The Factual Opinion

Comics Of The Weak: Didn't Realize Ya'll Liked To Get Wet

Pizza, punk-rock horse whispering, James Leonard's Magic, air conditioning, more pizza, learning at the feet of Lazzarus. You missed it? You must live in the wrong place. You? You should move.

ipso facto:

Captain America & Bucky #620
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Chris Samnee
Published by Marvel Comics

No kidding around: while it wasn't "wrong" to kill off the Bucky character, and people like Tom Brevoort (people who wear old porkpie hats and dirty t-shirts to press conferences, people who take Newsarama seriously, people who call intercourse "giving the jew some bacon", people just like Tom Brevoort) are right to tell weener peeners to suck it up and fuck themselves and their slimy fivers right over to Dark Horse or those Game of Thrones things if they don't like the twists and turns that the Marvel roller coaster keeps on-a-taking. That's not wrong, so he's right. But that doesn't mean killing Bucky wasn't a stupid, meaningless thing to do, it doesn't change the fact that it took place in a comic that no one likes (and rest assured, even Kelly Sue DeConnick thinks Fear Itself sucks the balls, and she's sharing toothpaste with its writer), and it's okay--for the next part to work, you have to let me be the mommy, and let mommy give you the permission--to be a little chapped off about the whole state of affairs. Hell, use that feeling as an excuse to ignore the other Captain America comic, the one that Steve McNiven is...well, I guess you call that drawing, you certainly wouldn't mistake it for sandwich making. Skipt hat one, you won't miss a thing, and you can slather all that attention right atop this little boner sandwich, which is a comic about the good old days, when lil' Bucky got flown somewhere in a cargo jet so that he could beat up the original Seal Team 6 right in front of an army jeep, and sitting in that army jeep, falling in love for the first time: Sterling Steve Rogers, the man himself. Doesn't that sound like the sort of warm blanket that'll get you lindy hopping again?

Detective Comics #880
Written by Scott Snyder
Art by Jock & Dave Baron
Published by DC Comics

What kind of half-ass psycho comes to town with an extensive new mystery play that'll hide his craze-balls loony brain all so that he can pull back the curtain in about a week's time? Oh, the kind that gets his story remixed and then full on aborted so the deck can be ready for the new Batman comics. So now that we're staring down at the conclusion, how much do you want to bet that there's going to be some really treacly monologuing in the next issue of this kinda-gross story where Commissioner Gordon's lunatic (and super evil! he dismembers people and strips his own mother naked for the torturing!) son explains that the whole reason he's crazy as fuck (but not so crazy that every part of his plan doesn't work out totally the way he wants it to) is because wah fucking wah wah he fell off a bridge and got caught by a guy in a motorcycle jacket when he was a diaper-filling baby. Gawd, you ever meet those kinds of people? The ones who attribute even the most minor personal failings to some barely remembered slight from their youth? I once knew a girl who worked as a greeter at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Factory in Times Square, and she got in trouble with the boss because she told a party of four about her conviction that her uncle had probably molested her when she was but a wee infant. Now, I know what you're thinking: how the hell does that conversation even begin to happen? The party-of-four/restaraunt-greeter relationship hangs on one, easy question: there's just no sane way to work it back to the womb. Even then though, she had more of a leg to stand on then our little Jimmy G Junior (actual name!), who you just know is going to blame his addiction to Hannibal Lector behavior completely on the one time when his 3 month old ass went over the railing. Punk ass cornbaby. What he needs to do is suck it up.

Deadpool Max #10
Written by David Lapham
Art by Kyle Baker
Published by Marvel Comics

As much as it pains me to say it, David Lapham is doing a good job on this one. And yes, I'm aware of the existence of Crossed Family Values and Crossed Psychopath and Crossed Babies, Babies Mamma Wanna Kill Em All (Crossed Casey Anthony?), so let it be fully underscored: I know what it means when one praises the work of David Lapham, I'm aware of where that road can lead. (That Modern Warfare 2 comic that said L1 aims, L2 rapes? I know all about that shit.) This was still good! Admittedly, the pleasures of Deadpool Max stem in huge part to its blunt refusal to be intelligent for any period of time that lasts beyond a few panels, as well as an artist whose apparent interest in "pleasing" drawings rises and fall within individual issues; shorter version, you return to it because of its out-and-out weirdness. It still feels like a Marvel comic--more so than Ennis' War Stories-tinged Max work did--but it's one of those Marvel comics that reads like it was cloned from the time the Punisher tinted his skin black, or when Spider-Man got replaced by a dude wearing an outfit from Olivia Newton John's "Let's Get Physical" videos. Plus, you know, there's impotence jokes, f-words and secret penises.

Criminal The Last Of The Innocent #2
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Sean Phillips
Published by Image Comics

I can't be the only one who is getting testy about waiting for Brubaker to write a straight up whodunit under the Criminal umbrella, and yet considering what he's doing here--an EC tinged nasty with the Archie characters, where Jughead the junkie in recovery, Betty is the laid back badass friend he should've gone for, and Veronica's the whore wife who can't be satisfied, which fits just fine with her status obsessed Archie hating Mr. Lodge--you kind of can't blame him for going with his gut. It's a clever take, better than an "Archie's Crime SuspseStories" title would've led anyone to expect. 

Uncanny X-Force #12
Written by Rick Remender
Art by Mark Brooks, Andrew Currie, Dean White & Richard Isanove
Published by Marvel Comics

It must have been an awesome moment for Richard Isanove when he got the call to work on something other than those shitty Spider-Man reprints and Dark Tower: Some More Shit That Happens Between Pages 315 and 317 of Wizard And The Glass comics, but goddamn, what a sleepy chapter in the abusive relationship that is Uncanny X-Force did he end up getting saddled with. As was mentioned in last week's comments, this issue was lots and lots of talking, and nobody got on board the X-Force train because talking roused their dick chicken. (Okay FINE, that part where Wolverine refers to Jean Grey as "handmade by God to afflict me" is a total corker.) And while there's enough Tim Riggins & Landry fans 'round here to admit that a good old fashioned won't-those-two-just-fuck subplot can keep us in our seats through the tedious moments where the glasses people babble about Muggle swing dance traditions, let's be clear: you have to make us care about Psylocke if you want us to care about who Psylocke wants to fuck. And dude: nobody ain't never gonna care about Psylocke. PS.com: since when is Fantomex not gay?

Butcher Baker The Righteous Maker #5
Written by Joe Casey
Art by Mike Huddleston
Published by Image Comics

The first chunk of this issue, leading up to the muddy-as-hell jumping jeep panel--that was a chore to get through, the kind of stuff that felt like work to read, and there's probably nothing worse you can say about a single issue comic book than "it felt like work to read". But after that--literally, the next page after that jeep panel--Butcher Baker turned itself into the comic that Joe Casey has been pimping it out to be in the backmatter essays, and this became the-mother-fuckery people should be getting into. The color on this book has been solid since issue one, but in issue 4--that panel where Times Square kept the nudie theaters and exploded into non-advertising-powered candied life--it jumped past everything else that's coming out right now (including my precious art comics about feelings and elmo dreamingz) and entered Brendan McCarthy level hallucinatory territory. This is the kind of comic that Image exists to publish, and it's the kind of thing that makes comic books seem unique again. Sleep on that shit at your peril. Lord knows you can have dipshit movie pitches if that's what makes your pant-churches steeple.

-Tucker Stone, 2011

Comics Of The Weak: Even With Full Hearts, They Still Lose

Avengers #15
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Chris Bachalo
Published by Marvel Comics

While the grid pages in this installment of Bendis Still Watches The Real World, Avengers Version are lame and obnoxious, that allegedly might be because Bachalo said "fuck you for making me draw all these heads, nobody wants to buy the original art when it's a page full of talking heads, and Baby Bachalo needs bangers and mash", so he subsequently added entire extra lines of grid heads which Bendis was then forced to write extra dialog for, after the fact. And god bless comic book writers, we all love comic book writers, but man: isn't it nice to see the guy who does the actual hard part--which is the drawing! drawing comics is harder than writing them! the only people who tell you different are comic book writers and bloggers who want to write comic books!--swinging his I-draw-this-shit dick right around and slapping his writer counterparts all around the mouth and facial regions? There's supposedly a similar thing happening between Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo on the upcoming Detective Comics, and guys like Dustin Nguyen and Sean Murphy have pretty much given up on having careers made out of taking shit constantly--this isn't the makings of a great, sexy future quite yet, but if it results in a reordering of priorities--one wherethe heavy lifter types start getting treated with some respect again--that'll be good enough.

PS: Don't read this issue if it's important to you that Steve Rogers (the fictional character) remain intelligent (fictionally), because in this issue, Steve Rogers response to finding out that the Incredible Hulk has been given even more power, to the point where he's the answer to "Thor + Hulk equals what", is to send a team made up of Ms. Marvel, Spider-Woman and The Protector to handle the situation. And this isn't an long conversation about powers kind of a thing, it's just the memory of a seven year old, meaning: seven years ago the Hulk, without god-like powers, was strong enough to take over the entire continent of North America for the purposes of humiliating and shitkicking every super-hero alive. Being able to take everybody on and hold your own means that you're able to take on three of those people pretty fucking easily.

B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth Monsters #1
Written by Mike Mignola & John Arcudi
Art by Tyler Crook & Dave Stewart
Published by Dark Horse Comics

The switch from Mignola to Fegredo on Hellboy might have been difficult at first, but the change itself was never that jarring. But a switch to the BPRD? That was always going to be a little bit harder to swallow. Whereas Hellboy comics have always been one where we were just mere observers to Mignola's story, Abe, Liz, Kate, Roger, Johann and Benjamin's struggles unfolded all around us, and Guy Davis was the sure hand that enveloped it all. You knew how to read a BPRD story because of Guy Davis, because he was there to tell you what everybody felt, etching into every line that creased their face. The shock of appearance, the wearied collapse of sleep starved eyes, the sound of a cry dictated by the shape of a mouth...it was Davis, over and over again, who made those moments palpable ones. Losing him--even for reasons as respectable as the ones that have been mentioned--hurts, and it should.

Tyler Crook's transition isn't likely to be as smooth as Fegredo's was. He just doesn't have the same body of work, accepting him here requires a leap of faith in Mignola's judgment. And yet, there's no real reason given in these pages to be worried. This one is a dark, ugly story, and Tyler's contribution--specifically the horror that closes the book or the cocked head frog who reminds us, briefly, of what came before--ends up being stronger than expected. Serial comics have never been the go-to product for those who like change, no matter the kind. But for now, this particular iteration of that dreaded moment isn't one to cry about.

The Walking Dead #87
Written by Robert Kirkman
Art by Charlie Adlard
Published by Image Comics

Walking Dead irritates me nowadays because it's just so fucking pedestrian in its attempts to shock. Women get raped, beat up, shot, or they lose their boyfriends. Little kids get their heads cut off, sometimes people threaten to rape them, or they get shot. Likeable black guys, fat people, auto mechanics, crybabies and testosterone junkies: it's all the same end. Everybody does these same tricks--television, Dennis Lehane, Native American dreamweavers, Japanese folklore. Kirkman's got a captive audience, he could be writing about robots and fisting, he could be the guy who reintroduces the world to Tcheky Karyo. Instead he's just resending the same text messages over and over again, and even worse, he's doing it really fucking slowly.

Daredevil #1
Written by Mark Waid
Art by Marcos Martin, Paolo Rivera
Published by Marvel Comics

While it probably wasn't intended to be a "hey Dan, here's how you fucking do it", you can't help but read Daredevil #1 and see the comic as a general up yours to the Distinguished Competition. Think about it: saddled with a solid period of comics that were both terribly received AND actually terrible to boot, Mark Waid and Marcos Martin--incidentally, two creators whose historical treatment by DC editorial is remarkably wearisome even by today's hideous, comics-killing standard--have teamed up with Paolo Rivera and delivered the best looking super-hero comic of recent memory while still aggressively embracing all the horrible stories that came before. It's still a New Number One stunt, and Marvel's still the same Gene Colan killing scumfucks they were two weeks prior, but hey: at least some middle fingers were thrown up. And come September, DC's going to publish 52 attempts at being what Daredevil #1 is right fucking now: how you think that's going to work out?

Batman #712
Written by Tony Daniel
Art by Steve Scott Ryan Winn Andy Smith Walden Wong Ian Hannin Computers Time Not Caring
Published By DC Comics

You know, I actually used to get Batman and Detective Comics in the mail when I was a little kid, and one time I ganked the cash from my mom's Sunday School class--she was the treasurer, so they never found out--and used it to buy some old Batman comics. (Also some Detroit era Justice Leagues, which were better comics than most people seem willing to admit, but that's neither here nor there.) And I know, us buy-Batman-anyway junkies are part of the problem, we're definitely a huge percentage of the people-who-fucked-up-super-hero-comics, we'll just buy anything, fuck us, blah blah blah, why can't we be grown ups and buy comics like Ex Machina and Sandman weenus weenus skeet skeet skeet. But from here on my little moron stool, let me tell you the one thing that all the other I Own A Copy of #39 and The Animated Series Defined Post Miller Batman guys keep pretending isn't happening:

The Tony Daniel era of Batman comics--the ones that he's drawn, these ones that he's writing--are the absolute worst the comic has seen in the last 30 years. And while some of those comics were written by Grant Morrison, the fundamental, linewide damage that's been done by allowing an at best B-, but more often than not just a C-, level artist on these books for this long (to say nothing of the hideous line-up of new characters he's added to the book in the last few months that he's been writing it) is basically irreparable. If you want to know where Batman and Detective will be in the next few years, take a look at the current status of Superman, Wonder Woman or the Flash, and you'll have an idea. An endless string of baby reboots and renumbering games, and the constant feeling that you're seeing somebody's mouth struggling to stay above water. A congratulations is probably in order. Because after years of missing the mark, Batman can finally get in line with the rest of DC's line--all second tier, all the time.

-Tucker Stone, 2011 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh neverfuckingmind

-Tucker Stone, 2011

 

Comics Of The Weak: Harding Never Betrayed Taft, But He Might Have Eaten His Golden Retriever

Avengers #14
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by John Romita Jr, Klaus Janson & Dean White
Published by Marvel Comics

Most of the time, The Avengers most reminds me of what would happen if you put the mind and voice of that old WB cartoon frog inside Gina Gershon's hot carcass, because the only thing that would prevent me from rubbing one out while looking at the Lady Bound would be the hard-on I wouldn't get because she were barking out "Hello My Baby" in that frog's fucking donkey voice, but this issue comes pretty close to being acceptable and pump-worthy, as it frontloads that horrible reality-show-confessional style comics that Bendis is stone cold addicted to in the first few pages, giving almost the rest of the comic over to the Thing beating the Red Hulk so badly you'll start wondering if this fight started in a silver Lamborghini, and if that isn't what John Romita Jr. super-hero comics are supposed to have in them, then you must be Chuck Dixon and Marvel still has decent Punisher comics left to publish. Still, I'd warn you against saving any Conclusive Sex Explosions for the final page, as Bendis rears up and ruins the fight's conclusion by plugging in shit about what makes that gimpy old butler cry. So close!

Graveyard of Empires #1
Written by Mark Sable
Art by Paul Azaceta & Matt Wilson
Published by Image Comics

While this story is so rife with the possibility of horrible failure that rooting for it is the equivalent of hoping the tumor has enough sentient thought that it can be your new dad, the first issue is all kinds of gutter sleaze awesome. Gone are the days of two years ago where Electronic Arts aped all of their scenes from Generation Kill and other stark, "realistic" war tales, this is the new school, where Mark Sable presents an Afghanistan as a place crossed somewhere between Vietnam and the trenches of WW1. It's gross, it's stupid, and by the end, it definitely fucking has zombies, so go on and get ready for the magic that this comic can bringzles. (Also keep your eye out for a scene where a local Muslim calls a whiteboy American on his ignorance: you're definitely reading some smart comics here!)

Batman #711
Written by Tony Daniel
Art by Steve Scott, Ryan Winn & Ian Hannin
Published by DC Comics

Oh Tony Daniel, if they didn't let Ivan Brandon and some C-level fill in artist kill Two-Face in those Streets of Gotham back-up stories (you remember, the ones that were longer than the main story), they're not going to let you and some D-level fill in artist put 'em down either. They call it a pecking order for a reason, and making up a new female sidekick every issue isn't going to change that. That being said, good show on this one:

Puking isn't a new thing, but coloring it so that it looks like this is a henchman who delights in the ingestion of human shit? That's freakier than a birthday party at Justiniano's. Which makes me think: doesn't adding all these female sorta-villainous sidekick kids to the DC Comics universe start a dead-girls-countdown-clock? Feminists best get their tumblrs at the ready.

Deadpool Max #9
Written by David Lapham
Art by Shawn Crystal & John Rauch
Published by Marvel Comics

Maybe Baker didn't show up because of the script, or maybe the script is the way it is because Baker wasn't going to show up, but this one didn't really land. Mostly, you just read it and wonder what it is that the fat prostitute does that makes the prostitute-using portion of the population move their business over to her in proportions so large that the remaining prostitutes feel the need to bring violent solutions to bear. Cuz it's a boring story, you see. And while Shawn Crystal doesn't do anything wrong--and in the case of drawing some puckered birdbite cellulite lines, he does one gross thing extraordinarily right--he's too far removed from Baker's specific 'Pool style set for this issue not to seem completely out of place.

Daken Dark Wolverine #10
Written by Rob Williams
Art by Matteo Buffagni, Riley Rosmo & Chris Peter
Published by Marvel Comics

The main reason why people got impressed enough with Final Crisis Revelations to give it a GLAAD award wasn't because it was a good representation of homosexual characters or relationships or tolerance or anything else, but simply because it made it okay for gay super-heroes to stand alongside straight super-heroes in a really shitty event tie-in comic book with horrible art. It was genius on Greg Rucka's part, to so boldly say "Gay people can be just as fucking boring and useless as straight people, and they can look as shitty too, see just check this comic out the bad guy has a tattoo on his face", and that comic will forever stand in as some kind of Rosa Parks of the art form. After all, if it wasn't for that little stereotype shatterer, we wouldn't be were we are now, with Daken (the Dark Wolverine), who is apparently going to fuck dudes and be addicted to pills for the next few issues of however long his soon-to-be-canceled title has left. Hawt? In the same way those old Life Or Meth posters were, sure.

Flashpoint Wonder Woman and The Furies #1
Written by Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning
Art by Scott Clark & Dave Beatty
Published by DC Comics

There's probably no better example of why Marvel wins so many of those DC Versus Marvel story throwdown arguments that all of us would be better off not having than the way that DC handles alternate reality stories, case in point this fairy tale right here: even though the Flashpoint series has already established that Wonder Woman and The Aquaman are responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent people (and in an even better twist, Dr. Aquaman is also responsible for the destruction of lots of famous art, like the kind with oils and marble), this issue makes it abundantly clear that it isn't really their fault, because somebody just tricked them into making some mistakes on their wedding day, and so you can rest assured that the end of this particular little Flashpoint odyssey will feature some moment where they realize they've been tricked, and they'll help accelerate whatever foregone conclusion is already set up so that this comic can end with their historical legacies of being boring old moral busybodies intact. Compare that to Marvel, where fucked up shit can totally happen in alternate realities above and beyond things like "What if Batman's hair was red", and you'll see the difference pretty clearly. Marvel understands that alt realities are just that, places to have Cyclops slice infants in twain while Steve Rogers does blow off of Luke Cage's power glove, whereas DC thinks "well, Wonder Woman still has to be basically a good person, because because because, so let's blame this whole millions-and-millions-and-millions dead thing on some misunderstanding involving her bitch sister." 

-Tucker Stone, 2011

 

Comics Of The Weak: I'm Saving All My Optimism For The Bedroom, Thank You Very Much

Deadpool Max #8
Written by David Lapham
Art by Kyle Baker
Published by Marvel Comics

Part of this issue felt like it was already told once before (in the "Cable" issue), but since that installment was sort of a disappointment (which isn't totally fair, as the anticipation for CableMax was so keyed up that the actual comic couldn't help but be merely acceptable), it's okay to go at it again, this time with a heavier focus on the non-Deadpool side of things. And in point of fact, non-Deadpool is exactly what this issue is--our titular lead only shows up as plot contrivance when the story demands his presence, and his appearance doesn't alter our narrator's rambling monologue theater in the slightest, its just shoehorned right in--and yet that's perfectly okay, even if it means Baker spends less time drawing him in an issue where Baker is pretty much delivering some all-time-so-far best stuff. (Specifically, we're looking at dude-from-Avatar's Cable face, Agent Bob's pre-Deadpool handlee, the blink-so-you-can-think-bout-it Sluggo, and all of those fingerprint tread backgrounds.)

"Dit Dit Dit-Dah Dah Dah Dit Dit"
From Casanova Gula #4
Written by Matt Fraction
Art by Gabriel Ba & Cris Peter
Published by Marvel Comics

This is the first (maybe?) new Casanova shingle put on the career roof at Fraction Manor since the whole "exhausted your goodwill" thing started, but garsh-be-damned, it's pretty fucking good stuff. In part, that's because Casanova (the character) isn't it, and he'd begun to be a bit of an anvil hanging over the stories surrounding him, which is a simple, concise way of saying that the devil-may-care as nothing-matters-but-styling 'tudes only works in the broad strokes of those first blush meetings, and it will always give way and be shown up for the empty headedness it actually represents upon the long stare. (This is why the coolest guy in the last chapter of Gula is the disgruntled, embarrassed father and not the petulant lead, and make no mistake: the winner in a Casanova comic is always whoever ends up looking the coolest.) The new story--a short excursion on a pleasure cruise, since "pleasure" in comics definitely means sitting like the L character from Death Note in an Arne Jacobson rip-off while wearing the leftover Jean-Paul Gaultier bandage costume from the Fifth Element and plinking out Bowie on a guitar cuz that's what you do after a killfest holocaust--just works, playing its back-up-so-it-don't-have-to-matter status all the way to the hilt. It's part that it's Ba on the com, smoothing Fraction's tumblrbrain into cogency, but it's also that it only has one piece of information to truly deliver--the introduction of a character--and can thus get back to the business of being comics immediately after doing so.

Ultimate Spider-Man #159
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Mark Bagley, Andy Lanning & Justin Ponsor
Published by Marvel Comics

Although everyone will have a moment from Ultimate Death of Spider-Man that they call the seminal, where-were-you-when moment, and most of those people will refer to the moment when a crying (!) Punisher got taken away from a scene of a crime screeching "Punish MEEEEEEE", as this was the moment when Mark Millar must have officially decided that yes, even he could be way too old for this shit, you can bet that there is someone out there in the big blue and wide yonder who will point to the moment here, where Peter Parker retorted "but......cute" to his Aunt's "You crazy boy" remark, which occurred after Aunt May had put three rounds into Electro's chesticals. Make a note of who that person is, and tell your local pharmacist. That way this person's meds can be upped, because they're a sex crime away from ruining a lot of ice cream socials.

Batman and Robin #24
Written by Judd Winick
Art by Greg Tocchini
Published by DC Comics

Part of the reason it's impossible to have any conversation of actual, adult substance about that whole DC relaunch/reboot/remix is that you can only have it on their public relations and hype born terms--which don't do anything to explain how DC plans to deal with revenue, or what sort of numbers they'll be looking for in terms of sales upon which to claim success, or if they even have a method in place for seeing what sell-thru numbers look like, as all digital sales ultimately are sell-thru numbers and thus have to be analyzed differently than physical pre-sales, but that's to be expected: comics are small, the number of people who are bored and choose to satisfy their boredom with this information is even smaller, and of course, the persecution complexes that come up whenever you say "What about the money" has no real comparison in terms of hyperbolism, even when you compare it to the amount of freaking out that occurs when you say "raise your hands if you've ever read an actual book that wasn't primarily intended for teenagers" or "and how many of you regularly skip showers" and the tempestuous favorite "you aren't an artist, and mashing up your childhood obsessions into story paste doesn't make you a creator, neither", so yeah, the conversations end up settling down on the landscape "I give a shit about the new Blue Beetle, but I don't give a shit about the new Superboy", as if there's some way to actually navigate future comics solicits (none of which are apparently set in enough stone that straight-up-getting-fucking-fired still can't be used as an existential threat), but hey, fractions are fun for people whose educational focus ignored all math classes in pursuit of a minor in Torchwood Studies, so sure, let's say 11 out of 52 per, with a dollar down on the barrelhead. What? But if you really want to get down to it, here's a comic about conversating with the DC reboot: Batman and Robin #24. Does anybody want it to continue? No, of course not. There was a weird anti-marketing marketing gimmick where DC pretended that the book was getting a new creative team when it was really getting a revolving squad, and now it's settled on a guy you sort of remember reading something you think you liked by, but mostly he's responsible for stuff that isn't really your speed, and the artist is somebody you think you've seen before but don't really care for either, and they've delivered a comic that doesn't even bother riffing on its bog standard story but just presents the bog as being it, like if somebody invited you over to their house to show you pictures of their trip to the Pyramids and then, when you arrived, just said "here you go" and handed you a first generation iPhone and then stared at you silently while you looked at them until some personally determined point where they finally say "that's enough for now" and shows you the door, no offer of snacks or wife-swapping, nothing at all. That's what you're in for, because yeah: Marvel still has all the writers you want to read, and if you haven't figured it out by now, Geoff Johns doesn't like Grant Morrison comics, and there's no blue days coming. There's just more like this coming, and you aren't going to like it any more than you did the first time. Now you just won't have to worry about where you're going to store it.

The New Avengers #13
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Mike Deodato
Published by Marvel Comics

This is some silly ass shit, but it's not silly enough where I could actually be saying I'm enjoying it, just that I think it's silly. Lookie look:

I just don't believe that anybody would ever go into an interrogation room with a bow and a quiver full of arrows. I don't know why that's a sticking point for me, but it is. I can buy that the Thing is a gigantic orange rock monster with the capability of forcing those orange rocks into the orange rock equivalent of a human frowny face to express the sadness he feels because he was making a joke and that joke-making prevented him from saving this dumb Mockingbird character from getting the nasty mortal wound that has taken up the plot of the last however many issues of New Avengers (that also happened in this comic), but no, I cannot buy that this Hawkeye dude brought a bow into interrogation room six.

-Tucker Stone, 2011

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

Comics Of The Weak: Maybe The World Did End And God Just Didn't Want You

 

Avengers #13
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Chris Bachalo
Published by Marvel Comics

The tagline with Chris Ware is that he's trying to create comics as if the medium was untouched by film, the tagline with the Lone Wolf and Golgo crew is/was that they had/have a hard on/boner for spaghetti westerns, and the gig with Will Eisner is that he sat in the dark watching penny dreadfuls (he was a plantation owner who lived in the 1900's, according to Jeet Heer's "notes"), or so the legends go repeated. Those references and inspirations are cute but fuck all those posers, says Bendis. What would comics look like if they were pure translations of reality show confessional booths? That's what comics calls a high concept, nursery school, so shove that Batman comic in your cupcake sucking mouth. And yeah, so what if that means the majority of this book is 12 panel pages of head shots and bad jokes? We got a streak of wasting the abilities of interesting artists by giving them almost nothing of interest to draw to keep intact, and when the goal is to keep Daddy so worked up in the other room that Mommy can go to sleep and dodge that getting pregnant bullet one more time, you know which exit ya'll bitches can take on expressway future: it's the one that says "screw".

Batman and Robin #23
Written by Judd Winick
Art by Guillem March & Andrei Bresson
Published by DC Comics

Apparently the numbers for Batman & Robin finally crossed some arbitrary bottom that set off the no-shame alarm bells, because there's no other believable reason for Guillem March's cover to go that hard in the "After Quitely" paint: and maybe it'll work, all craven Hail Mary as it is. "Remember when a lot more of you bought this comic" is, as they go, a pretty decent way to get people saying "yes" and Dale Carnegie always said that first yes is where the sale begins. That's all brinkmanship though: how's this Winick comic read, you ask? Eh, like most of them do, they say: not enough happens to fill the pages, and even when some of its blatant rip-off-the-Punisher stuff works, it's rough trade copy of the moment when a frantic Batman drove somewhere while screaming something like "the call is coming from inside the house" is only the most obvious version of this comic's greatest problem, which is that this is ground recently well-covered being covered spuriously here.

Tomb of Dracula Presents Throne of Blood #1
Written by Victor Gischler
Art by Goran Parlov
Published by Marvel Comics

This is a comic that probably only exists just so that Marvel can keep guys like Goran Parlov too busy to take work from the frantically seeking fill-in factory over at DC, but it's still Parlov with Gischler, and those are the two guys responsible for the only good non-Ennis Punisher comic since Romita on War Zone. Being set in the feudal Japanese era, Gischler has to include a nod to Lone Wolf and Cub (that's the one part of the Comics Code you'll only forget at your peril), but he otherwise follows the same formula that showed up in that weird Death of Dracula comic that Giuseppe Camuncoli drew last year: overtalking mixed with good-to-great violence drawings. Totally diggable stuff, but only in so much as you treat it like a sketchbook.

Batman Incorporated #6
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Chris Burnham
Published by DC Comics

While this title has essentially pumped steroids right back into the Only Extreme Positions May Apply war between Morrison's most obsessive fans and Morrison's most obsesssive detractors (still this generation's most boring comics argument, although Why Don't You And Your Fucking Masters Degree Shut The Fuck Up About How To Fix Wonder Woman lurks forever in the rearview despite it not having the "both of you are the same" irony found in Morrison's Cafeteria), none of that silliness is Batman Incorporated #6's fault. Of course, it's also not its fault that it fights against the expectations bred of the dying flower that was Return of Bruce Wayne, which was a strange experiment in trying to create an ongoing story based off of ideas that had already been taken away from its writer once before by a man whose lifelong ambition is, apparently, to write really ugly comics about Geoforce, Katana, and a gigantic racial caricature named Freight Train. Anyway, there's no better case for why Grant Morrison comics would be so much fucking better if they were about whole wheat bread statues and Jewish hobo boxing champions, basically anything other than Big Two super-heroes, because this comic is a smart and dare it be said funny tear through all of what might someday make Bat Inc great, and as that greatness is never ever going to be allowed to happen, it would be awesome to see him hang out around something that didn't so closely resemble the word "debacle" every couple of years.

The New Avengers #12
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Mike Deodato, Howard Chaykin, Rain Beredo & Jose Delgado
Published by Marvel Comics 

This was great, both for bullshit "what a horrible comic, comics are horrible" reason as well as just a straight up "that was perfect" reason, and you don't get a lot of comics like those. The dumb part was the part where a long time NYC detective played by fat Laurence Fishburne--seriously, can somebody loan Deodato a movie that didn't come out in the last two years? thanks!--claims to have never heard of Luke Cage, which is all kinds of confusing for about 75 reasons, 12 of which have to do with the fact that you can guaran-godamned-T-ya that every black cop in the city knows full fucking well who Luke Fucking Cage is, and if you make me go into that I'm going to start crying, and you don't want to know what I mean by that because it is something I'll only explain while spooning. AND. The stand alone good part was when the dude got his head all blown to spaghetti while the Red Skull was saying something about Superior Races, all because of the way Chaykin delivered one of those masterful head spins where it looks like the Red Skull's cranium is a globe on an axis. That's how you draw dumb shit gloriously, and if the world cared, it would show up be cemented forever in the brains of America in one of those "Sequence of the Week" columns that Sean T. Collins delivers over at Newsarama, but he's too busy watching Bethenny Ever After to mess with us proles. Confound you, snobbery!

FF #3
Written by Johnny "Inappropriate" Hickman
Art by Mike "Steve" Epting
Published by Marvel "We'll Only Hire A Black Guy If We Can Immediately Fire A Woman" Comics

The all time best invitation comic ever was that JLI issue where Fire pretty much foreign language fucked El Diablo for the entire page count, so this issue of FF will have to get spot number two. (If only DC had the balls to publish the story where all the super-heroes were given "wear your costume to the Identity Crisis funeral" orders when the stretchy guy's preggo wife got the burnt remainders of her carcass shoveled into one of the many DC landfills!) As with all the Hickman issues, this is arguably a really smart math comic about the thought experiment of whether or not a bunch of Reed Richard's from alternate dimensions are more boring than one regular Reed Richards all by himself. This is, however, arguable, so you should show your work. Spoiler! This comic will put you in a coma.

Captain America #617
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by Butch Guice, Chris Samnee, Mike Deodato's Computer
Published by Marvel Comics 

We got a couple of complaints across the desk here at TFO headquarters not too long ago, and while they ended up the same place that all of your letters go to, we did notice the irony that one was from the Mars, and one was from the Sun, and far be it from us to ignore whenever the God of War teams up with the the guy (girl?) from Stargate all for the purposes of pulling out the old namby pamby "you hate everything" card, a card that makes sense when its slapped down by a beanie baby from the breakworld and not so much otherwise. So here's a class action suit fired in preparation of a libel case: this is a great issue of Captain America, in no small part because its able to use a fight scene involving a bear even after webcomics and Robert Kirkman came along and turned all of those late-night-drunk-being-silly kinds of stories into an actual genre that each one of them seems to think they do better than the last, despite the obvious truth that all of them do it more horribly than the ones who came before. So good on you Ed Brubaker, and good on Butch Guice for drawing shitloads of panels on the page, and good on the Breitweiser family for producing so many various people with the last name Breitweiser that you eventually had to end up with one who colored comics better than Frank "The Steamroller" D'Armata, and good on Chris Samnee for still being Chris Samnee, and I guess good on Mike Deodato's Computer for having lots and lots of pretty women's breasts to trace or whatever it is that does that thing with the nipples and the bottoms in the catsuits. Sisterhood!

Ultimate Spider-Man #158
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Mark Bagley
Published by Marvel Comics

He's not dead yet.

Ultimate Avengers Vs. New Ultimates #4
Written by Mark Millar
Ar by Lenil Francis Yu
Published by Marvel Comics

But somebody else is dead!

Booster Gold #44
Name of person who will pretend they wrote this of their own free will: Dan Jurgens
Art by Dan Jurgens
Published by DC Comics

A lot of people keep asking: What's the deal with Flashpoint? Where did it come from? Who makes up these crazy ideas? Of course, as you already know, DC is keeping a pretty exclusive lid on Flashpoint so that all those people staying at the Holiday Inn Express can read about it first in their free copies of USA Today, after which they will spread the story via word-of-mouth in what's come to be known as "viral" marketing (because herpes is a virus, and everybody who reads USA Today probably has herpes because seriously: who fucking reads USA Today? whores and junkies, that's who!) However, your trusty website was able to reach out through the magic of the internet and get some actual answers on the historical backgrounding of Flashpoint, which we now present below via the medium of copying and pasting:

TFO: Yo, fuckface.

Geoff Johns: What is up cockmaster?

TFO: Not a whole lot, actually. I was thinking I needed to book myself a stay at the local bed and continental breakfast to rustle up one of those free copies of USA Today, find out what the deal is with the Flashpoints. Then I remembered: I still had your email address from that time you gave that private online press conference explaining why you kept inserting abandoned or abusive fathers in all of your hero scripts.

Johns: Ah, the "Cub Scout" explanation, I remember that. You know I can't talk about how we're using Flashpoint to reboot all the Grant Morrison Batman stuff after this is all over and done, right?

TFO: Of course dude, this is just a private conversation. Treat it like this: I'm metaphorically nude right now, a moist infant, searching for a teat of Flashpoint historical information that I can suckle upon for my pleasures. I crave understanding the way Judas craved some simple recognition when he said "nah, thirty sounds fine." Let me curl up amongst your hairy bosoms like the wolf cub I so long to be.

Johns: I can't give you much, but how about I share my original moment of inspiration? Will my brain's lightning bolt be enough of a nipple for you to sup some nom-noms?

TFO: I'm puckered up like a 9 year old Catholic lighthouse keeper. Plop that shit into my gullet like you're fly-fishing.

Johns: First, a question: who's the lead character in Flashpoint?

TFO: You are, you fucking shortstop. Why not ask me something that won't cause me stupid cancer?

Johns: Alright smart guy: who's the lead COMIC BOOK character in Flashpoint?

TFO: Well...It's the Flash, right?

Johns: Nope. It's Cyborg.

TFO: What's so special about Cyborg?

Johns: Take a look at this: 

TFO: What the hell is this? And why does Superman want to know my two favorite breakfast foods? Hey! Why can't I have more than two? Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!

Johns: Don't get bogged down in the details, buttercup. That's just the kind of stuff he liked to "rap" about before John Byrne made him a Communist, dig? What I want you to focus in on is Q5. Do you see what i'm looking at?

TFO: Let me see..."how interested are you in reading about..." oh. Oh my!

Johns: Exactly.

TFO: But...I don't understand!

Johns: Allow me to explain, with American words. This survey, found in many DC Comics in 1970, was used by DC Comics as a guideline to the stories that those creators told. Now, my first action following my promotion to DC Story Overlord was to give myself two week's paid vacation so that I could meet the guys who invented Kirsten Dunst, but my second action was to summon all of DC's historical documents to my bedchamber. It was there that I made an astonishing discovery.

TFO: Was it a sexual discovery? Like on that show Survivorman?

Johns: What? No, you gotta focus. No, what I discovered was that the DC reader of 1970--what Levitz used to call "our wet creature"--wasn't just a fan of hot AND cold cereal, he was also an old school hardcore racist. He wasn't very interested in black people. He wasn't fairly interested in black people. Brother, he was straight up NOT INTERESTED.

TFO: People actually ripped these surveys out for the sole purpose of telling DC Comics that they didn't want to read comics about black people? Is that what you're telling me?

Johns: Not only that, they also wanted to let us know what they liked to eat for breakfast along with their passion for comics about astrology. Now, you gotta remember, there was a war on. Lots of kids were doing heroin and stealing bras so they could burn them at heroin parties. It was a different time. It was a racist time.

TFO: So what's this got to do with Flashpoint?

Johns: Well, when I sat down in my bedchamber with those survey results, I cried, I'm not going to lie. I cried like I was watching Marley and Me. I haven't cried that hard since the last time I read that part in New Frontier where Hal Jordan meets his flight jacket for the first time. I wept.

TFO: That's crazy. You think of Hal Jordan's jacket as a sentient thing capable of meeting human beings?

Johns: I'll ignore that, because you obviously haven't turned your life and will over to Stephen Ambrose. When I was looking at those survey results, I realized why so many people think of DC as a stodgy old company that pumps out a never-ending stream of inherently fucked up content in hopes that one of them might have a strong enough grasp on some swath of the American overconsumer that our corporate overlords can make some money off of the merchandising fees. They think that because we're still trying to please some racist kid who eats multiple breakfasts!

TFO: Broseph, I can get behind that kind of reasoning, as it makes perfect sense. Go on.

Johns: So my question became: what would things have been like if it had gone the other way? What would it have been like it our readers had responded to the survey and said that they were VERY interested in reading about black people? And hobbies!

TFO: And your answer was Flashpoint?

Johns: No, Cyborg was my answer. Flashpoint is just the leaves that grew off of the Cyborg tree!

TFO: I feel like you're hiding something.

Johns: Of course I'm hiding something! There's more comics coming, a lot more, and some of them are going to blow your mind. But here's a tasty example: what if the Greatest Generation was only Great because Hal Jordan became a Green Lantern? To be more specific--and this might be hard for you to understand--what if the only reason why we defeated the Nazis in World War Two was because of super-heroes?

TFO: That question doesn't even make sense. And what's that got to do with the survey?

Johns: Son, forget about the survey, I just got the black people thing from that. Now I'm talking about Nazis.

TFO: Yeah, I don't really want to talk about Nazis. I'm just...

Johns: Scared? I'll bet you are! You should be scared. See, in Flashpoint, the Nazis have taken over parts of South America. They never lost! They're still out there, goosestepping, talking in German, ironing their epaulets...

TFO: I'm not scared. I'm bored.

Johns: Wha-

TFO: Like, Nazis? Really? That's what I'm supposed to get a hard on about? I mean, i'm probably into the thing were Wonder Woman kills millions of people, that seems like there's a lot of potential for some hardcore gore. But Nazis? C'mon dude. Didn't you read that Wolverine comic where he ghosts all those Nazi bitches in the concentration camps? That shit was unreal. It was like Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark level shit, like "two dead boys stand up to fight, back to back they faced each other", you know?

Johns: Oh shit, "drew their swords"?!

TFO: "And fucking SHOT each other". Yeah, now that's the kind of Nazi versus super-hero shit I'll get behind.

Johns: God, that sounds so rad. I can't be seen packing that gear though, you know? It's bad for business.

TFO: You seriously can't read badass Mark Millar Wolverine comics? Not even as a "know your enemy" kind of thing?

Johns: Nah, it's...honestly, I think it's that some of those dudes--you know, like Sattler, Berganza, those cats--they just take this shit home too much. I remember Jim used to have some old issues of X-Men in his office, just as a reminder that he'd drawn the best selling super-hero comic like EVER, like, The All Fucking Time shit, and Ian was walking by, and he saw them gangbang mothers laying out...

TFO: All gatefolded out like a Sports Illustrated calendar...

Johns: You know it, with Magneto in the Kathy Ireland spot! .... Shit. But yeah, it was just sitting there, and Ian starts bawling like Jim had broken his Tonka truck. He locked himself up in the toy design rooms, refused to write the DC Nation for a couple of weeks. They had to let him fire some Vertigo people just to get him to stop crying. After that, the unspoken rule became an unspoken law.

TFO: That's so crazy.

Johns: Yeah, why do you think everybody keeps bailing for LA? That place is about as fun as a methodone clinic. Well, listen, I gotta bail. It's fucking l.a.t.e. It's Skinemax late.

TFO: All good. How's that Green Lantern movie looking, before you go?

Johns: Pretty good, I guess. We hired Helen Mirren to redo all of Blake Lively's lines in a Jamaican accent. It was going alright until Blake's agent found out. But that's all legal shit, not my game. I'm just waiting for the checks to roll in. 

TFO: Living the life, sergeant.

Johns: You know it. We done here?

TFO: Audi 5000.

-Tucker Stone, 2011