Comics Of The Weak: For Those Who Think Comics Are Beyond Redemption, Go And Try And Find A Greeting Card That Doesn't Make You Want To Yank Out Your Eyeguts

Ultimate X #5
Written by Jeph Loeb
Art by Art Adams & Peter Steigerwald
Published by Marvel Comics

Well, we never really got to know Derek (he was a black angel!), and we never really learned to care about Jimmy (he was a half-Canadian!), but we did get the chance to grow some boners from the way that Art drew that one shower scene (now you know why she's called Marvel Girl!), and if that isn't why Jesus Christ gave us the strength and moral fortitude required to kill all those Native Americans so they wouldn't be around to complain when Jason Aaron exploited their racial predilection towards gambling and alcoholism in his ugly people n' junkies comic, than I don't want to know why Jesus had us do that, because I've read Blood Meredian three times now and if there wasn't a really, really good reason for all that scalping and shit than I think we might have some serious retribution on the way. Ultimate Comics X: it was pretty good stuff.

For a coward.

Batman Incorporated #7
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Chris Burnham
Published by DC Comics

So good, this one. No fooling around, this issue--which may or may not be part of a story that will never see conclusion, but its probably the latter--has to be one of the tidiest things that Grant Morrison has written since the pre-RIP parts of his Batman run, and it's certainly the most front-to-back entertaining single issue comic book he's done since that one issue of Final Crisis that was constructed solely from power-synth-scored emotional climax moments. It's unusual, sure--Batman's appearance in the comic is felt more than actually witnessed, with the character appearing only on five pages, six if you count the nosebone his Batarang snaps in twain--but it's not pedantic or trivial, the way other issues have been. But enough: there's nothing in this issue that screams "better than", this is a comic that just yells "pretty awesome". It's impossible--completely--to believe that DC will make good on their promise to let this story reach its natural endpoint, but for now? There's a good Batman comic out there, people. Get those knees to the floor, and get those wet lips wrapped around a solid prayer.

Detective Comics #878
Written by Scott Snyder
Art by Jock
Published by DC Comics

For those who are only reading Detective Comics so that they can someday turn to their children and say "I was right there on the ground floor of the whole getting-sick-of-Jock movement", you may wonder why Scott Snyder looks to have abandoned the methodical pace that was being used to tell the story of James Gordon, the is-he or isn't-he crazyboy that's been lurking around the last few months. You may have turned to those final pages and said "oh, so he is a completely evil human being, bent on violence and murder, full stop", and then you may have wondered--why was this information delivered so bluntly? Now, the more cynical of you might believe it has something to do with the DC reboot thing that is coming, but that's a bag of horsehockey, and you can keep that bag. The reason is simple: they had to explain where all the limbless corpses in Green Arrow were coming from.

Mr. Snyder was happy to provide.

Uncanny X-Men #539
Written by Kieron Gillen
Art by Ibraim Roberson & Jim Charalampidis
Published by Marvel Comics

I was going to ignore these comics, as they're X-Men comics and you know, life's too fucking short for in-continuity X-Men comics that aren't drawn by oddball curios, but then I heard that my little girl from that Cable series was in this one, so I read it. It's one of those stories where exterior forces provide a plot to disguise that the comic is actually about character and relationship building, but everybody is in on that fact, so nobody really cares. In this installment of that particular skeleton, Wolverine showcases his ability to kill motherfuckers and say damaged, fucked up shit while Hope--that's the name of my little baby girl from Cable, I love her the way you love XVideos--reveals that she's no stranger to the language of emotionally disturbed proclamations of bad-assery.

Witch Doctor #1
Written by Barndon Seifert
Art by Lukas Ketner
Published by Image Comics

Like more comics than anyone would care to think about, there's nothing abnormally wrong with this thing. It's just hyper-generic pablum, the actualization of a phrase like "House plus Hellblazer", a chance to google and then use the word "pablum". It's like this: there's a bright guy with a partner--the partner exists so that the bright guy has somebody it would make sense to explain things to, making the reading of the comic one where you listen in on the explanations someone else is being given, which is always an exciting trick, and they must teach it in some online creative writing course because boy-fucking-howdy does it show up a lot--and this is a version of "bright guy" who happens to be an expert in demonic pathology. Whatever that description makes you think might happen, go with those thoughts, and you can rest assured that you probably just imagined this story or one so close to it as to be indistinguishable in both aesthetic and qualitative terms. So let's all hope you know somebody who can draw, because that's how close you are to being a goddamned champion.

The Walking Dead #86
Written by Robert Kirkman
Art by Charlie Adlard
Published by Image Comics

Holy shit, they really need to hurry up and tell everybody whether the kid has Terri Shiavo brain damage or wander-around-and-be-pretty-much-okay brain damage, because God knows there's nothing else happening in these pages that anybody could possibly care about. Secret Message: to whoever it was that convinced Robert Kirkman to spend so much time showing these boring fucking assholes talk to each other constantly? You need to man up and admit that you were just kidding. This isn't art, it's the physical representation of stories that people make up in their head when they're trying to fall asleep at night. Get back on the stick, Maverick.

Simpsons Super Spectacular #13
Written by Patric Verrone
Art by Tone Rodriguez, Dan Davis & Nathan Hamill
Published by Bongo

This is a comic length parody of the entire Watchmen series, so it's not like it can do much more than hit reference points. And yet, even with its nature as pure exercise admitted as caveat, this is a genuinely funny exercise, and that's admirable enough. While its appeal is a lot like those Archie comics that cast him as a bad ass secret agent or a zombie fighter (meaning its appeal is questionable considering how young the actual audience is), there's clearly been a decent amount of effort put into packing enough jokes in that the funnier ones will outweigh the bad. Simpsons Comics will always be something best taken in small, infrequent doses, but then again, the same could be said for all the rest of them. Especially Top Shelf's webcomics. I mean jesus christ you guys

-Tucker Stone, 2011

 

Comments

[Chris Jones]

I'm just extremely pleased that someone besides me uses the term horsehockey.

[seth hurley]

Witch Doctor is spot on in its depiction of how difficult the wheelbarrow can be while trying to hear if your dick is hitting their lungs.

[Jacob]

They chose the wrong Batman spin-off. Man-of-Bats is a billion times more interesting than Batwing. He even has a less stupider name.

Of course, DC thinks "more diversity" is a bunch of comics with black people. So screw the rest of us minorities.

[D. Peace]

I guess comics are better than greeting cards SOMETIMES. But then there are those moments when you find just the right "Happy Divorce Day, Grampa" card with just the right cat with just the right googly plastic eyes glued on and it really makes you THINK, you know? It works on LEVELS. And you're like "yeah, man... this is why I keep coming back to the Hallmark store every Wednesday. This is the good stuff, right here."

[fakey wakey]

SCANDAL SAVAGE IS BRAZILIAN JACOB