As stated in previous posts, I root for the little guy in Comics. That doesn’t necessarily mean I support the little guy. The Big Boys are gonna take a lot of flak for putting out junk, looking at you Marvisney, but they’re the Big Boys for a reason and they can take the heat and the losses. What I’m dishing out to them isn’t even heat by their standards it’s more like a ‘What’s that weird smell’ when they exit onto Buena Vista street in Burbank. I was actually in Burbank yesterday for a voiceover gig for a Video Game on Buena Vista street just north of Disney. As I passed their main entrance I rolled down the the window of my Old School 79 Camaro and yelled ‘Stop ruining my childhood comic books Satan!’. Satan then whispered in my ear to give She Hulk on Marvisney Plunk a try; gotta give it up to their persistence.
At any rate, look, the market is overflowing with new series and creator owned books; a plethora of ‘ooh what’s this’. Books are all on a short leash, it’s three, four, five maybe six issues and then a ‘hold on’ so they can check the numbers before letting the series continue again at a new Number One issue for it’s “second arc”. Publishers are acting like serial daters on Tinder, just throwing mini series out there like they just purchased a couple hundred ‘Super Likes’. If they get a hit, great, if not, there’s another big bootied creative director in West LA who likes Wine Bars and 90s jams juuuuust around the corner…waiting on a line…that stretches all the way to Greyhound depot in Downtown LA; the fresh off the boat babe choo choo.
What that means for us as comic geeks is that we have to be picky. We can’t just snatch up every new shiny series with a bajillion variants or our comic book budget would be in the high three digits every month. So, if you want in on our hallowed pull list you better come with the goody good wowza biznasty or you’re getting your wine loving butterfly tat on the ankle ass dropped. We don’t care how big your office is, it’s an even playing field, streaming, all of it, wow us or buh-bye. I say all of this because Ninja Funk is a shiny new series fresh off the boat with a bottle of chardonnay and a Chinese character tat on the back of its neck vying for my attention. It worked…for a second.
So remember when you were in High School and there was that kid who sat in the back of the class all the time? He wore a jean jacket and had a bunch of pins and patches on it? He had longish hair, acne, a bizarre odor. He would never pay attention he would just doodle in his notebook all during class. You’d sit by him sometimes and peer over at his notebook and there’d be all these crazy black and white sketches of weird monsters and aliens and girls with big tits straddling dragons and rocket ships. You would think, ‘hey that’s pretty good’. But you wouldn’t think ‘wow I should talk to my buddy at gym class whose Dad works at DC and have stinky metal weirdo submit his notebook to them'. That’s what it feels like happened here. Stinky Metal Weirdo got his notebook to this new imprint called Whatnot and rather than forward him a discount to The Kubert School of Cartooning and Graphic Art they went ‘Dude! Righteous Scribbles! Let’s pop this puppy out there!’
You know you’re in a bit of trouble when the synopsis on the solicits starts off the description of the story by extolling the fact that David Mack is doing a Variant Cover for the book. Honestly, that’s what also hooked me, I love David Mack. Every David Mack cover is a work of art and I wish he would get back to making comics again but that’s another story. Here’s the description:
A fun, high stakes adventure weaved together with face-melting beats, Ninja Funk follows a ragtag band of misfits as they attempt to save a universe that's off-key.
Now that would have been cool, if they released a free track online of that face-melting beat to read along with the comic. That would have been really interesting. As it stands, I have zero idea what’s happening or what’s going in the first few pages. There’s a cat that’s flying around and pooping on everything, which is triggering to me because there’s wild cats all over my neighborhood doing the same thing; not flying but who knows what’s going on at 4am. The art is straight sketch book misfit vibe from 1995 replete with the babe in the futuristic outfit with the perky boobies. The vibe reminded me of this play by Sam Shepard called ‘Tooth of Crime’ but, you know, without the genius of Sam Shepard. I flipped forward a bit and that was that. I just walked out of this comic like walking out of a movie.
I just checked the solicits and there are a ton of new shiny butterfly tat exciting titles coming out next week: there’s a new Kindt, a Bermejo oversized prestige edition, a new fangled Iron Man from Marvisney that I will take a deep breath and take a peek at. So NinjaCatPoop ain’t gonna make it. Ninjafunk sounds like the name of an email address you would get from somebody in the 90s. Like ninjafunk@hotmail or even worse at earthlink.
You got a friend request from NinjafunkCatPoop on Friendster! Next up on our battle of the underground Emcees it’s Eminem vs Ninjafunk! You’ve got mail! It’s from CatNinjaLitterBox and it has an attachment, it’s a second issue!
Whatnot publishing. Hmm, maybe they’ve truncated their actual name. Maybe it’s WHATthehellisthisi’mNOTsurewhyIshouldkeepreadingit.
Rating: 2.5
Verdict: Drop
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