April '23 Reading Round Up

 

Another mixed bag in Comic Book land this month. Scott Snyder’s first of the three issues series called Clear was a much needed breath of fresh air, especially

after not faring well whatsoever in his previous two 3 issue drops. The more I think back on it the more I’m getting excited for #2 so puhhleease be just as amazing. As mentioned in my rant in Spy Superb’s finale in their 3^rd issue, these pricey 3 issue are more than often a huge letdown.

 

Avengers War Across Time is a blast. There really is nothing wrong whatsoever with this book it’s pure retro goodness. I mean, you’ve got this formula, it works to a tee. It’s fun, it’s heroic, it’s a comic book. Like, I get it, nobody wants to do their debut acoustic album all over again now that they’re onto symphonic drum and bass with a hint of bluegrass. But, jeez, like, I dunno, keep putting out the formula and add the new flavors. There was a poignant point made in the letters column at the back of the book by a reader named Paul Carbonnaro who I assume also noshes at Canters the same time Paul Levitz does. He goes on to say:

 

“There are a number of things that made the Silver and Bronze Ages great reading fun, and they include splash pages, narrative intrusion and the dramatic irony of thought balloons = the latter for just that, as opposed to exposition. Frankly, I simply cannot understand why modern comic books don’t use these elements. These are comic books after all, and not storyboards for TV Shows.”

 

Amen Paul! This is exactly what I’ve been saying. Just bake a comic book for us, please? We don’t need your pitchdeck for your pipe dream HBO Max show, just deliver a great story meant for a comic book and let the chips fall where they may as far as it becoming something else.

 

Black Cloak is turning into a fine murder mystery and the magical city she’s created is evolving at a really lovely engaging gallop. There’s nothing super spectacular about this series but when you have a writer who understands structure, pacing and effective world building it immediately sets it apart from the common drivel that is the comic book universe these days. After a perfect set up at the end of this issue I’m really looking forward to the next installment.

 

Finally, Groo: Gods Against Groo wrapped up its 4 issue drop and, I mean, you just can’t go wrong with Groo. I really wish Dark Horse would just give Sergio an ongoing series at this point and forgo all these 4 issue mini series but maybe that’s the way Sergio likes it. Whatever the case may be somebody needs to start making the Groo movie already. Yes, after dropping pure amazingness for 40 frikkin’ years there ain’t nothing wrong with giving this IP it’s cinematic due.

 

Here’s what got the full on ‘Review’ treatment of the past month:

 

Monstress #44 

 

Dead Romans #1 

 

Spy Superb #3 

 

Superman: Space Age #3 

 

Clear #1 

 

The Ambassadors #1 

 

That's it everyone! Lastly I hate to admit it but damn that new 'Flash' movie looks amazing. And Keaton back as Bats? Whaaaaat? Dammit. Dammit please be good. Dammit DC make a frikkin' genius movie already! Marvisney's crapping the bed. There's a void. Fill it! 

Happy Reading :)

MONSTRESS #44 - Review

 

I mean, I just, sigh, I mean, dude, what the hell. Like, seriously, what the hell! What the hell is going on here??? Is anybody still reading this comic book? Am I the only one? Is it like some wacky runaway hit in some far gone far flung locale like Pitcairn Island or Burkina Faso? Are fans of this series just buying the book, flipping through it to let the amazing art wash over them and then bagging it and boarding it before they get a chance to even look at the text bubbles? Look, as I said in the review of the issue prior to this one, I’m all for wackadoodle wacky trippy dippy madness when it comes to anything except my dates but someone needs to put this comic in a straight jacket.

 

We’re at the same point in this Monstress comic relationship where we would be if your girlfriend of 7 years started losing her shit and began exhibiting odd erratic behavior. Like if she just started giving herself panda eyes with her make-up and putting her hair in pigtails for the first time you’d be like ‘Honey, what’s with the new look’ and she’d react by punching you in the face for repressing her ability to express herself. Like if you came home one day and she’s yelling at a Golfer in a Golf Tournament on TV while eating a greasy BLT and you say ‘Babe, you’re Kosher and you hate golf’ and she breaks down and cries because she now realizes that you’ve never taken the time out to really get to know the ‘real’ her. It is the essence of that bonkers behavior that has made its way into this comic.

 

Again, I don’t know what’s going on with Majorie in her life but I think it’s safe to assume that she and her genius author beau Junot Diaz are having problems and she’s taking it out on this plot. Either that or she latched onto a really bad ‘Self Help Program’ that is encouraging her to release her trauma into her work. I mean, look at the art in this book now, Sana Takeda seems to be scratching and clawing her panels as if her brain is on fire. I think that’s what we should call this comic from now ‘My Brain is on Fire: The Cats Did it’.

 

Maybe since cats with multiple tails and flying abilities are such a huge part of this series it’s driven Marjorie into the loony bin. Isn’t there something that cats release into the air that’s shown to make their owners go bonkers. I know I read an article recently where a certain parasite that gets into a cat can make their owners ‘take unnecessary life threatening risks’. Maybe that’s what’s happened here. Maybe one of Marjie’s cats sent one of these parasites into our beloved author! It all makes sense now! Look, we’re in this completely ridiculous world now and how did we get here? Through the belly of a stone cat that was floating in space! I don’t think that’s purely coincidental. I think we need to accept the fact that Ms. Liue has gone Catshit Crazy.

 

Let’s just assume for a moment that this ‘Ancient God Prison Colony’ storyline where the roles of the Ancient God and Maika the female lead are reversed; he’s now the host and she’s the tethered symbiotic consciousness, it still begs the question: Why? Why are we in an ancient God prison colony after having just jumped through the belly of an intergalactic feline??? Is it to show that even Ancient Gods are oppressed? Has someone started an Ancient God Reparation petition online yet? I mean, we’re getting scenes and dialogue of Ancient Gods working the fields like we’re in a deleted scene in a cotton field from ‘Shawshank Redemption’. I can hear Morgan Freeman’s voice right now:

 

Red: Ancient Andy knew that any day now a cat would fly out of his puckered asshole. Either that or some emo girl with bangs would wrap a tentacle around his balls and drag him into a bonfire of bones. But he was still the same Ancient Andy, always smiling, always lending a squiggly tentacle hand and always ready to put you on his back and run when the Cat Spaceship appeared in the sky. That’s the Ancient Andy I’ll always remember.

 

You know, I wouldn’t mind this Star Trek type alternate planetary reality type story line if it was, oh I dunno, written AFTER we finished the main storyline. Like, if the whole plot of the war and the mask and the mystery of Zinn and a reconciliation with Momma happened then we flew into a Cat Belly, fine. But we’re on this off the wall tangential story line that has completely divorced us from the main storyline and all its characters. I mean, read the quick recap on the inside page of the main cover:

 

C’mon Marj, like WTF? I think that’s why Sana Takeda’s art is reaaaallly aggressive this issue, she’s probably jittering her hand as she draws the cat while muttering ‘What’s next??? A twelve step program for ancient Gods who have human heads attached to their foreheads??’.

 

And look, now Monstress is taking a mini-hiatus again until June. Clearly Image called Marjorie again asking the same basic questions they ask of her every other month: ‘Is everything okay? Shouldn’t we be wrapping this story up by now?’ only to be hung up by her while cats screech to the heavens in the background. Maybe Marjorie needs to pick up the Saga Compendum to see how you continue a compelling story that lasts over 40 issues. Look, I want this comic to be great. I want it to last a hundred issues but jeezus louiszus throw me a rational story building bone here!

 

Well, just like a girlfriend of 7 years who all of a sudden loses her marbles you can’t break up with her or you’re the insensitive asshole boyfriend dude. So you have to stick it out with her until she does something so unconscionably bad that everyone agrees you have no choice but to leave her. That’s where we are with this book. I can’t just leave it, I have to stand by it and reassure it that everything is going to be okay as it poops on my gluten-free devil dog. Maybe that’s it. Maybe if she introduces a anthropomorphic Terrier character that gets eaten alive or something I can leave based on the principle of her traumatizing me since I have a Terrier. I wouldn’t put anything past a Cat Lady. At this point I’m sure the suits at Image have already bandied about the idea of releasing the collected volumes of Monstress and calling it ‘The Cat Lady Cat Sh*t Compendum’; you know that’s gotta be on the table at this point.

 

Rating: 6.1

Verdict: Sigh. I support you through your plot hardship Crazy Cat Lady. Pull.

DEAD ROMANS #1 - Review

 

Looking at the thumbnails of the weekly comic book solicitations is like being a crotchety old Casting Director looking at headshot submissions from fresh off the boat Non-Union Actors. You’ve got a scowl on your face, an ashtray full of menthol cigarette butts and a desk full of unopened mail. You’ll see yourself saying to yourself:

 

‘What the hell is this crap? Who are these fucking people! No. No. No. Definitely no. Yuck. Oh please. Spare me. What in God’s name is that? More no’s. Jesus frikkin Christmas!’

 

As you scroll down squinting at each comic book cover in the solicits the taste in your mouth grows staler and staler and the pit in your stomach grows emptier and emptier. That was my experience a while ago until I saw the cover for ‘Dead Romans’. Historical shit, huh? Hmm. I’ll take a looky loo. I couldn’t make heads or tails of the plot, go figure, but the art? Wow. Who’s this Nick Marinkovich dude? His work is beautiful. Stylized. Detailed. Evocative. Flat out gorgeous paneling. Yeah, I can let this wash over me in my early morning coffee read, I’ll just pretend I can’t read English and forgo the story. Actually, I tried that. I ignored the text and just watched this book unfold before my eyes and it was quite an experience.

 

Ya know one of the greatest Acting Teachers I ever had said you should be able to turn off the volume of anything you’re watching and still be able to completely understand what the story is, that goes for acting scenes as well. I would say that also goes for comic books. A great comic doesn’t need exposition or thought bubbles, if the artist is truly keyed in and in synch with the writer the art will give you everything you need. I feel without question this is what happened with Dead Romans. Marinkovich’s lines tells you everything you need to know.

 

So I went back and actually read Fred Kennedy’s story the second time around. Fred Kennedy, who’s Fred Kennedy, sounds like a politician who gets caught with a trans hooker in Hollywood on a late Wednesday night:

 

“Councilman Fred Kennedy had no comment on last night’s arrest with famed streetwalker Binky McStinky. When pressed his press agent insisted that when driving home from a full day’s work of making his city better Fred likes giving rides to 24 hour supermarkets to ‘those who seem a bit down on their luck’. This of course doesn’t explain why his pants were down behind a donut stand on Wilcox and Santa Monica blvd.”

 

When you Shmoogle Fred Kennedy the first result that comes up is a Stuntman from Nebraska that worked a bunch of Hollywood films back in the 40s. The next result is firm that helps you with DUIs. So clearly Freddie Kay isn’t a huge name yet which is fine by me, let’s see what you got homie, I’m gonna read your tome:

 

Hmm, interesting, okay, not bad, ah, well, really, gotcha, wait [flips pages back and forth] huh? Ohhh. Wait [flips pages back and forth] hmph, alright. Got it.

 

So I’ll try and break this story down in modern LA terms. The story may be a bit confusing to some of you out there. Yes, this story takes place in Germany and involves a guarded Roman caravan with a Queen aboard that was sent by a high ranking Roman dude. But once you transfer it into a wackadoodle LA story, which for all I know it could be, then it all makes sense.

 

So instead of this being called ‘Dead Romans’ we’ll call it ‘Dead Homeless’ to make it more applicable to La La Land.

 

 

DEAD HOMELESS

 

So you got this douchebag Lawyer type with a tiny pee pee who lives in Agoura Hills. He makes beaucoup bucks but not enough to afford a spot in the hallowed Calabasas gated community. All he cares about are the dillies. He’s got a hot Armenian babe as a girlfriend. She was an actress who booked a commercial here and there but basically was staring down a life as a Restaurant Hostess until she hooked up with Douchy Lawyer Dude after he hit on her at her job. She banged him silly one night and now she shops at Rodeo on the regular thanks to his credit cards. She’s bored and unsatisfied but she likes the cushy home, the whip and the bottomless Mimosas with her pseudo friends on the weekends.

 

Since a girl like this ain’t gonna just sit around and not get her booty bell rung properly she ends up seducing one of the interns at Douchy Lawyer Dude’s office who falls in love with her and bangs her on the regular in his crappy NoHo apartment or in Uber XLs, she loves getting banged in Luxury SUVs for some reason. He obviously wants her to leave Douchy but he ain’t got the ends to satisfy her.

 

Douchy Lawyer Dude is involved in some shady shit. He runs drugs and other illegal paraphernalia from his office and has connects to multiple gang members in LA. His girl knows about it and doesn’t really care, she gets a thrill from it in a way and sometimes does a shady errand for him every now and then. Douchy gets a big multi million dollar shipment dropped in his lap from a gang connect and has to deliver it to a contact in Venice on the low. So he gets his girl to put the drugs in a suitcase and tells her to call an Uber Black to take her to the airport but to add a stop in Venice.

 

Homegirl tells her Intern Lover about the shipment and he gets an idea. He calls his homie who knows a rival gang in the area about the shipment and to hijack the delivery. His thinking is, he’ll have the gang members steal the shipment and grab his girl. He’ll take the money he gets from hooking up the gang with the drugs, about 250k, to fund his crypto venture which he’s more than confident will turn him into a billionaire. The Gang already is in deep shit with the local cops over a bunch of robberies and accidental shootings of randos on Abbot Kinney. So they decide to pay a bunch of raggedy homeless losers to ambush the Uber and snatch the babe and the blow. They hook the homeless up with a bunch of glocks and tell them they’ll get paid once they deliver both to them after the ambush.

 

Problem is, Douchy ain’t an idiot and had someone tailing his girl in the Uber. Once the Uber gets ambushed on Venice Blvd the dude tailing Douchy’s girl unloads on the homeless. The Uber goes up in flames and multiple homeless get drilled and killed. Several manage to grab the babe and the blow and take off into the sewer system. The word goes around the entire homeless pop in Venice (which probably outnumbers all the gangs in LA) that they were set up. The homeless rally around each other and put ransom demands on both the girl and the blow as they hide out in the sewers.

 

Now the Intern is fucked. He’s lost his girl and the blow. He knows Douchy is gonna come after both hard so he drives over to Venice to talk to the gang members about rescuing his girl and the drugs.

 

So there ya go! It’s not bad huh? Makes you really wanna read Issue 2 now doesn’t it. You’re welcome Fred Kennedy. Just stay away from the Trannies and keep your nose clean and I think you’ll be looking at a real successful series just as long as you get out of the way of Nicky M and his bad ass art.

 

Dead Homeless. Coming to a cheezy YouTube channel near one of your browser tabs soon!

 

Rating: 7.8

Verdict: Pull

SPY SUPERB #3 - Review

 

This is going to be a rant about Kindt’s Marketing Team and a rant about these pricy Three Issue Series drops that seem to becoming more and more popular in the monthly comic book publishing world. These pricy 3 issue drops? They need to stop. Unless you’re coming with the super rarefied genius that Black Label came with last year, y’all need to stop. Unless you’re dropping something comparable to the unbelievable majesty that was Aquaman: Andromeda, Catwoman: Lonely City or Wonder Woman: Historia – y’all need to stop trying to charge our geeky asses all this bank for these wack ass three issue mini-series. Just because you fluff up the page count and compress a story and hire someone who’s got credits doesn’t automatically make your 3 Issue Money Grab grabbable.

 

See, the prices on the aforementioned books were justified. Hell, I probably woulda paid more if they upped the prices for Books 1 & 2 of all three of those Black Label titles they were so ridiculously amazing. But if you think you can just mush your story into three jumbo sized issues because you wanna hurry it up so you can double up your return on the monthly and the trade within six months – slow your roll. Most of these 3 issue jumbo sized extra page count books – are butt. One of those butt books was this Spy Supreme trasharama.

 

Look, it’s not easy having a coherent, well paced story with well rounded characters that traverse a fulfilling arc replete with a twist and a payoff at the end in only three issues. It takes talent. It takes a smart efficient editorial team and most of all it takes a solid concept that has zero holes in it. Spy Supreme has more holes in it than a golf course. My little baby’s doggy poo bags are stronger than this book’s flimsy AF plot. I don’t get it. Like, why? I just spent 25 bones on this mini series and I would rather have paid for a fancy shmancy ridiculously priced controversially lauded burger at Father’s Office in Culver City than piss my hard earned comic book bux down the drain on this half baked swill from Kindt.

 

Kindt! WTF? Mind MGMT! Genius! Pure effin genius. We want more, obvi (that’s what the kids say these days, obvi, look how hip I am) but if you’re gonna dip your wick back in the spy game again homie you can’t just poop any old idea you came up with at one of your Eyes Wide Shut parties in Hollywood where you were being violated by a dozen masked women and Kathy Griffin dressed as Maleficent with a strap-on. Your premise is sound: unsuspecting yutz is one of a line of other unsuspecting yutzes who have the traits to act as an invincible useful idiot to carry out missions they’re not even aware of, great! But it’s one note, bro. You don’t have a story here and because it’s so poorly plotted your scribbly art looks even scribblier, it looks like toilet paper square art and doesn’t enhance the story at all like it did in your groundbreaking Mind MGMT opus.

 

You come up with some cool spy people especially Roche Chambeaux, the dude who’s a killer that rocks scissors, poisoned paper squares and fists of titanium – brilliant. But the whole story goes nowhere and is fugazi. I don’t buy for a second that this ‘Lucky’ spy chick fell for this guy. I don’t have any connection to why this dude is being used nor has it been reinforced by whom. I can’t for the life of me figure why they’re in New Zealand other than it’s far away, woop de doo. The environment plays zero of a character in the plot; it could be anywhere. Dude, Matt, bubbeleh, you can’t drop genius, become Hollywood and then drop poop. You’ll tank your career. People will soon figure out you’re a hack even if you’re not. You’re a year away from wandering around Abbot Kinney in Venice on an Art Walk Night looking like you’ve just been on a bender for a month in a youth hostel in Europe.

 

You know what’s really sad? I could’ve typed into ChatGPT ‘Hey, evil AI, write me an unbelievable sequel to Matt Kindt’s Mind MGMT’ and been given more of an entertaining read than this. Hell, it probably would’ve drawn your stuff to a tee. Hell, I could’ve told it to draw in the cast of the Muppets and taken this AI Comic to next level award material. You know what’s really sadder? I bet that’s already happening. I bet we’ve already read some AI Comics. I mean, do you really think DC & Marvisney that’s being run by corporate cost cutting overlords haven’t already experimented on some of its wacker titles that don’t sell very well by now? The crazy thing is in a couple of years we probably won’t be able to tell the difference if this AI thing goes unchecked; we’re literally on the threshold of making most artists obsolete.

 

Anyway, back to this three issue insanity. I just spent 30 bones on 3 issues of Superman: Space Age. As mentioned before by me, the Three Issue Gambit is brilliant by marketing standards. You have an idea with a hook. You drop a pricy oversized page count issue. It’s good enough to make anyone want to buy the second issue. The second issue is good but not great, in most cases it might even suck. When the third issue comes out you feel compelled to buy it because A. You already bought the first two B. Just because the second issue sucked doesn’t mean the third will and at this point you might as well find out how it ends.

 

Then it’s over and you’re like ‘What the hell just happened???’ You just paid for what you would have paid for 6 comics over the span of six months in 3 and yet you didn’t necessarily have a transcendent experience, dude, you just got three issue banged on the dance floor at a Molly Rave at the Avalon on Vine on a Monday Night. The Majestic Black Label Books of 2022 had a lot of time off between issues. One had to assume it was because they were putting a hell of a lot of work in to make those issues unbelievably undeniably great – and they were. Look at 'A Vicious Circle', that also is a 3 issue prestige drop but issue 2 hasn't come out yet and it's been 4 months since issue one. That tells me they're working hard on delivering the goods for issue 2. But this ‘Spy The Herb?’, turns out it was nothing more than a cog in the marketing scheme of the Kindt team.

 

Well looky looky at what we have here at the very end of this series plastered on the inside of the back cover:

 

 

Fifty Bux! My goodness. To be honest, this actually looks great, I mean, this looks waaaay better than the gobstopping swill I just ingested from this 3 issue drop. The more I look into it the more I wish I had bought this instead of these 3 comics. I wasn’t aware this was even out. So, again, Kindt/Dark Horse is trying to upsell you after a Mini-Series. They did with the Mind MGMT:Remix 4 issue series that was blah at best. That one seemed completely tailored as a hook for the Mind MGMT Boardgame, which cost $50 also. So these comics are just marketing tools for even more expensive purchases, they’re not comics for the sake of them being comics. Do you really think after reading two mediocre poorly thought out mini series that I’m going to be all hyped up to drop an extra $100 on more Mindless MGMT stuff? Like, ‘Hey, thanks for wasting $25! Here, drop another $50 on this!’ Dude. C’mon. I mean, if this was a great Mini Series or even a great 6 issues I might consider it but after pooping on three of my mornings with this caca I’m not really inclined to spend more, capische?

 

Like, Saga puts out perfect issues every month and then is like, ‘Hey, we have merch if you want it’. Great! I’ll check that out, might even buy some. Or if Lemire or Bendis drops six dope issues in a row and the publisher is like ‘Hey, look at all the other stuff this dude wrote’. Great! I might check that out and buy it too. But this just feels like a comic book hook. Like, I didn’t even know about the board game and this book to begin with, but now I do, after paying $40 between the two series. That makes me feel yucky. Like, either market it properly to people in the game and trade market or pump out some bad ass quality engaging books that would pique my interest for more.

 

Matt, bubbeleh, I get it, LA is expensive. Can’t find a decent cup coffee for less than $8 after a tip. Power Bills are more expensive than your TV & Phone bills combined. You can’t eat out without at least dropping $30-40 per person, and that’s at a chintzy taco spot in Mar Vista. But dude, you’re doing it ass backwards. Star Wars releases Star Wars and then says buy the action figures. You’re selling the action figures before the movie homie. Get your shit correct. You officially get the ‘Stink Eye’ next time I see something that is in the solicits from you. Hey, it’s baseball season…

 

Cause it’s One. Two. Three Issues and you’re Out of $$$ in the Ol’ Comic Game!

 

Rating: 5.7

Verdict: SMH

 

SUPERMAN: SPACE AGE #3 - Review

 

I finally got around to finishing this wacky 3 issue drop from DC. I’m not really a Superdude guy but I was intrigued by the series, Alldred’s art is always delightful and the page count was a definite bang for the buck. To be honest, I don’t know what the point of this series was and who it was necessarily targeting. It gives off a serious retro vibe and does a lot of revisionist history with its iconic characters. I’m not sure if this is an alternate reality or if Mark Russell was just tasked with the idea of just writing his take on the Supe and JLA origin story and their attempt to stop the world from being destroyed. Maybe they got wind of the Levitz “Avengers War Across Time” retro thingy and this was their response, wouldn’t be surprised.

 

First of all, the cover looks like what the costumed characters look like in front of Mann’s Chinese Theater these days in Hollywood but without the muscles. Plus, the chick in the upper right in the fishnets is eerily accurate as to what happens on the weekends there: Ho’s just be fallin from da sky upside down n shit. Who is that, Black Canary? Looks like any random Luciferian you’d run into at Bar Sinister in Hollyweird on any given night. Look at all those rips in her fishnets, why are they there?

 

Fishnets in the 80s and 90s never had rips in them, babes would parade around them in videos sexy as all get out. Now? It’s a thing to look like you just got into a fight with a mountain lion after you fell off a balcony in the hills at a late night after party. Is that supposed to be a turn on?

 

Wow, you look like you’ve been up all night doing drugs and fending off savage animals in a forest, wanna grab a coffee?

 

I have lots of questions about this book. First, I thought that Green Lantern was killed in the last issue, so why did the singer Maxwell get cast as him? Look at this dude, that’s the ‘Sumthin’ Sumthin’ guy! Did the JLA end up in a poetry slam in Brooklyn for some reason and see Maxwell perform and hire him to croon during their ‘Thursday Threesome Nights?’

 

We also get a lot of Lois and Clark living in the Fortress of Solitude raising their Super Kid. I have a lot of questions about this whole fortress of solitude situation especially once Supe brings Lois there.

 

1.  Once you bring a babe there doesn’t it immediately annul its whole ‘Fortress of Solitude’ status? Wouldn’t it turn into something like ‘The Bang-cicle’ or the ‘The North Pole Dance?’ Unless you’ve created a whole other ice house for her. Regardless, no self respecting intelligent babe is gonna wanna live in a spot called the fortress of fucking solitude. She’s changing that shit with a quickness. It’s probably going to become ‘The Palace of Communication’ or ‘The Armory of Saying Sorry and Meaning It’.

 

2.   What’s the kitchen like and how long does it take to get groceries? I would assume there’s gonna be an ice-island in the middle of the kitchen but what else? Are you just eating raw and vegan up there cuz you obviously can’t have an oven. One thing I know is that babes want to have food up in their domicile so Lois ain’t gonna be content to just get Super Banged. Plus, she’s gonna want to completely do a makeover on the kitchen. And, groceries. Clark! We’re out of butter! Like all day every day.

 

3.     What’s the coffee situation? Oh c’mon, a New York Beat Reporter? That chick drinks coffee like it’s Guinness at a pub in Dublin. Can you even heat up water in the Fortress? Iced Coffee isn’t gonna cut it and I’m telling you right now Lois without her coffee fix in the morning has gotta be a complete and utter nightmare. Supe and his “Mmm wake up to the fresh air of the Artic” ain’t gonna cut it with a caffeine addicted New Yorker who needs to feel useful and important.

 

4.     What’s the laundry situation? Holy Moly that’s huge! You can’t just sleep on the same sheets every day especially after Super Banging on them and bickering over who sleeps in the Super Wet Spot. She’s gonna feel gross and unclean and want freshly laundered sheets like every other day. Supe and his “I’ll heat them and clean them with my eye lasers”? Yeah, another ain’t gonna cut it. It’s either spin cycles or nuthin. My goodness this Fortress is turning into the worst bachelor pad in the history of the Universe.

 

5.     Now in this comic they raise a kid in the Ice Palace of Communication. Are you kidding me? You telling me a new Mom is just going to be okay without all the accoutrements that come with raising a baby?!?! Is there Super Formula? Is there a Super Baby Monitor? Just because Supes can hear every single breath of the kid doesn’t mean that Lois still wouldn’t want to make sure everything is alright in the – I dunno, where’s the kid sleeping? Is it decorated? Is there a place to change the kid’s diapers? DIAPERS! Where they getting diapers from???? Again, this is the 80s, no Prime!

 

6.     So Daddy Supes is there all the time albeit as a algorithmic AI hologram, but still, no way Lois is just gonna be fine with Magic Daddy all up in their business 24/7. During one of their knockdown no punches pulled fights about the coffee situation Holo Daddy would probably float in and offer some sage advice which would only drive Lois crazier about there being no coffee. Seriously, Holo Daddy is getting unplugged within a week tops.

 

Yeah, I call serrrriouuuuss bullshit on the entire fortress scenario. Lois would like be down for a weekend getaway here and there but no way is she getting her homemaker vibe on Mr. Freezemeister’s vacation home.

 

There’s a whole Lex Luthor corporate takeover subplot which is neither here nor there. Basically it all comes down to something called The Anti-Monitor, who looks like a bunch of rejects from the Galaga video game, that is coming to devour the Universe of the Earth. So the fate of the world rests in the hands of these people:

 

Who's the Cat Dude??? There's a Cat Dude hero in the DC Universe? You know the Cat Dude is the guy who shows up uninvited to a Halloween Party with his cat mask and proceeds to drink himself into a stupor while grabbing the asses of all the taken women in the party before leaving. Then while everyone's upset and wondering who violated their wives/girlfriends someone pipes up 'It was a dude with a Cat Mask on, he was drinkin' and grabbin' mad ass and then just bounced'

 

I mean, can we just accept the fact that in the 60s or 70s the creators of DC got super high on weed and acid and wandered down from their comic book making offices one day and stumbled upon the Pride Parade in the West Village? Their eyes, and probably some of their crotches, bulged and they probably raced back to their offices to come up with all the costumes of the entire DC Universe. Look at them! That’s major pride vibe right there. Plus, you’ve got your token sad drunk babe who goes to gay bars to drown her sorrow over her cheating boyfriend, that’s Black Canary in the lower left corner. And! You also have your basic Drama Chick in the top hat who everybody in the cast of the Lower East Side play she’s in can’t figure out if she’s straight or not, that’s Zatanna. Zatanna, jeez, even sounds like the hottest girl in a cast who nobody even gets close to figuring out or smooching. Like, she’s either a rich dude’s girl that he’s letting have her fun slumming with the poor artist types or she’s a deviant who’s trying to play it off like she’s normal but she runs an S&M dungeon on the weeknights and sticks her heels in the earholes of Wall Street losers for oodles of cash.

 

So the world gets destroyed but Supes was able to collect the DNA of every human on the planet by offering them the cure for all the diseases on the planet by being able to diagnose and cure everything based on their DNA. Let me tell you something, I’d give my DNA to Superman okay? But under no circumstances would I give my DNA to annnnyyy of these Ancestor Family Tree Bogus DNA kits. I can’t believe people fell for this nonsense. 

 

 

Evil DNA Dude 1: Hmm, how can we collect everybody’s DNA and put it into a database so we decide how to kill any and everyone whenever we so choose.

 

Evil DNA Dude 2: Hmm, I know! Tell them if they do we’ll show them how they were related to a Cherokee Chief or  like a, I dunno, a Welsh playwright in the 1700s.

 

Evil DNA Dude 1: Yeah! Then we can just connect them with random people in rural areas that nobody ever talks to and tell them that they’re related, brilliant!

 

 

Unbelievable. You know that people have submitted DNA to the same or different companies and almost always get back different results every time? You’re not related to Sitting Bull okay? You’re still related to your creepy drunk possibly pedo uncle who runs a sportsbook out of Linden, NJ.

 

Supes then takes the shards with all the DNA of humanity and enters some alternate universe created by the Brainiac crew and creates a new Universe with an Earth in it. The real Superman dies but there's a new Earth that gets created with a new Superman and a bunch of mostly white people in head to toe white outfits that have a bunch of pets at their feet.

So now it's clear to me that the entire creative team of this book was baked out of their minds. I'm cool with that. I mean, if DC heads start doing acid like they did in the 60s and 70s and they start putting out quality shit who am I to judge? Clearly all that Marvisney is doing is strapping all of their writers and artists into a chair, peeling all of their eyelids back a la 'Clockwork Orange' and forcing them to watch 'Pink Flamingos' on repeat for weeks on end before they're allowed to commence on their work.

I don't know what to make of this whole 'DC Space Age' experience that I just had. I mean, it happened, I got it, it was goofy, I didn't feel anything but in some weird way I enjoyed it and appreciated the writing a lot, like, yeah, it was really well written. Well, now I have a good icebreaker for my next date whenever the hell that is. Literally, an icebreaker. I can ask my date what she thinks of the whole 'Fortress of Solitude' Situation and then sit back and watch her go on a rant for an hour.

Rating: 8.0

Verdict: Get it, it's, umm, it's pretty good! I think?

 

 

CLEAR #1 - Review

 

 Here we go again with Snyder and these 3 issue series. I’ve been burned before: ‘We Have Demons’ and ‘Night of the Ghoul’; those were both major oy’s to the veys. This one, per usual Double S, intrigues me. Apparently this has already been released digitally on Comixology so I assume it did well enough to warrant printing it? Uggh, I loathe that whole marketing premise: Release it digitally, see how it does and if if sells then print it for the world. Everything is hedging your bets these days isn’t it? God forbid you just say, hey I like your idea, write the shit out of it and let’s put it out to the world. No Risk=No Glory. I feel like Image is aligned with that thinking, for the most part. As has been lamented before in this blogamajigeroo, the whole 4, 5, 6 issues dropping at a time before there is an evaluation to come up with more is really bringing me down along with a lot of other comic geeks I know. They justify it by saying they’re story arcs where more than half the time they’re just a continuation of what the hell was going on in the first place; in other words…a series. I can’t say why this is the norm now but it sucks balls.

 

Does anybody actually read digital comics? I suppose many do. I mean, can you even consider that a comic at that point, it’s more like webpages with art on them. I would dry heave if I had to open up an app on a tablet and then swipe left on my digital comic; what a dehumanizing concept. It’s like dating apps for comic books. It feels like you’re reading a comic book but you’re not actually reading one just like it feels like you’re viably communicating with a prospective smooch prospect but you’re not. You’re looking at the ingredients of a comic but not actually ingesting one. You don’t go to a restaurant and tell the kitchen to bring you the ingredients to your meal do you?

 

I also can’t understand why digital comics cost the same as regular comics. Clearly that’s a misstep by the industry. Either make digital 4 bux and real tree juice comics all 6 or 7 bux or make the comics 4 bux and the digital 2 bux. Pricing all formats at the same price point makes zero sense and undermines the idea that it costs more to print, ship and deal with LCS human beings. I get that the argument for digital anything is convenience and that it saves space. Having traversed the entire rainbow path of having nothing but physical products to having everything be digital to 2023 I can say that actually feeling and touching something is way more of a fulfilling experience than just having it exist on a rectangular device somewhere.

 

Remember that moment in the ‘Steve Jobs’ movie where Michael Fassbender as Jobs is on the roof of a building at the end of the movie talking with his daughter? She’s upset or something or is about to walk away and he says “I can put 1000 songs in your pocket”. Clearly this was a reference to having the iPod in development which would turn the world of content upside down. If I was his daughter I would have rushed at him, pounced on his chest and with my fingers clenching down on his throat I’d growl ‘Nothing will replace Vinyl you degenerate NerdFuck!’.

 

Dave Chapelle tells a story where he was in a bar or something with Steve Jobs and Jobs was bragging about how he had the first iPhone in his pocket. Chapelle says he should have taken it from him and thrown it into the ocean and thereby would have saved all of us. Look, in no way am I luddite but digital convenience will, at least for me, never replace tangible objects that enrich our experience. You can’t bag and board a digital comic. I mean, you can snag the file and drag it to your bag and board gif but there’s something about bagging and boarding a comic you loved and putting it away for posterity’s sake that can’t be replaced. I do realize that since rents now average 3K a month here in La La Land that you need to be making six figures in order to afford a big enough place for your comic book collection; so there’s that.

 

Okay okay, ‘Clear’. Well, I’m clear that ‘Clear’ is the best thing Snyder has written since Wytches and his majestic New 52 Batman Run. Praise Jesus, Allah, Buddha and Prince we finally have a winner! Took ya long enough Double S. This is Sci-Fi Noir at its best. This is the Sci-Fi book I’ve been waiting for. A real Superstar Writer’s take on the whole Augmented Reality phenomenon. Snyder nails it on the head with this whole ‘Veils’ filtered reality concept wrapped around a hard boiled murder mystery. Couple that with Francis Manapul’s flawless art that captures this futuristic world to a tee and I’m all in. So this was just sitting on a digital cloud for months until it made it into the physical world? Ridiculous! This should have been front and center in my LCS like it was an overhyped Marvisney Multidimensional Multitrashbinfodder Crossover Event.

 

Man, there’s nothing better than seeing a battered and bruised dude with a hard lined jaw walking into his office with the blinds barely cracked open to find a smoky hot babe in a pencil thin dress bursting out of her top wanting to talk to him about her case. I’d like that. Maybe the Marvisney people can send me a babe from their marketing division to come here dressed like Mary Jane Parker to talk about their case and why I’ve been ripping them apart for the past 6 months.

 

Minor little gripes:

 

1.     It takes place in San Francisco 2052. That’s thirty years in the future which means that’s thirty years of deranged psychopathic homeless people pooping all over the city. By then there’d have to be poop neighborhoods and poop castles. There’d probably also be a Poop Skateboard Park where skateboarders drop into poop half pipes, poop ledges and poop rails. This would’ve added another layer of realism, maybe our protagonist hunts down the murderer at a poop dock, that would be cool.

 

2.     The pretext for the war that brought the US to its knees is pure caca legacy media lamestream news nonsense. So Snyder says that China took over Taiwan, then Russia invaded Poland like they’re Nazi Germany then North Korea invaded South Korea. China’s invasion of Taiwan would not cause us to do ske-wat because they own half of our land and we buy all of our cheap junk that lines every Target and Walmart from them. Enough with us fighting China, ain’t gonna happen. Plus, Russia would never invade Poland nor would The Jong Un invade South Korea. Some dipshit’s been watching too much Wolf and Anderson and needs to stop believing the tripe that gets reported on NPR and Apple News.

 

3.    Snyder then says that our military initiative was turned back by China because they programmed all of our missiles to turn around on us and blow up our shit. C’mon Snyder. This ain’t War Games and Matthew Broderick isn’t sitting in the Pentagon, come up with something a little more believable or just skip the whole geo political military stuff altogether.

 

Other than that, this was a super fun issue to read through and it was jam packed from front to back with pages of Manapul artistic goodness with zero ads; a serious clear bang for my buckaroo. Obviously given Snyder’s history on these three issue drops the second issue go could south and implode faster than a six pack of Bud Light at Kid Rock’s ranch but with this fantastic premise I think Snyder would be hard pressed to mess this one up. If you read this on Comixology only, I feel bad for you. It’s like you enjoyed this on a web cam. I got the real thing baby. Nothing like turning the page of an actual page. It’s called a Comic Book not a Comic Swipe.

 

Rating: 9.1

Verdict: Pull and Turn

THE AMBASSADORS #1 - Review

 

 

I'm not a big fan of the Mark Millar vibe. His whole oeuvre, it’s got this snarky sniveling pompousness to it. I feel like Millar is the 2000s version of Dane Cook of the Comic Book World. I did some shows with Cook back in the day. He’s very good, solid, no holes in his material or delivery, great energy, likeable. Yet his bombastic career vaulted into the stratosphere due to his ego, his viciousness in strong arming other comics who would dare confront him over the source of his material and his genius of utilizing the dawn of social media (mainly MySpace) to his advantage.

 

Cook was the MySpace king when it was actually a space. He capitalized on his ‘Yo Bro’ regular guy from Bawston act to be a vortex for the entire party people ‘Woo Hoo’ crowd. They flocked to his shows. He was a guaranteed winner onstage and he was just like you. Problem was that ‘Woo Hoo’ crowd wasn’t a sophisticated comedic savant crowd. They couldn’t tell you who George Carlin or Bill Hicks was. They wanted to take their dates out, drink a lot and go woo hoo to Cook’s middle of the road humor. Cook became the darling of the LA Comedy scene due to his shows at Dublin’s. 

Dublin's was a huge Irish Pub/Club with two floors that used to exist right at the edge of the Sunset Strip back in its heyday when cruising the strip was still a thing. It was a perfect storm. The Woo Hoo Social Media Guy Comic at the tip of LA’s Social apex. He killed you with laughter and then you could dance, drink and kill yourself with booze and lines off the floor of the Viper Room.

 

Cook’s biggest show on planet earth was broadcast in the round from Madison Square Garden if I’m not mistaken. It was his moment to cement himself as one of the greats. The ‘Woo Hoo’ crowd was there but you could feel how off the energy was. The Woo Hoo crowd didn’t want to sit down in an arena and be far away where their dates could barely see one of their own. They were restless. They didn’t have the attention span for an hour. They wanted twenty minutes so they could go back to the bar, order drinks, text their friends, maybe get a quick bang in the bathroom with their dates. This was asking too much from them.

 

Cook’s film career also tanked. You can’t go Woo Hoo in a cinema unless it’s in the Bronx of course. The final downfall came when another regular shmo Louis C.K. called him out as a thief. Louis wasn’t just a regular shmo like us he was also a comic’s comic. He was one of us; a guy who put the years in as a nobody because he loved what he did.  So the vitriol and desire for retribution over Cook poured through C.K.’s shtick. His ascent to knock Cook off the top of the mountain was rooted for by everyone who saw Cook as a fraud. Of course, C.K. became exiled from the kingdom of comedy when it was revealed that he liked stroking off in front of female comics in the heart of the Me Too error, oh Louis.

 

Anyway, so this Millar doofus. This yutz who puts his name at the top of every comic in BOLD 150pt FONT. His books are events! They’re part of his World! Millar World! They’re can’t miss arcs of never seen before work in the comic book medium. He enlists the greatest artists and tells the most riveting stories! Millar World! Where comic geeks go to experience all the best that comic books have to offer under a sky where MILLAR hovers in 17,000 pt font as a hologram. Yeah. Whatever.

 

I never found anything he did to be so gobstopping wow. It was like Cook: good, solid, standard fare, no flaws, solid delivery – but so fucking what? You’re not Stan Lee or Jeff Lemire or Jonathan Hickman even. Millar’s stuff gets made into TV Shows! He’s always got something in development that will break new ground in the world of entertainment. The fusion of his mnyeh comic books with streaming content will take the world by storm!

 

I bet this dude goes to Dominatrixes a lot. Like, he’s one of these tightly wound neurotics who hob knob in such high stakes meetings and business shenanigans that he needs some Amazon with sawed off heels to put a ball gag in his mouth, hang him upside down and put his fingers in a nutcracker. I bet he likes to crawl around naked on Star Wars comic books from the 70s panting like a dog while his Dom whips him and seethes ‘You’re not Lucas, you’re not big time, you’re an aborted Ewok’ while he whimpers ‘Yes Mistress Lay-uh’.

 

So this ‘Ambassadors’ book comes out. Mind you, I’m toiling in a world where my pull list is dwindling by the week due to the incessant blecch that seems to be pouring out from the Comic Book Universe these days. I’m flailing about, looking for something to grab me, to take me away on a journey. Millar isn’t stupid. Never said that. No, he’s cunning and a brilliant salesman. He knows how to grab people. So what does he do? He drops another ‘This story is holy guacamole good!’ but he gets Frank Quitely to draw it. Fuck. Quitely. Quitely can draw a pile of poo on a bar napkin and it would be frameable. Quitely. Dammit. Art Genius. Okay. Fine. I’ll get it, I mean how bad could it be? And look, Millar reduces the font of his name at the top of the book and makes it equal to Quitely! Okay, maybe he’s chilling out a bit.

 

The premise, from what I can gather, is some wrongly accused middle aged Korean chick who is rotting in a jail cell somehow creates the ultimate super hero of some sort and has downloaded herself in its consciousness in another body that’s out in the world somehow. Her douchebag husband who I assume either stole the tech or just flat out betrayed her had her put in jail either for being smarter than him, not making good homemade kimchi, or both. Meanwhile we get a subplot B story of your basic half assed ‘Antarctica is a base for the intelligent agencies/shadow govt’ where the future of the planet is created/experimented on and super intelligent beings/monkeys who escape and have to be tracked down by Men In Black who don’t dance like Will Smith nor have wives you need to keep out yo fuckin’ mouf.

 

Korean chick is now a babe and is levitating in front of a bunch of elites in Korea. She offers her superpower tech to anybody, any regular person who is worthy of it from the entire planet. Who will it be??? The crusty dude who yells ‘Tamales’ at 8am up the street from me? Megyn the Horsy or whatever she is? A white blonde Christian woman who loves Jes – hahahahaha I’m sorry I couldn’t even finish typing that; you're kicked off the casting list sweetie for about 10 years. Well you know what? This question has already been answered! It’s in the solicits! All 6 issues of this run and the choices that get made are revealed one by one in clear regular Helvetica font.

 

Spoiler: It’s an Indian dude, a Mom and her son in Paris, a Catholic Priest in Brazil, an Anti-Progressive (what does that even mean) older dude from Australia and a Mexican dude. Yawn. Their outfits look like they were designed by the costume design castoffs of Alpha Flight and the Wonder Twins from back in the day. But it’s Millar World! Sorry. MILLAR WORLD! A world where we cultivate great stories and turn them into streaming content – oh shut up. You know why it’s in the Solicits for all the world to see? Why is Marky Mark just giving away the entire secret of the series five months ahead of time? Because the comic is just a vehicle for the TV Show or a vehicle to ultimately just sell a trade. It doesn’t exist as its own entity. And if it's Marky Mark it's going to be created for a pitch deck or it’s not Millar World.

 

You see, these comics aren’t comic books for you to enjoy. They’re marketing tools. They’re an extended storyboard for TV Executives to take a look at. The sales will gauge and fuel the pitch meeting. Look at all this diversity! Look at all the markets we hit with this cast! Yes, the Anti-Progressive undergoes a sex change by the second season, don’t worry! Look, you’ve got an Editorial Production Manager listed right on the first page of the masthead of credits. That’s not a comic book job. There were no Editorial Production Manager jobs in the classifieds when Kirby was looking for a gig back in the 60s. Aww, and look Mark’s wife is the CEO. Notice her font is 1/10^th the size of Mark’s. Is this him being passive aggressive with his wife? I bet you he's the master of passive aggressiveness, just look at his fonts! Is this a new disease? Fontism? Helvetica on Steroids Syndrome?

 

Of course I can't really get mad at Mark, this is an industry wide issue. Lots of comics have their entire story broken down in solicits and already have the date for the Trade Paperback set before you even get issue one. Does the comic book universe not want us to buy monthlies? Ugh, anyway...

 

The Most Ambitious Comic Book of All Time! Oy vey. How is this the most ambitious comic of all time Mark? Seriously. A six issue arc with a basic trope about finding power in every day people? Is it the 6 different artists? Dude, artists are hopping around projects these days like herpes at the Playboy Mansion in the 80s. Is it your ambition Mark? To make this into a 7 season Emmy award winning streamer? You wanna know what would be the most ambitious comic book of all time? Saying, I'm gonna write a compelling story that lasts 500 issues! That, would take the cake. Hell, in this day and age saying you'd wanna write 20 issues is considered nutso.

 

Finally, of course Mark can’t resist exploding his name to assault your eyeballs with. He’s back to his old antics with his font fetish on the back cover page of the comic. My goodness the name of the comic he's promoting on the back cover is called BIG GAME.

 

Here's a sneak peak at some titles coming down the pike from Millar Lite World:

Gigantic Things. Big Stufferoo. E-Nor-Mous. Wowiekablowie! Boom Boom Buy Buy.

 

Look, Quitely’s art is a sight to behold. I could read this back and forth several times over if I didn’t have to actually ingest any of the text. Again, it's not that this is bad per se but it's not worthy of any of the superlatives, not one bit. Maybe it’s telling that an artist is changed up for every issue of the series, perhaps they can only take Mr. Fonty for one issue before he’s begging to pick them up and drive them to a Malibu Clambake where Matthew McConaughey is hosting his nude Bongo workshop.

 

Good on ya Mark. You’ve made a life and a career for yourself. I can’t hate on you for that. But I would look to the rise and fall of Dane Cook as a cautionary tale for someone who surfed to glory with bombast and marketing know how. Eventually it catches up to you. Eventually your work will be sitting in the round at Madison Square Garden and the world will see you not necessarily as the Titan that you claim to be but rather a simple old Times New Roman 10pt font that doesn’t even know how to italicize itself.

 

Rating: 7.0

Verdict: Drop