Well, looks like Matt Kindt is the Golden Boy of Hollywood all of a sudden. He’s got a bunch of projects in development at Netflix, he’s hobknobbing with Studio Mucky Mucks in forever pools while drinking hard kombucha and he’s dropping 8 dollar comic books for the plebes. He even looks like a Hollywood Mucky Muck, look at this pic of him to the right:
Actually, he looks more like a creepy pedo staring at kiddies through a chain link fence. Either that or the weirdo that wanders through Tompkins Square park in New York City in the wee hours mumbling to himself about the war and the need for a hearty minestrone. I mean, if this guy showed up at my door with my DoorDash order I’d text him to drop the food and slowly back away from my door with his long wool overcoat peeled open to reveal any possible blunt objects. I’ve also got a Stink Eye for the Kindt Eye since his last 4 issue Mind MGMT: Bootleg debacle which turned out to be nothing but a long winded ad for the Mind MGMT board game.
Kindt’s also getting the Hollywood ‘Meets’ treatment where your projects are dangled between two opposing characters or personalities. For Spy Superb we get ‘John Wick meets Wes Anderson’. Yeah, no. This ain’t no John Wick meets Wes Anderson this book is Matt Kindt meets his wife Sharlene in the study and they make a comic book. This is Mind MGMT meets Mgmt MIND where video games, audio books and podcasts are standing at the ready for all your scribbly pastel colored needs. Did Wes Anderson dismiss Matty at a swanky Golden Globes party and now Matty wants to return the favor by reducing this great filmmaker to a scribbly book? There’s also zero John Wick in this book, it’s just a shmo who somehow manages to escape being killed by 5 killers as they accidentally kill themselves in his kitchen.
The premise? The legend of an invincible spy ‘Spy Superb’ is kept alive by an intelligence agency by using unsuspecting normies to carry out the missions. In order to maintain the charade or lose a bunch of secrets stored on a phone they rope in an unsuspecting roob named Jay Bartholomew who considers himself an Auteur but is nothing more than a shmo who works at a bookstore. Clever. I can just see Matty Kay and Jonah Hill getting prostate massages from some Trannies overlooking the Pacific Palisades talking up the plot to this book and bandying about the name for the book store shmo.
Jonah: How about James Bartles, like the opposite of Bartles & James?
MattY Kay DawG: James Bartles, hilarious, you’re a hoot Jay H Doggie. Ooh, how about Jay H James. I mean, you’re on board for the Apple TV + series right?
Jonah: I’m on board if his name is Jay Hewson, that was the name of this asshole who crashed my Bar Mitzvah, won the limbo contest and made out with my crush Jessica Fish.
Matty Kizzle Dizzle: You knew a girl named Jessica Fish?
Jonah: Yeah, I think she’s rapping in Asia under the name J-Lox.
MKD: Word ‘em up.
Jonah: Jay Bartles? Jay Bartholomew? J.B. Chunky, not smooth?
Mind MATTAGEMENT: Dudaroonski, Jay fuckin Bartholomew, boom.
So, Jay Bee gets this phone, heads to his pad and five assassins show up to take him out. But Jay is so klutzy or lucky that they all end up accidentally killing themselves or each other: a burner on a stove explodes, a bunch of steak knives somehow end up in a guy’s back, a simple kitchen fire extinguisher is apparently deadly enough to take out two men as well. Yeah, I call BS. If you pitched this scene to me as an exec in an elevator at CAA I’d take your parking validation and make you pay the $30 for the 10 minutes you were in the building. My goodness, you people probably have no idea how they’ve jacked up the prices for non-validated vehicles in office buildings in Los Angeles. It’s out of control. I also feel receptionists have different validation cards, like if they like you then you get 2-3 hours but if someone calls the front desk before you leave it’s 15 minutes and good luck loser.
Anyway, look, this book isn’t half bad, in fact it’s pretty good. I love love love the cover. The Trader Joe’s bag variant with the receipt on the back and the ‘Trader/Traitor’ pun is genius. I’d like to think that Matt K Dawg shops at Trader Joe’s and hasn’t become an Erewhon snob yet. Maybe that’s wishful thinking at this point. There’s absolutely no reason why you wouldn’t want to check out the next issue other than the fact that it’s 8 frikkin’ bux. I don’t see why this book is 8 bux. Wonder Woman Historia and other Black Label mega hits like Aquaman Andromeda were priced around 8 bux and they were in Prestige Format. That’s a no brainer there. What’s this fascination now by publishers with three issue series for 8 bux each? Let’s just pump these out quickly so I can drop the $40 trade with the extras and downloadable Augmented Reality Filters and a Pokemon card, is that it? Hot to trot comic book dudes are now too busy to lord over a six to twelve month issue commitment because they’re too busy walking around a high stakes Hollywood Writers room swinging a bat like they’re Tom Cruise in ‘A Few Good Men’?
I mean, uggh, it just feels like more and more that comic books are not just comic books for comic books sake they have to key in to the grand machine of content that cascades into the endless vacuum void of screen addicted earthlings. That’s all well and good and I get it, who wouldn’t want their creations finding new homes and new outlets of expression? Who wouldn’t want to roll up into an exciting casting session where little starlets wander in reciting lines you thought up in your boxer shorts in your studio apartment in Waukesha?
Spy Superb isn’t really superb, it’s Spy Pretty Good and you’ll probably yank the next two issues to say ‘I read this when…’ as Jonah accepts his Golden Globe for his portrayal of James Bartles (name changed on first day of shooting by Jonah as Matt was escorted off set by security)
Rating: 8.3
Verdict: Pull
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