Comics Of The Weak: The Preferred Artform For People Who Hate Art Just A Little More Than They Hate Women

Walking Dead # 83
Written by Robert Kirkman
Art by Charlie Adlard
Published by Image Comics

Well, since they've run out of characters that anyone cares about, it's time to just start slabbing randomly. It's not totally on Kirkman that this situation has occurred--Walking Dead isn't a story, character based or otherwise, it's a concept, that concept being "what happens if you remove the logical two hour time constraint most zombie stories have". In financial terms, it's a pretty mind-boggling success story of a concept, but in creative terms, it was always going to run out of steam, because it didn't have anywhere to go but onward, and "onward" eventually means "nowhere". But until it ends, there's definite potential for some embarrassingly awesome things that will someday be surrounded in regret and apology, especially if Kirkman takes the path of most resistance and turns Rick's kid into the brain-damaged simpleton that any of us would be if we didn't die when a bullet tore its way through our eyesocket and half of our skull. Can you imagine this crew doing mentally handicapped? Comedy can't get blacker than that.

Uncanny X-Men 534.1
Written by Keiron Gillen
Art by Carlos Pachecho
Published by Marvel Comics

Can you have normal conversations in helicopters without yelling? Will the screwed up letter balloon placements on the last page result in a scolding? Does no one have the courage to tell Frank D'Armata that Carlos Pachecho doesn't need to be colored like that Invincible Iron Man guy, because Pachecho can actually draw some shit? Is the inclusion of Gillen's knowledge of relevant pop culture memes going to make an unreadable franchise comic with editorially-dictated content readable? Anything's possible, except for the fact that it's the X-men, and who caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrres.

Brightest Day # 23
Written by Geoff Johns & Peter Tomasi
Art by Ivan Reis & Joe Prado
Published by DC Comics

While Big Two super-hero comics will always be inherently more honest about their raison d'être than anything published by independent publishers simply because independent publishers are too fucking scummy to hire respectable p.r. firms, there's times when the confused scramblings of spandex pushers for releveance and profit are too clumsy to be rewarded, when they're just too damn obscene about the whole "fucking money, need fucking money, why can't i make firestorm make money". Case in point being, of course, this: Brightest Day. It's a comic that has wandered around without a plot for 23 cornball gross-out issues, to the point where nobody even needed to read it, they just had to glance at the cover to figure out which character Johns and Tomasi were going to brainstorm with for a while. If the comic were planned out, the story has apparently been about how a talking light fixture  wanted to manipulate (through lying and jokes) some B and C-level characters into a position where they were strong enough to fight a retcon of Alan Moore's take on Swamp Thing, which is bizarre on the face of it, because on what planet will Geoff Johns brainstorm comics ever outimpact (by sales, which is how you determine "impact" in Big Two cape books, another reason why they're straightshooting Cub Scouts) any Alan Moore comic, ever? On the meta- level, there's something vaguely interesting about a comic where a corporate guy's favorite hobby horses team up to kill Swamp Thing, which is one of those rare characters whose very name conjures up the memory of intelligent comics created by talented risk-takers in an environment where creative freedom was actually permissible.

Ultimate Captain America # 4
Written by Jason Aaron
Art by Ron Garney
Published by Marvel Comics

The story in this one is kind of funny--the miracle Steve Rogers gets in a jail cell, the one that saves him from certain death? It's a snake, whose venom he drains by way of being Capn' Golddanged 'Merica! That's not the funny part, the funny part is much later, when Hawkeye hears the story and says "hey, maybe the snake wasn't God but was, you know, the other fictional character that sometimes shows up to make deals and what not" and Ron Garney draws one fo those letterbox close-ups on the eye panels and you can hear the record skip because WHOOPS, Steve didn't even think of that! It never even crossed his mind! It's just a reminder of the simple, genius choice that Mark Millar made back when he came up with the Ultimate Cap, which is that Ultimate Captain America is just impossibly fucking stupid, like so ridiculously stupid that you spend more time struggling to believe he doesn't eat breakfast cereal with his fingers than you do trying to remember what exactly the point of any of his adventures has ever been beyond hurting people for hurtin' sake. And while nobody likes to credit Millar with anything, because that's like admitting that ejaculation does feel better when you're being quitely strangled, being one of those things that's just fucking true but would totally upset your mom if she ever found out, the truth is that making Steve a xenophobic idiot was a pretty audacious move. You only have to look at America's actual presence throughout the world to realize that being represented by an imperialist monster who punches everything he can find and threatens to kill children despite knowing full that the children's behavior might be the result of biological manipulation and genetic alteration, well...do we need to finish this one? It's fucking spot on, and even when it seems like he's being written by somebody who doesn't get the nuance--which maybe was the case here, you know?--Millar's basic premise is built on such a firm bed of unimpeachable cynicism that no manner of ignorance can dull its razored edge. The only thing ballsier would be to have made Steve Rogers a crybaby isolationist who just wants to be left alone to depressively worship his muscles in private, which is why Brubaker has that version reserved for the continuity titles.

Non-Player # 1
By Nate Simpson
Published by Image Comics

Supposedly in the works for a long time, this is a comic about a girl who lives in King City while living a VR life in the world of Orc Stain, and she and her friends only feel comfortable in certain parts of the color palette. She's also really good at the part of Inception where you create multiple levels in which to live in, but in keeping with the rules of whatever Robert Mckee style storytelling rulebook Simpson read, she keeps her oldest cliches closest, like a droll conversation-based-relationship with a harried but ultimately caring mother, or a salty, wise-beyond-her-years little sister who dispenses sarcasm and support in equal measure. Too many girls, you say? Well, you're a sexist pig, but don't fret: there's also a dude, a (possibly hot?) geek who has trouble in social situations and is clearly a fan of being boring in that way that all perpetually single weaklings always are. Future issues will undoubtably include a conflict over whether the game world is real, a will-they or won't-they style banter between our two leads, and, while this might be a ways off, a period of time when our female lead does get the amazing game design job she always wanted, only to discover that it's just not as life-affirming as she had long hoped. That's if, of course, the comic ever comes out again, which it probably won't, because all the Non-Player hype worked and that food wheelbarrow at Marvel probably hired this guy for some oneshot you'll have to pretend to care about next. See you later, Orc Stain for Kyle Rayner fans.

Izombie # 12
Written by Chris Roberson
Art by Gilbert Hernandez
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

There's a two page spread in here featuring the White Hornet (I guess?) and Kato (cuz he's Asian?) fighting zombies in those weird tunnels under Portland that's pretty unusual, but this is still just another Vertigo series in 2011, which means that it's a mind-numbing comic book with nothing to say. Vertigo used to be the sort of thing you'd point to as next level back when it was doing Enigma and Doom Patrol, and even as recently as 100 Bullets it wasn't a total job and idea hemorrhaging clusterfuck. Now it's just a landfill of repackaged failure and unwanted television pitches, but IDW, Image and Dynamite have had that particular beat locked down for so long that Vertigo's like the new kid again. And as nice as it might be to look at Gilbert Hernandez drawing some kind of anything, it's not like his art is going to magically generate interest in something as generically seat-filling as "characters tell stories to one another and the stories are illustrated differently to indictate their difference". You'd be better off re-reading pretty much anything else the guy has done, especially if it's Birdland or one of the b-movie ones, because that means you'll be orgasming soon afterwards. Those books have titties.

Jonah Hex # 66
Written by Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray
Art by Fiona Staples
Published by DC Comics

Hysterical stuff. If you were starving to death, to the point where you had gone Guy Pearce movie crazy and started eating human beings, would you keep working as a prostitute? Would you keep working at any job, ever? It would seem like "not going to work" is a step that gets taken long before "become a cannibal", right? I mean--i get it, one of the big thrills in Jonah Hex is being able to get off on the character beating and murdering women, and "ravenous cannibal whore" is a unlimited credit card in terms of punch-that-bitch excuses--but really? Has "trying" joined "competence" on the comic book no-no list?

-Tucker Stone, 2011

Comments

[Chris Jones]

"A fan of being boring in that way that all perpetually single weaklings are" is one of the meanest, truest things I think I've ever read on this column.

[AComment]

The Walking Dead has no plot, the X-men currently has no point, Brightest Day never had one, the Ultimate U is best used to take obvious character jokes to their logical conclusions, pseudo-indie hits spawn pseudo-indie knock-offs, Vertigo can no longer knock off itself even less the talent it still attracts, Jonah Hex is kinda like Wolverine only in the Old West only Wolverine could already do that too?

[Richard Baez]

"...there's something vaguely interesting about a comic where a corporate guy's favorite hobby horses team up to kill Swamp Thing, which is one of those rare characters whose very name conjures up the memory of intelligent comics created by talented risk-takers in an environment where creative freedom was actually permissible."

This bit was quite clever.