. Speechifying shitbag bitch on a red foreign lay-down motorcycle, real Americans would ride a Harley or at least that Honda that rips off Harley design. Who doesn't know that?

X-Men # 9
Written by Victor Gischler
Art by Chris Bachalo
Published by Marvel Comics

Probably the most effort dedicated to compulsive panel building that Bachalo has done in a little while, although he still takes the time to randomly draw lizards on the side of the page just in case anybody forget what the story was about. Like all of Victor Gischler's non-Welcome To The Bayou work, this isn't as good as Welcome To The Bayou, but it's surprisingly engaging for an X-Men comic, which is so rare that you'd think Marvel didn't actually publish these things anymore, even though they do, all the time, they are just horrible and sometimes ugly. This though--lots of meaningful violence, a huge amount of mean-spirited nihilism, and that the-90's-are-awesome X-Men line-up (Gambit, Wolverine, Storm, others) that appeals directly to people who generally hate X-Men comics. This: pretty weird.

Daken Dark Wolverine # 7
Written by Marjorie Liu & Daniel Way
Art by not Giuseppe Camuncoli
Published by Marvel Comics

Terrible. Why no good art in terrible comic?

5 Ronin # 4
Written by Peter Milligan
Art by Goran Parlov
Published by Marvel Comics

Another installment in the post-Programme library of Peter Milligan comics no one reads or seems to really care about, the weekly 5 Ronin mini-series is now making its period-required stop at the ever popular feudal Japanese staple: the hooker who stabs things. This time around, there's the twist of keeping the geishas sans-make up, in cages, which could totally be true, since my extent of research into this period comes from Lone Wolf And Cub, Usagi Yojimbo, and the clips of samurai movies used on Wu-Tang albums. But hey, maybe this comic is factually inaccurate: your feelings about that may determine how often your parents shrug and put your phone calls through to voicemail. 

Hulk # 31
Written by Jeff Parker
Art by Gabriel Hardman and another Breitweiser
Published by Marvel Comics

It's always really depressing when you figure out that you might actually be one of those fucking fingerjam shitbags who "just doesn't like that character", because that mental train has a lot of potential to crash into a bunch of custom-action figures of Infinity Incorporated, collapsed relationships, and one of those crotches that connects to the belly to form a perfect oval of fat piece-of-shittedness. Characters in comics are a fucking shell game, a trick that keeps people on the teat no matter the talent. It's meaningless shit, evidence of crazy, and yet, and yet, and yet: who likes the Red Hulk? Who likes this guy? He's so irritating, this guy! And yet--that point one issue actually seemed so simple and interesting, like a well made yoga dvd or a book about time management. It's just a comic about a guy wandering around trying to solve problems at the behest of absentee bosses, with robots as friends, one robot in particular that he wants to have sex with but doesn't seem to realize that he feels that way yet in a poignant pushbroom mustache fashion, and the whole thing is drawn in this really friendly, open style that seems to have no parallel to anything other than just making sense. This issue...it isn't great, and it manages to make that point one issue seem like an insult by recapping it entirely, comic style, on the first measly page--but it's engaging and pleasant, which almost no super-hero comic seems capable of being, if we're being totally frank. Everything is so mean, so gross, and while that grossness can be done well, and that meanness can be funny, it's still kind of absent and cloistered to pretend that fucking BOOKS made out of SKIN and Maxwell Lord's BODY COUNT and the X-men version of Dr. Fuckin' Mengele is so impressively mature and adult and oh so smart. Which isn't to say that Hulk 31 is some kind of bellwether--it isn't, it's a comic stretching out Marvel's gross mentality of over-publication, of crass saturation, no matter that it's a well made version of that thing, those kinds of things will ultimately destroy in the long term--but it is a quiet rebuke, one that's somewhat comforting to find. So what if it's about the Red Hulk? It's not like there's some better option available, or that if there is, that it isn't the same one there's always been: songs about fingerfucking, and more of them.

Cockgobbler's Knob

-Tucker Stone, 2011

Comments

[Chris Jones]

I got to "Speechifying shitbag bitch" and then couldn't read anymore due to a combination of convulsions and eye-watering.

[david brothers]

Who is letting Paul Dini write all these Hush comics? At a certain point you gotta take the pipe away, man.

and Invincible actually sounds worse than it was when I quit it a couple years ago

[Dan Coyle]

Will you stop fucking enabling Baker with Deadpool MAX? This is hackwork of the highest order he's doing here, and you damn well know it Tucker.

[david brothers]

Worry not, Coyle. Baker is off the book as of whatever the latest solicited issue is. 9 or 10.

Which sucks, because his work has been stellar.

[Chris Jones]

I think Marvel "switched it" to being a 12-issue miniseries, so yeah, the whole thing goes kaput soon. Which is kind of a shame, if only because no more consistent Kyle Baker, but honestly I wasn't that impressed with it. I was expecting Lapham to go all Takashi Miike with this and was bummed to see that he was restraining himself so much.

[David]

As someone who could not give a fuck about how you spell Jodie Foster's name, I'm obviously offended by your take on Neonomicon - offended enough to include an unsubtle dig at you in my upcoming 8,000 word exegesis on Alan Moore's creepy metafictional rape-gauntlets - but you're right, that is a shitty sentence.

It makes the character sound like the guy who found Being John Malkovich's "shit" in Burn After Reading: "I found it on the floor there.... Right there on the floor there".

So, in the end I've decided that you're alright, Tucker Stone. I'll still be dissing you in my next magnum opus (obliquely, but not so obliquely that you won't know you're being talked about), but you're alright.

[Jesse]

You may not intend these as a public service, Tucker, but you seriously save me a lot of money every week.

[Darryl Ayo]

I was so close to checking out that "FF," until I did the flip-through. Flipped it back on the shelf. I don't quite get this "COMICS ARE FOR *SERIOUS*" thing that Marvel is currently obsessed with. Like Alex Ross, it flatters the fanboy by rendering its circus carnival protagonists in a "real life" fashion, but still, this is the descendent of the most Jack Kirby of Jack Kirby comics. Drawing it like a "seriousie" kills it dead on the page.

And Ultimate Spider Man. Maaaan how many times do they write "next: THE DEATH OF SPIDER MAN" before they actually tell the story. Don't let me find out the bastard slips in the shower or something I'll fight someone.

[moose n squirrel]

Alan Moore likes him some rape.

While I generally like Kyle Baker, I gotta say... the way he draws Arabs? Kind of Jews-in-Weimar-Germany-tastic.

[moose n squirrel]

I would like "The Death of Spider-man" to involve a random tacked-on one-page silent montage in which Peter Parker graduates from college, gets a job in a call center, grows to a ripe old age and dies of prostate cancer.

[Jim Kingman]

Tucker, you really need to read Xombi, T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, Scalped, Fables, Joe the Barbarian (soon to be collected, I assume) and the Daytripper trade paperback, and then you would probably consider the House of Garbage the House of Great Garbage.

[Qbob]

moose n squirrel doesn't get Kyle Baker's explicit use of stereotyped caricature in the Kurtzman MAD Magazine style 8)

[moose n squirrel]

I get that it's an explicit use of an obvious racial caricature. What I don't get is that it's not used on any other ethnic groups besides Arabs and (orthodox) Jews. Ethnic stereotypes of WASPs, Italians, Irish, etc. exist too, but in Baker's work we mainly see ludicrously racist caricatures of Semites alongside sleek, muscly Aryan dudes - which is really fucking offputting, especially when there doesn't appear to be any special satirical/anti-racist content to the comic itself (as there was in the neo-Nazi/KKK issue). The caricatured Arab is just a buffoon and a punching bag, trotted out to be a stock racist caricature and nothing more.

[AComment]

Damn, that's a lot of comics. Isn't there a crisis on?

[Chris Jones]

Also, nice audio post, Avey Tare.

[Shoulder Buddy]

I read all of FF, flipped back, skimmed it again. Couldn't believe it, but no, I was right.

Spider-Man does nothing - NOTHING - in this story. There is no reason for Spider-Man to be there other than to reference What If? #1.

FLAGSHIP.

[PRICKLE]

Tucker-

Any chance you can revisit the "Lex Luthor talks to people franchise" for a grand diatribe concerning AC # 900? 899 was beyond shit