Comics Of The Weak: Even Your Mother Hates You In That Cardigan

Uncanny X-Force #11
Written by Rick Remender
Art by Mark Brooks, Andrew Currie & Dean White
Published by Marvel Comics

The best part of Uncanny X-Force #10 was when Dean White didn't give Paul Mounts the cheat code to fix Billy Tan's art, forcing Marvel to bring yet another speedballing fill-in artist from whatever country CB Cebulski (the eatin' wheelbarrow) most recently discovered he has high speed internet access to, but "Look How Fast They Fucked Up This Comic" stopped being an interesting game about 5 issues ago, although you're allowed to use the defense that "5 issues ago" was sometime last week and not, as one might wrongly assume, the month of February. (In keeping with the inexplicable dopiness that may just have cancerized my admittedly prurient interest in this particular endeavor, the artist you liked on this comic will be returning in just a few more issues, which means they probably would've only needed one fill-in artist if they hadn't decided to ramp up the delivery of this comic to its current 3-times-a-month schedule.) In this issue, not a lot of people die, but some of Deadpool's jokes are funny. And in a mean twist of fate, an alternative version of Nightcrawler shows up and reminds you that you don't miss him at all.

Criminal The Last Of The Innocent #1
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Sean Phillips & Val Staples
Published by Marvel Comics

The last installment of Criminal read like an audition script for a run on writing Rescue Me, but that doesn't mean that Criminal is necessarily bad-for-life. And yeah, as Sean Witzke pointed out, it is exciting when somebody who never does the Warren Ellis self-promotional spiel uncharacteristically drops a "I think I pulled it off, you guys". On the basis of the first issue, is it earned?

...maybe?

While it seems ungenerous to describe a comic as "decompressed" when said comic features the introduction of an entire cast as well as the death and funeral of one, the uncovering of a secret affair between another, as well as all of the basic facts it takes to fill in a reader on an entire youthful past, Innocent just doesn't read as densely packed as say, this week's issue of Hellboy. That doesn't mean it's a piece of shit or anything, just that it was more successful at stoking interest by things outside of its merits as a comic--specifically, that there's an interview and an essay out there where the guy seems fucking excited, and that's worth paying attention to. This is an artform is populated mostly with people whose ability to market themselves and their output is inversely proportional to that work's value or interest, and that's a truism so across the board accurate that it might be worth someone's time examining if it's somehow intrinsic to comics themselves. When somebody who doesn't run their mouth--about gutbuckets full of food, why you should treat greedy, dishonest slobs with respect or how turned on they get by molestation victims with self-image problems--starts acting sincere, it's behavior worth rewarding. Maybe it won't always be with praise, and it certainly shouldn't be with blind worship. But with attention?

Definitely.

Doppleganger
By Tom Neely
Published by I Will Destroy You

Oh, and then there was the time Popeye decided (or was forced) to go all Multiple Man on himself (super-hero comparisons allowed, check the back cover author's photo before getting your bridge is over britches busted) so that he could battle it out to determine the validity of pure stoicism (I am what I am) and the attractions of a brutal, action Zen (that love/hate duality popularized in knuckle tattoo history). Being a Tom Neely enterprise, there's a pretty strong pleasure warranty, but you can be the judge:

So what if that's too much mindless punching for the comics historian cabal? There's a reason those dinkless wet naps can't please a lady. For the breast of us, Neely's our President tonight.

The Walking Dead #85
Written by Robert Kirkman
Art by Charlie Adlard
Published by Image Comics
For Some Reason The Cover Reminds Me Of This 

"I think it might be good to have more community events. I know there's lots of people here I can't even name. I'd like to know everyone." -Glenn, the Asian Guy, and isn't it weird how you still have to call him the Asian guy, even after 85 issues? You'd think you wouldn't have to, that something beyond that would have come up by now as a signifier but really: name a trait that Glenn has that isn't A) Being Asian B) Being good at scavenging or C) Being named Glenn. Maybe, thanks to his remark quoted above, we can add D) Being the most ridiculously gigantic tool anyone has ever had the displeasure of spending one's time with. Seriously, you just fended off hundreds of zombies because the fence fell over and your contribution to the aftermath meeting is "I think we should have more cookouts so I can find out if the old guy used to like baseball". 

Maybe the better one is the "no, look. I'm not sorry I cheated on you. Fuck off." (Not the exact words, but still kind of awesome if you see the breakup conversation as a character saying "look, Robert Kirkman writes all my dialog, so if you think I'm going to give you a good reason why I fucked somebody else, or why I won't be fucking you anymore, or basically, you know, anything to prevent you from eventually freaking out and taking some kind of revenge on me when this whole does-the-kid-survive-without-a-brain drama peters out, then you're out-yer-motherfucking-mind." Then it's pretty cool.)

Green Lantern Corps #60
Written by Tony Bedard
Art by Tyler Kirkman & Batt
Published by DC Comics

It seems unlikely in the extreme that the major (major? sure, whatever.) death scene in this comic could've been devised in any way by Tony Bedard, who will forever be remembered as the guy DC fucked out of a tenth issue even though he was writing a ten-issue mini-series focusing on ten separate characters, all of whom together made up a super-hero team actually called The Great Ten. After all, the entire existence of a 2011 Green Lantern spin-off comic (of which exist currently in an inexplicable abundance) is attributable solely to one man, a man you may know from a headshot that hasn't been updated in something like five years, despite the fact that he's been promoted to Grand Wizard Theodore or whatever they call corporate creative positions over at Playmobile Sex Army (DC Comics). But yeah, look at this comic, and what name do you see? Bedard, all up and down it like a Duke power forward. To which we have to say: let the victor take the spoils!

See, the last year or two has seen any number of this generations Big Two creators spitting all kinds of static about Alan Moore and his lack of permanent gratitude towards DC Comics, ranging from "stop being mean to me" to "why won't that asshole read this crazy comic/movie/tv pitch I got about British vampires that solve crimes in Williamsburg when they aren't reading Phonogram" culminating in the title-winning "Fuck That Foreign Bearded Wizard" courtesy of American comic's own Bearded Redneck, a gentile line of attack brought to you by Comic Book Resources (who are still, after an entire decade, using the tagline "Not as much of a sewer as fucking Newsarama" as their sole means of advertisement) and their crack team of pieces of shit, but nobody yet has had the cajones that Bedard plops onto the roman helmet of readers everywhere as he does here, actually going to far as to present the full-on murder of what might have been Alan's most inoffensively well-regarded piece of super-hero innovations, which was Mogo, a planet that helped people. "Words are cool", said Bedard. "But they ain't as cool as killing somebody's motherfucking children."

-Tucker Stone, 2011

Comments

[Chris Jones]

Fuck dude, they killed Mogo?!

[Tucker Stone]

Oh yeah they did. Remember that part in Blue Velvet where Frank Booth explains what a love letter is? Imagine that part, but the role of Dennis Hopper is played by John Stewart. And then imagine that you can kill a planet by shooting it with a sniper rifle that you made out of a black lantern ring.

[Jonathan Baylis]

That's ok. When DC reboots, they're bringing him back and giving him his own book, since they're going to diversify and Mogo appeals to the planet demographic. Sorry, Pluto, you can't play. Oans don't give rings to dwarves. DiDio hates midgets.

[Chris Jones]

The only good thing about that is that your description made me go look up clips of Blue Velvet.

Also, is John Stewart evil now? Do I even want to know?(Talk about your questions you already know the answer to)

[Jones, one of the Jones boys]

Holy fucking shit, Tom Neely, ladies and gentlemen.

[Tim O'Neil]

He's not evil but he might as well be. Because, you know, when he put on a purple ring he got all gangsta'ed out in some total No Limit Studios fake-ass camo military gear, because the idea of a strong, intelligent black man who doesn't dream of playacting as a cartoon color rap video thug is just too much for the good folks at Deuteronomy Comics to grasp.

[D. Peace]

Reviews of monthly installments of stories aren't worth reading or writing any more than a book critic should turn in a finished review of just one chapter of a new novel.

I trust Brubaker and Phillips to deliver. They've earned it. Your "Meh, we'll see how it goes..." reaction is way too skeptical. Do you permit yourself to enjoy ANYTHING wholly and without reservation?

[James W]

What's next on Geoff John's "Fuck Alan Moore" tour of the DC universe? Joker gets a definitive origin, is revealed to be the ancient emotional entity for "Scary Clown" (that's PurpleGreen, on the Emotional Spectrum)?

[Chris T]

I don't get all the Alan Moore hate... What did he do that was so wrong? Refuse to suck at the corporate teats of Marvel and DC and get away with it?

[John K(UK)]

This Alan Moore fella, right? In that there DODGEM LOGIC I have read about his attempts to aid his local community via hampers for the needy and campaigning against library closures amongst other charitable and essentially decent and humane acts.

'Slike his addled mind has got himself confused with that "planet that helped people". Who needs that fey "helping people" balls. I hope Mogo died screaming. Silently; because space is a vacuum. Hell, I hear that Alan Moore's been doing that kind of lilac Stalinist shit for years. Yet, in all that time has he written any new Batman comics? Any Wolverine comics? No. No, he has not.

The utter bastard.

[caleb]

"Reviews of monthly installments of stories aren't worth reading or writing any more than a book critic should turn in a finished review of just one chapter of a new novel."

But since new novels aren't packaged and sold one chapter at a time in monthly installments like comic book stories are, then that analogy doesn't really make any sense, now does it?

[Abhay]

I really liked the first issue of CRIMINAL, even though I kept disliking it while I read it...? Part of me was constantly saying, "It's just What If the Archie Gang Grew Up to Be Jerks, big deal; there are no happy What If comics" but I enjoyed it anyways, and at the end of it I wanted to read the next one. I always have that experience with CRIMINAL, where I'm always enjoying it and suspicious of it simultaneously. I don't know what else I enjoy that I have that reaction to. But I do like that book. (Plus, an essay about The Great Brain books! Oh god, I loved those-- con men are my favorite things so a book about kid con men ripping off Mormons, man, that stuff was the best...)

re: Walking Dead-- this is a truly dumb question but I haven't read that comic since Tony Moore stopped drawing it-- why don't they just use flamethrowers? I'm sure zombies are scary and all but just burn them, and you're done. After 80 issues, have they really not figured out a way to burn all the zombies? That seems like a long time. It's not just people still shooting at them with guns, is it?

[Abhay]

Also, in the Walking Dead, has anyone thought to get on a cell phone and call India? I'm pretty sure we cremate our dead people. I'm in India, the last thing I'm worried about is zombies.

Has anybody in that comic really thought things through?

[tucker stone]

I seem to have a traditional suspicion surrounding the first issues of Criminal story arcs, with the exception of Dead and the Dying, which still exists for me as one of those rare "perfect" comics. With the exception of Sinners, I always end up liking them. I just don't like starting them, I guess?

Walking Dead is pretty much the same thing over and over again, and no, flame throwers have never taken the place of people in towers using sniper rifles and mumbling bible quotes to themselves.

PS: Here's a review of a Great Brain book written in 1990 by yours truly: http://www.factualopinion.com/the_factual_opinion/2009/11/books11.html

[Bill Peschel]

What's with the TS hate? Reading his reviews are worth it if only for referring to DC Comics as the "Playmobile Sex Army."

I have no earthly idea what that means, but it still makes me laugh.

[Chris Jones]

On the John Stewart thing, isn't purple the Compassion color? Does one commonly associate compassion with swag? Was there a Lil B mixtape I missed?

[Chris Mautner]

Playmobile Sex Army would be a really great name for a rock band.

[Lugh]

The reason people are "mad" at Alan Moore is because idiotic website interviewers don't want to talk to him about anything he cares about, they just mumble about current superhero comics, hoping for hysterics and Moore is all too willing to deliver, most likely to get them to go away.

[D. Druid]

If you've come to find the guy who hates everything, that's me

[moose n squirrel]

I'm bored with Alan Moore.

[Chris Jones]

Alan Bored

[Spak]

Okay, seriously, that Popeye page made my day.

[D. Peace]

"But since new novels aren't packaged and sold one chapter at a time in monthly installments like comic book stories are, then that analogy doesn't really make any sense, now does it?"

- caleb

Comics are packaged and sold in a stupid way. Right. No argument here.

[Blue Tyson]

Playmobile Sex Army could have Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine reform to open for them.

[dangermouse]

in unfairness to geoff johns, he's shit all over the work of LOTS of better, actually creative writers.

Shitting all over Alan Moore's body of work just gets people's attention the way you don't get when you shit all over Peter David or Marv Wolfman or Mark Waid.

[AERose]

Wait is this dude throwing down against Alan Moore? Like did I actually just read someone imply that Marv Wolfman was a better writer than the dude who basically invented the last 25 years of comics?

[Tim Hamilton]

Why aren't comics for kids anymore?
Bang! Pow!

Tim

[John Pontoon]

I riposte that comics are very much for kids. Young goats-kids, who eat the comics for sustenance, but find insufficient of it. I make the English jokes, yes?

[Lugh]

No, AERose. He's saying that nobody cares if someone craps on Marv Wolfman or the like in the way they care if Moore is crapped on. By "better, more creative writers" he meant better than Johns.

[Halloween Jack]

Here's why people hate Alan Moore.

See, there's this tree, just a big enormous old thing, and the tree bears fruit. Most of the low-hanging fruit has already been picked, but there's still way more fruit just a little higher up. You might have to learn to climb the tree to get the fruit, you might have to get a ladder, stretch a little bit to pick it, you might end up falling and breaking your neck, or falling and just looking stupid. And the fruit might be unripe, or overripe, or have worms in it. But if you exercise a little care and effort, and don't give up, you can still get some really good fruit.

And at the base of the tree, there's a little trash pile of fruit skins and seeds that have been left by others, and there's this guy who likes to grub around in the pile for bits of fruit in the trash that others may have missed. Some of the trash is already starting to rot and doesn't smell too good, but he's diligent. He knows that, since someone has already eaten the fruit, it must have been really good, and that he's going to glean whatever bits and drops that he can from it, rather than risk his neck climbing the tree to get fruit that may not be as good.

And this shabby old man with a cane walks up to him--he has hair and a beard that looks like hair is basically exploding from his head, and a small menagerie of silver creatures crawling over his hands--and says, son, do you know that you're grubbing through the brown and slimy remnants of my old picnic while there's a tree virtually groaning with fresh bounty right over your head?

And the grubber snarls and says, Go away! You're selfish! And his followers, who have, in fact, lauded him for his grubbing, take up the chant. The shabby old man shrugs, meanders off.

And that's why people are mad at Alan Moore.