Empty Beauty: Batman: Odyssey #2 Review

Batman: Odyssey #2 features exquisite art by Neal Adams. The images of Batman in this book are spectacular, and Adams has not lost a step from his classic Batman illustrations in the 1970’s. You could lose yourself in this art. Which is a good thing because it is there in support of a story also written by Neal Adams. And reading this story is like being fucked in the brainstem by Adams’s drafting pencil after a half-dose of shitty brown acid.

I have no fucking idea what is happening in this comic book. It opens with Bruce Wayne looking right at me – literally making eye contact through the page – andapparently asking me, as a reader, if  I like his Green Lantern t-shirt. Then he says, “So, sure, it wasn’t a happy thing leaving Dick behind, but… what would you do?” Um, I don’t want to tell a legend like Adams his business, but as a long-time comics fan who has read many classic Batman stories, I can’t remember one of them where I was reasonably certain that Batman was hitting on me.

The Quintuple Macguffin: Daredevil #6 Review

This review probably isn’t going to be very long because there’s just not all that much to say about Daredevil #6, or the book in general since Mark Waid took over writing duties from Andy Diggle a few months back. This is an excellent comic, and you should be buying it. This is one of the rare comics where you really need to nitpick to find fault… and make no mistake, I will do that, because baldfaced cheerleading for a comic book just isn’t funny. Unless you’re watching someone else doing it. Preferably at a convention. While he or she is wearing an authentic Spider-Man costume. Assuming Peter Parker had been given the proportionate strength and speed of a very, very obese spider. But already, I digress.

Let’s start with the villain. Bruiser is a new creation by Waid and artist Marcos Martin, with a simple premise: he dresses like a wrestler, he wants to fight The Hulk, and he’s working his way up “The Ranks” of superhumans until he’s earned his shot. That is all we know and all we need to know; he exists to give Daredevil someone new and cool to fight, which is damn refreshing after years of story arcs where old familiar villains with axes to grind spend issue upon issue planning to psychologically destroy Matt Murdock. There have been times when I’ve put down a Daredevil issue and said, “Jesus, would you and Kingpin just fuck and get it over with, already?”

The Kids Are All Right – Review Of Marzi, A Memoir

When you say the words “comic book” to the average American, they will most likely think of stories having to do with capes and cowls. However, there is a rich tradition of comic books that are reality based, topical, even autobiographical. Marzi, written by Marzena Sowa with art by Sylvain Savoia, falls within that tradition. Marzi, published in North America by Vertigo, was originally published in Belgium. The stories chronicle growing up in communist Poland just as the Eastern Bloc is beginning to strike and demand its freedom. However, although those events are the backdrop to Sowa’s story, the book is really more about what it was like to be a little girl, as she explains to Cafe Babel.

“Sometimes readers find it surprising that besides strikes, usually associated with Jaruzelski and ‘Solidarity’, people also had a regular life,” the author explains. “I mean, going to school and to work, children playing in the courtyards, holidays. My comics won’t age. Even twenty years on you will find something new, something for yourself. We were all children, and we all had some wishes that never came true; I was always dreaming about getting Barbie from Pewex (communist-time stores which sold Western goods in exchange for Western currencies).”

It Means To Expose Everything: The Flash #3 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: Struck by a belt of whiskey and doused in bourbon, Crisis On Infinite Midlives editor Rob was transformed into The Spoilingest Man Alive. Tapping into the Internet device called the keyboard, he applies a tenacious sense of… ah, to hell with it. This review contains spoilers. But on the plus side, it also explains the ending of this book. You’ve been warned.

The Flash is really beginning to frustrate me. I want to like this book. The Flash is one of my favorite characters. The art by Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato is some of the best currently appearing in monthly comics, which is no small praise when you’ve also got Jim Lee doing Justice League and J. H. Williams on Batwoman. Manapul and Buccellato are trying like hell to bring new concepts to the book. The problem is, what they need to be bringing to the book are writers.

The book opens with a spectacular title page that should make whatever Marvel intern who writes those dry, empty recap pages chop their typing fingers off in abject shame. It also contains The Flash complaining that he hates coffee, which, as a lifestyle argument, is a complete and total non-starter here in the Home Office. Sure, he says it’s because caffeine plays hell with his speed powers, but it cuts right to the core of everything I believe. Next he’ll be complaining that he can’t believe anybody likes porn because of how it leaves him chafed, bleeding and screaming. But I digress.

The Unchanging Man: The Shade #2 Review

For all the excitement that DC Comics has been trying to generate with the New 52, and their loud and public protestations that everything is all-new and all-different, this appears to be the week that they’re playing to old readers’ nostalgia… if not every reader’s nostalgia, then mine in particular. Going through this week’s DC take is like being 25 years old again, except I no longer have to choose between comics and food that isn’t ramen noodles, my joints crack whenever I do anything more strenuous than turning a page, and those cracking joints are the only ones I currently have hidden in the house.

James Robinson’s Starman was one of the bright spots of comics in the 1990s, a decade that brought us chromium variant covers, Spider-Clones and the ability for Rob Liefeld to make a living that didn’t involve grocery bagging or glory holes. Starman was a book that was as much about world-building as it was the title character, making its Opal City art deco setting and its residents as much a key character as Jack Knight himself. Robinson retired Jack Knight as Starman – permanently, so far – in 2001, and supposedly has a deal with DC where they can’t use the character without his permission, making Robinson the first comic creator I’ve been tempted to torture for the good of comics who didn’t draw Captain America with tits.

So, no Starman for you. However, Robinson’s giving us The Shade miniseries, which is still pretty Goddamned good.

Dark History: Justice League Dark #3 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: On initial publication of this review, I missed Ryan Sook’s cover credit and attributed the cover work to interior artist Mikel Janin. Mikel was good enough to check into the comments and point out my error. The review has been updated with more accurate credits.

I am probably not the best person to objectively review this book, for a few reasons, even though I studied journalism in college. But I figure once you’ve publshed a review that contains the sentence, “This ending is so Goddamned shameful I can barely even find the fucking words,” I can pretty much chuck any pretense of journalistic objectivity out the window, at least when it comes to the Comic Book Reviews category.

With that said, let’s talk about Justice League Dark #3: I liked this book… and I shouldn’t have, by every standard I’ve set for comics in every review I have written to date.

It’s decompressed. It contains almost no action. It barely explains what happened before, assumes the reader has knowledge of comics that were canceled fifteen years ago and were long out of print, and has a cover that writes checks the comic itself doesn’t cash. I mean, at no time in this book does Zatanna ride a Batcycle, and if you’re gonna bait and switch me like that, the least artist Mikel Janin Ryan Sook could have done was put her in her fishnets for a little free-of-charge fanboy boner (Fanboy-ner? Hey, no Google results! Fanboy-ner! Trademark /copyright 2011 Crisis On Infinite Midlives!). And John Constantine does not shoot fire from his hands, Mikel Ryan. The only way his hand should look like that would immediately after fingerblasting Veneria, the Harpy Queen of Tertiary Chlamydia.

So I shouldn’t like this book. But it has four things going for it: Shade, The, Changing and Man.

Flaming: Fantastic Four #600 Review

I have decided that when I die, I want someone at Marvel to write my obituary. Because that will mean that I won’t be dead for very fucking long.

Yeah, The Human Torch is alive again, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

I haven’t reviewed any of the issues in Jonathan Hickman’s run of Fantastic Four before because honestly? It just hasn’t hooked me in. I’ve given it a try because the book has been part of my pulls since Mark Waid’s and Mike Wieringo’s run, so I’ve sort of been getting it by default. And I read it every month, but there’s something about ir that just doesn’t stick to my brain. I’ll grant that alcohol might be a factor, but considering not ten seconds ago I was asked, and able, to recall the Libby’s jingle from the 1970’s, I doubt booze is just attacking my memories of Hickman on FF. Hopefully.

I’ve certainly given Hickman’s writing an honest chance. On top of Fantastic Four, I’ve been reading his book Red Wing by Image, and I’ve picked up trades of his miniseries Red Mass for Mars and Pax Humana. All of which are big idea comics, with intricate clockwork plots that pull together seamlessly… and to a one populated with characters that feel to me like ciphers that exist purely to further those plots. They are impeccable works of engineering, yet oddly bloodless, like a high-end silicone fuck doll: there are people who swear by them, but I was born a blow-up doll man, and I’ll die a blow-up doll man. And lonely. But I digress.

Rehab Start: Catwoman #3 Review

Catwoman #3 is better than the first issue, but don’t get too excited about it, at least not yet. Better is, after all, a relative word; losing your job is better than, say, losing your foot, but that doesn’t make it good.

I’m gonna start with the positive things I found in this issue, because unfortunately there’s still plenty that’s disappointing, but we’re 48 hours from a long weekend in the United States, and only 24 hours from the biggest bar night of the year, so I’m feeling charitable.

As opposed to the first issue, which felt like a bunch of plot points strung together to fill enough pages to justify Catwoman fucking Batman, there is an actual story going on here, and it’s reasonable compelling. This comic is a revenge story, plain and simple, and although it is part of a larger story arc that started in the abysmal first issue, it has the feel of a one-and-done that’s refreshing.

We open with Catwoman captured and one of her closest confidants killed,and proceed at a rapid and exciting pace through her escape, hunting of the killer and taking revenge upon him, all in 20-something pages. It feels complete, which is all-too-rare in the New 52 books so far, and it ends with a cliffhanger vastly more satisfying than the first issue, where the only thing we were left wondering was how you get semen out of kevlar.

What’s In A Name? – Review Of Wolverine: The Best There Is #11

Wolverine is a Marvel character that appears in more books than the Duggars have children. As all children are special and unique, like snowflakes, so it is that each of Wolverine’s titles are all a bit different from one another. In the Wolverine family, Wolverine: The Best There Is, written by Charlie Huston, with art by Juan Jose Ryp is the pretty one that’s also a little slow, but really likes to hear itself talk and thinks it’s more mature than it actually is.

Note the “Parental Advisory! Not For Kids!” label slapped on the cover. Marvel already has an existing MAX line in which content with explicit themes can be published. So, if Wolverine: The Best There Is is “not for kids”, why not publish this title under the MAX imprint? Could it be that Marvel/Disney doesn’t want to take one of its most popular characters and place it in a book that is actively off limits to kids and teens? Because, if that is the case, the overall muted storytelling, with its emphasis on violent, graphic imagery, stilted exposition and bleeped out swear words reads like a network television broadcast edit on an “R” rated movie – and a mediocre one at that.

Spoilers, megalomania and wasted potential after the jump.

Spawn Camping: Green Lantern Corps #3 Review

A few weeks ago I reviewed a comic book about a video game that was actually a damn good Green Lantern story. By contrast, the latest issue of Green Lantern Corps is a Green Lantern comic that is, for all intents and purposes, a video game.

This book is what Green Lantern would be if it was a first person shooter in Hoard Mode.

You think I’m kidding? The whole video game vibe frankly bakes off of this book. For starters, look at that Alex Garner cover and tell me it doesn’t look like concept art from some FPS. The first person point of view, “your” hand coming into frame at right to shoot plasma beams at anonymous bad guys in armor with lightsabers… just replace the DC Comics slug with a health meter and the New 52 bullet with an ammo indicator and boom! You’ve got a shooter! A shooter designed by a focus group loaded with Asperger’s patients (“So how about we give stormtroopers lightsabers and have them fight Green Lanterns? Jesus, Bob; they’re all peeing!”), but a shooter nonetheless.

The whole video game vibe continues right into the story proper and doesn’t stop, from the weird aliens coming in multiple waves, to the Green Lanterns using their rings – weapons that can turn whatever you imagine into reality – to do nothing more than create a plethora of BFG9000’s to mow the aliens down. Part of me thinks that writer Peter J. Tomasi took a screen grab of an epic Red Bull-and-Stoli-fueled Gears of War session, emailed it to artist Geraldo Borges, and said, “Lightbox this, but make everything, y’know, green. But don’t trace the chainsaws on the ends of the guns; I don’t want to get sued.”