Kicks To The Skull, Prices Reasonable

We haven’t talked a lot about Skullkickers here because frankly, it flies a little under our radar despite being one damn fun comic book. It’s a story about two fantasy adventurers – one an alcoholic dwarf, the othe an alcoholic classic Conan type, only with a foul mouth and a gun – for hire to the highest bidder. Or any bidder. Think Lord of The Rings with a quualude habit. Or a messy, serialized Uwe Boll film that’s actually fun to watch.

The Image book became a hit quickly, selling out its early issues quickly enough that for a while it could be hard to find those comics to catch up… not that you need a lot of backstory to understand “Drunks… monster(s)… FIGHT!” The difficulty in hunting down back issues is, however, no longer an excuse for not checking the book out, because creator Jim Zub is releasing the book from the first issue on the Web. A page a day. For nothing. Gratis. Bupkis. Which is not a business plan that the protagonists of the book would embrace.

What the hell, Jim?

The Killer In Me Is The Killer In You: My Friend Dahmer Review

When I was 20, my college buddies and I brought our mutual friend Alf – a weirdly hairless mesomorph who was the son of a Federal court judge and therefore utterly naive and fearless when it came to the concept of consequences – to our local mall for a little fun. The act was this: Alf put his hood up, hunched his shoulders over and constantly licked his lips. Jim’s job was to hold Alf’s hand while they wandered about, and Alf would wander up to strangers and shout things like, “SAB-A-TOOO! DERRRR!” Then Jim would tug Alf away and apologize along the lines of, “Sorry about my retarded brother. Mom dropped him on his head. Last week.” Repeat until bored or an of-age friend got off work to buy beer for us.

So it was a little surprising to see almost this exact scene in a graphic novel. Except instead of Jim, it was a dude named Derf. And instead of Alf, it was Jeffrey Dahmer.

Smash Cut: The Ray #3 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a comics Website, at a time when spoiler-free reviews roamed the Earth. One review changed all that. It hit with the force of 10,000 spoilers. It has happened before. It will happen again. It’s just a question of when. Which would be now.

So apparently Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray believe that Michael Bay is the greatest threat that has ever roamed the face of the Earth. Having seen two Transformers movies and Pearl Harbor, I’m inclined to agree, although I’d think these guys would put in a bigger vote for the guy who fucked up the Jonah Hex movie.

This issue of The Ray has more of an action-oriented edge than the first issue, which makes sense; in an origin story you need to spend a certain amount of page real estate setting up the characters and the rules of the powers. But after a certain point, you need to get the heroes and the villains into the trenches to beat on each other. And that certainly happens here, but Palmiotti and Gray take things in a slightly different direction than you’d expect. by which I mean The Ray tries very hard to not beat on people in the trenches.

There’s a key scene in this book where The Ray stops the action and tries to talk the villain down. We’ve got more than two full pages of The Ray trying to calm the villain down, along with a few other scenes of the hero aquiescing to demands from authority as diverse as cops to paramedics to pissed-off parents. The Ray is polite, Goddammit, and it not only all makes sense on a character basis – the kid is the adopted child of two stereotypical pot-smoking California liberals as we saw in the first issue – but it’s interesting. After all, if you stop and think about it, having superpowers and using them to beat on someone would probably only be fun if the guy you’re fighting doesn’t have superpowers. If the other guy has them, then it’s just a plain-old fight, and that’s no fun. Having superpowers is probably a lot like having a gun: everyone has someone that they wouldn’t mind shooting, but nobody wants to be in a gunfight.

Rebellion Bias: Spurlock’s Comic-Con Documentary Trailer

Morgan Spurlock is one of those documentary directors that, like Michael Moore, makes my dad act like the sharp edge of his jock just poked through his jockeys and mutter about “liberal bias,” and “stilted opinions,” and “I like supersized fries, Goddammit.” My dad prefers the editorial vision of, say, a Sean Hannity… the difference between Spurlock and Hannity being that if Hannity showed up at SDCC he’d be roofied for spite, with videos of a line of furries angrily yiffing his leg soon to follow on YouTube. When Spurlock goes, he gets a documentary about it.

The flick is called Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope, and it follows a few attendees around the con (if memory serves, based on the Alien facehugger freebie masks that people are waving around, it looks like at least some of it was filmed at the 2010 convention), and provides a general sense of what it’s like to be there… minus the terminal exhaustion, unexplained physical breakdowns, and unless the film costs $1,500 to attend with another $1,200 for snacks, the cost.

Regardless, you can get a taste by checking out the movie’s trailer after the jump.

Never Judge A Book: Ultimate Spider-Man #7 Review

We’re now seven issues into Brian Michael Bendis’s new Ultimate Spider-Man, and Miles Morales is in his costume, Peter Parker is in his heaven, and there is finally superhero action in this superhero action comic book. Man, I’m liking this book a lot more now that something’s actually happening in it. Who woulda thunk it?

However, the book gets a rough start thanks to Kaare Andrews cover. Sure, it’s beautifully rendered with pseudo 3D / photorealistic backgrounds, and unlike the cover in the last issue we reviewed here, it doesn’t look like Spider-Man’s so excited to have superpowers that he’s double-ejaculating like some kind of pornographic Chow Yun Fat while busily sucking his own dick. No, in this cover, Spider-Man is overlooking the city, demurely and quietly squatting… and apparently crapping a giant golden dook. Right on top of the American flag. Look, I really like Kaare Andrews work – his stuff on Spider-Man: Reign was excellent – but the man draws these Ultimate Spider-Man covers like he’s trying to see what weird shit he can sneak into them. I’m guessing that either we’re two issues away from a cover where Spider-Man sprays webs onto Black Cat’s upper lip, or that I just have a filthy, dirty (sanchez) mind and should stop reading perversion into these covers.

Things, however, are a little more plain vanilla between the covers (Ha! Get it?).

Don’t Be Shy; I’m A Doctor

It has been a strange and full day, culminating in a spirited argument between me, Amanda and conributor Lance Manion as to the proper order of a Dr. Who-themed Fuck, Marry, Kill game populated by Amy Pond, Rose Tyler and Jon Pertwee (Editor’s Note: I have chosen… poorly). So combining that and hard liquor means that this…

…means the end of our broadcast day.

But if you have to find yourself in a position where you’re denying that Tom Baker’s scarf might be hiding tits and an Adam’s Apple, there are worse takes with which to distract yourself. We’ve got new Ultimate Spider-Man, Secret Avengers, Avengers Academy, All-Star Western, and a bunch of other cool-looking books to distract you from what happened at the glory hole in the side of the TARDIS!

But before we can review them, we need to read them! Also to gargle, but mostly to read them. So until then: see you tomorrow, suckers!

Blue Velvet: Blue Beetle #6 Review

Blue Beetle #6 is a weird book. Good, but weird.

First off, I still maintain that, of all DC’s first round of New 52 books, Blue Beetle is one of the best at accomplishing its supposed mandate: making the hero generally relatable and understandable to not just new readers to the title, but to new comics readers in general. This is a series in general where you don’t need to know almost anything about the DC Universe at all to enjoy it. And this particular issue, while still part of the overall origin arc, functions as a pretty decent one-and-done that tells you everything you need to know to enjoy just this issue if you want a place to jump on.

Unfortunately, some people are going to have trouble enjoying this issue because, frankly, it includes some action that’s likely to disturb and upset some readers, no matter how good and self contained the issue is in general. This book includes scenes of the hero smacking around a teenaged girl and threatening a mother and her child at gunpoint. Now, if your reaction to that description is immediate and context-free outrage, just hold on and I’ll get to that. If your reaction is to mutter “Awesome!” or to find a discreet place to masturbate, fuck off and find a different comics site, okay? Or better yet: find a different hobby; no superhero’s power is a donkey punch, you spastic.

Pretty Vacant: The Dark Tower: The Way Station #3 Review

Like most guys who came of age during the 1980s, I grew up as a Stephen King freak. And like many of those guys, I was a Dark Tower fanatic, initially because you just couldn’t get the Goddamned thing. The first Dark Tower book was listed in King’s C.V. starting with Pet Sematary, but until 1988 it was only available in a long sold out limited edition that, provided you could even find a copy, would requiring beating off other like-minded fanboys to get it. Possibly literally.

But once it, and its sequels, started reaching the mass market, it hit the sweet spot for comic book fans. It was a fantasy, but not one about some other wimpy pretty boy with a magic sword. No, Roland was a bad motherfucker who was well-trained with a gun – medieval Batman with a sandalwood-handled .45. And as the series went on, it tied into King’s other stories. And his other stories tied into the Dark Tower (which is one of the only redeeming reasons to read King’s Insomnia). He built an entire, cohesive universe tied to the actions of Roland and his hunt for the Tower, turning his entire body of work into a continuity-laden universe. This shit was crack for a comics fan.

The Dark Tower series officially ended in 2004 (although King’s dropping another book of short stories set in the Dark Tower world called The Wind Through The Keyhole later this year), but King kept feeding the fans’ back monkeys by authorizing Marvel to produce Dark Tower comic books, which they’ve been doing since 2007. The initial pitch to stir up the rubes – including me – was that the comics miniseries would fill in gaps in the stories from the novels. And some of them, like The Fall of Gilead and Battle of Jericho Hill, have done just that. Unfortunately, others have just retreaded parts of the original novel in comic form as straight adaptations.

The current mini, The Way Station, is a straight adaptation. It’s an adaptation of a part of the first Dark Tower book that takes place in and around one building, where a lot of the dialog is internal in nature. This isn’t probably the best thing to try to make into a comic book.

The Punishment For Graffiti: New Clip of The Amazing Spider Man Released

The first complete, non-trailer scene clip of The Amazing Spider-Man flick has been released to the Internet on a viral site called Mark of The Spider-Man, a site which shows pictures of a bunch of people doing Spider-Man graffiti in cities around America, and then shows a disclaimer saying that each tagging was done with permission and that they don’t “condone or support the propagation of unauthorized graffiti.” In really small letters. Way at the bottom of the page. All the while, I’m sure, praying fervently that teenaged punks actually do start throwing Spider-Man symbols on brick walls around America. Which they will never do. Because all evidence to the contrary, teenagers are not morons. If Columbia Pictures really wants to reach the young, dumb and full of come “XXX-treme” demographic, they should put the Spider-Man symbol on bags of meth. Perhaps with a disclaimer stating that Columbia Pictures doesn’t condone or support the use of methamphetamines. And yes, I am currently whacked on a double dose of Sudafed; what’s your point?

Anyhoo, if the marketing swine at Columbia are hoping that releasing a clip of Spider-Man will lead to some kind of viral campaign of petty vandalism, they might be right… if perhaps they had released a clip including, you know, Spider-Man. Or The Lizard. Or any action whatsoever. However, they did not, so stow your spray cans, settle in, and enjoy approximately 45 seconds of the epic battle of: Peter Parker vs. The Dick Doorman!

Stealing My Dreams: Winter Soldier #2 Review

Okay: we’re two issues into Winter Soldier now, and I’m getting a better sense of what Ed Brubaker’s going for here: some old-school, Steranko-style, 60s-S.H.I.E.L.D. sci-fi super spy stuff that doesn’t necessarily need to make any logical, real-world sense beyond a James Bond film with a 200 million dollar budget. All of which takes some of the edge off the fact that what initially appeared to be a modern, Marvel-based espianoge story suddenly spun, by the end of the first issue, into a scene of a screaming gorilla with a machine gun…

…and none of which makes it any easier to see that same gorilla with a jetpack at the beginning of this issue. That Goddamned gorilla is living every dream I’ve had since I was nine years old. By the third issue he’s gonna be throwing the meat to Heather Thomas, and by the fifth that fucker’ll be chucking feces at The New Kids On The Block.