With apologies to Tucker.
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Marvel Divas #1
Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa
Tonci Zonjic

Frank Miller’s always saying awesome stuff in those interludes just after he’s pulled his slobbery lips from Hollywood’s open syphilitic sores and right before he’s placed them onto Will Eisner’s spectral ghost-anus. And one of the awesome things he said was that comics can do anything. And I’ll go one even awesomer, and say that super-hero comics can do anything even better. Like, human rights organizations, for example; they’re always going on and on about how the Falun Gong are getting their organs torn out or boring people in Iran are being tortured like in Guantanamo or whatever. So fine, that’s good and all, more power to them…but wouldn’t it be cooler if it were comics, and you had Wolverine come in at the end with an intestine on his claws and quoting Hamlet? Or you could have Superman fly in and take a super-piss on Iran so everything would be green and the Ayatollahs would turn into Swamp Thing?

Marvel Divas is just the sort of story I’m talking about — pushing the boundaries of comicdom just the way Frank and the Ayatollahs were hoping. Y’know, some people say, “Super-heroes aren’t for girls.” But I say, super-heroes can date. They can talk about boys. They can be strong, complex women for the oughts, and by god, they can be just as poorly drawn as their male counterparts.

And hey, don’t forget about cancer. You know a story’s good when it ends with cancer.

Green Lantern #44
Geoff Johns
Doug Mahnke
Inks by scads of folks.

There are lots of great things about super-hero comics if you’re a pluralist. The best thing is that there’s so much plural, these days. I mean, heroes multiplying like bunnies, if the bunnies were zombies and pieces kept falling off of them and staggering off to fuck Batman to produce little zombie bat-bunnies who then tore out Hawkman’s heart! With the elongated penis of a transgendered clone of Little Veronica! From Archie!!! That’s the fucking shit, man! Because nothing screams horror like random super-heroes wandering around a Green Lantern title talking about how they used to be dead but now they aren’t and this one represent Hope! and that one represents Will! And this other guy is as strong as Superman and he’s complaining that everyone forgets that because they’re not reading enough fucking comics! I want more heroes, I want more different lantern colors, I want more panels of heroes explicating their powers in third person like when the Flash says, “The Flash doesn’t fly.” I want Green Lantern shouting from the rooftops, “Green Lantern doesn’t have regular bowel movements, but saves his shit up all year for one big dump!” Thus the term, “Blackest Night.” Or maybe he could say, “Green Lantern doesn’t use bad grammar!” Which is too bad, really; bad grammar is something we could use more of as long as we’re not being elitist. As it is, it seems like only the African-American fellow gets to say “ain’t.”

Marvel Zombies 4
Fred Van Lente
Kev Walker

This is exactly the same comic as the previous one, except better. For the following reasons.

1) Hellcat says, “There’s something about you bad boys that makes me go all creamy inside.” I think she was responding to her boyfriend, who just tearfully confessed that he had cancer. At least, I hope so.

2) This comic has a summary page. Printed in dark red type against black in tiny, tiny print, so that it’s virtually unreadable. And, of course, when you do read it, it doesn’t make any sense. I appreciate it when that kind of care is taken to confuse me.

3) Moebius the living vampire has been reading old Steve Gerber comics, and actually says out loud, “And whatever knows fear — burns at the touch of the Man-Thing!”

Wednesday Comics #1-4

Everybody says I should look at these. So okay, I picked one up and ripped it right in half because it’s put together backwards or inside out or something. What’s with that? If I want a newspaper — oh, never mind, nobody wants a newspaper.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, so then I’m trying to read it, and I was kind of interested because I’ve never heard of this Wednesday superhero, and I’ve even heard of Rocket Racer. But no sign of either of those guys, just a bunch of the same tired old heroes…and they don’t even stick with one for more than a page. First you’ve got Batman talking to Gordon, and then you’ve got Flash running around with Gorilla Grodd and then you’ve got Metamorpho I guess. I mean, I know I said those other comics didn’t make any sense, but these go to a whole new level of what the hell — there are even different artists every damn page. Fuck this pansy ass, oh-so-intellectual William Burroughs cut-and-paste shit. If you’re going to do that, I want to see heroin and flying infectious libido flies, right? I mean, okay, Gordon’s fucking the bat signal one panel, the Flash is addicting everyone in the world to crack at super-speed the next, Wonder Woman’s binding Jack Kerouac with his own nose hair to a flatulent Amazonian kangaroo — I could pay for that I guess. But $3.99 for a bunch of disconnected scenes that keep trying to get a story off the ground and failing… Do I look like I’m made of money? Screw that.

I put it at the back of the rack so the store-owner wouldn’t notice it was torn, naturally. After I pissed on it. I really had to go, and there were a bunch of Dark Reign crossovers I hadn’t seen yet. What? Oh, “Comic stores should be kid friendly! They should be woman friendly!” Whatever. When I go to a comic store, I want a locker room. Period.

Animal Man #3
Gerry Conway
Chris Batista/Dave Meikis

Now this is more like it. Young turk Gerry Conway tells us what it’s like to experience a mid-life crisis, super-hero style. Losing your powers, wife’s upset cause you’re never home, kids are distant, just like in that sad, sad Harry Chapin song — “you know I’m gonna be like you, dad!”

But mainly, now that you’re old and your peter is all wrinkled up like a tiny portrait of Philip Roth, you get to adulterously bang the bodacious co-eds — which in this case means Princess fucking Koriander, aka Starfire, aka Koooooooorrrrry.

Was that so tricky? Was that so difficult? All we really want from our comics is a tale of suburban malaise with the wet-dream pin-up from our drooling youth thrown in as a little cherry on top. When Stan Lee made super-heroes have real problems way back then? This was the whole point. This is the apogee of comics, right here. Go off with it, you and your little Philip Roth, into your suburban bedroom, and contemplate it closely.