The Factual Opinion

SECOND CITY: the Paul Duncan & Phil Elliott Interview

by Michel Fiffe

In comics, it’s the quick bursts of brilliance that can be found in the most peculiar of places; a fly by night one shot here, a back up story in a random annual there or even a short run in an anthology. These newsprint vehicles contain some gems from creators that didn’t have the interest or mileage or opportunity to be thrown into the spotlight by the hands of fate (or editors).

Another reliable delivery system for these kind of unsung comics is the mini series, specifically the ones from the independent press. Many examples can prove me wrong, but the mini series isn’t conducive to dragging out a story. It forces it to be told efficiently while still giving it enough breathing room to develop substantially. 

Second City is the perfect example of a layered and ambitious comic book that rewards the reader beyond the brief commitment to four issues. Written by Paul Duncan and drawn by Phil Elliott in 1986, Second City was released by the short-lived publisher, Harrier Comics. I first came across a random issue of that title a couple of years ago. Upon reading it, I was taken by how eloquent and visually striking it was. Even when I found the remainder of the mini series at a local back issue shop, it wasn’t enough. I had to know more about it, how it came to be and who was responsible.

Phil Elliott is a longstanding staple of the indie UK comics scene. His projects include Tales From Gimbley, Tupelo, and several other comics for Escape and Strip Magazine. Paul Duncan was the founder of comics magazine Arken Sword and after a brief stint in writing comics, he focused on writing, editing, archiving all things crime stories. When I contacted both gentlemen to investigate further, they graciously mapped out their collaboration and looked back to examine their work on Second City.

 

SON OF ORIGIN

PHIL ELLIOTT: I’d known Paul Duncan for a few years due to his editorship of the comics magazine, Arken Sword. Paul was helpful in promoting my work and that of other British artists working on the fringes of the comics industry and we often discussed collaborating on something together. Our “big break” came in the form of Harrier Comics, a UK publisher who was taking advantage of the growing direct sales market. This was an opportunity to have our work published and also reach a wider audience… and we might even make some money from it! We weren’t the only ones thinking this. My old mate, Eddie Campbell had the same idea and he and I had a friendly competition at the time to see who could get their comic released by Harrier first. Second City pipped Eddie’s Deadface by about six months. Actually, if I remember correctly, the first chapter of Second City was originally going to be a stand-alone story which we thought could be expanded, and that’s when we approached Harrier.

PAUL DUNCAN: Phil and I knew each other from the London Comic Marts, where everybody from the Fast Fiction (i.e. self-published comics) scene, comics fandom, and the emergent 2000AD/Warrior creators met every couple of months for a chat and gossip and news, as well as to buy the latest comics.

I'd always admired Phil's clear-line style of art, and the great work he'd done on Doc Chaos and Gimbley, and had included some of his work in my magazine Arken Sword (later Ark) as well as interviewing him for the mag. In fall 1985 he rang me up, saying that he wanted to work on something a bit more commercial for the burgeoning American market, and could I recommend some writers for him to collaborate with. I gave him some names, and also, uncharacteristically, suggested myself. He looked through the scripts he received and decided to illustrate my short 6-page SF strip, which was fashioned along the lines of Blade Runner, film noir, and his own self-reflective comics.

Although Phil had worked on pro comics before, I had not, so it was a little nerve-wracking for me. Phil quickly put together the first story, “Contact”, and he even finished it off with a lovely wash finish. We sent copies to David Lloyd and Steve Bissette to get their reactions, which were favourable. Dave suggested changes, mainly to make it more linear, but both Phil and I resisted this because we felt that its air of mystery was one of its strongest points.

At the beginning of 1986, Phil sent a copy to Eclipse Monthly, who sort of liked it, but wouldn't commit to anything solid. While we were waiting, Phil and I were starting to think in terms of doing a series of 6-page stories that gradually revealed the background and a larger story. We showed the strip and explained the idea to Martin Lock of Harrier Comics, who had a stall at the London Comic Mart, and was easily accessible. Although we weren't particularly keen on some of his comics, we liked him, he was a solid dependable person, and he was willing to give us complete creative control of every aspect of the 4-part mini-series.

THEMATIC INSPIRATION

DUNCAN: The first story is a kind of “a day in the life of a government killer” which introduced the reader to the world, the technology, the characters, and the idea that people spent so much time in their room video-conferencing (what we call Skyping today) that they lost all sense of physical or emotional contact. This was written in 1985, before I had had any experience of e-mail and the Internet, and I was even using a card-punch system at Polytechnic to run and compile my programs. I had just read Isaac Asimov's SF mysteries The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun, and this idea of a lack of real connection between people was the impetus of the whole thing. Also, at the time I was a student living at home with my parents, and we were all living in different 8-hour shifts, and I was very much struck by the fact that I was living in the same space as my parents but none of us saw the other for any appreciable period of time, yet we were all interdependent. To this idea of the rigorous control and fracturing of time was another idea added to the melting pot.

Once Martin gave us the go-ahead, we decided to do a total of 16 independent chapters, but with each of them feeding into the other chapters, so that a whole was created. I loved Will Eisner's The Spirit, and wanted to get his sense of completeness for each chapter. Also, I love hardboiled and noir fiction, and I used Paul Cain's Seven Slayers as the model for economy and thrift in direct storytelling. I dived in with absolutely no idea of what the overall arc of the story was. The only thing we knew for certain was that the title was Second City.

 COLLABORATIVE PROCESS

ELLIOTT: I’d some experience of drawing longer comics like Doc Chaos but was more used to creating short stories, often single-page vignettes. Paul was conscious that I might freak out if I was presented with a full 96-page script so he broke the story down into chapters and I received the script in short bursts. This of course meant I wasn’t entirely sure how the story would develop, but I never found this a hindrance.

Paul’s scripts were quite detailed, with very specific notes about the staging of certain panels and the positioning of characters, especially where scenes mirrored each other. This didn’t mean Paul wasn’t open to adaptations or suggestions and we were in regular contact about the comic, discussing different approaches. This was before e-mails and we would often be on the phone for an hour or more, almost every day, much to my wife’s horror when the phone bills came in!

DUNCAN: We worked on a chapter-by-chapter basis. The reason for this was initially because we didn't know if we could produce the work in bulk, and also because giving ourselves short-term objectives made our progress seem quick.

This is how it worked. I wrote, by hand, a six-page script, with a thumbnail of the panel grids, and a full description and dialogue for each panel. I'd post it to Phil and he'd get it the next morning, read through it, ask questions if he needed to, then get to work on the artwork, producing a page or more a day. The following week, I got photocopies of the chapter first thing in the morning, read through it, and then telephoned Phil with notes on specific panels. Usually, the changes were to do with clarity of storytelling. Having seen what Phil had drawn - and he added a tremendous amount of additional detail and subtlety into the work - I reacted to it and incorporated elements into future chapters.

So, on the day I received the photocopies, Phil would be making changes whilst I wrote the next six pages quick enough to get them into the post that afternoon, so that the process could be repeated until the book was finished. Inevitably, I messed up. On one chapter, Phil delivered the pages as written and I was desperately unhappy about it. It just didn't work - I had broken up the timeline to such a degree that it was as clear as mud. So I rewrote it using as many of the existing panels as possible. I'm sure that Phil curses me to this day for that chapter because although it was my mistake he was the one who had to pay for it.

The design of the comics, including the covers (which were hand separated colours) and the title pages, were all done by Phil, and these are really, really superb.

ELLIOTT: As I say, Paul and I discussed the comic at great length and the creative process was quite fluid, with me being able to offer suggestions with impunity.  Not all were greeted with enthusiasm but none were dismissed out of hand and there was always a mutual agreement of how the comic developed.  It’s inevitable that an artist will want to inject some of their ideas and feelings into the story and as long as it doesn’t disrupt the writer’s vision that’s how it should be.  There’s a scene where Jack persuades the girl to leave her apartment and they have their backs to each other, barely touching hands and when Eddie Campbell saw that panel, he commented on the hands, saying, “That was your idea, wasn’t it?”

CONTACT CULTURE

 

Given the nature of their collaboration, it’s not surprising that Duncan’s words and Elliott’s pictures are as tightly locked as if they came from one hand. The execution from one chapter to the next is quite skillful for a first time team.

I couldn’t pinpoint whether Elliott's style was a result of aesthetic epiphany or just a change of pace, but it stands apart from what he did before and after. His work became more stark, even a bit less fussy, but it never lost any sign of subtle expression.

ELLIOTT: Second City was my first attempt at drawing a conventional US-style comic book and it was always in my mind that if it were do well commercially I needed to adapt my existing drawing style. The main change was that I used a brush and more black ink – Paul had interviewed Will Eisner for Arken Sword and he kept reminding me what Eisner said about the use of black ink, which was something along the lines of you can never use enough of it. I also used a dry brush and stippling as the comic progressed making the art rougher, in keeping with the tone of the story. There are still elements of the European ligne-claire and it’s still quite cartoonish and stylized in places – Jack’s hair for instance, with its reference to one of my own characters, Gimbley – but it’s probably more grounded in a traditional US comic book style than my previous work, owing as much to Caniff, Eisner and Toth as to Hergé, Benoit or Hernandez.  This fresh approach would become more apparent in subsequent books like Illegal Alien and Bluebeard and it’s only recently, with Contraband and the new Tupelo book that I’ve returned to my more obvious clear-line influences. 

The only other comic from the same era with shared sensibilities as Second City is Mr. X. They’re minor details: the city as a character, the lone protagonist trying to save it all, the futuristic landscape. When asked about the similarities between Second City and Mr. X, the creators’ difference of opinion reflects the fact that those similarities are strictly surface level.

ELLIOTT: We were trying something different in Second City but there were definite nods to Mr X. It’s fair to say that the style and design of the original 4 issue mini series owed a lot to Mr. X and Watchmen. I liked the way that those comics, and others, used design in such an effective way and I still remember the thrill of seeing each issue of Watchmen – Alan’s elegant prose, Dave’s artwork, John’s colours and the overall design. We never got so close with Second City, but we tried. Harrier gave us a pretty free rein but I wish now that I’d been more positive and refused to have any advertising in the comic and extended the designs onto the back covers.

DUNCAN: Not really. Mr. X, the character, was an enigma and we don't really get inside his head, whereas the whole point about Second City is that we know and feel what's happening to Jack. In fact, I met Mr. X creators Dean Motter and Seth at a convention in 1986 and they immediately saw that Second City was a completely different beast. And you have to remember that Phil was drawing these sort of landscapes a long time before Mr. X was first published in 1984.

If any comic influenced me at the time, other than Phil's Gimbley comics, I'd probably say it was Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta, not only for its tone and message, but for its 9 panel grid system. Second City was published bimonthly from November 1986, just two months after Watchmen started coming out, so readers may think think that the grid system came from that, but it's definitely from V for Vendetta, which was first published in Warrior in 1982.

BLACK AND WHITE

Duncan’s writing is structurally strong and carefully executed, its voice far from precious, but it is the story’s warm tone that balances the comic’s initial coldness. Whatever well of inspiration Duncan drew from, it didn’t strike me as the same one used by comic book writers of the time.

DUNCAN: The theme of the series was how a man finds and maintains his humanity in the face of a cold and uncaring environment. Since Jack, the central character was a morose and laconic individual, he wasn't going to explain much through dialogue, so I opted for a voiceover. This also linked it stylistically to film noir, so it all worked out for the best.

As for rhythm of the text, it really comes from music. I was listening to a lot of Talking Heads, Joy Division, Velvet Underground, The Doors, Iggy Pop, etc. and I was picking tracks and words from the lyrics to get the flow of the text on the page. So, for me, there was a soundtrack for the book as I was writing it, but now, 25 years later, I couldn't for the life of me tell you what the tracks were now.

The rhythm of the chapters was interesting because the 6-page format forced me to jump to a particular moment or turning point in the overall narrative without adhering to a linear story structure. So I could begin a chapter a day, month, or year after the previous chapter, and then fill in pertinent information as I went along. We played with this a lot. In the second issue you can guess at the passage of time by Jack's broken arm going from cast to sling to bandage over the chapters - an idea borrowed from Jack Nicholson's slit nose in Chinatown. Also, the references and remarks about previous events change complexion in the light of Jack's emotional state. This playing with time and memory gives the series an unusual feel, I think.

I cannot speak for Phil, but I was definitely going through the 'alienated and alone' period of angst that I guess a lot of young adults go through as they are growing up. In childhood, the world is comforting and safe. Everything is done for you. Then, when you have to go out into the wide world, you begin to see it in a different light, as a place of possible danger and despair.  You realize that people are not as straight-forward and honest as you would assume - that people can be hypocrites and self-serving. And also that dreams and life plans don't always turn out as you may wish. So, for me - and I can only say this now in hindsight since it was purely unconscious on my part at the time - the arc of the story was a realization that the world was so, and how do you deal with it as an individual.  

EPICENTRE

In every chapter, meaning every six comic book pages, Paul Duncan looked to reach profound human truths through his stories and he achieved that. It's rare for a comic to hit that note once, let alone by a young writer/cartoonist, but he and Phil Elliott sustained it without any posturing. 

Second City transcended the genre it was using; the noir trappings worked in their favor as Paul and Phil created something unique. The fact that the issue I found had been shuffled about between hundreds and thousands of deservedly forgettable comics is depressing. That’s just the way things are given the attention span of popular culture and the arbitrary gloss of popularity. However, distinguished works such as Second City deserve to be re-evaluated and put in front of a newer, sharper audience. Slave Labor Graphics released a now out of print collected edition back in ’92, but at least the individual issues can still be found pretty easily. It’s a work that should still be in print. It's a work that's too viable and interesting and beautiful not to be. 

                     
ELLIOTT: I’m still very pleased with how the comic turned out. I enjoyed drawing it and take great pride in the fact that someone like you wants to know more about the comic, 25 years after the original mini-series appeared. It’s appeared in book form twice with talk of it being reprinted again - there are issues we dealt with in the comic that are almost more relevant now than they were then and I like to think it has stood the test of time well. 

DUNCAN: Rereading Second City after 25 years, and despite seeing many faults in the writing, I'm still immensely proud of it, and think that it makes for an interesting read. There is complexity in its arrangement and themes, as well as in its style of storytelling. At the time I dreamed of writing many comics for many people, but all my efforts were in vain, and it just didn't happen. I'm now living a completely different life than the one I planned, so I guess the theme of the comic managed to prophesy what would happen to me in real life. 

--Michel Fiffe, 2011

Comics Of The Weak: New York Convention Edition

Back Issue Hunting

Despite the fantastic selection that Lone Star, Time Machine and Joe Koch's place has to offer, there's still a couple of comics that I've always got an eye out for. It isn't a physical list that gets adjusted, just a mental one consisting of the various back issues I've long told myself I'd buy on sight if they happen to cross my path. One is the "Joke Book" issues of the Acme Novelty Library, either of the first two Rubber Blankets, and then there's Panter: Panter, Panter, Panter. As witnessed in the picture above, I was able to track some of those down--lazier still, it was all from one guy, who it turns out I had already dealt with once before: at the last New York Comic Con, when he sold me some a Rocco Vargas hardcover and some magazine called "Voyager". Schizo was just something of accidental interest that I'd wanted to pick up mostly to see the infamous letter's column, which totally lived up to the hype. Fast Forward is an old Pirahna (DC) comic, an anthology issue featuring a stellar zombie story by Kyle Baker. There's also a short piece by Stephen DeStefano and Bob Rozakis in there that I really liked. Take a look at this, it's the very beginning:

I love the way the picture's appearance changes in that third panel, and I love the way the changes work in relation to the one in the middle, making the pictures themselves comics as well, but only to us, the reader. Neat stuff.

Wonder Woman came up right before the con, a preview issue kind of thing. I feel the same way about Wonder Woman as my wife did, actually. The only other Wonder Woman comic I've ever bought was when the series crossed over with Superman during that Sacrifice story, and I thought those were terrible comics. (Because they are terrible comics.) This current thing that Azzarello and Cliff are doing is, in fact, pretty  great. I like reading the book not because it's better than DC's other books by comparison (although it is) but  because it's just a smartly written and extremely well drawn comic book, regardless of what surrounds it. Both of these guys deserve a win, too--Azzarello got completely fucked by whatever Rags and DC did to the First Wave stuff, and Cliff's been out there in the covers only hinterland for too long now. As long as the comic stays this good, I'm sure the pangs of what should have been will pass before long.

Bumping

Right after I saw those Rubber Blankets I was soon to buy, I saw Jared Lewis. I knew that meant Sean and Katie Witzke were not far behind, and I was thusly treated to a fine conversation with one of comic's most valuable squadrons of influence. We departed outside to talk shit, which we do better than most. It was a glorious, glorious collection of moments, interspersed with public proclamations of support for Brandon Graham and Simon Roy, who had by then announced the greatest announcement this Comic Con was to deliver. (The Prophet thing.) I also had the latest in a multi-year stretch of pleasant con conversations with Tim Callahan. He's smart, funny and capable of having a disagreement about Scalped's level of quality (still sticking up for the "it's not a complete piece of shit" camp) without turning into a big red faced crybaby, and that's so rare a feat that I might petition the Harveys to start a category for it.

Get Your Shit Together

I bumped into Tim right after my first failed attempt to use the convention for a few of the primary things I would expect it to be explicitly for, which is to find out A) what a publisher is publishing and B) how to get those things so they can be sold in a store or at the very least C) get some contact information for the magical geniuses who can answer those super difficult questions. Because why have that? Why have a catalog, or a release list, or even a business card? Why do any of that shit? What are you, some kind of pedophile?

Anyway, that first experience was, hopefully, just a freak occurrence. The rest of the time, the smaller pubs seemed pretty excited to extol their various wares. (Abrams especially. I like those people a lot.) Still. In an environment where kid's comics are less of a priority to almost everyone concerned, who doesn't have their shit together enough to have a schedule of releases, a business card, a catalog, or at least somebody with a basic understanding of what their company does (or how their products are distributed) manning their booth? More and more, the supremacy of Graphix comics seems to not only rest on their aesthetic quality, but also on the simple fact that they hired actual grown ups to man the phones.

Everybody Is A Liar Except _____

Last year, there was this one comic that got canceled and it's cancellation turned into this ridiculous Tea Party event where everybody and their mother chimed in to pretend that they'd secretly preferred gushy romantic comedies over action films all along, when in reality this was just the latest opportunity in the 900th episode of "I'm going to tell you how fucking much I hate you personally for not liking the things I like, because that's how I exorcise my personal sense of shame over the amount of my fiscal solvency I have dedicated to things that I have only a base emotional connection towards, things which are for some reason still continually failing to fill the gaping void in my black, black heart, i mean holy shit i even got some bitch pregnant and it didn't slow the pain down even one bit". Everybody wrote blog posts about the comic, it stayed canceled, a bunch of made up "new readers" (some of whom were fictionally female as well as fictionally existent) all died in a big omg-who-will-buy-the-comics-now fictional bonfire, and then we all moved on. And so hey, it turns out that the sales on the fucking thing were just fine, and it got canceled just because the publisher wanted to move the artist onto a different book, and the artist wouldn't budge until he was reminded that, hey, this is fucking comics, and artists are allowed to have one vote and that vote is always YES SIR. The only choice you get is how loud you want to yell it.

I Would Have Walked 5000 Miles

My favorite story out of the con is the one that may not even be true, so devoid as it is of any corroboration outside of everybody who got tanked on Saturday night and then said that yes, it was totally true. But yes, IF Ron Marz really did grab Rich Johnston in a headlock and then proceed to punch his head and face multiple times on the con floor, I believe that might even be the best convention story of the decade. It's the kind of fight that everybody wins, especially America. (Rich Johnston is not American.) Awesome.

The Only Thing I Have To Say About Sexism Is That I'm Not it

I used to think it was some kind of latent sexism, but every time i've ever seen an attractive woman dressed up in some kind of fantasy/super-hero costume, I've always immediately thought to myself: "You don't need to do that. You're pretty." (I've never had the reaction to a picture of a woman playing dress up, just when I see them in real life.) I just assumed it was some ingrained bit of white male hookum, not the sort of thing I would explore, just a thought I didn't need to worry about as long as I didn't act on it. It's just a barnacle. But then, on Saturday, I saw a good looking man...in a costume! It was some kind of Jedi/cyberpunk thing where you could see his abs. And I had the thought! I looked right at him and immediately thought: "Come on, buddy! There's no need for you to do that!" So I guess I'm not sexist after all. I just think cosplaying should be left to people who are plain and/or unattractive. Who knew!

-Tucker Stone, 2011

Comics Of The Weak: Generally Speaking, There's No Learning Curve To Intercourse

Gangsta Rap Posse #2
By Benjamin Marra
Published by Traditional Comics

While it would be an argument worth having, let's go all in on some off-the-cuff hyperbole: this issue of Gangsta Rap Posse features one of the top five best Ben Marra drawings of all time. It's not the one where the Bootsy Collins lookalike gets his knife-throwing chest blown apart, and it's not the one where a Wile E. Coyote-mimicking George Clinton catches a four-way golden shower, all of which are awesome. No, it's the one after the mayor gets mildly chided for his incredibly racist langauage, that panel where he cranes his head back and, open-handed, holds out his palms. It's a perfect piece of concise storytelling, the sort of choice that you see everytime a tale needs to describe a character completely but has zero time within which to do so. More than any line of dialog, that dual movement--the head craning back, mouth closed, while the hands go up in exasperation: it's the equivalent of somebody injecting a syringe of understanding directly into your cerebellum. You know without a shadow of a doubt that this guy is one weak, piece-of-shit motherfucker, and that whatever happens to him is going to be fully deserved and yet will still probably not be enough. And even though you have to read through the rest of the comic to get to the panel where his brain beckons three lazer guided bullets (thwmp,thwmp,thwmp) on an express trip right through his skull seconds after he's finished ejaculating all over himself, it's only the extremity of the violence that come as a surprise. Who are you fooling, guy? You knew where that cat's story was heading the second his chin went up.

Red Lanterns #2
Written by Peter Milligan
Art by Ed Benes
Published by DC Comics

This is the one that's about the super-people (they aren't really heroes or villains) who vomit acidic blood and count a cat amongst their members. Their leader, Atrocitus, spent a solid portion of the first issue soliloquizing to the corpse of Krona, who is a member of that race called the Guardians that look exactly like what Smurfs would look like if they decided to make hyper realistic movies about Smurfs. His soliloquy was pretty awesome, the sort of purple prose that seems to have been born out of a cross between Stan Lee, Alan Moore and the break-up diary of a 15-year-old Zola Jesus fan. This issue includes more of that monologue, but this time, it's being used to set up the upcoming plot instead of detailing the status quo, and as a result is far less entertaining to read. In the middle of the monologuing, the comic takes a quick break to remind you of the A-Team nature of the Red Lanterns (if your rage is "worthy", and you can find them, you too can have vengeance wreaked on your behalf--just scream!), and then it goes on back to the talking to a dead body thing. It's weird how all of that is so much better than Swamp Thing, but it totally is.

X-Men Schism #5
Written by Jason Aaron
Art by Adam Kubert, Mark Roslan & Jason Keith
Published by Marvel Comics

I've been doing physical therapy for the last couple of weeks to recover from a broken bone, and so unfortunately I can't really get into this comic due to the way it depicts violence. Not that it's upsetting, but that I just can't get past how quickly the fight would be over the second that Wolverine sticks a claw through Cyclops' deltoid muscle. That would just be it, he'd be done forever. He'd be apologizing and crying and screaming (if he didn't pass out, and he'd probably pass out), and not becuase "Cyclops is a pussy", I actually like Cyclops, but man--that is just way too much fucking pain. You get your deltoid perforated, you're in the hospital immediately. It's going to take months and months before you can pick up a golf ball. Still, even if I'd been able to buy into this comic, there still would have been the stumbling block that, five issues in, it's still not clear what the  basic problem is. Cyclops wants to slaughter bad guys, so does Wolverine, but they can't agree on which age to set the enlistment minimum? How is that a disageement that requires fisticuffs and bombs to figure out? These guys are supposed to be best friends.

Thunderbolts #164
Written by Jeff Parker
Art by Kev Walker, Terry Pallot, D'Auria & Martin
Published by Marvel Comics

If you wanted to write a recipe for failure, there's no quicker way to go about it then to ditch your most entertaining characters and focus instead on the benchwarmers, who you've jettisoned backwards in time. And yet, while that's a brusque and cruel way to describe the plot that Jeff Parker's taken with his Thunderbolts, it's what he did, and it worked.

If there was a better example of Fear Itself failing to prove the value of those big round-up meetings that Marvel's various writers use to "architect"-uralize the various strands of comic book community, it could definitely be the Thunderbolts portion of the equation. Post Siege, Thunderbolts was the strongest of the various Avengers-related titles that Marvel was putting out. During Fear Itself, a series that prominently featured at least one of the Thunderbolts team and would therefore seem to be one of the book's most deserving of spotlight and attention, the book languished on the vine. And while Marvel seems to have fully embraced the editorial dictation style of comics--despite DC's consistent publication of 20 page pamphlets of proof that said method results in dire, hellish comics--this current Thunderbolts storyline reads like a writer going "well fuck it, can I at least take the guys you don't care about back in time, then?" The result is, so far, the most vibrant and engaging story since those first few issues. Hyde chucking bodies into Man-Thing's coma-rendered silent maw, the gooftastic 50's get-ups, and the first two page spread Kev Walker's had that stands eye-to-eye with his heaven-sent work on ABC Warriors: this comic just jumped back to the front of the line.

Action Comics #2
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Rags Morales, Brent Anderson & Rick Bryant
Published by DC Comics

If there's one thing that Grant Morrison is good at but never gets credit for, it's that he does decadent shit in super-hero comics in a way that doesn't seem sleazy. (There's one exception I can think of that comes to mind: when the Joker cut his own tongue in half. But considering what keeps happening in every recent issues of Detective Comics, it's highly probable that Tony Daniel threw that in on his own.) Most of the time though, Morrison manages to pull off the very thing he seems to have wanted to criticize Mark Millar for: Grindy, too-old-for-genre FX channel twists. He gets credit for the way he traffics in horror stuff, like Pig in Batman & Robin or the galloping terrors in that Final Crisis spin-off, but not so much for the other things, the things he (and his readers) know would be a little bit embarrassing to explain if somebody actually asked what you were reading on I Bet Strangers Will Ignore The Ketchup Stains And Be Impressed By A Prominent Display Of Watchmen Day. This issue of Action goes down that road apiece, focusing on the story of Lex Luthor's attempts to go all Jack Bauer on a tied-to-chair Superman, and while the resulting experience doesn't manage to go anywhere in terms of plot, it still gets to be a relatively decent single issue experience. It's a bunch of jerk-offs trying to torture Superman: who doesn't want to see that? People who hate having a good time, that's who.

Casanova Avaritia #2
Written by Matt Fraction
Art by Gabriel Ba
Published by Marvel Comics

I can't remember which comics reviewer/blogger/oversharing baby it is that made the claim that there's never a right time to include violence against animals in a story, but I sure wish I could, because how fucking wrong would a copy of this issue make them? It's great too, seeing that image of violence-against-pandas juxtaposed with one of this website's own personal shudders, which is a scene where the comics creator pops up in story. Because, honestly, this might be the first time since Jim Aparo drew himself in as an active player in a Batman story that the trick worked. (In that same issue, Bob Haney was depicted with a shotgun and no home phone, a classic example of how you make the fudge realer.) There's just something about this particular run on Casanova--maybe it's Fraction's confrontational attempt to exorcise whatever memories his reader's have of the guy who used to excitedly tell you about why he threw in a Liquid Swords reference, maybe it's that Dustin Harbin's fragile glass lettering makes every line seem more drunk with meaning, maybe it's that the plot seems redacted by memory, black sharpies across the script. Whatever it is, this is an exciting, exciting, comic. It's gnarly, unfriendly and ungainly, but it's still a story. Feeling like an out of the loop party crasher--this is definitely what a five dollar comic should be like.

-Tucker Stone, 2011

Economist Versus Idiot: Your Blood, Their Rover

The World Last Week, In Blurbs

-Michael Sata, who used to be a porter at a London railway station, became the president of Zambia. I'm not sure how this will affect me emotionally the next time I have an opportunity to tip a porter, but at the same time, I do not usually travel with a lot of luggage.

-The Dalai Lama is super positive that he wil live to the age of 90, and he will wait to pick his successor until that point. China's thoughts on the issue are mean.

-Chris Christie still might be a contender for the Republican nomination, even though he keeps saying he would preference is to eat his weight in waffles.

-In keeping with their status as worst state in the entire country, Florida may throw their primary in January, which will do the country no benefit, while ensuring that you will have to hear assholes talk about who they won't be voting for way earlier than usual.

-Although the left wing has not taken control of the French Senate since 1958, all French people are liberal pussies, or at least, that's what my father has always said. If he's right, this is a meaningless change.

-The president of FIFA wrote a letter to the president of Brazil, and everybody got to read it, and it said "FIFA thinks all ya'll are a bunch of fuck ups", and now Brazil is pretty embarrassed.

-Mahmoud Abbas went ahead and applied for full UN membership, and now there's going to be a big vote to find out who Palestine's real friends are.

-Just to be clear, there's still a total civil war going on in Libya. I know that got boring really fast, but it's still happening. However, Eni--an oil company--got up and running again, despite the war thing.

-Berkshire Hathaway bought back some of its own stock, which is basically Warren Buffett's way of saying that he thinks he's awesome. He has a good track record!

-Houses in America keep going up in price, even though the sales figures keep going down. So it's neither a buyer's NOR a seller's market. It's not even a market! It's just a sad, empty place, where everything dies.

-Groupon had to delay their public stock offering for the umpteenth time because they had listed the money they have to pay other people as money they get to keep. How did they just now realize that wasn't okay?

Leaders (the opinion/editorial section of the Economist)

-The cover story--man, that's an ugly cover--is the Economist firing off a public/private message to the world's leaders, reminding them that fixing the global economy (i.e. Greece, i.e. deficits, i.e. Euros) has to take precedence over arguments about...you know, whatever the hell else it is they're talking about. A snoozer, this one, but the part where they look at America and say "yeah, nobody is really sure what the hell they're doing over there right now, but they should probably stop" is pretty great.

-Samsung gets doubled up on in this issue, so this initial leader is more of a blurby synopsis of that longer article. Basically, Samsung have moved from the "pretty successful" phase into their "supreme, God-rebuking" period of money-making. In a bit of a surprise move, they're going to be moving into solar panels, LED lighting, medical devices, biotech drugs and electric car batteries (while bringing $20 billion dollars of investment money with them) all because they realized selling people televisions and LCD screens is, on the long term, pretty boring. (Not joking!) The article gets even deeper cuts in--their cult of personality management style that revolves around legendary bonfire parties, an impossible to explicate ownership lineage hid behind the founding families, Samsung's country controlling tendrils of power that have forced legal pardons--and it's worth taking a look at, even if one's interest is purely prurient.

-Oh, did you hear? Einstein might be wrong! About what? Something. Something about things going faster than the speed of light. In your face, years of study! I got the INTERNET.

-It's really fun for us non-Russians to joke about the awesomeness of Vladimir Putin, because from basically every non-Russian place, the guy is a fucking riot--that hardcore trunk-like muscle carcass that he keeps shirtlessly exposes, all those yeah-i-got-a-facelift smile/snarls, and the most wtf horseback posturing you can find outside of white collar prison therapy sessions--and yet, no, this isn't really funny, is it? Even after years of knowing that he wasn't really going anywhere, full awareness that he told Dmitry Medvedev when he could flush the toilet, after months of assuming he was on the way back to the Presidential seat, now that it's finally happening, the audacity is almost too much to comprehend. This is nasty business, and this essay doesn't hold it's punches.

-Most articles about how "the internet should be free" are written by people who should talk less and bath more, but this one is pretty solid. Basically, it's just a reminder that you're going to have a bunch of new websites (ones with domain names like .xxx) to deal with pretty soon, and it would be best if China wasn't in charge of what you could do with them. It's not an Atari Teenage Riot song, but it wears the title of one with class.

-The closing leader is a report card on David Cameron, who the Economist thinks could do better, specifically at public-sector reform, but that he should also ease up some of his more extreme positions on spending. (They also want him to open a bank? I'm sorry, I'm just not up on Britain's economy these days.) Oh, and they want him to ignore the tabloids! I can agree with that. I'm certain they are poppycock. Tabloids so often are.

Letters (people writing to the Economist)

-All of the letters are wonderful this time, even the one where the guy who works at some hippie college in Berkeley writes in to say "hey, we're super hippie dippie out here in fucking Berkeley, pot smoke feminism equality sandals philosophy", but the best letter is the guy who wrote in to say "hey, I read where you said that dogs were better than cats, and I wanted to let you know I totally agree, because dogs rule/cats drool". People who write letters to say they agree with you are the best people in the world.

United States

-There's already one Keystone pipeline going through Nebraska, but TransCanada is readying their second, the Keystone XL. It's tar sands oil, coming out of Canada, and it's got Nebraskan Republicans teamed up with hardline environmentalists, proving that people can act like human beings with those they disagree with when there's actual shit going down. Bring on the fake alien attack, I say! We could all hug each other once more.

-Without money, the judicial system cannot function, and without the judicial system, where would the US end up? We might soon find out in places like California, Ohio, New York or Georgia. It's impossible to overstate how fundamentally idiotic it is for the current state of judicial bankruptcy to continue, so hey, get ready to be irritated.

-Another Congressional shutdown might be on the way, because hey, that method worked out so well the last time. November 18th is the day you should pummel yourself into a coma if you want to avoid hearing about it--that's when the next big brawl gets rolling again.

-If you only read one article about how the unemployed stats are getting better just because a bunch of unemployed people are no longer being labeled unemployed due to the length of time they've been without work, it probably won't be this one, because every form of news media has published one of these particular articles at least once a week for the last two years. If it is your first one, then hello: where have you been all my life? I have a couch.

-If you want to know why there isn't a National Slavery Museum in Virginia after 18 years of trying, you can start piecing together the story here, but the short answer is that corruption had sex with embezzlement and they had a baby named bankruptcy.

-The population numbers in New Orleans have yet to stabilize, to the point where it's as small as it was in 1910, when it was mostly swampland. Read more about those statistics, and some racism, here.

-The Economist has a firm anti-death penalty take most of the time, and they've the got the dial set for disgust in this article, which is about the recent decision in Texas to take away a prisoner's choice of last meal. I don't want to know people who get erections about taking away last meals. So tiresome.

-Lexington seems a little annoyed that he/she has to deal with the Republican presidential nominee question so early, and his final conclusion--that Democrats would prefer a battle between Obama and Rick Perry over a Romney/Obama contest, because Romney could win--is a bit rushed. Still: it's Lexington, and Lexington is always a pleasure.

The Americas

-How's about a breakdown of Brazil's weird recent history of football based criminality, much of it laced around the run-up to the 2014 World Cup? This is good old bloodless crime, a nice break from massacre based journalism. Thievery!

-Back in 2009, America started pushing Jamaica to extradite a powerful druglord. It wasn't until May 2010 that they finally went after him, and when they did, 73 people died in the process. The murder rate then fell by 40%. This article isn't about that--it's about the resignation a of Jamaican prime minister Bruce Golding, who oversaw the extradition--but man, it really should be, right?

-Chile imports 75% of its energy, sometimes from countries that have to stiff them when they run low themselves. They're running out of publicly acceptable places to put dams, Fukushima chilled their nuclear enthusiasm, and decent subsidies are required to make solar work. And two weeks ago, the power went out for half of the countries population. It was back in a few hours, but the future looks to be getting worse.

Asia

-Here's a dark quote for the history books: "We have no money. All we have are the crazies. So the crazies it is." That's a retired senior Pakistani official explaining why he believes his army will stay in bed with jihadists, no matter what Mike Mullen (and his hands, check this out) has to say about it. The article moves onto a more nuanced look at the Haqqani network, but it's that blunt quote that sticks.

-Japan may turn to Europe for their next jet fighters, now that America has banned the export of the elite F-22. The US bristles at the mere suggestion--Japan has bought fighters exclusively from American companies since 1960--but hey, that's what happens in a free market.

-The battle against the death penalty in Georgia may be out of our news cycle for a bit, but in India, the subject is a fresh one. This time around, it's because of the constant postponement cycle that has seen men languish for decades. (India has hung only one person since 1995, just to give you an indication.)

Middle East and Africa

-While Zambians once formed a single file line for the express purpose of kicking Chinese behind, they've now come to terms with the country, who are now the hungriest consumer of Zambia's chief export. (That would be copper.) Money doesn't just rule everything around, it also messes with one's emotions.

-Surprising everyone by showing up in the middle of the night, the President of Yemen got back home from sleepaway camp just in time to catch some more of the non-stop fighting that threatens to turn into a full scale civil war. This guy, you guys, this guy!

Europe

-The subtitle to this article about French governmental corruption (titled "Bad Smells") describes a "complex party-financing scandal", and I'll double down on that. Part of the reason that more finance people don't go to jail is that it doesn't seem possible to explain what they did wrong in less than 16 paragraphs. Huh?

-Although Charlemagne seems to have a grudging respect for Angela Merkel's steely patience, he/she also wants her (and Germany) to hurry up and and make something happen, as they've decided the wait-and-see game is "weakening growth". They also acknowledge the concerns of an earlier-in-the-issue letter writer, who warned about the tendency talks of panic have towards ensuring its existence. Merkel's always scared this magazine though, one might keep that in mind.

-It's unlikely that Alexei Kudrin rode on a white stallion named Heroism on his way back from Truth and Justice Mountain, but the fact that he responded to Dmitry Medvedev's demand for a retraction or resignation by saying, basically, "shut the fuck up and I'll let you know what I'm going to do when I feel like telling you, bitch" is pretty spectacular. (He resigned.)

Britain

-This is a continuation/expansion of the op/ed on what David Cameron should do to make the Economist happy. The short version of it would be a bunch of cheerleaders spelling out the words quantitative easing, as far as I can tell.

-Never heard of the Richard Scarry rule, check it out: it's never in the governments best interest to attack things that regularly show up in childrens books. Farming, firefighters, etc--it's your ass you're playing with. (The actual article is about how David Cameron is doing exactly that in his attempt to extract cash money from Britain's National Trust.)

-Man, I hope they put this one on the public part of the website: it's Bagehot's take-no-prisoners snarkdown on Ed Miliband. British people hurt fucking feelings, holy christ. "Baby-faced, panda-eyed policy wonk"...man. Cold-blooded. There's a serious article about what a loser they think the guy is as well. Then again, the Economist has always hated everybody in its own government.

International (the weirdo section)

-This is a longer look at the Internet Governance Forum, which was a recently held conference in Nairobi where the world's governmental officials had to share space with activists to discuss the future of the web. There was a large range of discussions at the thing, from who should be in charge of domain names to whether social media is really accomplishing all it claims to. The most interesting aspect is probably the equality with which everyone is allowed space--a Chinese diplomat has the same basic rights as a well-heeled activist. Of course, there's the whole plane-ticket-to-Nairobi bar to clear, but beyond that: freedom!

-The other big dog of the internet--in terms of money, in terms of traffic--is porn, which still controls the horizontal whilst showing you the vertical, no matter how many cam and clip sites show up to give it away. Here's a state of the XXX industry address, Economist style. (Third highest number of comments on their website, by the by. Only shark fin soup and Charlemagne interest the world more!)

Business

-This article on Amazon times out so closely to the Kindle Fire announcement that its hard not to see it as a public relations creation, especially as so much of it is well-known--Amazon is cheaper than most retail stores? who didn't know that?--but this was the first time I read how tiny (3-4%) their actual profit margin was, after investing so heavily in cloud computing. So read that part, I guess?

-Mediasift and Gnip: those are the names of the company who are making a shitload of money copying and pasting what you just said about Muslims on Twitter. So yeah, those awesome gags you're giving away for free? They make 30 grand a month emailing copies of 'em (along with thousands of other comments about what movies TBS is replaying right now) to their many happy customers.

-If you want a job that never goes out of style and always turns a profit (at least, until Jericho falls), start selling shit to rich people. Examples: a whole page worth.

-Global air-traffic management "is stuck in the 1950s", or so this article says. (It makes an excellent case for that being true!) The topic came up in Obama's recent jobs speech as being an area where more work could be had for electronics firms, and it's one environmental types could get behind as well, as better management would mean shorter flights, and shorter flights means less fuel. Still, there's a lot of agreements that have to be made first--what standards, and who watches them, for example--but hey, this might be the "big project" that makes a legacy. (Except for the fact that it isn't that sexy.)

-There's a lot of money in making and selling clothes to people who weigh more than people who don't mind going out in public to buy clothes. Ah, and water: that shit is totally wet.

Finance and Economics

-For those of you well-versed in currency divergence, prepare yourself to find your education duly rewarded: one, two. Neither of these articles made an impact on the pink stuff beneath the bone hat of your trusted associate, and yes, I'm feeling the shame.

-Some things change, some things never will: Buttonwood is the weirdest writer the Economist employs. This time around, he singles out Kate Winslet as the "gotcha" example of overly emotive actors desperate for awards, all for the purposes of making a tenuous "split personality" point about financial markets.

Science and Technology

-Physics gets double duty this time around, with an extensive look at why it's probably not a good idea to abandon America's largest particle accelerator (the Tevatron, which was turned off a little over a week ago), even the LHC has taken over the spotlight. The second, shorter article is about how the founder of Research In Motion (the Blackberry company) spent a quarter of his own personal wealth setting up the world's biggest institute for the study of theoretical physics. That's fucking awesome news.

-There's another place besides film criticism where the stay-at-home thinker remains king, that place is astronomy. Like bird-watching but less active, amateur lookee-loos stare at downloaded pictures, determining whether bright blip #29673922 is something special. For now, computers can't do it as well.

-This article about how we're all one step away from being a "little Hitler" will quench one's thirst for pithy conversation points to bring up at parties, but that's about it. Sometimes I wonder if that's why they get printed in the first place--it's useless information, but you could totally bring it up at an embassy party/corporate function and seem like quite the Renaissance individual.

Books and Arts

-Two Dickens books are coming out, one that focuses on his life up until he turned 26 (that's when he started signing his writings under his actual name) and another that goes cradle to grave. It's a positive review, and the best fact that gets yanked out is the part where Dickens, tired after a long day of writing, splashed himself with water, Rocky montage style, just to get out those final pages.

-In case you haven't heard, Julian Assange bailed on his own autobiography after the ghost writer had finished a first draft, so they went ahead and published it anyway. As the Economist points out, the guy is a bit of an "easy target", but that doesn't mean he isn't sort of interesting. The most jacked up anecdote has to be the part where he meets the biological father who abandoned him, only to see they share the same taste in books. Genes pulling jack moves!

-I don't know if this Grayson Perry guy's art is my thing, but I love the line "Men rationalize their love of aesthetic things under the guise of function." It's so true!

-Not a lot of books get censored by the CIA and still show up on the shelves, or at least, not a lot make that a selling point. Ali Soufan gets to have one, it's Black Banners. He's one of the guys who was in that room and said "that waterboarding shit isn't going to work, so fuck you, i'm out".

-Never read a Robert Harris book in my life, but apparently the explanation of hedge funds in his newest one turned on the lights at the home of the book editor over at Economist Central, so check it out if you've got an allergy to that Kramer guy.

Obituary: Tiger Patudi

-Tiger was a badass cricket player with one eye ("he saw two balls, and he hit the inside one") who inspired his country when they needed it. He was also a prince, the husband of a Bollywood star, and, according to the obit writer, an occasional sulking aristocrat.

-Tucker Stone, 2011

My Wife: Understands The Cosplay Impulse

Before I delve in here, I must come clean about a coupla things. 

First - I don't really know anything about Wonder Woman except for what I remember of the Linda Carter TV show, and what I remember of that show is that I watched it, and it was a television show.

Second - I don't really know my mythology. My mythology is familial, my mythology is World War 2, it's Russia, it's stereotypes. Greek stuff? I don't know Greek stuff.

Sooooo.....there's a lot in this comic that I didn't totally grab ahold of.

That being said? This was a delightful read! While I didn't get all of the reference, I enjoyed spending time with such a cool story. There was so little dialog and narration here and when there was dialog, it wasn't a literal, redudant explanation of what was on the page--which I feel like happens in comics way too often--but instead, the language and writing expanded it in a way the art couldn't, making it even better. (That first time it happens, when the line "...sun of a king" shows up was particularly awesome. There's no way to draw that the guy is toying with the girls he's about to kill by letting them know he isn't human, and there's no way we would hear the distinction in a movie if an actor said the word "sun" instead of "son"--it's only going to happen here, in text. Knowing where that scene goes at the end, that line gets even cooler.) And the final reveal of where that narration comes from--wow. That was really awesome, and so dark. It wasn't what I expected, and I loved it.

And yet? I have to say that my favorite parts of this comic were the one's without any words. For instance, there's a series of frames where a woman clad in a hooded cape of peacock feathers, uses a scythe to kill a horse. Whoa. The colors of that cape, juxtaposed with the barn and the horse. That blade swinging amongst all the softness and silence, sharply singing its song. The frame where you the horse neighing, yet there's no sound effect written - I loved it all. 

Now, how about those two horse-people-mythological-figures bustin' down the door! I stared at that for, like, five minutes. The harnesses, the legs of the horses, the violent charging. There's so much "motion" in one page, it's like--have you ever been around horses? They have the most intense presence, with all that power caught up in their muscles. It's unreal, being close to them, realizing that they've just agreed not to "attack", that domestication is just a promise between us and them, a promise not to run us down. I look at the legs on those centaurs and they've got that kind of power. They're scary.

What about Diana? Wonder Woman herself? I just love all the angles that she's drawn from - her long hair flowing down her back as she looks over her shoulder, opening her serious closet full of serious equipment; the intense look in her eye. I especially love the frame where she's jumping in the air to protect the chick in her underwear, how she blocks and destroys an arrow that was coming straight toward her. YES. See, now I get why you would wanna be Wonder Woman for Halloween. Before, it seemed like a costume. This seems like something more...badass.

The end of this comic, which I alluded to before is depicted in such a cool way that I want to go dig up some mythology books and learn a thing or two. I stared at that last page for what felt like hours. Those girls got burnt to a crisp. I love that the last frame is one of their falling, fiery bones. Just a dark piece of confirmation that yes, those three girls are completely burnt up and dead. Make no mistake, accept no substitute. RIP.

This was a delightful read. I came in not knowing a lot about Wonder Woman or Greek Mythology, and nevertheless, I was able to enjoy this comic. I guess that means that you've got a successful #1 on your hands.

-Nina Stone, 2011

Comics Of The Weak: Free Witchblade T-Shirts For Everyone, Unless They Are Girls

Whoops, this is supa late.

Mister Terrific #1
Written by Eric Wallace
Art by Gianluca Gugliotta
Published by DC Comics

So, part of this comic rotates around a scene where the main character's pregnant wife dies (this happens on the fourth page, which is two pages after some of the most confusing panel transitions any of these DC book's have had thus far), and while you might make a case for some kind of anti-female thing, you should know in advance that our Mr. Terrific Terrifically rebounds from the dead wife/dead baby thing by becoming besties (with benefits? the characters say no, but the wardrobe choices scream unreliable narrator!) with Power Girl, who may or may not still be a super-hero, but definitely still has gigantic breasts. Anyway: the wife dies on the street, and they take the baby (which is also dead?) out of her body and Mr. Terrific buries the two of them in their own pine boxes? This is on the fifth page? This is...what? Aren't there rules against using only two pages to introduce a pregnant wife and then kill her and her baby and then saw her dead baby out of her body so he/she/it can be placed in a separate casket AND then including a scene a few pages later where Power Girl argues with another girl over who might make the best fuck blanket for the main character? Look, you can jump time all you want, but killing a preggers/baby extraction/hotties catfighting over my man's junk has gotta be too much shit to shovel into one story, right?

Voodoo #1
Written by Ron Marz
Art by Sam Basri
Published by DC Comics

Jesus, talk about spinning on a dime--never seen that many blogger types pull screeched tire reversals, and for what? So they wouldn't "lose access" to....jesus--look, this comic is exactly what the previews made everybody think it was going to be, a big steaming piece of shit about a stripper talking to other strippers about all the cliched horseshit that imaginary fictional strippers talk about in fictional stripper stories written by guys who go to strip clubs (or worse, by guys who don't go to strip clubs and act super fucking precious about not going to strip lubs, as if there's some prize to be won by impressing complete strangers on Facebook with how much more public you are about your fucking prissiness compared to some imaginary strip-club-attending stranger who also writes lousy screenplays and shitty comics). It's drawn in such a way that you can tell the artist is trying to split the difference between drawing sleazy enough that he can make some bank off of the original pages but not so sleazy that he has to drink himself into blindness just to forget about how far away he is from A Career Sane People Dream Of Having. It's Voodoo, and it's apparently a big time hit. Thanks a bunch.

Justice League Dark #1
Written by Peter Milligan
Art by Mikel Janin
Published by DC Comics

This is another one of the DC new 52's, this one hoping to raise some interest due to its aping of Marvel's insanely popular Dark Avengers for some titular inspiration. It's the most Vertigo of the bunch (unless you count the remix treatment being given to Animal Man and Swamp Thing), written as it is by Peter Milligan, who is at this point more responsible for Shade The Changing Man than creator Steve Ditko could ever hope (or will ever care) to be. It's sort of a horror comic (it opens with a bunch of people being slaughtered on the highway and includes lines like "But what is the smell of sanity? The reek of skinned babies and sliced eyeballs"), but it follows the "Here's A Bad Guy, Let's Build A Team To Defeat It" protocols of most super-team origin stories so closely that any other agenda eventually drowns. It's terrible? Yes, it's terrible. Batman doesn't agree though. Look at how happy he is!

Not even sure what emotion that's trying to convey. Weirdballs.

Black Panther #523.1
Written by David Liss
Art by Jefte Palo & Jean-Franois Beaulieu
Published by Marvel Comics

In case Jefte Palo's deft caricature of Commissioner Gordon didn't clue you in, this is the best old school Batman comic to come out in a good long stretch of time. (Using the modifier "old school" means you can keep that one Grant-Morrison-thinks-Scalped-is-corny issue of Batman Incorporated out of the running.) And while ripping off Batman comics is a perfectly acceptable (and considering the lack of any good ones from DC, a brilliant stroke of capitalist need-filling), there's no reason to make the Robin analogue so incredibly fucking shrill. No self-respecting super-hero would choose to hang out with a busted smoke alarm, no matter how quick-witted she is.

Aquaman #1
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Ivan Reis & Joe Prado
Published by DC Comics

Here's the positive spin for a change: this is an incredibly successful attempt to send Aquaman in a bold new direction, unlike any of the previous directions he has taken, which, in case you don't remember your history, have always been miserable financial failures, except for the one time that they worked for a little while. (That would be the Peter David one, which was also a bold new direction. It included a beard.) The bold new direction this time around is that Geoff Johns depicts Aquaman in the DC Universe as the same big fucking joke he is in our world, and also as a character who thinks fish are boring and stupid and likes to eat them when he isn't controlling them. Johns also introduces a new set of bad guys, and the new set of bad guys are basically the bad guys from that movie The Descent, which is a fucking great movie that proves that you can make great action/horror movies even if you don't have any men as your leads. (I may have just spoiled one of its best surprises.) So, for what it's worth, this Aquaman comic is markedly different from previous Aquaman comics, which were apparently about a bunch of shit that happens down at the bottom of the ocean as well as being about magic. Good luck to you, comic book! You have a hell of a road in front of you, and it is unlikely that road will ever include a movie that people will want to watch. Nobody tell Diane Nelson: promises are about to be made forever broken.

Deadpool Max #12
Written by David Lapham
Art by Kyle Baker
Published by Marvel Comics

This is the last issue of the first volume of a comic that previous blog posts have taught me no one will ever like as much as me, but that will not deter me from saying, once again, that this is a positively wonderful comic book drawn by one of the medium's greatest living artists. It's not an action comic--it was, maybe, at one point--although the style Kyle Baker uses was utilized to great action-y effect in his Special Forces comic, which also turned out to be the best response to Frank Miller's Holy Terror anyone is ever going to come up with (and it's even better because Baker published it long before he could have known a lot about Holy Terror). Instead, Baker's exaggerated humor cartooning--with a dash with cruel commentary, like the way he draws prostitutes as either obese or anorexic, or the way he mimics the notorious Danish Muslim cartoons--results in something that's almost Haneke-esque in the way it snaps at you for enjoying yourself. But enough: this has been an impossible sell, what I'm getting out of this thing--1) the way a hyper referenced world says hello to a melting face, 2) the smashed color combinations that amplify the sick, 3) the way Bob's clothing hangs off his wasted body while his hair flops back, still perfection--but that doesn't make it any less wonderful.

All Star Western #1
Written by Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray
Art by Moritat
Published by DC Comics

While this is one of the new DC #1's, it's pretty much a friendly snap of the wet rag to the bottoms of older readers, in that it maintains the longstanding tradition of Jonah Hex comics being pretty to look at (in this installment, Moritat does the honors) even when what you're looking at is some horrible shit being done to female characters and their female bathing suit areas. The more things change, the more they're still comics about how Jonah Hex spent most of his old-timey time walking into rooms right after somebody else had walked into those same rooms for the purposes of cowboy raping some lady. "If only they weren't asking for it, with those multiple layers of gingham petticoats and laudanum addictions", the comics so often say. Indeed!

The Mighty Thor #6
Written by Matt Fraction
Art by Oliver Coipel
Published by Marvel Comics

Fucking great cover. Oliver Coipel's take on this comic is pretty awesome, because he seems to be obsessed with finding ways to work shirtless dudes into the narrative as much as possible. There's just something kind of wonderful about grabbing a roller, dipping it into a vat of hairy, big chested man, and then splurging that shit all over the page. The story probably isn't about fucking and crying and being held, but I'll be goddamned if that isn't exactly how it feels when you get done.

Wolverine #16
Written by Jason Aaron
Art by Goran Sudzuka
Published by Marvel Comics

The secondary plot of this comic is Wolverine finding himself in a camp full of people who make children fight wolves for fun, they do this in a pit--you get it? Comics are basically people who watch shitty movies. No bad guy in a decent action movie would build a criminal franchise around watching children fight wolves, because it would be a boring fucking fight and nobody would come back to bet on it a second time. Fuck, look at that trailer for this Liam Neeson movie (which is totally going to be a better Wolverine story than either movie or comic has to offer, even though it's going to pretend to just be a Liam Neeson movie). If you want to kill wolves, you have to at least be Liam Neeson, and you have to make your own broken glass killing gloves. Children--I don't give a shit if there's 30 of them, children are fucking meat for the grinder, they don't have a chance. Still that's nothing compared to the corny bullshit that serves as the main plot of this terrible, terrible comic: which is that Wolverine got upset about something, so he ran away from home. And he's never coming back! So all of his friends got together and decided to go and see him out in the woods and ask him to come home, because they all care about him so much, so won't you please come home, because we wuv you and you are special, even if you don't think so right now, oh there there cry it out you Fucking Dwarfish Hair Covered Suckling Cunt

Look, just because there's been a good 15,000 comics featuring Wolverine as lead character published in the past decade, that glut of material doesn't mean its time to publish stories where the guy acts like a run of the mill pout-baby from the five-to-twelve age bracket. Take some fucking acid, go to an actual dogfight, spearfish. There's inspiration everywhere!

-Tucker Stone, 2011