Comics Of The Weak: I'm Serious About That Baby Owl Thing, It's Money In The Bank

The Spirit #15
Written by David Hine
Art by Moritat
Published by DC Comics

Man, women love the Spirit, don't they? They want to kiss him and rub their privates all over him. It's funny when you think about it, because he doesn't dress that differently than the Green Hornet, but the Green Hornet never has ladies going so crazy they kill (nor so crazy they die) just to get his attention, unless you count that little Asian slave who kung fu fights for him, but I don't think it's funny to make jokes about slavery. And man, that shit where the ladies go crazy happens to the Spirit all-the-fucking-time! 

Oh! I bet his penis has a bunch of baby owls tattooed on it. Baby owls are the first person shooter of making ladies go crazy.

Superman #712
Written by Kurt Busiek
Art by Rick Leonardi
Published by DC Comics

This one kind of cracks you up, because hey: where's Superman, dude? Dog comics? FUCK DOGS. fuckdawgs?

Straczynski's run on Superman has taught this reader one thing, and that is how to spell his name. It's taught absolutely nothing else though, it's just been a fucking shotgun blast of moron right to the face, and bringing another writer on board to flesh out the bad ideas didn't change a thing. It's been anti women, anti kids, anti black, anti intelligent, decent human beings on a nonstop never quits basis. But in what has to be the biggest DC shocker since the dead cat as weaponry, DC apparently ended up with a hot enough potato (the potato was Muslim flavored) that they couldn't bring themselves to print the fucking thing, and they ended up tossing out some dog comics to kill time. Think about what that comic must be, for DC not to publish it! Now, it's wholly possible that this horrible, horrible story arc had all of a sudden, for reasons that make absolutely no logical sense, turned out a magical comic despite being written and drawn by the same people who, for obvious reasons, had yet to make something that even remotely approached competence before. That is a thing that is possible! They could have gotten all the stupid out of their system in the child abuse issue, as there was lots and lots of stupid in that issue. But maybe--and religion is a sensitive subject, so let's tread carefully--it's more likely that a grown up finally walked into the room and said "I think that's enough." 

(Here's a hint: one of these responses is a bit optimistic. The second one is insanely optimistic.)

Ultimate Avengers Versus New Ultimates #5
Written by Mark Millar
Art by Leinil Francis Yu, Stephen Segovia, Gerry Alanguilan, Jason Paz, Sunny Gho & Jeff Huet
Published by Marvel Comics

Thank god Marvel was kind enough to bring such a massive crew of people on board to finish this issue. Having to wait to read one of those comics that hinges on somebody saying "actually, those bullets won't work...because I did something yesterday to THAT gun with YOUR mom and now EVERYTHING is different" would've really stunk up the trunk. That shit aside though, it does bode well to see North Korean freedom fighters showing up as the Big Bad's final line of attack, because if there's one thing that irritates the penises of internet comic book joykillers, it's when Mark Millar gets into contemporary geopoliticking. Make sure you pour out a forty for Black Hulk, gentlemen! (He got shot in the face.)

Green Arrow #13
Written by James Patrick
Art by Agustin Padilla
Published by DC Comics

While all the goodwill built up by DC's Rise of Arsenal comic was long squandered when the new Green Arrow series turned out to be merely a piece cut from the other side of the same shit pie that the previous Green Arrow series had grown out of, it's always worth flipping through the latest issue if you can find one on the stands, if only to see moments like this:

For those who prefer to have their pictures described to them by somebody who is waiting for a torrent of The Real Housewives of New Jersey to finish downloading, allow me: this is the real Green Arrow Year One, a flashback depicting the moment when, prior to the part where he was patrolling-the-streets, the character borrowed medical cadavers for the express purpose of shooting them with arrows, so that he could see how that shooting-people-with-arrows-shit worked. Drink that in, if you please. So many questions! Why did the medical school agree to let a rich industrialist shoot their medical cadavers? Did the cadavers come limbless, or is that something Oliver did on his own? How did he hang those cadavers up on those target plates? Did Green Arrow become Green Arrow to make use of all those extra back muscles he is depicted as having? I ask again, why the fuck don't they have any arms and legs? Even better: did he learn anything, or did he just yank the arrows out and say "guess my arrows made some fucking holes in you, bitch"?

Captain America #619
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Butch Guice, Chris Samnee & Elizabeth Breitweiser
Published by Marvel Comics

It would be a lot cooler if they would just let Mike Deodato or Kyle Baker use Bruce Villanch as reference for Steve Rogers, or, if not "a lot cooler", semi-intriguing, because this whole thing where Butch Guice does the best work he's done...is this ever? It feels like ever, and this is a guy who drew part of one of the best selling series of comics in the category called All Time...right alongside critical darling Chris Samnee who, while being totally wonderful, seems to have been stuck drawing "Steve Rogers argues with himself about being Captain America in the Captain America home ec classroom" for longer than it's going to take you to figure out where this sentence started, which was the statement that it would be better if Steve was played by an obese joke monger with a beard that looks like a shrimpnet. Because it would!

Flashpoint Lois Lane and the Resistance #1
Written by Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning
Art by Eddie Nunez & Don Ho
Published by DC Comics

In the category marked "that doesn't make any sense", there's a manila folder containing the things that shouldn't inspire people but apparently do, and right next to the entry for Hal Jordan you'll find Lois snoozey ass Lane. And while the two characters inspire a general "who fucking cares about those losers" sentiment amongst people who have never even heard of custom made action figure, the ironic difference is that it really doesn't have to be that way for old Lois. No, unlike Hal scumbag fascist bags of shit dogfucking Jordan, Lois is just supposed to be a smart female reporter. Hell, the only thing you usually have to suspend disbelief on with Lois is the part where she works for a newspaper and is also pretty, as in real life those are two of those "twain will never meet" kinds of things. And yet, historically, the only good comics Lois is prominently involved in are the ones where she does something idiotic and Superman has to break his dick in half saving her. It's probably attributable in part to the people who make her stories up, but then again, maybe it's just something in the fabric of her fictional make-up: doomed to a promise she can never deliver. 

Take this comic, for example. That cover-depicting a badass looking chick facing off against a bunch of random DC characters, one of whom (the Demon Etrigan) any normal human has no chance against and should, by rights, be shit-their-pants-terrified of, and yet Lois is packing a nine, all set to fire at their prime time. If anything shows promise--if anything shows an understanding on DC's part that they could actually win some people over to liking their comics and not just buying them in a state of depressed "maybe this time they won't use a weight bench to rape my favorite female character" dejection like some pop culture abuse victim, it's the comic this cover has on advertisement, the comic that's about the take-no-shit scarf wearing lady who plans to shoot some motherfuckers in the face for jacking up her trip to London. And hell, it's by Abnett and Lanning! They wrote all that cosmic Marvel shit that I know at least one person liked, I'll bet this is going to be the pickle I eat, not the pickle I boink the dog with! How could they fuck up this kind of touchdown?

Oh neverfuckingmind

-Tucker Stone, 2011

 

Comments

[Fireballxtc]

DC can't get a single fucking thing right. It's either the art that's a total horror, or the writing stinks, or it's fucking both. And I've tried to be excited about this relaunch, God knows I've tried, but WHY have they invited the same useless people back to stink up the place? That panel with Green Arrow shooting up some cadavers? Yeah, that's the future of DC Comics right there. Everyone involved should be let go post haste, and Mark Chiarello should be allowed to run the whole show, as opposed to (as I currently imagine) being confined to a tiny office in the virtually derelict east wing of the building, behind a door which has a filing cabinet wedged against it, so he can't get out and cause any trouble with his "ideas".

I'm reaching a point where I can't even finish reading a DC book. That Secret Seven thing, with Peter Milligan and George Perez? That should've been amazing, right? And the Jeff Lemire Frankenstein thing - that's a no-brainer. Jeff Lemire does Hellboy, with Grant Morrison's Monster - unimpeachable. And yet, and yet... I wanted to throw the things in the trash when I was done with them. There was such a fundamental disconnect between the story and the art in both cases (in SS, due to an idealogical mismatch, in Frankenstein due to rank incompetence), that reading them was an actual chore.

Dear DC - you need new editors, fucking STAT.

[Tim Hamilton]

I only read the bit about Green Arrow shooting cadavers...

If I donate my body to science, I can only hope my dead body is used for such lofty endeavors.

[seth hurley]

Do people think that the appearance of a Muslim hero is going to make Superman readable?

I guess its better to be depicted as boring as everyone else rather than not at all.

[BrianMc]

Am I supposed to be able to read that Lois spread (um, bad word choice, but I'm claiming my delete key is broken) to see how they've fucked it up, or is it just the art? Which is more than enough "example," yeah.

And the Green Arrow: So amazingly crap, and for no purpose. When Geoff Johns writes crap, it's in an attempt to "blow your mind" (rainbow lanterns that puke blood and/or want lots of stuff!) or to deal with his own sexual neuroses (Hal Jordan is the best, and he gets laid! A LOT!). So there's a reason. THIS, though, is just ... an attempt to get the worst possible idea into the smallest possible space? Is that what the GA series is, like a clown car packed with stupid?

[Paul Slade]

This meme's far too well-established to ever quash it now, but I think the fact of the matter is that Arsenal was supposed to be staring at the dead cat in horror rather than actually planning to hit anyone with it. It was still a really, really shitty comic, though.

[Spak]

As BrianMc says, that Lois panel is unreadably small, which I think ruins the punchline?

Also: If you lived in a world where people grew weird freakish piles of muscles on their backs, yet had extraordinarily tiny hands like that guy in that Burger King commercial about the Whopper, you might want to brush up on your anatomy too. That's what I'm assuming the rest of the comic is about: Green Arrow wondering if arrows still can harm people in this grotesque new world, or if the muscle plague has rendered everyone impervious, forcing him to resort to boxing glove arrows. Because frankly, he was just looking for an excuse to bust out the boxing glove arrows.

[Sean Michael Robinson]

So... I don't think I've actually read a DC comic since. I dunno. 1995. So obviously I've missed some things. But, is that Green Arrow panel legit? This is not some kind of sociological experiment on your part? Because it's just appalling on so many levels, I can scarcely believe it's real. Just...wow.

[tucker]

It's the real thing Sean.

[Tim O'Neil]

I was waiting for someone who wasn't in the midst of a soul-crushing move across the country to jump on the whole cadaver thing. I'm glad to see someone was able to pick up the baton there.

[D. Peace]

That scene from GREEN ARROW combines Liefeldian hideousness, in the egregious incorectness of the anatomy, with millennial Didio/Johns sophomoric shock tactics in such a specific way... a deliberate and calculated way... it'd be hard to believe they're not BAITING you into featuring it in Comics Of The Weak! I'm onto their game. And who could blame them? It'd be fun just to publish this kind of thing to see what that prick Tucker will say next. If I were a DC editor, I would lob you some underhand slow-pitch just for the sake of amusement... since nobody's reading these comics, who cares anyway?

My idea: Judd Winick, Kenneth Rocafort, and a team of no less than 18 different inkers combine efforts on a new TITANS storyarc where Whatever Girl gets weaponized breast implants to impress That Kid Who Looks Like Flash but they're posessed by the wandering spirit of an old Silver Age bad guy who uses voodoo to control the bodies of heroes. The cover says, in gooey green font: "ONE OF THESE HEROES WILL BE SODOMIZED!! CAN YOU GUESS WHO??" and at the end, Doiby Dickles will be sacrificed on a blood altar and I'll go on CNN and talk about how topical and important to the nation it is and the comic will be bagged in black vinyl because there's a very special funeral scene where heroes cry a lot and you FEEL Firestorm's pain... YOU FEEL IT.

Your move.

[D. Peace]

Also... now I'm picturing a comic book world where each hero's origin story consists of training on cadavers they took from a medical facility. I mean, back in the day, they used dummies or punching bags for that kind of shit but that's not nearly hardcore enough. I want a new version of Batman's Year One where he learns about the effects of ballistics on human organs by loading up some hearts and brains and livers into one of those skeet-shooting traps that launches them into the air where he blasts them with a double-barreled shotgun. And what are these valiant heroes fighting to preserve? Human life, of course.

[Abhay]

"As BrianMc says, that Lois panel is unreadably small, which I think ruins the punchline?"

1) That many words on the page = info dump. Info dumps suck; aren't *stories*.

2) There's no clear pathway for the eye to follow with the caption boxes-- I can pick out 3 different ways to "read" that page.

3) The storytelling in that flashback is nonsensical-- there's a flashback container structure but the last panel in it is "Now"; there's no POV on the second panel in the flashback; the establishing shot goes second and the third shot is not in the same scene as the establishing shot, etc.

4) Too many down-shots by an artist that can't really pull of down-shots. Also, not enough depth to those drawings-- way too flat.

5) Caption boxes with "now" in them are the hackiest things in comics. Hack move.

6) The drawings aren't very strong.

7) Does the audience for a Lois Lane comic want to read about Roman slave girls, instead of Lois Lane being awesome journalist lady?

8) Really- none of the compositions work. The camera on the hand holding a spear panel in particular is in the worst possible place-- what is that, ankle-level? Basic storytelling is just off. The writers don't help the artist out, mixing a flashback with, what, three establishing shots in 2 pages...? I've never read one of their comics, but they sure weren't "thinking comics" on these pages.

And so on.

[Abhay]

Also, 9) That computer lettering in the bottom right, for the sound effect is beyond lame. I like computer lettering more for dialogue and captions, but computers can't do sound effects...

10) The artist is struggling to draw a tree...? I'm sure whoever's a very, very talented artist but maybe wasn't given enough time to execute at their best level here, would be my wild guess. That's what that looks like...

Those buildings in the last panel look like toothpaste containers. The composition above it-- Lois dead center, a woman getting cut-off to the right, no depth to any of it... The panel above that is video playing to a crowd of no one which... if video plays in a forest and no one sees it, is it still blah blah blah?

I have to hope the artist had something preventing them from doing their best, a tough deadline, a rough personal life, I don't know what...

11) Doing a flashback on a page means you get to do interesting things to convey that-- here, they opted to place it all in a giant yellow box... and then put a gradient in that box for... some reason.

The colorist is confusing gradients with good color throughout that page-- putting a gradient on the olive green selected for the exciting panel of Lois shoving a spear into some... thing's head isn't going to make that panel more exciting when you've selected olive green for the action panels...

I do like how the artist and the colorist worked together on Lois's hand though, on the panel all the way to the left. That's not a bad looking hand at least this far away. Well, I'm assuming that's Lois... I don't know-- for me, for Lois I always think Jennifer Jason Leigh in Hudsucker Proxy, not Demetrius and His Gladiators or whatever's going on here...

[Abhay]

12) The murderous amazons who will kill all babies and are real serious threats to the DC Flashpoint Universe...? They like their walls to be hot pink because they're also ladies, and that's the kind of color that ladies like.

(I'm okay with Roman gldiator slaves having pink nail polish though-- Lois Lane should have her nails did in any comic she's in, she shouldn't be all torn up...)

Anyways, I'm going to stop now, but my point being you don't need to read the words to see why those pages don't work...

[Sean Michael Robinson]

Okay, I just don't know how to explain the hold that panel has on me. Its ugliness, careless grotesque brutality, and casual implausibility have combined to create in me a feeling of nausea and strange compulsive researching.

DID YOU KNOW- This issue has been reviewed in a variety of places, mostly positively, and with a straight face every time?

DID YOU KNOW- The writer of said issue warrants a full-on interview at a major comics site? And they don't ask him where the corpses' limbs went?

DID YOU KNOW- Those cadavers must be...magnetic, or something, eh?

DID YOU KNOW- That panel seems to be calculated to make me feel nostalgic for those sweet, uncomplicated comics of my youth. Like, you know, Punisher War Journal. And X-Force.

Alright, I'll stop now.

[tucker]

It may be predictable to say "what abhay said", but so what, it's never been more fitting.

Sean: I found the armless cadaver follow-up to beat most armless cadaver follow-ups, so keep your eyes peeled for the next installment in Tucker Reads DC Comics And Finds Weird Off Putting Shit.

[Lugh]

I've pretty much got the stereotypical nerd physique, but I'm positive that the average muscular back doesn't look like a topographical map of a desert badlands.

[Daniel]

LOVED the last few issues of Captain America, its as strong as the stuff from the first 42 issues. I wrote it up and went on about the Butch Guice art and it is pretty much the best I've ever seen from him.

http://supertemporal.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/in-soviet-russian-ice-breaks-you/

[Chris Jones]

"Tucker Reads DC Comics And Finds Weird Off Putting Shit."

If you shorten this to "Tucker Reads DC Comics" it'll have precisely the same meaning.

[DZ]

This set of reviews, and, especially the comments section are hilarious. This all should be bronzed and preserved somewhere off the evil interwebs.

[Gabriel]

I would tap that Captain America, and if his hankie code is any indication, he would tap me too. ::thumbs up::