My last efforts in this direction were greeted mostly with indifference and hostility, not to mention the lawsuit from Tucker. So I figured, what the hell, let’s roll.

__________________

Secret Six #1
Gail Simone
Brad Walker/Jimmy Pamiotti

My favorite thing about this comic is that the North Korean prison camp is supposed to be this horribly evil place because they kill your family and your baby and everything. But I happen to have just read a bit about North Korean prison camps, and you know, the thing about them is that there aren’t actually families, because people spend their entire lives in them, and the jailers more or less put couples together, and the kids never actually really know their parents. In fact, they don’t even necessarily know that there’s a world outside the prison camp at all. Which just goes to show that you think you’re being evil and cruel, and then it turns out you just haven’t really done your research. But fuck it, North Korea is really just there so that the anti-heroes can look good in comparison, like how we all love Ronald Reagan because of George W. Bush. Of course, it’s maybe a little callous to use the horrific experiences of actual people as a way to make your boring baddies seem soulful, but hey, the North Korean prisoners probably aren’t allowed to read Secret Six anyway. Their loss; nothing cheers a bleak, brutalized existence like a largely incomprehensible mish-mash of portentous pithy proclamations leavened with continuity porn. I can just see that North Korean child now, beaten to a pulp, bloody snot dripping onto each page, shivering to himself, and then getting to the last panel, smiling with joy because….

…it’s a guest appearance by the Mad Hatter! That makes it all worthwhile.

Wolverine: Worst Day Ever
Barry Lyga

This is a book, not a comic, and it’s actually pretty good. Barry Lyga has simple ambitions — he wants to be mildly touching, he wants to be amusing, he wants to have a story with Wolverine in it. And hey, mission accomplished; young mutant narrator Eric, whose mutant power is that nobody notices him, is both funny and winsome. He’s lonely because, well, nobody notices him, but he’s also sufficiently acid to notice that, for example, Professor X ‘s penchant for covering everything in the entire compound with Xs reeks of egomania. And there’s also lots of Wolveirne…being noble, being tough, fighting Sabertooth, singing “These Are a Few of My Favorite Things” and drinking strawberry milk. Perfect.

Oh, and the book also provided me with multiple epiphanies.

1: Wolverine is, like, Han Solo and Chewbacca at the same time. No wonder everybody loves him.

2: I fucking hate Wolverine.

Cry for Justice #2
James Robinson
Mauro Cascioli

I haven’t actually read this. I’ve just seen that one page everyone is up in arms about:

And yeah, I have to say I’m pretty offended too. Let me count the ways:

1. Ollie and Hal (can I call you Ollie and Hal? Aw, thanks.) are totally out of character here. Because…hello? They’re dead. Dead, dead, dead. Even if they hadn’t been wiped out multiple times in various storylines, they started, what, 50, 60 years ago? If they’re not dead, they should be in wheelchairs, not posing like plastic action toys and making frat boy jokes about who put his green wiener where. Those wieners are old and shrivelled, fellas. A mountain of viagra, even abetted by ridiculous facial hair right out of Look At This Fucking Hipster, isn’t going to get you up out of your underwear, much less onto that rooftop.

2. Man-Bat is completely out of character. Last time I checked, he was a doting family man, who would cover his ears and emit high-pitched squeaky noises if anyone started to tell him an off-color story. Besides, he’s way too busy trying to subjugate the mammals to his reptilian will to hang around swapping locker room….

Or, wait, is that the Lizard?

Anyway, whoever he is, he’s out of character, and it makes me sputter.

3. James Robinson is out of character. Continuity has clearly established that he doesn’t even know what women are, much less how to surf to YouPorn for plot points.

Also, he’s lent his toupee to Hal, and it looks ridiculous.

_____________________

Also, as long as I’m mangling poor Tucker’s zeitgeist, I might as well point out that I noted an error in his last column.

He wrote:

“Abstract Comics is a tremendously random (as opposed to “diverse”) collection of graphic design pieces and black and white sketches, only a few of which might conceivably have a place in Kramer’s Ergot or one of those other anthologies people look at but don’t read. The rest are in the same category as the Buddha Machine, or Rafael Toral’s Space series–a specific, niche creation for a specific, niche audience. The only real difference is that the guys who make the Buddha Machine don’t start calling people idiots when they say they’d prefer a little more music with their purchase of sound.”

But what he meant to write was:

“Abstract Comics is boring, except for those two pages by Noah Berlatsky! Man, when I saw those, my cynical eyes beshat themselves, and my hectoring anus voided salty tears. I was such a mess I had to use leaves from the book to clean myself…but, fear not, for I saved those two pages by Noah Berlatsky! I have stapled them now to the visage of my true love, that I may contemplate them whenever I see her, and know that, even in this fallen world, beauty and truth are not forsaken.”

So, there. All fixed now.

With apologies to Tucker.
___________________

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.